He bowed.
I had to admit, I was deeply impressed. This was up there with the best spy adventure stories I’d ever imagined.
“So my fort,” I said, “and Abby’s fort, and Uncle Joe’s, and your network and NAFAFA, all of it started right here, right where we’re standing?” I eyed the place with a lot more respect than I had before. “And other kids from around the world come here too?”
Murray nodded. “Every Continental Alliance’s hub has a link to this room. Sometimes we bump into each other. If there’s ever a global catastrophe or crisis, everyone’s supposed to meet here and try to solve it, I think.”
“Wait, you think?”
“It’s never been tried. When World War II began, some of the Councils met up, but we don’t have records of them being able to do much more than protect this room.”
“Protect it? From what?”
“Invaders. Grown-ups. Anyone who might want to break in. France was occupied during the war, and Versailles was full of foreign commanders and soldiers who were super curious about le Petit Salon and not as interested in preserving French mysteries as the locals.”
“How did the kids protect it?” I asked, enthralled.
“Standing guard, mostly. There were kids stationed here twenty-four hours a day. Whenever anyone came near the door they would cry, or laugh, or clap their hands and sing counting games in off-key voices.”
“And the invading soldiers would just run away?”
“Kids can be very creepy when they want to be,” said Murray, putting his sunglasses back on.
I looked around the room, my imagination going into overdrive, and pictured myself standing guard all night in the darkness and dust. How boring. I would have run things much better if this were one of my games. Didn’t kids back then have any sense of daring? “They really should’ve set a trap,” I said. “And then lured the soldiers in one by one and captured them.”
“Ah, well, they couldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? Not enough kids?”
“No, because they couldn’t open the door,” said Murray. “No one can. Not without smashing it down like your fellow American out there suggested.”
I blinked. I looked at the door. I looked at the key hanging right beside it. I looked back at Murray.
I felt like there was some important point I was missing.
“But, okay,” I said slowly. “We’re inside the room, and the key’s right there. . . .”
Murray gave me a long look from behind his sunglasses. “Unlock it, then,” he said.
“What?”
“Unlock the door. Seriously. Maybe it’s time.”
Flecks of dust sparkled through the air between us.
“You mean it?” I said. “Really?”
“Really.”
Slowly, with more than one glance back at Murray to see if he was kidding, I crossed to the door and lifted down the key. It was beautiful up close: a dull silver decorated with oak leaves around a radiating golden sun. It was surprisingly heavy.
“Go on,” breathed Murray.
I took a deep, slow breath, thinking in a flash of the kind of summer I’d been having only a few days before: waiting by the mailbox for Abby’s postcards, moping around in my lonely pillow fort, staring out at the world from my spot up on the roof . . . Things sure had changed. I exhaled hard and slipped the key into the lock that hadn’t been opened in three hundred years. It fit.
I turned it.
The key didn’t budge.
I tried harder.
Nothing.
I scrunched up my face and twisted my fingers back and forth until sweat broke out on my palms, but the lock refused to open. My hands fell to my sides.
“So, now you know,” said Murray quietly.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded. “What is this?”
“The real mystery of le Petit Salon,” answered Murray. “That key’s been there forever, but so far as we know it’s never worked in that door.”
“Well what’s it for, then?”
“There are two theories,” Murray said. “The first is that the key will only unlock the door for a certain person, a chosen one who will uncover the secrets of the origins of the First Sofa and bring about a golden age for the world of pillow forts.”
I snorted. “Pass.”
“I completely agree,” said Murray. “It’s way too Sword in the Stone. But some people really believe it. I know for a fact Ben comes in here every now and then to try the key again. He probably hopes he’ll become the chosen one if he just keeps at it. I think he’s wasting his time, though. I follow the second theory, which makes more sense but is much more frustrating.”
“What is it?”
“That the key doesn’t go to this door at all. That it goes to another lock entirely.”
“Where?”
“That’s the frustrating part,” said Murray. He retrieved the key and hung it back on the wall. It swung gently, the edges gleaming in the light. “It’s been three hundred years, and we still haven’t got a clue.”
Ten
Murray pulled the velvet curtains shut, then led the way back through the ancient sofa to the Hall of Records. The golden lights and shining mirrors were dazzling after the dusty sunbeams of le Petit Salon.
“Hang on a second,” I said, swatting cobwebs off my pajamas as Murray reset the pillow. “How does a group that’s only kids afford all this?”
“All what?”
“All this!” I flapped a hand at the mirrors and lamps and columns of glossy marble. “I get that it’s been built up over hundreds of years, but this place must be pretty expensive to maintain.”
“You’re good at spotting problems, aren’t you?” Murray said. “The answer’s pretty simple. Have you ever sat down on a sofa with change in your pocket?”
“Yeah.”
“And have you ever stood up and realized
