Butterflies of Death - 1. Butterflies of Death

Ten little unicorns sat together in the middle of a grassy meadow under the stars and watchful eyes of their parents. The oldest of the lot held the others spellbound with the re-telling of an old legend: Butterflies of Death. They 'oohed' and 'ahhed' in time to the story, leaning forward in anticipation as the suspense grew and grew and grew until, at the fateful moment when the hero is about to be devoured ....

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!" screamed the little unicorns shrilly, some ducking and hiding and some leaping away.

The juvenile unicorns now revealed laughed with delight over their prank as dandelion fluff and flower petals continued to rain down on the meadow.

The littlest unicorn ran and ran and ran! But his feet, so much larger in proportion to his body, caught on a grassy hummock and he fell. Big, crystal tears sprang from his eyes, quickly washed away by giggles when caught and tossed high into the air.

His father caught him and rested the littlest unicorn on his shoulders to bound quickly across the meadow and join the rest of the herd. There the little unicorns bedded down in a haphazard pile amongst the heather.

Morning came fresh and clear to the meadow, bringing water with the dew, birdsong with the dawn, and a lazy breeze from over the mountains.

Summer was all play for the little unicorns, like chasing dragonflies and imitating grasshoppers. They played leap frog and hide and seek and tag across the meadow while the older ones watched affectionately. There was no danger here in the meadow, only sunshine and hot dust and tall grasses blotting out the sun.

Time and again the littlest unicorn stopped at the border of the woods. His fellows dared him to go inside. They were forbidden to leave the meadow without an adult, but each had dared step inside, their dares growing more outrageous. Soon just a toe within the shade was not enough. The littlest unicorn was the last and he shuddered at the thought of crossing that threshold and a dozen large steps to touch the nearest tree. The other little unicorns begged and pleaded and scoffed, but eventually they turned away from the forest to tumble into a jumbled heap, napping in the afternoon sunshine.

One day found the littlest unicorn alone, standing on the edge of the meadow staring up at a chubby-cheeked chipmunk high above in the tree branches. He watched the little creature's progress with rapt attention.

Unicorns did not climb trees; he knew this, but other creatures of the forest climbed trees. The littlest unicorn was not the bravest or cleverest, and he was afraid of the forest, but he could not let the summer pass without successfully completing his dare. More than that, he wanted to surpass all the others. He wanted to do something more adventurous than all the past summers of his life.

How clever would it be, he thought, if everyone were to see me up there! Taller and higher than any unicorn. Even Papa!

Yes, the littlest unicorn would do what no unicorn had done before: he would climb a tree.

It didn't look so hard, but he soon found himself further inside the forest than he'd ever been. The little trees were too little; there on the outskirts, the branches bent or broke beneath his slight weight. The big trees were too big; he had nothing to hold on to.

He tried them all, the big ones, the little ones, the fat ones and the skinny ones. He tried the mossy ones, the smooth ones, and the rough ones. He tried trees that stood alone and trees that grew entwined with other trees. He tried climbing on boulders and jumping, but his fingers only skidded and slid along the bark, sending him back to the ground in a shower of leaves and twigs.

Sitting there, covered in dirt and mossy stains, with twigs in his hair and sweat on his face, the littlest unicorn suddenly realized how dark the sky was. Hidden beneath the thick canopy of the forest, the day had passed unnoticed. He looked about anxiously, but could see only the forest, a place more and more foreign and frightening now that he was paying attention.

The trees and low ground cover stretched to the horizon in all directions, quiet, but into the hush crept strange and unfamiliar sounds. The creatures of evening stirred: the low hooting of an owl, the croak of a bullfrog, the slither and swish of little animals and insects settling in to sleep.

Where had the day gone?

The littlest unicorn had never spent more than a few minutes alone, and had never been away from his herd at night. No mother, no father to bring him sweet grass and daisies, no herd mates to flop together with for warmth. He was all alone.

He sat there several moments longer, clenching his hands together over his thumping heart and trying to remember where the sun set in relation to the meadow. He had only to walk far enough and then surely he would hear his family calling. Surely they had noticed he was missing by now!

Keeping his goal firmly in mind, he began to walk with quick, mincing steps both eager to be home and frightened that the bears and wolves and lions in the stories would find him and eat him!

What he did not realize in his naivete was that he had explored deep within the forest at an angle, so that when he started back he walked parallel to his herd's meadow. Among the trees it was easy to lose his way as the great trunks forced him to detour first one way and then another. The game trails wound and twisted along the easiest paths, and not the straightest ones.

As he walked, he grew hungrier and hungrier, and the forest around him grew darker and darker and colder and colder. His stomach growled louder and louder and he walked a little faster, darting glances up and around in the darkening gloom.

"Oh, no."

With full dark, the littlest unicorn had to stop. He picked at some moss with his fingers, but he didn't know if it was safe to eat and he was hungry, but not so hungry that he would risk being poisoned with some evil fairy's spell. Who was to say he wouldn't be trapped in the forest for eternity if he ate something?

Of course, not all of the stories were bad ones. There was the Frog King, and the princess and the dwarfs. The littlest unicorn had so wanted to meet a real princess one day, but all he could think about were the scary wolves and foxes and witches that all lived in the forest. There were lions, and tigers, and bears, too. Evil ogres and trolls and spiders bigger than he was.

Cold and shivering, he crawled into a pile of old leaves for warmth, hoping that the moon wouldn't reflect upon his pale, spotted skin, or that the little, spiraling horn on the center of his forehead wouldn't give him away, or that his tail (which so often had a mind of its own) wouldn't twitch at the wrong moment. He curled into a tiny ball, tense while he listened to the scary night sounds.

Every little thing jolted him wide awake on the occasions he drifted off, and he worried that the sun had been kidnapped by the moon because dawn took a lifetime to arrive.

He wandered the forest for days, unknowingly moving further and further from home. He licked the moisture from the leaves in the morning, and nibbled at the plants and moss, longing for the sweet, green grass of home. He tired quickly, sleeping in snatches when his eyes slipped closed despite the unfamiliarity of the place.

The cracking of antlers against antlers startled him one day and he fled before he could think, but the deer, the birds, and the chipmunks were all the company he had.

Finally, in a tiny, grassy clearing by an equally tiny pond, the littlest unicorn wept, afraid and lonely, and so very hungry. The grass was short and tickled his skin as he fell asleep in a tiny sunbeam. That evening he watched a dark shape beneath the green-blue water snatch insects off the surface of the pond and he shuddered.

There in the little meadow the forest seemed less forbidding, less frightening, and more friendly. The little meadow was warm and comfortable, and whatever was in the pond stayed there, so it seemed safe enough. He lazed in the late summer sunshine watching the trees sway overhead and chewing on long pieces of grass, occasionally creeping to sip wary handfuls of water.

Lured by the very sleepy peacefulness, the littlest unicorn relaxed for the first time in days, taking an impromptu nap in the sunshine. He woke to the drone of the bees, heart thumping in his chest as he rubbed at his eyes, expecting to find the past days as a bad dream, certain that he'd see his home meadow and his family, but all that greeted him was a startled cloud of brilliant colors and the bat of tiny wings.

"Eeeeeeeeeee!"

The high-pitched shriek startled animals, birds, and insects alike. They were everywhere! Butterflies! Surrounding him so they could gnaw the flesh from his bones, just like Gildas the Unfortunate!

The littlest unicorn sprang to his feet at once, batting his hands into the swirling clouds of insects as he fought his way free. The wings and tiny legs whispered against his naked body, fluttering so close to his face that all he could see was streaks and blogs of color. In his panic, he didn't realize how close he'd come to the pond until he put a foot in it.

His toes sank into something cold and wet. Something slimy touched the top of his foot, and the pond's surface roiled with the activities of the hidden monsters within.

Another loud scream, and the littlest unicorn bolted. The creatures of the forest also took flight with his passage, birds startling up, rabbits darting underfoot, and a possum flopping over 'dead.'

The littlest unicorn was blind to the chaos of his passing, blinded by tears, deafened by his sobs. He pitched head-long into a tree, bouncing off to land on his rear and wailing louder. He wanted his mama unicorn! She would soothe his hurts, rub him with sweet grass to clean him, tuck him inside her arms while his father unicorn kept the murderous butterflies at bay.

"Here, now, honey-sweet." Stepping from her tree, the dryad stared up at the branches where an obviously quite lost baby unicorn perched. She asked, "Now, now, and what's all this about, then, eh?"

She was quite unprepared for the garbled answer and guffawed before she could stop herself, but she stepped quickly back into her tree, convinced that the sudden assault was harmless, and reappeared beside the unicorn. She'd never seen a unicorn climb a tree before and she sat beside him, her kind heart reaching out to the scared, little thing.

"There, there, sweetie," she murmured, patting his back. "You're safe in my tree, now. No butterflies here."

The littlest unicorn's eyes opened and he stared out at the forest far, far below. "I did it! I did it! I did it!" he crowed, standing and holding onto another branch for balance. Abruptly aware of his audience, he blushed and slid down to rest his back against the trunk of the tree.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Flora, and I'm a dryad. This is my tree."

He cocked his head curiously. She was smaller than his mother, and looked quite different, all green and slender, but she had the same kind voice and gentle touch.

He crept towards her. "Will you be my mommy?"

Flora smiled and held out her arms, which were shortly filled with wriggling, giggling baby unicorn. She told her friends and they told their friends, and the story of the unicorn who could climb trees spread in their section of the forest. They looked, but they could not find the baby's family herd, and so they adopted him, taught him, and loved him.

And on fine days he can still be spied fast asleep in the arms of the dogwood tree.