by Will Taylor
Mark spread the map over the dashboard, studying it, then pointed to the left. My mom nodded and spun the wheel sharply, pointing the nose of the truck down as we curved around a line of hills.
Everyone in the back looked up at the turn, and everyone saw it, and everyone shouted, but it was too late. We were leaving the stars and the wind behind.
We were driving into a solid wall of fog.
There was no time to turn. The hills held the heavy gray cloud between them like a sea, and our path went right through it. Within seconds we were swallowed whole.
My mom slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to a bouncing stop.
We stared around, but the fog threw the headlights back, reflecting only shining whiteness. The wind was gone, and the damp, clammy cold crept into the truck, finding every gap in our defenses. Abby pulled her hat down over her ears. Kelly disappeared completely under her blankets.
“I’m going to have to take this super slowly, everyone,” my mom called from the front, easing the truck into a crawl. “There’s no point trying to go back, but if we’re lucky we’ll come out of this soup soon.”
Mark had the map inches from his face.
“It looks like we should be okay,” he said. “This is only a sort of valley between the hills. Once we’re through we won’t be that far from town.”
“But how long will it take to get through?” asked Matt. “At this speed it could be hours.”
“We don’t have a choice,” said my mom. “We can’t risk hitting something if we’re going fast. Everybody just sit tight.” She was doing her best to sound optimistic, but I could hear the worry in her voice. “How you doing back there, Joe?” she called.
“I’m okay, Sis,” he called back. “I am okay.” Now that we were moving quietly I could hear faint sloops and eeeows from the walkie-talkie. It looked like Orpheus was still singing.
“Well, keep it up,” said my mom. “We’ll be at the hospital before you know it.”
We crawled forward, the only sound the crunch of the tires on the rocky ground and the occasional blip of whale song. On and on, and the fog got deeper. I felt a gnawing in my stomach, an uneasy mix of worry and plain old hunger. It had been a long time since I’d eaten. I wondered how the others were doing. Without the stars and the wind and the thrill of speed, our rescue mission was a lot less fun. No one was smiling now.
All sense of time slipped away. We might have been inching along for hours. I was starting to wonder if we were moving at all when Mark shouted in alarm and the truck stopped with a jolt.
“What the—?” said Abby, but looking ahead I could see exactly what. My mom had hit the brakes only just in time. The truck’s front bumper was inches from a wall of rubble right across our path.
“Darn it!” said my mom. “There must have been a landslide.” She hit the steering wheel in frustration, catching the horn with her fist. The tinny beep sounded small and forlorn in the shrouded landscape.
“Here there be margins,” Abby said under her breath. I managed a weak smile.
“Can’t we turn and follow alongside the slide?” asked Matt.
“We can try,” said Mark, his head bent over the map. “But which way? The slide’s right across our path, and there’s no way of knowing if taking a left or right will get us around it faster.”
My mom turned off the engine.
“Why stopped?” asked Uncle Joe sleepily. “Are we there?”
“No, Joe,” said Abby. “Not yet. We’re just taking a quick break.”
Uncle Joe mumbled something unintelligible and closed his eyes.
“What do we do now?” asked Kelly in a small voice.
Nobody answered. I could feel Matt shivering beside me. The seconds ticked by. What were we going to do? We could always wait for day and hope the sun would burn away the fog, but how far off would that be? And what sort of condition would Uncle Joe—or any of us—be in when it came?
“Shame,” mumbled Uncle Joe.
“What, Joe?” asked my mom.
Uncle Joe shook the walkie-talkie. “Out of batteries.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell over the group again. The silence grew. I could almost hear everybody thinking.
Finally, my mom spoke.
“Okay, what if we—”
“Shh!” hissed Abby. “What’s that?”
We froze, listening, and I heard it: a steady crunching. The crunching of footsteps over the rocks. Something large, something . . . heavy . . . was moving out in the fog.
I sat up straight, my eyes wide and my ears trained on whatever was out there as it came nearer and nearer, circling, closing in on us. Stalking, said an unhelpful voice in my head. I shivered. It suddenly occurred to me how very exposed we were, sitting there in the open back of the truck, ready to be picked off one by one. . . .
There was a sharp crack of rock breaking, then a grumbling snort. What animal snapped rocks just by walking? Maybe it was a woolly mammoth. Maybe it was the last woolly mammoth in the world, and it had been lost in the arctic, forced to become carnivorous to survive. Maybe it was sniffing us out, trying to decide which of us to yank into the air with its trunk and devour first.
Maybe it had settled on me. Maybe I was about to see the inside of a woolly mammoth’s belly again, only this time without the pillows. I hoped I at least got a look at it first.
“There!” hissed Mark, pointing, and everyone gasped as an enormous shape appeared barely ten feet away, then vanished again into the mist.
“On the count of three,” said my mom in a loud whisper, “I’m going to blow the horn. Maybe it’ll go away.” We all nodded. “One . . .” The crunching came closer. “Two . . .” There was a huffling, muffled snort. “Thr—”
“Wait!” said Matt. “Look!”
And it emerged out of the fog like a ship on the sea: dark eyes, a huge furry body, four massive legs, jaws that could crush us like grapes, and antlers, enormous antlers parting the mist before them. It came right up to the back of the truck and stopped.
It was a moose. A gargantuan moose of mammoth proportions. I’d always pictured moose as being kind of funny; but now, with one standing over me, its huffing nostrils adding to the fog and its antlers scraping the sky, the only word I could think of was RUN.
“Everyone,” my mom said out of the side of her mouth, “keep very, very still.”
We did. The moose stared down at us and blinked.
“Hey, Joe,” breathed Abby. “What do we do?”
Uncle Joe gave a little snore. He was fast asleep.
“That thing could flip over the truck just by shaking its head, Ms. H.,” whispered Mark. “We have to get out of here.”
“I agree,” my mom whispered back. “But how? I can’t drive over this wall of rocks, and I can’t back up with that thing standing there. We have to make it move somehow.”
“Let’s try and scare it,” said Mark. “You honk the horn, and we’ll hit it with something. What do we have that we can throw?”
“No, don’t,” I said. What were they all talking about? The moose wasn’t hurting anybody—it was just standing there. As far as we knew, it could even be here to help us find our way out of the fog, like the ghost moose in those stories Abby brought home from Camp . . . Cantaloupe. . . .
I looked back up at our new friend, my heart thudding. But not from fear anymore.
“There’s a toolbox in the back here,” Matt said, fumbling under the blankets. He pulled out a solid-looking wrench and passed it through the window to Mark, then grabbed a hammer for himself.
“Okay, on three, you honk the horn, Ms. H., and we’ll throw.” He shared a grim nod with his brother. “Aim for between the eyes.”
“Wait!” I said, horrified. “You can’t! Abby, tell them.”
Abby looked around, startled. “Huh? Tell them what?”
“That it’s here to rescue us! It’s obviously the ghost moose from Camp Cantaloupe.” The moose coughed. “See?” I said. “
It knows the name.”
What I could see of Abby’s forehead wrinkled. Her eyes traveled up to the moose, then back to me. “Mags, you know that was just a story, right?”
“But—you believed it. I know you did. You’ve barely stopped talking about it since you got back.”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s funny,” said Abby. “And because I thought maybe you’d be into it, with your games and all, and maybe not be grumpy about me being gone. I didn’t actually believe the ghost story part of it. Obviously.”
“And even now there’s an actual ghost moose standing over us”—I waved a hand at it—“an actual ghost moose as large as life, you still don’t believe that it’s real?”
Abby pulled her hat down over her eyebrows. “Mags, that doesn’t even make sense,” she said. “It’s just a wild animal.”
I looked around for support. Was I the only one who thought this moose might actually be a good thing? My mom was shaking her head. Mark wouldn’t meet my eye. Matt quirked his mouth to one side and shrugged.
“Is it a friendly ghost moose?” asked a tiny voice from inside Kelly’s cocoon.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Kelly, it’s very friendly. That’s how the story goes, anyway.” I shot Abby a look. “It saves campers when they’re lost in the woods.”
Kelly peered out, her face just visible. “We’re lost,” she said.
She looked so small and hopeful in that moment that I couldn’t stand it, and a hot spark of anger burned to life inside me. Who cared if it was just a story? Who cared if believing it didn’t make any sense? This was what was happening. If I’d had my way, we’d have been rescued by a helicopter full of secret-agent librarians headed for their base in a nearby volcano. But the ghost moose of Camp Cantaloupe was what we got, and I’d eat a whole pan of cucumber casserole before I let this chance pass us by.
I smiled at Kelly, my heart fluttering a little at what I was about to do. “That’s right,” I said, putting my shoulders back. “We are. But not for long.” The music started. I pushed my nest of blankets aside.
I stood up.
Everyone gasped.
The mist parted, billowing around me as I planted my feet, my head held high. I stood taller than the others, taller than the cab of the truck, taller than the hills around us, taller than the sky. The reflected headlights burned in the air like moonlight, and the vast arctic night stretched away on all sides. I raised my chin. The fog blew through my hair.
“Wow,” someone breathed behind me.
I looked up at the moose. It gazed down, a puzzled sort of interest on its face.
For a ghost moose it sure did smell.
“Hello, hi,” I said to it. What was the proper way to address a ghost moose? “If you’re who I think you are and you’re here from Camp Cantaloupe, will you please show us the way to town? We’re lost, and Uncle Joe is hurt, and Kelly and my mom have to get back to the hospital, and Samson is probably hungry. And we could really use your help.”
The moose stayed perfectly still, watching me, mist rolling down its antlers.
“So . . . please?” I said, my voice shaking slightly. “Will you help us?” I was starting to shiver. I’d been hoping for a grand, dramatic moment. This wasn’t exactly going to plan.
The moose flicked one ear, then the other.
“Sweetie, I don’t think . . . ,” began my mom.
“Shh,” I said. I was thinking hard. The moose wasn’t leaping to our aid, but it wasn’t leaving, either. Maybe I wasn’t doing enough on my own. Maybe the moose needed more. It was a pity we didn’t have any cantaloupe lying around.
But Abby had said the moose helped lost campers. That was the story. And I was a camper, sort of. Except . . . no, not really. I’d actually been fighting hard against the whole idea of summer camp since the day Abby left, and even more since she’d tried to bring it back with her. I was a pillow forter, a builder of caves and doer of missions with the wind blowing through my hair. Abby was the one with the super-social summer camp skills, and meeting new people powers, and oh my moose nostrils, that was it.
Abby was the Camp. And I was the Pillow Fort. And we could only do this by our powers combined.
I turned my head. “Abby, get up here. I need you.”
Abby looked surprised and more than a little wary, but she clambered to her feet and maneuvered her way beside me. “What are you doing?” she murmured, eyeing the sharp points of the antlers less than a foot above our heads.
“I think I figured it out,” I said. “The moose helps campers, but I’m too much of a pillow forter to count. It should recognize you, though. What can you do that’s Cantaloupey?”
“Huh? Cantaloupey?”
“You know, something from camp. Is there a song or— Hey! The camp dance!”
“What about it?” said Abby.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Do it.”
“Now?”
“Of course now! You were all about it the other day. And we need to do something to convince the moose we’re campers worth saving. You do it once to show me, then I’ll join in. I think we’re supposed to do this thing together.”
The moose was watching our discussion with interest.
Abby paused, and I bit my lip. I could almost hear Old Abby and New Abby fighting it out.
The thing was, I needed help from both.
“Oh-kay,” she said at last. “Fine.” I moved back, relieved, as she put her hands on her hips and stepped into a deep lunge. “But this had better work, or I’m gonna feel really silly. And one, two, three: da-da, da-da-da, da, DA . . .”
It wasn’t a complicated dance, and Abby gave it her all even while wobbling on blankets and trying not to step on Uncle Joe. She kicked, lunged, swayed, and clapped, da-da-ing along the whole time.
“Okay,” she said, coming to a halt. “That’s the Camp Cantaloupe dance. Here, Mags.” She held out a hand. “Let’s try it with both of us.”
Space was tight, so we wrapped our arms around each other’s shoulders. It was nice being huddled up—it took the edge off the cold. We stepped into a deep lunge.
“You all might as well help too,” called Abby, half turning around. “Like Maggie said, maybe we’re supposed to do this together.”
I glanced back. Matt, Mark, and my mom looked confused. Kelly looked excited. Samson was asleep.
“We can do the singing part,” announced Kelly, pushing away the blankets of her cocoon. “I like to sing. Okay, one, two, three . . . da-da, da-da-da, da, DA. . . .”
And Abby and I danced. It took a few tries to get in sync, but we got there in the end. One by one the others joined in on the da-da-ing, and soon Kelly was conducting with Creepy Frog, Mark was drumming with his wrench, and the bed of the truck was bouncing with our kicks and lunges.
I had a sudden vision of how weird all this would look to someone out there in the mists. A hodgepodge family of kids, teens, and grown-ups, camped out in a pickup truck, putting on a song-and-dance routine for a dinosaur-size moose in the middle of the freezing arctic night.
“Cantaloupes,” I murmured to myself, squeezing Abby closer for the swaying bit. “We are a total bunch of cantaloupes.” I grinned. I wasn’t cold at all anymore.
Halfway through the fourth round the moose began to nod its huge nose up and down in time with our dancing.
“It’s working!” panted Abby, and we danced even harder.
As the fifth round ended the moose let out a loud snort, reared up high, its hairy belly stretching over our heads, and brought its hooves back to earth with a crash. More rocks shattered. Abby and I froze midlunge, and the others stopped singing.
The moose snorted again, almost daintily in the silence, then turned and trotted a few steps into the mist. It stopped and looked back, just visible in the reflection from the headlights, waiting.
“Well, that’s pretty clear,” said Abby, wiping her forehead on her sleeve. “Follow that moose!”
Kelly cheered. Matt and Mark whooped. Sam
son woke up and yawned.
Abby seized me and pulled me into a massive hug. She smelled like wool sweaters and cocoa and my best friend in the whole world. “Cantaloupe, cantaloupe,” I said, grinning into her hair.
“Moose, moose, moose,” she whispered back. “Thank you.”
“Well done, Maggie and Abby!” called my mom, starting the engine with a roar as Abby and I flopped back in our seats. “Well done, everybody!”
The tires spun to life against the rocks and we were off, sliding through the fog with the moose trotting along between the headlights and everyone patting Abby and me on the back for being so brave. Everything was fun again, and the cold and damp and hunger were all just part of the adventure. Samson stretched out beside Uncle Joe—who had somehow slept through the whole entire thing—and purred even louder than the engine.
All at once the moose picked up speed and broke into a run, disappearing in the clouds ahead. My mom stepped on the gas to follow, and as we zoomed forward, the mist around us thinned, faded, then vanished completely, and we were through. The dream was over, we were out of the valley, and spread out before us in the distance lay the roads and buildings and spangled lights of town.
Twenty-Three
Everything was quiet and still in the local hospital’s pastel waiting room, and my head jerked up for the hundredth time as I fought to stay awake. Abby and Kelly were already asleep, curled up together on one of the couches with Samson hidden in a bundle of blankets between them. Matt and Mark slumped in their chairs, watching the silent TV on the wall and passing yawns back and forth. There was no one else around. Even the receptionist at the desk had gone for the night, and apart from Abby’s snores it was perfectly still.
I was just giving in to the heavy pull behind my eyes when my mom arrived. I shook Abby and Kelly awake, and they sat up, yawning, crinkling the pile of wrappers from our Rescue Mission Snack Committee raid on the hospital vending machines.
“All right,” my mom said, dropping into a chair. “Joe’s going to be fine. It was a clean break, so no worries about long-term damage to his leg, and he’s got a mild concussion, but they say that’ll be fine too.” She looked around at us, bleary-eyed and rumpled. “You’re all real heroes.”