May Bird Among the Stars (11 page)

Bea looked at her, hurt. “You think I'll never find her.”

May flinched, alarm fluttering in her belly. “No, I do! I just—” It just seemed that maybe if Bea stopped pushing so hard, just for a while …

But Bea had already stood and, her nose in the air and her letter tucked under her arm, started floating off across the plain, leaving May watching her back, bewildered. What had she said?

That night all sorts of things kept them up. The wind howled down upon them from the north, causing May and Somber Kitty—the only two who felt the cold—to huddle together in their
sleeping bag, their teeth rattling. The mountains—which again did not seem to be getting any closer—danced with strange lights, flickering here and there like lightning bugs. Even Beatrice, sleeping at a cool distance from May, had no explanation for them.

When May finally slept, she dreamed that the breeze coming down from the mountains was the breath of the Lady herself.

“Meow”

Commander Berzerko stood before the group of goblins and zombies she'd summoned. They had rendezvoused just a few minutes before, at a graveyard just north of the Dead Sea.

In her left paw she held a marker. With her right, she pointed to a collapsible blackboard, indicating a drawing she had just completed:

The commander sniffed a pawful of catnip, then surveyed the crowd. “Meow?”

The group gazed back at her blankly. Not one of the zombies or goblins present knew how to speak cat. But, since their recruitment that morning, no one had had the nerve to tell this to Commander Berzerko yet. So far they had just nodded a lot
as she'd pulled out maps, done drawings, even sketched the occasional portrait.

“Meow?” the commander asked.

The zombies shifted uncomfortably. A few goblins nodded. Neither group looked at the other. Unbeknownst to the commander, zombies and goblins had been sworn enemies since 1912. (That year the goblins had determined that zombies had the worst outfits of any group of spirits in the realm.)

“Mew meow?” Commander Berzerko directed her gaze at an unfortunate goblin in the front, who'd been examining his cuticles. The goblin started and looked up in horror. Clearly aware that he was being asked a question, he pretended to be thinking really hard. He began to tremble and sweat profusely. He looked at the others helplessly. “Ufffff, meow?” he ventured.

“Meow?” Commander Berzerko considered, with deadly calm. Her eyes narrowed. And then something strange began to happen. Her fur stood up on end. Her body began to shake. Her green eyes widened and crossed. She floated several feet into the air like a balloon. All over her body, her fur formed itself into shiny black spikes. Her claws shot out into the air, smoke flowing madly from her ears. But most horrible of all was what happened to her tail.

“Meeeeeoooooooooooooow!” The tail shot out and wrapped itself around the goblin, whipping him into the air and dangling him before the others as he screeched.

And then the screeching stopped. Commander Berzerko began to shrink to normal size and float back toward the ground. Her spiraled tail unraveled itself, revealing no sign of the goblin who had been there a moment before. And then something fell from the last curl of the tail with a clatter.

A glittering black diamond.

Commander Berzerko scooped the diamond up with one paw and tucked it somewhere inside her collar as the Dark Spirits before her watched, shocked.

Calmly, she returned her attention to the blackboard and pointed once again to the figure of the cat with the big ears.

“Meow,” she said. Which, though no one understood, meant,
Leave this one to me.

May awoke to a gentle tap on her cheek. Kitty was staring at her proudly, wearing something filmy and gray. It was a little kitty coat.

Behind him, Fabbio sat with a tiny silver needle and a little sewing bag. “Now be very still, I am needing to finish hem.” Noticing May staring at him, he sniffed. “What, you thinking it is unmanly to sew?” He nodded toward the white, snow-blanketed mountains in front of them. “This cat. He was not made for cold mountains.” Then he muttered, “Beatrice teach me how.”

May smiled. Fabbio's blue lips curled upward, his mustache curling with them. His eyes darted to the mountains. “Anyway, I no sleep.”

May thought the lights must have kept him up too. And then another thought came to her. “Is this place like where you died, Captain?” she asked, pulling a petrified twig from the ground and rubbing it thoughtfully between her fingers. She knew Fabbio had died parachuting into the Alps. That was where he had lost all his men.

Fabbio stopped sewing for a moment, then nodded, his face taking on a cast as stony as the kneecap they rested against.
“Yes…. But was not my fault!” he added sharply, his nose going red.

“I'm sure it wasn't.” May rolled her twig.

“Good morning, you two.” Beatrice emerged from behind the kneecap. “Come on. I've built a fire.”

May gave Bea a tentative smile, and, to her relief, Bea smiled back. It looked like she'd been forgiven.

Somber Kitty quickly glanced at the mountains, then disappeared around the kneecap in a flash.

“My sentiments exactly,” May whispered.

On the third day, a light snow began to fall. By the morning of the fourth day, far up the side of one of the steepest mountains, it had whipped itself into a storm, and May couldn't see past the ends of her fingers. She, Bea, and Fabbio had to hold hands to keep from losing one another. Somber Kitty had let Pumpkin hold him for a while, pretending he didn't like it, and occasionally he peeked out of the collar of Pumpkin's coat, where he lay hidden, protected from the storm. Pumpkin drifted along happily, singing about a sepulcher in Sarasota, where his sweetheart waited for him.

“We
have
to be close to the peak,” May said, pulling herself uphill by a petrified limb. She shivered under her shroud.

“What's that?” Beatrice cupped her hand over her eyes and squinted forward.

Up ahead of them, a dark hole opened up in the snow. A neon sign just at the top of it said
NORTH FARM, THIS WAY.

The travelers looked at one another. A warm glow came from the tunnel.

“What do you think?” Beatrice asked.

“I think we go!” Fabbio said. “Clearly, this is shortcut.”

May gazed at the opening. It seemed odd that the Petrified Pass, seemingly so forbidding, should invite them in. But May was freezing, and everyone's looks urged her forward. Even Somber Kitty had poked out of Pumpkin's coat again, his ears pointed toward the tunnel with curiosity. A tiny voice inside May said to keep trudging uphill, but she wanted to ignore it.

“Let's just go in and see,” she said unsurely. The travelers hurried into the mouth of the cave.

Behind them, the neon lights flickered and then went out.

The zombies and goblins came to a stop and shivered. Ahead of them, the mountains of the Petrified Pass leaped from the horizon crookedly, sharp and menacing. Even Commander Berzerko's fur stood on end as she paced the line that separated the pass from the highlands, sniffing at where the trail of the living girl and the living cat made a straight track toward the mountains.

Now sure that the travelers had gone that way, and keenly able to scent that their trail led all the way into the mountains, she smirked, her canines poking out of her jowls.

The commander motioned a paw to the goblins, who began spreading themselves along the edge of the pass and hiding wherever they could. The zombies she sent farther east, to hide themselves in the traditional zombie style. All the exits from the pass would be covered.

Of course, it was probably unnecessary. No one who ventured into the pass ever came back out again.

The commander sank back on her haunches to watch … and wait.

I
n the hush of the tunnel May's and Kitty's breath furled itself across the air, drifting farther into the depths as if inviting them forward. Dripping, thawing water echoed around them. Large lumps grew out of the ground on either side of the cave, but it was hard to tell exactly what they were.

Though it was still cold, there was no wind to whip the chill into her bones, and May loosened the collar of her death shroud. She noticed it had torn in one place and that her vivid, living body showed through the tear.

“Hello?” Pumpkin called, smiling and delighted as his own voice bounced back at him. “Pumpkin is the best!” he called, cupping his long white fingers to his ears, his tuft flopping in the breeze. His echo returned again and again.

“Shhh!” May and Fabbio hissed.

Beatrice drifted up to one of the lumps, then gasped. “May, come look.”

May hurried to her side.

The lump wasn't just a lump, but a statue of a ghoul—sharp fangs protruding from under its lips, its arms held up over its eyes as if in terror.

“How odd,” Beatrice said.

“Maybe we shouldn't be in here,” May said. But already Fabbio had drifted down the passage.

“I have found the way,” he called proudly, following a glowing blue arrow on the ground. Somber Kitty leaped out of Pumpkin's coat and onto the ground, dropping back and rubbing between Pumpkin's legs.

They all reluctantly followed Fabbio. More statues emerged from the darkness: ghouls, goblins, even the occasional ghost or specter. One held a camera up to its face.

“You don't think that's one of the holo-tographers that book talked about, do you?” Beatrice whispered in May's ear. “The ones that never came back?”

May shivered.

All of the statues looked terrified. The number of them increased the farther they went, until they were practically butting up against one another.

“I think we should turn around,” May said, swiveling to look back at Bea and Pumpkin. But the passage behind her was empty.

From above, the sound of a deep breath being exhaled swept through the cave, followed by a gust of frigid air.

“Pumpkin? Bea?” May whispered, then scanned the ground. “Kitty?” She shivered, and her heart thudded against her ribs. The cave seemed to have gotten about twenty degrees colder. She looked up the tunnel in the other direction, where Fabbio had drifted too far ahead to be seen.

Whhoooooooooshhhhhhh.
Again, a cold gust of air swept over May and made her shiver.

“Hello?” May warbled, her pulse thrumming.

“Fabbio?” she called. There was no answer.

May strained her ears against the silence. She peered around at the different passageways, which dug their way like hollow roots outward from the open space. An icy breath from one to the right blew her hair back, her bangs parting on either side of her forehead. May walked up to the opening, pulling her shroud tight, her nose freezing. “Hello?” she called down the shaft, only to hear her echo respond.

She paused on the verge, not knowing what to do. And then she saw it. The figure was obscured by shadows, but still May could make out its thin, small form in the recesses of the tunnel.

“Hello?” she called.

Hello?
her echo replied.

May crept forward, and so did the figure. It had the gait of a jaguar. Sharp, ready, poised, purposeful.

“Hello?” May squeaked again.

She paused, and so did the figure. There was something distinctly odd about it. Distinctly … familiar.

The figure's hair was very dark. It had glittering eyes and a thoughtful tilt to its head.

May padded up to it slowly, reaching out her hands toward her reflection in the ice. It was May, but not the May she knew. This May was older—maybe by two or three years.

She no longer had knobby knees, but long, lean, gazellelike ones. She was painted like a warrior and clothed in a dark, sparkling shroud. A quiver of silver arrows poked above her shoulder from where it hung on her back. Her hair was long, black, and lustrous and hung down along her shoulders, wild and unkempt.

“You aren't me,” May whispered. This May was dazzling. She was as sparkly as the stars on her bathing suit.

May touched the mirror with one fearfully extended finger. The moment she did, she felt it was a mistake. The icy cold seemed to sear its way up her finger bone, through her whole hand, then her arm. The cold shot deeper and deeper inside her, and as it did, there was an odd stiffening in her fingers. Her body began to go rigid. She tried to pull her hand away but couldn't. May turned her head, and her neck cricked. She tried to step backward but was shocked to discover that her feet would not lift from the ground. She looked down at them. They looked … petrified. Like stone.

May looked up again, and the moment she did, her neck gave a crackling sound and went rigid as rock too. She could only stare at the girl in the ice, who, unexpectedly, gave her a friendly smile and a wink.

As he searched the icy cavern for May, shivering in fits despite his coat, Somber Kitty paused and sniffed the air. Something not so far away was very wrong. He had begun to wonder what it was when he was distracted, suddenly, by a figure up ahead.