Daphne

They were butterflies, just butterflies. To Daphne, that’s all they were.

All those flimsy name tags were quickly snipped off and flicked away. They fluttered through the air to join others on a heap like all the butterflies she used to watch when she was a girl, exhausted and carpeting the banks of the stream behind her house in late summer, only to be swept away by wind and rain. She never read the names. Butterflies didn’t have names. As soon as the next garment landed on her table, a snip and a flick sent another butterfly to land on the pile. The more of them that passed through her hands, the easier it became.

She was a Patcher and Patchers patched. She spent her days in a damp basement hunched over a sewing machine or plying scissors, needle and thread under feeble light, mending tears, patching holes. She and thirty five other volunteers, some chosen for their experience with needle and thread, some simply recruited after being excused from military service for medical reasons.

The garments needed to be made serviceable. For whom? For the Cause, for the Effort. For the defenders.

At nineteen, Daphne had been conscripted into the Effort along with her schoolmates. The war was heating up again and the Regime needed everyone to do their part, so she joined the ROG, or the Regalia Outfitting Group, the department responsible for uniforms.

Then there were the ‘Washers’ and the ‘Carters’. She knew vaguely that Washers washed the clothes and the Carters moved bundles of uniforms from place to place. No one told her where the uniforms came from, and she did not ask. The Regime did not encourage questions. You did your work and you did it quickly because there was always more to do.

As a young girl, her family lived in a town like any other, small, where everyone knew young Daphne and she knew every street, shop and smiling passer-by. She played hide and seek around the creek behind her house. It was a wild, sunny place where she could lie next to the stream and watch birds and butterflies while she conjured magical lands in her imagination. Growing up, she was drawn to eastern philosophy, with its images of mountains and sea. All the while, the world gradually darkened around her and passers-by ceased to smile.

By the time she completed her first year of Uni, she was told she could go no further. Serving the Regime was paramount, and she was needed somewhere useful. Eastern studies produced no weapons. They didn’t feed the troops or advance the Cause. Her childhood friends had all gone off in whatever direction the Regime took them, but for her, it was Patching. The clothes kept coming, so she kept patching. Sometimes she’d catch herself imagining she was gazing up at a torii against passing clouds. Only when the bell sounded for break would she realise she’d already flicked more than a dozen butterflies into the disposal bin.

He was a Carter. They met at one of the ‘socials’. The ROG held one at the end of each 6-day work week when they’d exceeded their assigned quota. It had been a ‘good’ week, which meant the work had gone smoothly. None of the machines had broken and only a few of the Patchers had been too sick to work.

She liked his smile. He held her hand and turned it over to examine it after he’d shaken it.

“So this is where the magic happens,” he mused in his deep voice.

Blushing, she managed to stammer, “The magic?”

“Well, that’s what we’re all doing here, right? Patching up the uniforms?” When she said nothing, he went on: “For the troops? For those who fight? Our defen…”

“I suppose,” she cut him off. “I try not to think about it. I just do my job.” She hesitated, trying to form a picture of the sunny stream back home.

He smiled and nodded.

“Right,” he said quietly. Turning to the refreshments table, he gestured and asked, “Drink?”

Daphne nodded.

“I’m Roger,” he told her, handing her a metal cup of ‘wine’. Growing up, she would sneak little sips of the wine her parents served at parties. She didn’t exactly like the taste, but even she could tell that the stuff in her cup wasn’t much like what she remembered.

But then, nothing was much like she remembered when she was growing up.

“I’m Daphne.”

He smiled again. It was a warm smile. She liked it. She forgot to think about the wine.

They sat and talked. He was a big man, dark-skinned, young like her, but he moved with a limp.

“So you Patch, and I Cart,” he said after a while. She smiled, nodding. She could not remember what he’d been saying. She was watching his lips move as he spoke. Especially when he smiled.

She saw him on and off again over the next days and weeks, carting bundles of clothes to deliver them to the Patchers. Somehow, he always managed to deposit his bundle of shirts and tunics at one of the tables closest to her. She would smile at him and give him a quick wave if her hands were not occupied at her machine. He always had a smile for her.

The next few weeks went ‘well’ again, so Daphne and Roger found themselves sitting together while others amused themselves around the drinks table. A few couples danced.

One night, Daphne noticed Roger staring at her hands.

“What are you looking at?”

“Your hands. They’re beautiful,” he answered before he could catch himself.

Daphne made to pull them away, to hide them under the work apron that she had not bothered to take off, but Roger surprised her–surprised himself–by reaching out and gently pulling them back to hold them and lightly caress her fingertips. It made her breath catch in her throat. Roger seemed genuinely captivated, but Daphne was shy.

“They’re not beautiful,” she objected. “They’re… too square.”

“Nonsense.They’re perfect.” He said with growing confidence. Then, sensing her discomfort, he shifted the topic. “Where did you learn to sew?”

“Ever since I was little,” she answered. “I started with my toys, then my clothes, things like that ...you know?”

Roger nodded.

“Then I practiced sewing my name into my clothes. Just for fun.” Seeing his surprise, she turned the edge of her apron inside out to show him. “Like this.”

Daphne Linyos he recited, reading what she had stitched there.

“My goodness, the letters are so perfect!” he marveled, then frowned. “Wait. Nothing shows on the outside!”

“A-ha! Very observant, sir!” she teased. “That is the trick, isn’t it? If you look carefully, Mr. Observant, you see that the hem is doubled over. I don’t let the needle go all the way through.”

Roger stared at the hem of her apron a moment longer and noticed a spot of colour next to Daphne’s name.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s my mandala,” she said proudly, turning the edge of her apron back farther to reveal an intricate disc of many colours. “That took a little longer,” she confided.

“Wow, I bet!” Roger looked speculative. “Can you show me how?”

She stared back at him.

“A man with big strong hands like yours fiddling with a tiny little needle?” she laughed.

“Well, it’s not as if I can dance like I used to,” he said, rapping his knee with his metal cup. It made a clanging sound.

“You were a dancer?” she blurted, confused but once again taking in his powerful build. He nodded, his face a mix of pride and regret.

“It was a small troupe. Modern stuff. All energy and gymnastics,” he shrugged. “I miss it.” He glanced over at some of their comrades swaying to the music. “I can’t even do that now. Not like I used to, anyway. I was in the infantry. That’s where I lost this,” he explained, pulling up the left leg of his trousers to reveal a metal shaft. “I was lucky it was just my leg.”

Daphne felt a chill at his words, but the chill melted as he looked away awkwardly and muttered. “The rest of me… uh… still works, though.”

Taken by surprise, Daphne started to laugh, but looking into his eyes, she found she was out of breath. She made a decision. They slipped away from the party and spent the rest of the evening exploring how well they worked together.

The next weeks and months were filled with a happiness Daphne never imagined, even as the sounds of explosions sometimes woke her in the night. She managed to be assigned her own room, about the size of a broom closet, and she’d cradle in the warmth of his arms where nothing could touch them. Some nights, they’d have to retreat to the underground shelters with hundreds of others to lie huddled on the hard surfaces of ancient subway stations, and still, in his arms, the world disappeared.

They spent every free moment together. She taught him some simple stitches. He even managed a lopsided mandala in three bright colours, barely recognizable as a circle. With great effort, Daphne kept a straight face when she congratulated him. Roger grinned, absurdly proud.

One night she finally worked up the courage to ask a question that was gnawing at her, “One time you told me you were lucky…? And sometimes you’re far away.”

She let the question hang in the air.

“Yeah,” Roger finally answered.

“What did you mean? You were lucky?” she persisted.

Roger’s face was pained as he answered.

“I was almost one of them,” he said and held his hand up with his forefinger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart. “I came that close.”

“One of what?”

“One of them. You know.”

When she didn’t answer, Roger sighed.

“You know that the uniforms are cleaned before they’re sent to you Patchers.”

“Yes, I know that,” she sighed, relieved at his mundane explanation. “It took me forever to get used to the smell of that awful detergent. I can still smell it when I go to bed!”

“Yeah. It’s to take off the mud.”

“The mud?”

“And the blood.”

“The blood?” Daphne’s heart began to race.

“And worse.”

Daphne flinched.

“The uniforms are taken from the fallen, Daphne. From the dead. We all know it. We just don’t talk about it.”

“And you…?”

“Yeah. They almost left me for dead. I bet they wanted to. It would’ve been easier for them. I was half-dead, anyway. I was lying there with the rest of my troupe with my leg all smashed, but I must’ve started shouting, or something. I can’t remember. I was zoning in and out. If I hadn’t made a lotta noise, they would’ve dumped me with the rest of them. And it wouldn’t’ve been the first time that happened.”

“Oh, no… they wouldn’t… I never guessed you’d…” She understood. At some level she’d always known where the garments came from, but now the vision came clear. She couldn’t un-see them. Young men and women, lying in mud with gaping wounds. She saw their torn flesh under their torn tunics. She even pictured one who groaned, pleading, but most lay silent.

She buried her face in Roger’s chest.

Heroes? she reflected. That’s what the Regime called them. Or were they just innocent kids with bodies torn apart? In her imagination, she saw their smooth faces and their frightened, frozen expressions. She stared into their open eyes that would forever gaze back at emptiness.

“The Collectors pulled me out and dumped me at a field hospital. Everyone smoked in the truck on the way back, mostly to hide the way their hands kept shaking. One guy just clutched himself and rocked back and forth in his seat the whole time. They stank,” Roger spoke into the darkness.

“Collectors?”

“Yeah. The ones who go out to the battlefields after the fighting moves on,” Roger’s voice caught. “It’s muddy. The ground gets chewed up from the shelling. The Collectors strip the dead. They take the uniforms. Sometimes, they’ve been lying there for weeks. I guess it’s better in winter, when it’s cold enough so the bodies haven’t started to go off too much.”

Go off? Daphne choked when she realised what he meant.

“Then the Collectors bury them,” Roger continued, “pretty much naked, in piles. I watched them do it to my own troupe. My brothers in arms,” he concluded softly. “Or they’re supposed to. They’re supposed to dig a trench and cover them up good, but they don’t always put enough dirt on. It was …bad.”

Roger paused to jam his fists into his eyes before sighing and continuing.

“Some nights, I see their arms sticking up out of the earth. They reach for me.

“The Collectors don’t last long. The Regime gives that job to the worst cases: criminals or crazies, soldiers too broken to do anything else. I knew two of those guys, from Basic. Twins. We called them the Madman and Patrone. Even back in Basic, they were bastards. Now, they’re so far gone, I bet their hands don’t even shake when they go out. I heard they got drunk and started a fight a few nights ago over at Iverswitch. When their Lieutenant tried to break it up, they beat him up. That got them sent away. Finally.” He sighed again. “News gets around.”

“Sent away where?”

“I dunno. It doesn’t pay to ask,” Roger answered wearily. “Somewhere worse than Collecting.”

They were silent for a long time before Daphne spoke again.

“Roger?”

He snorted in the darkness.

“You know, I always hated my name. ‘Roger’,” he repeated.

“Why?”

“I dunno. I always thought it sounded funny. When I was a kid, I wanted my parents to change my name. ‘Rowen’. Now that’s a cool name! I wanted to be called Rowen. Never happened, of course.”

Silence, then: “I’m glad you told me.”

“Heh, why is that?”

She took his hand and placed it on the swell that was beginning to show on her belly.

“Because now I have a name for him.”

It had to happen. One day, Roger was escorted from his posting as a Carter and whisked away. He was needed. He was being sent back to the front. They did not even have the time for a goodbye.

Daphne slept-walked through her duties for the next week. Then, the next. When she lay down at night, she did not sleep. At mealtime, she barely ate. She showed up at work every day to patch, patch, patch. She rarely spoke.

And then came the day when she lifted a torn vest onto her worktable to remove the name tag that she would not read. But she found no butterfly. Instead, she found a tiny, lopsided mandala in three faded colours next to a perfectly circular bullet hole.