Butterfly Beth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Beth had a perfect song in her head, and by noon it was gone. She hummed it all morning while she walked the sunflower grove. The tune rose and turned and made the butterflies at her heels spin in bright loops. It was the song she needed, the one that could make all of Mounds Park stop and listen. Then a bird called, she lost her place, and the melody slipped away like water through her fingers. She sat down hard among the stems. This happened every time. Beth could sing, but she had never learned to read or write music. Her best tunes lived only as long as she could hold them in her mind. She had no way to catch them, no way to shape one into a real song she could sing again tomorrow. "You're chasing something that keeps running off," said a voice. An old woman stepped between two tall blooms. Beth knew her by the sunflower pinned at her collar and the golden ones stitched down her robe. This was the keeper who tended the great sunflowers in the grove. She pressed songs into their seeds, saving music that would otherwise be lost. Beth had heard the story her whole life. She had never dared to ask for help. "I keep losing it," Beth said. "I hear a song, and then it's just gone." The keeper knelt beside her. She plucked a fat seed from the nearest sunflower and turned it in her wrinkled fingers. "Then stop trusting your memory. Give the song a body." She drew marks in the dirt with a stick. Dots on lines, high and low. "Each mark is a note," she said. "Higher up, higher sound. Once it's written, it can't run." She hummed a short line, then pointed to each dot as she sang it again, exactly the same. Beth's chest tightened. She had watched people write words her whole life and never thought music could be written too. "Show me again," she said. They worked until the light went orange. The keeper hummed; Beth copied the dots. At first Beth's marks were wrong, and the tune came out crooked. She scrubbed them out and tried again. By the third try, she sang back the keeper's line without hearing it first. She read it off the ground. Then Beth hummed a small piece of her own lost song. Her hand shook, but she set the dots down, one at a time. She looked at what she had made. She sang it. The notes matched. The butterflies lifted and circled her head. "I caught it," Beth whispered. "I actually caught it." The keeper stood and brushed off her robe. "You can write a note now. But one line is not a song." She nodded toward the seeds waiting in every giant bloom. "A whole song is a long climb, child. And I only teach those who keep coming back."