May Bird, Warrior Princess

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  He looked May up and down, then smiled to reveal seven golden teeth in an otherwise empty mouth. He reached one hand around her wrist firmly. With the other he pulled a length of rope from his pocket. He winked at her and grinned more widely. “And you look like a million bucks.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Last of the Knaves

  ’T was only a small group of us what made it out, thanks to our smarts,” Petey was saying, plucking a hair from his scraggly beard and using it to floss his golden teeth. “A knave’s always got to have an escape route.”

  Petey, sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, which was painted the exact color of the desert so that it was almost impossible to spot from more than a few feet away, wore a striped pirate shirt that accentuated his bulging belly. One wooden leg protruded from his baggy trousers. In the back with her wrists tied together, May was flanked on one side by a chunky woman with round, bluish cheeks who, May knew, went by the name of Guillotined Gwenneth. She had a purple gash along her neck where she had clearly been beheaded, and her brown eyes twinkled with malicious mirth as she stared at May. Somber Kitty, whom Gwenneth held on her lap tightly, looked to be smothering in her copious bosom. On May’s right sat a beanpole of a man in a black-and-white-striped prison suit, who had introduced himself as Skinny Skippy and now sat fiddling nervously with her quiver of arrows, licking his dry lips and rocking back and forth slightly.

  It had been a long time since May had felt the coldness of a spirit’s touch. But as they lurched along beyond the cliffs and back into the desert, she stared out the window, numb to the danger that came with sitting in a car full of knaves. She kept running over events in her mind at top speed. Falling off the roof. The lake suddenly appearing. The open doorway. It was all too clear to ignore.

  They were dead. Dead. Dead. As doornails.

  May had pictured herself as being a lot of things when she grew up, but none of them included being a spirit drifting around the afterlife in a bathing suit and pajama bottoms. Nevers crowded her mind like beetles, one piling on top of the next, each one a fresh shock. She would never grow an inch taller, never have a boyfriend, never go to high school, never visit the real Egypt, never see White Moss Manor again. But most of all, more hurtful than any never that popped into her head, May thought of those nights her mom had reached for her in the middle of the night, just to make sure she was there.

  She stared down at her translucent body, trying to picture an eternity floating, filmy, and gray. She looked over at Somber Kitty, who was staring at her quizzically, his giant translucent ears tilted toward her like satellites. Did he know they were dead? He looked very melancholy, but after all, that was his favorite expression, and they were being kidnapped by knaves. May turned to the window again, tears gathering in her eyes.

  Petey, who happened to be looking back over his shoulder just then, frowned. “There, there, lassie, don’t try to hold it back,” he said, his voice sounding all choked up. “Ain’t no shame in it. Sometimes I cry too, ye know.”

  “Every time ye so much as stub yer toe, or see a wee poltergeist trapped at the zoo!” Gwenneth chortled. Skinny Skippy laughed through his nose, nodding his head up and down.

  Petey frowned deeper and turned back to driving.

  “The ghouls came right after you left, lassie,” Skinny Skippy said, grinning. “You and the Jibber and your friends. That bright white boyfriend o’ yours and that pathetic house ghost, Squashie.”

  May was barely listening. She cast a glance at Skippy, who licked his smiling lips, worms crawling out of the holes in his shirt. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she muttered.

  “Say.” Petey looked into the cracked rearview mirror. “What happened to you anyway? How’d ye die? Asphyxiation? Drowning?” May kept her mouth shut. She didn’t know how she continued to exist right then. She felt like she should disintegrate completely, so empty did she feel.

  “Well, the Ever After’s changed a great deal since we last had the pleasure of your comp’ny,” he went on. Gwenneth and Skippy rolled their eyes at each other at the words “pleasure of your company,” and Gwenneth pantomimed Petey’s fine manners. She nodded toward the front passenger seat, drawing May’s attention to a book that lay there: How to Win Friends, Influence Specters, Have Good Manners, and Find Buried Treasure by Duke Bluebeard, Esquire. Petey, not noticing, continued. “All our friends—gone, lassie. And knaves bein’ the best souls at hidin’ themselves and bein’ sneaky.” He sighed. “Ah well, I’d say the others what dwelled in the Grotto have crossed the bridge by now. I’d say lots of spirits all over the realm have, since Cleevil took over.” He sniffed. “Poor things.”

  “Bridge …” May murmured, hardly caring that she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Gwenneth let out a derisive grunt. “You know about the Bridge of Souls?” she asked, with a malicious grin, clearly dying to share.

  May shook her head numbly.

  Gwenneth and Skinny Skippy gave each other a meaningful look.

  “Best not talk about that, ye two,” Petey said warningly over his shoulder, then let out a huge, smelly burp. Somber Kitty tucked his nose against Gwenneth’s bosom. “Some folks say it sneaks up on you if you talk about it too much.” Gwenneth’s eyes widened with fear, as if realizing he had a point. And then she seemed to have a new thought.

  “Ay.” She sighed. “I do feel sorry fer ye, lassie, being newly dead’s no picnic. Bit of a shock, it is.” She hesitated, scratching at the mark around her neck from where she’d been beheaded. “And ye know, it makes me a sight sorry about trying to get ye wet all those years ago, with that nasty seawater capsule,” she said, reaching out a hand to shake. “Let’s make up.”

  “There’s one in your hand right now,” May said flatly, staring down at the black capsule tucked between Gwenneth’s fingers, ready to pop.

  Gwenneth feigned surprise. “Ay, so there is!” she said, sheepishly slipping the capsule back into her pocket and showing May her big, black-toothed smile.

  “Bet people on Earth are a bit on edge these days, eh?” Petey said, cheerfully making conversation. May barely heard him, wondering what her funeral would be like. Would somebody be there to hold her mom’s hand? What kind of music would they play?

  Up ahead, the City of Ether came into view, and they all fell silent, leaning forward breathlessly. Even for spirits who saw it every day, the city was breathtaking: its spiky rooftops, the great churches that soared above its walls, and the enormous gray spire of the Eternal Edifice, which rose so high into the air that its roof couldn’t be seen—it merely disappeared into the sky.

  The city was surrounded by an enormous cemetery filled with hundreds of thousands of graves for nightly haunting duties.

  Ether itself was still alight, eerie glows coming from the windows. But even from this far away, May could see that the great phantoms that once guarded its four gates were gone.

  “Bo Cleevil called the sniffing phantoms home last year sometime,” Gwenneth said, following her eyes. “’Tweren’t necessary anymore. Now he’s just got the vampires roaming the skies.”

  May could just make out a giant structure up ahead, several stories tall, just outside the city gate. That was new. It was a billboard of sorts, with a dark shadowy figure on it, all in black, moving back and forth with decisive, quick movements. The way it moved, powerful and menacing, reminded her of Bo Cleevil. She imagined she could make out his long trench coat, his beaten hat, his slick-as-a-snake movements. But as they got closer, she realized it was a different shape—similar, but smaller, thinner, more graceful.

  As they drove closer and closer, another gut-pounding thought occurred to her: If she was dead, that meant the Lady hadn’t sent for her. She hadn’t brought her here. She might not even know that May was in the Ever After.

  At that same moment, something about the tilt of the figure on the billboard up ahead made May’s ears go red and itchy. If her heart had still been beating, it would have skipped. It cou
ldn’t be … but then, now that she saw it, there was no mistaking it. Things—which a moment ago seemed about as bad as they could get—got worse.

  Looming ahead was a moving picture—several stories high—of a figure with her death shroud blowing behind her, a sinister look on her face, her black bathing suit sparkling. It was a ten-year-old May Bird, towering over Ether for all the world to see. Across the top was one word: WANTED, glowing in moving red letters. And along the bottom: A MILLION BUCKS FOR HER CAPTURE. COURTESY OF YOUR FAVORITE RULER, BO CLEEVIL.

  May looked down at her tied hands and knew now why the knaves had taken her. She wriggled her wrists, but Skinny Skippy put his water gun to her side and gave her a look that said not to dare.

  “We float from here,” he said.

  May had no choice but to drift out of the car behind the knaves as they made their slow progress up the ramp that led onto the wall of the city.

  “Yep,” Petey said, as much to himself as to May, looking around at the thousands of headstones behind them, then up at the Eternal Edifice, its impossibly high spire arching far above their heads. “Hard to believe Cleevil’s finally got his hands on The Book of the Dead. They say that’s what told him how to use the graves.”

  “What do you mean ‘use the graves’?” May asked, a sudden fear taking hold of her, though she didn’t know exactly why.

  “Why,” Petey said, looking surprised, “how to use other spirits’ graves without getting lost. That’s how he means to do it, ye know. What do ye think all the Cleevilvilles are for? For the dark spirits, of course. Thousands and thousands of ’em. Goblins, ghouls, vamps, whatnot.” He nodded to himself. “Yep, I’d say they’re just about ready to go.”

  “Go where?” May asked, her stomach turning sickly.

  “Why, to go take over the land of the living, of course,” he said, chewing on something. “Didn’t ye know?” He motioned to the vast graveyard behind them, a giant version of the cemeteries that stood in every town in the Ever After, all full of doorways to the world below. He reached a finger into his mouth and pulled out a cockroach, but May hardly noticed. “Earth’s the next to go.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ghost City

  May and her captors drifted up the main boulevard, tumbleweeds flying past them. The dusty streets of Ether, once filled with bustling merchants, hangmen, Victorian specters bustling off to haunting duties, shades in saris and silks, spirits hawking souvenirs from rusted carts, were empty. Tiny hovels, cottages, gaping mausoleums, intricate crumbling chapels lined the boulevards and crisscrossing alleys, but nothing more. Even the stone gargoyles that had once lined the tops of walls of the city were gone.

  It was impossible, May thought. Impossible. The Ever After was full of ancient rules. And one of them was “Hopping graveys is for babies.” Which meant, no spirits could use other spirits’ graves to haunt the Earth.

  “You’re right to look scared, girly. They probably gonna turn ye ta nothin’ when we hand ye over,” Skinny Skippy said gleefully, misinterpreting her stricken expression.

  They stopped at an empty bakery with crispy skull-shaped pastries in the window display, and cupcakes coated in thick white frosting made to look like brains, and tiny, intricate marzipan coffins. The knaves raided the shelves and stuffed their faces, grinning at one another with their rotten teeth. May stared at them, lost. From time to time, Kitty swiped his paw softly at her cheek, trying to wake her from her daze. But finding out she was dead, that she was also up for ransom, and that her entire planet was on the brink of being invaded by every ghoul, goblin, and zombie in existence was too much for her. Something inside her had crumpled up, checked out, so that even Somber Kitty’s soft paw pads couldn’t rouse her.

  “Ay, that last skullcake’s got me name on it,” Skinny Skippy growled.

  “And Santa’s coming early this year,” Petey shot back, grabbing the pastry and stuffing it into his mouth, then winking at Skippy, his cheeks bulging. That was all it took for Skippy, who hauled back and punched Petey in the face. Petey stumbled back and drew his water gun at the same time Skippy did. Somber Kitty, perched in May’s arms, watched, fascinated, his head moving back and forth as if he were at a tennis match.

  “’At’s enough, boys,” Gwenneth said, thrusting one smelly foot between them. Skippy acted quickly, pulling out his dagger and slicing it off.

  “Yow!” she yelled, lunging after her foot, which landed a few feet away. “What’d ye go and do that for?” She picked up the foot, the toes wiggling. “As if I ain’t got enough to carry and now I gotta be carryin’ me own foot.” She looked around, as if she might find something to tie the foot back on with, and then she sighed and tucked it under her arm.

  They wove through the city slowly, Petey stopping them every time they reached a corner or an open doorway to make sure the coast was clear. “Still a few dark spirits running about,” he said, “though most of ’em have moved on now that the city’s deserted….”

  The knaves, seeming a little discomfited by May’s utter silence, were trying to make conversation.

  “Ye may wonder where we’re takin’ ye,” Gwenneth prattled on. “There’s a captive drop-off spot north of here, in West Stabby Eye, right next to the drop-off for Bad Will.”

  They were in a district called Glow-So, which, by the looks of it, was the high fashion capital of the realm. The street was lined with stores displaying filmy garments full of holes and coated in intricate, moldy, and spiderwebbed patterns. Some were covered in customized dark stains, others were simply worn-out and nubby. They wove through the neighborhoods of Little Groany, All Hags Haven, and Phantasm Phairway, Peg Leg Petey explaining that in the city’s heyday, this was where you got the best hexes, and that was the hottest spot to buy phantasmic phootwear, and this was where you went to see the best new musicals. What was left behind by the city’s inhabitants—bits of paper scrawled with glowing words and blood red ink, old wedding veils, top hats, blobs of ectoplasm—fluttered up and down the crisscrossing alleyways and avenues with the breeze.

  And then they turned a corner and suddenly it was before them—the Eternal Edifice.

  The Edifice’s great golden doors lay on the street, broken in pieces. Its windows were all missing. Ghouls had graffitied its walls with words such as “Hgggbbleeeee” and “Argglbll ggubkllbbllll!”

  “Argglbll ggubkllbbllll.” Petey sighed. “Now that’s a bit naughty.”

  Even the knaves were awed by the hollowed remains of the Edifice.

  Listlessly May drifted toward it, reaching out her bound hands, peering up its once-gleaming white walls, now dull and grimy. And then she was close enough to see that, underneath the graffiti and the grime, the words of wishes—which she had seen once before—were still etched across the building’s surface. Her eyes fell to the ground, where a shard of stained glass lay beneath her. Something poked out from underneath it—a piece of paper, fluttering at her in the breeze. She stared at it for a moment. And suddenly, the fog in May’s head lifted.

  FINAL PERFORMANCE IN THE EVER AFTER! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

  The photo was of Pumpkin, dressed in a turban. He was standing near a pile of fake jewels, moving his mouth as if he were singing. May held the paper close to her ear. She could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of Pumpkin’s magnificent voice. She pulled back and looked again. He winked, but there was a sadness to his wink. A momentary wistful frown crossed his big, crooked mouth.

  May felt like a person waking up from a dream. She had to pull herself—as flimsy and translucent as she might be—together.

  She chewed a nail and stared at the picture, Pumpkin waving his jewels and treasure. She felt a tug at her wrists.

  “All right, missy,” Skippy said, sneering and licking his lips. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Quickly May grabbed the paper and stuffed it into her pocket. She shot Somber Kitty a look. Kitty, tight in Gwenneth’s arms and his usual discreet self, didn’t say anything.

  “Hey, you
know,” May said thoughtfully, a few minutes later, as they were making their way down an empty boulevard in the direction of the northern gate, “you really shouldn’t turn me in.”

  Gwenneth let out a hardy laugh. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  May thought of Pumpkin’s picture, which had reminded her of something else. “Because I know where you can find something that’s worth much more than a million bucks.”

  Skinny Skippy laughed and Gwenneth yawned, clearly disbelieving. But Peg Leg Petey looked intrigued and rubbed his scraggly chin. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  “Well if you’re not interested in the treasure of the Queen of Sheeba …”

  The knaves stood staring for a moment. Greed twinkled in Petey’s eye. It glistened in a drop of drool that rolled from Skippy’s mouth. It glinted off Gwenneth’s three gold teeth.

  “She lies,” Skippy said.

  May sighed. “Okay. Whatever …”

  Suddenly May was being swept into Skippy’s arms, a water gun pointed at her chin. “Now Skippy, be nice, lad,” Petey said, reaching out for him and giving May an apologetic look with his one exposed eyeball, but Skippy jerked May backward another step.

  “Explain yerself, lassie—yyyOW!”

  Skippy leaped into the air, waving his gun toward the ground, where Somber Kitty had landed, a piece of fabric dangling from his mouth. “He bit me bum!” Skippy yelped.

  “Ay, to the devil with the both of ye,” Gwenneth cried, snatching the gun out of Skippy’s hands. “You”—she waved the gun at Skippy—“with yer skinny little munchkin legs, and you”—she waved the gun at Petey. She pointed the gun at May herself, waving it every now and then at Somber Kitty, too. “Now, explain yerself, girly.”

  May cleared her throat. “Remember John the Jibber came with me to find it?” It was true. She and John the Jibber had joined forces to reach the top of the Eternal Edifice so they could read the all-knowing Book of the Dead. May had wanted to find out if the book could tell her the way back to West Virginia. And John had wanted it to tell him where the treasure was. All they’d discovered, though, was the passage under May’s name that read Known far and wide as the girl who destroyed Evil Bo Cleevil’s reign of terror.