She called it the black butterfly.
It was a little metal box that Uncle Jack had given her once, when she was five or six, she couldn’t really remember. It had been a present for no real reason. Uncle Jack never needed a reason to give people things. He was always coming up to the house with boxes — bigger and smaller boxes, some butterfly shaped, others not — and saying things like ‘here, you want it?’.
And the children always wanted it, not just because they didn’t get many presents otherwise, but because everything that came from Uncle Jack was special. No matter how impressive or insignificant, they just loved it. Like magpies, they would hone in on whatever their parents got, and sometimes what the other got also, and hoard it back to their room. The children lived in a shrine, dedicated in its entirety to their Uncle.
Their parents never seemed to mind, and of course, they never actually told them, because then, their mother’d be angry. Worshiping false gods and all that. Little would she understand that it wasn’t like that. Uncle Jack was real. He was better than any god, as far as the children were concerned.
And besides, their parents never noticed. Nobody ever bothered about those two little rascals much, and money was scarce as it was, without taking them into consideration. Whatever Uncle Jack brought was pretty much all they had.
Even their beds, Uncle Jack had carved himself. Took him about a week each, what with working a full time job down at the shop an’ all.
He’d even carved a big butterfly — only a little misshapen — over her bed. She was his little white butterfly, Uncle Jack always said.
And now, a butterfly box for a butterfly girl. The box wasn’t empty either, though she didn’t show her brother that. She got the feeling she shouldn’t show anyone from the way Uncle Jack looked. Worried. Mistrustful. Perhaps a little sad.
The metal butterfly carried with it a small, silver bracelet with black stones. They were tiny, but they were more beautiful than anything the little girl had ever seen. And most important, they’d been a gift from him.
She wished she could place it atop the empty table that was reserved for extra-special-precious-things. But then, she was afraid that if their father found it, he’d sell it.
And she just knew, she’d rather go hungry than give up something from Uncle Jack.
She only ever showed her brother after both their parents were in the ground and money was no longer a problem. That night, after their mother’s funeral, she told her brother many things. She told him how she ran away once, but only for a day. It had been hot summer and she thought she might die if she had to endure one more day in the scorching heat.
Her and her brother, they always talked in the dead o’ night — how nice it’d be, to live wherever Uncle Jack lived, wherever he found all those things. It was their shared fantasy, their dream, for Uncle Jack to come up the steps once and in his arms, he’d have a couple empty boxes. And he’d tell them to pack up — but only their most valuables — and it would be hard, because they loved all his gifts dearly. And then, they’d get in his truck and go live with him instead, and never want for anything in their life.
Uncle Jack was never concerned with money, he never threatened the children or put the fear of God into them. Frankly, they didn’t think he had much of that to begin with. And their parents would be relieved to be rid of them, surely.
So, she ran away, even though they were meant to run away together. But her brother was eight then, a child, and she was eleven, not really a child anymore, but something infinitely more powerful. And she went through the house, without really knowing where she was going and she pumped out a flash of water and took the butterfly and a coat with her, ’cause it could get damn cold in the dead of night, and she left.
That night, many years later, she told her brother she was sorry, but he would’ve only slowed her down then and she didn’t want to stay there no longer.
An’ she walked for hours, except later, it turned out it had only been about a mile. And she would’ve died on the side of the road, even then, if Uncle Jack hadn’t found her. He ran out of his truck and scooped her up in his strong arms and first thing she said to him was ‘Uncle Jack, please take me with you.’
And Uncle Jack smiled, in that way he had. Worried. Mistrustful. Perhaps a little sad. And he drove her right back to her home, said he found her playing, though they both knew better. They never spoke about it and she never saw Uncle Jack after that. He just stopped coming up the driveway and the children would sit up at night, long after their folks had gone to sleep, and pray for Uncle Jack to come back to them.
‘I never knew what Uncle Jack saw in me that day, but I know it was my fault he never came again. I made him so sad.’
Her brother watches her, in silence, sitting out on the old porch, looking up at the night sky. And he doesn’t say nothing to contradict her, because really, he blames her, too. And he watches as a little black butterfly, almost invisible against the night sky, flies to her and sits on her outstretched hand.
‘He just comes to say hello sometimes.’
