My name is Wesley Angelcakes and my dearest friend is Gabriel Hummingbird. I have known him since I was ten years old. We grew up together in England on the Romney Marsh, in houses near to each other, across that eerie, ghost ridden landscape. We used to pretend we were explorers and dig into the earth. We found Roman coins and fragments of pottery, a flint blade and the skull of a sheep. We collected beetles, horned ones: black hairy legs, emerald eyes, deep set like jewels. We stored them in jars and then gave them mock funerals down wells.
But after a few years we started to both have a deep fascination for butterflies. It became an addiction. Our fathers gave us butterfly nets for our birthdays and we chased those white marshland moths, the pale blue summer flies and the cabbage-eaters. We chased them as the god of the underworld chased Persephone: unyielding, obsessively.
By the time we were eighteen we both had extensive collections and every variety of butterfly in England sat pinned through the heart in our houses. We arranged a trip abroad to South America to collect varieties of the rarest in the world. It took over a year to plan and here we now are.
We are in Peru exploring an Aztec temple. We’ve been in South America for two months now and already have a good collection of ghost moths, emperors and dancing flames. The latter is a vibrant pink and orange butterfly. Gabriel has found seven of those, each one he kisses when he captures them.
This particular temple is cool and dark with great vines creeping round our feet and snails the size of teapots softly moving about. We have come here because we have been told that the rarest butterfly in the world has been spotted here. Her name is Angel-Eater and she is also the largest butterfly in the world. We must have her for our collection, for our exhibition in London on our return.
We creep lower into the bowels of the temple, rubble and dark earth piled round our feet, the walls decaying and crumbling. Gabriel holds the torch, which flickers and spits, revealing paintings on the temple walls. Pictures crudely executed, showing the temple steps covered in piles of bodies, an ocean of bodies and a warrior woman standing at the top. At the bottom of the temple, a river is depicted stuffed full of human hearts.
We come to a great stone door, which with a combined effort we manage to heave open.
Inside is a small chamber with an altar, and a picture drawn on the wall of a deity wearing human skin. Gabriel points his finger to the ceiling and we both gasp for there we see an angel-eater, two foot long, wings as black as hell, floating above our heads.
So softly my net sweeps her in, as though a lover plucking a sweetheart onto the dance floor. And in a moment she’s dead.
We are both laughing and dancing. As happy as drunk bugs. Gabriel asks me to check the rest of the chamber to see if there are any more beauties hiding. I peek round the corners of the small chamber, move further in. And then I hear the door shut behind me. Gabriel has locked me in and taken the rarest butterfly in the world.
Why am I not surprised?
I don’t know how many days it has been but I am dying. The picture on the wall keeps talking to me. It wants to wear my skin. I try and fill my mind with my girls:
Pearl-queen
Cabbage-eater
Ghost
Blue emperor
Dancing flames
Jester-bells
Toad-eye
Devil’s finger Meadowsweet
Maiden-kiss
Butter-shark
Little boy blue
They flicker off my tongue like spit.
Angel-Eater. The biggest.
I tell the picture on the wall my name. I tell him before I forget it. He likes my name. He likes my skin. I am forgetting the names of the butterflies. I start to hallucinate. I have turned into a butterfly and glide about my tomb. I am a jester-bell, brown as a leaf in autumn with little red splodges on my wings. I am a little butterfly, quick moving and delicate as a wisp of smoke. See how high I can fly! And then drop, deep and low and skim the prison floor, my tiny wings brushing it like a flower petal across a cheek. For a moment I am so happy. So deliriously happy.
Before I die he crawls into me. Starts to peel off my wings.
The Wedding
My wedding dress is as black as the stomach of a demon. A red sash is around my waist. A top hat on my head, the colour of liquorice. Butterfly butterfly butterfly: my wings are my curved silver blades concealed within my high-laced boots. Shall I spread my wings for you?
Mr Angelcakes thinks I look interesting. I say, shouldn’t a bride look beautiful? He says I am not an ordinary bride.
Mr Loveheart is throwing stones at my window. I open it and peer down at him. Today he’s dressed in white, red hearts like love bites.
“Don’t marry him, Boo Boo! He’s incredibly dull.”
Mr Angelcakes nods his head in agreement, his skin wobbling slightly.