It was lying by the window, curled up, gleaming blue. It must have flown in on a warm afternoon, windows open to let the breeze in, and then not found its way back out. Starved.
It’s a purple emperor (Apatura iris), from the right angle the wings take on the depth of the August night sky.
According to father’s butterfly book, it only lives in the deciduous forests in southern Sweden – but then again, the book is twelve years old and summers have gone all awry, winters too, could a Scania butterfly have caught a northbound wind and ended up lost in our aspen, oak and hazel grove by the mid-Swedish lake?
How did it come to be here, and is that why it died? Or was that just an accident, like with the silver-washed fritillaries and green-veined whites that sometimes get stuck inside the sun porch? Will there be other purple emperors fluttering among the lavender and roses now, or was that the only one?
And what kinds of little accidents does the world have in store for the rest of us?
Katja Malmborg 