The Crone, the Butterfly, and the child

Dreams can reflect the shadows we do not want to see…

A shaft of moonlight fell through the open window upon the bare wooden floor before my feet. The room was bare of any furniture. The window, shutterless. A square, open section of floor surrounded by a rickety railing showed the second floor below the loft where I stood. No rugs or ornaments decorated the room. Nothing rich, of that sort. Only a single illuminating beam of silver. 

Even my own arms— thin and untried; and my hands— small and untested: Both were out of place and seemed uncertain. Where was I?

A longtang in Shanghai. 

The sense of towering apartments, flowering vines and winding streets, and pigeons, surrounded me, with lines of string decorated with linens, cottons, and silks to dry draping across the narrow alleys even at night during the hot summers. 

But it was past midnight, now.

Why was I awake?

From the left corner of my eye, I suddenly saw the old man. Warm crinkles lined the corners of his eyes and his mouth. He stood in the room with me, unmoving. 

When he took a step closer and I looked towards him fully, the old man became a woman— and although the child that I was found reason for suspicion, innate curiosity held me in place.

The woman standing before me was a crone. She seemed remote, yet kind, as she beckoned to me with one withered hand. Her eyes contained a glint of mischief. 

As I stepped closer, she smiled widely at me, and I heard the sweet whistle as her lips pursed to call. 

Through the column of silver, an orange jewel fluttered through the window. Delicately, exquisitely, flapping its gossamer wings— carefully, and softly, it flew. Small dots of obsidian against a blaze of vibrancy. Of life. 

The small butterfly flew towards the crone and I and I laughed with delight as my hand reached out towards the creature, enchanted.

A whisper. A kiss. I barely felt the butterfly’s touch before it took off to fly around the dusty ceiling. In wonder, I watched. 

Then the crone whistled again, and a larger moth flew through the window, too.

The moon’s light caught the moth just as brilliantly; its feathered antennae and thicker wings, stalwart and strong, were luminous. I giggled even louder as the moth seemed drawn to both the woman and I. It flew around my hair in soft, slow beats of its wings, its casual brushes tickling my cheek as it circled me several times, to land on the crone’s fingers. 

The crone smiled even more invitingly. 

“That one,” she whispered to the moth, “is a monster.”

My eyes shot to the delicate butterfly, the monster the crone meant.

“Kill it.”

The moth shuddered, convulsing once. My stomach dropped to the floor. 

The moth drew down its wings— determinedly, righteously— and fluttered towards the small butterfly who was still flying ignorantly around the ceiling. 

NO! 

I screamed the word aloud, or in my head. I do not know. I know my feet started frantically towards the moth, ready to leap and defend the butterfly— such an innocent creature was about to be destroyed— when I stopped.  

I stopped moving.

The moth did not know it had been bewitched.

The moth did not know it had been manipulated. 

The moth did not know the crone had her own will, influencing its own. 

The moth did not know the butterfly was not its enemy.

And I could hear the crone’s laughter starting to ring loudly in my ears… 

My hands trembled, shaking with the urge to do something as the crone laughed. To know that to save the butterfly— an innocent— was to harm the moth, another unwitting party… My hands felt sticky, human. To know that I’d harm the moth’s wings, or kill it, if I caught it… What choice was that to make?

This was the desire of the crone. 

To exploit my own pain, my own suffering. To force me to choose.

Helpless, I sobbed and dropped to the floor. 

I sobbed as the moth drew closer to the butterfly— so whimsical in its fluttering, no one would suspect its manipulated instinct. I urged the butterfly to fly faster and equally urged the moth to wake up. 

Neither happened.

The butterfly— ignorant of its own danger— settled gently beside the single lightbulb in the room which illuminated the stairs leading down. The moth drew ever closer. Fluttering closer. 

It landed in the sconce where the lightbulb was fixated. 

A shrill squeaking instantly filled the room. 

I slammed my hands over my ears, my sobs and scalding tears blinding me but not deafening the cries of the butterfly as the moth attacked it again. 

And again. And again. Shredding it, tearing its wings to pieces… 

In the name of righteousness, manipulated, the moth felt no remorse. It felt pride. Victory. The sickness turned my stomach and I sobbed even harder.

My crumpled legs pressed into the floor, my hands covering my face as I cried over my inaction. The injustice. The pointless violence. 

And all the while, I could hear the crone’s laughter echoing throughout the room… 

So what is the “point” of this story, as many of you may ask?

Rather than answer, I’d like to pose a question back to you instead:

Does everything have to have a point?

Maybe the “point,” if there is any, to my story or any other is to better understand our individual selves as we all interpret text, films, and art as genetically unique clusters of stardust with varied backgrounds and personal history.

What themes or symbols do you see in my surrealist tale above? I can tell you what I see. I can tell you that I see innocence and love. Manipulation and honesty. More importantly, I see how the eternal struggle of righteousness and morality is exposed to us as nothing more than the strength (or stubbornness) of our own perceptions, even if that perception has been shadowed by others.

If I am competent in my craft, you may catch glimpses of these ideas in the words above. But if I am also honest in my artistry, with my words and my ideas and myself— presenting the pages I write as portals to your own thoughts and understanding— hopefully you will make connections that this writer wouldn’t have even dreamt of…