34

“I saved your quilt,” Jenna said when Lexie walked in the back door, dazed and lost in thought.

“What?”

“Your mom’s quilt. I saved it.”

Lexie had nearly forgotten about it, and she felt a stab of regret as she realized she was making a habit of that.

“Thanks,” Lexie said, not stopping on her walk until she was nearly at the stairs, wanting to get in the shower before any of the girls smelled her.

“Don’t you want to see it?” Jenna asked.

“Um … ” Lexie waffled. “Can it wait?”

Though Jenna didn’t answer, Lexie could feel her deflate. It had to be at least 2 a.m., and Jenna was no night owl unless the moon was in control. Jenna had stayed up, waiting for Lexie’s return.

“I’m sorry,” Lexie said, stopping on her trajectory upstairs and returning to the living room where Jenna sat. The quilt was draped on a clothing rack in front of the fire, the light of the flames lighting it as though it were a shadow theater screen. “That was really sweet of you. Thank you,” she said.

Jenna smiled that same sweet smile. “Happy to help,” she shrugged.

The orange glow illuminated the delicate stitching, giving Lexie a new appreciation of the beauty of her mother’s handiwork. She forgot about Sage and Bree and Duane and all the other brutal disappointments and terrors that lurked beyond the walls of the Den. She breathed in a moment of simple beauty, her mother communicating to her across spans of death and age.

Jenna rested her chin on Lexie’s shoulder and wrapped her other arm around her waist. “Your mother was a great craftsperson,” she said. “This is some fine stitching.”

“I was just thinking the same thing, but I don’t really know what to look for. I’m glad you think so, Miss Expert.”

Jenna smiled and gave Lexie’s waist a little squeeze. She placed her finger on one of the cotton threads starting at the far left side of the quilt and running right. “Well, this was all obviously hand-stitched, and the stitches are so small and the curves so deliberate and detailed, it’s pretty remarkable. See this part, here?” Jenna ran her index finger over a line halfway down the fabric. A horizontal line jumped into a peak and then down below the median level where it formed a U-shape, then up again into a loop that resembled a “p.” The line followed this soaring and diving pattern across the entire quilt.

“It’s really strange. Most quilts tie onto the batting just with some random loops or jagged shapes, depending on your style. This one mixes curves and loops with harsh angles and even some random little dots and hyphen-thingys, but all of it in these perfectly-spaced lines. It’s really special.”

Lexie followed Jenna’s finger, her vision aided by the fire’s backlighting. The stitches were silhouetted against the glowing orange of the rest of the quilt. She scanned the whole thing from top to bottom, appreciating Jenna’s assessment. It felt strange, viewing this object she’d had since birth in a new light. She stepped forward to run her finger over the thread too, noticing only on the second line she traced that she was holding her breath as a puzzle revealed itself.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Lexie muttered.

Lexie traced the thread that had held bits of filth only days before and now traced clean white lines across the quilt.

“What?” Jenna asked.

“What?” Lexie replied, ripped from the problem she was unconsciously trying to solve.

“You’re spacing out,” Jenna said with concern. “You’ve been running your finger over that same spot for a solid minute.”

Lexie looked back to the quilt flickering in strange shadows. Her brain was caught like a rowboat on the rocks. The clues battered at her, while the angry waves of flame scattered her focus.

“These are … hold on,” Lexie said. She ran up the stairs to her backpack and returned holding the small leather-bound book from the library.

“What?” Jenna stepped to the quilt and squinted as Lexie flipped through the pages, finding a page of script. “See?” Lexie said, pointing to scribbles in the text that resembled Arabic or Tagalog script, sharp angles and round bodies, soaring peaks and deep valleys. She looked back up at her quilt, which sported similar scribbles, all set with a single spool of thread.

Lexie looked through the pages to find the pronunciation guide, matching them from left to right. Soo-too-kah, she said in her head.

Lexie made a hard sound with her tongue. Tka, she corrected. Like a choke combined with a sharp percussive.

Sutka, sutka, she read.

“What’s that mean?” Jenna asked, hands on hips, squinting at the quilt.

“Turn, turn,” she whispered.

“What?” Jenna said with a short gasp.

Lexie ran her finger over the backwards “L” shape that fell into a lowercase “u” and into a peak with a dot over top it.

Sutka, sutka, fislume. Tan saong ritfoan.

“Turn, turn, wheel. All things change.”

Jenna’s jaw dropped. “Does it say that in the book?” She craned her neck to see the pages, but only found the script and pronunciation. “Where’s the translation?”

Lexie continued, finding the sounds, closing her eyes and hearing the words reform themselves into the only language she thought she knew.

A gisaong knut, a gisaong xitkira.

“To something new, to something strange.”

“Does that say that?” Jenna said, in a volume too loud for the semi-sleeping house.

Lexie nodded.

“Go on!” Jenna squealed.

Like jagged filigrees, the script unfolded.

“Nothing that be still or … something. I don’t know that last word.” Lexie said. “The moon waxes, the moon wanes.”

“Oh my god. Sisters!” Jenna shouted.

The whole house came alive at once, and Renee rushed down the stairs. “Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Jenna squealed. “Lexie’s mom. She’s speaking to us.”

One by one, the girls came down the stairs in various states of consciousness and dress.

Lexie stood in front of the quilt, reading the stitching like braille and speaking her stilted translations aloud.

“The mist, the cloud, will become rain. The rain to mist and again cloud.”

She dropped to her knees and stretched the quilt tight to see the continued script. “Tomorrow becomes today.” A long straight line connected that passage to the next. “Art is the child of Nature.”

Some of the words weren’t coming as easily as others. Lexie struggled to translate as much as she could. “Her beloved child, in … dunno dunno dunno. The something of the mother’s face. Her something and her mood. All her something beauty. Somethinged and soft and something. Into dunno and with a human sense dunno. She is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature. Never man.” She skipped ahead a line. “In Nature’s footprints, light and quick, And follows fearless where she leads.”

Separate from the rest, another line, smaller. To my Daughter, whom I wish to live. Lexie read the last line to herself.

The sound of the waning fire filled the silence as Lexie completed the translation.

“That sounds more like the Tao Te Ching than a battle plan,” Sharmalee said at last.

Mitch nodded as he rubbed a heavy palm against his forehead. “Yeah, what does that even mean?”

“Are you sure you translated right?” Hazel asked.

“Hell if I know,” Lexie muttered. “It’s like some bastardized indigenous language plus eight other things I’ve never heard of. Well, not technically, but you know, cognitively. Or, like experientially, or, whatever. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. But, you know.”

“I dunno,” Mitch said. “It sounds too Hallmark-y to be meaningful.”

Hazel rolled her eyes and walked to the quilt. “Oh my god, you guys. It’s like you’ve never read a fantasy novel or a spiritual text.

“Change and the moon, right?” Hazel said, pointing to a line—the wrong line, since she couldn’t read it. “She’s talking about us.”

Mitch peered at the quilt and rubbed his chin. “Renee, Sharm, you both speak two languages.”

Renee held up four fingers above her crossed arms and shrugged.

Sharmalee nodded. “Seven-ish.”

Corwin muttered, “God, I hate being American sometimes.”

“Okay, you both speak multiple languages,” Mitch said. “You know how to interpret a direct translation.”

“Not really,” Renee said. “It’s all just context. Like Shakespeare more than Austrian or Bajan.”

“To something new, something strange,” Lexie repeated. “What’s strange?”

Jenna frowned. “Our wolves.”

“But different from the Morloc or other Rares?” Sharmalee asked.

“I suppose our ability to keep our heads even when we change,” Jenna said.

“Which is a theory,” Renee said.

“With good evidence,” Mitch offered.

“What else?” Jenna asked.

“Maybe it means ‘nature’ in the literal sense,” Hazel said. “Like our periods or something.”

“We’ll fight them with menstrual blood!” Corwin shouted with a laugh while Sharmalee grimaced.

“Knowing men, it’d probably work,” Renee said.

The girls all studied the quilt, as though the solution to the riddle would emerge spontaneously from the worn cotton and corduroy.

Renee asked Lexie to repeat it aloud again, word for word, the crudest translation she could divine, while Renee wrote it down in small neat print on a lined notebook page.

When Lexie was finished, Renee studied the text and said, “Hm,” once, percussive.

“Longfellow,” Corwin said from the kitchen. While the girls had struggled over the translation, Corwin had grabbed her laptop and done some investigative Googling.

“What?” Renee said.

“‘Keramos,’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Never man/As artist or as artisan/Pursuing his own fantasies/Can touch the human heart, or please/Or satisfy our nobler needs/As he who sets his willing feet In Nature’s footprints/light and fleet/And follows fearless where she leads. ‘Keramos and Other Poems’. 1878.”

The girls cocked their heads and looked back to the quilt. “I guess that solves that mystery.” Renee said. “A twice-translated, cryptic message that ends up being a poem by a dead white guy.”

“It’s probably a clue,” Hazel said. “A message from beyond the grave.”

“Sure,” Renee said. “And our highly contextual, highly stressed reading will certainly yield accurate results.” She buried her hand in her hair and scratched her scalp, staring at the glowing wall of faint text. “Well, good night again, everyone.”

The girls scattered back to bed, leaving Lexie and Jenna alone again next to the quilt.

“A poem,” Jenna said. “That’s sweet.”

Lexie shrugged. “I guess. But why translate an American poem into some random language? And why sew it into a quilt?”

“I do things like that. It’s like spell casting. Weaving the words into intentions. Maybe she intended for you to find it when the time was right, and treat the words with some extra attention.”

Lexie thrummed her lips. “Bummer,” she said.

Jenna squeezed her shoulders. “Not everything has to be a symbol, I guess. Maybe you can just appreciate your mother’s artistic eye and generous spirit.” She took steps toward the stairs. “Try to get some rest. We’ve got a lot coming our way.”

Lexie sighed. Right.

Jenna left her alone in the living room. Lexie stared at the flickering quilt for a long time, thinking back on the only two times she remembered her mother tucking her into bed. She replayed them in her mind, as though rehearsing a scene to memorize the lines and blocking. Lexie knew the memories were likely false or at least exaggerated, but that didn’t really bother her. Only when the fire faded into embers did Lexie draw her attention away, remembering the book that now lay face-up on the low table beside her. She reached for it, the tiny yellow slip of paper floating to the ground. Lexie leaned over to grab it, and the translation came easy now: Crow Moon. They Attack.