The Weight of Wings

My name is Elara Voss, and I’ve been seeing moths. Not the pretty, dusty kind that flutter around porch lights in summer. These are different—small, black, with wings that seem to drink the light around them. They appeared when I was a child, and my mother called them ‘fancy shadows.’ I learned to keep quiet about them. Now, at thirty-two, I’ve joined a support group for anxiety, and I’ve started to notice them more, clustering around certain people. My therapist, Dr. Kaine, suggested I speak with a man named Silas Thorne, who claims to have his own ‘peculiar experiences.’ I hope he can help me understand what these moths are, and why they’ve started to gather around my grandmother, who is dying of a disease that is eating her from the inside out.

Silas meets me in a quiet corner of the community center after one of our sessions. He’s older, with sharp eyes and a calm demeanor, but when I describe the moths, his face tightens. ‘Black moths,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘I’ve seen them too. On the dying. On the cursed.’ He leans in, lowering his voice. ‘They’re not just harbingers, Elara. They’re more like… witnesses. They mark the moment a soul starts to fray, when the threads of life begin to unravel. But they can also be drawn to those who are about to make a terrible choice, or who are touched by something beyond.’ He looks at me, his gaze unsettling. ‘You must not let them see you see them. They feed on attention, on fear.’

His words unsettle me, but they also ring true. The more I try to ignore the moths, the more they seem to multiply, especially around my grandmother. She’s in a hospice now, her body failing, and when I visit, the moths are thick on her windowsill, on her hands, even on her eyelids. She doesn’t seem to notice them, but I feel their weight in the room, a pressure that makes it hard to breathe. One day, I bring her a small wind chime made of glass and silver, a gift to cheer her up. As I hang it by her bed, a moth lands on the chime, and for a moment, the light catches its wings, and I see a faint pattern, like a sigil, that I can’t quite make out. My grandmother stirs and smiles at me, but her eyes are distant, and she whispers, ‘They know something, child. They were here before I was born.’ I recoil, startled. She has never acknowledged the moths before. I ask her what she means, but she just closes her eyes and drifts back to sleep.

The next day, I find Silas in the parking lot, and I tell him about the sigil on the moth’s wing. He pales. ‘That’s the mark of a ‘knot’—a place where fate has become tangled. It means those moths aren’t just watching. They’re waiting for something to happen, something that will cut a bond or seal a pact. You said your grandmother is dying? But there’s something else, isn’t there? A secret? A guilt?’ I think about my family. My father walked out when I was ten, and my mother never spoke of him. My grandmother has always been the matriarch, the one who held us together. Last week, she gave me an old locket, telling me to open it only if she died unexpectedly. ‘She’s not going to die unexpectedly,’ I say, but even as I speak, I feel the moths’ presence, pressing closer.

That night, I can’t sleep. The moths are everywhere in my apartment, their shadows flickering on the walls. I finally get up, driven by a compulsion I can’t name, and I drive to the hospice. My grandmother is asleep, her breathing shallow. A single, large black moth is perched on her chest, its wings slowly fanning. As I watch, the moth detaches itself and flies to me, landing on my hand. Its touch is cold, and I feel a jolt, as if a static charge passes between us. Then it launches into the air and dissolves into a black dust that settles on the floor. I look at my grandmother, and her eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. She says, clear as day, ‘I’m sorry, Elara. I’m the reason your father is gone. I made him a deal to keep you safe, but the price has come due.’ She coughs, and blood speckles her lips. ‘The moths are here to collect. They’ll take my soul, but they want a successor. They want you.’ I step back, shaking my head, but I feel an invisible thread pulling me toward her. In that moment, I see the moths swarm, not just in the room, but in my mind’s eye, a black tide that washes over me, and I know that Silas’s warning came too late. They see me, and they have claimed me.

I don’t remember leaving the hospice. But I wake up in my own bed, the dawn light gray through the blinds. My phone is ringing. It’s Silas. ‘Elara, are you all right? You’ve been unreachable.’ I start to speak, but the words catch in my throat. When I look in the mirror, there is a small black mark just below my collarbone, like a moth in flight. I feel the weight of it, a constant presence. And somewhere, in the pit of my stomach, I know that my grandmother has passed, and that I am no longer just an observer. I am the next one they will follow, and one day, they will settle on me, waiting for my eyes to close. I whisper to the empty room, ‘I’m sorry, Grandma. I’m not going to let them take me without a fight.’ But even as I say it, a moth alights on the mirror, and I see my own reflection in its dark eye, and I realize that the fight has already begun, and I don’t know the rules.

In the weeks that follow, I try to live a normal life, but the moths are always there, on the edges of my vision. I learn that Silas has seen them too, but he calls them ‘wings of consequence,’ and he advises me to focus on my will, to build a mental fortress to keep them at bay. But I can’t help feeling that they are more intelligent than we assume, that they are waiting for a particular choice from me, a decision that will seal my fate. My grandmother’s funeral is small, and the moths line the chapel’s rafters. At the service, a man approaches me, a stranger with kind eyes. He says, ‘I knew your grandmother. She saved my life once, years ago, by taking a bargain from a shadow. I’m sorry for your loss.’ He hands me a small, worn notebook. ‘She wanted you to have this. It might explain some things.’ I take it, and as I do, a moth lands on the cover, and I see the same sigil etched into the leather. When I open it, the pages are filled with her handwriting, a journal of her encounters with the moths, and a final entry that reads: ‘If you’re reading this, Elara, I’m sorry. The bargain was for my soul, but I made them promise to spare you for as long as I lived. Now that I’m gone, they will come for you. You must find a way to break the bond, or they will carry you away when your time comes. There is one possible escape: the sacrifice of a memory so precious to you that it cannot be replaced. I have hidden it in the place where the first moth was born. Seek the mossy stone in the garden of my childhood home, and you will find a locked box. The key is inside the locket I gave you. Destroy it, and you may be free. But beware—they will not let you go easily.’