Round in circles

This is for Sonya’s Three Line Tales, a photo by Emiel Molenaar and a story to tell in three lines. Have a go. It’s fun.

 

They’d done it again, he fumed—fairy folk or not they were bad news and it meant another sweep of the harvester before the self-styled pagans arrived to take more photos.

Every summer it was the same, convoluted patterns appearing in the hay and the wheat fields—crop circles they called them, and the eejits with their long scraggy beards told him not to touch them, or the spirits would be angry.

He had lost patience, and at the winter solstice, when the real powers wakened to create the new year, he would cast the enchantment to draw the pathetic, artistic, circle-obsessed fairies into the rising sun and fry the little bastards once and for all.

 

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Dancing with the stars

A Minute Poem for the Secret Keeper’s writing prompt. The words this week are

MOVE | SMALL | WONDER | DANCE | PART

Photo©Kevin Higgins

Dancing with the stars

I wonder at the oak trees’ dance,

In a wind trance,

Moving in thrall

To its wild call.

 

I part the grasses of the path,

Over the rath,

Where voices low

Bid me not go.

 

Paying small heed to common sense,

I climb the fence:

With cold stars roam,

I’ll not go home.

Three line tale: Fionn VI

The Isles of Bliss were not what Fionn had been led to expect—the dwellings hard and harsh, full of crude, dead fabrics and witchlight to see by.

He looked at the woman as she lay sleeping, at the gentle, soft curves of her, beneath the veiled light of the moon and sighed. One woman is, after all, much like another in sleep.

No man could deceive the fairy folk and live, that was known by all, but if he didn’t understand the words of the enchantment, did that not mean it had no hold upon him? There was only one way to find out.

Microfiction: The spring dance

Painting ©Helma Petrick

She knew this was the right place, because of the wolf face smiling at her from high among the smooth stones.

Here, it whispered.

I know, she replied eagerly.

We’re waiting for you, said the rose nodding gently among the branches of the big tree.

She hesitated and looked back along the path towards the road that wound about until it reached another road and the house where she lived. But the path had gone. The cart ruts filled with pale sandy soil and separated by tall wavy grass were no longer there. She crouched down and parted the tall yellow flowers, felt the ground until she found the indentation made by a metal-rimmed wheel long ago. She picked a flower and smiled at its yellowness. The path was still there if you knew where to look. And she did.

Come, the wolf said. Come and dance.

Dance, said the rose, and a wave of perfume broke over her face.

Can I go home, after? She asked.

If you want to, said the wolf.

Only if you want to, said the rose and the spreading tree.

Only if you want to, repeated all the trees in the great forest beyond the wall.

Then I’ll come, said the little girl.

The wolf howled with delight, and the wolves and foxes of the forest picked up his song. The spreading tree leant gracefully to one side, and the wall opened to let the child pass. She skipped through the narrow, root-curly gap and joined in the spring dance that only ever ends if you want it to.

100 word story: Enchanted swans

Photo: Swans on the Baie de Somme

She watches through the hole in the door, the swans settling on the lake and wonders what they look like in human form. She sighs, and her heart flutters like beating wings in her chest. Though dark clouds lower in the sky, no wind disturbs the sedge, and the snow white birds glide without fear on the still waters. Unlike her, they are not doomed to stay. Soon they will rise in a flurry of white feathers and scattered crystal water droplets, and she yearns to join them, borne on strong, broad wings beyond the pain of this mortal life.

Haiku challenge: Bard & Water

Time to join in Ronovan’s Haiku challenge. This week the key words are Bard and Water.

Here are my two poems.

The stained glass is by Edward Burne-Jones

Enchantment

Honey tongued the Bard

singing his spells false seemings

water turns to wine

In two lines this gives:

Honey-tongued, the Bard singing his spells, false seemings.

Singing his spells, false seemings, water turns to wine.

Sea Wolves

Charm the waters, Bard

with spells beyond the ninth wave

bloody sea wolves hold.

In two lines:

Charm the waters, Bard, with spells beyond the ninth wave.

With spells beyond the ninth wave, bloody sea wolves hold.

Sadbh

Watching him leave at dawn,
A star fading in the morning light,
She longs to become a curled bud,
To follow him as perfume in his hair.
She knows, as surely as she feels
The curled bud in her belly stretching,
As she feels the birth pangs beginning,
That darkness will claim her before he returns.
How, she does not know,
But she wraps his scent around her,
Wraps her arms about her swollen belly,
And tears fill her eyes, soft as any doe’s.

He follows the sea king’s daughter

I should be doing something completely different but my mind is on an Irish legend I’m working up into a retelling. This is a poem that has come out of my procrastinations.

A snow white gull she made him,

And he followed where she led

Across the waves until she plunged,

Come after me, she said.

In the watery realm of the sea king,

He had wealth of every kind,

And he forgot the earthly love

That he had left behind.

In a green sea cave she laid him down

And whispered her honeyed words

That made him forget the sun and moon

And the spring song of the birds.

Until he raised his eyes to the shallows

Where the sun lit up the day

And sent to the deep green sea cave

A single golden ray.

Gold as his loved one’s flowing hair,

Cold silvered his heart with frost,

And all the tears in the ocean

Could not bring back what he had lost.