Magenta

Saena Wilkee had, historically, had some trouble finding things with her name monogrammed on them. If by “some trouble,” she meant that she had never, not once in the entirety of her thirty-five years on Earth, looked at an object and seen her name printed on it, unless she had written it herself. This had bothered her as a child. Okay, this had bothered her last week when she’d tried to buy something off Etsy and found out they were upcharging for “custom monograms.”

All this to say, when she came face-to-face with something that said SAENA on it, she grabbed for it immediately. Especially when that was followed by AVERILL WILKEE.

Especially when it was floating in the air and glowing blue. A person didn’t just walk past that without closer inspection.

It was stupid, really. Anyone who ever watched a TV show or movie knew that blue, floating objects meant a portal. She blamed a lack of coffee and the terrible day she’d had at work, and the fact that no one really expected to find a portal with their name on it just hanging out on the sidewalk in the middle of suburban New Jersey.

She felt weirdly unsurprised—though quite sore—when she crashed to the ground someplace that was decidedly not suburban New Jersey. It seemed, in fact, that it was not any neighborhood in any state on Earth. Saena was no scientist, but she was fairly sure there was no place on Earth where the sky was this particular uniform shade of magenta. Nor any place where there were three suns.

She wasn’t alone. That was the next thing Saena noticed, after the sun thing. There was someone else there, someone who looked just as human as Saena was pretty sure she was. Someone who looked a whole hell of a lot like Saena’s very dead human mother.

“Um, what the hell?” Apparently she was exactly as articulate on wherever this was as she was on Earth.

“Good, you’re finally here,” her maybe-mother said, not looking up from something that looked like a cell phone, if cell phone technology was about a hundred years ahead of what it was now. “Come.”

She started to walk, and Saena, having really no other option, followed, though not quietly. “Where exactly is here? And who exactly are you? Are you… are you my mom?”

Her maybe-mom looked surprised by that question, looking down at her body as if she’d forgotten what she looked like. “Oh. No. I took this form because I thought you might find it… soothing.” She said “soothing” the way Saena said “vegan barbecue,” like she didn’t fully understand what it meant.

“My dead mom’s body? Yeah, big swing and a miss there.”

Her not-mom frowned and looked at her body again. “Should I change into something else? Your sister perhaps, or maybe one of your friends?”

“No!” Saena interrupted. “No. Why do you know all of this about me? Who are you? Where am I? And what the hell am I doing here?”

“It was written you would come,” Not-Mom said absently, as she carefully considered a fork in the road before picking a direction.

“It was… what?” Why were all the answers making this more confusing? Why wasn’t she monologuing or something, like they always did in movies?

Maybe Saena was watching too many movies.

“Written you would come,” Not-Mom said again, still with no further explanation.

Saena snapped.

“Okay, I’m going to need you to be a lot more helpful before I move another inch.” She crossed her arms over her chest and dug her heels in for emphasis.

Not-Mom considered that. Then she said, “What’s an inch?”

Saena let out a frustrated scream.

This was apparently the universal language for, “Tell me what the hell is going on right now,” because not-Mom finally, finally started to explain.

“It was written, in the early days of lore, of an Earthling who would come at this time to help us release Olantia, the trapped goddess. We mapped the stars for millennia waiting for the correct alignment, which happened at the exact moment of your birth. And then we waited for you to come of age, so we could bring you here.”

Saena frowned. “Come of age? I’m thirty-five.”

Not-Mom blinked at her. “Yes.”

“Right. Okay. And… who exactly are you?”

“I am Anthea Aximilius Raurent Ylelt, of the Pirural Sect.”

Saena let out a helpless laugh. “I’m sorry I asked.” Dimly, she was aware that she should probably be freaking out by now. She was definitely on a different planet, with what she could only presume at this point was a shape-shifting alien who had been watching her since she was a baby and had summoned her here to free a goddess.

This was… ridiculous.

She had more questions, like, “How do you speak English?” and, “How were you spying on me for thirty-five years?” and, “Where exactly am I?” but the one that came out of her mouth was, “What do I need to do to free this… goddess?”

“There is an incantation. You must read it aloud.”

“That’s it?” Saena frowned. “There are no, like, dragons to battle or gauntlets to pass or anything?”

“What’s a dragon?”

“Never mind.” Saena shook her head, trying to clear it. “I just mean… there are no challenges or anything? Just some words I have to say?”

“The challenge was finding the correct entity to say them,” Anthea said.

“Fair enough.” They walked in silence for a few minutes, while Saena tried to gather her thoughts. “And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens after I say this incantation and your goddess is released? Do you just… beam me back home?”

Anthea looked bemused. “Oh, no. The goddess will consume your soul and inhabit your body as her vessel.”

Saena stopped dead. “I’m sorry, she’ll what?”

Anthea frowned as if confused about why she’d stopped. “Inhabit your body,” she said more slowly, like maybe the problem was that Saena couldn’t understand her. “As her vessel.” When Saena continued to stare at her, she added, “Because she needs a vessel.”

“No, yeah, I get that, but, uh, she can’t have mine.”

Anthea frowned harder. “Why not?”

“What do you mean why not? Because I need it!”

“It’s a great honor to be chosen as the goddess’ vessel,” Anthea insisted, like that would somehow convince Saena.

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Saena snapped. “I’m still using this vessel right now. You can have it in forty years or so.”

“But the stars will no longer align then!” Now Anthea sounded panicked. “It needs to be now!”

“Tough shit.”

Anthea assessed her silently for a moment, and Saena tried her best to make her face say, “There is no way in hell I’m going to do this.”

“I’m sorry,” Anthea said, and Saena’s shoulders relaxed for a fraction of a second. “This is not a request.” And she held up the cell phone thing and pushed a button, and it all faded to black.

***

Saena woke up with a dry mouth and a pounding headache. She tried to force herself to stand up, but all that did was make her stomach churn dangerously, and she whimpered and tucked her knees to her chest, breathing through her mouth.

It took several long moments before she could open her eyes. She was in a room, presumably, though she recognized very few of the objects in it. For the first time, she wondered what the original shape of the aliens was, because she didn’t see anything that looked like chairs.

She did, however, see another human.

Except, no. When Saena forced her eyes to focus, she realized they weren’t a human. They looked mostly human, but there were distinct differences in the eyes and nose, and they had—

Oh. They had two additional arms.

So… not a human then.

“Hello,” the alien said. Their voice was actually pretty pleasant, melodic and flute-like.

And they were speaking English too. Saena had a lot of linguistic questions that she thought could probably wait until her life wasn’t in danger.

“Hi,” she said. “Um… who are you?”

“Pyla,” they said, and it was a relief to hear such a simple name.

“Saena,” she answered. “I mean, uh, I’m Saena.”

“Nice to meet you.”

They were awkwardly silent for a moment before Saena said, “So… do you come here often?” At Pyla’s blank look, she sighed. “Never mind. Are you… are you here to try to make me give my body to some goddess? Because I’m warning you, I can take you.” Saena wasn’t one hundred percent sure that was true right at the moment, but hopefully she wouldn’t have to find out.

“Oh no,” Pyla said hastily. “You misunderstand. I’m a prisoner too.”

That pulled Saena up short. “You are? What do they want you for?”

“My blood is apparently also required to free their goddess.” Pyla’s lips twisted into a wry expression that seem to transcend species.

Saena frowned. “So they think after they bleed you dry, I’m going to say their incantation and let some goddess who wasn’t even powerful enough to keep herself from getting trapped take my body?”

“That… sounds accurate.”

“Yeah, hell no. I won’t be saying any incantation. Not today, not any day.”

Pyla gave her what could only be considered a pitying look. “They don’t need your cooperation. Their brustaba can force you to perform whatever act they require in the name of their goddess.”

Saena’s blood ran cold. “Their… what?”

“Brustaba. The, um, the machine they all carry. The one that opened the portal to bring you here.”

“Oh, the cell phone thing.”

Pyla looked confused by that, but nodded. “It controls everything on this planet. The technology, the habitats, and the people.”

Saena’s head spun with the implications. “So they can just walk around all day mind controlling each other? That’s horrible!”

“No,” Pyla said in a low, serious voice. “It only works on foreigners.”

Somehow, that was worse.

Saena forced herself to focus on literally anything else. “You said it controls the portal.”

“That’s right.”

“So we just need to get a hold of one, and we can send ourselves home. Can you work one?”

Pyla frowned. “Probably. My planet has much more sophisticated technology than this. But I don’t know how you intend to get one.”

“Someone has to come in here eventually to get us, right?” Saena said. “We’ll just…” She pantomimed punching one hand with her other fist.

Pyla stared at her. “That’s your plan?”

“Do you have anything better?”

“I… suppose not.”

“Okay, then. I’m going to pretend to be unconscious still. Take them by surprise.”

“Naturally.” Saena ignored the sarcasm in Pyla’s voice and relaxed back on the floor, thankful to close her eyes against the light that was still making her nauseous.

They waited in silence for a long time. Saena tried to use the time to come up with a more detailed plan, even if she chose not to acknowledge that Pyla might have a point. Unfortunately, the throbbing at her temples and her complete lack of knowledge about where she was made it difficult to come up with anything more specific than, “Punch her in the nose and hope she doesn’t have super-strength.”

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Pyla whispered, “They need the brustaba to shape-shift. If you can get it away, she’ll be stuck in whatever form she takes before she comes in here.”

“That’s good to know,” Saena murmured back.

“If she’s still human, her weak point is at the base of her skull,” Pyla continued, as if Saena hadn’t spoken. “If she’s in her natural form, it’s just above the top-left appendage.”

Hopefully that would make more sense if Saena saw her “natural form.”

It was another immeasurable amount of silence before Saena heard footsteps outside the door. She reflexively tensed, then forced herself to relax. Play dead, she scolded herself.

A door opened, and someone stepped inside. “You’re awake,” Anthea said, and Saena almost jerked in surprise.

Fortunately, she kept her reaction contained, because Pyla answered, “Yes, I am.”

“Good. That will make it easier.” There was a pause, then a note of stress in her voice when she said, “The other one isn’t.”

“No,” Pyla agreed, their melodic voice making them sound agreeable.

Saena waited with measured breaths while Anthea drew nearer and nearer. “Perhaps I should wake her,” she mused, and she prodded Saena gently with her foot.

That was her cue.

With a speed she didn’t know she possessed, Saena grabbed Anthea’s foot and yanked, knocking her off-balance and sending her sprawling. The cell phone thing—brustaba—flew out of her hands, skittering across the floor.

Anthea recovered far too quickly, pushing off the ground and trying to detangle herself from Saena.

Saena’s head swam, both from the headache and from jumping up too fast, and her hands felt clumsy as she tried to hold onto Anthea, to punch at her or knock her back down or something. Literally anything useful.

What she did instead was throw up.

The upside was that her retching thoroughly distracted and horrified Anthea. The downside was that she felt so weak and shaky she collapsed back onto the ground.

Anthea recovered before she did, and she gave Saena a surprisingly strong kick to the ribs. She followed it up with another and another, and Saena’s traitorous body curled in on itself. She could do nothing but protect her head and soft underside from the blows.

And then, suddenly, Anthea collapsed.

Saena blinked a few times to clear her vision. Standing above her, silhouetted by the lights of the room, was Pyla. In one hand, they held something that Saena would have called a paperweight if they’d been on Earth. In the other, they held the brustaba.

“Come on,” they said, reaching down to help Saena to her feet. “Quickly. Others will have heard.”

They tapped at the brustaba with sure fingers. Outside, there were yells and pounding footsteps. They only had minutes before someone came in to investigate.

With a yell of triumph, Pyla punched a last button, and a blue, glowing portal materialized next to them. “Go,” they said. “It’s set to return you to the Earth, to the coordinates it picked you up from. Hurry.”

“What about you?” Saena demanded, casting a nervous glance at the door.

“I’ll reprogram it as soon as you are through,” Pyla said. “I know my coordinates. Go.”

Saena hesitated, though she wasn’t sure why. “Go now, Saena.”

“Right. Okay. I just…” She shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “Thank you.”

The door banged. “Go!” Pyla yelled.

Saena didn’t waste another moment, flinging herself through the portal with reckless disregard.

She slammed into the ground on the other side and, for a minute, she was afraid to open her eyes. Afraid she would see magenta skies or three suns or something completely different.

“Excuse me, ma’am, are you okay?”

Saena’s eyes snapped open to see a young teen boy with a concerned look on his face. She took in the blue sky, the one sun, the green grass, and the very human kid who thought she might be crazy, and she exhaled a shaky laugh. Once it started, she couldn’t stop it, until she was laughing shrilly and lying in the grass.

The boy looked nervous. “Do you, um, do you need a doctor or something?”

Saena assessed her body as she sobered. “No. No, I’m okay. Thanks.” When he still looked skeptical, she insisted, “You got your good Samaritan merit badge. I’m fine.”

“Okay…” He didn’t sound like he believed her, but he went on his way.

Saena clambered to her feet and took stock. She really had been beamed right back to where she’d started. Hell, her bag was sitting right there where she’d dropped it. She pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. Five minutes. It had been five minutes.

If it weren’t for the bruises she could feel forming on her body, she’d have been sure it was a hallucination.

She dragged herself back home, fed her cat, ate leftovers from the day before, all like nothing had happened. She called her father. She watched TV and read a book before bed. Already, the memory was fading. Already, she couldn’t remember the name of the alien who had kidnapped her, nor the one who had rescued her. Already, she’d forgotten the name of the device, and the way the room looked.

That night she slept more heavily than she had in a long time. And when she dreamed, she dreamed of magenta.