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COVER STORY

It was a chilly autumn day. The butterfly had spread here wings into the sky and had flown into the valley from across the hills and heather. She was radiant with the bloom of colors which speckled her wings. She was proud of her beauty and the power of her flight. Earlier in the day some children had tried to catch her in their insect nets in the fields beyond the hills, but she was too agile and quick for them. Rather than sensing fear, she was proud of her speed and her ability to evade captivity. She was even honored that she was the object of their desire.

Her wings were a golden orange with black dots in the center which added contrast and beauty to her design. She liked this valley which she often visited to gather nectar from the flowers and to bask in the sun and cool herself with the breezes which came from the north.

She stopped one afternoon to rest on the lip of a wild mountain flower. It's blue petals opened to greet her and even blushed from the touch of such intimacy.

Suddenly she saw a caterpillar crawling up the stem of the flower and was repulsed by its ugly, haggard appearance. It crept slowly up the stem. It's many legs awkwardly keeping in line with one another, and the wave of its body moving up and down propelled it forward. It was certainly an ugly creature, a deformity of nature, she thought, a mistake of creation.

'...I promise not to bother you. I also want to rest and besides, there is plenty of room here. I will just rest in the shade on this leaf while you can bask in the sun.'

From its tubular body came a head of ungainly appearance, and its pulpy body was covered with a funny, hairy coat which repelled as much as the butterfly's wings attracted.

No children would dare to capture it for the sake of beauty and most people would be repulsed if it landed on their body by mistake. The ground was also home to his enemies. There were small snakes in the fields and birds in the air, and other insects on the ground for whom his pulpy flesh was a regular diet. Unlike the agile butterfly who could escape in flight, he was condemned to crawl. His daily life was a matter of survival.

Several minutes later he reached the top of the stem, settles on a leaf and saw the butterfly.

The proud butterfly looked down at him in disgust, "Please, sir, can't you see that I am resting on this petal? Why don't you go to some other flower and leave me alone."

"Oh," said the caterpillar, "I promise not to bother you. I also want to rest and besides, there is plenty of room here. I will just rest in the shade on this leaf while you can bask in the sun."

The butterfly was annoyed and insisted, "You are indeed an ugly creature. You are slow and clumsy and possess no grace or beauty."

"Oh," replied the caterpillar, "but we are very much the same. Deep inside, we are made of the same substance and part on the same creation."

"Nonsense," responded the butterfly with contempt, "you and I have nothing in common. You crawl and I fly. You are fat and awkward, I am slim and graceful. You have fuzzy hair which cloaks your body, but I..I have beautiful wings."

The caterpillar was deeply saddened and hurt by these remarks and offended by the arrogance of the butterfly. The caterpillar felt sorry for the butterfly for in beauty she had forgotten who she was and from whence she came. He wanted to responded to the butterfly but could not because with a quick flutter of her wings, the butterfly was lifted from the petal and began to fly across the field of daffodils and into the summer sky.

"Humph!" cried the caterpillar, "I hope I never become like that for beauty is only in appearance. Deep inside, where all things matter, we are the same."

The days passed. The butterfly continued to explore the valley and when she dared to go over the hills where the children lived, she would tease them and cleverly avoid their nets as they tried to catch her.

"Ha!," she laughed to herself, "You cannot catch me for I have wings to keep me free."

The caterpillar continued his sluggish life crawling from branch to branch and vine to vine and risking his life on the ground. He daily ate the leaves of trees and flowers and found that he often became more tired as the days grew shorter.

"How much I want to sleep," he murmured to himself. "To rest in a peace that will give me a new life." he became more and more drowsy.

One day he found that life was beyond his control and he was capable of a magical power he never dreamed he had. He began to spin a cocoon around himself. The thread of his cocoon came from within his own body and he was slowly being sealed within himself. He was changing, into what he did not know. He found himself clinging from beneath a leaf and the world he had known was slowing slipping away from him.

"What is this?" he asked himself, "Is this for me a kind of death or shall I be born to a new life?"

As the sun set that evening, he closed his eyes and was surrounded by darkness.

Time passed and the days continued their own cycle of sunrises and sunsets. After a time which could only be measured by eternity, the caterpillar awoke. He opened his eyes sleepily and gazed through the gauze of his cocoon.

"What?" he said to himself. "I must have been dreaming. I felt that I had slept a lifetime. And so he had.

He found his cocoon easy to break through. It was no prison, no cage, no captivity. He climbed out ever so slowly from his cocoon and clung to the branch. He felt moist and wet and chilly, but soon he was dried by the warmth of the sun and found himself stretching. This was something he had never done before.

"What?," he cried out in wonder and amazement. "I have wings. I have beautiful wings." And so he did. They were magnificent wings and filled with color.

He thought for a moment and said to himself, "I remember. I used to be a caterpillar. I used to crawl on the ground and I had ugly fur and people and other creatures found me repulsive. I lived in fear because I was easy prey for birds and insects greater than I. But now I have wings and can fly. I did not die but I was reborn. I now have a new life."

His joy was beyond comprehension and he found it easy now to take flight. The world he saw was new and different. He saw the beauty of creation from the infinity of the sky. "How high can I fly?," he challenged himself. "How far? How wide?"

After a few days he was used to his new power and enjoyed the power of flight, but in the heat of the afternoon he stopped to rest on the petal of a flower standing in the field.

Suddenly he noticed that on another flower there was another butterfly, one with bright orange wings and black markings. He flew over to the flower to get a closer look.

"Do you remember me?," he asked shyly.

"And why should I remember you?" The butterfly answered with contempt in her voice.

"Because we once met."

"Indeed," said the other butterfly, "I never met you before." And with that she flapped her wings and flew away.

The butterfly who remembered his life as a caterpillar looked at the proud butterfly disappearing into the sky and felt sad.

After a while he sighed and sadly said to himself, "I feel sorry for her. I don't think she will ever be happy. She forgot who she was and doesn't know from whence she came."

But the sadness did not last long. He had been given a new life and there was too much of the world to discover. With the power of a new life and the gift of a new creation, he flapped his wings and flew into the sky.

William M. Balsamo is an English Professor at Kenmei Women's Junior College, Japan