The Golden Flutterby

by Craig Rice

[Pseudonym of Georgiana Ann Craig]

She was magic, meant for love—and like so much of beauty, strangely marked by fate.

Of course it happened a very long time ago. Today, there is barely a charred, overgrown trace left of the buildings that burned, the curious, helter-skelter collection of gaily painted little two and three apartment houses that huddled together, down a steep valley scarp from the broad avenue above. The whole affair, indeed, is almost forgotten—almost.

He is a mature man now, the head of a family, successful in his business, liked and respected, a solid citizen in all things. But he still remembers. As long as he lives, he will never forget.

And the little children—all grown up now, of course—surely they must remember, too.

It began on a night that was windless and clear, neither warm nor cold—a night that was very quiet. He was young, and he was lonely, a stranger in the town in those days. All by himself, he had gone into one of the small, shadowy bars that dotted the broad avenue that crowned the hillside. He sat there alone, scarcely touching his glass, not seeking companions, all but oblivious of the men and women who moved and got acquainted with each other all around him.

He had no idea how long she had been sitting beside him when first he noticed her. Even then, it was the drink that he noticed first, rather than the girl. The glass that held it was conventional enough—thin and gracefully stemmed—but the drink itself glowed with a color he could not remember ever having seen before. A gold color it was, yet with more light, more luminescence than gold. It was marvelously clear, yet there was an occasional hint of swirling mist in its depths that appeared and vanished and appeared again. He watched it for a while caught by its almost hypnotic effect, and then he looked at the girl.

She was golden, from the hair wound and braided so smoothly about her head, to the gold kid slippers on her small and fragile feet. Her dress, of some soft, glistening, silky stuff, was a deeper shade of the same gold, her soft, delicate skin seemed almost to be touched with a faint, powdery, golden dust. He failed to register, and never could recall, the color of her eyes. Perhaps, they were golden, too.

All at once, he realized she was aware that he was staring at her, that she seemed faintly amused. He looked away and stammered something inadequate about the curious color of the drink in her glass.

She smiled, a sweet radiant smile, and pushed the glass toward him.

Neither then, nor in memory, could he be sure she said, “Would you like to try it?” in a faint whisper, or that his own mind formed the words from some projected thought. For that matter, did she ever speak at all? Of this, too, he never was quite sure. But of course, he would remind himself in afterdays, she must have spoken when she told the children stories. Or did she? Did they understand the words as, perhaps, he had, without ever hearing them? He never knew.

He did know that he tried the drink. It was cool but not cold, pungent yet sweet—almost too sweet with a curious, new flavor he could not quite identify, a flavor of half-remembered fruits and flowers. Cool and sweet and strangely heady—he took a sip of it and felt a faint, delightful tingling in his fingers and toes.

They sat together silently, while strangers moved and chattered all around them and paid as little attention as if neither of them was there. Then it was late, and the lights were being turned out, and the chairs stacked on the tables.

He said, almost without thinking, “Will you come home with me?” It was as easy as asking for a match.

She said, “Of course,” in that soft whisper that might not have been a whisper at all. Then she rose and linked his arm with hers, and they went out of the small, shadowy bar. It was as simple as that.

They walked down the broad avenue together and paused at the top of the stairs that led down between the little buildings. They were steep stairs, narrow and winding and dimly lighted, and he turned to her and said, “You must let me carry you down.”

He lifted her and she seemed to weigh nothing at all—exactly nothing. It wasn’t that she was remarkably small, it was simply that she didn’t weigh anything. Yet he thought hardly anything about it at the time.

Down the long, steep stairs, past the paths and little flights of stairs that led off in all directions, down to the wide, gardened space halfway to the valley floor, where the children played in the daytime, from which his own little flight of wooden stairs led. Up to his door, and into the two tiny rooms that were his home in those days.

He never was quite sure how long she stayed. It might have been weeks or months. It was days, certainly. He was on vacation, and there was no routine coming and going to and from his insignificant job to wind the clock of his mind.

He was certain of but one thing—then and always afterwards. This was the happiest time of his entire life.

It seemed never the least strange to him that she seemed to have no other home, neither friends nor mere people to inquire about her. Nor had she possessions of her own.

Save for the carrying of her down the long flight of stairs, he scarcely dared touch her again but with the rarest and lightest caress of a hand. He had a feeling that, somehow, she was too fragile, too delicate, too perishable for coarse human contact, that a normal caress would shatter her into glistening golden fragments, that she might, perhaps, disappear altogether. Sometimes, she would smile at him, the sweet radiant smile, and brush light fingers fondly over his face. Yet, while he knew her fingers touched him, he could scarcely feel them.

It did seem curious to him now and then, during the time they were together, that she never slept or, at least, never seemed to sleep. She did come to rest from time to time, perched on the arm of a chair, perhaps poised gracefully on the couch, her exquisite face in repose, motionless save for an occasional fluttering of her small hands. Watching her, he would fall asleep himself, confident that, when he wakened, she would still be there in the two tiny rooms.

It was down in the garden that the very young children who lived in the other buildings on the hillside would come to her. She would rest on the lowest step of his little flight of wooden stairs, and tell them stories—fabulous, wonderful, marvelous stories. It mattered not to the children whether she told her stories in words or in dreamlike thought projections. The children heard them and understood them, and watched her with eyes sometimes gay, sometimes grave, sometimes aglow with sheer enchantment.

She made little cakes for them, too, the sugary, crumbly little cakes that, with the sweet, golden drink, seemed to be her only food. She loved them all, and they loved her.

It was a very lovely time, a dreamy time, and he was happy.

Then, awakening in the midst of a night that was windless and clear and very quiet, he heard the rustle and crackle of flames. He rushed outside to the little apartment landing and saw that the lower buildings were ablaze, that the flames were creeping up towards his own little garden.

He ran back into the house to sweep her up to safety. She shook her head, radiating a strange blend of sadness and expectation. It didn’t matter to him whether she spoke aloud or not. “The children,” was what she said. He understood. He raced down into the garden and began to knock on all the doors.

How he managed it all, he was never quite sure. From doorway to doorway, from window to window he ran, waking everyone, collecting the children, shepherding them up the hill to the broad avenue and safety. There were fire engines coming now.

The flames were flickering hungrily, close to his own little home when he reached it and ran lightly up the stairs, to where she stood poised on the tiny landing.

She had taken a scarf of the same glistening, golden silky stuff as her dress, and bound it around her eyes like a blindfold. She stretched out her hands to him, and he prepared to lift her and carry her away to safety.

Perhaps, in his fear and in the urgency of the moment, he moved too quickly, too roughly—for, suddenly, the scarf came unbound and floated into his hands.

She gave him one long look, of anguish, of incomprehensible despair, of final farewell. Then she turned and, before he could move to stop her, she had gone. She seemed, in his horrified eyes, to dart, to fly, into the very heart of the flames. It was as if, having seen them, she was drawn to them as by a magnet. It was as if a moth....

Afterward, of course, they called him a hero. They made a great fuss and pother over him. There were pictures of him in the newspapers, and pictures of the children. But whenever he spoke of her, everyone looked at him kindly, even pityingly. “Shock,” they said. “Shock and the horror of the fire.”

But he could never quite accept this theory—for how did they explain the scarf he still had, the golden, glistening, gossamer scarf, that he still has to this day. The children never spoke to him of her, but, for a long time afterward, they looked at him with sad, remembering, pitying eyes. Did they know? He was never to find out. By the time he acquired the wisdom to ask them, it was too late. They were no longer children—they were merely boys and girls.