Death of the nymph

The sun had long deserted the woods when the egg began to shudder. Squirrels scrambled into their nests whilst beavers dove into their lodges; the dozing sun cast shadows over the roe deer that vanished into the trees. A fox crept out from inside a log, her tail unfurling and lashing the air as she peered into the swelling darkness. Her ears twitched as a nightingale, nestled in a hazel tree above, began to warble. A coldness clung to the tree leaves, imprisoning the forest beneath an inky veil.

For eight days, the egg had clung to the leaf’s belly, unmoving and uncompromising, as though it would never peel. Its companions had abandoned the egg without pity, for it was peculiar and obstinate, and they were troubled with their pilgrimages. Dark clouds huddled above the oak tree, but it did not rain. The gloom plagued the egg and after the eighth day, it sprouted a dark spot. From this spot emerged a row of teeth, small but firm, that began to chew. The hole in the eggshell expanded slowly, until something crawled out of it—a girl, black-haired, bright-eyed, small-faced. Her eyelashes fluttered nervously, her hands quivering as they searched for purchase. She dangled, her hair hanging like dark vines that dissolved into the blackness of her narrow vision. 

The nightingale’s song was punctuated with the haunting cries of an owl. Trembling, the girl’s grip tightened. As night-time’s horrors unburied themselves and built a foreboding orchestra, she gnawed at the eggshell, feeling her hunger numb her fear. The chorus bloomed into a menacing crescendo as she neared the end of her meal. She licked her lips and clung to the leaf, feeling cold and alone, and unsteady with dread. 

Night would trail by without much rest for the girl. She could hear a toad’s squeal, then another’s. All the girl could do was clutch the leaf, and try to sleep through her first hours outside the egg. Perhaps tomorrow she might venture deeper into the woods, she decided. 

When tomorrow did come, the girl was too starved of sleep to progress. She had been—albeit foggily—awake when a robin began to sing, painting the arrival of dawn. She stirred; heard the flap of wings; froze. Her body was pressed tightly against the leaf’s underside, compelled into a sharp stillness. It did not slacken until the thrashing noise grew smaller and smaller, and the creature was gone. 

The girl felt heavy with fatigue. She considered curling up into herself again, hiding for perhaps a few moments or hours longer. Hunger wrestled with her exhaustion. As morning crawled closer, the leaf’s dewy coat taunted the girl, but she didn’t dare to eat. Delirious with the fever of her great feast, she might eat her way into a fatal encounter with a wasp, or a woodpecker, too plump to flee. 

Her siblings had paused to graze before they abandoned her; the girl knew this, for she beheld two holes in the leaf, and its curves were interrupted at several points. She wondered where they were, and if they had been eaten themselves. Perhaps they too were hiding under some shade, or inside a tree. The latter, thought the girl, might not be so wise, for much of the wood’s children enjoyed the warm hollowness of a tree’s stomach. Doubtlessly, any silly nymph that climbed inside a tree trunk would be gobbled before the sun slept.

Perhaps the most rational course of action was to remain exactly where she was. Indeed, there was the inevitable question of starvation, but she did not want to confront that yet, for her terror was all-encompassing to the point of numbness. 

Like sap, the girl’s limbs affixed themselves to the leaf in a taut clasp. The sun’s sluggish journey overhead could not cut them free. As blazing streaks littered the indigo sky, signifying the approach of dusk, the girl heard new, anonymous creatures call and chirp and cry. Some resounded deep in the forest; others whirred nearby, tormenting her, but she did not fly. The roof of the leaf sheltered her from the winged monsters, and as for any company that might wander below … Well, there was nothing much she could do, except to curl up tightly, small and starved. 

Hiding felt easy, essentially thoughtless. The girl felt light, like she was floating; she felt not like she was clutching onto the leaf, but that she was the leaf itself. Did she ever escape her egg? Was she still inside, locked away from the world, absent of thought and feeling? 

Though the girl was born not long ago, she felt was already dead. This did not bother her; in fact, she felt rather comforted, for death’s consistency felt kinder than the challenge of surviving. 

And so she clasped the leaf for another day, sleeping little, thinking little, feeling little. That ultimate stab of hunger, however, was quickly snowballing into something that could no longer be swallowed and stowed away. That hunger, that self-inflicted starvation, swelled and roared, mushrooming into a blinding, searing anguish. The girl could not take it any longer: she had to eat. Halfway through her second day alive, the girl recognised the expiration of her strategy. Before her stomach could devour itself, she permitted herself a single bite of the leaf. 

This was instantly pursued by another bite, and another, and before the girl could examine her dazed destruction, she had consumed the entire leaf. It was not enough. Feverishly, the girl preyed on another leaf; feasted on one more. She was taken hostage by her appetite—sick with desire, gleeful with need. 

When at last she felt appeased, her terror did not delay in its return. Dusk’s descent was imminent, yet the woodlands buzzed in a feral cacophony. Though the girl’s narrow vision did not translate the colour of the sky, no lush banquet could disguise the chill of the air. Nestled atop a leaf she had spared, the girl began to quake. She was considering taking shelter below, when some twinkling spectacle caught her eye.

Twines of silver stretched their fingers towards branches overhead, almost escaping the girl’s line of sight. The entire miracle resembled something almost circular, except it was no modest pattern. Feasting her eyes on the rows and rows and columns and columns of silver made the girl’s head spin. But she could not tear her eyes away: what marvel was this? What creature, what celestial architect, could spin something so intricate, so lustrous, as though it were the moon’s yarn? 

The answer was swift to announce itself. 

In her captivation, the girl had failed to heed the monster waiting in the web’s centre—a spider, large, with eight long, bushy legs, and a russet coat. She resembled a dull bumblebee, if it weren’t for her deathly silence, and that white cross pasted on her stout body, and those eight legs, which would easily latch onto the girl’s writhing body if she dared to run. She could not run. Her body was chilled into a doomed stillness, and she was back on the leaf of her birth, cold and frightened, accepting death before life. This was it: this was her end. 

I should never have eaten, thought the girl glumly. Perhaps it would have been more merciful to waste away into a lonely death, rather than die to this devil’s venom. Legs that could spin a web so fine would trap her without struggle, and she would suffer a grotesque slaughter. Perhaps the girl should never have escaped her egg, let alone her leaf. 

She screwed her eyes shut. There was no use in running; such folly would only make the ordeal more terrifying and hopeless. She was dead, she had never been awake, she was in her egg and dead. 

I am dead, thought the girl. 

‘Hello,’ said a silken voice. 

The girl’s eyes cracked open. 

Where a stout spider had once hung menacingly, a woman stood, her long fingers curled around a cord of web. Her hair was a nest of russet curls, velvety coils framing a dark face spotted with white. 

The girl’s shoulders sank with the solace of recognition: in a dark wood, here stood another female, with a face she knew and did not fear. ‘Hello,’ she replied. She grimaced; her voice was hoarse like tree bark.

The tall woman smiled. ‘You seemed frightened of me a moment ago.’

With a frown, the girl craned her neck. ‘I wasn’t afraid of you,’ she explained. ‘There was—a spider.’

‘A spider?’ The woman cocked her head. She crawled down the construction with such grace the girl’s mouth hung agape. 

‘Are you…?’ She trailed off.

The spider, who looked nothing like a spider, extended her long arm in a sweeping motion. ‘Welcome to the woods. You have much to learn about.’ She flashed a sympathetic smile. ‘Don’t be so alarmed, you needn’t fear me. Not until you’re a butterfly, anyway.’

Perhaps fashioning her serpentine web had tired the woman’s eight eyes, and rendered her confused. Did she seek to mock the girl, who knew not three days of this ravenous world?

The girl looked down at herself, before lifting her baffled stare to the spidery woman. ‘You mistake me,’ urged the girl. ‘I am a nymph.’ Damned to grow into nothing more beautiful than a cockroach or a cricket.  

The woman’s face was stony when she studied the girl. Then she threw her head back and released a cackle so great, her web trembled. ‘A nymph?’ she echoed, incredulously. ‘My dear, you are no nymph! Don’t you mark your lanate hide? You are a caterpillar, fated to sprout wings.’

‘A—caterpillar?’ The girl tested the word on her tongue: heavy; too large to wedge between her teeth. Butterfly was even less attainable. As though spying on the exchange, a bronze-winged butterfly fluttered nearby, settling inside a primrose blossom. The girl watched, stunned. Surely, this could not be her reflection, a month from now? She raised her arms; flapped them experimentally. As the spidery woman cackled once more, the girl dropped her arms, and hung her head. 

The spidery woman assured her, ‘You are no nymph, child. Be careful in these woods, and you’ll earn your wings.’ 

Such a feat burdened the girl instantly, for she had twice accepted death, and found she preferred it for its simplicity and ease. Survival daunted her, with its perils and promises: live and feast for another month, and she could sprout wings, lest she become a warbler’s lunch! Could she manage it? If a winged fortune really was her truth, could she survive to rejoice in it? Already, she felt exhausted; her terror felt ever-escalating. ‘Perhaps I should feel stirred,’ she told the woman. ‘But I feel only the sting of my incompetence.’ 

Now, the spidery woman did not laugh. Her commiserating smile returned. She told the girl she, too, had shrivelled with fear when she was but a small babe, hatched fresh into the dark, wide wood. ‘You shall manage it, child,’ she said, and that voice of velvet seemed to command the girl’s resilience. It felt not like reassurance, but fact, or foresight. 

Moments ago, the girl had thought herself a nymph: dull and mundane, now and forevermore. Did she really bear such a gift—blushing wings that could haul her from bud to bud? Perhaps it was too early to believe such a blessing was more than just ambition, but the girl couldn’t help but return her attention to that copper-winged insect. It had vanished, and in its place was something striking: a butterfly with wings like mulberries, a dark violet, like two shards of nighttime sky. Though it fluttered away soon after, escaping the girl’s wide eyes, she did not forget that sight, and felt her heart unfurl with longing, faith and resolve.