The Dreams of the Black Butterfly
Iquitos, Peru
September 8th 1926
The doors of Cavendish House opened just after dawn, as the mournful call of the Common Potoo drifted through the mist. Lamps flared behind the shuttered windows, dimmed a little as they were adjusted, and began floating through the rooms of the big house under unseen hands. The sizzle of bacon on a skillet and the smell of coffee, murmured instructions growing louder. As the sun cleared the treetops, it was as though Pachamama herself was drawing the mist back into the jungle with a slow intake of breath.
A steady stream of tea chests and rough wooden crates were brought out and deposited on the gravel drive. Horse-drawn carts began to arrive from Iquitos Town. They queued beneath the giant trees, waiting to be loaded. The men got down, watered their horses and stood beside them smoking cigarettes in the warm, green shadows.
Alice Cavendish watched it all from the bottom of the long, sloping garden. For an hour she had been slumped over an iron table, chin resting on her folded arms, eyes following the labourers and servants as they went back and forth through the entrance to her home. Occasionally, she would hear a shrill cry from her mother upstairs, demanding something be done more quickly, more carefully, and yet the labourers seemed indifferent to her demands. They moved with a languor befitting the rising temperature.
The previous Christmas, Alice’s father had brought back a steel toy from England. It was a Noah’s Ark, almost as big as Alice herself. When the handle was wound, Noah, his family and the pairs of animals would clank along on a chain system,
The Dreams of the Black Butterfly Description:
Moises Quispé has heard the whispered rumours about the Black Butterfly – its hypnotic, velvet wings, two feet across and as dark and mystical as the Peruvian jungle night; a jungle receding to a soundtrack of chainsaws and hate; a jungle that gave him life and embraces the spirit of his murdered family. So he searches. Not because of the one million nuevo sol offered for its capture by the maniacal Mr Dollie, or because his mentor – who believes the rumours – has disappeared so completely, but because he must.
Perhaps the Black Butterfly has been searching for him too, desperate to reveal the tight, elegant writing embedded in its wings. Its stories: tall, dark and cautionary tales of a doomed humanity that he alone can read. And when the butterfly finally submits, the danger that Moises finds himself in pales into insignificance against the fate of humanity itself. The Black Butterfly has chosen him to deliver its message and the future of mankind is in his hands. Man’s imagination will be nature’s revenge…
