Abby came over to the table and sat down across from me. “I just realized something funny,” she whispered. Uncle Joe was still chatting away.
“What?”
“You and your uncle have been, like, your own tiny club of zany people living by themselves in cabins all summer. Isn’t that hilarious?”
Ugh. So much for hanging on Uncle Joe’s every word.
“First off,” I whispered back, “you are exactly as zany as me, Miss I-made-my-best-friend-a-scarf-in-the-middle-of-July.”
“Hey, you made one too!”
“Second, my fort wasn’t a cabin”—I pulled out my extra-strength air quotes—“until you came home and decided to turn it into one.”
“Okay, fair. But you totally agreed to it.”
“And third, where have you been living all summer? Oh, that’s right: a cabin!”
“Well, yeah,” Abby said. “That’s my point. You’re supposed to live in a cabin at camp. It’s kinda weird when you’re on your own.”
“And this big guy,” said Uncle Joe, waving at a column of glossy pictures beside the front door, “is our grand finale. His name is Orpheus. He’s the whole reason I’m out here.”
Abby looked up, her braid swinging. “Orpheus? That guy from the old Greek legends?” I stared at her. She shrugged. “One of the counselors at camp read us some of the stories.”
“That’s wonderful,” Uncle Joe said. “Do you know the story, Maggie?”
“Nope.” Whee, I was all on my own again.
“Orpheus was a singer,” explained Uncle Joe. “An amazing singer. The best. He was so good, he almost managed to sing the love of his life back from the dead. And I think Orpheus the whale is doing something just as incredible.”
“You think he’s singing dead whales back to life?” asked Abby.
“Ha! No, nothing like that, but I think he’s what I call a rogue singer.”
“And what’s a rogue singer?” I asked, figuring I might as well keep being the one who didn’t know anything.
Uncle Joe plonked down on the back of the sofa. “Well, with humpbacks it’s the adult males who do the singing, and they usually sing more or less the same song that changes slowly over time. We’ve got lots of recordings of different whales singing over the years, and we think we basically understand what most songs are all about. But based on some clues I’ve come across in my research, I think that during summer feeding time, which is right now, one or two very rare whales leave the group to sing a one-hundred-percent different song all by themselves. Orpheus definitely keeps wandering off on his own, and I want to be the first scientist to get a recording of this other song. If there is one.
“I’m basically the only whale researcher on the planet who believes any of this, though. All my colleagues think I’m totally weird, but I can live with that.”
“You, um, might not have much choice,” I said, gesturing around at the walls.
Uncle Joe threw a pillow at me.
“Stop!” Abby and I shouted, leaping to our feet.
Uncle Joe was sitting right beside the blanket and pillow that made up the link. If he moved one more pillow or even leaned the wrong way, he would see the gap. Or worse, fall straight through, destroying the link and leaving us stranded up here for good.
Uncle Joe froze like a fish in a bubble net.
“What do we do?” I hissed at Abby, forgetting I was annoyed. This was a crisis.
“We’ve got to build something more secure,” Abby whispered back. I nodded.
“So, um, hey, Uncle Joe,” I said in my best casual voice. “I’m not saying anything in particular here, but this might be a good time for you to go be, you know, somewhere else for a while.”
Uncle Joe’s eyebrows went up, then down, then back up again. “Okay . . .”
“How about you go for a walk on the beach?” suggested Abby. “You can look for wildlife or something. Maybe you’ll see a moose!” She nudged my leg under the table.
Ugh, she was thinking of that ghost moose again. What, did she expect to see it prancing around Uncle Joe’s cabin up here on the edge of the Arctic Circle? We were already having a bigger adventure than anything Camp Cantaloupe could possibly offer. Why couldn’t she just let it go already?
“All right, I’ll do that,” said Uncle Joe. “But sorry, Abby, there aren’t any moose up here this time of year. How, uh, how long should my wildlife walk be . . . ?”
“Fifteen minutes should do it,” I said.
“I’ll just change my sweater.”
The moment Uncle Joe trooped out into the cold Alaska afternoon, Abby and I leaped into action, tearing apart the sofa to build a proper fort around the link, with a door and blanket roof and everything. It wasn’t the most beautiful pillow fort the world had ever seen, but it would have to do.
Uncle Joe gave the fort a long look when he came back in. “I’m doing my best not to think about what any of this means, kids,” he said with a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck, “but it’s not easy. I’m guessing there are all sorts of rules I’m not supposed to break or things I’m not supposed to do, right? No, don’t answer that—you’ll probably say too much.” He chewed his lip. “Okay, here’s the deal: I won’t mess with this fort so long as you two promise to announce your presence whenever you, uh, swing by.”
“Like, knock on the floor or something?” I said.
“That’ll work,” said Uncle Joe. “But make sure to knock loudly, just in case I’m in the bath.”
Abby raised her hand. “Is it saying too much if I mention you should think up a name for your fort?”
Uncle Joe flinched. “Well, it’s too late now if it is.” He eyed the heap of pillows and blankets, then smiled. “At least that’s easy.” He went over to the desk, scribbled something on a piece of paper, and held it
