Butterfly Garden

by Annette Blair

  Sara shivered and pulled her cape tight. If she had brought the big buggy, she would be able to climb in the back and lie down. As it was, she had no choice but to sit there with the snow hitting her in the face. She’d been better off before this foolish half-turn; at least she had been protected from the snow driving into her face.

  She looked at that far stand of trees and thought perhaps a house sat behind or within its shelter. It was worth a try and didn’t seem too far to walk.

  Sara climbed down, again, and began her trek into the teeth of the wind. The snow felt somehow deeper, colder now. Her cape, dragging heavily behind her, became more hindrance than protection, so she unfastened it and let it fall, giving herself a freedom of movement. Lifting her skirts to keep them from bogging her down, Sara was able to move at a more satisfactory pace.

  A long time passed before she reached the trees, and once she was there, the distance around them appeared to be much farther than she expected. She decided to cut through, but, up close, what had seemed a small grouping of trees resembled a forest.

  Within its bower, the light of the moon became obscured, and Sara walked a dark path, frightened at first, except that she felt warmer than when she’d walked in the open amid the snow and wind.

  When she saw the clearing up ahead, she thought it might be part of someone’s yard and practically ran, until the ground cracked, shifted and fell from beneath her.

  * * * * *

  Adam’s horses turned in time to escape disaster. His buggy did not.

  He used his horses, along with Sara’s new chestnut, to carry the farmer and his wife—injured before he arrived upon the scene of their accident—and their children, back to their nearby farm. He refused the grateful family’s offer of shelter for the rest of the night. The man’s horse was suffering and needed to be put down, which they silently agreed not to do in front of the children, and Adam wanted to get home, for more than the obvious reasons. He could not define, even in his own mind, the obscure disquiet compelling him to continue on. He knew only that he must.

  To keep his horses safe, he left them with the farmer and his family and went to put down the man’s horse. Then he began the long walk home. It was hard going, but at least his leg no longer pained him. The deep snow soothed the ache in his thigh, considerably. Funny, the Mennonite wife thought heat would help it, but cold actually did. Or it numbed it. Either way, it felt better than it had in days.

  As Adam finally approached his farm, he saw lights on in the kitchen, the best room too. Sara must be worried he was so late. Knowing her, she would be pacing. He wasn’t certain how he felt about that, except that maybe it was a good thing. He could use her soothing hand on his brow about now. In a few other places, too, her hand would be welcome.

  The thought cheered him, until the kitchen door flew open, and his mother, Emma behind her, came running out. Emma stopped when she saw him. His mother stopped too, nearer though, near enough that Adam thought she might have wanted to throw her arms around him. For a minute he was disappointed.

  “Where have you been?” she asked on a rush. “Where is your buggy; we’ve been worried sick.” Not one breath did she take.

  Adam looked at his sister. “You mean you have been worried,” he told his mother, shaking his head with regret as he watched Emma back up a step for each he took toward the house.

  “Nein, nein,” his mother said, waving him onward. “Emma worries about you too.”

  His sister froze in place when she heard that.

  Adam hated to frighten her further, so he stopped, as well.

  His mother scolded Emma and told her to move, distressing her, and Adam experienced, even now, his old need to protect her. He swore and took a wide birth around her, so she could do as she pleased with no fear of him. He was too damned tired to be stubborn about it. He needed to sit down and—

  He stopped. His mother was so close behind, she walked into him. “Go, go inside,” she said. “You’ll catch your death.”

  He stood stock still. “Where is Sara?”

  “I do not talk until you go inside, sit down, and drink dandelion wine.”

  Adam wanted to swear, but he did as he was told, instead. And while he did, it occurred to him that, for all the woman hadn’t mothered him for years, she sure took to it easy enough. She was treating him and his sister exactly the same as she used to. And for some foolish reason, it warmed him.

  Sara was not in the kitchen, their room either. He went to the bottom of the enclosed stairway, looked up, and knew he did not have the strength to climb half-way up. Besides, he knew she was up there.

  He had hurt her this morning and she had decided she was sleeping with the girls. Well, let her get a bad night’s sleep, then she’d come crawling back, where she belonged.

  He went and sat in the kitchen rocker, which his mother placed before the fire. He lay his head back. He should tell her he was too hot to sit near a fire, but he was too tired to speak. A cup of something warm was placed in his hand. He opened his eyes to see her looking down on him with worry. Talk about a trip back in time. “Yes,” he sighed. “Again, bruises.”

  She nodded, her eyes bleak. “Your buggy?”

  He drank the wine. It tasted good and warmed his frozen parts. “Gone. Turned over. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

  “And you, just bruises?”

  “Snow’s soft. Felt good.”

  His mother frowned and placed her palm against his check. “Ya, as I thought. You have fever. Burning up, you are.”

  “Sara will fix it.” For all the hand on his brow belonged to the wrong woman, it soothed just the same, and he was too tired to fight it.

  “Sara is not here.”

  His mother’s words opened Adam’s eyes.

  “She never came back.”

  Chapter 12

  That fast, every part of Adam, body and mind, surged with life as he shot to his feet. “Sara is not back from where?” The shout sent his sister skittering out into the snowy night.

  “Get her back in here, damn it.” Adam followed his mother outside to find Emma standing in the yard, a distance away, her arms around herself.

  Worried she’d run farther, he could think of only one thing that would get her attention. “Sara may be hurt. Come inside so I can go and get Sara, instead of chasing you.”

  Emma hesitated but started toward the house, slowing when she got near. Then she raised her chin and walked a half-circle around him.

  “Good girl,” he said, loud enough for her to hear.

  She faltered, but kept going.

  “She trusts you will put Sara first,” his mother said. “It’s a beginning, son.”

  “Do not call me son.” Adam wished he’d turned away before hurt dimmed his mother’s eyes. Son was the boy who was cowed and belittled. Son is what the monster who sired him called him. Perhaps, someday, he would explain that to his mother, without hurt on either side. “Call me Adam. Come into the barn and tell me where Sara went while I hitch up your buggy.”

  Adam was ready to go in no time, his mother predicting he’d kill himself going off with such a fever, even as she placed a jar of dandelion wine on the seat beside him. “For medicine.”

  All he could think about were the directions she gave him and the places along the way where Sara might stop for shelter. But panic soon became his companion. No one along the route had seen her, though they all said they’d pray for her. One foolish woman went so far as to urge a lantern and matches into his hand. “For guidance and warmth,” she said. “Just for maybe.”

  His mother’s buggy horse was a prime goer and the wheels on her buggy were wide, better in the snow than the one he’d lost earlier. Still, before long, the snow was so deep, he was forced to abandon the buggy and continue on foot. He left his mother’s horse, the lantern and matches in a lean-to beside an empty shack where he abandoned his last real hope of finding Sara sheltered and warm.

  Who was he fooling? He hoped to find Sara
safe behind every tree.

  How tired he had been standing at the bottom of the stairs just hours ago, too tired to raise his foot to the first tread, let alone ascend. Now, here he was trudging through the snow, strong as anything.

  “For Sara,” he said louder. She had come to mean so much to the children. What if he—they lost her? How could they go on, if—

  “For the children,” he cried. “Because she is the closest to good ever happened to them.” And to me, he did not say, for he would not tempt fate with another opportunity to do damage in his name.

  Sara mattered to his mother and sister too. Already, they loved her, and she, them.

  For every one of them, he needed to find her, keep her safe. And for Sara, herself, who had so much life to give.

  He had seen the good she could do as a midwife, first-hand, though he’d not said so that day, nor the next, because he was still angry about the way he found her and The English.

  He should have told her how well he thought she did, that he was proud of her, though pride was frowned upon by their people.

  “For Sara,” he said looking up. “And for the children she would bring into Your world, Lord.” He regarded the black starry sky, vast, the stairway to a place he often doubted existed. “For Sara. Please.”

  “He said it, over and over, in a prayer-song that gave him strength and kept him moving. “For Sara.” In time, he said it more loudly, more quickly. With the words, his pace became swifter and his heart brighter with hope ... until he saw her buggy, abandoned, belly-deep in snow, her horse down. Dead, he saw when he got close.

  Poor Old Joe.

  An hour ago, he knew exactly how that horse must have felt before it fell. Not now, though. He wasn’t weak or cold now. Right now, he felt almost as strong as Sara usually appeared.

  He’d been right, her horse had been too old and weak to stand the cold. Damn, he should have replaced it sooner. If he put Sara in danger….

  Adam shook the thought away. Such thoughts could be defeating, dangerous, buckling-the-knees and giving-up dangerous. He must stay positive, so he could keep going, no matter what.

  He walked around the buggy and saw, immediately, where the snow had been disturbed by someone trudging through it. Even though the later snowfall had smoothed it somewhat, the trail remained lumpy enough to follow, thank God.

  Almost at once, he came upon a half-buried cape, and swore, hope dimming by vast degrees. Without protection from the elements, Sara would not have to go far to be in trouble. Stubborn woman. Foolish woman. Wandering off, getting herself lost.

  Adam looked again at the heavens and doubted, as had often happened in his sorry life, the existence of anything beyond what could be seen and heard. Then, just in case, he whispered, “Please.”

  When he’d seen that old settler’s shack earlier, he thought surely she was there, but no recent step had marred the thick dust on its raw-plank floor. He almost wished now that he’d started a fire in the old stone fireplace, ‘just for maybe,’ like the old woman said. Course he might have burned the place down, and that would help no one, Sara least of all.

  Cursing, Adam grabbed the cape, shook as much snow off as possible, and continued to follow the trail that must be hers.

  Once he entered the stand of trees to which her tracks had led, he found it hard to locate any further sign of disturbance and wandered around for a bit before he picked up a trail again.

  When he saw a clearing in the distance, he hoped for a homestead, a family and a welcoming fire, where Sara waited for him.

  He hoped she’d know he would come for her, then wondered if he had ever given her any reason to believe in him.

  “Best stick to the problems at hand,” he said to keep the should-haves crowding his mind from driving him madder than usual.

  If there were a house, and if Sara were inside, then soon her hand might graze his forehead, hers, finally. For the rest of tonight, they might share a daybed in a stranger’s kitchen. If so—Lord, let it be so—he would not let her go all night.

  He began to walk faster than he imagined possible, given the condition of his leg, so fast, he damned near stepped over the snow-covered lump in his path. But a sudden sense of awareness made him stoop down to investigate, which cost him mightily.

  Rather than pressed leaves over hard earth, Adam felt, beneath his palm, a soft trace of warmth, barely a trace. Apprehension made his hands shake and his head and belly sick as he dug out and turned the form.

  An iron fist shoved through his chest and gripped his heart.

  Sara lay at the edge of a pond, the part of her still in the water surrounded by a thin veneer of ice. If he’d stepped over her, he would have broken through and been no use to her.

  The iron fist squeezed hard. When Sara failed to respond to his call, it got a grip on his lungs as well. Her face, her lips, were as blue as her legs. The skirt of her dress had frozen to the ice. Adam ripped it and left it to the elements claiming it ... but they could not have Sara.

  Once she was free and in his arms, he could not discern the rise and fall of her chest. His shaking hands and escalating panic hampered his progress as he tried to wrap his greatcoat and her cape tight around her. As he carried her back toward his buggy, he sensed that she was no longer inside herself. It frightened Adam more than he could afford to acknowledge.

  Despite his determination to hold steady and remain strong, something fierce and ugly tried to claw its heaving way up from a place so deep inside him, Adam had not known it existed. Though it pained him more than dying must, he feared letting it out ... yet holding back was useless.

  His howl, when it came, sounded inhuman, feral, even to him, but stopping was beyond him. Anyone in hearing distance would expire of fright or come running.

  No one came and Sara never woke.

  It was too late.

  Adam Zuckerman, heart pounding, fever raging, sure now that he was as mad as everyone claimed, hugged his burden to his heart and raised his face to the stars.

  “Just this once,” he raged. “Could you not have listened, just once!” He pulled Sara’s icy face into his neck and shouted as he walked. He made so many promises—to Sara, to God—he’d have a parcel of work to do fulfilling them all—if only he would be given the chance.

  Impossible as it seemed, hope walked beside him. Pain too, but that had been with him for a long time. The pain, he ignored. But hope, now that was another story. Where had that come from?

  He’d felt nothing like since ... since he was four, almost five years old, at a time when he believed his mother would be there forever. He remembered the hope, because it was probably the last time he experienced it ... until now.

  He’d found a missing calf in a snowstorm and wanted it to be alive. He was too young and stupid to accept death, he supposed. He’d wrapped it in a blanket and held it close to his body, to warm it while he carried it to the barn, the way he carried Sara now.

  He entered the clearing, the woods behind him now, and made for Sara’s buggy. He took the extra blankets from behind her seat and wrapped her again. He even took the blanket from her dead horse’s back and threw it over his shoulder. If he could get her to that shack and start a fire, he’d lay it out to dry. Sara might need it later.

  He thought of that calf again. He’d brought it to its lowing mother and right away she’d begun to wash it. He remembered how happy he was, because she would have ignored it, if it was dead. It was too weak to nurse so he’d gone into the house to warm some milk, which he practically poured down the hungry mite’s throat.

  The calf had opened its eyes. It had even begun to move a bit on its own, until his father had come out of nowhere and gave it a kick. He laughed at his “weakling son’s” tears over a dead animal and tossed the calf on the heap behind the barn, like so much garbage. “No use wasting energy on a lost cause,” the bastard had said.

  Adam remembered when his mother found him crying. Her hand on his brow had felt as good tonight as all tho
se years ago. She offered hope when she placed that jar of warm dandelion wine beside him “for medicine.”

  He stopped. Damn, he’d left the wine in the buggy and that was farther away than the shack. He looked to the heavens and started walking again. He would get Sara to the shack, warm her, then fetch the wine.

  One thing he’d learned since that day with the calf; there were no lost causes. Oddly enough, it was the woman in his arms who taught him to believe that again, and not so very long ago.

  If they made it to the shack ... no, when they made it, after he got a fire started, he’d get Sara out of her wet clothes and wrap her in blankets. He’d leave her by the fire while he went for the wine. Then he’d pour it down her throat, by God.

  After what seemed like hours, during which Adam feared he’d lost his way, he was surprised to see, through the veil of snow surrounding them, that foolish yellow buggy, like a beacon lighting his way, for the shack stood somewhere between them and the buggy, not as far away as he thought.

  Hating to let Sara go, even for a minute, he lay her down on the floor of the shack, before the cold hearth, but not without rubbing her limbs through the blankets, hoping, hoping to revive her by rubbing some warmth into her.

  She failed to stir. She barely breathed … if at all.

  Wiping his eyes, he got up and set to work on the fire. Broken furniture lay scattered about. Even the sound of him breaking it up failed to rouse Sara. A rotting old wagon in the lean-to had crumbled when he kicked it aside to make room for his mother’s horse. He went and fetched the wood from that.

  Given dry kindling, the fire started right away. Adam lit the lantern and brought it close to examine Sara. White face, blue lips. He buried the sob that rose in him and set to work. “I will not give up on you, Sara. No more than you gave up on me. I will not.”

  He hated that he could not strip her until the room warmed, so he wrapped her with another blanket. Though he hated as much to leave her, he needed to fetch the wine.