Butterflies

Annie is dreaming of the lost little girl when the butterflies wake her. The breath of their fairy wings a call to play as they flit and dance at her window. Mother said when she wakes early, when the sun still has one eye shut, she must wait.

Wait till mother comes for you, Annie. Don’t go off alone.

But Annie doesn’t like to wait. Not today. Today she is a big girl. Ten years old. Old enough for the big knives and forks. Old enough to decide what to do with her day. And for breakfast today there will be pancakes—if she waits. Waiting is hard. Almost as hard as the sums Mother gives her. The numbers never stay still long enough for Annie to know them. Come on, Annie, they say, let’s go outside and play. And they slip away off the page running across the table and out the door and Annie skips after them laughing.

Mother gets angry. And sometimes she gets sad, so sad that big dollops of water fall from her eyes. Once, Annie watched them roll down her cheeks and splash onto the table. That was the day Annie went to the river alone. She stayed until the sun shut both its eyes and then she couldn’t find her way home because the white picket fence she’d followed wasn’t white enough and she wasn’t sure it was the same. After that Mother said she must wait. That she mustn’t go outside without permission, that she must never-ever-ever go to the river alone because a long, long time ago a little girl was lost there and her mummy waited and waited, but she never came home.

Annie aches to find that lost little girl.

Wait until mother comes with you, Annie.

Annie thinks all this as she pulls on her dress and buckles her sandals. But the butterflies are calling softly. Come with us Annie. Come dance with us. And they are so pretty and delicate and free. And with the butterflies she won’t be alone.

Mother hears the back door slam, hears the laughter of her sweet, damaged Annie. She knows it’s a dream and pulls the covers higher. Just a little longer. Today is a big day. Lots of Annie’s friends are coming and there is much to do, but a few more moments won’t hurt. And she likes dreaming of Annie laughing.

Annie’s laughing as she chases the butterflies down the path and out the front gate. They dance past Mrs Brown’s store where mother buys the apples she likes, past the one-eyed dog sleeping on the post office steps, past the picket fence. The butterflies show her the dew on the leaves. It glistens, like the tears on Mother’s cheeks. Mother. For a moment Annie stops dancing. She looks back along the dusty road to the little house with the rusting roof. A little way up the street Ned kicks up red dust as he pulls the milk cart. She likes Ned. Likes the silken feel of his mouth on her palm when she shares her apple, likes the clip, clop of his hooves when he reaches the sealed road that runs into town.

Wings of red and gold flit across her vision. Butterflies!

Annie turns. They are dancing up ahead, their wings so pretty in the brightening light. Annie runs and runs but she can’t quite catch them. She knows where they’re taking her. To the big tree with the tyre swing. To the river.

When she reaches the water’s edge they dance out across the rippling surface, far out in the middle of the river, out where the water is bluer, where it moves faster.

Out where the lost little girl waits for Annie.