May Bird Among the Stars (5 page)

It made them almost forget. It made them almost feel as if their moms were just behind them, catching up, and not impossibly far away

NECROMANCY NANCY'S SNACK SHOPPE,
a sign ahead announced. A shell of a house perched on the rocky hill beyond it, its doors all long fallen in and its frame sagging to the left. Shingles had slid off its sides and lay in piles at its base. Somber Kitty gave the air a thoughtful sniff from his papoose as they passed the sign and turned toward the shop.

“If I get home, I am going to behave better,” May said, her eyes on the horizon ahead, where the faintest shadows of mountains formed.

“If I see my mother again,” Bea mused, trying to pass the time, “I'm going to tat a lace handkerchief for her.”

“If I see my men again, I never ever gonna let them go,” Fabbio blurted out with emotion, then cleared his throat and tugged at the medals on his uniform self-consciously.

“Something smells terrible,” May croaked, pinching her nose with her fingers.

Beatrice drifted to the front doorway and wrinkled her nose.

Pumpkin raised his nostrils to the air.
Sniff, sniff sniff.
“Smells like bananas.”

Whoosh!

May flinched just as a teapot flew past her head.

She stared after it as it went tumbling across the dirt. It had come out of one of the windows of Necromancy Nancy's.

“Oh no!” Beatrice said, casting a look at Fabbio. Pumpkin whimpered.

“Ay, Dio mio,”
Fabbio said, backing up, his eyes pinned to the shack. Somber Kitty leaped from his papoose and hissed at the empty, gaping doorway.

“What is it?”

“Shhh,” Beatrice hissed, taking May by the strap of her bathing suit and yanking her backward. Pumpkin zipped backward too.

Bea's eyelashes fluttered wildly as she quickly scanned the area around them. “They're here,” she whispered.

Fabbio grasped the hilt of his sword. “We are to being very still. They may be surrounding us.”

“Who?” May turned to stare at Bea quizzically at the very same moment that a pie plate came shooting through the doorway, just missing her ear. Her hands flew to her face as a shrill cry rang in her ears.

And then they saw it. A
something
appeared in the doorway of the snack shack. It didn't have a shape, really—it was just a glowing, lopsided orb of hazy light. In its hazy arms it held a jumble of plates, bowls, and candlesticks.

“Bip bop diddum duddum waddum choo!”

A torrent of items came flying at them from the doors and windows of the house. A bottle of shampoo flew at May from behind. Just as she turned, somebody pinched the back of her neck, then her cheek.

“Cootchy cootchy!”

Next to May, Beatrice crouched to miss a teacup. “Run!”

“Bip bop diddum duddum waddum choo!”

Fabbio pulled out his sword and began waving it in the air wildly as they sprinted forward alongside the tracks, dodging the rocks butting out of the soil. Laughter and other sounds of delight followed behind them. So did silverware. A butter knife missed May's ear by half a centimeter. A fork grazed Fabbio right under his nose, combing his mustache.

“Gobble gobble gee, gobble gobble guy!”

“What's happening?” May asked, craning her neck to look behind her. She could just make out fuzzy, indistinct shapes—balls of mist and light zipping along behind them, occasionally oozing slime in long dribbles on the ground.

“Poltergeists!” Bea yelled, clutching the sides of her head. “Cover your ears!”

The group fled across the highlands, and the poltergeists followed—over small rises and rocks, down furrows in the land.

May, who'd already been ready to fall down from exhaustion,
felt her legs going wobbly beneath her, and she finally tumbled forward, thudding into the grass.

Fabbio came to a halt. Beatrice, Kitty in tow, slammed into his back with an “Ugh.” Pumpkin zipped behind a rock.

May felt a pair of cold hands on her shoulders and a dribble of slime down her back. “Gobble gobble gobble gobble,” it whispered.

“Sha na na na?” a voice said. The voice sounded familiar.

“Diggy diggy?” the poltergeist holding May's shoulder replied, releasing her.

“Well, gobble. Gobble gobble.”

Everyone gazed in astonishment at Pumpkin. He and the poltergeists looked like they were having some kind of meeting.

Finally, Pumpkin looked back at May and the others, irritated. “Can we have some privacy, please?”

Bewildered, Fabbio, Beatrice, May, and Kitty walked about twenty yards away

A few minutes later Pumpkin came floating over to them.

“They say they can help.”

“Banna fanna fo fanna!!” the poltergeists called over Pumpkin's shoulder. Pumpkin slapped his hands on his knees and laughed.

“What did they say?” Beatrice asked.

“Nothing.” Pumpkin cleared his throat, shooting a glance at Fabbio's curled mustache. “Just a joke.”

“Okay But what are they saying?” May was starting to get annoyed.

“I told them we're trying to get north. They said they'll carry
us to paradise if we want. They said the spirits there are pretty brave; they might be able to help us get north.”

Bea, Fabbio, and May looked at one another. They shrugged. Paradise didn't sound that bad.

“I don't know. Poltergeists are very unpredictable,” Beatrice said.

“Hobble gobble.”

“They say that's typical of specters, to be so rude. They say they're a misunderstood and oppressed species of spirit that has never gotten the respect it deserves.”

“Gobble gobble.”

“In fact,” Pumpkin translated, “they have started the Union Against the Defamation of Poltergeists and suggest you could be held accountable for your comments.”

Everyone stared, disbelieving.

“Zippety doo da.”

“And they said, so what if they occasionally steal stuff and turn spirits mad and try to knock them out with heavy objects? That is their right as poltergeists,” Pumpkin finished with his nose in the air.

Everyone looked to May for a decision.

“Why are they willing to help?” she asked suspiciously “Why us?”

“Dippitydo!”

Pumpkin paused. His wide, crooked mouth fell into a scowl. He looked at Somber Kitty, then sighed and muttered, “They say, because they like your cat.”

May looked at Kitty, who licked his paw casually, then at the poltergeists. She looked to the mountains in the north.

“I don't know….”

What if the poltergeists were liars, like John the Jibber had been?

But then, what other choices did they have?

“I think … I think out of all of our choices, it may be the least terrible one,” May finally said, looking unsurely at the others, who nodded agreement.

With that, the poltergeists hoisted them all into the air and started carrying them west across the highlands.

I
t was a couple of hours before the poltergeists stopped up ahead on the dusky horizon and began to gabble, leaping up and down. Their baggage, whom they let down now, looked over the rise and were greeted with an unexpected sight: a patch of scrubby, thin, glowing trees surrounded by a wide moat.

“Gabble gabble!”

Pumpkin waved. “Gobble!”

Without another gabble, the poltergeists zipped off, on to some other adventure.

Everyone looked at Pumpkin. “What?” he asked self-consciously.

“We just had no idea you could … do that. You said you could, but …” May trailed off.

Somber Kitty looked off into the distance and yawned, trying to appear bored. Pumpkin and May shared a smile that only they understood. It wasn't the first time Pumpkin had surprised her. He blushed.

They all approached the edge of the moat—which was spanned by a narrow bridge—and tried to peer into the sparse scattering of trees on the other side.
Paradise.

Fabbio cleared his throat. “I have a poem about this. It is called Across the Moat I'm Looking, to See What Is Cooking.' It is like this….”

After they'd listened patiently to Fabbio's poem, which was a sonnet in iambic pentameter, May suggested they cross the moat, but very carefully. If the poltergeists could attack them so easily, maybe others could too, and maybe they wouldn't be so friendly. She fastened her death shroud extra tight. She didn't want anyone spotting her as a Live One and blowing their Bogey whistle, which would summon him lickety-split.

“Wait, what about Kitty?” Beatrice asked.

May looked down at her cat. There wasn't much use of
her
looking ghostly when
he
looked so very alive and, well, catlike. “You're right,” she said with a sigh, embarrassed. She could be so forgetful sometimes.

“Kitty, you're going to have to hide here until we find out what kind of spirits are around,” she said.

“Meay?” Kitty mewed softly and sadly, tilting his head to one side and giving May his best sad kitten eyes. But May shook her head.

“I'm sorry. ”

Somber Kitty sneezed reproachfully. Then he curled up under some nearby branches. “Mew,” he said, with finality.

Everyone gave him a kiss on the top of the head as Pumpkin stood and watched, making jealous kissy faces behind their backs. Fabbio lingered, stroking Kitty's ears. “You stay safe, little Kitty.”

Under Somber Kitty's watchful gaze, they each crossed
the moat, Pumpkin insisting on floating directly behind May. Then they disappeared into the trees.

The travelers made their way slowly through the grass. “Yow,” May whispered. “Ow. Ouch!
Pumpkin!
” She turned around. Pumpkin stood centimeters behind her, biting his fingers.

“Can you
please
stop stepping on my heels?”

“Can I have a piggyback?”

“No,” May hissed.

“Can I go back and wait with Somber Kitty?” he whispered.

“If you want.”

“Will you take me?”

“No!” May, Fabbio, and Beatrice said in unison.

Pumpkin was silent for a few moments, then he whispered, “Can somebody hold my hand?”

May sighed, but she let Pumpkin slip his frigid fingers into hers.

A few minutes later they approached the last of the cluster of trees, obscuring what looked like a clearing. Fabbio stuck out his arm theatrically, and they all came to a halt. “On count of three, we pull back branches and look.” Beatrice, however, had already pulled aside some branches. They leaned forward.

The sight was breathtaking. In the evening starlight lay a wide vale—a deep, sprawling valley of green grass that spread itself downward in a bowl toward huge, slate gray cliffs that climbed into the sky. And crashing along down the middle, breaking against the rocks in great puffs of white foam, was an enormous waterfall—glowing neon blue water rushing toward a large pool, where it crashed and foamed with deafening speed.
Waterslides, burrowed smoothly into the rock, wound down the cliffs on either side of the falls, curling toward the lagoon below Tiny purple and yellow nightshade flowers floated on the grass like polka dots on a green dress, along with a giant trampoline and something that looked like a cannon.

Tree houses dotted the trees around the field, and several tents made with sheets and sticks were strewn across the lawn. A sweet breeze blew through the glowing grass. Ukulele music floated from some unknown spot, playing a sweet Hawaiian tune.

Fabbio wiped a tear of joy from his eye. Beatrice let out a long sigh. Pumpkin squeezed May's hand tighter. May felt a smile in her heart. Just looking at the beautiful water had a peaceful, soothing effect on her. “Paradise,” she whispered.

Suddenly, from the left, a knot of spirits, their heads stuck with feathers, came barreling past the trees. Another group chased after them, shooting arrows and yelling wildly.

Some were missing heads or arms or legs. Others were bent and twisted into odd shapes. Besides the feathers they had tucked in their hair, they wore aviator suits, loincloths, swim trunks, camouflage. Never in the Ever After had May witnessed such a ragtag group of spirits.

As the travelers looked on, a figure bringing up the rear seemed to catch sight of them out of the corner of his eye. He skidded to a halt and aimed one of his arrows in their direction, peering at them through the trees.

“Nobody move,” he said. A white line of sunblock ran the length of his nose, his green eyes sparkled wildly He wore a pair of fluorescent orange shorts and an orchid-printed T-shirt.
He had a slight bluish tinge to his lips. After studying them a moment longer, he lowered his arrow and held a hand up in the air. “What's up, dudes?”

May looked at the others, then back in the direction in which they had left Somber Kitty. Pumpkin gave her a little shove forward.

“Um, hi.”

The spirit thrust his hand toward May. “Name's Zero.”

“I'm May Bird.” May gulped, tightening her death shroud. “This is Beatrice Heathcliff Longfellow, Pumpkin, and Captain Fabbio.”

Zero directed his widening smile at Beatrice. “Welcome to paradise.” Then he seemed to recall something. His mouth lowered in a frown. He lifted his arrow again, aiming it at them.

“You're trespassing.”

T
he travelers huddled together on a boulder in the middle of the grass, staring out at the hundred or so specters who had gathered to catch a glimpse of them. “Ohhh,” Pumpkin moaned, cowering behind May. Beatrice gave him a look that urged him to be brave. The spirits were a fearsome group—mostly young, all mangled or maimed in some way. By the way they were dressed, May picked out snake charmers, race car drivers, mountaineers, parachutists. To the right, those not curious enough to join the gathering occasionally hurtled over the edge of the falls, screaming and plummeting with a crash into the lagoon. A few shot out of water cannons nearby.