5. A Purple Pixie Pesters Cousin Hadi
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| "Purple Faery" by Arwen Robertson |
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
… the laces to his legwals. While Dindi tried to guess what the fae was up to, the pixie untied two pairs of laces on either of Hadi’s legs, then retied the wrong strings together. Meanwhile, another pixie buzzed around his ear to distract him. Though Hadi couldn’t see the fae, and couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the hum of pixie voices.
Dindi
… the laces to his legwals. While Dindi tried to guess what the fae was up to, the pixie untied two pairs of laces on either of Hadi’s legs, then retied the wrong strings together. Meanwhile, another pixie buzzed around his ear to distract him. Though Hadi couldn’t see the fae, and couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the hum of pixie voices.
“You little fiends!” Hadi waved his spear. “I know you’re here somewhere! I’ll get you!”
“Hadi, don’t...!”
When Hadi tried to lunge, he tripped because his calves were tied together. He fell face first into the moist soil.
“You
mucky faeries!” He pounded the mud where he’d fallen. The pixies
cheered and jumped up and down on his back while congratulating each
other on their victory over the foe.
Puddlepaws
pounced on the pixie. Very proud of himself, he held the pixie by the
back of its little tunic and brought it to Dindi.
“Bad kitty! Bad kitty!” cried the pixie.
Dindi
scooped up the kitten, freed the pixie, and shouted back over her
shoulder, as she took off down the row of maize, “I’ll just go on
ahead.”
“Dindi!
You are not to leave my sight!” He squirmed in the mud but only managed
to dig himself into a shallow trench. “Dindi! Dindi, get back here this
instant! I’m in charge of you!”
She just laughed. The empty basket bounced on her back as she ran. The fae followed Dindi in a cloud.
“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!” they urged in a babble of flute voices.
“I
can’t this afternoon, friends,” Dindi apologized. “I have to gather
soap roots, tallow and ash to make soap and pick and juice blueberries,
all by middle meal.”
A purple pixie fragile as a butterfly, landed on Dindi’s shoulder. She twined her tiny lavender hands in Dindi’s black hair.
“Chores
are boring, Dindi,” she said. “That’s why they call them chores.”
“Don’t let those humans tire you out, Dindi,” chided a green pixie. He
landed on Dindi’s other shoulder. A red shoved him off and claimed the
shoulder for his own. That enraged the purple, who raced over Dindi’s
nose to attack the red pixie. All this activity excited Puddlepaws, who
squirmed in Dindi’s arms. She kept her grip firm on the furry
pixie-hunting predator.
“Do you mind?” Dindi said. “It’s very difficult to walk when you’re using me as a battleground.”
“Then come dance with us!”
“Yes,
yes!” agreed a yellow dandelion sprite. He parted the corn stalks to
skip at Dindi’s feet. “You dance with us and in exchange, we’ll do your
chores for you.”
“Mm.
Just like you milked the bull for me and winnowed the sugar out of the
gravel for me, and wove a sitting mat I was to give to Uncle Lubo out of
prickly pear thorns?”
“Friends,” the green pixie said to the others, “anyone would think she wasn’t grateful for all our help.”
“Impossible.” The purple one…
TO BE CONTINUED
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