Lightning’s yellow and orange stripes shot down his wings in a jagged pattern. Their pointy design scared enemies, but it didn’t help the young butterfly make friends. Lightning always flew alone.
Lightning looked across the tall lizard-green field to where his sister Sassy sipped from a buttercup. “Her stripes are as soft and beautiful as that flower. Maybe that’s why that gleaming butterfly, Shiny, visits her everyday. I wish my stripes didn’t look so scary,” Lightning thought.
His mom, the lemon-striped, Sunlight, was always surrounded by a cluster
of friends. His father, Thunder whose stripes were as dark as a stormy
sky had more friends that Lightning could count.
These thoughts buzzed in Lightning’s head as the gentle wind sang a drowsy
lullaby. Then Lightning heard a different sound. It was a dreaded
sound, a whispering swish-swish that every butterfly knew. Lightning peered
through the tall grasses and saw a boy swinging a net.
“Dad,” Lightning called out. But it was too late. Before Lightning
could move, the boy had captured every member of his family. Lightning
could see that they had no chance of escaping.
“Help us, Lightning,” Sassy called as she bounced around in the net. Lightning
darted between blades of grass, keeping the boy in sight. Finally they
crossed the field and came to a large purple house with black shutters. The
boy opened the front door, zoomed inside and slammed it shut.
Lightning circled the house, peeking in each window until he saw the boy
standing over an open jar. Lightning watched as the boy shook his butterfly
family into the jar and screwed the lid tight.
“He’s so big. And so loud!” Lightning thought as the boy sang and danced
around his room. Then Lightning heard a growl from deep inside the house. “Braxto,
come now!” it said in a voice that was even louder than the boy’s. Braxto
yelled back, his voice as noisy as a hornet’s swarm, “I’m coming, Mom!” He
stomped across his room and banged the door shut. As Lightning stared
straight ahead, he noticed a tiny tear in the screen that blocked the entrance
to the boy’s house.
Lightning zipped through the hole and right up to the jar that held his frantic
family. He pressed close to the glass and heard Sassy gasp, “I can barely
breathe in here.” Sunlight’s bright wings beat like a hummingbird’s and
Thunder’s great dark wings crashed into the side of the jar again and again.
Lightning tried to joke to make his family feel better. “You’re lucky
you can’t smell that boy’s stinky socks. He hasn’t cleaned his room in
a year. It looks like a junkyard and smells like one, too!” On the
wall, Lightning saw the huge net hung on a nail and underneath it, ten or more
jars, lined up like small prisons waiting for captured butterflies. “I’m
going to save you,” he promised.
“Be careful,” Sunlight warned, “He’s so big! What can you do?”
“I’ll think of something,” Lightning promised and flew away before the boy
could return. He returned after dark and squeezed through the rough sharp
hole in the screen. While the boy snored like a whole hive of bees, Lightning
flew to the jar that held his family and peered through the glass. Sassy’s
wings sagged, Sunlight had sunk to the bottom of the jar while Thunder’s
flapping wings still pounded against the glass.
“I’m here to save you!” Lightning called and strained to push the jar
off the table where it stood. It didn’t move an inch. He tried again
and again, but it wouldn’t budge. “I’m not giving up, I’ll be back,” Lightning
called.
He flew directly to the middle of the butterflies’ favorite garden. “My
family’s dying and I seriously need your help,” Lightning began and described
the terrible situation.
“Why should we help you?” said a thin-winged butterfly named Blade.
“Yeah, you never helped us before. You always look so mad and mean,” said
a butterfly named Boomerang who zigzagged back and forth in the shadowy sky. “You
look scary!”
Lightning thought how scary Braxto looked to him. “Please,” he cried, “You’ve
got to help me. I can’t save them by myself.”
“Wow! He’s not mean like we thought,” said the gleaming Shiny.
“Let’s help him,” said a pale green butterfly named Lucky. “I’ll be
we can get others to help you, too, Lightning.”
An hour later,
thousands of butterflies gathered outside the boy’s window. One by one
they pushed through the screen. They fluttered around the jar holding Lightning’s
family, their tiny wings striking the glass, until the sound woke Braxto.
Braxto jumped out of bed and froze, staring as the butterflies flew up in
a great swarm of colors. Red, blue and yellow swirled around in an arc
of tiny wings. “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” the boy whispered,
“It’s a living rainbow.”
“I’ve got to save my family. They’re almost out of air,” Lightning said
and flew from the boy’s face to the jar, then back again waving his angry-looking
wings in a frantic dance.
Braxto looked at Lightning curiously. “Are you trying to rescue
your family?” he asked, pointing to the jar. Braxto stared at Lightning
and then one more time at the cloud of butterflies who circled his room. He
sighed, picked up the jar, walked to the window, pushed the screen aside and
twisted the lid until it came off. Then he tipped the jar gently.
Sassy, Sunlight and Thunder soared into the warm summer night. Then the boy stepped away from the window to let the giant cloud of butterflies follow them. Right in front was Lightning, proudly leading the rest of his butterfly friends in flight.
A story written with After School Students at Haw River School in Graham, NC with Susie Wilde