by Will Taylor
“But, hang on, we have the key to that little room, right?” said Joe. “Why don’t we just head over there, unlock the door from the outside, and go in to look for the key Abby dropped?”
“Ha!” Helene’s laugh sounded almost exactly like Maggie’s. “You think it would be that easy, do you?”
“Yes?” said Joe.
“Do not be ridiculous, Joe,” Helene said. “We have no loops to Versailles, and the logistics of traveling there over land and sneaking into that room without detection would be extraordinary.”
“Maybe we don’t have to get in from the outside,” I said. Ooo, more brain fireworks! “You said you still have the other doors, right? The ones that were saved when the ship was sinking?”
Helene raised her eyebrows. “Of course. The looped doors are how we get food and clothing and supplies and everything else. They’re how we visit our children at school. They’re the only way off this island. They’re how we survive.”
“And they all go to real palaces and castles around Europe?”
“They do. But as I just said, there are none leading to Versailles now that the door you came through is apparently broken beyond repair.”
“No, that’s totally not a problem! We don’t need a door—we can get in through the pillow forts. Kids from around the world do it all the time.”
I got hit with two confused frowns. “I don’t see how that would be possible,” said Antonia. “There are none of these magical pillow fort contraptions on this island.”
“But there are in the palaces!” I said. “Or, well, there were. Maggie told me about it. Louis linked the First Sofa to palaces all over Europe so he and his friends could sneak around and visit each other. What if some of those forts are still there, hidden in palaces that you all have loops to? No one uses them anymore, and I never heard anything about them being monitored. We can use the loops to get to the links.” I grinned and couldn’t stop myself saying it. “By our powers combined!”
Their eyes slid out of focus as they worked out what I was saying. Antonia looked at Helene. Helene looked at Antonia. Ariadne’s floating chicken pile collided with the musician’s raft, and a feathery sort of invasion began.
“It could work,” said Helene.
“It has potential,” said Antonia.
Helene shrugged. “Then it’s worth a try. Anything to recover that key.” She got to her feet and shouted, “Ahoy!” Her voice echoed crisp and clear around the lagoon.
The floating pirates snapped to attention. “Ahoy!” they all shouted back.
“We have a plan to retrieve the Oak Key!” Helene declared. Everyone cheered. One of the chickens pecked out a happy riff on the xylophone. “It’s too late to clean up from this party and get started today, but tomorrow morning we will begin investigating the looped palaces for signs of magical pillow forts, which, according to Abby, should link back to the sofa in le Petit Salon, where Abby believes she dropped the key. So, did everyone hear that?”
“Yes!” shouted the crowd.
“Does everyone understand it?”
“Not really!”
“Oh. Well, does everyone believe it anyway?”
“Yes!”
“Excellent.” Helene turned to me. “And you’ll know how to use one of these pillow forts if we find one, Abby?”
“When we find one,” I said. Because we had to. This whole wacky island adventure thing was fun, but I’d already been missing from camp way too long. And it looked like my only chance of getting anywhere near Camp Cantaloupe—or North America in general—was through the First Sofa. If I could get there, I could find the link to the NAFAFA Hub, ask for help, and get back to Maggie’s and my summer before my face ended up splashed across the news.
“Joe has to come too,” I said, pointing over at him. “Once we’re in le Petit Salon, we can probably find him a way home through the network links, too.”
“Ooh, that would be great,” Joe called, air-cheers-ing me with his glass. “I have all my research and equipment and everything to get back to before the humpback migration starts, and I’m pretty sure I left the milk out on the counter in my cabin.”
“Fine,” said Helene, nodding. “Joe will come too. So we have our mission! Tomorrow morning we will meet and begin our visits to the palaces, and—yes, Abby, one more question?”
I lowered my hand. “I was just wondering how exactly we’re going to sneak through all these palaces. I mean, it’ll be daytime. Won’t there be people there? Guards and tourists and stuff? Won’t they get suspicious if they see us poking around looking under pillows?”
“We’ve got ways to deal with that, don’t worry,” said Helene. “But you and Joe will need to be thoroughly coached and prepared beforehand, so you’ll have to be up early for training.”
“Yay!” said Joe. “Training!”
“That means you should come below after this meeting, Abby,” Helene continued. “It will make things easier in the morning, and we have plenty of spare rooms.”
“No!” I said. Going below now would mean leaving Antonia behind alone. And from what I’d heard she’d had more than enough of that in her life. “I want to stay in the Palace. It might be the only chance I get!”
“Ooh, can I stay in the Palace, too?” piped up Joe.
Helene looked surprised, but she shrugged and turned to Antonia, who was gazing into the distance with a thoughtful frown.
“What do you think, Mama? Could our guests stay with you tonight?” Helene asked. “I’ll be doing the formal training myself, but maybe you could give them some classic protocol pointers before sending them below for the mission?”
Antonia seemed to come back from a long way away. She drew herself up, her cape shimmering in the sun and the feathers in her hat waving in the sea breeze. “Certainly the castaways can stay in the Palace,” she said. “But I won’t be sending them below in the morning.”
Wait, huh? I looked over at Joe. Was Antonia about to start making things difficult? Did she expect Helene to find the pillow fort and Oak Key by herself? Was I going to end up doing that dusting and cleaning after all?
“What do you mean?” asked Helene. “Why not?”
“Because Abigail says she can get us into le Petit Salon,” Antonia said, her voice echoing around the lagoon. “And thanks to her we also have the key that will open the door into Versailles itself. Until today I never had any real hope of fulfilling the last of Captain Emily’s final wishes—none of us did. But with Abigail here, that’s all changed.” She looked over at her daughter. “We have a chance to take a second swipe at Versailles, Helene, and really make them notice. And I refuse to just stand by and watch. So the reason I’m not sending the castaways to the Island Underneath tomorrow is because I will be bringing them down myself.” She looked over the hushed crowd, her eyes shining. “I’m going on the mission with you.”
Eighteen
Abby
The shock of Antonia announcing she was going to pay a visit to the Island Underneath completely upended what was left of the planning party. It was all Helene could do to squeeze in a formal closing sea chantey and start herding the crew back home.
Antonia and I returned to the Palace, bringing Joe and the chickens, who had adopted Joe as their leader after he saved them from toppling into the water during the post-Antonia-announcement excitement. Ariadne was still up at the lagoon, enjoying a nice quiet float by herself on someone’s inflatable saxophone.
Joe loved the Palace. He ran around like a little kid, yelling about how cool everything was, until Antonia got him under control and gave him a proper tour, making sure he was caught up on the Captain Emily story along the way.
Helene came up a while later, bringing an early dinner and something for me: the Iron Key.
“We decided you should hang on to it,” she said at the smile on my face. “It’s no use at all to us here. Just make sure you don’t lose this one!”
Dinner turned out to be summer risotto with pesto and fr
ied squash blossoms, plus caramelized pineapple-honeycomb ice cream for dessert. It was honestly the best food I’d ever had in my life. I’d always thought my dad was the greatest cook in the world, but this was on a whole other level.
“Where did you all learn to make food like this?” I asked, shoveling cheese-crisped squash blossoms into my mouth. “I mean!” I could barely speak. Hopefully my expression was getting the point across.
“Twelve of the crew members have trained in palace kitchens,” Helene said. “They rotate being in charge of meals. It’s gotten quite competitive. Which turns out well for everyone.”
“Seriously,” said Joe, around a mouthful of ice cream.
After dinner and dishes, Helene said good night, and Antonia insisted Joe and I go check out the stars before heading to bed. As soon as we stepped out from the boulder pile, I was glad she had. They were unbelievably, stunningly glorious. They splashed across the sky from horizon to horizon, white and blue and silver, so bright I could see my shadow in the sand. We’d only been up there for a minute before I saw my first shooting star, its reflection gliding through the waves.
I had a sudden flashback to climbing into the Shipwreck Treehouse, and the view of stars over the ocean I’d gotten before everything fell apart. Now here I was on a different island, in a different ocean, preparing to break into a bunch of European castles in a quest for a key I’d had and then lost.
For the hundredth time that day I thought of Maggie. Hopefully she was doing okay. Hopefully she was avoiding Charlene. Hopefully she wasn’t attempting some completely impossible rescue mission while there was no one sensible there to stop her.
Joe and I kicked back on the beach, listening to the waves and staring up at the rainbow-dust-colored Milky Way for a long, long time. But eventually the yawns got the better of us, and we headed back in, full of starlight and ready for bed. Helene had helped us clean and prepare two mini-bedrooms: one with a dark blue four-poster bed for me near the kitchen, and one done all in red-and-gold plaid for Joe, just past the second library. Antonia was in the best bedroom way down near the fireplace, and we all yelled good night to each other from our separate wings of the Palace.
Joe’s light went out almost immediately, but I sat up a little longer with my camp journal, doing my best to cram everything that had happened into a letter for Maggie.
Dear Mags,
Hiiiiiii! Okay, so last time I wrote you, I thought I was alone here. And whoooo was I wrong!
I’m still on the island, but now I’m in a blue four-poster bed, in a palace that’s all crammed into a sort of underground basement. There are chickens keeping guard outside. There’s no way I’ll be able to write down everything that happened, so here are some useful facts from today:
—A long time ago a bunch of nice-sounding pirates led by someone called Captain Emily found this island, which has magic trees that you can build links with.
—The tree links only go one way at a time (huge pain), so they made this super-complicated system to get a network going so they could sneak into palaces and steal stuff, and they called the links loops.
—After they lost their ship, they lived in a big palace on the surface, but they tore it down when spy planes were invented or something, and most of them live under it(?) now. Not sure what that means. I get to go check it out tomorrow.
—Guess what! Your uncle Joe is here, too! He says he went through a door he found in his bay up in Alaska and now he’s here somehow! (I still have lots of questions about this.) Tomorrow we’re going through the looped doors to check out some palaces (real ones) and see if we can find any pillow forts left over from Louis’s original network. It’s partly a mission to get back the Oak Key, which I totally dropped in le Petit Salon, and partly so Joe and I can maybe work out a way home.
—We have no plan for what to do if we don’t find any pillow forts.
—There are waaayyyy more kinds of pool floaty than I thought there were.
—We need to find Joe a hat, because he already has a sunburn on top of his head.
Okay, enough useful facts. I never got my nap earlier, and I’ve been awake for ten thousand years and I’m in the fanciest bed ever and it’s super comfy and goooood niiiight.
See you so soon, hopefully! We’ll find out tomorrow!
Abs
Nineteen
Maggie
I woke up with a start. The moon was blasting past the blinds on the other side of the cabin. Cantaloupe! I must have dozed off. I fumbled for my watch . . . 12:35. It was late. Much later than I wanted.
I began pulling back the covers and stopped dead. Charlene’s bunk was empty.
I glanced around the cabin. Okay. Don’t panic. She was probably just in the bathroom.
What to do? It was either head out now or lie down again, wait for Charlene to come back, keep waiting until she was fast asleep, then sneak out. Oof, that was not going to work. I might really fall asleep again if I had to lie there pretending I was. And tonight was my only chance. Another day of no Abby, and this place would be crawling with search-and-rescue officers, just like Director Haggis had said.
I was on my feet in three seconds, across the cabin with my supply pack on in eight, and padding out into the night in twelve. Charlene would notice I was out of bed when she got back, but hopefully she’d assume I was up to use the bathroom, too. I couldn’t delay my mission another minute. I had to get to the Hub.
It felt weird sneaking out without Abby by my side. The night before it had been wonderful, all shining stars and pine-scented wind and the bubbling excitement of shared adventure. Tonight, the moon felt like a searchlight trying to pin me down. A chilly, mud-scented breeze was coming off the lake. Tree shadows stretched across the field like bars, and the cabins lurked in the darkness like they were hiding something.
Well, at least it didn’t look like they were hiding the local police or squadrons of flashlight-waving counselors. If anyone was out searching for Abby, they weren’t anywhere near camp. Maybe it was a good thing I’d overslept, after all.
My achy ankle wasn’t happy about going on another mission, but it only slowed me down a little as I worked my way toward the classroom cabins, using all my super-spy skills to stay hidden. I was almost starting to enjoy myself when there was a snap of branches in the woods.
Faster than you could blink, I darted behind the nearest pine tree and peered around the side. There was something, absolutely definitely a great big something, in the woods on the other side of the field. Everything went very still, except for the cold breeze breathing down the back of my shirt.
Another branch snapped in the silence, then another, and I heard a low, rumbling groan. I’d only met it once before, and in a totally different setting, but that didn’t sound like the ghost moose of Camp Cantaloupe to me. Did they have bears on Orcas Island? Wildcats? Giant northwestern shadow leeches?
My fingers dug right into my piney friend’s sticky bark as the creature charged out of the trees and burst into the moonlit field.
It wasn’t the ghost moose. And it wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t even a wild cat.
It was Charlene Thieson, driving a golf cart.
She steered her little vehicle across the field, an empty rolly bin bouncing along behind her, and disappeared behind the maintenance shed.
What. On. Earth.
What was Miss Teacher’s Pet doing? There was no way she was even supposed to be driving the camp golf cart, let alone at night, let alone through the woods.
A strange feeling danced across my brain, and it took me a second to realize I was impressed. Charlene knew the risks of sneaking out the same as I did, and here she was joyriding around camp after midnight.
I watched the maintenance shed for a solid three minutes, but Charlene didn’t reappear. Hmm. The arts and crafts cabin was right in between us. If I was careful, I could make it. Just so long as Charlene stayed put.
It took all my best moves to dodge and dive from one dark place to another
, zigging and zagging, but I made it to the arts and crafts cabin without a hitch. The window I’d cleverly unlocked during class was still in shadow. I slid the heavy frame up, wincing as it screeched, and heaved myself through.
Well, mostly through. The window came screeching back down just as I got my hips onto the sill, smashing my bag into the small of my back and trapping me like a bug. And right then, with my front half flailing inside the cabin and my legs kicking wildly behind me, someone spoke.
“You’re doing that wrong, you know.”
I jumped. Well, I spasmed against the frame.
“I can’t believe you don’t know how to sneak in a window,” the voice said.
Ugh. Charlene. Of course. Any second now she’d start screaming for the counselors, and I would never live it down as long as I lived. Maggie Hetzger: the girl who broke the Shipwreck Treehouse, lost her best friend, and got stuck in a window in the middle of the night, all in her first two days at camp.
I kicked at the air, half hoping to hit her, but Charlene dodged my feet easily and came up beside me, peering in.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like? I’m trying to get free.” I kicked and wiggled some more to demonstrate.
“But why are you trying to get through this window in the first place?”
“My business,” I snapped. “Not yours.” I was so annoyed at getting caught. This never would have happened back home. Why did plans never go right at this camp?
Charlene rapped her fingernails on the sill. “Well, speaking as your buddy, I think it is my business.”
“Oh, yeah?” It was tricky trying to talk to her over my shoulder. “Then I guess it’s my business to find out why I just saw you driving out of the woods in a golf cart.”
The fingernails stopped.
There was a long, long pause. I did a little experimental kicking, but Charlene ignored it.
“You never saw that,” she said finally.
“Did.”
