Teranesia

His arms and sides were dripping from the night’s humidity; he soaked his right hand and placed it, palm up, on the bottom of the cage. Then he raised his arm slowly. The empty space above the floor of the cage seemed to go on forever; he could feel his palm drying while the rest of his skin shed nervous rivulets. He tried to remember what his father had told him about the breeding cycle. Maybe there were no pupae in the cage at all.

When his hand was shoulder-high, his wrist finally touched something.

It was cool and springy. One of the branches.

He withdrew his arm. It was trembling.

One more time, he decided. If he failed again, he’d walk away.

As he stood beside the cage, trying to remember exactly where he’d placed his hand the first time, Prabir became aware of a faint, unfamiliar drone coming from somewhere outside the hut. He was puzzled; he knew the sound of every machine in the kampung, whether they were working smoothly, labouring against an overload, or seizing up completely. If there were any mysteries left, they’d be in here with him: some automated piece of lab equipment or refrigeration pump, too quiet to hear from the outside. But the source of this sound was not in the hut, he was sure of that.

It was a jet. Flying lower than usual. Or maybe not; maybe the night air changed the acoustics. The sound was so faint it would never have woken him. He couldn’t be sure that this was anything new.

He stood in the dark, listening to the aircraft approaching. If it was flying lower, what did that mean? If he ran and woke his parents, no one would demand to know what he’d been doing. He’d been woken by stomach pains, that was all he’d need to say.

The drone grew louder, then suddenly dropped in pitch. Prabir remained paralysed, picturing bombs tumbling through the air, falling towards their target as the plane accelerated away. But as the retreating engines faded, nothing followed. Only frog calls from the jungle.

Prabir almost laughed with relief, but the sound stuck in his throat. Maybe the signs had protected them, the paint visible against the warmth of the roof panels, black-on-green in the false colours of an infrared display. But if the plane’s destination had been elsewhere all along – if Teranesia had meant nothing to the pilot but a fleeting piece of scenery beneath the flight path – then the bombs could still fall tonight. On some other island.

Prabir stared into the darkness, a hollow ache in his chest. He put his hand into the cage again, and continued the search. This time he was rewarded: his fingertips brushed against the side of a chrysalis. The impact set it swinging, but the silk thread holding it was resilient. He waited for the oscillations to die down, then cupped it gently in the palm of his hand. The surface was cool and smooth, like shellac.

He wasn’t sure now how much sweat he’d had on his palm, and he didn’t want to try to move his left hand into the cage as well – that would mean twisting his body, and worrying about new obstacles. He stood perfectly still for a while, fixing the position of the chrysalis in his mind. Then he withdrew his hand, coated it thoroughly, and wiped a second, surer dose of poison across the surface of the sleeping insect.

He closed the cage and walked out of the hut the way he’d come. Belatedly, he crouched to check for footprints, but there was enough grass along the route he’d taken to keep him from making any impression in the soil, and to keep his feet from being dusty enough to have left a visible trail indoors.

As he lay down in his hammock, he felt physically drained, more exhausted than when he’d half climbed the volcano. But everything he’d done in the butterfly hut already felt less real than a dream. Not having seen the crime would make it easier to keep the guilt from his face when he heard the news. By the time the poisoned butterfly failed to emerge – or unfurled its wings and died in the sunlight – no memory would remain of the faint mental image of his hand inside the cage.

Prabir was walking back from the beach, Madhusree in his arms, when he heard a loud, dull thud from the direction of the kampung. It could almost have been a tree toppling, but there’d been no screech of tearing wood, no rustle of branches.

Madhusree gave him a puzzled look, but didn’t press him for an explanation; she was perfectly capable of inventing one herself. They’d all get to hear it at dinner: a new creature on the island, probably, blundering around in search of children to eat.