The Minister’s many faces loom on the top of every building—paper eyes, paper lips. They are large, faded, and garishly lit, as though watching the town. The Minister is always watching, with his smooth face and his white teeth and his rigid smile. There are only eighteen buildings in town, and thus there are also eighteen Ministers of varying sizes, the largest of which sits atop the Constable’s office.
It is terribly large.
And in this, the largest of the Minister’s faces, the dear leader does not smile. He does not show his teeth. His eyes are wide. His lips curl in. He is frightened, she thinks. Or angry. He is a child lost in the wood, a supplicant at the feet of a cruel and unfeeling god. The rims of his eyes are wet. His prominent cheekbones have a greenish pallor. She closes her eyes as she climbs and feels her heart skip a beat.
The junk man’s daughter loves this billboard best. And she loves the Minister, though he does not know it. She shinnies up the bracework behind the Minister’s face, as clever as a spider, and hooks around to the catwalk along the bottom rim.
“There were only two babies in this county born with the mark last time ’round, and one of them died before it took its first breath. You know it. You saw ’em. You held that dead baby in your own two hands and you made me throw it in the trash heap to be burned.” The girl hears the smash of a fist on a desk. She hears mugs and paperclips rattle and fall. The Constable’s voice is loud. Rageful. The Inquisitor says nothing. He only scratches his pen on the paper. “You think I don’t remember? I was there, damnit. You took the pictures and ran the tests and filled out your goddamned forms, and that was that.” Each word is an accusation. “And now you’re wasting my time on rumors? Please. It’s a lot of old nonsense, and you know it.”
She can hear the worry in the Constable’s voice, hiding under the righteous anger and indignation, and she knows it is for her. The Constable’s one for secrets, that’s for sure. And he’s one of a precious few that gives a rat’s nethers over whether she lives or dies. Which is why she feels a great sorrow for what she is about to do. She has never wanted anyone to get in trouble.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“You can interview the whole damn town if you want to,” says the Constable’s voice. It is heightened now. And even louder than before. He is a man to be reckoned with, even when he is lying. “But it’s the same. You’ll find nothin’ when there’s nothin’ to find. Unlicensed magician, my eye.”
The junk man’s daughter feels it first in her ankle bones. A buzz and heat. She removes four strands of hair from her head and, with loops and skillful knots, ties them into the shape of a butterfly. The buzzing sensation crawls its way through her bones. It is in her knees, then her hips. It inches up her spine. The butterfly made of hair is motionless in her hand. The buzz reaches her shoulders and down her arms, and spreads upward into her skull. It is in her fingers, her jaw, her teeth. She blinks bright floaters out of her eyes. Her eyelashes begin to singe.
She places the butterfly made of hair on her tongue and gently presses her lips together. She puffs out her cheeks and closes her eyes, and feels that unpleasant buzz heat its way through her muscles and organs. She feels it crawl across her skin like the scuttle of a thousand ants. She is covered. She is burning. She is so alive.
She opens her mouth wide and sticks out her tongue. And it begins.
The butterflies shoot out in threes. They are large, luridly colored, and glowing. They have bright eyes, hot antennae, wings that could heat a kitchen on a winter morning.
Fifteen butterflies. Eighteen. Twenty-one.
Her body shudders and shakes. Her eyes water and weep.
Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty-two.
Her skin burns, her teeth burn, her tongue may never be the same.
One hundred and two. One hundred and five.
The butterflies hover over her head in a bright cloud. They shake the air. By the time the three-hundredth butterfly (the largest of them all, with electric-blue wings) emerges from her choking throat, she slumps onto the slats, utterly spent.
The butterflies await their orders.
“The eyes,” she gasps, her voice barely a whisper. “Infect the eyes.”
The butterflies need no other encouragement. They fly fast as missiles into the open eyes of each billboard Minister, disappearing into the depths of ink and paper.
“Well,” she hears the Inquisitor say. “Thank you for your time.”
“Make sure you stop at the baker’s before you go. Bring a pie home for the missus. You won’t regret it.”
The eyes of each Minister burn black as coal. They glow red. Then gold. Then purple. They pulse and swell.
“I’ll be sure to make a note of your cooperation in my report.”
“I’d appreciate that. We all serve at the Minister’s pleasure.”
The largest butterfly stays with the girl. It rests on her chest, wrapping its wings over her body like a blanket. She shivers and heaves. Above her, the eyes of the Ministers brighten and beam. She can feel the vibration worming through the air.
And though she is weak, she smiles. She lets her left hand drift over the luminous body of the butterfly, stroking it tenderly. It’s working, she thinks. I
