From the Chrysalis: a novel Read online

  From the Chrysalis

  A novel by Karen E. Black

  Published by Karen E. Black

  Copyright 2012 by Karen E. Black

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  I have been struck by two facts; the extraordinary sympathy or similarity between the pair. He is her cousin, which perhaps accounts for some of it. They seem to be one person split in two.

  *[Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, p.500.]

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Monarchs

  Who hurt you so, My dear?

  Who, long ago

  When you were very young,

  Did, said, became, was... something that you did not know

  Beauty could ever do, say, be, become?-

  So that your brown eyes filled

  With tears they never, not to this day, have shed...

  Not because one more boy stood hurt by life,

  No: because something- deathless had dropped dead-

  An ugly, an indecent thing to do-

  So that you stood and stared, with open mouth in which

  the tongue

  Froze slowly backward toward its root,

  As if it would not speak again, too badly stung

  By memories thick as wasps about a nest invaded

  To know if or if not you suffered pain.

  *[Millay, Edna St. Vincent, Mine the Harvest: A

  Collection of New Poems, #7, New York: Harper &

  Brothers Publishers, 1949,p.47]

  Devereux Farm, Eden, Ontario, July 10, 1966:

  A shadow fell across her path as she rounded the veranda. A long shadow for so late in the day. Her eyes followed the shape as it stretched across the worn boards, then stopped when she recognized the source, still as a statue in their Aunt Sadie’s garden.

  She resisted the urge to touch him, to convince herself he was real. People said she could write a little, but words never said enough. If only she could take pictures or draw. Something that would freeze her cousin, D’Arcy “Dace” James Devereux, at eighteen. There was just something about him.

  A bottle of beer dangled from his fingers, so maybe he had slipped out the back porch door of the farmhouse, through a phalanx of his elders. When he cracked a smile she was so startled she stepped backwards, disturbing a pair of butterflies which hovered by her head. He spoke, though she didn’t see his lips move, and she was so busy listening to the sound of his voice she almost didn’t hear what he said. The words were low and sounded a little rough. No wonder—his voice was never used.

  “Little Liza,” was all he said. He held out his brown bottle to her, an unfathomable expression in his eyes.

  She recognized a little bit of their Granny Debo in him, as well as some of his father, but there was also something that was just him. She ignored his offering. He hadn’t said a word to her all day. Besides, she had a monarch on her right shoulder which was far more interesting than a bottle of beer.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  The butterfly explored, lured by false promises in her yellow shift, and Dace and Liza watched the insect probe the shoulder seam of her dress. Aunt Sadie’s garden was full of massive yellow sunflowers and wild lupine. Besides Liza’s monarch suitor, butterflies flitted everywhere: Black Swallowtails, Clouded Sulphurs, Painted Ladys and Red Admirals. The last two were sometimes mistaken for monarchs, but Liza could distinguish the orange and black markings of all three species by now. When she was twelve, she had brought a book called Field Guide to Butterflies to the farm, much to the amusement of her relatives. Despite their teasing, she had taught herself to recognize the more common species.

  Liza was afraid to move and even more afraid to speak. What if she disturbed her guest?

  “I’ll bet he thinks you’re a flower,” said Dace. She watched him tip the beer to his lips and knock it back in two swallows. In a flash, she realized he had become a new man. His almost black eyes lit with amusement, his full mouth softened, and he relaxed. “You kind of look like one, you know? All that hair, your long legs, your little dress …”

  “Yeah, right,” she whispered. She stood frozen, her head on her shoulder, hair spilling down the left side of her chest. “He just thinks I’m food. Are you old enough to be drinking that?”

  “It’s okay. Uncle Eddie pried the cap off with his teeth and gave it to me the moment I moved. For some reason he looked mighty glad to see me go. Probably wanted to talk about me. Hey, little girl, don’t look so scared.”

  “Why? What’s there to talk about?” she asked softly. This was too much for the monarch. It fluttered away, joining the others.

  “Man stuff,” he said, his eyes still on the butterfly.

  “Is it something bad? Aunt Debby said—”

  He waved a hand, dismissing what she’d said. “I love the aunts, but they don’t know crap. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. The lawyer said … Ah, never mind. I don’t care what that goofball says.”

  Liza’s brow tightened. Nothing was going right. She had waited all afternoon to talk to him and now he wasn’t making any sense. “A lawyer? You have a lawyer? Why?”

  Dace shook his head. “You ask way too many questions. Like I said, I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. Especially a little girl like you. What are you, thirteen, fourteen now? Besides, it’s not just me. There’s a bunch of other people involved. Rick, my friend, all we wanted was some beer and suddenly all hell broke loose. Oh, heck. I can’t—” He stopped mid-sentence, an anxious, black look almost ruining his face.

  “Says who?”

  “Everybody in Maitland. And my father. He wanted me to come here today as a show of faith and now even he can’t stand the sight of me. Not that I blame him. Nobody could.”

  “Uncle Norm? Why would he … why would anybody blame you for anything?” She thought a moment. “What … What did you do? Peddle drugs? You didn’t sell drugs, did you?”

  “Liza, for God’s sake, of course I didn’t peddle drugs! I want to play pro football someday.” He chuckled, but it didn’t really sound like laughter. “Wanted to. Fat chance now. What Dad actually said was: ‘Watch out for that strange little girl who’s always following you around’.”

  He let the empty beer bottle slide to the ground, then lifted her hair away from her face so that the backs of his fingers brushed her jaw.

  Something funny exploded in her chest and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She felt like she had climbed too many stairs. S
he wanted him to touch her again, but she also wanted to argue with him, to fight, to set him right. Don’t you dare throw your beer bottle in Aunt Sadie’s garden, you big oaf, she nearly said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked instead, rising on her tiptoes until her eyes were almost level with his. “When was the last time I saw you?” When? At his own mother’s funeral? She knew he’d been there for sure. “You weren’t even at Granny Debo’s funeral last March. Both your father and Rosie were. I looked for you all over the place. Even if you weren’t at the rest of our stupid family dos, you should have been there.”

  Dace shrugged. “Well, that’s what he said.” One of his shiny black shoes booted the beer bottle into a bed of double pink Impatiens and silver Dusty Miller.

  Liza’s face went hot. “He did not!” she shouted and left the garden, running off in the direction of the pond. That was another place she liked to visit by herself. If the pond were anything like last year, the water wasn’t much, but there would be bulrushes. Maybe even a great Blue Heron. Besides, she had to get away from Dace. Had to. Or … what? It didn’t matter. Getting away was the right thing to do.

  She spied a big, black motorcycle ahead of her, propped against the fence. Motorcycles all looked the same to her. It must have been his; nobody else at the farm had one. They had a tractor maybe. A bike was way too impractical. They were more like toys. Had Uncle Norm followed Dace all the way from Maitland to the farm in his Ford? If Liza had known how to ride a bike, she would have taken it. The hell with him, the way he looked, the story in his eyes, the touch of his hand … He was such a phony. And the sun was too bright. It hurt her eyes. No wonder she couldn’t think straight.

  The shortcut to the pond veered off through a patch of tall grass. Liza was full grown at five and a half feet tall, but the grass was so high at this time of year she had to part it with both hands. Panting, she slowed to a walk, self-conscious enough to fear observation from the farmhouse by both the living and the dead. Of course people were watching. They always were.

  Although she pretended not to notice, he caught up with her in a couple of strides, walking in her grassy tread. Clouds of dragonflies and iridescent green grasshoppers rose in the air. He’d taken off his tie and looked less immaculate in his open-necked shirt. More like the boy he used to be.

  Against her will, she liked him even better this way, with sweat trickling down the smooth planes of his face. She especially liked his determination to follow her anyplace. He smelled of starch and deodorant and something else, something not unpleasant at all. For the first time in her life, she wished it would rain. He reached for her hand, but she pushed him away. You, she thought, are becoming too used to getting your own way.

  Butterflies were following them. Common as monarchs were, they were her favourites. Some people called them Wanderers because they migrated to Mexico every year against all odds, although it was a mystery how they found their wintering grounds. She knew from an old National Geographic article that it wasn’t from memory. Somehow they just knew what to do. There was no record of a monarch living long enough to return to its wintering place the following year.

  Did monarchs rely on their own instincts and built-in biochemical forces? Or were they led by the moon and the stars? And why? It was 1966, but nobody knew. Did they even have a choice? The returnees might be the grandchildren of the generation who had flown south, their forebears having made the ultimate sacrifice for their descendants, but nobody knew for sure.

  Whoever said butterflies were free? she wondered, watching the boldly coloured insects navigate through the tall grass.

  Liza watched her cousin clear a path for her through overhanging branches. She wondered if he thought about things like that.

  Dace seemed mesmerized by the monarchs, too. He tried to catch several in his cupped hands, but they escaped him. “I don’t want to hurt them,” he explained when she laughed. “They’re so free.”

  “No, they’re not.” She contradicted him, although she had a feeling that wasn’t exactly what he’d meant to say. “They look free, but they just do what they’re told, what they know. They fly all the way to Mexico just because.”

  She broke off, hating the way she sounded like a show off. She wasn’t actually convinced he was interested in anything she had to say.

  “Really?” Dace asked, reaching out and briefly touching her arm. “All that way?”

  Liza glanced sharply at him, walking innocently at her side. Was he mocking her? She didn’t think so, but …

  “Yes,” she said, deciding to continue. He snapped a blade of grass in half with his teeth. “They make their great migration against all odds, blessed with only one advantage: they are partly protected by their body chemistry. As a caterpillar, each monarch feeds on milkweed leaves. The chemicals in the plant make both the caterpillar and the butterfly distasteful to birds. The black and orange markings tell predators about this defence, so the birds didn’t even try. The smaller ones, the Viceroys, mimic the monarchs, so they share the same protection.” She stopped again, afraid of boring him. Never mind about the Viceroys, she thought.

  He stopped and stared at a brown bump on a low-hanging branch. “Look,” he said. “I almost didn’t see him.”

  Liza hesitated, wondering if she should continue sharing what she knew. “That’s a stick insect,” she finally said. What’s your protection? she wanted to ask. By now she knew almost every living creature had evolved a protective camouflage, all except humans. They were far more complicated and varied in their defences. This implied humans had some choice. Was Dace’s secretiveness a protective device, or was he just being bad? He was more complex than a monarch or a stick insect, though. They both were. His behaviour had been learned.

  As had hers, she thought, her throat aching with unshed tears. She didn’t know for what, except back in the farmhouse kitchen he had looked so sad. It came to her then how much she’d wanted to see him again. What had gone wrong since the last time she’d seen him? Was there no way she could help him? Was there nothing she could do?

  Besides burst out of her own skin, that is.

  Minutes later they emerged from the tall grass onto a rutted dirt road where pioneer wagons had once rolled. Before that it had been walked by Ojibwa natives. In lieu of pummelling Dace—she didn’t dare—she aimed several vicious kicks at a border ditch of yellow snapdragons, pink phlox, Queen Anne’s Lace and milkweed, watching in satisfaction when silken strands from the milk pods exploded in midair.

  “Whoa, girl,” Dace said, prompting her to move farther away. She hated the stupid smile on his face. A part of her was still angry at him for ignoring her all afternoon, no matter what his reason.

  “Why don’t you get lost on your bike?” she asked, glad she couldn’t see the expression on her own face.

  “Well, sure, if you come too. It’s exciting, you know, the wind in your face. You don’t look like the kind of girl who would be worried about mussing up her hair. A little free spirit like you …”

  Maybe he wasn’t the one with the problem, maybe she was, she thought, refusing him the satisfaction of an answer. First she’d wanted him to talk to her, and now she didn’t. She would have ridden with him on his bike earlier, but now she was too scared. When, oh when, were her parents and brothers leaving? she wondered, smacking a black fly as it buzzed in circles around her head. Dace caught the bug in his large hands and crushed it. She hated being stuck here, being at the mercy of her parents’ decisions. At home there were books to read, dreams to dream and, somewhere in the future, a man to love.

  Clearly she had been mistaken, entertaining fantasies about this boy. It was sad, but it looked like she had nothing in common with her cousin D’Arcy Devereux anymore. Just like she had nothing in common with anybody else here.

  She’d asked many times if she were adopted, but her mother had bemoaned her first pregnancy and labour far too many times for her to belong to anyone else. Trapped. Liza was trapped with these people, a
nd there were a hundred or more here today. Why on earth had her grandmother had so many children? She slapped at another insect, a bloodsucking female mosquito this time.

  Liza just about boiled over with pent-up frustration. She was crammed into the hull of a sailing boat which had pulled to a shore she had never seen. She was sandbagged in a wagon and crossing rough terrain. She was pulled to places no sane girl would visit on her own. Well, the Devereux had immigrated before. All the way from County Wexford, Ireland in 1818. No wonder. If she got the chance, she’d leave her homeland, too. There were lots of other places besides Canada and loads of other people.

  “That’s it. We can’t go any farther,” Dace said, motioning at an electrified fence strung on the horizon, just above the small pond. They stopped and stared at the slime-free water and shared the same thought: Uncle Tom had been through here with a back hoe and cleaned up the place. Yellow flowered lily pads floated on the surface, bluish purple pickerel weed poked through bulrushes near the shore, and a Great Blue Heron glided in for a landing on the opposite shore.

  “Maybe it’s as far as you can go,” she said, kicking off her shoes. They fell just short of the spongy earth at the pond’s edge. Briefly she considered pushing him into the bulrushes, but she was afraid of his reaction. He would do something worse to her for sure. She sensed there was something in him waiting to be unleashed. The same thing was in her.

  A cicada sang in the trees. It was usually a rather pleasant sound, but she found it annoying now. It was too soon, wasn’t it? The bullfrogs sounded even worse. Guttural, almost obscene. Mating, she supposed. As she eased a foot into the cool water, he unbuttoned his wrinkled shirt, damp now under the arms.