The Blanket Fort of Steel by Wolf Epley

“It’s not that bad.” Dad gestures to the person talking on the laptop, the map behind lit up in a spectrum of shifting colors. “Look, the worst of it is already east of here.”

Scarlet doesn’t look up. One corner of Nana’s quilt is pinned under a stack of books on the extra desk chair. She tucks the opposite corner behind a love seat cushion. A little tug confirms just the right amount of tension. Scarlet’s sure it’ll hold.

“Aren’t you a bit old for this?” Dad raises an eyebrow, but Scarlet ignores him. The constant rat-tat-tat of high-speed water on the window is a ticking clock.

“Mom would understand. So would Mason.” The wind whistles along the gutter outside the window. She snaps the edge of the big gray blanket and it unfurls in a wave across the room, driving the remnants of Dad’s thinning hair back from his forehead. 

Dad knows better than to snap back. The guilt shadows his face. He sighs, turns down the volume on the local news weather stream. “Ok, what would Mom and Mason do?”

“They would be helping me. We need another chair,” Scarlet says, her voice rising slightly. She crams the gray blanket into the same cushion gap as the quilt. Dad sighs again, then rises and spins his leather rolling chair around so Scarlet can braid the edge of the blanket through the chair’s open arm. 

“So, this is going to protect us?”

“That’s the idea.”

A rumble of thunder shakes the walls and Scarlet finally looks up. “I need a chopstick. A metal chopstick.” A strike of fear follows the thunder, flashing in her eyes.

“A what?”

“A metal chopstick. Do you still have the set I gave you for your birthday last year?”

Dad’s eyes roam the ceiling. “Uh, yeah?”

“Can you get one please? And dip it in olive oil.”

He bubbles his lips, throws his hands up, and heads to the kitchen. By the time the gray blanket is secured to the chair, Dad marches triumphantly back into the office, a glistening metal stick held aloft like Excalibur. “Knew right where it was. You’re lucky I had that grocery store sushi the other day. Luckier than my bowels.”

“Dad, gross. Gimme that, and get in here.” 

He snuffs a laugh, shakes his head. “How?”

“Crawl through there, but don’t knock it down!” 

“Ok, ok.” On his knees he holds his palms up. The next roll of thunder vibrates the floor planks. Army-crawling through the little opening under the red fleece throw blanket, he appears behind Scarlet’s right elbow. She twists the last corner of the quilt together with the red throw, drapes them over the back of the office chair. There’s no time to tie them down. The chopstick slicks her left palm in oil. Scarlet flattens to her back so she can grip it with both hands.

“You know you don’t have to be afraid, right? It’s only a couple of tests, just to rule some things out,” Dad says.

“I know.”

“Mom will be back Thursday. And we have the best doctors. Remember that shoulder surgery I had? Good as new.” Dad tries to roll his arm over his head, but he nudges the quilt.

“Stay still!” Scarlet closes her eyes, focusing on the chopstick, the blankets, the electrical energy pulsing through the room. “I’m fine, Dad. I’m not afraid of that, just the storm. I promise.”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him nodding. He’s not sure, but he nods anyway. Then he’s quiet. The wind is strong enough to rattle the windowpane, and Scarlet is wishing they had space in the hall bathroom to make a blanket fort, where there aren’t any windows. The breathless, whispered words coming out of her mouth would be difficult to pick out over the heaving of the storm, but Dad is inches away. He hears them all.

The next burst of thunder has a strange cracking quality. It’s the wall, tearing away. 

Dad screams in a pitch Scarlet has never heard before, wraps his arms around her so tight she can barely keep chanting. The blankets whip like sails, but stay anchored. Scarlet feels mist on her cheek. The sound of water striking the floor echoes all around. 

Dad’s arms never relax. For five solid minutes, until both of them and all the blankets are soaked through, Dad holds, Scarlet chants.

Then, the storm dissipates. Pushed to the east. A lightness settles in the air, Scarlet stops chanting. “Holy shit,” Dad says, and throws the sodden gray blanket back. The roof is gone, a ten-foot section of wall torn away with it. “Holy shit. Are you hurt?” He cups her face in his hands, examines her head.

“I’m ok Dad. We’re ok.” She’s smiling. Soaked and smiling, the chopstick still clutched in her left hand. Detritus and shingles lay all around them, a big roof beam collapsed at an angle, just touching Nana’s quilt.

“Whoa.” Dad is surprisingly calm for a guy who had just been screaming his voice hoarse. “We are so lucky. That could’ve killed us!”

“It’s not luck, Dad.” Scarlet twirls her wand like a pro, slides it into the pocket of her pajama pants as she stands. “I tried to tell you.”

“Your blanket fort saved us?” He asks. 

Scarlet smiles, half-nods, half-curtseys at the question. “And some protection magic,” she says.

“Hmm.” Dad looks around at the shattered wall, the missing roof, his ruined office, the big gray clouds speeding by above. “You couldn’t just protect the house?”

Wolf Epley

Image: Pixabay.com – Wild stormy sky with black, blue, grey and gold clouds.