When Chenille Is Not Enough

The moment Susan asked the question, a partition in her mind opened. The essence of the room sang to her. The soft, nubbly upholstery rubbed against her arm. She ran her hand across the top of the couch. She stared at the subtle stripes of brown, beige and gold in threads of different widths and weights. The air around her chilled, not with fear but with certainty. The cream and gold wallpaper, champagne-colored velvet drapes and pale-gold throw pillows seemed to speak to her.

“They’ve been here before,” she said.

“Last year,” Edna said. “Now, do you want to hear about the quilt or not?”

Scott rose and, with measured steps, approached Susan. “Are you talking about the aliens?”

“Yes,” Susan said, rocking from one foot to the other. “And not the ones we fought. Other ones. They were here a long time ago, and somehow Agnes met them.” Her feet took charge and propelled her back and forth behind the couch. “The quilt she made is like a coded message. She wanted to tell us something, but couldn’t.”

“My grandmother never used a coded message in her life. If she wanted to say something, she just said it.” Edna looked past Susan’s shoulder. “Gary, you should do the same. If you’ve got something to say, out with it.”

Gary stood at the entrance to the living room, car keys in hand. “I’m going to pick up Eleanor and Olivia now,” he said. “Do you need to call the school first, to let them know you sent me?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Susan said. “Where’s my phone? Oh, and I need you to swing by the shop and get the crazy quilt.” She found her purse and rummaged for the phone. As she scrolled for the number to the school, she stopped. “No, I’ve got a better idea. Bring the girls straight home, Gary. I’ll call Louise and have her bring the quilt over. She was there, too, Scott, when Bozidar took Cecily. You’ll want her story as well.”

“Yes, I will,” Scott said. “But I should get the girls. I’ve done it before, and the staff knows me.” He glanced at Edna, then at Susan. “Gary, let’s go together. These two have some family history to sort out.”

Edna opened her mouth, but Susan lifted a hand in her direction as she dialed the phone with the other.

“Let me call Louise first, Mom,” Susan said. She turned her back to Edna as the call went through. “Hey, it’s me. I’m better. No, really. I’m starting to understand things. Remember when the aliens first came last year? You said you had problems keeping track of the bolts, like they were hiding? And somehow they affected your memory? Well, I think Bozidar did the same thing to us. Listen, I need you to go to the shop and get the quilt. Yes, the crazy quilt. Bring it to my house. Everything started going wrong when Bozidar saw that quilt, and we’re going to figure out why.”

Susan pocketed the phone, squared her shoulders and turned round. “Okay, tell me I’m insane. Get it out of your system. Then we can talk about Agnes.”

Edna opened her mouth, and snapped it shut. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “No, I don’t think I will,” she said with a snort. “Tell you you’re insane, I mean. You said something to Louise that got me thinking. About the memory tricks.”

“Yes?” Susan returned to the couch and motioned for Edna to continue.

“It’s the memory thing. I remember now.” Edna grabbed a pillow and hugged it.

“Yes?” Susan said again. When Edna did not reply, she said, “Mom, now you’re scaring me. And that’s the last thing I need today.” When Edna still did not reply, she snatched the pillow and said sharply, “Mom!”

“Fine!” Edna snapped. “What I remember is my grandmother telling me about the day she found some flour sacks. That talked to her.”

***

“What time is it?” Cecily asked. She glanced around the pod. “You’ve got a lot of cool things here, but I don’t see a clock. Do you even measure time the way we do?”

Bozidar swept his hand over the console. A tangerine-colored rectangle appeared on the screen. Bright purple and black lines scrolled across it for a second, then formed a cross-hatch. A red dot blinked its way across two sections of the cross-hatch, and the rectangle disappeared.

“Local time is four in the afternoon.” He returned to the bench without looking at her.

She tapped her foot against the floor, causing a faint rhythm like a ticker-tape to echo through the pod. “You didn’t answer my second question. How do your people tell time?” She watched the toe of her shoe quiver, inhaled, and pressed both feet into the floor.

“What does it matter how we tell time?” he grumbled. “Are you trying to determine how much longer I will be alive?”

“Excuse me?” She flinched, then forced her shoulders to relax. “Since when are you dying?”

He leaned forward. “You said your mother is going to kill me,” he hissed.

She stifled one giggle, only to have another slip through. “No. What I meant is that she would, oh, never mind. Mom couldn’t kill a fly.”

“Your film shows her killing quite a few of my clan mates. All of them, in fact. Every last one of them.” He rolled away from her and onto his feet. “What is to stop her from ending my life?”

“Well, for one thing, you don’t crumble into dust when you’re whacked with a chenille pillow,” she said. “Aside from that, you invaded us. Mom was defending herself. Come on, if you woke up one day to find a bunch of these whatchamacallits - ” she picked up a small green cone ” - dancing around the pod and threatening to strangle you if you came too close, wouldn’t you fight back?”

“Careful!” Bozidar squealed as he took the cone from her. “That is a replacement filter for the cleansing station. I would rather not return to my planet as a slime ball, assuming I survive the encounter with your mother.”

“Which brings me back to time,” she said. “Nice design concept, by the way. Decorate the ship with useful items, leaving room for souvenirs or samples on the return trip. It’s like on a submarine. They stack the canned food - ”

“I have already told you it is four in the afternoon local time. Why do you insist on bringing up the subject only to ignore my answer?” He leaned his head against the wall of the pod and closed his eyes. “I hate this planet,” he whimpered.

Cecily cast her eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry. Pull yourself together and let me explain my plan.” She peeked at Bozidar.

He opened his eyes and saw her looking at him. Maintaining eye contact, he nodded and sat next to her. “I will listen.”

“Okay, I have two younger sisters.”

“Oh, no. Not more of you,” he moaned.

“Olivia and Eleanor are great. They’re the ones who suggested I dye my hair purple. Said red was out of fashion.” She watched him put his hands to his temples and press hard. “Which you don’t care about at the moment. The important thing is that the girls get out of school at three. They should be home by now. Mom won’t want to scare them, so she won’t come after you with a shotgun - which we don’t have, by the way - and with any luck I’ll be able to explain why you did what you did, and what’s going on back home, and how we can settle this honor debt thing. Sound good?”

He dropped his hands to his lap, focused on her words. After a moment, he nodded.

“There is just one detail to work out,” Cecily said. “Getting there.”

He stared at her. When she did not continue, he said, “I can go wherever I wish. Taking you to your home will not be an issue.”

“Yes, but how?” she said. “Will you fly the pod to my house? Does it have some sort of cloaking device? The last thing we need is to have the neighbors see a UFO land on the front lawn. It would be even worse if it landed, then disappeared.”

“There is no need to bring the pod to your house. We will travel there the same way we traveled here. And no, I will not explain it to you. My brain is aching enough as it is.”

“Ah.” Cecily sat straighter. “See, I’m a little worried about just winking into the living room. I mean, how accurate is the transport mechanism? I don’t want to materialize half-way out of the wall, you know. I can give you the address, but I don’t have a GPS on me, so I don’t know the coordinates. Come to think of it, even if I knew the coordinates, would they make sense with your system? How do you work - ”

“Will you please stop asking questions!” Bozidar shrieked. “I am not a blobling. I have status in my clan. But after three of your days, look at me! I am a rack!”

“I think you mean wreck,” she whispered. “It’s okay. Let me write the address down, and you can figure out the rest. I trust you.” She patted her pockets. “Whoops. No paper.”

“Return my black box and tell me where you live.”

She clutched the box in her pocket. “The last time you held this, you used it to kidnap me.”

“It is a tool, not a weapon.” He sighed. “We will have to trust each other.”

She inched the box from her pocket and offered it to him. He tapped in a code as she gave him her address, and waited. A faint hum began and a yellow light blinked.

“Which room would you suggest we transport to?” he asked.

She scratched her neck below her ear. “Probably the living room. There’s a lot of furniture, but when people are in there they’re usually sitting. The family room is more open but if the girls are there they’ll be running around, and the kitchen is completely out of the question.”

“Fine.” He tapped the box again.

“If you have to have contact when we transport,” she said, “don’t hold me around the neck. Mom won’t wait for an explanation if she sees you with your hands on my throat.”

“Standing next to each other is sufficient.” He slid the box in his pocket, rose and motioned to Cecily to join him. “Prepare yourself. We will arrive momentarily.”

***

Louise helped Kyle remove the crazy quilt, in its frame, from the car and ran up the walkway to Susan’s front door. Susan greeted them, then brought them to the living room, where Kyle leaned the frame against a wall before joining his mother on the couch. Scott occupied the green wing-backed chair, notebook on his knee. Susan perched on the arm of an overstuffed chair, the same pale gold as the throw pillows on the couch. Edna’s voice rumbled from the kitchen as she doled out treats to Olivia and Eleanor.

Gary brought a tray of cups and cookies. “Edna will bring the tea as soon as she gets the girls settled,” he said. He placed the tray on the coffee table and maneuvered Susan from the arm of the chair to the seat, taking position behind it like a guard behind a throne.

“We can start without her,” Scott said. “Louise, I understand you reacted heroically at the store.”

Louise glanced away before answering. “I don’t know how heroic I was. I certainly didn’t stop him. And to be honest, I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. Maybe it was the green smoke coming out of his ears.”

“His mouth,” Susan said. “It was definitely his mouth.”

“Oh, you’re right.” Louise adjusted the sleeves of her jacket. “Anyway, it was as if a switch flipped, and I knew he was a threat. The chenille pillow was right there. I grabbed it, tried to . . . ”

“You did what you trained to do,” Scott said as Louise’s voice trailed to emptiness. “Don’t blame yourself for not stopping him, or feel guilty for attacking him. Your instincts were correct, and you behaved admirably. Kyle, I understand you were at the store that morning as well. What did you see?”

“Not the kidnapping, sir,” Kyle said. He cleared his throat. “I came to help with the computer.” He glanced at Susan. “At first I thought it had crashed because it’s old. The more I think about it, though, the more certain I am it has a virus. And if I had to guess, even though I don’t have proof, I would say that alien planted it.”

“Why do you say that, sweetie?” Louise asked.

“Cecily showed me the similarities between the quilt and the images on the computer screen,” he said. “We didn’t think anything of it. Well, we did, but it was more making up funny stories.” His gaze skipped from face to face. “Cecily started it, like she was brainstorming ideas for her next film. We never dreamed there was anything to it. Until she was kidnapped. Then it all fell into place.” He turned to Louise. “You gave me the clue, Mom, when you told me that your tablet crashed while you were working at Susan’s store.”

“How did that tell you anything?” Louise asked. “Her computer had already crashed. I didn’t upload a virus from it.”

“You also said that Bozidar was there. You told us at dinner that you had met the man who wanted to promote Cecily’s film. He must have had an electronic device with him that he used to infect the shop computer and your tablet.”

Scott nodded. “Logical.” He paused, pencil in the air. “Edna told me you are considering a medical career. You’ll make a good diagnostician.” Scott wrote a little more and flipped the page. “So, you and Cecily noticed a similarity between the images on the screen and the design of the quilt.”

“Specifically the embroidery,” Kyle said.

“Yes,” Scott said, scribbling. “We’ll get back to that later. What happened then? You and Cecily were talking. Why did she leave?”

Kyle frowned and pressed his fingers together. “First Susan came into the office. She wanted to see what progress I had made.” He looked at Susan. “Cecily didn’t want you to see us laughing. Not that we were laughing at you.”

Susan raised her eyebrow. “Of course you were. She’s always laughing at my lack of technical skills. I can imagine the story she made up for you.”

Kyle dropped his head and hunched his shoulders. “It wasn’t that bad. Anyway, the bell over the door jingled, and you looked frazzled, as if you didn’t know which way to turn. Cecily took you to the front room, and I went back to figuring out what was wrong with the computer. Then I heard the bell jingle again.”

“Who else was in the store?” Scott asked.

“No one,” Louise said. “The first bell was me. I thought I saw something outside the window. I opened the door to see, but it turned out to be nothing. Susan and Cecily came into the room. Cecily was talking about the designs. That’s when Bozidar entered.”

Scott flipped another page. “So, Kyle, you heard the second bell. Why did you leave the office? Did you hear something?”

“No.” Kyle paused. His forehead wrinkled. “Not at first, anyway. I smelled something, though - smoke. That bitter, acrid smoke from last year.” He glanced at his mother. “You remember that smoke during the battle. I couldn’t imagine what else would make that smell, so I went out to check. When I stepped out of the hall there was a flash of light. Mom and Susan were standing near the cutting table, looking at an empty space between them. Cecily was gone.”

Kyle paused while Scott wrote. A shimmering blue light filled the room, and two shapes materialized by the window.

“Hi, Mom, I’m home,” Cecily said.