The Monster and the Butterfly

Seven - Thyme

It's some sort of an instinct that wakes me just as the beginnings of dawn paint the clouded sky and spill across my bedspread; a heavy smell of dew wafts from the chimney shaft and makes the curtains shift along with the gentle draft, helping stir me from the shallowed depths of sleep.

But when my eyes flutter open, complete consciousness strikes me with a sharp hand as I sit up and toss the thick layers of blankets onto the floor. Down my back a shudder slithers before returning upwards and settling unnervingly across my shoulders and neck.

Rather than just the single butterfly from the night before, I find more, all scattered across my pillows and sheets with their teal wings slowly fluttering as if they're synchronized with some unseen heartbeat, an unseen breath. I know I ought to be questioning their presence but when I become painfully aware of Madame's butterfly-shaped ring, I try my best to feel the same sense of ease rather than confusion like I had felt last night. But last night I was visited by a single butterfly, not a mysterious horde of them. Such confusion becomes dread, an emotion that forces my mind to question if there is a corpse laying nearby that'd attract the attention of such creatures.

The thought is powerful enough to launch me from the bed, sending me in a mad search around the room, tossing aside blankets and curtains and dresses, and slamming the bathroom and wardrobe doors open, in desperate search for a body, or anything, that could charm and draw in the butterflies. But I find nothing, no body, no rotting carrion, and the butterflies remain in an oddly gentle, demure cluster upon my pillows. Some had flittered into the air to settle upon the vanity.

I stare at them with a speculative glare. One butterfly last night was enough, mere coincidence that I could easily put off as folly to help put me at ease within a place so foreign. But to awake to a cluster sleeping alongside you? It's frightening! Rather confusing, it is. I know naught what to make of it, and strangely within my gut the confused feeling of dread weighs heavy.

But I figure it ought to be best to ignore the butterflies, and, in a way, I must. I have a job I'm intent on doing, and I don't wish to slack on my first day. After all, I am to be a gardener, not a warlock or doctor or whatever title entomologists give themselves. And despite what attitudes I may hold regarding the house or its mysterious, faceless lord, or its pension for attracting butterflies, I am determined to use skills that I've ignored and wasted back home.

The very beginnings of sunrise, cloaked in a lingering haze of silvery grey mist, pierce through my window and drawn curtains as I slip into my usual work dress: a black-and-brown garment with a top so loose it ought to be a man's blouse and a skirt that halts just below my knees. I'm sure to wear cheap stockings and boots with little buttons as to I don't have to lament over tattered and torn clothing, ruined by mud and garden work—I only anticipate that by clearing away weeds and brambles I am to be torn like butcher's meat and my stockings shall become only ribbons by the end of the evening. I have always found more improper attire more accommodating for gardening as more often than not they're comfortably loose, allowing for smoother movements that won't be strained by a corset or tight bodice.

Shadows crouch in the house's every corner, crook, and alcove, making vaguely organic shapes, when I finally leave my room. Madame's shears are tightly secured in my apron's waistline and her shawl across my shoulders, Lord Cushing's key and hand-made map weigh heavy in my pocket, and several butterflies that followed me from my pillows flitter around my ears and use their wings to whisper tiny nothings into the air. Their presence leaves me feeling ill at ease. There must be a corpse nearby.

My footfalls as I pass several windows that offer views of the fog that had completely swallowed the rising sun and shrouds the land in grey darkness reverberate throughout the entire house like shattering glass, and I try to break through whatever residual bitterness I retain from last night with that essence of excitement that had planted itself within me.