A Feast of Butterflies by Amanda Hollander (F&SF, March-April 2020) opens with a constable, in a far-flung outpost of what seems to be an Asian empire, summoned to see one of the village elders called the “Judge”. When he arrives the constable is told that five boys have gone missing (one of them is the Judge’s grandson), and that a young woman who lives on the other side of the mountain may be responsible.
When the constable later arrives at the village where the boys went missing he speaks to an old woman who subsequently takes him to “the girl who eats butterflies” (a habit she acquired after her brother died in suspicious circumstances, possibly involving roving young men):
The young woman was crouched by a large spider web stretched between whorls in the tree bark. She did not appear to notice them. But could she even see them, he wondered, for butterflies of every color of the rainbow fluttered around her hands and face, some even trying to alight on her eyelashes. They beat the air with light wings. The young woman’s attention, though, was intensely focused on the lines of the spider web. Near the web’s center, a butterfly struggled against the threads that bound it. The young woman’s delicate fingers pulled the creature’s quivering body from the sticky strands. The insect beat its crimson wings furiously as the girl plucked its legs free, one by one. She examined the lines of red and black, glowing in the afternoon sun. Then, as gently as she removed the insect from the web, she folded it into her mouth. Her sharp teeth bit into the butterfly. The wings twitched fiercely, then not at all. Legs crunched and divided between the river stones of her teeth. Antennae hung over her lip. She looked up and saw them watching her. Her tongue slipped out to catch the ends of the legs and swept them into her mouth. She chewed for a moment, then swallowed.
Further developments (spoiler) see the constable (a) read his predecessor’s report about the brother’s death, which indicates there were signs of foul play, (b) surreptitiously observe the woman and see her turn into a spider, (c) get punched in the mouth by the Judge when the latter runs out of patience, and (d) write a letter to the woman (who reads it and then nods to him).
Finally, the Judge, his servants, and the constable go to the woman’s house. When they finally force their way into the building they see five cocooned bodies hanging from the ceiling. The woman vanishes, the servants take the bodies back to the village, and the Judge is bitten by a snake and dies.
The final scene sees the constable kill a rat that he has seen once before in his office:
The constable shifted in his seat. His muscles coiled and he sprang across the room, his teeth sinking into the fur and flesh. Venom quickly stilled the rodent’s twitching. The constable withdrew his fangs and tried to take the paralyzed creature into his mouth. It didn’t fit. He unhinged his jaw and swallowed the animal whole, the tail the last bit to slip past his lips and down his gullet.
This piece gets off to an intriguing start but eventually devolves into a fairly standard were-animal/shapechanger story, and one with an ending that pretty much comes out of nowhere (there are, at best, a couple of vague suggestions that the constable is a were-snake). I also have reservations about were-animal or shape-changer stories that don’t adhere to conservation of mass principles (I know this will sound daft, but I can suspend disbelief if a person turns into a person-sized spider or snake, but not if the creature is much smaller).
** (Average). 6,050 words.