A chime sounded. At first she thought that was all that had happened. Then she realized that the wind in the chamber had picked up, because the flowers on the trees were trembling, shaking.

But it wasn’t a wind. The air was dead still now. Even so, first one blossom, then another and another, left the bough and fluttered upward, then more and more, moving en masse through the air, flowing up into it.

“They are called butterflies, or at least there was something on Old Earth that resembled them and went by that name,” Tubal Last said.

“They’re beautiful,” Atlanta breathed out. For a moment she forgot all her fear and bewilderment and simply stood watching the swarm.

“They are, aren’t they?”

The butterflies danced and swirled in the air. They were indeed very beautiful.

Then they began to descend on Thorn, landing on his skin. Deep in his throat, Last made a small, pleased sound.

For a long moment Thorn did not react. Then he twitched, skin shuddering, trying to throw them off. More descended in a flurry, and he threw back his head and screamed out in pain.

The movement and noise dislodged the butterflies that had been on him. During the seconds before they fluttered back to land again, she saw tiny scarlet dots on his arms. They were eating him.

The chains held him down but he put up a fight at first. He thrashed on the ground, crushing many of the insects, till dots of color spotted the grass, wings like crumpled petals wavering before they fell still.

But there seemed to be an endless supply of them, and slowly, so slowly, the thrashing stopped. The screaming gave way to moans that wrung Atlanta’s heart with fear, and then a silence that made her frozen and unable to move.

Her legs were wet. She had peed in her pants without even realizing it. Tears streaked her cheeks.

They stood watching the mound covered with butterflies, their wings slowly opening and closing. “The spray,” Last explained, “is a pheromone-based chemical that attracts them. They have learned to associate the chime with being fed. It did not take long to teach them that. They are very simple creatures, despite their beauty.” He reached and grabbed Atlanta by the chin, pulling her face around so he could savor her expression as he spoke. “Do you understand how painful that will be? Do you understand that is how I mean to kill you?”

“Yes,” she said numbly. She felt a tear sliding from her eye and she cursed her body for giving way to that, for trembling.

“Good.” He released her, his look satisfied, satiated, then turned away.