She stirred the cream into the double boiler; the smell of thick, dark chocolate wafted through the room. “Now, you said that Nexus Burdock poisoned the governor. Or at least that’s what you think happened. Who else thinks so?”
Harrow opened his mouth and Syrah hopped twice. “Nobody,” he said. “Did he do it? Did you see him? Is that why he put the cuffs on you?”
Miss Floss poured some of the cream off into a mixing bowl and took up a whisk. She began to beat the cream, light and fast, until she’d created peaks. “He didn’t poison the governor,” she said, and Syrah looked up at her in surprise. “But that’s not the whole story. The real story starts thirty years ago.” She stirred sugar into the chocolate, slow and methodical in her movements. “Hans had no childhood,” she said. “Nor did I. But we both made something of ourselves in spite of it. He was Exalted, of course, which helped. I apprenticed myself to a baker as a girl, and from there I went to a confectioner.”
All at once, Syrah knew exactly where he’d seen that article. It was from one of the Criers they’d gotten from Clementine’s house, he was sure of it. He leapt from Harrow’s shoulder and bounced his way across the basement, onto the worktable closest to where the article hung, so that he could read the details.
It was the story of a little orphan girl who had emerged from the woods just a few days before the article had been published. She had been filthy and malnourished, and would give no name, but sought shelter with a local baker in exchange for work. A few days were all it had taken for the baker to realize that the girl was an artist in the kitchen, gifted beyond her years. A genius with a magic touch. In spite of her youth, he had offered her an apprenticeship.
Syrah’s mind raced. If this article was about G. G. Floss, it meant that she had come out of the woods at almost the same time as Hans Rantott. Which meant that she had appeared in Plenty just after the death of the Witch of the Woods. And the deaths of Grausam Steppe, Ava Cass, and Holly Seaberry.
“While I was apprenticing,” said G. G., “Hansel went north to train with the Exalted Council. But we never lost touch. We sent letters every week.”
“Hansel?”
“My pet name for him. We were always very close, you see.”
“Then why did he hurt you?”
“He thinks he knows best,” said Miss Floss. “But my way is better.”
She took the copper cup from the tray, poured liquid chocolate into it, and topped it off with whipped cream. She lifted the copper-topped shaker and tapped a generous shower of cinnamon onto the cream. A tendril of silver steam rose from the cup.
“For you.” Miss Floss offered the cup to Harrow. “For everything you’ve done.”
Syrah let out a long, slow croak.
Silver curl of steam. Slumbercap mushroom. A small amount would make it hard to breathe — a few swallows would paralyze Harrow’s lungs —
“RAWWWWP!” cried Syrah, in terror. Don’t drink it, don’t drink it —
He leapt down from the worktable and bounced toward Harrow as fast as he could. He had to get to his hand — had to touch his skin and tell him.
“RAWWWWP!”
If only he could be a man again for one moment — if only he could say two words, then he could stop this, but there wasn’t time. Harrow was already lifting the cup. Syrah’s mind raced as he bounced nearer. Maybe he could knock the cup out of Harrow’s hand — but if he did that, the liquid would slosh all over him. The slumbercap would kill him —
Harrow put the chocolate to his lips.
Syrah leapt to his knee, flinched for one moment, and then sprang as hard as he could toward the cup of poisoned chocolate, stretching out his front legs to bat it away from Harrow’s mouth. He splatted against the boiling hot copper, scalding his belly, his chin, the undersides of his legs. He let out a ribbiting scream of agony.
“Hey!” shouted Harrow as he lost his grip. The cup went sideways. Hot liquid went everywhere. Syrah tumbled into a puddle of spilled chocolate, striking his head so hard that the room spun. For a moment he could not move. He sat there in the mess, dizzy, burning, terrified. Slumbercap seeped through his skin. His lungs would not expand. Panicked, he sucked for air as hard as he could, but it was like trying to breathe through wet cloth.
He struggled to move and barely managed to wriggle out of the puddle. His burned body flamed with pain. He regurgitated on reflex, vomiting up his entire stomach. It hurtled out of his mouth and hung there, inside out. He wiped it with his front legs to wash away the poison, though he knew it was no use; he hadn’t eaten the slumbercap. He had absorbed it.
He swallowed his stomach, stumbled sideways, and grew still. Everything was getting dark. He felt Harrow’s hands on him. Felt the fear in him.
“Your pet sure likes to knock things over, doesn’t he?” he heard Miss Floss say. She laughed, but the sound was short. Uncomfortable. “I’ll get you another cup.”
“Hey,” said Harrow urgently. His voice sounded far away. He shook Syrah a little. “You okay?”
Get out of here, Syrah thought, staring glassily up at him. Get out, you’ve got to get out…. He was sleepy. Terribly sleepy. He couldn’t breathe, but at least he could not feel his burned skin anymore. And at least he had tried. Tried to do the right thing. Maybe Nana Cava had seen him from the Beyond. Maybe she was proud.
He could ask her soon. His eyes fell shut.
Then, just when he thought things could get no worse, Syrah exploded.
THE explosion was brief — the length of a few seconds — but they were the longest seconds of his life. Every inch of his body was stretching, tearing — his eyes, his guts, his muscles screamed — and then the misery was over. He was on his belly on the floor, and now his body felt all wrong, huge and disjointed. His stomach was very far away. His back feet were on the other side of the room. His vision had narrowed; he could not roll his eyes to see what was behind him. He was enormous, bulky, heavy, and his skin was wet and burning all at once. But he could breathe in long, hard gasps if he tried hard enough. He sucked for air.
Miss Floss was screaming.
“He’s with me!” he heard Harrow shout. “It’s all right! It’s Prince Syrah of the Olive Isles — he got turned into a frog, but now he’s back. Get a Hipocrath, quick — and a blanket, get a blanket!”
Syrah heard Miss Floss run up the stairs. He tried to croak. He heard a groan.
A human groan.
“You’re all right now,” Harrow was saying to him. “I’ve got you.” Syrah felt hands on his arms.
On his arms.
Tears sprang into his eyes. His upper arms were still on fire from where they’d struck the burning cup, but he didn’t care. Harrow gripped him and hoisted him off the floor, pulling him up until Syrah was on his knees.
His knees. He looked down at them, and there they were. Knees. Human ones. He held up his hands, and when he saw his own fingers, a sob of joy tore from his throat.
“Here, take this.” Harrow grabbed a long piece of yellow cloth from a basket under one of the worktables. It was a VOTE BURDOCK banner. He wrapped it around Syrah like a sarong and tucked it shut. “Can you walk?” he asked, crouching before him and offering his hands. Syrah grabbed on to them and used them to balance as he pulled himself to his feet. Tears of amazement coursed down his face. He was standing. He was human. Could he walk? He took a tentative step, still holding on to Harrow, and though he felt wobbly and off balance, he was able to put one foot in front of the other. He gave a victorious shout but barely made a sound. He sucked another long, thin breath.
He pulled his hands from Harrow’s and stumbled to the tray. He picked up the shaker. “Slumbercap,” he rasped. It was the first word he had spoken in nearly sixteen months.
Harrow gaped at him.
“Absorbed,” Syrah managed, touching his stomach. “Through my skin.”
“Can you breathe?”
Syrah sucked for air in a long, thin gasp, and held up two fingers, just barely apart.
“You knocked that cup out of my hand on purpose,” said Harrow. His dark, sober eyes met Syrah’s. “You saved my life.”
Syrah pushed the shaker into Harrow’s hand. “Evidence,” he rasped, and Harrow shoved the shaker down into one of his pockets.
Footsteps thudded overhead.
“She doesn’t know we know,” Syrah whispered, and he dragged for another breath. “Let’s get out of here — act normal.”
Harrow looked anxiously at the stairs. “Right,” he said.
They heard the door creak open at the top of the steps, followed by the jingling sounds of keys. A moment later, Miss Floss appeared, carrying a blanket in one hand and a pitcher in the other. A used rag stuck out of her apron pocket, and she wore gloves, which she had not before. She eyed Syrah suspiciously, but approached nonetheless and offered the blanket to him.
“Your Highness,” she said.
Syrah was not about to touch anything that G. G. Floss gave him. Especially since she was wearing gloves — she was probably trying to protect herself from something she had done to poison the blanket in her hand. He hitched up the Burdock banner he wore. “All set,” he wheezed. “Fits great.”
She narrowed her light eyes. The corners of her mouth turned down.
“Uh — we’ve — got to go,” said Harrow nervously, taking Syrah by the elbow. “Excuse us, but Prince Syrah needs to see the Physic.”
“Of course,” said Miss Floss. “It must feel very strange to be human again.” She turned away from them and went about cleaning up the spilled chocolate.
Harrow headed up the stairs, and Syrah followed unsteadily. His balance was completely off; every time he set a foot on a higher step, he thought he would tip over backward. He finally leaned forward, put both hands on the steps, and crawled his way up. It was far easier.
“This is locked,” said Harrow, when he tried the door. “And greasy,” he added. He wiped his hand on his trousers. “Miss Floss?” he called.
She did not answer.
“Uh, Miss Floss?” said Harrow, louder. “We’re locked in here.”
Syrah’s gut tightened, and not because of any poison. She had locked the door deliberately. He turned around and sat on the steps to peer down into the room but didn’t see her there at all. He used the banister to haul himself back up to his feet. Breathing thinly, he made his way back to the bottom of the steps, with Harrow behind him.
“Where’d she go?” Harrow whispered.
Syrah pointed to the corridor where she had gone before to get the cream. A door marked Storage stood open.
Harrow strode toward it, but Syrah stayed where he was, weakened by the efforts he had made already. He leaned on a worktable, struggling to breathe. He just wanted one good breath. If he could inhale deeply, he knew he would feel truly restored. But every breath felt like he was drawing air through a straw that was pinched half-shut. His head pounded.
Just as he reached the corridor, Harrow tripped and stumbled a little. He stopped. Shook himself. “Whoa,” he said. “That was awful strange.”
“What?” Syrah managed.
“It felt like …” Harrow rubbed his chest. “Miss Floss?” he called. “Where are you?”
She emerged from the storage room, wiping her hands on her apron. Her gloves were gone, as was the used rag that had been in her pocket. “You’re still here,” she said, smiling. “I thought you were going.”
“We’re locked in.”
“Yes, I guess you are.” She moved a chair, dragging it until it faced the candy house. “Sit down, Harrow.”
Harrow obeyed without protest, and Syrah tensed. Harrow was a bad liar, but he wasn’t stupid — he wouldn’t follow Miss Floss’s directions now unless he had to. She was controlling him somehow — but how? She hadn’t even touched him. She hadn’t fed him anything either. Was there some kind of poison in the air? No, because if there were, it would affect her too….
Miss Floss moved another chair into place. “Who saw you come here, Harrow?”
“No one.” His voice was heavy. Wooden.
“Who knows you came?”
“No one.”
Syrah glanced up the steps at the locked door. The doorknob glistened. G. G. Floss had put something on it, and whatever it was, it had drugged Harrow into obeying her.
“Who knows that Prince Syrah is here?”
“Only us.”
“Very good. Now you sit here, Your Highness,” she said, and she patted the second chair.
Syrah dragged for air, then stumbled to the chair beside Harrow’s. He dropped into it, fighting for breath, and stared hollowly at the candy house. He had to make her believe that he was as drugged as Harrow. If she touched him with that greasy stuff, then they were both done for.
“Now, Prince Syrah, tell me. How long were you a frog?”
Syrah sucked for air. “Fifteen months,” he managed, making his voice heavy like Harrow’s. “Two weeks … Two days …”
“Not that you’re counting,” said Miss Floss. She sounded amused. “How in Tyme did you get turned into a frog in the first place? That’s got to be a good story.”
“I made … a wish,” Syrah choked out. “I wished that Deli Gourd … would get what she deserved.”
Miss Floss laughed in genuine delight. “And your nasty little wish backfired. A fairy heard it, perhaps? Now that is a good story — it’s such a shame I’ll never be able to tell it, I could create scenes that would truly do it justice. Unfortunately, it’s about to have a very bad ending, so the world will never know what really happened to the Lost Prince of Olive. Just as they never knew what happened to the Witch of the Woods.”
“What … happened.” Harrow’s voice was so dulled that his question lacked inflection, but that didn’t seem to bother Miss Floss.
“I can tell you — and I will. It doesn’t matter if you know. And I’ve wanted to tell this story for so long.”
They had to get out of here, Syrah thought frantically. But how? Harrow would obey whatever Miss Floss told him to do, and Harrow was larger and taller than he was; Syrah was much too weak to drag him away, especially if he fought. And Miss Floss would fight him too. He might be able to fend her off, but he was very weak and could barely breathe, and she was stronger than she looked — she had given Harrow plenty of trouble when he’d tried to cut that bracelet off. There were knives in the room, and a fire poker — she could hurt Syrah badly, if she wanted to. Maybe even kill him. It would help if he could tie her up. He moved his eyes around the parts of the room that he could see without turning, searching furtively for something he could use, but he saw nothing even close to rope or twine.
Miss Floss walked around behind the worktable and stood between the candy house and the wretched hovel. “Once, there was an Exalted boy who grew up in the Arrowroot Forest,” she said, and she lifted her purple fingertips. The marzipan boy who lay limp on the table stood up and faced them. “His name was Hans, but everyone called him Hansel. His parents were poor, but they loved him and cared for him and his sister, Gretel.” She walked her fingertips through the air, and a marzipan girl walked out from behind the candy house. Her candy-floss hair was the color of sand, just like the boy’s. They stood together, holding hands. “Hansel and Gretel were eight and six years old when their parents died of fever and they were orphaned. They went to their only living relative, a distant cousin named Grausam Steppe, a woodcutter who lived all alone, deep in the woods. He was not kind.”
The two children walked toward the burned pastry hovel, and its black licorice door opened. No one emerged, but the marzipan children trembled and covered their faceless faces.
“He beat them,” said Miss Floss quietly. “He inflicted unthinkable pain. Hans tried to stop him, but he was very young, and his magic was not strong enough. As punishment, Cousin Grausam beat his small sister unconscious.”
The marzipan girl fell to the worktop and went still. The boy knelt over her, his back shaking as though with sobs.
> “Hans never tried to stop him again. Instead, he made a plan to shield his sister from the worst. He showed Gretel how to cook for Cousin Grausam so that he would like her better. For many months, as long as she filled his stomach, he took out his temper on Hansel instead. She didn’t want him to, but Hansel insisted it was the only way. And then one day, Cousin Grausam went too far.”
The little marzipan boy removed his shirt. His body was covered in burns and lacerations. Syrah remembered. He had seen those scars on Burdock’s body at the Royal Governor’s Inn and assumed they were from magical training.
“Cousin Grausam was drunk,” said Miss Floss. “He went after Gretel with a knife. Hansel was afraid and tried to get between them, so Cousin decided to teach Hans a lesson. He tied him up and burned him with a poker and cut him with the knife until he was almost dead. His screams were so frightful that Gretel ran away.”
The little marzipan girl fled and hid behind the hovel, then emerged carrying a tiny basket woven from thin brown pastry and filled with small gray candies.
“She could not save him,” said Miss Floss. “So instead, she went to a place in the woods that she knew, and she gathered mushrooms. She kept them in a basket until Hansel was awake. Once she was sure he would live, and he could walk again, she made Cousin Grausam a special supper. It looked just like his favorite. Mushrooms in gravy. Hansel didn’t know what she had done until Cousin Grausam stopped breathing and died, and then Hansel was angry. He was afraid that Gretel would be jailed. They ran from Cousin Grausam’s house and searched for shelter. They looked for many days, and became lost. They found little food or water.”
The marzipan children approached the candy house.
“And then they found a dream, standing in the woods,” said Miss Floss. “A beautiful house made all of candy, with a stream of cold, sweet water running around it. They drank from the stream, and ate from the house, and cried with relief. They knocked at the door and were let inside.”
The boy knocked at the vanilla biscuit door, and it opened. He went in and his sister followed, clutching his hand.
Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince Page 27