Eight
“Sorry about all this,” said Murray, pointing to the workers on the ceiling as I caught up to him. “We don’t usually do introductions on maintenance days, but you all are a bit of a special case.”
“In what way?” I asked. But before he could answer there was a shout from the maze to our right.
“Murray! Murray! Murray-Murray-Murray!” A tall boy with shiny black hair launched himself out of a cluster of forts and wrapped Murray in an enormous hug. “It’s been weeks! How’s my favorite capitaine?”
“Oof! Bobby! How’s it going?”
“Excellent!” said the kid. He locked Murray in another squeeze, then let him go and turned to me, beaming. “Who’s your friend? Are you giving a tour? Which network is she in?”
“Her own,” Murray said, catching his breath. “West coast!”
I had no idea what that meant, but the new boy looked very impressed. He held out a hand.
“Bobby,” he said, dropping his voice low.
“Maggie,” I said.
“Enchanté.” Bobby gave a deep bow as we shook.
“Show-off,” Murray said, grinning. He turned to me. “Bobby’s in my network. He’s from Montreal.”
“Montreal by way of Taiwan,” added Bobby, holding up a finger. He dropped his voice so deep he sounded like a movie preview. “Bobby is a global phenomenon.”
“Nice,” I said, smiling. “I’m from Seattle. By way of, um, Seattle.”
“Nice!” Bobby said. “And this is your first visit to the Hub?” His already-beaming face lit up even more. “Hey, do you want to see the coolest thing ever in the history of the world?”
“Um, sure.”
“Hooray! Capitaine?”
Murray gave a thumbs-up, and Bobby led us off the path to a boxy fort made of navy-blue sheets decorated with stars. We all ducked inside.
It was a neat, simple fort, with matching blue pillows lining the walls, a beanbag chair with a stack of comic books beside it, and twinkle lights strung around the ceiling. Bobby pulled down one of the pillows, set it aside, winked at me using his entire face, and disappeared through the link.
I crawled after him, feeling the soft carpet of the fort give way to the bouncy, smooshy squashiness of a deep pile of pillows. A very deep pile of pillows. It was almost pitch-black in the new fort, but as my arm sank up to the elbow I could tell this place would put Fort Comfy to shame.
“Where are we?” I whispered, trying to get my feet under me. My elbow knocked against something hard.
“Ouch,” breathed Murray.
“Oop, sorry!” I reached out a hand to steady myself, and my fingers brushed a blanket wall, then stopped. Whoa. I pressed my whole hand to the fabric. There was a real wall behind it.
“Bobby,” I said, reaching out with my other hand. Okay, there was a wall on my other side, too. “Where exactly”—my palm pressed flat just above my head—“are we?” Coolest thing in the history of the world or not, if we were boxed in a tiny crawl space or storage tank somewhere, I was getting out right now.
A faint light gleamed from the other end of the fort, showing Bobby’s broad smile. Seriously, it was like he and Murray were competing for the World’s Smiliest Tour Guide Award. “Come and see,” he whispered. I squished my way through the pillow pile, keeping a firm mental grip on the exit, and heaved myself up beside him.
We were looking out an oval opening, just large enough for one of us to scramble through. Two rows of pale plasticky nubs curved around the inside, with thick rails of the same material arcing out in front on either side of— hold on—those were teeth, and those were tusks, and that meant . . . I pushed past Bobby and stuck my head through the gap.
We were inside a woolly mammoth. And the woolly mammoth was inside a museum.
Dim lights lit up glass display cases, dioramas, skeletons, and life-size furry models like the one we were snuggled up in. A fancy banner over the wall across from us read:
THE AGE OF THE MEGAFAUNA
Everything was still. We must have been the only ones in the entire museum. This was spectacular.
I craned my neck to see around the mammoth’s side, and found myself face-to-face with an enormous stuffed moose. Its glass eyes glittered at me from beneath its sweeping antlers. My heart twinged. Abby would have loved to see this.
I crawled back inside the mammoth’s belly.
“Isn’t this the very greatest?” asked Bobby as my eyes readjusted to the gloom. “We came here on a class field trip when I was nine, and I wanted to know what was inside all the animals, so I just grabbed a tusk and climbed on in. I got in loads of trouble, but I’m glad I did it, because as soon as I joined the Northern Alliance, I was able to build a fort right inside Basil here. That’s what I named him.”
“Hi, Basil,” I said, patting the wall beside me. “But how on earth did you get all these cushions and blankets and everything in here without getting caught?” It must have been a planning nightmare. This mammoth was literally stuffed with pillows.
“I camped out,” said Bobby. “It was super fun, actually. I brought the starter blanket and pillows in a backpack and hid in the bathroom until everyone was gone for the night, then climbed in here just like I did when I was nine. Once Basil was linked in to my Northern Alliance fort, it was easy to bring the rest of the blankets and pillows in through the link.”
Of course. That was brilliant. “So do you all run around the museum at night whenever you want?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Bobby said. “No one in the world knows this museum better than us.” He sat up. “Hey, do you want a tour? I can show you the best exhibits right up close, and we can slide down the marble railings, and try on all the sweatshirts in
