Free May Bird Among the Stars by Peter Ferguson, Jodi Lynn Anderson, Sammy Yuen Jr., Christopher Grassi Page B

tent was festooned with green and purple light-bulbs, twinkling and blinking and sparkling as coolly as the moon.
    The tents appeared to be deserted, but just in case, May adjusted her death shroud as she came to a glowing banner that arched over the walkway.
    CARN V L AT THE EDG F T E W RLD
    The carnival was not nearly as grand as it had looked on the billboards she had seen. Instead of enormous attractions, there were these tents. No Ferris wheel soared above—only a smallmechanical wheel in a clearing up ahead that spun just feet above the ground, with two seats. The Tunnel of Terror looked to be a
Molehill
of Terror.
    The tents looked ancient, and many of the lights were either burned out or crushed. May shuffled up to one and peered in through a rent in the filmy fabric. She gasped. Inside was a ride with skeletal elephants wearing little yellow hats. She shuffled to the next tent, which held something called a Living Castle, with tiny metalwork people peeking out of its windows, their little metal arms waving, their little metal legs attached to wire pulleys that moved them forward and back into the shadows of the house, over and over. A third held It’s a Small Realm After All, a diorama of the whole of the Ever After that gave a bird’s-eye view of the Dead Sea, the City of Ether, the Hideous Highlands, and more. Upon closer inspection, May realized the diorama was full of motion. She leaned forward breathlessly to examine the tiny boats moving up and down the Styx Streamway, the hundreds of translucent pin-dot spirits moving around the City of Ether, a minuscule roller coaster zipping along its tracks in the Pit of Despair Amusement Park, and a darkly rippling Dead Sea.
    Nibbling a pinky nail, May searched the southern end of the diorama for the small town of Belle Morte, but only the Catacomb Cliffs had been reproduced, and May touched them gently, thinking of Lucius.
    She wove along the circus attractions, soon finding herself a few yards away from a squat building fronted by a sprawling, yawning porch overhung by a blinking neon sign on stilts thatread EAT AT THE ETERNAL RESTAURANT! The porch butted right up against the cliff’s edge and was dotted with several view-finders—tall, rusted metal posts with binoculars at the top, like May had seen in postcards of the Grand Canyon. She climbed the rickety porch stairs and inspected one more closely A tiny engraving read SPY ON STARS BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY! FEEL LIKE YOU’RE THERE!
    May smoothed back her bangs and gazed into the view-finder. It was like swimming in the ocean, then looking underwater with a pair of goggles. Suddenly, the stars surrounding the Ever After came into focus.
    BETA 7894553 IS FOR LOVERS!
    IF YOU LIVED ON BETELGEUSE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW!
    May pulled back and squinted at the sky. Nothing but tiny pinpoint stars. She looked back through the viewfinder and tilted it upward. Closer, just above her head, a long glowing banner of light being cast skyward from the Ever After read BORED OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE? TRY THE AFTERLIFE!
    Wow May had had no idea the universe was full of so many ads. She swept the sky, hoping to get a glimpse of Earth, but she guessed it was too far away to see. May was too deeply lost in thought to notice the figure hovering nearby until it floated close enough to touch her.
    Rumor had it that Commander Berzerko had been let out of her pen. That very morning the Wild Hunters had burst into South Place crying for their mommies and had gallopedstraight for the Bogey’s bedroom. Apparently, in their long and sordid careers tracking and trapping prey, they had never once come across a prize that fought back. Especially with noogies.
    Now the Bogey, it was whispered, had been forced to resort to the unthinkable. And all the Dark Spirits of South Place closed their casket doors a little tighter, looked over their slimy shoulders a little more often, and slept a little less soundly (though they