A Heart's Crucible
The Mound

“Let’s hunt for four-leaf clovers,” Zarella dived, breaking their flying formation.

Joq hovered as her friend’s bronze wings swooped towards a river. She recalled Zel favoured late to the fete every year. A tactic for a fanfare entrance.

Through a rush of wind, crisp across her face, and before Joq could urge an onward flight, Perdita hawk-dived to the Emerald Isle.

As Joq glided above babbling water, her companions plashed and titivated their hair in the river Slaney beneath the slopes of the peak of Lugnaquilla. Joq joined them. She dipped her toes in the cool stream. Around her, herons and kingfishers caught and gobbled skipping trout. Deer grazed on the riverbank, and ducks quacked in the reeds.

Joq lowered her head and freshened her face. Then, lifting her eyes, droplets from her fringe trickled both sides of her nose. Nearby, Perdita spread out on the grass above the mudflats. Zel’s back bent farther off, seeking an illusive clover.

Her red-haired friend plucked at a sea of tempting wildflowers. They surrounded her outstretched legs.

With each purple petal pulled, she caught a regular “I will, I won’t.”

“You will or won’t, what?” as a playful Joq darted to the spongy turf and slapped the Scottish lass’s thigh.

“Cause mischief,” and the red-haired Scottish Peri’s stunning locks flounced.

Shadows crossed Joq’s face as Zarella jumped in front of her and squealed. Her bronze wings shone as polished brass as she flaunted a four-leaf clover. She swayed the shamrock under Joq’s snub nose, making her wings flutter a buttery yellow.

Joq’s sensitive ears turned her head upstream. Perdita rose beside her, scattering wildflowers, and Zel dropped the clover. No Peri needed to pocket the symbolic aid of hope, faith, a ward against evil or success in love.

The Peri identified a harrowed female swearing beyond the river bend. Drawn not by a wish to help but to ante the hinder, Joq led the trio, gliding along the tree-lined bank. They spied a ford, a woman, a cow and an elaborate reed, crisscrossed woven basket.

The cursing local appeared twice the age of Joq and her friends, whose years stayed stilled at twenty-one summers. The villager yanked at a long rope, knee-deep in water, cajoling a stubborn jersey. The cow responded to every expletive from the bedraggled matron with a bellowed moo.

Zel suggested mayhem, and Joq joined Perdita in beating her wings. Together, the trio created a wind burst, knocking the villager backwards. Joq chuckled as the woman plonked with a coccyx-cracking splash, soaking her early greying hair. The matron’s hands flew to the sky, and her foul mouth ranted at the local river spirit as she beat the water. Meantime, the cow raced off after depositing a smelly load into the woman’s riverside basket.

Joq lynx-eyed tracked the jersey, and the bell perched on the highest oak tree. Settled astride a branch, she waited for Zel and Perdy. Then, as her friends flapped on the chunky limb beside her, Joq scanned a ramshackle village.

She screwed her nose. Poverty wafted from the dusty grey earth beneath plodding human feet. Undeterred, Zarella, to her left, clapped her hands and cast a spell on a mangy dog to chase three idle boys. Perdita, on her right, circled her ankle tattoo, making a gorgeous maiden fall head over heels for a loafer. Her friend’s cyan wings beat in delight.

Joq surveyed cracked cooking pots, holes in thatched roofs and weedy vegetable gardens. Her butterscotch eyes scouted a foolish leprechaun beyond the village, checking his pot of gold. Quicker than thought, in the realm where whims occur, she sneaked behind the slow-counting dolt. The Peri admitted he presented flash dressed in emerald green. Still swishing her flaxen locks, she dazzled the fool into the land of dreams. His hands counted empty coins. After gliding onto a puffy cloud over the settlement, Joq started a rain of gold pieces from the sky.

She scanned as housewives tumbled out of lightless doors, swishing and sluicing chamber pots. Children dropped the sticks and bones of play. Men forgot the forging of weapons and tilling of vegetables as they joined the scramble in the dirt.

“Oh, you cow,” said Zarella, cruising to flank her, “spoiling the fun.”

“Never.”

Joq didn’t add more because the startled jersey from the ford created a cattle stampede through the village. The coins lay buried in a sloppy slush of cow pies.

Zel’s squeal announced to Joq, her friend’s satisfaction.

Abreast of the steppe Peri, Perdita said, “Happy mucking.”

Joq cocked her head, flapped, and pointed west.

“We must fly.”

And soon after, the expansive Atlantic surged beneath the Peri as they passed the stunning cliffs of Mohe.

Joq listened as Zarella and Perdita babbled above the waves.

In a pre-party vein, Zel tested her maximum span and said, “Last year sparkled as a revelling night. Awesome fireworks. And Anais, as usual, dressed to French perfection to highlight her primrose wings.”

“What is she wearing to trap your eyes this season?” said the redhead.

“A beret,” as she tipped bronzed wings, “raspberry coloured to snare you!”

Joq grinned at her Scottish friend’s unhidden weakness for lush fruit.

She let her mind drift inside the passing clouds to her maiden memory of the first Peri gathering at a tender thirteen. The sprites pinpointed a place to share a carnival of delight in the manner of homing pigeons.

Joq explored as her new friends partied and feasted. Attracted to the ambience of The Great Serpent Mound coiled as a meandering river. The local yellowish clay reminded her of the grassland of Kazakhstan. She pondered whether the snake devoured an egg or the sun. Joq hoped the former because a world without sunlight dancing over the high wheat-coloured grass of the steppe blurred to the unimaginable. Complex thoughts dispersed as she flew around the mound’s curves and attempted to curl her straight flaxen hair.

Darkness spread as Joq sighted land. She led as the group coursed inland to the enchanted meeting site. A lunar eclipse pitched a murk, allowing a blur of the inhospitable to dominate the earth.

Zarella said, “strange, no bonfires or lighted torch way.”

Next, looping for a lark, “Ah, masks and dancing in the dark!”

Still, her buddy pouted — denied her showy entry.

Beside her, Perdy huffed. Her side-kick worried the best sweet treats lined other stomachs.

Joq quelled her companion’s onward rush of descent by blocking their planned plummet. For once in their world, something didn’t look right.

“Attend,” she stated, then wondered why the word popped into her head.

The unusual request made her friends circle high above the mist-shrouded mound.

“Caution isn’t our advice, but…,” started Joq.

“Oh, missy, don’t get your wings in a hummingbird flap. I predict a mass hide-and-seek surprise!”

Zarella tipped her wings, ready to descend.

Perdita rubbed her tummy, “Yes, awesome; we are overdue for twenty-one again today! And a massive cake!”

“Can we peek?” said Joq as she snared two wrists.

After a flap of agreement, the steppe Peri noticed a descent by stealth at woodcock speed made Zarella yawn and Perdy’s stomach rumble.

Joq urged a cautious craning of necks over the tail of the mound. Her eyes roved and confronted silence, mist and stillness. Zarella’s hand clutched Joq’s as they spied a red beret torn across a snapped bush. Perdita grabbed her forearm as they spotted pieces of fruit squashed and trampled. Joq eyeballed thick darts sticking out of trees at irregular intervals.

Attached to a chain of hands in the gloom, an unknown pessimism pitched from the pit of her stomach. A tremble from Zarella transferred to Joq, who shivered the wobble through her body, to Perdita. The shudder reverberated, an agitated ripple she sensed churned inside each Peri.

“I want to leave now,” said Perdita.

The customary jocular Scottish Peri dripped a stream on her arm.

“I need the comfort of a home-cooked meal in my glen.”

Perdita’s eyes match her hair.

Zarella said, “Honey, come with me to the Ganges; this is a time to hide amongst human numbers.”

A soft-breathing Joq shared left and right, “Join me on the steppe; you can see danger coming before a problem emerges.”

Perdita’s fingers trembled along Joq’s wings.

“Whatever, away, away!”

The mist of the mound rose from her toes to her waist.

“Yes, sweeties,” Joq clasped her friend’s hands tight.

She raised her eyes in a last scan and saw a finger-scrawled message in the dirt. Then taking a risk, she suspected a clue, explaining what ravaged the party.

Hovering, ready for rapid flight, Joq squizzed in a mist hole, the hurried scribble. The writings’ haste matched the dusty telltale mayhem outlined on the earth. Pounced-upon feet pursued and captured.

The scratched information read, ‘seer.’

Her forehead creased, pondering a meaning. She abandoned her thoughts following a shoulder tap. In the distance, a seething, circling swarm of bat shapes and swirling nets framed their view. Instinct-propelled flight — alongside her companions, Joq fled.