It was spring, and the fields inside the village were verdant with fresh green leaves. The evening was quiet, lit by moonlight. An old woman that lived on the outskirts of the village was still awake, sitting alone near a window, busily sewing away.
The lamp light inside the old woman's house was bright and even. The old woman's vision had gone a bit blurry from age, so she sat very close to the lamp when she re-threaded her needle, using her wrinkled, slender fingers to push the thread through the needle's tiny eye.
The moonlight was a pale bluish-white, spilling in through the window frame and spreading over the earth outside. The moon shone over the surface of the fresh, warming spring waters, the trees, the village houses, the hills and fields... everything. There was nothing that the moonlight did not touch.
The old woman daydreamed as she worked, remembering herself in her younger days, thinking about her distant relatives and a granddaughter that she hadn't seen in a very long time. Her alarm clock ticked steadily, but there was no other sound. Sometimes, the old woman heard people calling out to one another on the street—friends, perhaps, or salesmen going door to door. Later, there was the high-pitched whistle that signaled that a steam train was coming into town.
It was very late, and for a few moments, the old woman completely forgot where and when she was, or what she was supposed to be doing. A knock on her door stunned her back into self-awareness. She was a bit deaf, so the sound was not as startling as it might have been. Still, she was surprised. She wasn't expecting a visitor. The more she thought about it, the more she considered the idea that it was the wind she'd heard. The wind blew strongly in this season, in both the fields and the town.
The old woman tilted her head to listen better and heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps passing near her window. "Hello?" a man asked. "Is the lady of the house in?"
At first, the old woman thought that she was just hearing things. It was very late, and she was tired. Her hands stilled and she set her sewing aside.
"Hello? Please, if anyone's there, can you open the window for me?" It was the same voice as before.
The old woman stood up and walked over to her window to open it. The moon was so bright that the fields in front of her house were as clearly visible to her as if it were high noon.
A rather short man stood at the old woman's windowsill, looking up at her. He wore black glasses and had a slight beard.
"I don't know who you are," the old woman said. "Will you tell me, sir?" She was polite, but firm. She had never seen the man before and was fairly sure that he'd mistaken her house for someone else's.
"I sell glasses," the man said. "I really love this town; it's such a nice, friendly place. And the moon was so beautiful tonight that I just had to keep walking,"
The old woman had only just struggled to thread her needle for sewing. These days, thread always seemed out of focus and impossibly far away from the needle's eye.
"Could you sell me a pair of glasses to help me see better?" she asked.
The man lifted the lid of the box he carried. He rooted around, searching for a pair of glasses to suit the old woman. He came up with a large pair of glasses framed with tortoiseshell.
The old woman was peeking out the window. The salesman handed her the glasses and said, “You’ll be able to see anything you want with these.”
Wherever the salesman stepped, the vegetation around him died. Dying white, red and blue flowers darkened when he passed them by. The shriveled flowers shone in the light of the moon, smelling sweetly of decay.
The old woman tried the glasses on. The numbers of the alarm clock across the room and the calendar on the wall came sharply into focus. She read off the numbers one by one. Her eyesight hadn’t been as good as this in ten years or more.
“I’ll buy these,” the old woman said, not disguising her delight. And she bought them on the spot. She passed the bearded salesman coins as payment, then removed her old black-rimmed pair of glasses, exchanging them for the new ones.
When the old woman looked around for the salesman, he was gone. She hadn’t seen him vanish. The only sign he’d ever been there was the line of dying grass and flowers leading away from the house. The moonlit night was still and quiet, as before.
The old woman closed the window, then sat down again. She could thread her sewing needle with incredible ease. She took the glasses on and off again. She was like a curious child, testing out what she could and couldn’t see by using the glasses. She wasn’t usually so excitable, but the glasses had wrought a sudden change in her.
After she was done working, the old woman removed the glasses and placed them on the cupboard next to the alarm clock. It was quite late, and she wanted to rest. She tidied her workspace a little first.
As the old woman was cleaning up, she heard a knock at the door. The old woman tilted her head to listen.
“What a strange night,” the old woman said. “Do I have another visitor? It’s so late...” The moon lit the world brightly even at this hour, but one look at the clock confirmed that it was well past her usual bedtime.
The old woman went to the door. Her new visitor was still knocking. Now that she was closer, she could tell that the sound was made by little hands. A child, perhaps?
There was a beautiful girl on the other side of the door--perhaps twelve or thirteen years old. The old woman told her to come in and stay the night, since it was dangerous for a child on their own. “Really, what are you doing out so late all by yourself?”
“I was working in town today,” the girl said. “There was an open market tonight. I go out every day to gather white roses. I put them in jars to preserve them so that they can be used to make perfumes. I worked late tonight and walked home, but the moonlight made me wander. I lost my way a little bit and tripped over a stone... my finger’s cut up pretty bad... It hurts so much, I can’t stand it. It won’t stop bleeding. I tried to ask for help at other houses, but everyone is asleep! I know you’re kind to everyone, so I took the chance and came here, hoping you’d be awake. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
The girl’s hair was long, spilling over her shoulders. She smelled like white roses--like the perfumes she made. The old woman had been smelling that all through the girl’s explanation.
“How do you know I’m kind to others? We’ve never met before,” the old woman said.
“I see you working in the window sometimes when I’m on the way to work.”
Satisfied with this answer, the old woman said, “You seem like a good child. Let me take a look at your poor finger. I have some good ointment to put on it.”
The old woman led the girl over to a lit lamp. The girl held out her injured finger politely, looking cuter and somehow younger when she did. Though the old woman hadn’t noticed while the girl was standing in the doorway, she saw now that red blood was streaming from the girl’s white finger.
“This is quite a scratch that the stone gave you,” the old woman said. But she wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she couldn’t tell exactly where the blood was coming from.
“Now where did I put those glasses?” the old woman asked, fumbling around on the top of the cupboard where she’d left them.
She found the glasses after a short search and put them on. She turned back to the girl, thinking to take a closer look at her wound so that she could treat it more easily.
The old woman caught sight of the girl with her improved vision and was stunned. The girl who passed by her house every day for work was not a girl at all, but a butterfly.
The old woman had heard stories of the moonlight and late hours playing tricks on the mind. The gentle moon and her lack of sleep had transformed this butterfly maiden into something very human-seeming. With her glasses on, she could see that the butterfly had hurt her leg, not a finger.
“You’re a good child,” she said kindly. “Please follow me.”
The old woman went outside into her garden. The butterfly girl followed her after some hesitation. There were always flowers blooming in the old woman’s garden, but this time of year was the peak season for growing things. Bees and butterflies all thronged to the garden during the day, but now, in the gloomy shade of evening, the hustle and bustle of the daytime seemed like nothing but a pleasant dream.
All was still. The moonlight poured silver-blue light over the garden like shining water. The fields around the house were all blooming with white flowers. The flowers looked like a sheet of untrammeled snow.
“Where do you live?” the old woman asked the girl. “Where are you going?”
When the old woman turned to the girl, she was gone. Like the salesman, she’d simply vanished.
“Well, since everyone else is home in bed, I should get some sleep myself,” the old woman said. She went back inside the house.
The moon really was beautiful tonight.
THE END
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