Where the Dark Stands Still

Butterflies serve as a motif of The Magic of Self-Acceptance. Liska’s magic appears in the form of butterflies throughout the novel, and her relationship with herself heals as she embraces her power. At the beginning of the story, Liska associates the butterflies with fear, destruction, and guilt because her magic caused the deaths of her father and Tomasz Prawota. These negative associations are apparent in the way Liska reacts to the butterflies that fill her mind during the soul-reading spell in Chapter 15: “[T]here are blue butterflies everywhere, the color of periwinkles, the color of Mama’s eyes, and Liska’s, too, and the color of sins” (135). By making the butterflies the same periwinkle blue as Liska’s eyes, Poranek emphasizes that Liska’s magic is an important part of her rather than a malignant force as her faith has conditioned her to believe.

Confronting her trauma changes the way Liska views the butterflies, as evidenced by the first spell she casts after opening up about Tomasz’s death: “Blue light haloes her hands, swirling in a mesmerizing kaleidoscope, taking the shape of a butterfly’s wings” (208). This description presents the butterflies as something beautiful and awe-inspiring rather than fearful. During the novel’s epilogue, Liska’s “blue butterflies” frolic with Basia’s “bees of yellow magic” (352), illustrating that Liska can help other czarownik embrace their power now that she has done so herself.