by Will Taylor
The ocean wall curved and rolled, following the shape of the island, and our path curved along with it. “We’re near the lagoon now,” Helene said. She pointed to a shiny door in the rock wall. “That elevator goes right to it.”
“Why’s it so much bigger than the other one?” Joe asked.
“The lagoon is neutral territory; it’s the only part of the surface Mama allows us to visit freely without asking her permission. We go up there pretty often, so we need room to carry plenty of people.”
“And their floaties,” I said.
“And their floaties,” agreed Helene.
Past the lagoon the floor sloped up, and outside the window the open ocean gave way to rocks and a wide reef stretching out from the roots of the island. The water here was so thick with plants and animals, it looked like one of those nature shows on TV. And right in the middle of everything was an old-timey wardrobe perched on a chunk of rock and coral, its barnacle-covered door spewing out a steady stream of bubbles.
“Ha! That looks like the treasure chest in the fish tank at my dentist’s!” I said. And it totally did. When I was little, Matt and Mark told me that the dentist shrank kids who wouldn’t floss and trapped them in there, and the bubbles were them screaming for help. I think they were trying to make me cry, but all that ended up happening was a lot of excitement when I climbed into the tank to rescue the kids.
“Hooray!” said Joe, running over and pressing himself to the glass. “That’s it! That’s how I got here!”
“Through that?” I joined him and peered past a starfish clinging to the wall above my head. “Wardrobe McBubbleton out there?”
“Yup. Hi, buddy!”
“Okay, so question.” I turned to Helene. “You said the doors all led to furniture in palaces. Why did Joe’s lead to some wardrobe out here on the reefy-do?”
“Answering that means another story,” warned Helene.
“Woohoo!” cheered Joe. “Story time!”
I plopped down on the carpet, my back against the great glass wall, and looked up expectantly.
“Right, well we have to go back to the moment the original crew got stranded,” Helene began, smiling. “Remember, they’d been on the run for months, then in the final battle they lost their ship, several of the looped doors, and Captain Emily.”
“They were probably pretty heartbroken,” Joe said.
“They certainly were!” Helene nodded. “But they also realized they had a problem: the looped doors that sank with the ship still worked. They were all locked, sure, and it might take centuries for the sea to open them, but it was only a matter of time before the furniture they looped to was going to start pouring out freezing North Pacific water.” She looked back out at the wardrobe. “Can you imagine? A chest of drawers or a bookshelf in some royal Spanish bedroom just starts gushing saltwater, fish, seaweed, and who knows what all, and no one can do anything to stop it.”
Joe and I whistled.
“So the door I went through was one of the ones that sank with the ship,” said Joe. “I get that. And the ocean broke open the lock, I get that. But like Abby said, why’s the wardrobe it looped to back here at the island? And out in the water? Why isn’t it in some Spanish palace bedroom place?”
“Once the crew realized the problem,” said Helene, “they decided to retrieve all the furniture that was at risk. It would only have taken a couple of pieces spewing seawater for folks to realize it was happening to furniture presented by the unknown ambassador, and that might have led all the palace dwellers in Europe to destroy their unknown ambassador gifts as a precaution, and then the crew would be stranded. With no ship, and no other way off the island, those links were—and still are—the crew’s only lifeline. Even today we’re completely dependent on them for all our basic needs.
“The initial plan was to bring the furniture back and store it here on the reef where it wouldn’t pose a danger. But that turned out to be difficult. It’s a lot harder getting a nice piece of furniture out of a palace than it is getting one in. They had such a hard time retrieving the wardrobe, they decided it just wasn’t worth the effort for the rest. So the head carpenter and a few of the others went around posing as the world’s clumsiest appraisers, and one by one, they broke the remaining drowned-loop furniture to bits. They got a little famous for it, actually. There was an opera.”
“That is wild,” said Joe. “And when did the lock on my wardrobe buddy break?”
“About twenty years ago. One moment it was normal, the next the doors flew open and all these bubbles started erupting toward the surface. We threw a party for it. It was very exciting.”
“Having North Pacific water pouring through there must be causing some fascinating disturbances in the marine environment,” Joe noted, putting on his sciency voice.
“Oh, it is! The sea life around here has really boomed since.”
“And Orpheus, the Pacific humpback, heard the whales singing in the Atlantic and started singing back.” Joe got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Singing back through the drowned door.”
“That explains a lot,” said Helene. “We’ve been wondering why whales keep turning up and singing at the wardrobe. Sometimes we gather here and sing them chanteys, in case the whales are lonely. It’s good to know they’ve just been making long-distance calls.”
Joe and I agreed that it was good to know.
“Hey, what about the door that led to the sofa in le Petit Salon?” I said. “The crew left that one behind to sink too, right?”
“Naturally. With the key lost, there was no point bringing the door back to the island.”
“Then why didn’t the clumsy appraisers destroy the sofa it went to?”
“Oh, they tried,” said Helene. “But when they arrived at Versailles, they found King Louis’s private study was guarded day and night. In the end they had to go away and just hope the door with the Oak Lock wouldn’t open for a long, long time.”
“And it didn’t,” I said quietly. Not until Mags and I had arrived on the scene. Oof, more Maggie heart pangs. We’d been part of this centuries-old pirates-and-palaces wild furniture saga without even knowing it. We really should have been learning about it together.
I climbed to my feet and our little group continued on, Joe looking back over his shoulder at the wardrobe. The floor sloped down after the reef, and Helene pointed out more doors leading to a mess hall, a movie theater, a bowling alley, and a storeroom stacked floor to ceiling with barrels.
“Oh, now, you have to see inside this one,” she said, pointing us over to a plain metal door I would never have noticed. She tapped a keypad set into the rock beside it, and we stepped inside.
Oh. My. Covert ops. Maggie would have completely flipped over this.
We were in a round, windowless room, lit by red track lighting and glowing banks of computers, display panels, and screens hugging the wall. Buttons, switches, and cables gleamed everywhere, like we’d stepped onto the bridge of a TV starship crossed with the secret lair of some futuristic super-spy.
“Welcome to the command center for the island,” said Helene, waving us to a platform in the center. She pressed her palm to a waiting tablet. Immediately a large screen against the wall reset, losing its columns of numbers and showing a map of an oblong green dollop surrounded by blue.
“Ooh, is that us?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s our island,” said Helene. “Ready for one last dose of storytime?”
“Yay!” Joe and I said together.
“Excellent. So, for the first two hundred years or so, the pirates had an easy time keeping this island secret. It’s quite tiny, and ships crossing back and forth over the Atlantic didn’t usually travel at this latitude, so they weren’t likely to run into it. There were a few near misses in the late 1800s, though, and that’s when the crew first began thinking about maybe possibly having to hide their Palace out of sight so the looped doors could be safe.
“But the twentieth century made the decision for the
m. First there were planes going overhead, then massive ships with powerful sensors, then satellites with their super-targeting cameras. The crew had to protect the island, and fast, so they threw everything they had into building a state-of-the-art, self-contained underwater base. Over the last fifty years we’ve removed every sign of life from the surface of the island, except the stumps, which we can’t hide, and the Ship Door, which is a monument to Captain Emily. We’ve been safe from discovery so far, and we’re all just hoping it stays that way. That was why you two arriving back-to-back caused so much excitement. It was practically an invasion.”
“Incredible,” Joe said. “But hang on, what about modern ships? Can’t they take their own readings nowadays, even apart from satellites? Some of the whale research boats I’ve worked on have been pretty high tech, and they’re not even top of the line.”
“Very true,” said Helene. “But we’ve managed to convince the world’s geodata centers that this place has been thoroughly explored and found useless. We planted the information years ago, adding in some information about hazardous conditions for shipping routes, and it’s been passed on as fact ever since. That’s kept most ships from getting too close.
“And we do have some high-tech defenses of our own. Look, I’ll show you. See that screen there? That red dot? It’s a British navy ship that’s getting too close. I’ve been monitoring it the last couple of days, and this is as good a time as any to redirect it.”
She tapped a pattern on the tablet, and another monitor lit up. There was a snazzy trumpet fanfare, and something gray and silver flashed across one of the screens in a burst of bubbles. Over on the map, a silver dot appeared, heading right for the red dot of the ship.
“What on earth was that?” I asked.
“Florence,” Helene said. “Our mechanical dolphin.”
Joe and I looked at each other.
“You have a mechanical dolphin,” I said slowly. “Named Florence.”
“Yes.”
“And she chases away ships?”
“Florence sends out interfering signals to rechart the ship’s course past the island or show a dangerous weather anomaly happening in this area, depending on which sensor equipment the ship is using.”
Up on the screen, the silver dot was already halfway to the ship. “Whoa,” I said. “She’s fast!”
“Top of the line,” said Helene. “I designed her myself.”
“Why did it play a fanfare when you activated her?” asked Joe.
“Because she’s a mechanical dolphin named Florence who guards a secret island!” I said. Come on, that part was obvious. “It’d be weird if she didn’t have her own fanfare!”
Helene gave me an approving nod.
There was a soft ping from a speaker somewhere overhead, and a familiar voice fuzzed into the room.
“Hello? Hello! Helene? Castaways? Can you hear me?”
“Hello, Mama,” called Helene, speaking to the ceiling. “We’re here. I was just showing Abby and Joe the control center.”
“Lovely,” Antonia’s disembodied voice replied. “And when were you planning on doing some actual work? Everything is in place at the doors, but we’ll need at least an hour of protocol training to get our visitors ready. I didn’t come all the way down here to let them ruin this mission with their complete ignorance of how to do a proper courtly curtsy.”
Twenty-Two
Abby
Three rope ladders and one swingy plank bridge later, Joe and I were standing in a long door-lined hallway with Antonia, learning how to behave inside a palace.
For a full hour she briefed us on things to do and not do, things to touch and not touch, what to say if we were spoken to, and the proper way to walk into and out of a room.
“I don’t see why we need to know all this,” I said. “We’re just checking out places Louis might have had links to; we’re not actually going back to the 1700s.”
Antonia shook her head. “You will see why you need this protocol training soon enough,” she said. “Oh, that reminds me. How’s your Russian?”
I blinked at her. Joe and I looked at each other.
“No Russian? Ah. Well, I assume your other languages are decent, then?”
We both shrugged.
“I know some Spanish,” I said. “But not, like, palace Spanish.”
“I took two years of French in high school,” offered Joe.
“Bon,” said Antonia. “So you can carry on a simple conversation?”
“All I remember is how to ask where the bathroom is,” said Joe. “And say, ‘I am an American and I speak no French.’”
Antonia grimaced. “Well, let’s hope neither of you has to say a word to anyone while we conduct this mission, then. Now, bowing and curtsying lessons!”
Helene, who’d been fussing with Florence, arrived just as our lessons were finishing, and she and Antonia headed for one of the hallway’s many doors. “Stay here and give me fifty more bows and curtsies each,” Antonia called as they disappeared. “Then follow after us, and we’ll get you set up with supplies.”
“I wonder what that meant,” said Joe as we finally finished flailing and followed them. “What are our ‘supplies’?” We stepped through the door into a simple square room, and Joe got his question answered.
One entire side of the room was lined with rack after rack of clothes. There were dresses with massive skirts covered in lace and frills and bows, silk pants in every color imaginable, velvet gowns, wildly elaborate wigs, tiaras, necklaces, satin slippers, buckled shoes, military jackets, three-cornered hats, and trays of sparkling jewelry.
In the very center of the room was an old-timey wooden door, just like the one up in the grove of trees, standing in its frame with a lock holding it closed and everything. I stepped forward to take a closer look, but—
“Ah, good, you’re here,” said Helene, sweeping out from behind a curtained alcove at the end of the racks of clothes. I gasped, for good reason. Helene was wearing a bloodred crimson gown with built-in hips that had to be five feet wide, covered with bows and ruffles. A glittering net of white jewels curled around her neck and shoulders, and she’d capped the whole look off with a two-foot spiraling gray wig decorated with silk gardenia flowers. She looked stunning.
“Well, what are you staring at?” she said. “Pick an outfit and get changed. We want to get this show on the road.”
But Joe and I could only stand there gaping, and it got worse when Antonia appeared from behind another curtain, her tasseled heels clopping softly on the wooden floor. Her dress was similar to Helene’s, but in black, with a high collar decorated with silver and gray feathers. She’d accessorized with elbow-length ivory gloves, and her wig was a cloud of pale blue studded with tiny golden stars.
Antonia adjusted a bow on the back of Helene’s dress and raised her eyebrows as Joe and I stayed rooted to the spot, staring.
“Yes?” she said. “You have questions?”
“What is . . . how . . . why . . . ?” I managed. I tried again. “What’s up with the costumes? You look amazing, but how will they help us search for pillow forts? Won’t they make us totally noticeable inside the palace?”
“Yes, that’s the point,” answered Helene. “We learned long ago that sneaking around palaces is an art, and the easiest way to get caught is to try to stay out of sight. There are always guards, and nowadays cameras, looking for just that sort of thing. So we make good use of the three hundred years’ worth of fine clothes we’ve collected and just pretend to be period reenactors. It works like a dream, and no one bats an eye.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” said Antonia. “Think about it. If you were visiting a palace, or a security guard working in one, and someone walked by dressed like this . . .” She did a full turn, letting the beaded midnight-satin trim of her dress spin. “. . . wouldn’t you think that person probably had a good reason for being there?”
“Oh, totally,” I said.
“I
get it!” said Joe, snapping his fingers. “Because who else would go to all that trouble?”
“Exactly,” said Helene. “And now it’s your turn. Everything in this room is appropriate for the destination on the other side of the loop, so please choose an ensemble quickly and get dressed. Abby, if you don’t want to select a wig, I can help you with a period-specific fancy updo.”
“What palace are we visiting first?” I asked as I headed over to the treasure trove of glamorous clothes.
“My very favorite,” said Antonia, a real smile appearing on her face for the first time that day. “Somewhere I haven’t been in far too long. It’s part of the Hermitage Museum now, but when Captain Emily first visited, it was known as the Winter Palace, the preferred home of Her Imperial Highness Catherine the Great, Empress of All the Russias.”
Twenty-Three
Abby
Joe and I emerged from our dressing rooms at almost the same time. He’d picked out a swoopy coat made of green silk covered in gold embroidery, matching shorts that cinched tight around his knees, white-and-gold stockings, sparkly buckled shoes, and a sleek brown wig. “I haven’t had hair like this since I was in grad school,” he said, running a hand happily over his head. “And Abby! You look so splendid!”
“Thanks!” I said. I felt splendid. I was wearing a wide-hipped dress like Antonia and Helene, but mine was in the softest, sleekest teal velvet the world had ever seen, with cream ribbons at the sleeves and neck. I’d also found a big chunky necklace of lapis blue stones, purple satin shoes—purple! satin!—and, because everyone else was doing it, a big white wig shaped like a muffin.
How on earth could Antonia refuse to come below for so many years? If I lived on the island, I’d be down here dressing up every single day.
While Joe and I were admiring each other’s outfits, Helene brought out her ring of keys and unlocked the door in the center of the room. She held it open politely for her mother, waving us in, and as we filed after Antonia, I caught a look at the carved lock. There was no sun surrounded by oak leaves here; this lock was patterned with honeycomb and three delicate bees.
