The Ever After

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Station

PUMPKIN, MAY, BEATRICE, AND FABBIO CAREENED across the sand, kicking up dust in their wake, each of them falling off Captain Fabbio like ticks falling off a dog after a flea bath.

May landed with her mouth in the sand, which she spit and spluttered out as she sat up. Her bones ached.

"Are you all okay?"

Pumpkin was moaning. Beatrice and Fabbio were slowly levitating back up to sitting. The parachute lay tattered and flat behind them. They were several hundred yards from the walls of Ether.

They all stood up, stared at one another groggily for a few moments, and then they started to smile.

"Whoop!"

"Yahoo!"

"We did it!"

"Mama mia, it is too good to be true!"

May thrust her hands in the air, jumping up and down and clenching her fists in triumph. "We did it!" she yelled again. "We did it we did it we did it!"

They all hollered and hooted and hugged one another. When they had all calmed down, they peered around them. "What do we do now?" Pumpkin asked.

May spoke quickly, with authority. "The train station. Which way is it?"

Beatrice stretched a long pale arm ahead of her. "The train was on its way. We'd better go fast. Unless we've missed it already."

The travelers hurried across the desert as swiftly as they could in the direction of the station they had seen from the air. It rose up before them, small at first, but getting larger and larger.

May had just made out the roof when a massive sound came from behind them. They all turned to look. As they watched, the huge gates of the city slowly swung open. And then what looked like hundreds of black dots swarmed out through the gates.

"Oh my gosh," May said.

Beatrice threw her small hand over her heart. "Shuck dogs." No one needed a second look. They started zooming now, and soon not only the roof but the whole of the train station was clear and vivid in front of them. They arrived at top speed, slamming to a halt right in front of the platform.

"Do you see the train? Do you see it?" Beatrice asked, scanning the horizon. "How close is it?"

May scanned the sand in both directions, hoping that if she saw the train, it would be heading toward them and not away. For a heart-stopping moment there was nothing to be seen on the desert but the Black Shucks in the distance. And also, strangely, a giant wooden mouse rolling along to the far left. May shook her head, befuddled. And then, there it was, a tiny plume of smoke in the distance.

"Look." May pointed.

"That's it!" Beatrice said. "Is it getting closer or farther away?"

They all strained their eyes to see.

"Closer!"

Everyone cheered except Pumpkin. He stood with his fingers jammed in his mouth, frowning. "Ohhhhh."

"It's good news, Pumpkin!" May assured him.

Pumpkin groaned again. "It would be"-he pointed to the growing black blobs in the distance-"but I think the dogs are moving faster."

If May had been paying attention while she was flying through the sky, she may have seen a tiny speck, smaller than any ghost, trekking across the ground below, moving more and more slowly, like a car running out of gas. She also would have seen that the giant mouse, with hundreds of feet poking out from the bottom, was closing the distance between itself and the speck.

Somber Kitty had known he was being followed for several minutes. The fact that it was by a giant wooden mouse did not faze him. There were all sorts of things in this world to confuse him, and he was too close to May to think of any of them anymore. He had seen her, with his keen eyes, land on the sand, and now she was running away. He had noticed, from the corner of his eye, the fast-moving train in the distance. And he had also seen the gates of the city open and a cluster of strange black specks pour out onto the landscape, moving at lightning speed.

Those didn't faze him either.

Somber Kitty set his course and tried to push his tired legs faster.