The Butterfly Spirit

Old Zhou lived alone in an old house at the foot of the hills, with a small vegetable patch out front. In the third year after his wife, Axiu, passed, the row of hollyhocks he had planted finally burst into a full wall of bloom for the first time.

He was a stubborn man, sparing with words. When others urged him to move to town with his son, he refused. He said the garden could not be left untended; in truth, he simply could not bear to leave the house.

That April, a butterfly settled on the back of his hand. Its wings were the grey-blue of worn silk, trimmed with a thin line of pale gold. Old Zhou raised his hand to brush it away, then stopped. The butterfly rested there, perfectly still, as if it knew him, wings folded, motionless against his skin. He set down his hoe and let it stay.

After that it came often. In the early mornings, while he sorted vegetables in the yard, it circled him once and perched on the bamboo pole opposite. When he knelt on the ridge to pull weeds, it would rest a while on his shoulder, opening and closing its wings as though inspecting his work. Old Zhou began to talk to it. He spoke of the poor bean crop that year, of how the well behind the house ran colder than last, of how Axiu used to love climbing the slope for wild berries.

These were things he told no one. Yet telling them to a butterfly cost him no shame.

One summer evening, as Old Zhou boiled water in the kitchen, he heard a faint fluttering at the windowsill. The butterfly had come, but it was not calm as before. It paced along the sill, beating its wings in quick, restless strokes. Old Zhou followed it out the door. It flew a little, paused, flew again, leading him toward the far end of the garden. There he saw it: a bamboo fence rail had given way, and the firewood he had stacked beneath it that morning was sliding toward the ditch. He hurried to move the wood, then turned to find the butterfly already settled on a hollyhock, its grey-blue wings slowly folding, as if it had breathed a sigh of relief.

Old Zhou stood before the flowers and thought, suddenly, that this small creature might hold a little spirit. He did not dwell on it. He only felt the hollow in his chest lightly filled, a small patch of it.

In autumn it came less often. Old Zhou knew butterflies do not survive the winter, yet every April it returned, and he could pick out that pale gold edge from far off.

In the sixth spring, it came later than any year before. Old Zhou waited in the yard until the hollyhocks had spent their first flush of bloom. At last it came and settled on his hand, its grey-blue now threaded with white, as if faded. He left a bowl of clear water on the windowsill for it. At night he heard the soft beat of wings, like someone walking once through the room, then quietly stepping back out.

At dawn the water remained, but the butterfly was gone. Old Zhou searched the garden, the foot of the wall, the stone stool where Axiu used to sit. Nothing.

He was not anxious. He knew it would come again. Only, when next they met, he would be a little older, and the butterfly a little more worn. But what of that? At the foot of these hills, in this old house, every April there would be a grey-blue butterfly edged in gold, that knew a stubborn old man. And that was enough.