Chapter 4

Chapter IV

YELLOW WAS DESOLATE WITHOUT STRIPE. She crawled daily to the pile looking for him and returned home at night sad, but half relieved that she never saw him. If she had, she feared she might plunge after him knowing that she shouldn’t. She felt like doing something, anything, rather than this uncertain waiting.

“What in the world do I really want?” she sighed. “It seems different every few minutes. But I know there must be more.” Finally, she became numb and wandered away from everything familiar.

One day a grey-haired caterpillar hanging upside down on a branch surprised her. he seemed caught in some hairy stuff.

“You seem in trouble,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“No, my dear, I have to do this to become a butterfly.”

Her whole insides leapt. “Butterfly – that word,” she thought. “Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?”

“It’s what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterflies the world would soon have few flowers.”

“It can’t be true!” gasped Yellow. “How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside you or me when all I see is a fuzzy worm?”

“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively.

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

“You mean to die?” asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

“Yes and No,” he answered. “What looks like you will die but what’s really you will still live. Life is changed, not taken away. Isn’t that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?”

“And if I decide to become a butterfly,” said Yellow hesitantly. “What do I do?”

“Watch me. I’m making a cocoon. It looks like I’m hiding, I know, but a cocoon is no escape. It’s an in-between house where the change takes place. It’s a big step since you can never return to caterpillar life. During the change, it will seem to you or to anyone who might peek that nothing is happening – but the butterfly is already becoming. It just takes time! And there something else! Once you are a butterfly, you can really love – the kind of love that makes new life. It’s better than all the hugging caterpillars can do.”

“Oh, let me go and get Stripe,” Yellow said. But she sadly knew he was too far into the pile to possibly reach.

“Don’t be sad,” said her new friend. “If you change, you can fly and show him how beautiful butterflies are. Maybe he will want to become one too!”

Yellow was torn in anguish:”What if Stripe comes back and I’m not there? What if he doesn’t recognize my new self? Suppose he decides to stay a caterpillar? At least we can do something as caterpillars – we can crawl and eat. We can love in some way. How can two cocoons get together at all? How awful to get stuck in a cocoon!” How can she risk the only life she knew when it seemed so unlikely she could ever be a glorious winged creature? What did she have to go on? –Seeing another caterpillar who believed enough to make his own cocoon. –And that peculiar hope which had kept her off the pillar and leapt within her when she heard about butterflies.

The grey-haired caterpillar continued to cover himself with silky threads. As he wove the last bit around his head he called: “YOU’LL BE A BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY – we’re all waiting for you!”

And Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly. For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own. “Imagine, I didn’t even know I could do this. That’s some encouragement that I’m on the right track. If I have inside me the stuff to make cocoons – maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too.”