He leapt up onto Walter’s chair and back onto the desk. A piece of loose parchment with just a few crossed-out scribbles lay on one side of the table. Syrah hopped around behind it, set his front toes on it, and slid it forward, taking tiny hops with his back legs and keeping his front toes pressed down on the parchment until he had pushed the paper all the way to the front of the desk. It slipped over the edge and drifted to the floor.
The final step in preparing to write was to create an ink puddle. This was by far the most treacherous endeavor. If the ink puddled quickly and spread toward him, and he wasn’t able to leap out of its path, he very well might die. He considered the small rectangular glass bottle, and the slight slope of the desk. If he pushed the bottle toward the front of the desk, the ink would run down the slope, away from him. It might drip onto the floor, but that was fine.
Syrah hopped around behind the bottle and prepared himself. If this went wrong, he would have to jump for it, far and fast. He tensed, ready to spring, and he stuck out his face. He gave the little bottle a nudge with his yellow, gut-like chin. The bottle wobbled, but didn’t tip. Syrah braced himself and shoved his chin harder against the bottle.
It tipped. Syrah leapt sideways and kept leaping until he was off the desk and back on the windowsill, where no ink could follow. He sucked in air through his nostrils as he turned back to see what had happened.
The desk was clean.
He blinked, sure that the moonlight was playing tricks on him, but from where he sat it appeared that no ink had spilled. Confused, Syrah hopped back to the desktop. Gingerly, he made his way to the knocked-over bottle, which he prodded with a gelatinous toe.
Nothing.
Of course, he realized in frustration. If the bottle had been uncorked since before the family had left for the ATC, then the ink would have all dried out by now.
Luckily, Deli had left the door open, so he could explore other options. He wondered if he could get into the old schoolroom. There was chalk in there, and chalk wouldn’t poison him. Probably.
He made his way out of Walter’s room and kept close to the wall as he hopped along the corridor. The Thatch was mostly dark, but Syrah had been visiting the place his whole life, and though he’d spent very little time in the Gourd family’s personal quarters, it didn’t take long before he reached the grand staircase that led straight down into the main foyer. He paused at the top of the steps and gazed down. There, right there, Nana Cava had banished him. There, Grandmother Luffa had ordered her guards to escort him away.
Syrah remembered how Deli had huddled against the wall, close to where he now stood, hugging herself and looking down at him. Suddenly uncomfortable, he began to descend the steps, one hop at a time. Deli had brought it on herself, he told himself for the thousandth time. If she hadn’t acted so high and mighty at the party, and if Marsala hadn’t tattled on him, then his nana would never have kicked him out.
He felt a pang of anxiety at the thought of Marsala. Was she still unconscious? Where was she now? And where, come to think of it, was his entire family? They should have been sitting near the Yellow tent at the games. The Huanuis and the Gourds were practically blood, especially now that Marsanne had married Christophen. Had something come between them?
It occurred to him that maybe he had come between them. He had vanished in the Gourds’ backyard. For all his family knew, he was dead. Maybe they blamed Luffa’s guards. Maybe they blamed Luffa herself. But no — Nana Cava and Luffa were like sisters. Nothing could separate them.
Unless his nana was dead.
Syrah felt clammier than usual. She wasn’t dead — she wasn’t dead. For one thing, her death would have made the Criers, and Jack read the Criers all the time. Syrah would have heard him talking about an important headline like that…. Unless Nana Cava had died before Syrah had met up with Jack and Rapunzel.
It’s possible, said the horrible voice. Nana Cava was really old. And what had Calabaza said? Something about digging up Cava’s old armor? Syrah had thought he’d meant digging it up out of storage, but maybe he had meant something much worse. Maybe that was why Grandmother Luffa had looked so wounded.
Syrah bounced toward the old schoolroom more vigorously than necessary, trying to shake his bad feelings away. Focus. That was what he needed. Marsala was going to be fine, and his nana was definitely alive, and right now he needed to concentrate on becoming a man again, so that he could see them both for himself.
He found the old schoolroom door barely ajar. It smelled stale inside, like no one had been using it, which of course they hadn’t; Yellow Country didn’t do year-round school like Olive did. The triplets were out on holiday. It was something Syrah had long envied about life here in Cornucopia — school that stopped in summer. He had begged his parents to let him have summers off too, but they’d just smiled and ruffled his hair. They hadn’t even noticed when he’d started skipping sessions with his tutors for a couple of weeks one summer, just to see if he could get away with it. His whole life, they had never checked to see what he was doing. If Nana Cava hadn’t always been watching over his shoulder, he would barely have had an education.
He missed his nana with sudden keenness. No matter how many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren there were, she had always noticed him. Always spoken to him, held him to his duties, tried to motivate him. She had seen him, even when he didn’t want her to see him.
She had seen right through him when he’d lied about Deli’s letter.
Troubled, Syrah hopped up onto one of the school desks and swept his gaze around the room. Everything had been tidied up for summer, but he poked into every corner, and peered under the lecture podium. He jumped onto the instructor’s desk to see if any of the drawers were open enough for him to jimmy the rest of the way. They weren’t, but it didn’t matter — he saw what he was looking for: a piece of chalk, abandoned on the windowsill. Syrah leapt toward it with such energy that he fairly flew.
He didn’t snatch it right away with his tongue. He was afraid it might dissolve before he could do anything with it. It was small — no larger than a daisy petal. If he could only write a little bit, then what should he write?
And where should he write it? If he wrote something in here, it might not be seen for another two months. He had to get the chalk somewhere that his message would be noticed. He considered. He couldn’t push the chalk onto the floor, or it might break and be useless to him. He had to snatch it up with his tongue and jump to the floor. This he did, and then immediately released the chalk again so that it wouldn’t get too wet. He tasted his tongue, trying to determine whether chalk was poison, but nothing seemed alarming — it was probably just fine. He pushed it along with his forefeet, out of the classroom and down the hallway toward the foyer, until he reached the bottom of the stairs.
It was a good spot. The floor tiles were dark stone; the white chalk would stand out beautifully against them. If he could write out his name at the bottom of the steps, then it could not fail to catch somebody’s attention. But was his name the best option?
He had thought about this quite often. He believed that SYRAH = FROG was the shortest way to say what needed to be said. However, he wasn’t sure he had enough chalk for all that. SH = FROG? He wasn’t sure. Would anyone understand that SH stood for Syrah Huanui? SYR = FRG? No. That was just confusing.
He would write SYRAH. It was understandable, and it would startle people. The Gourds would pay attention to it. And he could hop back and forth along the letters, croaking like crazy until somebody understood. It was a shame he couldn’t write the letters in front of somebody. Then they’d realize right away that he wasn’t just a frog. But he’d tried that kind of thing before, and people always just thought that he was playing with whatever object he was trying to write with. The objects got taken away, and he got a pat on the head and a nudge into the garden with a “Go on, Prince Frog, find something to play with outside.”
Not this time. He’d do this now, by himself,
in the dark. By the time the Gourds woke up, he’d be finished.
He slid the chalk toward the stairs with his foot. As he dragged the chalk, he saw that it was already making faint marks along the stones. Excited, he pressed down a bit harder with his foot and dragged the chalk again. He’d made a brighter mark. This was much simpler than having to carry the chalk in his mouth, and it meant he wouldn’t melt it with wetness either. His foot was moist, but not so much as his mouth.
He started writing, dragging the chalk a little bit at a time, carefully shaping the first letter. S was tricky — so many curves, so many changes in direction — but he worked diligently, one small mark at a time, being sure to press hard enough to make the marks visible. When he finally had an S, he hopped up a couple of steps and looked down to see how it appeared.
It was perfect. Jagged and strange, but most definitely an S. His heart pattered, anxious and eager, and he leapt back to the chalk to keep working.
Hours passed. By the time he reached the end of the A he was breathing heavily through his nostrils. He was hungry and thirsty, and he knew that dawn was coming soon. But he was close. He’d almost made it. Just an H now. He rolled the chalk over to the next blank spot on the floor, pressed down, and made a guttural noise of dismay.
The chalk, which had been growing smaller all along, gave way under the pressure of his foot, leaving him with a pile of dust. Agonized, Syrah stared at it, and then he set his long mouth in a hard line. He was going to make this work. He had come too far to lose this chance now.
Using his foot like a brush, he dipped it in the chalk and then swiped it along the floor. He would make a smaller, less obvious H with the dust. It wouldn’t be big, but it would be there. They’d see it. They’d know.
He worked as fast as he could, and when he was done, he hopped up the steps and looked down at his creation.
SYRAH
He croaked in exhaustion and triumph together, then tucked himself in between two of the balustrade rails. Pale dawn light broke through the windows. Soon, people would wake. Until they did, he would stay right here, and he would wait for somebody to come.
The voice in his mind told him that it didn’t matter if somebody came — that just as every attempt before, this one would be foiled. Syrah shoved this miserable thought down as far as it would go. This time, it would be different. It had to be. He had written his name — how could anybody ignore that? They couldn’t, that was all. They’d see. They could not fail to see.
SYRAH had barely been waiting for half an hour when the peaceful stillness of the Thatch was shattered.
Somebody upstairs was screaming. A woman. Screaming and crying like she was under attack.
Syrah bounded up the stairs, toward the family’s quarters. The screaming continued until Grandmother Luffa’s voice rose up sharply over it. “Quiet, Roma!” she commanded, and Roma’s wails became instantly muffled like she’d clapped both hands over her mouth.
“Pa?” he heard one of the triplets say uncertainly. “What’s happening?”
“Go back to your room.”
Deli’s voice. So she wasn’t hurt. Syrah wanted to hop all the way upstairs and see her to make sure, but he stopped himself. He had to stay where he was. When somebody noticed his name, he had to get their attention and help them make the connection.
The front door of the Thatch flew open, and guards came rushing in. They were on the stairs in seconds; Syrah had to leap aside to keep from being crushed under heavy boots. The guards jangled their way up into the family quarters. Syrah looked down the stairs again and his heart gave a nasty lurch.
They had stomped right through his name, erasing parts of it. It was still possible to tell — just — that it said SYRA, but the little H was nothing but a smear of dust now. If people walked on it once or twice more without noticing, then the whole thing would be illegible.
He couldn’t let it happen. If they tried it again, he would make them stop. He bounced down to the bottom step and took up a defensive position right in the middle.
Bells began to ring, muffled but near. Syrah felt their vibrations as though they were coming from under the floor — and then he realized that was exactly where they were coming from. Someone was pulling the bell cords to wake the staff, a handful of whom soon shuffled past the grand staircase and into the parlor, some yawning, some still tying their aprons and buttoning their vests. The cooks emerged from their morning preparations in the kitchens.
“Earlier than usual for a meeting,” he heard one say to another. “Do you suppose it’s about that sickness in Plenty?”
“Not just Plenty,” replied the other cook, shaking his head. “I’ve got family out east in Threshing. Three days ago, their neighbors lost a little boy to this sickness. Just six years old.”
A man wearing dark gray garb and an Exalted amulet strode past, his face intent. The cooks watched him go into the parlor, and their faces showed both curiosity and fear.
“Now why would they bother the Relay for a kitchen staff meeting?” asked the first cook.
“Something’s bad wrong,” muttered the other.
None of them passed in front of the stairs. None of them saw Syrah’s chalked name. A moment later, two of the guards reappeared and hurried back down to the foyer. Syrah stayed where he was on the bottom step, croaking loudly to get their attention so that they would not squash him, but the guards were intent on their goal. They merely sidestepped him, then trod upon his name once more. He let out a furious raaawwp, which no one heeded. The guards hurried into the parlor.
“Emergency …” Syrah heard. “… next door to fetch Physic Feverfew …”
The rest was drowned out by the pounding of running feet as a woman flew from the parlor and ran to the back of the house, followed closely by a handful of messengers who were also moving at top speed. Syrah sagged, despairing. They hadn’t even glanced at the floor, and his name was in bad shape from having been trampled twice. Somebody had to look now. He had to make them look.
He leapt over his name so as not to further smudge it, and he bounded into the parlor, where the staff were listening to the guards and looking fearful. He began to croak as loudly as he could.
“Unconscious …” he heard, through the racket he was making. “… don’t panic …” “… confidential …”
Syrah grimaced. Nobody was looking at him. He leapt onto one of the parlor tables, right beside the guards, and he began to jump up and down, croaking for emphasis each time he landed. One of the staff, a teenaged boy in an apron, whose eyes were still pinned on the guard who was speaking, reached out for the window latch, felt for it, and unlocked it. “Is it the same sickness from Plenty?” he asked as he pulled up the window. “Does this mean it’s spreading here too?”
“No idea,” the guard replied. “So don’t start any rumors.”
The aproned boy walked over to Syrah and reached for him, but Syrah was too quick; he leapt out of the way. He wasn’t about to get thrown out a window now. “CROAK!” he shouted, and the boy took another step toward him. Syrah leapt for the door and checked back. The aproned boy was following him and looking annoyed. Overjoyed, Syrah continued to hop back out into the foyer, toward the bottom of the stairs.
The front door opened. The woman who had run from the house just minutes ago now returned with a Hipocrath beside her. It was Physic Feverfew, a stout little Hipocrath with a severe gray topknot and blue palms whom Syrah had encountered in some of his scrapes as a boy. Feverfew stamped on Syrah’s name as she raced upstairs, but the other woman stopped at the bottom of the staircase, breathing hard. She looked down, and her eyes locked onto Syrah’s chalk marks. She frowned. “What’s this, Benny?” she demanded, pulling her thick brown hair off her neck. She twisted it into a knot and started securing it with pins from her apron pocket. “Someone writing on the floor?”
“Looks like it,” said Benny, hooking his thumbs into his apron strings, which he had wrapped all the way around his skinny body and knotted
in the front. He squinted at Syrah’s handiwork. Syrah jumped up three steps and surveyed the damage. SY — A — was still vaguely readable. The R had smudged nearly out of existence. “Somebody was writing something,” he said. “S, Y — is that an A?” He shrugged. “Sya? Doesn’t make sense.”
Yes it does, thought Syrah angrily. THINK about it.
“Probably just the triplets making messes,” said the woman.
It’s not the triplets! cried Syrah inwardly, and he threw himself at the woman’s foot.
“Clean it up quick,” said the woman, wiggling her boot to get him off it, “before the ministers get here.”
Syrah leapt onto the place where his R had been, and he let out a moan of croaking agony. His vocal sac ached with effort.
The woman looked at him with some amusement. “This one’s looking for a mate,” she said. “Making all that noise. Put him outside, would you?”
“That’s not my job,” said Benny, seeming to forget that he’d been trying to do just that a moment ago. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because I forgot my cap.” The woman strode toward the door of the staff quarters, and Benny went back to the parlor.
“Someone take care of the foyer floor,” he ordered, before heading back toward the kitchens. A grumble from the parlor followed this.
“Thinks he’s the biggest tree in the orchard.”
“And all he does is wash the governor’s dishes.”
Syrah slumped where he was, blood pounding and nostrils flaring. His heart sank heavily into his guts.
It’s over, said the awful voice. You’re a frog. Accept it.
He couldn’t. He had to figure this out before Rapunzel heard he was here and came back to collect him. Fond as he was of Rapunzel, he couldn’t be her pet any longer. But what more could he do? How was he supposed to break this stupid curse?
Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince Page 12