The Butterfly Disjunct

She was four when they furrowed her, opening holes in her skull and channels through her brain. She was four when they prepared her for the Tree.

Four, but not afraid—not really. Jeyna had known of the Tree, of course, and how important the guardian’s duties were, but fear was foreign to her, along with the words her parents had repeated the night before: honour, sacrifice, pride.

Her parents themselves she remembers mostly as a jumble of impressions, all tear-streaked faces and shaking hands. She can picture their clothes, though, crisp and orderly, their pristine white subtly emphasising the cream-coloured soulsteel curves of the Place’s inner halls.

Her father’s broken baritone still echoes through her mind: “It’s not right, Kel. Not right.”

Still, he left her there.

They both had, outside the surgery, but she had not been afraid. She was curious. What would it be like, this new life with the Tree? She turned to the doors to find them open, awaiting her.

And to find Marin, clad in a vibrant red robe, her arms outstretched in welcome.

Marin, who was all smiles and gentle caring, who held her hand during the blackening pain of the furrow, and who soothed her burning recovery with patience and cool water. Marin, who trusted and raised and loved her all through the long years of her training.

A life without Marin? Jeyna would as well imagine a life without the Tree, a life without the smooth soulsteel of the Place around her. But they never lie, the realities which flitter in the forefront of her altered mind—the infinite storm of relentless, ash-grey butterflies.

The Tree, as always, buttresses her body and spirit. Its monofilament tendrils drift out and above her place within its trunk, comforting in their familiar motions. She can feel—very dimly—the sharpness where its interface pierces the base of her skull, but mostly she feels the supple smoothness of its soulsteel on her flesh, its vast energy throbbing through her.

She feels also the Place, its winding inner passages and its dizzying shafts, its artificial oceans and sprawling, engineered forests. It is for this beautiful globe of living green and tempered soulsteel that she stays vigilant, for all its teeming millions that she performs her duties.

Out here beyond the ends of time, her mind and the Tree are all that separate life from death. For a decade she has stood her watch, striking at each metaphysical butterfly, choosing a single one of its wings to affix to the vision of the Tree she keeps in her mind. Only one path can stay the Place through time.

She must carry out her duty in an instant: that is all it would take for the butterflies to settle on the tree she holds in her mind. Then, reality would stutter and trip, the bubble of space-time that keeps her people safe would fade. The Place and its wonders would burst into ghastly oblivion.

She has never failed in her duty, has never missed a single instant. Even the butterflies, ivory-tinged and formal, that spelled her parents’ deaths she struck through without regret. Always, she has chosen the reality which prolongs the Place. Always, she has acted.

Until now, when the butterfly is clad in red and bears Marin’s face.

And so, instead of striking, Jeyna hesitates: the butterfly settles into the leaves of the tree in her mind. It jerks and twitches its wings, and in a fluttering of light spawns two new red-black pests.

The Place begins to shift, a subtle disjunct only Jeyna can feel. She closes her eyes, striking the child realities from the tree in her mind as they appear. But always, when she returns to the red butterfly, she hesitates; always, she lets it dance its wings and propagate.