The Butterfly Garden (The Collector, #1)

by Dot Hutchison

You learn things over time, and that was one of the biggest things I learned about him. He wanted to find more joy in life than he did.

“He started with the outlines. Then he went back in over the course of two weeks to add in all the color and detail. And when it was done, there I was, just another one of the Butterflies in his Garden. God creating his own little world.”

Then the hum stopped and his breaths were short and fast as he wiped away the blood and excess ink. His hands trembled at their work where before they’d been nothing but steady. Cold, slick ointment came next, rubbed carefully into every inch of skin. “You’re exquisite,” he said hoarsely. “Absolutely flawless. Truly a worthy addition to my garden. And now . . . now you must have a name.” His thumbs stroked along my spine, where the first ink was done and the most healed, traveling up to the nape of my neck to tangle in my pulled-up hair. Greasy ointment clung to his hands, leaving my hair matted and heavy in his wake. Without warning, he pulled me down the bench until my feet were on the floor, my upper half still on the leather. I could hear him fumbling with his belt and zipper and I screwed my eyes tightly shut. “Maya,” he groaned, running his hands along my sides. “You are Maya now. Mine.”

“So a rose by any other name isn’t still a rose?” “That’s language, not identity. Who you are isn’t a name but it is a history, and I need to know yours.”

Beauty loses its meaning when you’re surrounded by too much of it.

she was so broken by submission to his interests, so absolutely in love with him, that she never tried to run away, never tried to tell anyone about the Garden or the dead Butterflies or the living ones who still could have had some hope. She went to her classes, and when she came back into the Garden she studied and practiced, and on her twenty-first birthday, he took away all those backless, pretty black dresses and gave her a plain grey uniform that covered her entirely, and she became the cook and nurse for the Garden.

The Gardener only ever killed girls for three reasons. First, they were too old. The shelf date counted down to twenty-one, and after that, well, beauty is ephemeral and fleeting, and he had to capture it while he could. Second reason was connected to health. If they were too sick, or too injured, or too pregnant. Well, pregnant, I guess. Being too pregnant is a bit like being too dead; it’s not really a flexible state. He was always a little disgruntled about the pregnancies; Lorraine gave us shots four times a year that were supposed to prevent that sort of inconvenience, but no birth control is completely foolproof. Third reason was if a girl was completely incapable of settling into the Garden. If after the first few weeks she couldn’t stop crying, if she tried to starve herself or kill herself past a certain “allowable” number of times. The girls who fought too hard, the girls who broke.

Avery killed girls for fun, and sometimes by accident. Whenever that happened, his father would ban him from the Garden for a time, but then he’d be back.

“Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”

When you were given something other than black, it was because that was the gown the Gardener wanted you to die in.

“I think your wife is sick.” I rarely lied to the Gardener; the truth was the one thing that could always be mine. “I think she’s scared of Avery and doesn’t want to show it, and I think she dotes on your younger boy. I think she treasures those walks with you as the only time she has your undivided attention.”

“You are quite unlike any of the others,” he said eventually. Not entirely true. I had a temper like Bliss, only I didn’t let it go. I had impatience like Lyonette, which I did my best to spread out. I read like Zara, ran like Glenys, danced like Ravenna, and braided hair like Hailee. I had bits and pieces of most of the others in me, save for Evita’s sweet simplicity. The only thing that made me truly different was that I was the only one who never cried. Who never could. Fucking carousel. “You put requests for books on the lists but never overtly ask for anything. You assist the other girls, you listen to them, calm them. You keep their secrets, and apparently mine as well, but you give no one else secrets to keep for you.” “My secrets are old friends; I would feel like a poor friend if I abandoned them now.”

The Gardener sat forward on the edge of the couch, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. “Your brother and I rescue them from the streets and bring

them back here for a better life. We feed them, clothe them, and take care of them.”

He’d learn better. The first time he heard a girl crying, the first time he saw someone’s wings, the first time the walls came up and showed all those girls in resin and glass, he’d know better. For now, he swallowed it all. By the time he learned better, would he be in too deep to do the right thing?

Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Finally I could hear his heavy footsteps against the cold metal floor as he came back, then oh fucking God the pain as he pressed something into my hip that burned and tore. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, the agony so tight it pulled everything in me to a single point and tried to shatter it. I screamed, my throat clenching around the sound that tore through it. Avery laughed. “Happy anniversary, you arrogant bitch.” The door slammed open and he spun away, but even after the tool was drawn away the agony remained, stealing all the breath from me as my scream finally choked and died. There were sounds in the room, but I couldn’t make sense of them. I gasped and tried to suck in air, but it felt like my lungs had forgotten how to work. Then hands fumbled at the cuffs at my wrists and ankles, and I flinched.

“They say everything comes in threes.” Three butterflies for a broken girl: one for personality, one for possession, and one for pettiness.

I’m not that person. I don’t choose to be sad or pissed off, but I don’t exactly choose to be happy, either.

“Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”

He was fragile in a way his father and brother weren’t, someone who wanted to be good, do good, and just didn’t know how. “No,” I said eventually. “Not completely.” Not if I could figure out some way to lead him to usefulness.

If you don’t look at the bad thing, the bad thing can’t see you, right?

But each time I saw it, I knew I was in the presence of something extraordinary, something that not everyone found or was capable of recognizing and sustaining.

You don’t learn to be brave. You just have to do what’s right, even if it scares you.