The Butterfly Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of kidnapping, death, rape, sexual violence and harassment, alcohol addiction, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

After six months in the Garden, Inara has befriended most of the 20 or so other prisoners, but Lyonette and Bliss remain her closest companions. The trio’s hardheaded, no-nonsense acceptance of their fate has endeared them not only to each other but to the Gardener, who “adores” them. Generally, the prisoners of the Garden are allowed to roam freely because their captor can always track them down as needed with his many surveillance cameras; the girls are shut into their rooms only two mornings a week, mostly when gardeners are doing maintenance in the atrium. One evening, a sobbing Lyonette tells Inara that the next day is her 21st birthday, which, according to the Gardener’s stringent rules, marks his captives’ “expiration date.” 

After five years in the Garden, her time is finally up. She says she considered fighting back but doesn’t want her death to be a punitively painful one. Inara is devastated. The Gardener comes for Lyonette just before daybreak, and Inara describes him as an “elegant,” well-built middle-aged man with green eyes and immaculately groomed blond hair.