“I’ve been known to.” The smile she tossed him over her shoulder as he followed her into the stand of trees made his heart skip. “I know I’ve no right to ask.” She stopped beside a thick eucalyptus. “Not after the kindness you provided yesterday, but I’d like for you, just today, to put everything aside. All your worries, all the concerns you brought with you. Those obligations that are weighing so heavy on your heart.”
She stepped closer and pressed her palm flat against his chest. He looked down and tried to stop his pulse from jumping. She had felt so warm, so...perfect against him. It was all he could do not to grasp her wrist and keep her connected to him forever.
“Try to stop dwelling on everything out there and see what I do. What I’d like everyone who comes here to see. This isn’t just a building we’re talking about constructing, Xander. It’s going to be a home.”
The smell of eucalyptus surrounded him here. Inhaling, he caught the fragrance of damp earth and grass. A cleanness that carried just a hint of the ocean he could hear far below them.
As they walked through the close-knit trees, the light faded, replaced by thin beams that made the leaves and air glisten. Whatever silence had been pressing in on him a few moments before increased. But not in that uncomfortable, deafening way that made him uneasy.
“Here.” Calliope tilted up her chin to the sky and drew him into a circle of trees with an opening barely big enough for the both of them. “Here. Sit with me.” She clasped both of his hands and sank to the ground.
He followed, not that she gave him much choice. His jeans provided little barrier to the damp earth and a chill dropped over them. Still she clung to his hands, twining her fingers with his as she continued to gaze up into the endless cascading branches and leaves.
“Look, Xander. Really look and tell me what you see.” Her words were a whisper in the breeze, but her face was alight with a happiness and peace he didn’t think he’d ever encountered before.
What did he see? He saw a woman who could have passed for a muse, an inspiration for beauty and joy and peace.
“As flattered as I am, stop looking at me.” She leaned forward and for a moment, he thought she might kiss him. Instead she pressed her finger beneath his chin and tilted up his head. “Now look.”
It took a moment for his eyes to focus, to see beyond the crisscross of limbs and leaves and branches that had probably been here long before he’d ever heard of Butterfly Harbor.
“Listen.” Her whispered command sent a shiver down his spine.
A flicker of movement caught his eye, within...no, around the outcropping of branches overhead. He could hear a vibration of sorts, a gentle buzz or hum that danced along the edge of the air. The trees were moving. Beneath the roof of sky barely visible through the thin cracks between the trees, they moved in time with his pulse. Like wings beating...
Wings.
“Those aren’t leaves.” He didn’t know why he thought he needed to tell her. Clearly, she knew that the clusters of paper-thin flittering and fluttering leaves were the late season monarchs that called the eucalyptus trees home.
Calliope’s fingers tightened around his. He held on, clung to her as he wished he could climb closer, examine every detail of the creatures piled on top of one another in orchestrated rest. For a moment, he swore he could. For a moment, he felt as if he’d been lifted out of his body to float up and around and through the hundreds...thousands of countless winged creatures clinging to vines and each other in gentle promise.
The stained-glass windows of their wings were more intricate and delicate than any created by man. Had he ever taken a moment to look closely at a butterfly? Let alone a cascade of them? Antennae flickered, and tiny, thread-thin legs twitched. Wings beat a soothing rhythm that he could feel brushing against his heart.
“What you propose will damage this grove,” Calliope whispered. “Will damage the refuge they’ve sought for longer than either of us has lived on this earth. Which of these creatures would you cast out, Xander? Which does not deserve to exist in this world we’ve already made so dangerous for them?”
Blinking, he snapped out of what he could only describe as a trance. “What would you have me do, Calliope?” As much as he appreciated the sentiment and concern, as much as he was certain he could come to agree with her, practicality and reality stood in his way. “I was hired to do a job. With or without me, someone is going to build this facility and I can guarantee, they won’t be willing to sit in this grove with you and listen to the butterflies.”