The Enchanted Prairie des Femmes

And have you seen the dragon who guards the bridge at Frozard?

I knew the Prairie des Femmes was enchanted because she was so unassuming, and so one day we set out across Monsieur Vacheur's  back pastures and then on to the other side, where there is a little grove of trees in a small l'anse of the prairie. There we found all kinds of evidence of fairy activity: acorn caps fashioned into hats and piles of hickory nuts like pyramids, the abandoned wings of the demoiselle fly, their forlorn iridescence catching my eye. There were spider webs along the ground (the tiny elves like to take their morning drink from the dew that gathers in droplets) and mossy green couches where they reclined in the roots of a cypress tree. There were new leaves freshly impaled on twigs scattered about (fairy flags) champignons of red and grey, and even green rings where they had danced the new moon before. But to be sure, I saw no fairies or elves or nains or even lutins, only their evidence. I knew that they were there, though, because after my journey to the l'anse, at dusk I could see the thin plumes of smoke rising like grey threads above the treeline; at night, the candle-flicker of their fires in the wood. Sometimes, I could hear the Indian drums and knew they danced to them in fairy rung:

In the spring, we went onto the ancient Bayou Bourbeau that borders the enchanted prairie. Up to the Grand Chemin halfway to Opelousas we went to put the canoes in the bayou. We came all the way down, behind the Academy of the Sacred Heart, we rested at the old wooden bridge covered in white blackberry flowers, and stopped to pick a few of the early dewberries.  Down the Bourbeau's green banks at narrow spots there were so many adolescent black moccasins, that they struck at the paddles and at the boat from the water and banks alike, until we made a game of bopping their hissing heads with our paddles. We floated along under a stripped umbrella and found white spider lilies and picked one for the mast of the ship. Further down where the brown water widened, there were white mulberry trees lining both banks of the muddy Bourbeau, and we picked and shook the trees until the berries fell like fat pink and white drops of rain.

 

Then one day in a rush I chanced upon a curious fellow, a centaur on the Prairie des Femmes road! He was all in brown and bareback'd with no identifying qualities that would place him in this century or the last. I had to stop to speak to him, to make sure he was not an apparition (as they are as likely on the Prairie des Femmes road as a centaur)  and though I spoke, he gave a sheepish smile but never replied except for a neighing sigh I heard as I turned. As he rounded the third curve, I snapped this photograph, and surely if I had not, you would believe my story or that the Prairie des Femmes was truly enchanted and maybe neither would I.

But then on the morning of the winter solstice, I received the biggest conformation of all! I happened to pass the Queen of the Prairie des Femmes in her grand Chariot en Paille, led by her entourage of black curs. She was wearing her magenta mantle, trimmed in brown furs! She did not stop, but gave me a gentle nod, for she was working to move the hay, for queens of this prairie must tend the herds, even on the darkest day!