A butterfly swarm

by DRM


When I still believed in fairies, I walked alone up a moun­tain in the west of Ire­land, the bog slip­ping away as I pushed along a faint trail past a hid­den lake and beyond a stony ridge.

I believed I was some­one who walked alone in the wild, but I wasn’t. I was in a fevered state. I was short of breath. My mind was rac­ing. There was some girl I longed for but couldn’t talk to. There was a group that I wanted to be part of but couldn’t get com­fort­able with. There were things that tore at my heart, they were so loud and clear-sounding, but I couldn’t get them said.

A bag was slung across my chest. It held my flute, my note­book, a chunk of ched­dar cheese, a round of bread, a choco­late bar and some water. The worn can­vas of the belt chafed against my neck.

After a while, I came to a bowl in the hill. The rocks dipped down into a bril­liant green can­vas. The heather was bloom­ing and strong. But­ter­cups swayed in grassy patches. The sun slipped in over the ridge. The walls of the bowl were cov­ered in shadow.

This was a place, I thought.

I slipped and scur­ried down the side, set­tled myself on a broad rock. I crossed my legs, sore from the walk, not really very lim­ber at all anyway.

When I played my flute, the sound echoed and danced.

Then I was in the mid­dle of a vision of white. A swarm of but­ter­flies danced around me like white­caps on a bay. There were hun­dreds, bounc­ing up and down in the slight breeze.

What I saw looked like a loud sound, but I was sur­rounded by silence. My mind roared. I didn’t know who I was. Was this a sign from God, a gift from the fairies, a moment of truth? I looked around for some­thing else, my flute just apart from my lips, small beads of con­den­sa­tion on the sil­ver mouthpiece.

The wind rushed and car­ried the frag­ile flock away. The sun skipped and the air cooled.

I made my way back out of the hills onto the bogs and walked a quiet road into a lit­tle town. In the first pub I came to, I sat with a pint and wrote in my notebook.

“The sto­ries have it that the fairies will travel across the bogs and into the hills in flocks of gen­tle white but­ter­flies,” I wrote.

I made that up because I wanted it to be true.

What was true was that my long­ing drew shad­ows over my eyes. I was blinded by dis­con­tent. I believed that there was one true answer out­side of me — true love, true friend, true faith — when in truth, that answer lay inside of me, a true accep­tance of my own jour­ney. It would be many years before I would understand.

Sit­ting in that pub, I waited for some­thing to hap­pen. I watched the men drink and talk. I waited for some­one to say some­thing to me. No one did. I drank in silence and then headed out into the night to find some­where to sleep.

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