And they didn’t know me, either. No one here knew I was a master secret agent, or that I’d been running my own epic adventure games for years. No one knew I was cool.
“Keep up, Maggie Hetzger,” called a voice, and I blinked back to my body. Carolina was heading off along the wall to my left.
I hurried to catch up, but flashes of sound coming from behind the wall pillows kept hijacking my attention. If these pillows worked like the ones in Fort McForterson, then every one of them, stretching all the way around the room, could lead somewhere. That meant dozens and dozens of possible links. I slowed, trailing a hand across the changing fabrics, listening.
The roar of a waterfall boomed from behind a pillow covered in pink sequins; loud opera-style singing drifted through the next; chickens clucked around the edges of a thin green body pillow; and from an enormous cushion the size of a garage door came a steady bright clinking like a downpour of metal raindrops. I stopped and pressed an ear to it, my spy senses tingling.
“Maggie Hetzger!” yelled Carolina, sounding exasperated. She’d stepped away from the wall and was heading down a path directly onto the main floor. I jogged to catch up.
Kids looked around as I passed. Some smiled. Some waved. A few laughed. There sure were a lot of them. A girl carrying a trombone appeared from behind a bookcase, took one look at me, and broke into giggles. I flushed, my scalp prickling, and suddenly wished Abby were with me. She’d know what to do here. She’d stick by my side. She probably felt the exact same way when she got to camp all on her own. I did my best to summon my music, to walk with my head held high and the wind blowing through my hair. But it wasn’t quite working.
Carolina led the way to the very center of the fort, where a round table sat on a platform beneath the gargantuan chandelier. The chandelier was stunning up close, all gleaming metal and golden lights, and decorated with bunches of . . . wait, kids?
There were kids up there, hanging thirty—no, fifty feet off the ground. I had to squint, but I could just make them out, geared up in black visors and climbing harnesses, crawling over the chandelier, dusting, polishing, and cleaning.
And hey, wait again! There were kids even higher up than that, dangling like window washers from the walls and ceiling, going at the curving blankets with needles and pins and thread.
Whoa. Times. Ten.
Beneath the chandelier four long banners hung all the way down to four chairs situated around the table. Four kids—two boys and two girls—were sitting motionless in the chairs, their hands flat on the table in front of them. They all wore matching silver sunglasses.
We climbed the steps and came to a halt. There was a long pause. The hubbub continued on the floor around us, but here on the platform everything was still.
“Welcome back, Carolina,” said the girl sitting across from us finally. She looked a little older than me. She had silver hoops in her ears and a streak of purple in her short black ponytail. “Please introduce our guest.” Apart from her lips the girl hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Carolina formally. “Councilors, this is Maggie Hetzger. Maggie Hetzger”—she held out a hand—“this . . . is the Council.”
I looked around and shivered. There was something deeply impressive about the way these kids were sitting there motionless, serene, bathed in that golden light. They looked like the statues in the Lost Temple of the Saber-Toothed Tiger, ancient and powerful. The one closest to me, a pink-cheeked boy in overalls who couldn’t have been older than nine, had a clipboard and pen set neatly on the table in front of him.
“Um, hello, the Council,” I said. What was the proper way to address a group like this? I needed more information. But I was determined to keep my cool. “So, what are you the council of, exactly?”
“Pillow forts, Maggie Hetzger,” answered the girl with the ponytail. “We are the leaders and representatives of the four regional chapters of NAFAFA, the North American Founding and Allied Forts Alliance.”
Oh. My. Creepy Frog. I felt my cool slip right off the platform.
I mean, sure, I was standing inside a palatial, impossible pillow fort, but what?!
“My name is Noriko,” the girl continued. “Head of the Council and Chancellor of the Forts of the Eastern Seaboard.” She raised a finger toward the banner above her head. It was midnight blue and showed a silver ship sailing over a rolling sea of pillows.
“This is Ben.” Noriko nodded toward pink-cheeked Overall Boy. “Emperor of the Great Plains Sofa Circle.” I looked up to see a grass-green banner with a circle of wheat around a plump yellow cushion.
“Next to him is Miesha, Queen of the United Southern Gulf–Pacific Fortresses.” Miesha had deep brown skin and a pair of fancy tortoiseshell frames poking out from under her silver sunglasses. Her banner was made up of three vertical stripes—blue, green, blue—with a castle of orange pillows rising in the center.
“And last is Murray, Captain of the Northern and Arctic Alliance.” Pale, sandy-haired Murray had a banner showing a polar bear on a mound of white pillows under a pink-and-purple sky.
I nodded, taking it all in, thankful for my years of spy training as I burned their names and titles into my brain. I was deep in unknown territory here; I needed every scrap of intel I could get.
“I’m Maggie,” I said, realizing they were all waiting for me, “Vice Director of Camp Pillow Fort.” Our name didn’t sound cool at all anymore.
I had a sudden horrifying thought and looked down. Ugh. I was in my sleepy-dinosaur pajamas. That probably
