May Bird Among the Stars (13 page)

Fabbio let out a big sniff. “I am ‘fraid of no such thing,” he said, tugging at his stone toe.

Bea patted his arm. “Of course not, Captain.”

Arista nodded. “Yes, yes, precisely Very good, dear.” He leaned back in his chair.
“Zzz,
you're very lucky you had an invitation. The Lady dispatched the North Farm spirits to collect you, I suppose. I was down there looking for you myself, just in case, when Kitty found me.”

Then everyone turned to May. They waited. May had a feeling she knew what they were waiting for, but she didn't want to acknowledge it. In fact, she pretended to be braiding her short bangs.

“What did
you
see back there?” Beatrice finally asked.

May felt her face flame up. What could she say? Herself?

“Bo Cleevil,” she lied, looking at the ground. “I saw Bo Cleevil.” She braided another handful of bangs, then turned to Arista. “Um. what are
you
doing here?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I received an invitation too,
zzzzzz
The day before you arrived in Belle Morte, actually”

“Before
I arrived in Belle Morte?”

“Yes, yes. The Lady said you'd need a familiar face once you got here.”

May was baffled. “You've known the Lady this whole time?”

Arista paused. “Oh, yes, dear. And, of course, we knew you would make it. Good job!”

May didn't know what to do or say. She looked at Beatrice, who was eyeing her carefully.

“I teleported up here yesterday.
Zzzzz
Took a little less than an hour. Pleasant, really. Lovely views …”—he frowned thoughtfully—”… for the most part.”

A big lump had formed in May's throat. Her mind raced, putting all the pieces together.
Teleported.
Which meant, if they had known she would end up here anyway, she could have just been teleported herself.

“May, you have something to say.” Arista's antennae pointed to her matter-of-factly.

“Yes.” May clenched her fists at her sides. “When I was in Belle Morte,” she started, stumbling a bit over her words, “you said … you said you didn't know
what
I should do, so I went to the Eternal Edifice, and that boy Lucius got hit with seawater, and—and—” May thrust a finger in the air. “John the Jibber! And we nearly got eaten by dogs, and then the Bogey …” Her voice cracked along the edge of tears.
“You knew?”

“The Lady knows everything,” Arista said calmly. “It was all for a reason.”

At this May's eyes glinted like steel and her heart felt razor sharp. How could such terrible things have happened for a reason?
What
reason? Arista, it seemed, chose to ignore this. He lifted a tray of skull cakes from a nearby table and held it out to her. May took three and shoved them into her mouth. Once she was done eating, she stared at her feet for a long time. She curled her toes in and out—the same thing she used to do when she tried to do a difficult math problem at school and her brain wanted to go somewhere else. Somber Kitty leaped into her lap and curled into a ball, staring up at her sadly.

May blinked up at the ceiling to keep back her angry tears. Arista sighed. “I couldn't very well tell you,
zzzz,
could I? Meddle with your choices,
zzzzz
Where would you be then?”

Pumpkin was now standing with his arms crossed. “I got speared by a ghoul. And I almost got turned into nothing. And I got tomatoed by imaginary spirits.”

There was a long moment of silence as May tried to imagine what Arista had asked
—where she would be.
The Bogey wouldn't be after her, John the Jibber wouldn't have betrayed them, Lucius …

“I don't understand,” she said between clenched teeth.

Arista fluffed a pillow between his hands.
“Zzzzz,
of course not. Nobody does.” Arista turned to Fabbio, who was snuggling a blanket against his cheek. “Comfort blankets. Only the best here in the Far North.”

“The Lady, is she a good spirit?” May asked. She wanted to add
at least?

“Oh, I wouldn't say that. Zzz She is a bit of everything, 1 suppose.”

“But if she isn't good, then is there any hope against Bo Cleevil?”

Arista smiled, but it was a sad smile accompanied by droopy antennae. “I don't know, dear.”

The group settled into a long, thick silence. Soon Fabbio began to snore.

“Arista, did you tell anybody back home that I was on a mission?” Pumpkin asked, looking respectfully somber but curious. “What did they say? They didn't believe it, right?”

Bea drifted to May's side and knelt down. “You should get some sleep.”

“Oh,
zzzz,
I'm afraid that won't do,” Arista said, overhearing. “I wish you could, my dear.” He drifted to her as well and put his hand on her shoulder, in his first gesture of comfort. “The Lady expects you.”

Out in the pasture the snow let out tiny hisses as it landed, flake by flake.

M
ay stepped out onto the dusky, snowy path, and Arista shut the door behind them, the sound resonating across the field. With Arista drifting in the lead, they turned left and circled onto a path behind the cabin, entering the woods on the other side of the field.

Under the canopy, thousands of fireflies had sifted out of their holes to fill in the spaces between the trees. May breathed in the woodsy smell, and the forest air ran between her fingers and her toes, the way it had done when she was running wild at home.

They wound their way deep into the forest, to where the trees grew even larger and wider. The cracks in the bark were deep enough for May's fingers to fit snugly inside.

Eventually, a deep green glow appeared up ahead, and a few minutes later they came to a circular clearing punctuated by giant roots bursting through the surface of the ground. The roots emanated from a huge magnolia tree that dwarfed all the others—May was sure it was the one she'd seen from the sleigh. Her eyes slid from the base of the trunk upward in wonder. Every inch of wood was covered in glowing, green lightning bugs. Breathlessly, she scanned the limbs above for a sign of the Lady, but the upper reaches of the tree were obscured in leaves and shadows.

Though no flowers were visible from the ground, a couple of giant seedpods dangled from the lowest branches, covered in bright red seeds that clung to sticky strings of sap.

May turned to look at Arista, but he seemed unamazed by it all. His antennae twitched perkily.
“Zzzz,
this is where I leave you, dear. Good luck.”

“Wait!”

Arista had already turned and, buzzing along, was drifting back down the path by which they had come. May watched him vanish around a bend in the trail, then craned her head back on her neck and looked up the tree again. She adjusted the straps of her bathing suit under her shroud, smoothed her hair, and approached the trunk. She circled around it once, then again. She looked up and around, not sure what she was supposed to do.

“Hello?” she called. Far above her, leaves rustled and scraped, but no one appeared. She waited for several minutes. There was no way to climb the tree that she could see
—if
that was what she was expected to do.

She stood there awkwardly, twirling her fingers nervously, occasionally staring up. The air got chillier, and she rubbed her arms. The woods grew darker, and the shadows began to deepen.

Rustling and whispering, the trees on the edge of the clearing leaned in curiously.

May was so busy trying to figure out what to do that she failed to notice the strange mist emerging from the tree behind her.

Mayyyyyy Birrrrd,
it whispered.

May shot up, whipping around. The tree was shrouded in a mist as thin as a thread of smoke. It circled the tree once, then twice in a long, sinuous ribbon.

Mayyyyyy Birrrrd.

May stumbled back a few feet.

She could just make out two slits of eyes in the mist, then a mouth, as it circled and circled the magnolia.

“Wh-what are you?” May asked. Behind her, the other trees rustled, as if giggling.

A great breath seemed to issue from the mist like the wind, sending the dry leaves on the clearing floor scuttling. When May looked at her feet, the leaves were arranged, just vaguely, into letters.

Tree spirit,
they spelled.

May gulped.

There was another wind, another rustle, and another set of leaves blew into words at her feet, so faint that if she hadn't been looking, May would never have noticed them.

H. Kari Threadgoode at your service.

May didn't know whether to gasp or laugh. That a tree spirit had been writing to her was something she'd never suspected—and that it was named H. Kari Threadgoode was almost as odd.

The leaves changed again:
The Lady is waiting.
With that, the mist swirled its way up around the tree, seeming to beckon her.

May looked at the glowing bark, covered in millions of crawling creatures. Then she shook her head. “I don't know how to get up,” she called. But the mist continued to swirl upward, finally disappearing from sight.

“Wait!” May cried. At the sound of her voice, the thousands of lightning bugs covering the bark of the great magnolia took flight, surrounding her in a glowing cloud of fluttering wings. May instantly felt she had made a big mistake. The bugs began to land on her, covering every inch of her arms and legs and face. Their wings fluttered madly May shuddered and gasped.

And then she felt her feet leave the ground.

Rising and rising, May closed her eyes tight. For a long while she felt herself going up, up, up, until her dangling feet knocked against something solid. Her whole body tickled as the thousands of lightning bugs deposited her there, unstuck themselves, and fluttered downward in a bright twitching cloud to reclaim their spots on the bark of the tree.

May was standing in a cluster of limbs gnarling their way skyward. She held on to a nearby leaf to steady herself and steeled herself to look down. As she did, she swayed. The ground was small and far away

Up ahead, a shuffling among the branches startled her and made her grab her leaf tighter. May squinted hard, trying to make out what had caused the noise.

“Hello?” Unsteadily, and holding on for dear life, she stepped forward, out onto the limb. “Are you there?” To her left, an enormous magnolia flower clung to one of the branches. May gazed into the cup of its waxy petals in wonder as she shimmied past it slowly.

The limb tapered, and soon there was enough room only for May's two feet and the plunging space on either side of her. More shuffling came from up ahead, and then, about ten
feet away, two eyes peered at her through spaces in the leaves.

Two eyes May knew well.

They blinked at her. A cackle issued from the place where they appeared, and then they vanished.

Suddenly, the limb that was holding her began to rattle and shake. From the limb, a tiny pod sprouted large green leaves and an oval-shaped bud. May watched in amazement as the bud unfurled, not into a flower, but into a waxy white figure as fragrant as May's mother's perfume.

A hand—old and wrinkled—slowly pushed the white veil of the petals aside, revealing a small woman, as small as May, her face deeply wrinkled, her hair tangled up with moss and decaying leaves. Her dress was a cascade of twigs caked with leaves and mud. She moved her hands to her face, slowly, looking as if she were holding herself together. And then in one swift movement she crouched against the limb and disappeared.

“Here!”

May swiveled to look behind her, still swaying on the limb. The woman sat on a throne made of roses, nestled within two giant leaves. Her face white, her hair a long curtain of moss, she looked no longer decrepit, but kind and beautiful. As her blue eyes glinted, her arm shot out to steady May

“Have I changed? Or are you just looking at me differently?”

May winced. The woman's breath smelled like the oldest apple rotted away and turned into soil, turned into roots, turned into a tree that had decayed and turned back into soil. It wasn't completely terrible, but it was full and heavy and thick.

“Are you the Lady?”

“Don't ask silly questions.” The Lady leaned forward. Her
voice came out low and steady, womanly, but with a deep rumble to it. “You've come too far for that.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment, the Lady taking May in with a gaze so sharp, so direct, that May felt it saw through to the pit of her soul. May waited for the wise words that were sure to pour out. Maybe the Lady was about to tell her the meaning of life or the square root of pi. She straightened her spine and listened.

“Did you have any trouble getting here?”

May was speechless. Trouble?
Any
trouble? “Um, a bit.”

“Hmmm.” The Lady nodded. “Tell me about it.”

May didn't know quite where to begin. “Well, there was a man, John the Jibber.” May swallowed. “And a boy, Lucius. And Arista and the Bogey …” It all bubbled up to the surface, like a scrape sometimes will when someone's there to listen to how it happened. To her own shock, May suddenly felt as if she might cry. Or lay down and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.

“There, there,” the Lady soothed, drifting down from her throne and wrapping May in her arms. Close up, she smelled like flowers blooming—sweet, soft, and new. May didn't question it but just sank into her embrace. “You've done exactly what you were supposed to do,” the Lady said, “and you are exactly who you are supposed to be. But go ahead, cry anyway. Even being right is worth crying over sometimes.”

May let the Lady hold her tight. She didn't want to cry at all, but two glossy homesick tears squeezed their way down her cheeks.

When the second tear had dribbled off May's chin, the Lady backed away. She was old again, worn and beaten. She seemed
to be sewn together with spiderwebs. So fragile that May worried for her, as if she were more fragile than May herself. “Let's go get comfortable.”