Have you ever pulled the wings from a butterfly? After a point, they do not struggle. The life goes out of them the moment the powdery brightness is torn from their bodies. Your fingers will carry the stain of their days but they won’t breathe their tiny breaths any longer because their fragility is the exact thing that makes you want to harm them. It is because you can. We weren’t all so lucky to be born high and mighty and giant.
I was a butterfly girl, so I knew all about this. Sometimes the children ran in from the village beyond the trees and tried to capture the minute creatures in their hands. They couldn’t take their eyes off the colors. The eyes were alright; it was their touch I was worried about. They were entranced by the beauty, and I knew why, because I’d walked down to the village many times to trade blankets and baskets for meat and milk. There was little enchantment there. The streets were thick with mud; the houses were packed in tight, tipping and leaning on one another for support like old men. The smell from the butcher house clung to your nostrils like cold did to bones. The women from the village looked thin and drawn, their skin papery—their names were things like Long Winter and Old Mother. The butterfly girls up on the mountain were bright in comparison, fluttering along always on the edge of spring or autumn.
Our homes were built of wood, like the ones in the village, but they were swept clean and kept free of wandering animals. Incense burned on the floor to keep out bad spirits and the windows were always open at least a little, to keep out the stuffiness, even in winter. Our beds were soft mats we rolled out into the upstairs chambers. Into the wood of our houses, our stories were written, carved into the surface. You could run your fingers over the paths of our lives: quilts, perfect little fans, girls and women with straight black hair, bowls and dishes, butterflies. Always the butterflies.
The butterflies were the reason for our existence. We raised flowers—and “raised” was the perfect word for it, because we tended to them like children—and we sewed, but the butterflies were our core. Within their homes of lashed wire nets they quivered from one branch to another, and rested while beating their bright wings sleepily. Despite being anxious creatures they managed to sweep the mountainside with a perfect calm. In the still afternoons I would sit on the rocks with my hands under my knees and watch them. Their faceless bodies would open up to the sun.
Winter was not butterfly-time. Their lives are incredibly brief; just as they emerged from their cocoons, we would sweep them up in wire cages and sell them to the caravans that came every summer. It was the most that we would see of men all year long, other than the brief glimpses we caught of some in the village. They wore the sharp colors of the Inner City, blues and greens, reds and yellows. Their robes were tattered and fell below their knees, and crossed over only one shoulder, leaving the other bare in the summer heat. The oldest of them wore white beards so long and white we could not stop giggling. We were fascinated by them. These were delegates of the vast Lotus Empire, and distant and proud as the stars. Of course I didn’t know they were merely merchants. I didn’t know much of anything.
They were almost (but not quite) as fascinated by us as we were by them, but none of us could recognize that at the time, either. Lily, the mother-figure of us all, gathered us around her after shaking their hands like a man. “Let me introduce you to my daughters. This is White Fox, that is Gentle Sister, that is Snow Deer –“ and so on and so forth, until, “and that last one, with the bright hair, that is Smiling Lynx.” I was always the last to be named.
And it was because I was the one who most often caught their attention, though I was not any prettier than the rest. It was the hair; a brown that was not quite straight, and gleamed gold in strong light. My eyes were also a little too round, and slightly off-colored. Lily didn’t think I looked right; my face was not flat enough, and my nose too big. But I rarely caught sight of myself and didn’t know what the men found so curious about me until the summer I was fourteen. As I handed one of them, green-robed, a cage of butterflies, he leaned over to me and said, “You look so much like Princess Lien. Has anyone told you that before?”
I felt hot down to the very tips of my toes. Princess Lien was the treasured daughter of the Lotus Empire, and tales of her perfumed skin and perfect oval face had filled my ears ever since I had been very young. “You’ve seen the Princess?”
“From afar, yes. You have the same hair—the same bearing.”
If I had known any better I would have excused his comments as empty flatteries. But being compared to the Princess Lien was as much as any girl could hope for. “Is she so beautiful?”
“The most.”
Lily’s voice cut across us like a knife. “Smiling Lynx! Come here!” And that was the end of that.
I had been thrilled to be compared to the Princess, but it soon faded from my thoughts. Autumn followed summer, and after that came winter. We were always holed up in the house. I spent my time playing games and sewing with Snow Deer, who was my favorite. She had long lashes and delicate white skin.
“What now?” I asked. We had finished cleaning the sleeping mats and were shivering from the cold.
Snow Deer sat on the floor with her legs crossed. Some other girls who lived with us were in the far corner, but they weren’t listening in. “Let’s play our favorite game!”
“Not that one—“ I began, but she cut me off.
“Yes, that one!”
It was our habit to take turns guessing who our parents were. Butterfly girls were sometimes orphans, sometimes not, but always dropped at the feet of Lily or her sister Beautiful Sky and then abandoned. Even if Lily or Beautiful Sky knew who my parents were, they could not tell me. We were either unwanted children, or children with dead parents, and I wasn’t sure which one would be worse. Lily said to be thankful we had as good a life as we did. Not all girls were so lucky. “You could be in the streets of Shu Lan or worse, Weiguo. Look upon the blessings you have been given and be thankful for them.”
“I can’t possibly think of anything else,” I said, somewhat pouty. “You’re far more creative than I am.”
“Don’t be nice. It won’t get you out of playing with me.” The older girl smiled and her inky eyes, so lovely and giant that they nearly reached her temples like strokes from a calligraphy brush, creased in humor. “Your mother is a queen from the west and your father a soldier from the Imperial Army—that explains your hair.”
“Your family comes from a long lineage of sky pirates.”
“You’ve already done that one!”
“Oh… well, your mother was a courtesan in Emperor Shing’s Masked Court, and he liked her so much that you have thirteen brothers and sisters!”
Snow Deer laughed, hiding her gapped teeth behind her hand, which was the only flawed thing about her. If Lily or Beautiful Sky was around we’d not dare to say such a thing, much less laugh about it if it was uttered. But we had been raised in the country, in the mountains, and had no idea what court or city life was like. We didn’t know that a wrong look in the Emperor’s direction could earn you death. People were good, to us. They were simple and good.
“What would it be like, to be related to the Emperor? To anyone in his court?” Her voice was quieter now. “Where would you go if you left here?”
“I don’t want to leave, Snow Deer. There is no other place for me. There’s just this mountain.”
“Perhaps there are hundreds of mountains out there. Thousands. Wouldn’t you like to see them?”
“If you have seen one mountain, it is likely the rest look the same.”
She scorned my lack of adventure. “There are more than mountains. There are people out there. Girls, boys, women…men who aren’t old and leaning on sticks and who smell like donkeys.”
But I didn’t need anyone. Just her, maybe, and Lily, and the butterflies when we raised them in the warm months. I imagined that people were just as fleeting. “This life is so short. You see how the women die so young in the village. If I leave the mountain, I’ll likely die even faster.”
Snow Deer seemed troubled by the sudden depth of my fears. “You won’t. I’ll protect you.”
I looked at her, so delicate and small the top of her head only brushed my nose, and light-boned as the animal she was named for. “But you want to leave.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Do you promise?”
Snow Deer glimpsed quickly around the room, as if someone would look in upon our secret pact and disapprove. “I promise. I’ll be with you forever.”
I clasped her tiny warm hand in mine and felt as if something sharp had been wedged into my chest. It was because I was already afraid that she would break her promise. That is a terrible thing and I shouldn’t admit it, but I didn’t have much faith in anyone. I loved her more than anything. I was afraid of stepping somewhere that I shouldn’t, putting pressure on a place that would burst, doing anything that would drive her from me. Her promise did not soothe me. It antagonized me.
“You are meant for greater things than you think.” The winter light fell over her slight shoulder.
“How can you tell?”
“Because I can.”
“Yes, but how?”
“You have to trust me,” said Snow Deer, somewhat severely. “You have to trust some people, you know.”
I got up and went to stand by the window. Our game was over. Neither of us would ever find out where we had come from. Snow fell outside; I could see it when I pulled down the screen fully and what had been a slit of sunlight came bursting through. I saw the top of Lily’s head as she carried in wood with Lovely Flower. I prayed that Snow Deer’s words didn’t sink too far into my head. I couldn’t risk feeling angry and resentful when all I should be was grateful.
That winter passed quickly. After the snow melted on the mountain we became animals of the air again. Our time was spent outside, in the small gardens, passing by the cocoons that would one day soon split gently. It was a little diversion of ours, to see who could spot the first butterfly. It passed the time and made us attentive. The girl who did was awarded with a fish the rest of us would spend all day trying to catch (this was the rule; we couldn’t go to the village to buy one) and then Lily would cook it in spices and serve it hot with rice. The lucky girl usually shared it with the rest, unless if it was Gentle Path who won. She didn’t really like sharing.
That year it was Snow Deer who saw the first butterfly. That night as we sat and ate (Snow Deer gave me nearly half of what she kept for herself) Lily said, “I have something to say.” And everyone fell silent at once.
“White Fox and River are going to be leaving us this summer when the caravans come from Shu Lan. They will go as far as the village of Peiu.”
None of us said anything, but there was a sudden taste to the air, as if the sweetness of it had suddenly gone rotten. Butterfly girls left often: that was a constant in my life. One day, when they grew too old, or perhaps were no longer fair enough to tend to the butterflies, they would flutter out of our lives as quietly as they had come. I did not know what was the deciding factor, what pushed them from us, and now I stopped with a bit of fish halfway to my mouth and stared.
White Fox and River were barely older than me. They were almost sixteen; soon they would be in their yellow years, when a woman fully grew into herself. I was still considered to be in my green years, but not by much, and I wondered why I wasn’t going with them. White Fox had a strange mouth and a heavy jaw, and River was bordering on pretty, but she was not quite there. For a moment I thought myself beautiful and special, that I was allowed to remain while they were not. But just as soon as that thought came, my heart sunk again in my chest with all the bitterness of winter. I didn’t want them to leave. I never wanted any of them to leave.
“Excuse me, Lily,” said Snow Deer, always the first to speak up. “But where is their home? Are they going somewhere else to be butterfly girls?”
Lily and Beautiful Sky gave her a look that would have frightened me into submission. But while Snow Deer hung her head, she did not take back the question.
“Don’t you think that we will make sure they are taken care of, daughter?” The last word hovered in the air brightly like a warning. “Do you have no faith in us?”
“Yes, Beautiful Sky. I was just curious. I am sorry.”
It was the closest I had ever seen Snow Deer to being shamed. I put the rest of my fish back into her bowl, to try and make her feel better. But she did not eat anything else that night, much to Lily’s irritation, and fled to her bed roll as soon as she was allowed. I found her laying on her back with her eyes wide open like half-moons, staring at the beamed ceiling over her.
“What made you say that?” I asked her accusatively, as I came down to sit next to her. “You don’t even like White Fox or River.”
“You’re right,” said Snow Deer, her petal-like lips barely moving. “White Fox is ugly and River is the clumsiest girl here. But they have no say in their fate. That isn’t right. Just because they’re ugly and clumsy doesn’t mean they should be sent away.”
There was an unsaid thought left after she spoke the words, and I knew what it was. Snow Deer was afraid she would be here forever, because she was so beautiful.
It wasn’t pride or arrogance on her part. Instead it was fear, radiating from her so strongly it felt like heat. Her lips quivered even though she didn’t say another word. Snow Deer had no time for her appearance. I had never seen her ducking for another look at her reflection in the stream or stealing a glance into Lily’s looking glass like the rest of us. It seemed unfair to me, that the most delicate of us had the looks we all sought for and didn’t even care. Worse, she hated them, because they kept her here, safe and well, while all she wanted to do was get away.
“Well,” she said, at last, “I suppose you’ll be here with me.”
“I’m not as beautiful as you,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “But you are pretty, and we would all do anything for your hair.” We let a silence grow between us, momentarily. “If you go, I’ll go too, Smiling Lynx. I told you I wouldn’t leave you on your own.”
“You’ll have no choice,” I said. Now something sticky was clogging my throat, and I recognized it dimly as fear. “You wouldn’t be able to just go with me. Besides, who said that I am leaving?”
“No one,” said Snow Deer, looking miserable. “But who knows?”
“You shouldn’t think about the future,” I said. “That always makes you unhappy.”
“I never think about the present,” she countered. “The present is just a trap. At least the future has hope.”
“Why do you need hope when you have me?” I felt like a stalk of bamboo had been driven through my heart. She didn’t answer me for a long time. Why was I not enough? Why didn’t she find comfort in the mountains, and the slanting dawn, and in the adequacy of the moon in the star-pinned sky?
“Smiling Lynx,” she said, in that blunt way of hers, “Do you have any idea of what it is like to be lonely?”
Of course I knew. Often I sat by myself as the shadows creeped over the flat dark stones of the ridge, my feet curled underneath me. At those times I heard nothing but my own breath. I knew what winter was like; the death of it, the harshness of the season that had taught us to appreciate the clarity of endings. I had been turned away from people before, I had been rebuked and scolded and smacked on the arm. I had often been alone in my life, and when I told this to Snow Deer she just looked at me and gave a little frown, her budding lips tiny creases.
“There’s a difference between being lonely and alone,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like Nuwa. I feel cold. I want to forget every kind thing everyone has ever said to me, so it would be easier for me to disappear.”
“But Nuwa made the world. She never forgot a thing, Snow Deer.”
“But she did disappear.”
I don’t care about Nuwa, I wanted to say. You promised me that you would stay, and now I can’t imagine living a day peacefully without you.
Maybe that was loneliness.
But I just said, “I don’t want you getting hurt. You won’t really run away, will you?”
Snow Deer looked at me in such a way that I felt as if I were the cause to all her problems, a boulder that blocked her exit. “No. I won’t.”
That was all I wanted to hear, so I retreated to my own bedroll, thinking she would feel better the next morning. She didn’t. She was moody and lacked her usual even temper, even when Lily snapped at her and sent her running back and forth from the well as punishment (Snow Deer was never made to haul water; she was so small she could barely lug the buckets). Her rebellious nature caused her to stew instead of forgive. She was a true Monkey, I thought; far too reckless and impetuous for her own good, and her cleverness only made it worse. I feel that she resented Lily and Beautiful Sky for not releasing her along with White Fox and River. Though she would never leave without being told to, she found other ways to rebel. One morning I woke up and found that she’d cut all her hair off. Now it was just a little below her ears.
“Oh no, Snow Deer,” I groaned. “Not your beautiful hair.”
“Don’t fuss at me,” she said. “It was never anything like yours, anyway.”
My mild Sheep self sat back and listened, my heart quite battered, as Beautiful Sky reprimanded Snow Deer and sentenced her to two days without food. I tried slipping her some dumplings and rice (rather messily) when we ate that first night, but Lily saw through me easily and slapped me so hard that I stumbled around for minutes after. When I went back to the upper floor of the house, Snow Deer apologized profusely, seeing the red mark on my cheek and saying that I should never do that sort of thing for her again.
It was all I wanted, though. My life had changed somehow, and the only thing I could think about was making Snow Deer happy again. I didn’t know if this was from my own selfish fear of being left behind, or my love for her, and I didn’t want to dwell on it. Instead I filled my days with little jokes and reassuring words. I made her a crown of flowers from the redthorn patch, the same kind that Princess Lien was said to wear during the New Year. I bothered her until she ate her rice. I did her chores for her. Eventually Lily pulled me to the side and said, “You have to stop doing everything for that girl. I know she is your friend, but she is too stubborn for her own good.”
“She is just sad, Lily,” I said.
“We all are sad sometimes. We all suffer. How about you think about yourself for once, Smiling Lynx?”
I couldn’t much see the point in that, so I just mumbled an apology and went off. I didn’t stop trying to cheer up Snow Deer, however. I just made sure to do it when Lily wasn’t around. Snow Deer never pushed me away, exactly, but she seemed distant now. I came out one day when morning was spilling over the green mountain, and every blade of grass had a tip of fire. Our houses, which were scattered like grains of rice, stood bathed in red light and so did she. Her hair fluttered like little wings around her ears.
“You should sleep more,” I said, feeling my habitual worry for her again tighten in my stomach. “You should also eat.”
Snow Deer turned to look at me, her presence as suffocating as a cloud of incense. “You are the best mother I’ve ever had.” Then, she smiled.
“Why are you out here?” I asked.
“Looking for fox spirits,” said Snow Deer, and she folded her legs beneath her and sat down in the cold dew. “They’re supposed to come out in the morning.”
“Why would you ever want to see a fox spirit?”
“I’d like to make a bet with one. I’d like to see if I could trick her.”
Spirits did not interest me. I had never been very religious, the village beliefs too absract for my taste, and lacking the officiality of a state’s creed. Not that I knew much about any of that, then. I was just relieved that she no longer seemed sad.
“You can’t trick a fox spirit,” I said, rather obviously.
“I know that,” she said, looking at me with disdain. “That’s why I want to try.”
Snow Deer always wanted to be first. The first to the table, the first to her bedroll at night and the first to awake in the morning. The first to see the butterflies. “So that she’d take you to her heaven?”
“Yes,” said Snow Deer. “One day I’m going to catch one, and make a deal with her. Then I’d rule over her heaven.”
The fox spirits of the Lotus Empire were crafty but fair-minded ghosts who roamed the forests in the space between day and night. Sometimes, a traveler who passed by our community would stop in and tell us stories of their encounters; how one misstep would beckon the fox to them, how a villager who chopped down the sacred trees would be met with a spirit’s wrath. They were tall and stood on two legs like men, and wore bangles in their ears. Their fur was the color of leaves in a mountain autumn. Their eyes gleamed like a woman’s.
The foxes were just one kind of spirit who reigned in the Nine Heavens beyond our world, but they were also the strongest. They bent elephant ghosts to their will and bound the souls of earthly scribes to chambers where the stolen humans would then write of their honor for the rest of eternity. Every step of their palaces was inlaid with jewels; they wrapped silks made of cloud around their waists and painted their claws with the blood of tigers. They danced between the realms as if they’d been born of two worlds. They trapped travelers in games of luck and chance, reciting riddles that only astral creatures would be able to answer. They were, as I had said, untrickable.
“When you rule the heavens,” I said, “Remember to send me rain. I like rain.”
Snow Deer scoffed. “You’d be with me, Smiling Lynx! You would have your own palace.”
“With my own servants?”
“Of course, as many as you want. And cat spirits for you to play with. And the most wonderful food.”
“Not congee, then,” I said.
“No more congee, no more plain rice.” Snow Deer tilted her face towards the morning and I wondered what it was that caused her to be so brave. “Fruit from sky trees and the saltiest soups you’ll ever taste.”
Her dreams were further than she could ever reach. I could almost see her thin arms grasping at the air for something solid, waving as if drowning.
“You think too much,” I said.
“You think too little.”
“My thoughts are filled, Snow Deer, even if you don’t believe me. I’m not stupid, like Lily thinks I am. I’m not at all.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say you were stupid, Smiling Lynx.” She pressed her head down on my shoulder, and her hair felt cool as water on my skin. “You are much smarter than me. You know how to be happy. Isn’t that funny? I never even learned how to be happy.”
I didn’t think that was very funny at all. “You can be happy. Just look at the trees and watch the butterflies. It isn’t too hard of a thing.”
“That does not bring me joy, just restlessness.” Snow Deer sighed dramatically. “A butterfly wing makes me think of the gowns of court ladies. Trees remind me of soldiers. Everything is an echo of something else that I can’t have.”
There was a tenderness beneath her tone, as if she was trying very hard not to hurt me, but still said what she felt. She could be nothing but honest.
“You shouldn’t think of what you cannot have. Just be glad that you have more than others.”
“You sound like a monk,” said Snow Deer, kindly. “I think we were born into the wrong places. I should have been born into the Inner City, and you should have been born under the eaves of a monestary. Think of all you could learn.”
“We wouldn’t know each other then,” I pointed out.
“That isn’t true. I would come up to your mountain every new moon, and ask you how I should live my life. And you would tell me…”
“Be happy and gracious.”
Snow Deer groaned. “Are you sure you aren’t religious?”
“You don’t have to believe in something in order to be thankful.”
“No, but to be as pious as you…”
“You are a Monkey and I’m a Sheep,” I said practically. “You sit on my back and look out at the world, and decide which way to go.”
“But the Monkey is foolish.”
“The Sheep is weak.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” said Snow Deer. “You have never been weak.”
“Our astral signs shape us from birth. I am weak. I was born to be.”
“You keep denying religion, yet you are as devout as a monk to some immovable, unseeable force!”
I cowed to her then, as I always did. I reached up a hand to stroke Snow Deer’s inky black hair, felt her cheek as soft as fur underneath my fingers. “You’re right. Maybe I am religious. Not like the villagers, though.”
“No,” Snow Deer agreed. “You are like a swan; they’re just sparrows.”
I giggled. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”
“So? It is true. To me, at least.” She pulled away and pushed back her hair so that her perfect oval face looked as if it dripped with golden light. Snow Deer always seemed as if she was glowing, but instead of having a brightness that came from within, it was as if she was being shone upon by some heavenly radiance. That morning, it was indeed the case. The sun was rising just ahead of us, and if you raised your hand it would swim in spirals of falling light. I had to squint to look at it, so powerful was the sun, though I never looked into the brightness directly. It was too much for my eyes to carry.
“I would never sleep for the rest of my life, if I could see this every day.” She sounded very old as she said this.
“I think you would grow very tired,” I pointed out. Snow Deer laughed.
“You know what Lily says. ‘Life is too brief to be sleeping all the time, girls!’”
“She says that to White Fox all the time,” I said, smiling. But my friend sobered at the name, remembering.
“Where do you think they go, Smiling Lynx?”
“Who?”
“The girls who leave us.”
I paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer. Perhaps Snow Deer did not want the truth. Perhaps she was looking for something else. “Lily says they go and are free.”
“Yes, that’s what Lily says,” said Snow Deer, and I could tell that she did not believe it. Yet my view of the world was so small, so insignificant, I could not believe any harm would fall to them. Why would anyone ever hurt a butterfly girl? We were gentle, and good.
“Isn’t that what you want, Snow Deer? To be free?”
“There are different kinds of freedom,” she said, with a worldliness I could not understand. “So yes, I would like to be free, but only in a certain way. It is like the traveling poets, Smiling Lynx. Everyone loves them, everyone listens when they speak. But no one really believes them. No one looks at them and thinks, ‘Yes, life could really be like this.’”
Here I was quiet, because I had never doubted the words of poets. But Snow Deer turned to me again, burying her warm face in my neck, thin shoulders shaking from either hidden sobs or laughter. “This is a funny life we have, Smiling Lynx. It is a funny thing.” I did not see what was so funny about it, but I held her to me anyway, and watched as the sun bore its full light onto our skin.