A Little Bit of Magic
Fanny had been reading a book of fairy-tales. My goodness, the magic there was in Fairyland! The way wizards changed people into different things – and the way that spells were worked and magic done – it was wonderful!
“Oh, Mummy!” she said, when she had finished the book. “I wish I could see some magic. But I don’t believe there is any nowadays. Things don’t change suddenly into something else – there don’t seem to be any spells about at all.”
“Well, I can show you something that seems like magic,” said her mother. “Something that happens a hundred times every year, in everyone’s garden.”
“Show me, Mummy!” said Fanny, really excited.
So her mother took her out into the garden. She went to the cabbage patch and hunted about. She turned back a leaf with holes in and showed Fanny a green-and-yellow caterpillar there.
“We’ll take this caterpillar on a piece of leaf, and watch him use a spell to change himself into something else,” she said.
So she and Fanny took the little caterpillar to Fanny’s bedroom on a piece of cabbage-leaf. Mother found a box and made holes in it. She put a piece of glass over the top so that Fanny could watch the tiny creature eating his cabbage-leaf.
“Has anyone told you what a caterpillar can turn himself into?” asked Fanny’ smother. But Fanny was only six, and she didn’t know.
“Well, this caterpillar can turn himself into a butterfly with wings,” said Mother.
“However can he do that?” said Fanny in surprise, looking at the long caterpillar. “I can’t see the beginnings of any wings at all.”
“He hasn’t got even the beginnings now,” said her mother. “He gets those later when the magic begins to work. We will watch him each day.”
So they watched the caterpillar. Twice he grew so fat that he had to change his tight skin. Fanny was surprised to find he had a new one underneath each time. She gave the little caterpillar a new cabbage-leaf every day and he grew and grew.
One day he didn’t want to eat any more. He went to a corner of the box and began to spin a kind of silky web there. Fanny couldn’t think where he got it from.
But he had plenty of silk. He fixed himself safely in the corner – and then a strange change came over him. He changed his skin for the last time. He lay still. He became hard and brown. He seemed quite, quite dead.
“He seems just a hard little case,” said Fanny, puzzled. “He isn’t like a caterpillar any more. But he isn’t like a butterfly either. His magic must have gone wrong, Mummy.”
“We’ll wait and see,” said Mother. “We call him a chrysalis now. Watch carefully each day.”
Fanny watched – and one day she was very excited. “Mummy, Mummy! I believe there is a butterfly being made inside the caterpillar’s hard brown case! I can faintly see the outline of wings – and what looks like new legs all bunched up together! Look!”
Her mother looked – and as she looked, a magical thing happened. The case split down the back! It began to move and wriggle – and, suddenly, out of the split came a small head!
“Something’s coming out – something’s coming out! Look!” squealed Fanny.
“Something did come out – something with four white crumpled wings, six thin legs, and a head with pretty, trembly feelers on it! Something so unlike a caterpillar that it was quite impossible to think there had ever been a caterpillar inside the case.
“It’s a pretty white butterfly!” said Fanny. “A butterfly with wings! Mummy, how did it grow wings? It hadn’t any when it turned into a chrysalis. How can a caterpillar turn into a butterfly? Do, do tell me.”
“I don’t know,” said her mother. “Nobody knows. It’s a little bit of magic. The caterpillar goes to sleep and wakes up as a butterfly. It’s like the tale of Beauty and the Beast – you remember how the ugly Beast turned into the beautiful Prince? Well, that’s the same sort of thing that the caterpillar dose.”
“It’s real magic,” said Fanny, watching the butterfly dry its crumpled wings in the sunshine. “Soon it will fly away and be happy in the flowers. It won’t eat cabbage-leaves any more. It’s a butterfly!”
Have you watched this bit of magic? You ought to. It’s just as strange as anything that happens in Fairyland. isn’t it?