May Bird Among the Stars

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  “Look, nobody’s interested in Risk Falls. We’re way at the edge of the world. And if they were interested, they wouldn’t go through all the trouble of finding us. And if they did find us, well …” He thought for a moment. “We’re not scared. We’re the risk takers, remember? We’re the bravest, boldest spirits in the realm.”

  He studied Beatrice as he said this, as if to see her reaction. Her fine eyebrows had settled low with worry.

  May wanted to ask Zero about all the spirits who were being taken away Where were they going? Wasn’t he scared for them? But Zero seemed so brave, so confident. Maybe he knew better.

  She decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

  That night, making sure no one was following her, May snuck back across the moat and spent a few hours stroking Somber Kitty so he wouldn’t feel alone. She thought about the towns to the south, about all the spirits disappearing from them, and about The Book of the Dead.

  “Meow,” Kitty said, worried. Which meant: Don’t you get the feeling that something evil’s on its way?

  But May, not understanding, only sighed wistfully and rubbed under his chin.

  When May returned to Risk Falls, Pumpkin was asleep in her bed, his long left arm lolling off one side. May smiled, covering him up with a blanket, though she supposed it didn’t matter, since ghosts didn’t feel cold.

  The light was still on in Bea’s nook. She was in bed, reading her book on typhoid victims by the glow of a star light.

  “Don’t you want to take a break?” May asked.

  “I’ve just got to finish this one thing.”

  The coolness of the water falling sent a nice breeze wafting in and out of the room. May fell back on a stool, kicked off her shoes, and let the breeze soothe her aching, dirty feet. Then she crawled up to the bamboo curtain and looked down into the vale. She watched the inhabitants of Risk Falls singing and playing music, gathered around a bonfire in the green bowl of the grass.

  Laughter drifted up, just barely audible above the sound of the crashing water, and finally it all dwindled until only the sound of a lone ukulele remained.

  “Gosh, it’s a nice place, isn’t it?” May asked.

  “What’s that?” Bea said, looking up from her book.

  “Nothing. It’s just, it kind of feels like the rest of the world doesn’t exist here. As if even the Lady can’t see us here.”

  Beatrice nodded distractedly, then turned the page of her book. May rested her chin on her hands, staring at the jolly spirits below. She was tempted to go down there with the others, to laugh and talk and listen to the drums.

  But the outsider in May, the one from Briery Swamp who had never fit quite right, kept her tucked safely in her nook.

  Chapter Six

  An Invitation

  Somber Kitty was curled underneath his bush, sound asleep, when he woke suddenly. He didn’t know why, only he sensed something in the darkness. He sniffed the air, but whatever it was, it was far away. The tiniest vibrations in the rocky soil set his whiskers bristling.

  “Meow,” he said softly.

  In the dusky darkness he could not see what was on its way. But he knew it was coming.

  When May rose the next morning, more rested than she had been in weeks, the rest of the vale was already awake.

  Spirits were sailing into the lagoon from all directions. Some were swishing down the waterslides. A man in a wet suit scarred with the mark of a shark’s teeth shot out of a cannon and went careening over the sparse treetops. One spirit floated on an inner tube in the water, bedecked in sunglasses and holding a giant beach ball. It took a second glance for May to realize it was Pumpkin.

  He drifted up to the shoreline on his inner tube. “Hey, May, can we move here?”

  May smiled at him, then scanned the area for Fabbio and Bea. Fabbio was star bathing on the grass in full uniform, his arms crossed behind his head. Bea was talking to some spirits near the water’s edge. “Well, if you hear anything, or if you see a woman who looks like she might have typhoid, please let me know. Even if she looks just a little peaked. Here’s my tomb number.” Beatrice whipped out a quill pen and a pad of parchment and scribbled down an address in Ether.

  May kept walking up along the lip of the vale to a wide green field. Here, Zero and some others were playing hockey with a ball that looked like something out of a medieval torture chamber, all covered with spikes and shooting fire.

  Zero ran after it like a gazelle, knocking it to one of his teammates just as he caught May’s eye. He floated over.

  “You wanna play? Spiky Death Ball’s easy, especially if you get a good coach,” he said with a wink.

  May shook her head. “Zero, the reason we came here is that we need to get to the Far North right away. We were taking the train, but—”

  “Yeah, we saw from the lookout post. Tracks ripped up. Bummer.” Zero stuck his hands in his pockets and bobbed his head a few times.

  “The poltergeists said you might help us.”

  “Ah. Moody little dudes. But they keep things interesting. They’re always throwing stuff over the moat at us—candlesticks, pots, you know—and trying to drag us off to the Dead Sea. Sometimes we’ll invite them for football. But they’re horrible cheaters.”

  A group of spirits floated by chasing the spiky ball. They disappeared around the side of the hill. Zero hardly noticed.

  “Sometimes the only thing to do when they’re acting up is put ’em in a headlock. And then you give them a good noogie. They hate that.”

  May wrinkled her nose. “A noogie?”

  “Yeah, you know. You slip your arm around their neck, like this.”

  “I know what a noogie is!” she said. But Zero slipped his frigid, ghostly arm around her neck, sending cold chills along her skin.

  “Dude, there’s an art to it. You really gotta lock your arms, like so, so they can’t get out. Then take your fist, like this”—Zero balled up one fist—“and press hard, like this.” He rubbed his fist into the top of her head. “And you gotta yell. Yelling is the most important part. Noogie! Noogie! Noogie!”

  “Ouch!” May squealed, slipping loose and giggling.

  Zero grinned. “Noogies. They’re totally underrated. The poltergeists hate them.”

  May smiled, but heavier things weighed on her mind. “Anyway, about going north …”

  Zero scratched his chin. “Well, we can’t really take you there. None of us likes to leave Risk Falls…. It’s kind of a drag out there.”

  “Oh.” May tried not to look crestfallen. She gazed down at her feet.

  “Hey. Don’t stress,” Zero said brightly. “If it’s that big a deal, we can just send you by balloon.”

  “Balloon?”

  Zero squinted. “Sure. I don’t see why not. We have one to raid the poltergeists with sometimes. We got it from some French dude. Used to be a major balloonist when he was alive. He left us to do aerial stunts for the Shakespeare Song and Dance Revue.” May immediately thought of Pumpkin. His dearest dream was to be a singer in the Shakespeare Song and Dance Revue.

  “And you know our motto here at Risk Falls,” Zero went on. “‘Share and share alike.’”

  May stifled a grin.

  “C’mon,” Zero said. “I’ll show’er to you.”

  May followed him around the side of the falls into a pretty glade overhung by rock. The balloon lay sprawled there, deflated, its big straw basket sitting upright on the grass. The balloon itself was not what she’d expected. It was shaped like a giraffe.

  Zero noticed her surprise. “French dude moonlighted as a clown for a while,” he explained with a shrug. “It still floats. Thing is, most spirits are tired of it. It’s pretty boring, just floating around up there. And it’s a lot of work. We’re not so into work.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and levitated, looking at the balloon.

  “I’ll make you a deal. Take a load off, relax for a couple days, and the balloon’s all yours. We love company.”

  May shook her h
ead furiously. “Uh, no, we’ve really got to get going.”

  As she said it, May looked back toward the vale and felt a pang of regret. It was so lovely here. Zero put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a look so careless and carefree, it put her worried frown to shame.

  “Just kick back a bit,” he urged. “Death is good.”

  That evening May found Pumpkin sitting by the lagoon, singing to himself.

  When he saw her, he cleared his throat. “Just watching Marco Polo.” He nodded toward the lagoon.

  Several spirits were swimming around the lagoon calling, “Marco!”

  Every once in a while a specter with a mustache and a three-pointed hat popped out of the water and yelled, “Polo! Thatsa me!”

  May sat beside Pumpkin and dipped her feet in the water. Under the blue surface, the bottom of her shroud drifted off away from her feet, so that they appeared very alive. She wiggled her toes with pleasure.

  She looked about her and sighed wistfully. It felt so safe here in Risk Falls.

  Pumpkin noticed her thoughtfulness and moved closer beside her, dipping his own ghostly feet into the water next to hers.

  “You look serious.”

  May smiled at him. “Do you think we need a rest, Pumpkin?”

  She expected a resounding yes! But instead, Pumpkin looked pensive.

  “You need to get home,” he finally said.

  May wiggled her toes some more, staring at them.

  “You’re right. I feel like we should leave as soon as possible.”

  This made Pumpkin waver. “But things are good here. Even Beatrice looks well, not so sad….” Pumpkin motioned to where Bea sat on the opposite side of the pond, mending clothes for some of the Risk Fallers. She wasn’t quite smiling, but as she worked, she wasn’t quite wearing her thoughtful frown, either.

  “We could stay for just a day or two,” May offered.

  Fabbio, who’d apparently been eavesdropping from where he lay on the grass, thrust one finger up into the air and, without moving his head or even opening his eyes, said, “We stay.”

  May looked at Pumpkin. “What do you think?”

  Pumpkin nibbled a finger. “Well, we have such a big thing to do,” he said. “North Farm and all of that. And it’s so dangerous.” He paused for a moment. “You know, I miss Arista. I miss my grave. And the beehive house.”

  May thought back to Arista and his cozy little house in Belle Morte, where Pumpkin had been a servant before setting out to accompany May on her journey. It had seemed so strange and unfamiliar when Pumpkin had brought her there. But if she had known then what lay ahead of her, she might have nestled into Arista’s snug guest room forever. It was a far cry from the dangerous heights of the Eternal Edifice or the wilds of the Far North.

  “I know the sooner we get going, the sooner I’ll be home again, but …” He looked at May, his big black eyes thoughtful. “I’m tired of being afraid.”

  May reached over and gave Pumpkin’s hand a squeeze. He had already faced so many fears for her. Then something else occurred to her: Kitty. They couldn’t leave him hidden and alone for days….

  “Dudes!”

  Everyone in the vale turned to see a blond pigtailed girl in scuba gear standing on the edge of the lagoon, her arms wrapped around a squirming Somber Kitty. “I found a living cat” She nodded toward the bundle in her arms, then beamed at everyone.

  May’s heart stood still.

  “Can we keep it?”

  The Risk Fallers swept toward Kitty. May leaped up to come to his aid.

  “Awesome!” somebody yelled. Somber Kitty let out a low meow and gave May a pitiful glance.

  May breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody seemed to mind that he was a fugitive. She turned to look at Pumpkin, Fabbio, and Bea, who’d come over to investigate. “Okay. We can stay a few days. Three. If you want.” She looked at Beatrice for approval Pumpkin deserved a break. They all did.

  Bea looked unsure. She gazed at the faces of the other two looking like she wanted to protest. But then she softened. “Well if the others want to, I suppose we could….”

  Pumpkin and Fabbio let out hoots. Across the grass Somber Kitty let out another meow, but nobody heard. Instinctively, May thought back to her telep-a-gram: Never forget that the way back is forward. But she chose to ignore that for now, just for the moment.

  “Three days,” she repeated. “Tops.”

  What could happen in three days?

  Chapter Seven

  The Forgetting Lagoon

  For several minutes a cloud of dust had been growing just south of Cleevilville #135, announcing the approach of a group of riders. The cloud grew and grew, until the riders came to a halt just outside the town gates.

  When the cloud settled, six figures, clad in tattered red riding jackets and puffs of yellowed lace at their throats, emerged from the dust. Each sat astride a heaving, snarling gargoyle and held a riding crop in one hand and a pair of braided reins in the other.

  The riders circled the abandoned railroad tracks, studying the ground leading in and out of the town. It wasn’t long before one gestured to a single pair of footprints in the dirt. Only Live Ones leave footprints.

  Without delay, the Wild Hunters whipped their mounts into motion, following the tracks north.

  The group settled into the paradisiacal vale as snugly as peas in rice. Captain Fabbio introduced an Italian game called Who’s Got the Spumoni? which he won most of the time because he kept changing the rules. Beatrice, unable to get her hands on any new books or even one newspaper—as these things seemed to be absent from Risk Falls entirely—mended every piece of clothing in the vale, then started in on other projects: polishing the surfboards, dusting the tiki torches, scrubbing the ledge that led behind the water. Pumpkin and Somber Kitty starting going on walks together, which surprised everyone. Somber Kitty would pass by May’s doorway, turning occasionally to flick his tail at Pumpkin, hurrying him up. Pumpkin would drift along behind and give a quick wave to May as he floated past.

  May watched these comings and goings with a secret smile. From what she could gather, Pumpkin had finally recognized Somber Kitty’s willingness to listen to everything he had to say, and Somber Kitty had begun to appreciate Pumpkin’s optimism. From time to time, Somber Kitty would prance back up to the room in a huff and leap onto May’s lap, after some unknown quarrel. And Pumpkin would scowl at him all through that evening’s activities—the slippery rock relay, the ball of acid toss, the tightrope race across the ravine—and accuse May of taking his side. But inevitably, they would traipse off together the next morning as if nothing had happened at all.

  Fabbio set up a cleaning detail to clear the vale of ghost weeds. Everyone who agreed to help, which meant Beatrice and May, met him at five every morning.

  Each day most of the Risk Falls inhabitants, no matter how many limbs they were missing, took to the lake and floated on their backs. Only Somber Kitty sat on the edge, growling at the ripples, letting out a woeful chorus of “Mew. Meow. Meay” Having lost his owner to a water demon, he had more reason than most cats to be suspicious of water.

  May marveled at the bravery of the spirits of Risk Falls. They weren’t scared of anything: not falling off cliffs or catching on fire or getting shot through with arrows (they shot one another quite frequently). They seemed to enjoy being dead with reckless abandon. Taken with the idea, May designed a barrel with rudders for the spirits to steer over the falls. She also forged a shortcut to the top of the cliffs that the others had never noticed, invented a quick and easy way to reattach missing parts with paper clips, and showed everyone how to teach a cat to dance. (Even though it would never come in handy, her students were delighted.) But the thing the specters of Risk Falls liked most of all about May Bird was that she told the best stories.

  She had told them only to Pumpkin at first—stories about her mom, about Somber Kitty the warrior cat, about Briery Swamp and the people she imagined had once lived there. She spun stories a
bout White Moss Manor and its previous owners, including a woman named Bertha Brettwaller, rumored to have had horrible breath and to have walked out of the house one morning looking for wild garlic, never to return. Adding details like this here and there, he listened raptly to May’s histories, Somber Kitty snoozing at her side.

  Presently, they were joined by a couple of spirits who happened to overhear, and the number kept growing until the entire population of Risk Falls was gathered in the vale every night to hear May recall the Eternal Edifice, the New Egyptians, the Bogey, and a psychic beekeeper named Arista. They were good stories already, but May added flourishes and embellishments, colorful descriptions, and passionate hand gestures, until every listener was under her spell, every ear trained on her every syllable. May found that when she was telling these stories, she forgot to be shy at all.

  Beatrice, meanwhile, woke each morning to find bouquets littered outside her door from various admirers. Also, piles of laundry. Both made her flush with pleasure.

  Oddly, on the fourth day not one of the travelers remembered that today was the day they’d planned to leave. Somber Kitty alone paced impatiently at the edge of the trees, trying to catch May’s eye. Whenever he did, he tried to wave her into the woods with his tail. But May, dripping in the invisible shroud that covered her sparkly bathing suit, which was slowly starting to lose its sparkle, would only smile at him in a lazy, relaxed way and go for another jump into the lagoon.

  May learned to shoot an arrow. To swing on a rope. To do a back handspring.

  If anyone had noticed that she didn’t float like everyone else or that she was more colorful than the average ghost, they didn’t say anything. And May began to think of herself not as a Live One, but as just another spirit of Risk Falls.

  Bea found herself needed and adored. Fabbio had found good-natured spirits, including Marco Polo himself, always willing to play by his rules. And Pumpkin had found a place to frolic.

  “May,” Bea said one morning when they were floating in the lagoon, “it’s odd, but sometimes I don’t even remember why we’re here.”