The Price of a Butterfly

The Price of a Butterfly

It was early morning when the fourth prince of Ott rode into an orchard of butterflies and found himself face to face with the wizardess Ru.

Jeweled wings flashed emerald and sapphire in the rays of the early sun as the prince sat straight in his saddle. The delicate creatures flapped and dove around him, landing for a moment in his hair or on the pommel of his saddle, landing on the blossoms of the apple trees and fluttering off again. The wizardess, sitting in a high-backed chair of birchwood, lay aside her knitting and held him with eyes older than words.

“It has been a long time since any mortal has entered my orchard. Longer still since one of the five princes of Ott has had the courage.”

Sliding from his saddle, Rowan felt a small butterfly, different from the jeweled winged beauties of the orchard, flutter desperately in his stomach. Fear crept up his spine and paralyzed his fingers, his tongue and all the while the wizardess Ru watched him out of her secret eyes.

Why is she waiting? he wondered desperately to himself. Why has she not killed me yet?

“She is cunning and conniving. She will play with you like a cat plays with a mouse.”

“ Bir is right Rowan. She hates Ott and she hates us. To seek her help is madness…”

Ash, what other option do we have?

“No one holds an ancient grudge like a wizardess.”


“Do you have a tongue my dove? Or does Ott breed speech out of their princes now?”

Rowan started but his body would not cooperate to make a proper bow. Birch, the first prince of Ott, his oldest brother, should have come. Birch always knew what to say and what to do and how to act. He knew not to stand like a fool among the butterflies.

“You’re the wizardess Ru,” he breathed finally.

She arched an eyebrow and delicately shifted her head as hair the color of raven feathers fell across her shoulders and she gazed at him out of the coal black eyes that held eternity.

“I am,” she murmured. “And you are Rowan of Atwood, the Fourth Prince of Ott who stands before me with fear in his eyes.”

“And should I not?” Rowan breathed in sharply, wishing he could grab the words out of the air as they hung between the two in suspended silence. “The tale of what was done against you by our forefathers is legendary,” he continued softely. “ The oath that was not kept, the word that was broken.”

“And have you, Rowan of Atwood, come here to mend that broken word?” Her voice was a gentle as a butterfly but they pierced the young prince and made him color in shame.

Slowly he shook his head, hair falling before his eyes like a tawny screen in the early morning sun. “No, wizardess, I need a favor.”

“A favor? Ott wants a favor from me? Ott has the nerve to ask for a favor from me and even sends me one of its princes?” She smiled and shook her head in disbelief as she picked up her needles. “Amazing.”

“Wizardess, I’m in great need of a butterfly.”

She froze as the air went suddenly still. The trees ceased moving, the butterflies settled and the shadow cast by the birch chair darkened. Slowly the wizardess raised her eyes and her gaze was cold. “You ask a lot, Rowan of Atwood. Rarely do I give a butterfly.”

Sorrow and hopelessness found their way from Rowans heart to his lips and he cried brokenly, “My sister, my sister! You are my last hope. She pulled a flower from the garden of the Black Eyed Wight. A butterfly is the only thing that will set her right again! A butterfly will be the only thing that will allow her dance once more in the sunlight in the stable yard, will allow her greet the doves each morning. Please, wizardess, you are my only hope.”

Ru appraised the broken prince as a tiny diamond of a tear formed on his cheek. “And if you care so much about your sister, why did not one of your brothers come? The first prince of Ott? First in line of the land? Or the second or even the third prince for that would seemly flatter me more than a fourth?”

Rowan shook his head bitterly and looked at the black eyed wizardess with wry humor in his eyes. “Because they knew that you would not help.”

“And so you came because you believed I would? You believed that I had or would forgive?”

“I may be fool on a fool's errand but I would not expect that.”

The wizardess sad back in her birchwood chair and a long silence stretched between them.

“I will give you a butterfly, fourth prince of Ott, but it comes with a price.”

Rowan looked up, not daring to breathe less the wind brush away the words he had just heard. Hope cautiously crept into his heart as he took the words and treasured them deeply.

“Anything,” he breathed. “I will give you anything I own, my home, the clothes from my back…whatever it is I will pay the price.”

The wizardess looked at him out of her coal black eyes. “I want you to ride to the Tower of the Winds, climb the great stairwell and tell me what you see from the top of the world.”

Rowans heart stopped as a butterfly landed in his hair. “What truths are held for the man who stands on the roof of the word? That riddle is old and ancient and I do not know the answer. They say that the winds tear a man apart before they let him leave the tower. They say that the world is so distorted that it drives a man insane for want of something familiar and want of something to know and love.”

Ru picked up her knitting once more. “You know my price.”

“I know your price,” Rowan replied, “and I shall pay it.”




What have I gotten myself into? Rowan asked himself over and over again as he rode away from the butterflies and the scent of apples. I cannot handle this task. It is impossible. What possessed me to search for the Wizardess, much less ask her for a Butterfly? I have not the strength to confront what awaits me on top of that ancient tower of riddles! Ash is stronger than I; he should be the one to go! Or I should not have gone to the Wizardess at all…Bir was right, no one holds an ancient grudge like a wizardess and I am indeed a fool.

“Thinking of going back on your promise to the wizardess, are you?”

Rowan looked at the owl as it spread its great gray wings and took to the air. It circled several times before settling on Rowan’s shoulder.

“No sir,” Rowan replied politely, “I am just musing on the truth.”

“Ah, who knows what truth is,” the owl murmured, preening his feathers.

“I know the truth is that I am the Fourth Prince of Ott. I know that I am a fool, everyone tells me as much. And I know that wizardesses hold grudges.”

“I know of one wizardess who gave away a great treasure.”

“But for a price, and for that treasure I shall lose my life. I must stand on the Tower of the Winds where tales tell of madness and death, where I know I will not survive. That is the price of such a treasure and the payment for Ott’s broken word. The grudge of a wizardess revealed. The price, however, is right I suppose after what Ott did so long ago.”

“So that is the truth?”

“Yes,” Rowan responded grim faced and grim mouthed, “that is the truth.”

“Why did you, then, seek such a truth in the Wizardess?”

“I don’t know!” Rowan cried. “Because I thought what I knew to be truth was possibly not the only truth. Because I thought…maybe… she might have forgiven, or maybe found forgiveness somewhere in her heart. I had hope, I guess. And it is for these thoughts that I am a fool. No one holds an ancient grudge like a wizardess.”

The owl peered at him out of eyes the color of the sun and took off from his perch on Rowans shoulder. Flying in front of him on mighty wings it called to all who might hear: “A fool! A fool approaches! Make way and honor him.” And Rowan hung his head in shame and rode on towards the Tower in silence.




The tall spire that was the Tower appeared over the horizon, reaching up impossibly tall lengths to touch the sky. As Rowan watched it grow larger with his approach, his heart grew heavier and fear drummed in his mind.

He rode down the dirt path and into a grove of trees where he dismounted and faced the yawning black mouth of the Tower door. Fear swelled in a crescendo in his heart and he hesitated.

“By the Gods I am not ready for death,” he murmured, “why am I doing this? For Ana I know but why must I die? Because I was not clever enough to bargain with the wizardess most likely, if I had Brands silver tongue I would not be in this mess.”

“Not going through with it, then?”

“No,” Rowan cried sharply to the snake who was sun bathing on the rock. “My reverie is for myself. I can doubt all I want but I will not break another promise to the wizardess.”

The snake yawned and stretched out to warm his belly on the hot stone. “I would not blame you, you know. Is this butterfly really worth your life? Or rather, does the wizardess really have a right to demand it?”

“She can demand whatever she would like. It is her butterfly.”

“But it is your life.”

“It is my life for my sisters life. That is all I need to know. Only a butterfly will save her. A butterfly from an angry Wizardess.”

“An angry Wizardess,” the snake repeated. “So that is the truth?”

Rowan looked at the snake sharply. “Have you been speaking to owls.”

“Owls know wisdom when they see it.”

Rowan blinked at the snake and shook his head. “I am sorry but I have no time to play your riddle game,” and he entered the inky blackness.


One, two Rowan counted and his heart beat harder, three-four-five-six. With each step he felt his fear grow more and more. Eight, nine, ten, eleven. As he climbed he could hear the wind whistling and crying on the otherside of the cold gray stone. I wonder what I shall see, he mused as he mounted step after step, before I leave this world that is. And how shall I tell the wizardess what I saw? Maybe all this is in vain and this is just a matter of revenge. After all, she hasn’t given me the butterfly yet and for all I know she never will.

And with these last thoughts he stepped out onto the roof of the world. He closed his eyes at first, waiting to see if the wind would take him immediately. He waited for vicious lashes and blows but all he felt was the gentle caress of gentle tendrils of air, and nothing stronger than a light breeze.

Cautiously he opened an eye and looked at the world wondering what madness he would see. Beneath him he saw grassy plains and great forests. There was the dirt road he had rode in on and far beneath him he could see the snake sunning himself on his rock. At the edge of the horizon was the lonely border of Ott.

“What do you see,” said a voice as gentle as the winds accompanied by the squeak of a birch rocker.

The Fourth Prince of Ott turned to the Wizardess Ru with confusion in his eyes. “I do not understand,” he said, “I should be dead by now, or at least mad.”

“That was not the price I asked for princeling,” she said calmly as she knitted her butterfly.

“You asked me to come here. Here, to a place where tales tell of horrors but I am alive and speaking to you. What of your grudge, what of the price? You do not give away butterflies for nothing?”

The Wizardess put aside her knitting and looked up at the young man before her and nodded. “You are right, I do not give away butterflies for nothing. And I have not. I gave one away for a vision of truth. You, the youngest, least worthy of your countrymen managed to see beyond the curtain of pride, shame, and centuries of perception and find hope and the possibility of forgiveness. That was truth. For that, I deemed you worthy of a butterfly.”

“But…this task…”

“I have never held a grudge against Ott. Never. I had forgiven Ott long ago but Ott never seemed to believe that someone was capable of forgiving, especially since it had not forgiven itself. And yet you came to me, carrying the hope of a truth and then leaving it at my doorstep and looking at me through the eyes of your countrymen you so fully believed. Nothing I would have said then would have made you believe me, you would have been searching for the grudge you believed was truth. And it was with this thought in mind, I made you come here to this place of tales. Now, Rowan of Atwood, Fourth Prince of Ott, pay the price I asked of you. What do you see from the roof of the world?”

And Rowan looked out over the fields and hills, dales and woods he knew and replied simply, “Truth.”