by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Paw Prints Beyond the Moon, July 2024
Warm air, sun-dappled pink tea roses, and the drowsy hum of bees melted away the cold from outer space that chilled the Time Tortoise. He had hidden inside his shell, wrapped in his silken robe, and watched the spiral galaxy, Galapagofrey, twist and crush down into a pinpoint black hole. Supermassive. His home galaxy was gone.
He needed something new.
The tortoise found what he was looking for on the underside of a leaf of a mustard plant. The head of the plant bobbed in the light breeze with cheerful yellow flowers. The tiny egg on the underside of the leaf was as bright and yellow as the mustard flowers. It was shaped like a tiny ear of corn.
It was small and new, full of promise. Everything that a dead galaxy was not.
“Hello, Little Caterpillar,” the tortoise said. His face was a wrinkled green mountain to the unborn creature curled inside the yellow egg. “You’re not a caterpillar yet, but you will be soon. If you want me to, I can take you on great adventures.”
For hours, the tortoise poured his heart out to the unborn caterpillar. She listened silently, unable to do otherwise. His voice became a comfort; his stories were her dreams of life to come. When he tired of talking, the tortoise promised to return. His giant face withdrew and disappeared inside his shell, and his shell phased away with a cheerful wheezing sound.
Two days later, the caterpillar hatched alone. An eternity had passed in her life since the tortoise spoke to her in his gently droning voice. Yet, she believed his promise that he would return.
Over the next week, Emily grew from a skinny, translucent yellow caterpillar into a pudgy, fuzzy green caterpillar. She made friends with a ladybug named Rodney and told him stories of a world where the flowers were as alive as any insect — the rhododendrons held a great empire, locked in war with the democratic camellias; the wildflowers were freedom fighters, allegiant to no one. The tortoise would take Emily there some day. He’d promised.
But a day is a long time for a caterpillar, and Emily began to lose hope. Rodney comforted her with stories of the only adventure a ladybug knew — flying. He had flown from plant to plant, much farther than Emily had crawled. They would fly together after her body changed, metamorphosing her into a butterfly. They could explore the entire garden. It sounded like a small adventure to Emily, but it was better than no adventure at all.
On the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, the Time Tortoise had lost track of time. When he came back, it was nearly too late.
“Hello, Little Caterpillar,” the tortoise said to the fuzzy, green caterpillar that Emily had become. “What are you doing?” His voice had not changed. It was the same voice that Emily remembered from her egg-dreams.
“I-I’m preparing to pupate,” she said. She could feel the sticky silk in the back of her throat that she would use to attach herself safely to the bottom of the leaf before her body hardened into a chrysalis. She swallowed it back. She wasn’t ready. “But it can wait. Take me with you!”
The mountainous green face staring at her from beside her mustard plant smiled. Emily felt like she’d finally come home. She hugged herself with half her arms, all of the ones she wasn’t standing on.
“All right,” the tortoise said. “I’ll take you on adventures with me.” His body reared up, presenting the smooth underbelly of his shell — a vast oasis of green to Emily. In the middle of his smooth green belly, there was a rectangular blue door. The tortoise grasped the door in his scaly paws and pulled it free. The door shrunk as it moved through the air until it was smaller than the nails at the end of the tortoise’s scaly paws. He placed the tiny door right in front of Emily, flat against the mustard leaf she stood upon.
With her foremost arms, Emily reached for and grabbed the brass door knob. She turned the knob, opened the door, and inched her way inside, bunching up her green body and then extending it.
The tortoise’s voice followed her: “Please shut the door behind you.” So Emily shut the door. She didn’t see Rodney, with his red shell wings extended and black underwings fluttering, flying towards her. She didn’t think at all about leaving him behind.
* * *
Inside the tortoise’s shell, Emily found a large round room with a patina of windows and doors covering every surface. The windows looked out on many disparate landscapes — deserts, starscapes, gas giants surrounded by glittering ice rings, and simple rolling green fields. It was everything she’d dreamed.
The tortoise — naked of his shell — stepped out of a glimmering beam of light in the middle of the room. He grabbed a star-studded silken robe from a nearby coat rack and wrapped it around himself. Emily found his abilities no more odd than what she knew her body was designed to do. Someday, she would glue her hindmost feet to the underside of a leaf; her head would split open; and a hardened chrysalis body would emerge. How was a Time Tortoise any more odd than that?
“You’re my size now,” she said, looking the tortoise over. In fact, he looked rather like her without his shell — they were both green and squishy. He had only the one pair of arms and legs, and they were longer than hers. But he looked more like her than Rodney did with his angular black exo-skeletal limbs and shiny red dome wings. “I like you this way.”
“I’m both larger and smaller than I seem,” the tortoise said. “I’m glad you like me this way. Let’s stay like this for a while, shall we?”
“I want to see the camellias,” Emily said.
The tortoise chuckled and walked to a control console underneath the largest window in the room. He began fiddling with the buttons and knobs, and the scenery on the windows changed, flitting from one landscape to the next.
“I like a companion who knows her own mind,” the tortoise said.
Emily came up beside him and touched his silken robe. She ran her pudgy caterpillar fingers over the colorful patterns of stars and galaxies embroidered onto the smooth dark silk. “I like this, too,” she said. “It makes me think of the wings I’m suppose to grow some day. Do you have one I can wear?”
“Another robe?” the tortoise asked. “Sure, I’ll show you to a closet filled with robes that you can choose from.”
One of the many doors around the perimeter of the large round room opened into a small room with a bed, dresser, and bureau with a mirror. The room had a closet filled with colorful robes, each the perfect size and fit for Emily.
“This will be your room on our adventures,” the tortoise said. “Take your time. I have plenty of time. When you’re ready, we can go meet some camellias.”
Emily pulled out the first robe she saw — white and shimmery. She draped it over herself and looked in the mirror.
The tortoise, standing by the door to the room, smiled at the sight. “That one suits you,” he said.
“Too plain,” Emily said. She put it back and pulled out another — bright yellow, decorated with blue tear drops. Then she tried on a purple one with yellow starbursts. Each robe she tried was more colorful than the last. They weren’t real wings that would let her fly like Rodney, but she didn’t need to fly. She was travelling with the Time Tortoise. Still, it was fun to look beautiful.
Finally, she settled on a brilliant orange robe, finely veined with black. It made her think of a butterfly that she had seen fly by her mustard plant when she was still a skinny yellow caterpillar. The orange clashed terribly with her pudgy green body, but she didn’t care. It only made her more colorful than the actual orange butterfly she’d seen.
The tortoise looked at her when she emerged from her room and said, “Dressed like a monarch to meet a monarch. Very appropriate.”
“Excuse me?” Emily asked.
“We’re going to see the queen of the camellias,” the tortoise said, gesturing for her to follow him toward the rectangular blue door she’d originally entered his shell by. He opened the door, and warm air burst in, filled with fresh, floral scents.
Emily stepped through the door and found herself beside a tangled grove. Green vines wound so tightly with each other that they created walls, rising into the shape of a turreted, towering castle, and far above, in the sky, two suns shone down — one large and orange and the other small and blue. A purple moon with a pale, pockmarked face hung on the horizon. This was a different world under a different sky.
Beside the tangled vines of the castle lay the smooth green dome of the tortoise’s shell — seemingly empty and large enough to be a small house. The blue door had been removed from the shell’s stomach once again and was inserted in one of the vine-castle’s outer walls.
“I thought the camellias had a democracy,” Emily said, turning back toward the blue door, but the tortoise hadn’t followed her through. In fact, he’d stayed inside his shell and closed the blue door behind Emily after she’d stepped out. Now his head and limbs — gigantic once again — emerged from the house-sized green shell, filling it up again.
“They do have a democracy,” the tortoise replied, still a giant beside her; though, he seemed to be slowly shrinking, less house-sized and more the size of a garden shed. He reached out and grabbed the blue door, peeled it off the castle wall and placed it back on himself, this time on the side of his shell. By the time it was properly affixed, the door was no longer big enough for Emily to pass through anymore. “They also have a monarchy,” the Time Tortoise said, seemingly unconcerned with his fluctuating size. “Purely ceremonial, of course. But the queen is lovely, and you should meet her.”
By the time the tortoise finished speaking, he was just Emily’s size, and the blue door on his shell was only the size of a small cupboard door relative to him.
The two of them — tortoise and caterpillar in a colorful robe — walked together, arm in arm, toward the vine castle’s front entrance and were allowed inside by a pair of guards with mathematically regular pink petals and perfectly symmetrical, oval, green leaves.
All the people inside the castle were similarly precise, geometrical flowers. They walked on stringy root feet and turned their petaled faces toward the sky to soak up the golden sunlight that rained down from above, for even though they’d entered the castle grounds, there was no ceiling above them to block out the sun’s rays. Emily felt very much at home among these flower people. Their city inside the castle walls was orderly, clean, and very pleasant. It was everything Emily had dreamed of inside her egg while the tortoise had whispered stories to her.
As the tortoise and Emily approached the central tower, camellias bowed before them. At first, Emily thought they were honoring the tortoise — and many of them seemed to be — but eventually she realized, some of them were bowing to her. An especially bold young camellia even came up and offered her leaf hands to Emily; when the caterpillar accepted the embrace, laying a pair of her own hands against the smooth skin of the camellia’s leaves, the flower suddenly began twirling, pulling Emily into a spinning dance together. The black-and-orange robe Emily wore whirled prettily around her. The dance was exhilarating and a little dizzying. It ended as quickly as it had begun, and the Time Tortoise took one of Emily’s pudgy arms again.
Unobstructed, the tortoise and Emily worked their way ever inward through the highly organized city until they came to the camellia queen’s throne room at the very center. Sunlight still rained down on them, but now it passed through a glass paneled ceiling far, far above them, turning the central tower of the city into a giant greenhouse with warm, thick air, heavy with moisture. The camellia queen’s throne was also built from glass panels, making it look a little like a prism, casting bits of rainbow all around it.
Before approaching the throne, the tortoise leaned close to his caterpillar companion and whispered, “The camellias know you’re a butterfly. Well, not yet, I suppose, you aren’t. But you will be, and I have trouble keeping time straight. They see your potential, and that’s why they bow to you and want to dance with you. It’s why they love you. They love butterflies.”
“Are there butterflies in this world, then?” Emily whispered back, thinking of how much she’d like to meet them. She it was her fate to become a butterfly someday, and she had seen some in the distance back at home… But she’d never really met one.
“Of course,” the tortoise answered. “A world with this many flowers would have to have butterflies! But very few of them visit here. They live with the wildflower rebels. You see, butterflies don’t like to be kept cooped up in cages, and the rigid structure of life among the camellias feels very much like a cage to most of them.”
Looking up at the greenhouse glass ceiling far above her, Emily could see how it might feel like part of a cage to a being who could fly, keeping them grounded, trapped away from the sky that should be their birthright. However, she hadn’t earned the sky yet by passing through her chrysalis phase, so the glass ceiling didn’t make her feel trapped. Regardless, Emily found herself thinking that she very much hoped the tortoise would take her to visit the wildflowers next.
Right in front of the camellia queen’s throne, the tortoise led Emily into making a deep, respectful bow. Her caterpillar shape was able to scrunch up into a sharply hooked squiggle that made for a very deep bow indeed, and as Emily straightened up, she saw a look of profound, delighted approval in the camellia queen’s eyes at the center of her geometrically arranged pink petals. Her shade of pink was richer and darker than the pale powder pink shade of many of the other camellias they’d passed walking through the city.
“You do me a great honor–” the camellia queen said, speaking primly to the tortoise, “–bringing a butterfly-child to pay respects to me.” She stood up from her throne, stepped forward, and then wrapped her green, vine-like arms around the tortoise’s shell-clad shoulders. “It has been too long since you’ve visited.”
“Last time,” the tortoise replied in a chiding tone, “you threatened to keep me here against my will.”
The camellia queen’s pink petals blushed an even deeper shade.
“A fruitless attempt,” the tortoise added. “I hope I don’t need to remind you.”
The camellia queen had turned her gaze, rather appraisingly, toward Emily. She reached out with her delicate green leaf hands and ran them along the hemmed edge of the orange and black cloak that Emily was wearing. Emily wasn’t sure she appreciated the presumption of familiarity, but she also didn’t feel safe objecting. She’d never met a queen before, and she supposed that monarchs were used to taking such liberties.
“These colors don’t match what your wings will look like, child,” the queen said, clearly disapproving.
“I thought it was pretty,” Emily answered, hugging the silken cloak closer against her long pudgy body. “And I don’t know what my wings will look like. I’ve only met one butterfly before, and he had wings like this.”
“Then he was a monarch,” the queen said approvingly, letting go of the edge of Emily’s cloak that she’d still been holding. “Or a viceroy,” she added a little more judgmentally, “if he only pretended to carry the royal poison in his veins. If I’d seen him myself, I could have told you which. But either way, you are certainly neither of those.”
Abashed by the certainty in the queen’s voice and a little embarrassed by meeting someone who seemed to know more about her body and future than she knew about herself, Emily stuttered, “Do you… do you know what kind of butterfly I am then?”
“Cabbage white, most clearly,” the queen pronounced in a tone was neither approving nor disapproving. “There is no question of it.”
“What do their wings look like?” Emily asked before she could even really think through if she wanted the answer or not. This queen seemed to have strong opinions about different kinds of butterflies, and Emily found herself both craving approval and fearing judgment.
“White with black tips and a few black spots,” the queen answered, seemingly unconcerned with how Emily would feel about that information. It was merely a fact to her. “They’re one of the most common forms of butterfly.”
For a moment, Emily had tried to imagine that the wings the queen was describing would look particularly elegant and striking — shining ivory with ebony spots — but the queen’s final words filled her with a strange sense of shame about herself and her future. As if she wasn’t truly a good enough type of butterfly. As if having a body that could transform to grow bright white, heart-shaped wings wasn’t magical enough. Here was a queen, and Emily was only a commoner.
The tortoise and camellia queen talked for a while longer, and several times, the queen intimated that she thought Emily should choose to stay in the camellia city and become one of her subjects. It was a strange sort of invitation, managing to be both flattering and insulting at the same time, simultaneously implying Emily’s desirability by grasping at her and yet still putting her down by suggesting she could never find anywhere else that would treat her well enough, because she simply wasn’t a special enough kind of butterfly.
As the queen and the tortoise talked, they roamed through the castle and its grounds. Emily cleaved closely to the Time Tortoise, insisting no matter how the camellia queen tried to ensnare or entreat her, that no, she would not leave her Galapogafreyan friend’s side. She didn’t trust this queen to respect her desires if the tortoise wasn’t there to speak up for her. And so despite the beautiful, geometric, clockwork-like nature of the camellia city, Emily found herself deeply relieved when the tortoise finally said his goodbyes and led her back outside of its towering, sheltering, smothering walls.
“What did you think of the domain of the camellias?” the time tortoise asked her, and Emily shuddered. “Yes, I suppose they can be a little overpowering for a first visit.”
“You think I’d like it better if I came to visit a second time?” Emily asked doubtfully.
“Oh goodness, no,” the tortoise answered, reaching one of his flippers around and opening the blue door on the side of his shell. He reached inside and rooted around with his flipper for a while before drawing out a mechanical device that looked a little like a metal wand. “If you came here with me again, the queen would become quite hostile about your refusal to stay, and if you ever came here without my protection, she’d keep you on a leash like a pet until you changed. Then she’d pin your wings to her wall.”
Emily gasped, aghast. “Pin me? To a wall?”
“Just your wings, probably after you died,” the tortoise amended. “But I don’t know for sure. It’s possible she’d have your wings cut off, forcibly removed, as soon as you emerged from your chrysalis, or maybe she’d wait until you died of natural causes. I haven’t been able to ascertain her exact methods yet. I have managed to cut off her supply though.”
“Her supply?” Emily felt quite dizzy. She’d placed herself in the tortoise’s flippers, flying off to heaven knew where with him, and now she discovered he’d taken her to see a queen who wanted to butcher her.
The metal wand in the tortoise’s flippers began blinking with a blue-green light and emitting a soft, whirring hum. “I set up a warning signal, telling every butterfly on the planet to stay away from the camellias. I’m sure when the queen finds out, she’ll be furious with me.” A coy smile twisted the corners of the tortoise’s wrinkly green face, and his eyes twinkled. “But since she hasn’t revoked my invitation to visit yet, I’m sure she doesn’t yet know, and it seemed a shame to miss an opportunity to show you a place so beautiful.”
It had been beautiful. Emily couldn’t deny that.
Sometimes, scary and beautiful can go hand in hand, apparently.
“I thought… well…” Emily felt so small and unsure of herself after her time among the camellias, but she fought to find the words she was seeking anyway. “From how you’d described the idea of a democracy, I thought they would be better than that.”
“Ah, yes.” The Time Tortoise nodded sagely. “Democracies can be a very beautiful form of government, but that doesn’t stop them from being cruel to beings who they don’t count among their people.”
“Are the rhododendrons better?” Emily asked hopefully. Based on how the Time Tortoise had talked about this world, she imagined their court would be the place he’d take her to visit next.
“Goodness, no!” The tortoise laughed, a huffy, wheezy sound. But he sobered quickly, returning to a somber expression. “Well, perhaps. At the very least, they are different. But that’s not really where you want to go next, is it?”
It wasn’t. Emily had seen enough of floral empires for one day. Or maybe a lifetime.
“I want to meet the freedom fighters,” Emily said. “The wildflowers — you said butterflies live among them.”
“Atta girl,” the tortoise praised her, smiling again. “I’ve already sent a message to them–” He waved his metal wand about, and the blue-green light blinked even faster. “–and transportation should arrive for us any moment.”
It was such a shocking, exhilarating idea — freedom fighters! Here! Right beside the camellias’ castle! “Is that safe?” Emily asked. She was starting to get the idea that traveling with the Time Tortoise — while fascinating and delightful — was less safe than she’d realized when they first set out. His ancient face and gentle voice still reached so deeply into her soul — imprinted upon her heart before her body had finished forming inside her egg — that it was hard to believe he could be dangerous. He was the foundation all her dreams had been built upon.
But now that he was here… Emily found herself uncertain that she’d ever really understood the Time Tortoise at all. The bedtime story, lullaby version of himself that had sung to her egg was perhaps just that — a story. The reality was much more frightening, because reality doesn’t have to tie up in a neat bow at the end. Caterpillars can die before ever becoming butterflies. And ancient, enigmatic tortoises from long ago, far away galaxies can forget how fragile and temporary their younger companions really are.
* * *
Transportation arrived in the form of several strange angular creatures flapping their way down through the sky. As they got closer, Emily recognized their shape — the double-winged structure of maple seeds — but they flapped through the sky like they were fully alive, not alive in the usual way for a maple seed but like a bird or butterfly.
“You’re wondering about the maple seeds, aren’t you?” the tortoise asked, knowingly, gesturing at the three maple seeds flying toward them.
Emily nodded dumbly. She was feeling more and more out of her depth here and couldn’t find any words to say.
“They are indeed maple seeds, but like the flowers here, trees on this world are also sentient.” The tortoise looked smugly pleased with the awed expression on his caterpillar companion’s face as she tried to imagine a towering, gigantic, skyscraper of a maple tree being sentient like the camellias had been. She could hardly imagine it — the size, the length of life… it was all on an entirely different scale than her own experience.
The tortoise continued: “Of course, the seed phase of a maple’s life is not as fully developed intellectually as the adult, tree phase. They’re simple creatures, but they can be trained to make very nice, flighted steeds. It’s a kindness really,” the tortoise intoned, “since so few maple seedlings actually end up developing into fully grown trees, it’s better for them to live a coddled, cared for life as a steed serving the wildflower nation than to wander around lost and alone, blindly following their instincts until they find themselves driven to burrow underground and do their best… which is rarely enough… to grow into a full maple tree.”
“That sounds… sad,” Emily said, seeing the approaching seeds in a new light. Each of them had the potential to become an unthinkably large god with an unimaginable lifespan — an entire planet to her — but instead, they would live less of a life than a mere butterfly.
Beside the Time Tortoise, Emily’s own life and existence was beginning to feel painfully small.
The three maple seeds landed nearby, and Emily could now see that one of them bore a golden-faced dandelion on its back, between the straight lines of its blade-like wings. The other two bore no one on their backs, and Emily surmised that they were waiting for her and the Time Tortoise to ride them.
This adventure was beginning to feel like it was getting out of hand, even though Emily had an entire row of hands running down each of her long sides. Regardless, no matter how overwhelmed and overawed Emily felt, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words that had started bubbling up in the back of her mind. She didn’t want to acknowledge those words. She didn’t want to ask the Time Tortoise to take her home. But she did find herself thinking the words, helplessly in the back of her mind, and she kept picturing Rodney back among the mustard flowers — safely non-sentient mustard flowers — waiting to fly with her when she grew her wings.
The idea of flying under the power of her own white wings beside Rodney with his lacy black wings and polka-dotted red shell wings seemed like such a small, safe adventure compared to the one she was undergoing right now.
But maybe safety wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe the opposite of adventure didn’t have to be stifling boredom. Maybe it could comfort.
At the Time Tortoise’s behest, Emily climbed on the back of the maple seed waiting for her, and she clung on tightly with her stubby arms as it began flapping its woody wings. Her silken robe fluttered behind her as the maple seed soared into the sky with Emily on its back. If she lost hold of the maple seed, the brightly colored silk robe would do nothing to stop her from falling. For the first time, Emily thought that — maybe — going into her chrysalis and growing her own white wings might be something to look forward to, rather than the disappointing consolation prize it had always seemed before.
Maybe it would be nice to have a smaller adventure on her own terms, under her own power, than an epic, magnificent adventure completely under the power of an ancient, uncontrollable being. The Time Tortoise seemed kind to her, but Emily thought she might like to have more control over her own life than for it to depend completely and entirely on an enigmatic alien’s kindness.
As Emily pondered these possibilities, the maple seed kept flying in formation with the one ridden by the golden-faced dandelion and the one ridden by the Time Tortoise, currently bereft of his shell. Emily thought that if she had a magically powerful shell like the Time Tortoise’s, she wasn’t at all sure that she’d leave it lying around outside random castles like that. He was such a confident being, this tortoise.
The trio of maple seeds flapped their way through the sky until they were over a broad, wide open meadow. Then all at once, they stopped flapping, held their stiff wings out straight, and allowed themselves to twist and turn, spiraling their way down through the air, fluttering in corkscrews toward the grassy field below. It was a dizzying way to travel and made Emily’s stomach flip and clench inside her as she clung even harder to the jointed groove in the middle of the maple seed’s back. Even so, when they landed atop the thick grass blades, Emily found herself wishing she could make the same fall over again. It had been the most terrifying and yet most wonderful few moments of her life.
“Welcome to the wildflower enclave!” the dandelion announced, climbing off the maple seed’s back and onto one of the thick grass blades. The dandelion’s stringy green limbs wrapped wispily around the grass blade and it rode down to the dirt below like it was a fire pole. The Time Tortoise followed in a similar manner, but Emily chose to climb more carefully downward, grabbing onto the smooth green of the grass blade she chose with her grippy rows of hands.
By the time Emily made it to the dirt below, the Time Tortoise was already surrounded by a host of wildflowers, all very excited to see him. There were daisies with wispy ivory petals; poppies with petals as orange as a monarch butterfly’s wings; buttercups that gleamed as bright as melted butter; purple pansies whose asymmetrical faces made them somehow always look like pilgrim women wearing bonnets; and columbine who might as well have been tiny cousins to the stars with their bright, pointed petals.
If Emily were a human child, she’d have thought she’d stepped right into Alice in Wonderland, but she was a butterfly child, and she didn’t know what to think. Someday, she’d have her wings, and she might have felt more at home among all these beautiful, be-petaled people, but in her caterpillar form, she felt very simple and plain indeed. She was nothing but a squiggly question mark of green, always asking the question: why am I even here? Whereas these sentient flowers — pressing close to the Time Tortoise, peppering him with questions, and salting him with exclamations of delight at his presence — were complete answers unto themselves. Of course they were here. Anywhere that a creature as beautiful as these flowers found itself would be lucky to have them. There’s no need to ask, why am I here?, when everyone is too busy being glad of your presence.
While Emily had been nearly a celebrity in the camellia city, here she blended right into the background. Once again, she stayed close to the Time Tortoise’s side as he wended his way through the chaotic paths between the towering blades of grass, but this time, it was less because she feared that the wildflower rebels would try to abscond with her — in fact, they paid almost no attention to her at all — and more because she felt suddenly keenly aware that she had absolutely no way to get back to her own quiet, little corner of the universe without the Time Tortoise’s assistance and she was afraid of getting lost.
While the camellia city had been orderly and geometrical, everything here was arranged haphazardly with grass and weeds woven together into small cottages, leaving winding, twisting paths that wandered about like the switchbacks and dead ends of an especially challenging corn maze, and everywhere was crowded with flowers bustling one way or another, gathering in groups to converse or pushing past each other in a hurry on their enigmatic, inscrutable errands. Far above the towering grass, butterflies flew past, their shadows passing like the shadows of clouds. Entirely out of reach. So there were butterflies here, but only at a distance.
Emily was realizing that she longed to go back to the mustard plants where she had hatched, plants that didn’t have faces and couldn’t talk, and she desperately hoped Rodney would still be waiting for her and they could fly together once she had her very own wings. She missed her ladybug friend. Rodney wasn’t as exciting as the Time Tortoise, but perhaps there was something to be said for having a friend with a lifespan and range of experiences vaguely similar to your own after all.
The Time Tortoise talked with the many wildflowers of the rebel encampment for what seemed like a very long time to Emily as she followed along docilely, continuing to take in everything she saw with amazement.
“I thought we would stay here for a while,” the Time Tortoise said to Emily when the crowds of flowers seeking his audience died down. He had given out tactical advice for the flowers’ war, shared news of other worlds, and caught up with the descendants of old friends — for the wildflowers, like Emily, lived much shorter lives than the Time Tortoise. Even so, Emily did not feel like she belonged among them. They were caught in the middle of three way war with the camellias and rhododendrons, and the more Emily learned of it, the more serious that sounded. It was not her war, and for everything beautiful about this world, it was not a war she wanted to join.
“How long are you thinking of?” Emily asked, trepidatiously, trying to calculate how long she could hold back the itchy, gummy feeling of silk that had started to rise in the back of her throat again, trying to prepare her for attaching to the underside of a leaf. She knew her body was feeling stiffer than it had at the start of her adventure with the Time Tortoise, and even if she tried her hardest to hold the transition back, eventually, her insides would harden into a chrysalis underneath her skin whether she was ready for it or not. She would prefer to be back home when it happened.
The Time Tortoise tilted his round, wrinkly head and looked over his young companion with a gentle, slightly sad smile. He had chosen to befriend a caterpillar, and it was unreasonable to wish she would keep from aging into a butterfly. But he still wished it.
Tortoises are exceptionally long-lived animals, and Time Tortoises even more so. Somewhere in the darkness between galaxies, an entire bale of Time Tortoises migrated together seeking a replacement for their home galaxy which was now gone, but this Time Tortoise had not chosen to travel with them. He had stayed here, having grown attached to the Milky Way, and chosen to befriend creatures who would never be anything more than children to him. And children need to be taken home in time for their bedtimes.
Emily and the Time Tortoise had traveled together for less than a day, but the entire lifespan of a butterfly can be measured in a mere handful of days. She had seen only a fraction of this world, but it had already filled her up on adventure. She was a small creature, and her hunger for adventure was sated perhaps more easily than would be the case for a creature with a longer life, a larger footprint on the shores of space-time. She had given so much of her life to the Time Tortoise, and he owed her safe passage back to her home.
“Not long, actually,” the Time Tortoise amended in a voice as ancient and creaky as the wind that wraps around a world, over and over again, merely flitting from one place to another and never dying. “In fact, I think there is only one last thing I’d like to show to you before we go.”
Surprise and relief flooded through Emily’s stiffening body. “One last thing?” With the end of her adventure in sight, she found herself wanting to cling to the tail end of it like a tired child begging for just one more story before having to go to sleep.
“Yes,” the Time Tortoise agreed. “We must visit with the retired leader of these freedom fighters. I’m told she’s in the final hours of her life now. I should like to say goodbye, and I think, perhaps, engage in a little interplanetary cross-pollination.”
Emily had no idea what the Time Tortoise meant by those strange words, but she was definitely curious to meet a retired leader. She hoped this one would be less scheming and judgmental than the camellia queen had proved to be.
* * *
The camellia queen’s throne had been in the most central, regal part of the city, surrounded by guards. Whereas now, the Time Tortoise led Emily into a small woven hut that was so non-descript, she might not have even noticed it nestled among the towering blades of grass all around if she hadn’t been following close beside the tortoise. The inside was cozy but cramped. There was only one person in residence — another dandelion but this one’s golden face was pinched and withered, with the golden petals twisted inward, showing their darker streaked backs, like her face was trying to close up on itself and go to sleep. She looked old and tired, but she still managed to smile primly.
“Old Friend,” the Time Tortoise said, holding out a flipper. The aged dandelion wrapped one of her stringy, jagged leaves warmly about the offered limb.
“My dear friend!” the dandelion replied as heartily as her advanced state of aging allowed. “You’ve returned before my time is up.”
“Just barely, it would seem.” In truth, the Time Tortoise had not expected to see this particular friend again. Camellias may live long lives, sustained by connecting back to the core shrub that makes up their castle, but wildflowers are as transient as butterflies. Even so, when a temporary creature falls in love with the stories of the Time Tortoise, sometimes those brushes with the idea of magic and adventure can sustain them, giving them a contact high and letting them last a little longer, holding out for the tortoise’s return. Exactly like what had happened with Emily who was still holding back the stiffening of her body, insisting that she would stay young to finish this adventure before falling into her chrysalis form.
Emily looked about the small space inside the hut, trying to figure out if she could sit somewhere while the tortoise and the aging dandelion talked. Instead, however, the dandelion caught her intention and said, “No, dear, we aren’t staying here. It’s my time, very nearly, and I need to be outside, under the sun.”
The Time Tortoise led the way back outside with the ancient dandelion leaning against him. Emily followed as the two friends walked together, winding through the pathways of the wildflower village and talking of all the dandelion had experienced — all the brave deeds she’d performed in the war — since their two paths had last crossed.
Emily found herself wondering if the ancient dandelion had ever traveled with the Time Tortoise like she was doing now. She wondered how often the tortoise took on companions like her. Was she special? Or was she simply a link in an uncountably long chain?
Could it be both? Perhaps she was only a single link, but without that link, the chain would break and fall. The Time Tortoise needed his companions. By participating in his parade of temporary friends, Emily elevated her own life, experiencing things she’d otherwise have never known about, and she secured herself a legacy. She would always be remembered in the heart of a strange, ancient, alien turtle as he traveled across the sky, from sky to sky, skipping across the surface of the space-time continuum like a perfectly formed river rock.
The Time Tortoise’s wandering through the wildflower village led to a particularly thick tussock of grass. Some of the blades around the outer edge had been woven into the form of ladders. The tortoise helped his dandelion friend climb one of them, and Emily followed behind. Several platforms had been woven into the tussock near its top, and the three wanderers settled comfortably onto one of them. The sun beat down brightly at them from above.
The ancient dandelion sighed, drawing Emily’s attention. As she watched the dandelion’s face, somehow Emily expected its golden petals to open wider under the warm, comforting rays of the sun. That’s what flowers do, isn’t it? Open their faces toward the sun — golden flower looking at a golden star, or in this case, a bright orange one and a second smaller blue one. But no, the dandelion’s face closed up tighter still, like it was becoming a bud again. Senility returning to infancy.
“The tortoise tells me you are from another world,” the dandelion creaked out through pinched lips, insofar as a dandelion has lips. She sounded infinitely tired, like she was about to fall asleep… a sleep she would never wake from.
This was brutal. Emily had not expected to end her adventure by watching a war hero die. Sure, based on the stories Emily had been hearing from all the wildflowers about the overall state of their war, there were far more brutal things she could have seen, but those had all been stories to her. This was happening in front of her eyes.
Perhaps some things are better off staying stories.
“Yes, that’s true,” Emily agreed. “My world is very different. Simpler.” Emily thought about the single golden sun in Earth’s sky and how its light would shine through the yellow petals of the flowers on her mustard plant. “But also beautiful.”
“I have never seen another world,” the dandelion whispered, sighing like the last wisp of wind as a storm finally comes to its end. “But I think I would like to…” And with those words, the dandelion’s face finished folding together into a bud too tight to allow any more speech at all.
“It’s not too late,” the Time Tortoise said gently to his expired friend, draped across his arms.
“I… think it is,” Emily hazarded, feeling like she was speaking out of place, but also like it would be cruel to let the tortoise miss the moment of his friend’s passing. A being as old as the Time Tortoise must have seen death countless times — especially if he made a habit of visiting war-torn lands — but that didn’t mean he’d learned to accept it, especially when it happened to someone he cared about.
The tortoise looked down at the pinched bud face of his expired friend. His wrinkly green face smiled enigmatically, even more enigmatic for how the touch of sadness that always seemed to grace his face seemed to have finally lifted for a moment.
What a strange moment for the tortoise to seem happier than usual! Emily didn’t understand this alien creature she was traveling with at all.
“Give it a moment,” the tortoise urged, causing even more confusion and consternation, but Emily knew better than to contradict a creature who was her only chance of ever returning home.
So she waited.
And against all odds, the expired dandelion’s face began to open again. Emily gasped.
Actually, what was happening to the dandelion was as completely normal for a sentient dandelion as Emily’s chrysalis transformation would be to her, even though both biological processes must seem bizarre and terrifying to someone who didn’t understand or expect them.
The dandelion’s face did not open up the same as it had closed. Instead of bright golden petals unfolding, the dandelion’s face was now composed of soft, fluffy, ivory white down, as delicate as freshly fallen snow.
In death, the dandelion had transformed, but the strangest part was yet to come.
Each tiny star of ivory fluff making up the dandelion’s new face had an even tinier face of its own. The dandelion had gone to seed, and in this world, seeds were alive too. The tiny stars of dandelion fluff winked awake, grinned, and cried out in a chaotic chorus of tinkling, bell-like voices. Emily couldn’t make out any words in their joyous cries, but she couldn’t possibly have missed the overflowing enthusiasm in their inarticulate, inchoate song.
The Time Tortoise drew in a deep breath, and when he let it go, he blew out steadily over the dandelion’s face like he was making a wish on the candles of a birthday cake. And in fact, this was a birthday. Dozens upon dozens of baby dandelions had just been born from the corpse of their mother, and as the Time Tortoise’s breath fell upon them, the little twinkling stars of fluff blew away, taking to the air, and getting caught up in the swirling breezes of this alien world that would carry them to wherever their myriad little new lives were truly meant to begin.
All but one of them. As the dandelion’s face dissipated, one single seed clung firm to the empty expanse beneath.
“Come here, Little Lion,” the Time Tortoise said, gently plucking the final seed up with the tip of his flipper. The bit of fluff acquiesced and allowed this ancient, alien creature to take hold of it.
The Time Tortoise gently laid down what remained of the original dandelion’s body, and then he held out the final remaining seed to Emily. It gibbered cutely and winked cheerily at her. Emily couldn’t help but laugh.
“I thought,” the Time Tortoise said, slowly and ponderously, “that you might take this Little Lion home with you.”
Emily drew in a breath sharply, surprised to discover the Time Tortoise had been right. It wasn’t too late for the ancient dandelion to visit another world. At least, in a way.
“I would be honored,” Emily said, reaching out a pair of her own stubby, pudgy hands to take hold of the tiny, fluffy baby. Once it was in her arms, it clung tightly to her, and she had no fear of losing it.
* * *
The trip home was a retread of places Emily had already been — riding back to the camellia castle on another maple seed, then re-entering the Time Tortoise’s shell through its blue door, and finally finding herself, stiff and tired, delivered back to her mustard plant where her life had begun.
Her ladybug friend, Rodney, was patiently waiting for her, much like she had once patiently waited for the Time Tortoise. Emily barely had a chance to hand her new ward, the Little Lion, off to Rodney before gooey silk overflowed her mouth. She bent forward, glued her feet with the silk to the mustard plant’s leaf, and then her face split apart, her skin withering and shrinking away, until all that was left of her was a smooth, crystalline, chrysalis, beating like a heart. The skin that had been her caterpillar self was nothing but a discarded cloak now.
Emily heard the Time Tortoise explaining patiently to Rodney how to look out for the Little Lion as it grew into a full dandelion plant that would grace their world with up to a dozen new talking dandelion flowers in its life. She listened to them talking together until she heard the cheerful wheezing sound of the Time Tortoise’s shell phasing away.
Then Emily listened to the sound of Rodney telling stories to the Little Lion. Rodney told it about their world, and then he told it about Emily — how she would emerge from her chrysalis with six long, spindly legs and wings as white as a wedding dress. They would fly together, finally.
Emily imagined how she would fly up towards the single sun in the sky, and then she’d let herself fall, spinning and twirling, like she had on the maple seed’s back.
Read more stories from Paw Prints Beyond the Moon:
[Previous][Next]