The Butterfly Forest

TEN

Luke Palmer warmed up a can of beans over an open fire. It had been more than a week since the drums stopped. He stared at the yellow flames and thought about the first night he heard the drums. It was his first night in the forest. He wondered if the girl and her commune had moved on to some other desolate place. He thought about her smile, brighter than the moon that dark night.

He ducked under a low-hanging limb, pushed through Spanish moss, and walked toward the drumbeats in the distance. Mosquitoes followed him, buzzing in his ears, biting at his exposed forearms and neck.

Within fifteen minutes, he’d reach the site. A few dozen old cars and vans were parked in a small field off one of the dirt roads. Palmer hid in the shadow of trees under a bold moon and watched as people moved in and around the parked cars. The scent of burning marijuana caught his nostrils. He saw the tiny moving orange dots as the pot was passed among two women and one man.

He crept closer to the sounds of the drums and chanting. Moving behind the underbrush, Palmer pulled back branches and looked out onto a small meadow area. At least fifty people sat around a bonfire. Some chanted. Some danced. One man in a white robe played a guitar. They all looked like they needed a good meal, he thought. Skinny hippie kids out here in no man’s land.

Palmer was intrigued with the costumes some of them wore. Girls dressed in wings, like little angels. The guys wearing masks, black and white, green faces, some wore horns, like the pictures of warlocks he’d seen.

A tall, lean man in a black robe climbed on a wooden box and began speaking, the chants ended and the drumbeats slowed to a steady pulse.

“Brothers and sisters,” said the man, eyes scanning the crowd. Even from the distance of at least one hundred feet, Palmer could see the firelight reflecting in the man’s wide eyes. “My angels of Eden,” began the man again, pointing to a half dozen women who moved to the beat of the drum. “From ancient Nordic times, this night is sacred. It’s the zenith in the crossroads of time and space… a night special beyond all the rest. Why? Because this is the night of the mystic movement of the heavens — the trek of planet earth on a southern journey. It’s the long day when we earthly creatures must move in sync with the pendulum that swings to its fullest arc this night.”

Someone standing to the far right of the crowd caught Palmer’s eye. A man, someone who seemed to be older than the majority of these kids, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans. He stood alone. Watching. Palmer had seen the stance, the look of the assassin many times in the prison yard. This man moved no different. He seemed to survey the crowd, and then work his way toward a table where food and drink was laid out. Palmer watched the man approach one of the girls dressed like an angel.

Palmer wanted to walk up to them and ask where a fella could get a thick steak on a night like tonight. We’re all fuckin’ carnivores, some have sharper and more deadly teeth, he thought. And Luke Palmer knew that the man talking with the girls was a lone wolf among sheep.

He watched the celebrations for another minute, said to hell with it. He could tell everyone was smokin’ and tokin,’ some drinking something from the bowl in the center of the table. God knows what’s mixed in that shit. People chanting. Dancing. Crying.

He turned and walked back toward his camp, walked through the clearing near the cars when a woman came out from behind a tree. “I saw you go in there,” she said, her voice soft as the moonlight falling around her shoulders.

Palmer looked at her, more curious than anything. She wore the angel wings, too. Her blond hair braided and up, her long dress was the color of vanilla, and she had a yellow wildflower behind one ear.

“Well, now you see me leaving,” Palmer said.

“You think we’re odd. Maybe some kind of freaks.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just didn’t speak it.” She smiled, dimples showing. “It’s okay. This is the celebration of St. Johns. A midsummer’s night dance with the little people.”

Palmer said nothing. He hadn’t had a lot of practice talking with women in the last forty years, and tonight he was totally speechless.

“I’m calling you Night Raven,” the girl smiled. “Because I think you have the wisdom of the raven. You feel comfortable at night. You’re free to live your dreams here, away from a spirit that’s been cooped up with things that you didn’t ask for.”

“I’ve had more than my spirit cooped up. What’s your name?”

“Evening Star, can’t you tell?” The smile was brighter than the moon over her right shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess I can, now that you mentioned it.”

She licked her thumb, knelt down, and placed her thumb in the dirt. Then she stood and reached up to Palmer’s forehead. He didn’t resist as she pressed her thumb on the center of his forehead. “There, Night Raven, you are of this earth… forever.”

Palmer shook his head. “Look, you’re a sweet kid. I’ve kinda missed a few generations in my life. Or maybe nothing’s changed since I was locked up way before you were born. A thing that hasn’t changed is bad in some people. Be careful out here.”

“That can’t touch us on this night.” She smiled and looked at the moon.

“That can always touch you, even when you don’t know it. Just be aware.”

“When was the last time you were hugged?”

“Huh?”

“Hugged.”

“Hugged?”

“That’s what I thought.” She leaned in and put her arms around him. “You can hug me, too.”

Palmer slowly placed his arms on her back, finding a spot between the wings.

“There,” she said, ending the embrace. “You are loved, Night Raven.” She turned to leave, walking toward the crowd in the meadow, the singing, the drums, the glow of the bonfire, almost floating like a winged moth to a flame where evil circled just outside the firelight.