Butterfly Bride

1,899 words - teen fantasy

She almost stepped on it. It was so small and still that she had to catch her foot midair when she realized it was alive. Or, at least, it had been alive. She wouldn't have even seen it if she hadn't been looking at her feet. Crouching down, she examined the little pale wings. She hoped Prince Charleston IV didn't find it and pin it to his morbid bug board.
When it reached out its feelers, she took in her breath. The butterfly was alive.
The palace gardens had turned red, orange, and yellow with autumn, so the bit of white was refreshing. But she didn't know why it was here. The butterflies had migrated by now.
This one sat there right in the middle of the path, not moving. Not wanting to leave it there to be stepped on, she held out her hand, wondering how to get the butterfly onto it without hurting it. But the butterfly crawled forward and wobbled right onto her hand.
"Isabella?"
Her head shot up. Prince Charleston IV emerged around a stone fountain. Isabella's other hand covered the butterfly protectively as she stood.
"There you are," he said. "I've been looking all over the palace. We're supposed to be having tea, you know."
"I know."
"What have you got there?" His eyes were hungry, like he already knew how the butterfly's wings would look on his wall.
"Nothing." She took a step back. "I'll be to tea in a moment. I just have to grab something from my rooms." She moved around him, but he blocked her path.
"Just let me have a look, Isabella."
"It's Princess Isabella, and no, you may not have a look."
"It's a white cabbage butterfly, isn't it?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Move out of the way, Charles."
He scowled about Isabella not using his title. "I saw it before you covered it up. Afraid I might stick a pin through it?"
She considered the merits of stomping on his toes and weighed them against the consequences.
"It doesn't hurt them, you know," he said. "They're already dead. See, it's a skill I have to kill them so fast they don't feel a thing, and they don't hurt themselves trying to get away. I just take their midsection-"
"I don't want to know! Okay? I just don't." She would have covered her ears if she could. The butterfly in her hands was so still she was scared it was already dead. "Now get out of my way or I'll scream and have the guards sent out here."
He scoffed. "And then what?"
"I'll tell them you tried to kiss me. Now get out of my way!"
He clenched his jaw, but stepped aside. "Suppose I'll have to take a look at that butterfly when you're off having your gown fitted tonight," he called after her.
She kicked her bedroom door closed behind her before opening her hands. The butterfly crawled forward, it's legs brushing she palm. She exhaled in relief.
Walking to her desk, she rummaged with her free hand and found a little sewing box. She dumped everything into a drawer and set the empty box upright on the desk. The butterfly climbed obediently off her hand and into the wooden square.
It made her smile.
Butterflies were beautiful. She'd always thought so. Her mother had the palace gardens made especially for butterflies, so they would come and drink the honeysuckle nectar, and so she could sit on the benches and watch them. Isabella's father told her once that her mother believed the butterflies were angels. The more of them around, the better.
If that was true, Isabella thought, then it made what Prince Charleston IV did to them even worse. He practiced killing them with such nonchalance that it chilled her. He didn't love butterflies, he just loved their bodies. He didn't want them around, not really. He just liked to hang their corpses on the wall. If a man ever did that with humans, he'd be locked up quicker than blinking. But butterflies couldn't scream, so he said it didn't hurt them.
It made Isabella sick.
"Stay here," she whispered to the butterfly.
She locked the bedroom door from the outside and took the key with her to the kitchens. She was supposed to be having tea with that pleasant boy she was betrothed to, as her mother called him, but since that pleasant boy had threatened to murder, she figured that negated the obligation. And in just over twenty four hours, the wedding would be over, and then her whole life would be like one long tea with him.
She begged a cup of honey water from the cook and took it up to her room. She'd watched butterflies often enough to know how they ate.
Still, she didn't know if the butterfly would recognize the honey water as nectar, or if it was even well enough to eat. So when she dipped her finger in the water and held it out, she laughed with delight as the butterfly unrolled it's long tongue and touched it to her fingertip. She couldn't feel it, so it was hard to hold her hand steady as the bubbles of laughter broke open in her chest.
She wondered how long the butterfly would live. And how she would hide it from Prince Charleston IV after they were married.
Married.
She rubbed her forehead.
Her mother was already her mother when she was fourteen. She told Isabella that she was terrified before the wedding, but it wasn't so bad. And Prince Charleston IV was a respectable person. He would make a just king. For everyone but the butterflies. But, of course, Isabella had added that last bit. And only in her head.
She sat at the desk at watched her butterfly for a long time, even though all it did was sit there, and once it crawled into the corner. But it made her inexplicably happy, just having it there, alive and with her.
When her Mother rapped on her door, she sighed. "I have to go get my wedding gown fitted," she said. "But I promise I'll be back. Stay here, okay?"
She made sure to lock the door on the way out.
The dress fitting took so long she was yawning by the time it was over. The gown was lovely, all flowing silk and white embroidery. She wriggled out of it and shucked it onto the floor. Before she left, she snitched a scrap of silk and tucked it into her waist pouch.
When she got back to her room, she was relieved to find the door still locked, and the butterfly right where she'd left it.
"I got this for you," she said, taking out the piece of silk. "It matches your wings." She set the silk down in the wooden box and the butterfly tottered over and folded its wings. "Do you want more honey water?" she asked, holding out a dipped finger.
The butterfly tasted the water, but only for a moment. Then it curled its tongue back up and she dried off her finger on her skirt.
"Good night little butterfly," she whispered. "Thank you for staying with me." It seemed like there should be more to say. If the butterfly really was an angel, maybe it knew what was happening tomorrow. Maybe that was why it had come.
"I know you can't stay forever," she said. "But please, stay tonight. Okay? Just this one night." She blinked fast, feeling her throat get tight. "It's my last night here, and it's good to have a friend." She took a deep breath. "So, thank you, little butterfly angel." She wanted to kiss its wings, but she didn't want to hurt it, so she blew the kiss instead.
Then she fell asleep wondering what butterfly wings felt like.

She dreamed that the butterfly flew around her room and perched on her head like an elegant hair piece for the wedding. As the priest started the vows, the butterfly took flight and grew, right there in the wedding chapel, until it was as big as a blanket. It touched her forehead with its feelers and she climbed onto its back, soaring away into the sky.
When she woke up, the butterfly was dead.

She buried it in the sewing box, with the scrap of silk and thimble-full of honey water. Her betrothed was never going to hang it on his wall. She would make sure of that.
"Thank you, little butterfly," she whispered, and patted down the dirt in the garden, right next to the path where she'd found it the day before.

She let the waiting girls dress her in the gown, let them do her hair and brush her cheeks with rouge. She let her mother fuss over the veil and tiara. Let her hug her and pat her hair.
She was to be married. She would be Prince Charleston IV's wife. One day, she would be King Charleston IV's wife. She would have a kingdom. She would have a family. She would smile, one day, she was sure. She would hug her own daughter at her wedding day, and whisper small things that might not be true. She could see her whole life, spread out before her, as the chapel doors opened and she looked down the aisle.
Prince Charleston IV nodded solemnly at her from the front of the chapel. He wore the same expression he'd used at her grandfather's funeral two years earlier, and she felt like maybe she ought to cry. But she hadn't cried then, for the stoic old man who'd given her thick atlases for her birthdays, and she wouldn't cry now. Not for the man who liked to pin up bodies on his walls.
The music started. The audience rose.
She clutched the bouquet of sunflowers in one hand and her skirt in the other. The silk was slippery, and she wondered if this was how butterfly wings felt.
She thought of her butterfly, resting in the garden. And she thought of her dream.
She wanted to fly.
She lifted her skirt in her hand and took a step forward.
The audience murmured and she knew she should smile.
But the murmuring was getting louder and then a woman gasped. The music stopped.
Silk rustled. She felt her dress move and shift around her body.
Prince Charleston IV backed away from her, his hands raised as though to shield him.
She turned and saw herself in the mirrors paneling the walls of the church.
She didn't gasp. She just smiled.
White silk wings unfolded from her back, rising over her head, spreading to the sides of the aisle.
She fluttered them, and let go of her skirt to touch them.
So this is what they feel like, she thought.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Her eyes shinning, she let the bouquet fall. She stood there a moment, everyone watching her.
"I am not getting married today," she said.
Then she turned, and walked, step over step, just like she'd learned, out of the chapel. When the sky was overhead, she looked up, and unfolded her wings to their fullest. She fluttered them, lifting her feet off the ground, and took to the air.
She was flying. And she was never ever coming down again.

1,899 words

photo by Marcel Steger