26 Missing Cowbells

Emily discovers the mystery of the missing cowbells

Straw tickled her nose. Emily wanted to sneeze so badly but she held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut until the urge passed. Any slight sound and they would see her and she would never figure out why old Bessie’s cowbells kept going missing.

“Twenty-six of ‘em,” Grampa had sighed over breakfast that morning, shaking his head in bewilderment that yet another bell was gone. “Ever’ time I put one round her neck, it’s plumb gone the next morn. It’s a mystery, for sure.”

“Mystery?” Emily’s ears had perked at that word and she determined right then and there, over gramma’s famous flapjacks, that she would figure out where grandpa’s cowbells had gone.

Now she crouched behind a dusty bale of straw and pulled her shawl closer to her body for warmth. The moon had climbed into the sky and grampa and gramma had long since gone to bed. Bessie was in her stall, calmly chewing her cud. Emily’s legs began to ache and she gently eased herself to the barn floor, longing for her comfortable bed and the quilt gramma had hand-sewn for her.

Waiting was so boring. Nothing exciting was happening. She yawned and got distracted by a spider spinning a web. Her eyes started to drift shut. She forced them back open but everything was blurred by sleepiness. The spider, the straw bale, Bessie, the alien…

Alien?

Emily’s eyes flew open.

A tall, blue alien was standing in front of Bessie’s stall. He offered the cow a small apple and patted her brown head before slipping off the bell wrapped around her neck.

“I knew it!” Emily shouted, bouncing to her feet and launching herself out from behind her hiding spot.

The alien startled and dropped the cowbell. He turned to Emily and his nose wrinkled into a frown.

“Whyfore must you surprise me so, girl of Earth?”

Emily tilted her chin up and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re stealing grampa’s cowbells!”

The alien glanced at Bessie. “This grampa has freely bestowed her marvelous bells into my appendages in exchange for an orb of fruit.”

“That’s not grampa,” Emily giggled, dropping her arms. “That’s Bessie.”

“Regardless of her designation, a trade has been achieved.” The alien stooped to pick up the fallen cowbell and turned to go.

“Wait!” Emily cried out.

The alien paused and turned. “Whyfore do you shout thusly?”

Emily pointed at the cowbell. “What are you doing with all the cowbells?”
The alien tapped a long finger against his chin. “Our much glorious leader is desirous of them though I must admit with much consternation that my gray matter does not comprehend whyfore. I was merely informed they were a necessary necessity.”

“Your leader? He...he’s not going to use grampa’s bells to take over the world somehow, is he?” Emily asked, fighting the sudden fear that rose in her chest. The alien rolled his eyes.

“I scoff at this idea. Howfore did your gray matter even design such a thought? We don’t want your insignificant planet, even if it is filled with the most glorious of bovine secretions. All our species of Walkens desire is...more cowbell.” He grinned, Emily blinked, and the alien disappeared.