“Okay,” I said, “wait.” My head was starting to feel downright spinny with all these names and places. It was like sitting through Abby’s talk about Camp Cantaloupe again. “Back up. You said you know all this from records. What records? Who has records of what this guy was doing as a kid all those years ago?”
“Museums, universities, top-secret government offices,” said Murray, tapping them off on his fingers. “NAFAFA kids have snuck into most of them over the years. There are tons of historical mysteries that can only be explained by linked-up pillow forts, and we follow any threads we can looking for evidence. And treasure, too, sometimes.
“It was actually a former queen of Miesha’s network who found the ‘how it all began’ story when she borrowed Louis’s diary from the French national archives eighty years ago. She had to do some real secret-agent work to get in there, but it was worth it. Miesha’s network runs the NAFAFA archives now, and they still have her notes if you ever want to read more about it.”
“Oh, I’ve been doing that kind of secret-agent stuff for years,” I said casually. Murray looked very impressed. “Well, you know, mostly in my head,” I admitted. “But that still counts as practice.”
“Well, once you’re in NAFAFA you can give it a try for real!”
I nodded. I still had so many questions.
“So,” I pushed on, “Louis linked from here to the Hall of Mirrors, and then what happened?”
“Right! So obviously he and Yvette were pretty excited about their discovery, and they went ahead and—”
“Tested the cucumber casserole out of it,” I finished, nodding.
Murray laughed. “Ew! But yeah, exactly. And soon they figured out how tokens and everything worked, and they added more forts and formed the first real network. At first it was just within Versailles, but then they started linking to other palaces and castles around France, and things really got going. And that’s how everything we have today began.”
“Wow,” I said. “But hang on. You used a word just now: tokens. What are tokens?”
“Tokens?” said Murray. “Really? They’re the things—socks, books, you know, whatever—taken from a hub fort and put in new forts to make them linkable. The thing that has to stay there. The thing that lets them connect. Tokens.”
My eyes slid out of focus as I digested what Murray was saying. Items from the hub fort, like Fort McForterson, being placed in other forts, like Fort Comfy, made those other forts linkable. So that was what had done it: the postcard I’d sent to Uncle Joe, the denim tassel scarf I’d given to Abby. Oof, it was a good thing I hadn’t been handing out stuff left and right all summer! Who knows where Fort McForterson could’ve gotten linked to without me even knowing?
“So, just to be super, totally clear,” I said, “you’re saying if I take something—anything—from my pillow fort, which is a hub, and put it in another pillow fort, they’ll link up? You’re saying that’s the whole trick?”
“Well, yeah,” said Murray. “Did—did you really not know that yet?”
I shook my head.
“Wow.” Murray rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s really basic. Anyway, ta-da! Now you know how networks get made. But let me finish the story here. It’s almost over.”
I bowed like Bobby. Murray giggled.
“So,” he continued, “little King Louis was happy with his network of palace forts, and he had all sorts of adventures and got into all sorts of trouble, but before too long he grew up and had to start actually acting like a king. On the plus side he got to tell everyone what to do, but on the down side he was trapped in his palaces, since kings aren’t ever allowed to go off and have adventures.
“Louis didn’t like that; he wanted to see the world. So he sent pillows from this sofa out on all his fastest ships.”
“To act as tokens,” I said, feeling very smart.
“Right,” said Murray.
“But wait, why whole pillows? Why not something simpler? You said they could be anything, right?”
“This was early days,” said Murray. “The idea of linking across oceans was almost impossible to even imagine, so Louis sent pillows in case his normal everyday tokens like slippers and candles couldn’t reach that far. His friends on the ships had orders to build pillow forts once they arrived, and when they did, Louis was suddenly able to travel anywhere he wanted. Well, anywhere he could send a ship with a pillow on it.
“He sent all the First Sofa’s pillows out except the seat cushion here, and within a few years he was able to duck into his fort and run all around the globe while his guards and advisers thought he was just hanging out in here playing games.”
“That’s what Abby’s dad always thinks we’re doing!” I said.
Murray nodded. “It’s a long, proud pillow fort tradition. Anyway, eventually it was all just too much for Louis to keep up with. He became a real grown-up, and being king was keeping him super busy, so he locked up the room to keep everything contained until he could figure out a time to come back. But he never did.
“The people in charge of his forts around the world kept them up just in case, and while everyone was looking the other way, their kids started playing in them instead.
“Of course, it turned out that kids were a whole lot better at running a pillow fort kingdom than grown-ups. It was the kids who figured out that each pillow was as powerful
