Butterfly Dust

Long blades of grass moved around her, bent down by the warm summer wind. Dandelion seeds got chaught in her long hair as she knelt in the middle of the meadow. The girl glanced up at the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky. She seemed to be waiting for something.
Theo tooks a few further steps towards her. He had never seen her before; maybe she was a guest for the holidays or had just moved here. Either way, she was the only possible playmate he had at the moment because all his friends had left for summer vacation the minute school was out.
Very slowly, the girl raised a pale hand and held something out above her head. The sunlight glittered on the surface and little spots of light danced across the meadow – a jar. It was a big preserving jar, the kind Theo's grandmother used for her jam and jelly. The girl held it absolutely still, the opening towards the sky. She didn't move even as Theo came to stand right behind her.
"What are you doing?", he asked.
The girl didn't answer. She didn't even look up. But just as Theo was about to touch her shoulder to get her attention, she suddenly shot to her feet. With one swift motion she slammed the lid on her preserving jar, twisted it shut and spun around to face Theo. Surprised, he stumbled a step backwards.
"Hello," said the girl softly. She tilted her head slightly and glanced up at him with the lightest gray eyes he had ever seen. The iris was almost transparent, like a trace of morning fog. A small smile spread on her lips.
"I'm Aisa."
"Theo."
For some reason his cheeks started burning. The way she looked at him made him nervous. He didn't know what to say, and so he repeated his original question.
"What were you doing with that jar?"
Aisa half closed her eyelids over the bright eyes and her smile grew just a bit. Now she wasn't looking at Theo anymore but instead she turned her eyes on the jar, which she clutched with both hands. It was empty.
"I catch dreams."
Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, but the wind carried the words to Theo's ears. Still, he wasn't quite sure whether he had understood correctly.
"Dreams?", he echoed.
Aisa nodded, ever so slightly. "Dreams, wishes, fantasies... Now, in the summer, there are especially many – of travels and far-away places, of new friends or a summer love... and all of them are so colorful, so pretty. Like butterflies."
For a single heartbeat, her eyes locked with Theo's. Her hands moved across the smooth, cool, empty glass of her jar.
"Look,", she said. And where there had been nothing but the glitter of reflected sunlight before, a butterfly appeared. It was a Small Tortoiseshell  with orange-black wings that fluttered against the walls of its see-through prison again and again. Theo stared at it in utter disbelieve.
"How did you do that?", he asked the girl.
"Your dream," she said without giving a direct answer, still watching the captured butterfly. "Your dream was to travel like all your friends instead of visiting your grandmother like every year. You wanted to go on an adventure, to be an explorer."
Theo opened his mouth, then closed it. No sound came out. How did she know that?
A moment later, a realization hit him. Was, she had said. Wanted. If she knew how much he yearned for an exciting journey, why did she speak in the past?
He was just about to tell her that he still hoped for his parents to decide on a real vacation, and that he would certainly never stop to do so. He had already imagined all the adventures waiting for him in foreign countries hundreds of times – but all of a sudden, he found that the vibrant colors of this dream had disappeared. He thought of his friends on their travels, yet at the same time he realized that he truly didn't care what they experienced on their journeys. He tried to picture himself in their place, but the image of the big adventurer was gone. Why had he been so unhappy with visiting his grandmother? Why had he wanted to go out and discover the world? It didn't matter anymore.
Aisa gave Theo a smile he couldn't read. The butterfly sank down to the bottom of the jar. Its wings twitched weakly one last time, then it lay completely lifeless.

***

The summer heat weighed heavily on him; now, at night, even more so than during the day. Theo had already dispatched of his blanket, which now formed a crumpled heap on the floor, but still he was sweating all over. It felt as if the warm, moist air pressed on his lungs instead of filling them. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed two in the morning.
As soundlessly as possible Theo put his feet to the floor and got up from his bed. He listened for the sounds of the house and heard his father's gentle snoring from the room next door. On tiptoes, he moved to the door and peered out into the hall. It was dark; even the bathroom where his mother had been packing for the trip to Theo's grandmother a few hours earlier was deserted.  He quickly walked down the hall and down the stairs, slipped his feet into his shoes and went outside. Nightly walks were his cure when he couldn't fall asleep. In the complete dark, even the backyard and the streets of his small home town could be the setting for adventures.
The house stood all the way at the back of a dead end street. From there, only a small path lead into the forest and to an old, deserted hut. Theo and his friends sometimes played there and pretended to be the first settlers in a far-away, wild place. Now a weak light shimmered from the hut through the trees, as if someone had lit a lamp inside. Theo squinted into the dark of the forest. No doubt. There was light in the deserted hut.
Suddenly, his heartbeat picked up in pace. His feet carried him to the narrow, weed-covered path and toward the flickering light as if they had a will of their own. The light's source had to be a fire, unsteady as it was – if he told that to his friends! Only a quick glance through the window to see what a strange person would put up a fire in the hut at this hour, and he would have the story of the summer.
At the edge of the clearing that surrounded the slowly decaying hut, Theo came to a halt. A few fireflies soundlessly hovered back and forth between the trees, but other then that nothing moved. Heavy silence lay on the forest and the hut. As quietly as possible Theo tiptoed over to the brightly lit window and peered inside. There were flames indeed, but there was not a single big fire. Instead, hundreds of candles were placed everywhere in the hut; on the floor, the table in the middle of the room, the window still. Between them stood large preserving jars. Reflections of flickering flames danced on their surface and conveyed an impression of steady movement. In the glasses Theo noticed small, dark objects but he could not tell what they were. Asides from the jars and the candles, the hut was empty; there was no one to be seen inside.
Very, very carefully, Theo crept alongside the wooden wall towards the door. It wasn't locked and swung open with a soft creak when he pushed against it. He could hear the blood pulsing in his ears. Like a sleepwalker he stepped into the small room, into the warm candle light. Slowly, Theo passed the candles and the jars, following a small pathway that lead to the table. Now he could see what was inside the preserving jars – tiny, broken, lifeless bodies. Butterflies. The light caught on their wings and made them glint in all shades and colors, even though they were so obviously dead. At the edge of the table, right in front of him, was the butterfly Aisa had caught this afternoon; the Small Tortoiseshell.
Dreams, she had said. Suddenly Theo felt a cold breeze on his neck, despite the warmth of the summer night and the heat coming from the countless candles. The butterfly in the jar seemed to whisper to Theo. Something pulled him towards it and made him pick it up. It felt as though he had found something he hadn't even been looking for. Something he had lost and forgotten.
"That's my dream", hissed a voice at his back. Aisa rushed through the hut, her long dress fluttering and the draft extinguished the candles left and right. Suddenly she was directly in front of Theo, surrounded by darkness, and stared at him with wide, piercing eyes. The gray iris was almost invisible in the half light; her eyes seemed completely empty except for the black pupils. Theo pressed the butterfly jar to his chest and tried to back off, but the table blocked his way.
„Give it back!", Aisa demanded and her voice sounded like breaking glass. Her face was twisted with rage. From one moment to the next, she bore almost no resemblance with the girl he had met on the meadow. She looked scary.
„It's mine!", she shrieked. With a swift move she threw herself at Theo and tried to pry the jar from his fingers. He let himself drop to the floor and hit the ground hard. Jars burst underneath his body and flames singed his skin before they died, but Theo hardly noticed. All he saw was Aisa; Aisa who screamed and screamed without forming words. She was on her knees, sorting the butterflies from the shards of broken glass. Deep cuts covered her hands already.
After a while the blood-curdling screams ceased and turned into a weak, helpless whimper. "They're disappearing." Tears mixed with the blood on the floor. "They're disappearing..."
And Aisa was right – the butterflies were disintegrating. The colorful wings crumbled to gray dust between her shaking fingers.
Theo sat with his back to the wall, frozen in place, and watched Aisa's futile attempts to hold the butterflies with growing shock. He was still clutching the jar with the Small Tortoiseshell. He glanced down at the butterfly and tried to understand why he wanted to save it so badly. He knew that it was a dream – his dream – but only now he began to remember what it had meant to him. The captured butterfly twitched.
A thought shot through Theo's mind. It was the image of a far-away place holding secrets for him to discover. The butterfly's thin legs tapped the bottom of the jar slipped and slipped on the smooth glass. Yet it didn't give up.  
Finally, it came back to Theo. For a single heartbeat, reflections moved across the jar's surface; shadows of things that were not in the room, but still seemed familiar. There were white beaches with palm trees, mountains and canyons, the deep green of the rain forest. All the adventures Theo had dreamed of. The dream had returned to him, and the butterfly in its glass prison stretched its wings.
Aisa had grown very quiet. Her eyes had glazed over and though she was staring at the broken jars in front of her, she didn't seem to see anything. The blood from her hands drenched her light dress and dark shadows lay on her face.  
"My dreams," she whispered. "My beautiful dreams..."
"But... those weren't really your dreams, were they?", Theo asked. A part of him urged him to get up and run as long as he could, but another part of him suddenly felt sorry for the girl. She looked incredibly fragile, kneeling on the floor surrounded by broken glass and the dust of her dreams.
She glanced up at him as he spoke, but still her gaze appeared unsteady and distant. It flickered from his face to his hands, finally fixing on the jar holding the dream butterfly.
"I wanted to have a dream, too," Aisa said. "Everyone has something to dream of. Some people even have a whole lot of dreams. But I... I don't. I can't even remember what the word means. All I have is the emptiness where my dreams should have been... and all I can wish for is to fill that emptiness somehow."
"That's why you... stole the dreams?"
She nodded but her mind still seemed absent. "Most people don't even know how valuable their dreams are. They don't even notice when I take them. If you hadn't come here..."
Her voice faded away. Theo feared that she would get angry again but all her energy seemed to have vanished. Very slowly so that it wouldn't startle her, he got up and walked out of the hut. He gazed back at Aisa several times. Just as he reached the door she got up, yet she didn't follow him. Instead she began to touch the jars that weren't broken, one after the other, as if to make sure that they were still there.
"Stolen dreams. My dreams, but all dead..." Her voice carried through the darkness, barely audible. Outside the hut, They stopped once more. He looked down at the jar in his hands. He hesitated, then turned the lid. The small butterfly, his dream rose from its prison and danced around him. Theo extended his hand and let it land on his finger. Like the others before, this dream began to lose its physical shape. But instead of decaying into gray ash, it turned into glittering stardust.
Theo had made his decision.
"Fly to Aisa,", he said to the butterfly, just before it could disappear all together. "She shall have her own, living dream, too."
The butterfly left his finger. Its wings glowed silver in front of the star covered sky, and it became one with the summer night. In the hut, one candle after the other died down. Aisa vanished together with her dream.

***

From the platform of the train station, a girl with unusual bright gray eyes was watching Theo. She was all alone, without parents or anyone else. Travelers moved around her and shuffled past, but no one paid her any attention. Theo saw her for only one short moment, then the train doors closed between them. Nonetheless he was sure that he'd recognized her – Aisa, who thanked him without words. She was gone when he glanced down at the platform again after he had taken his seat next to his parents. He still didn't know where the dreamless girl had come from, or where she was going from here. But he was absolutely certain that she would not return to steal other people's dreams again.  
Rumbling and hissing the train began to move. Theo smiled to himself. He wasn't sorry for the dream he had given away. After what he had experienced last night, he'd be quite happy with a normal, quiet summer at his grandmother's house. It would take some time for him to dream of travels and adventures yet again.