The Loophole

She carefully took the netted cage outside. Inside, through the delicate webbing, she could hear the repetitive batta-ta-tatta-ta-tatta of the fragile creatures wanting to be OUT.

"Easy, little ones, easy, just a few moments," she crooned. It didn't stop the noise, or the desperation, but it soothed her own feelings a little bit. "Soon, you'll be out, and it'll be all over."

That last, she knew, was an outright lie. She could only keep them safe for so long, through their final transformation. After? Birds, weather, cars, other predatory insects, and all the other dangers of being little and tasty in a big and hungry world. But still, they demanded OUT. And the biological imperative must be obeyed.

She knew the rules. And she knew the penalties for disobeying.

She hoped she had found a loophole. She couldn't pray, They might hear it, so she just hoped.

She set the cage down gently in the shade of a large maple tree in the back yard. Everything the little ones needed was in sight - flower-covered bushes, milkweed stalks waving in the light breeze in the garden, lots of plants with nectar for a dozen species. Even now, the honeybees were dancing on the pear tree, its second set of blossoms open for a very out-of-season pollen gather. They kept ripping the petals off in their hunger for the nectar, though some of the other species of butterflies dotted the less ravaged flowers. They were getting their food too, before journeying south.

There were penalties for disobeying...

Carefully she unzipped the cage halfway, put her hand inside. The first one walked onto her palm with little hesitation, and she got him out without letting his fresh wings touch the opening. She held him towards the butterfly bush, but he launched out of her hand and headed right towards the pear tree. And the female, sipping nectar on a close flower. Ah, biological imperatives.

"More of your stupid butterflies, Ellie?"

She didn't even bother answering her neighbor. Her hand went in the cage again, and again, and two more joined the air dance of their first flight. She smiled to see them free, closed the cage as carefully as she opened it. There were still eight chrysalises inside that weren't quite ripe yet, so she wanted to bring them back to relative safety to give them the best chances at survival. She continued to ignore her neighbor as his greasy snicker followed her inside.

Ugh. Some people.

She had suspicions, but you can never tell.

All through the summer, Elena continued her pattern - raise caterpillars in her mesh cages, bring them good fresh food from her garden, release them to do what nature intended when they became butterflies. And if her garden was more lush than it should be, greener than all the others, and bloomed more often than anyone else's, well, she wasn't entering any of it in the local fair, now was she? And if the bees and butterflies collected and stayed in her garden more than anyone else's, why should they complain?

She could see the butterfly carcasses in her neighbor's yard, though she pretended not to notice. She just hoped the loophole would be enough. And continued to ignore the neighbor's snide comments and unprintable suggestions. The more she ignored him, the worse he got.

She knew it wouldn't last.

Sure enough, he finally snapped a week before fall. She was bent over, cutting more milkweed for the latest hatch, when she could hear him cutting through her hedge fence. It was grown of good, solid, thorny roses; old stock. Good healthy blooms for growing critters. But the fact that he'd muttered words under his breath and waved a magic wand instead of a chainsaw, well, that was new.

Usually they weren't that obvious about it.

He came for her at night, while all her creatures should be asleep. While he was charging, snarling magic words and thrashing about with the stick in his hand, she took her shears and chanted a singsong rhyme while cutting the milkweed in her hand to bits.

It withered and turned to ash.

And the butterflies came.

They swirled out of nowhere - the bushes, the trees, the garden, the ground itself. Even the dead ones next door, they reanimated and came fluttering on ghostly wings, trailed by the actual wings that had been ripped off violently. Then the bees came, an angry buzzing horde whose drone overrode the dry rustlings of thousands of colorful wings.

It's hard to shoot a spell when you're angry. It's even harder when your targets are so tiny. It's impossible when you didn't expect the defense to take this form, and were expecting big and showy. And human. Well, human-like, anyway.

They surrounded him; they landed on him. They pulled him down with their weight. His cries were muffled by the grass he landed on, which seemed to wrap around him and pull him tighter to the soil.

With everything under control, she nodded in satisfaction and took the rest of her basket inside. She could do the rest later, when there would be no prying eyes to her garden business.

By morning, the garden seemed even more lush than ever before. More blooms, more butterflies, more bees. The honey-keepers were already talking about a glorious season never heard of before, and the mead makers were excited about what it would mean for their business as well. Elena smiled, and carefully patted more soil onto her new raised bed. She could grow the rare butterfly weed on this one, with its rich fertilizer already in place under such good earth. It looked as good as the other raised beds, all carefully arranged in small rows in her garden.

She wondered if she could buy her neighbor's house, when it went up for sheriff's sale. There were good shade trees, she might be able to make a forest meadow garden for some of the wilder species, the ones that weren't seen much anymore.

Oh, there were penalties for disobeying. But it seems that she wouldn't have to pay for a little while longer, at least. More precious years given for a very literal abatement. The loophole, as always, was to make someone else pay. Some went the cauldron-on-the-mountain route, or the gingerbread house route, but she liked her town and most of the neighbors. An attractive nuisance can be subtle, to draw in the ones who wouldn't be missed. As subtle as a flower filled with nectar, smelling heavenly to those who would feed on it. As long as they were foolish enough to continue to challenge her on her home turf, she could defend herself, and her own penalty would be pushed back farther and farther.

She patted the bed again, well satisfied, and smiled at the butterflies swirling around her head in the gentle breeze.