by Holly Hook
"Hello?" I called.
Franco wandered down the hall to the left. "This way," he said. "Or we can split up. That might go faster."
"The hypothetical hermit," I reminded him.
"Point taken," Franco said. He reached for a wooden post mounted to the wall. No. It was a torch, a spent torch. We were in a place that hadn't seen electrical wiring in all of history. "I guess this is better than nothing. They say you're stronger with something in your hand. You want one?" He pointed to another torch further down the hallway.
“I’m not sure if this would work," I said, but took the second burnt-out torch anyway.
Franco and I moved down the hall, which curved and branched into two hallways. We chose the one on the right, and came to some crumbling stone steps. We had to squeeze over to the side, hugging the wall, to avoid slipping on any of the loose stone.
At last, we came to a set of wooden double doors. They were shut, but a pull from Franco made one squeak open.
"It's a dining hall," he said, peeking inside. "It's pretty cool. Are those dishes silver?"
He threw the other door open so I could see.
The place was awesome. Long stone tables lined up everywhere, and they still had chalices and empty plates lined up on them as if guests were supposed to start arriving any moment. There was no food, and if there was, it would have been eaten by animals or decayed away a long time ago. I sniffed. The air here was fresh, pouring in through the high, open windows and creating a breeze. Light poured in, making some of the chalices shine.
"Wow," I said. This stuff was way more expensive than anything my father had ever bought. I walked to the nearest table and picked up a chalice. I could see my reflection in it. "How is this possible that there isn't any bird crap in here? Tons of them should have nested in here with those windows open."
"I don't get it, either," Franco said.
I set the chalice back down and the sense of dread crept back. These dishes sure looked genuine. These weren't props, nor were they things you could buy at a joke store.
"Um, Candice?" Franco asked.
He stared at the other side of the room, to where a painting hung above the entrance to the kitchens.
I faced it. It was a large oil painting of a young king, decked out in green and complete with a golden crown encrusted with emeralds. He looked upon the dining hall with a stoic, but gentle expression. He had his arms crossed over his lap as if impatient that he had to sit in one spot for the artist for too long.
But it was his face that made my heart stop.
"Candice, that's--" Franco started.
I gulped. "My father."
Chapter Four
I about fell to my knees.
Shorty had been right after all.
My father was younger in the picture, maybe about twenty years younger, hardly more than a teenager himself. But it was him. He had my father's deep brown eyes. The huge, thick eyebrows I'd grown used to. Even that one mole right above his eyebrow.
It was him. I couldn't deny it.
I turned away from the painting and Franco tried to grab my arm, but missed. "We're leaving," I said. "I'm finding Shorty and we're finding the closest way home he can show us. He's our best bet for getting out of here."
"But the stuff!" Franco said.
"I don't care about the stuff." I pushed through the dining hall doors, which swung out on their own. "Take what you want. I'm sure it's worth some money. I just want out of here."
"Sorry," Franco said, running to catch up. "I didn't mean to belittle your shock. I'm shocked, too. We need to stop and think about this. Panic is a bad idea. That's the first thing you do when you're in a survival situation."
I whirled around to face him. "This isn't a survival thing. It's an oh my god my whole life has just exploded thing."
I slumped against the wall, trying to breathe to calm myself down. Shorty was right and I wasn't nuts. And that was even scarier.
And the frog--
The frog was really a prince, cursed by some witch if the story was right. And Shorty was trying to destroy him.
I peeled myself from the wall and marched out through the courtyard. But Shorty was already running across the old drawbridge.
"Candice!" he said. "I thought you two had run off through the woods. I couldn't find that frog in the pond, so you need to stay away from there."
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Shorty, stop trying to kill it."
"Yes," said Franco. "Why is there a picture of her dad on the wall in the dining room? Dressed as a king?"
"Because your father is a king," Shorty said to me. "King Gustav the Second. That's what Alric called him, anyway."
I stood there while my head spun. "Then what is he doing in the other world? Why did he just walk out of here and abandon this place?" I had to ask questions to keep my sanity. I had to keep talking.
Shorty shrugged. "He must have left for the same reason the other characters have fled this world. Alric must have something to do with it." Then he took a breath like he was going to hate what he had to say. "I think he wants to take over Fable."
"Then I can't blame my dad for leaving," I said. I had a feeling there was more story here, and Shorty didn't know every detail. "Why are you trying to kill the frog?"
"Sounds bad to me," Franco added.
Shorty ignored him. "Okay. I'll tell you what I heard from the frog prince himself. A wise woman visited your father about twenty years ago. She predicted that a prince from a neighboring kingdom would fall under a witch's curse and turn into a frog. She also told your father he would have a daughter who would free the frog prince from his curse."
"You didn't answer the question," Franco said.
"You were trying to kill a prince in Mr. Godrey's class?" I asked.
Shorty swallowed. Sweat formed on his forehead. "I didn't want to. I was hoping Mr. Godfrey or someone would do it. You might have read the fairy tale before. They're not always the way you think they are. This frog isn't a nice prince. He's jealous and possessive and just not a cool guy. When I found him...the way he talked about you...I had to put him in that tank."
Shorty's face turned every shade of red I could imagine.
He had a major crush on me.
And protecting me wasn't the only reason he'd wanted to cut open that frog.
"But you knew that was a guy!" I said. "You knew someone would cut him open. That's sick, Shorty! You know, most rivals just settle things with fistfights or drag races and showing off, but you?"
He blanched and backed away from me. This hadn't been easy for him to say. "I didn't want to have to cut him open. It's just...never mind!"
Franco held both hands up. "Whoa. Can we start over here? What did I just end up in?"
"Bear with us," I told him. "And try to breathe." I was handling this argument on my own. Franco could back me up if I needed it. "Show us the way back home. Now. And we're taking the frog with us."
"I can't."
"What?" I advanced on him.
"I only know where there are portals in the other world. There aren't any easy portals here." Shorty looked away at the tattered banner.
My father’s banner.
He'd left this behind.
"That's awesome," Franco said. He clenched his fists. "Just awesome. We're stuck in fairy tale land for what might be the rest of our lives." Then Franco stopped and thought. "Yeah. I'm admitting that this might not be the normal world after all. I get that. Maybe that pond we came out by is the portal back."
Shorty waved his hands at Franco. "That's not a good idea. The frog prince is down there. I told you he's not a nice guy. You don't want him around. I hate to think of what he'll be like if his curse is removed."
"Maybe he's a bad guy because he's been a frog for so long," I said. "That would make anyone grouchy. What do I have to do to help him? Kiss him? That's gross."
Shorty shook his head and grimaced. "Please, don't. I don't think the original tale was like that. Alric said
something about people having the wrong idea about the frog prince story. But I did hear one thing." His voice got low and dark. "If you remove his curse, Candice, you'll be his. It's the way your story is supposed to go, and your story always follows you if you're a Legend. You don't want to doom yourself to such an awful guy."
Since when did Shorty care about how I felt about anything? "Is he really that bad?"
"How much spying did you do on your parents?" Franco asked.
"A lot," Shorty said. "I've heard lots of interesting stuff."
I shuddered. "And I don't get a choice about how this story goes?"
"No," Shorty said. "Not if you free the frog prince. The two of you will be bound together, and then he's going to take you away to his kingdom. You'll live under his thumb the rest of your life. That's what's supposed to happen, and Alric wants to stop that."
"Then maybe Alric isn't such a bad guy," I said.
"I think he's bad," Shorty said. Pain crept into his features and he rubbed his hand across his face, making his mask go back up. "He said something to my parents about, well, about parts of Fable falling to darkness if a story doesn't end the way it should. I think he's a dark wizard, Candice. He rules dark things."
I remembered the frog's words. If the story falls, we all fall. Okay. This Alric guy was bad. Sickness rose up. "You're making this up, Shorty." He hadn't even told me how he was so sure the frog prince was horrible. He'd gotten my amethyst ball back for me, after all. And I'd saved his life. Even if I removed his curse, I could just walk away from him, right? I didn't have to give him my hand in marriage.
But this wasn't the regular world, either. The rules might be different here.
The mask fell away again. It had crumbled. "I'm not!" he shouted. His voice echoed off the stone walls around us and shot into the sky. A couple of sparrows took off into flight. "Listen to me, Candice. Don't go back down there. He can stay cursed. He deserves to be a frog."
"How do you know that?" I asked. "Look--I don't even know this prince and I have no interest in marrying him. But I can't let him stay like that. And if he got into the regular world in the first place, he might know a way to get there again."
And so would my father, I thought.
But Dad wasn't here. He was off sleeping in a hote or walking into some meeting, adjusting his tie. He'd know a way out of here if he fled from this Alric guy before.
"Come on," I told Franco. "Let's go find this prince and take him to someone who can help him. Like some princess. And then he might help us get out of here."
"You are a princess," Shorty said. "The princess of the Water Kingdom."
I recoiled. I wasn't going to bear that label. "Leave us alone while we go and do this," I said. "If you want to stay here in this Fable place, go ahead. We won't stop you."
Shorty bit his lip like he wanted to say something, something crushing, and struggle welled up in his eyes. He was holding something back. Maybe even something horrifying. "You can't go back down there," he said. "It would ruin everything."
"What stake do you have in this?" Franco asked.
Shorty said nothing. His face got red.
"Well?" Franco asked, facing him.
"I don't have a stake in this!" he shouted.
He was getting way too upset, and I knew why. "Look, Shorty," I said. "I'm not interested in you. I'm sorry, but it's true. I'm sure you're not really a bad guy or anything, except for the fact that you wanted to have a prince cut open on a lab table."
He took a step back into the tall weeds. I could almost hear his hope deflating. "You don't know what you're doing," he said. "The fairy tales all have a dark side that no one knows about. There's even a dark side to Fable." Shorty pointed to the drawbridge and to the forest beyond. "Go!" he shouted. "Go find out for yourself what he is."
I hesitated.
For a second, I wondered if Shorty could be telling the truth.
And if he was, if Alric had been telling his parents the truth.
I glanced at Franco. He had no words.
"It doesn't hurt just to go look again," I told him. What was I supposed to do? But Shorty kept pointing. He trembled.
I turned away from him and led Franco back over the drawbridge, forgetting how old and creaky it was. We hurried across as a board snapped and the thing shook. I jumped onto solid ground and Franco joined me, panting.
"What was his problem?" Franco asked me.
"Don't know," I said. "Well, I do know, but I don't want to think about it." I wanted far, far away from Shorty. The thought of him made my skin crawl.
And I wanted away from the castle. The portrait hanging inside.
The truth.
I studied the forest that surrounded us on all sides. There was no sign of anyone else. Franco and I were isolated out here with Shorty. It was a nightmare come true.
Which way was the pond?
We'd come to the castle from the left. I walked that way, through the tall grass and the weeds. Shorty didn't follow us.
I'd hurt him.
After he had tried to keep us from coming here, I'd crushed all his hope. And I felt kind of bad about it.
On entering the trees, it took us a while to find the pond again, but we did. It seemed bigger and darker than ever, and the lilies almost seemed to glow. It was a magical place, even more magical than the pond I'd visited as a child.
Of course, this was a magical world.
I wondered how that frog had found me.
"Frog," I called. "Let's get you out of here. I'll find you some help and then you can show us the way out of here." I couldn't believe I was talking to an amphibian.
"You can really hear the frog talking to you?" Franco asked. "It's not just Shorty?"
I gulped. "Yes. Shorty was right." I felt heat rush to my face as I said it. "The frog can talk to us. Well, to me."
"And I'm the one left out," Franco said, swinging his fist in mock disappointment. "Candice, I still think there's a chance we're in the same world. It might be the same chance I have at passing Trig, but it's a chance. Something weird happened back at the park, and I don't know what it is, but we need to find that frog and get out of here. We can start walking down that road we saw by the castle."
"I agree," I said, checking behind me. I could barely see the castle now. I could imagine some little girl coming out here to be alone. "Um, frog? Are you still here? Shorty's gone."
I am.
The water rippled near the shore and a small, green head emerged.
Franco stopped. "Okay. That's weird. It just did what you said."
Will you now keep your promise to me?
"I saved your life," I told the frog. "I think we're way more than even."
The frog crawled out of the water and perched there, facing me with those big yellow eyes. It was creepy, to say the least.
"I don't know," I said, feeling completely stupid that I was talking to a frog. "I don't know who you are and I don't know what your plans are."
"You're really talking to the frog," Franco said.
The boy you came here with is evil. He wants to unravel our story.
"I know that."
We must follow our story. Terrible things will happen if we do not.
The frog's tone was so demanding that I took a step back. "I figured."
Perhaps Shorty was onto something.
Pick me up.
"Can't you hop or something?" I asked. "I don't pick up frogs."
Then have your servant pick me up.
"Franco's my friend," I said. "I don't have servants."
"You want me to grab the frog?" Franco asked.
I nodded to him. "Please." I was scared to touch it. I didn't know what to do or what would happen if I went against the so-called story and left the frog here.
Or what would happen if I did what it wanted.
Franco approached from the side while the frog continued to stare at me. "I'll have my friend pick you up," I said. "We'll take you to someone who can hel
p you. There has to be someone in this world."
You must help me, the frog said. Only you. Your father fled his kingdom and left his people at the mercy of darkness. Your kingdom still has hope. Alric cannot claim it unless it becomes dark, and it will only do so if our story falls. You must do as I say.
I was being dealt an ultimatum. "There's no one here," I told the frog. "No people. At least, I don't see anyone."
People remain in the Water Kingdom, hoping one day for their kind King to return.
I thought of the portrait hanging in the dining hall.
"That's not going to happen," I said. "He's not coming back. He's too busy off on business trips for that. He's made another life for himself."
He is running. But if we follow our story and win, Alric will have no sway over this part of Fable. Your father will be free to return.
Franco inched closer to the frog. He was facing the water as if something had caught his attention. Franco shifted as if he'd seen a shark lurking under there, waiting to come out. I checked, but spotted nothing.
"You know an awful lot about me," I said. Franco advanced, closer to the frog.
I have followed you for a long time. I heard the wise woman's prediction that he would have a daughter that would free me. I slipped through the portal with your father, hidden in a leather sack. I knew that if I followed him, I would meet the princess who would free me.
"You stalker!" I shouted. Was this the frog version of Shorty? It was no wonder Shorty wanted him out of the way. Some birds took off into flight. "And how old are you, anyway? Wait. That means you know where there's a portal back out of here. Tell me where it is, and I might help you."
You must free me first. And be mine.
"Great." I was thinking more and more of heading back to the castle with Shorty. "That's helpful. If you think I'm automatically going to be in love with you as soon as you turn back into some guy who's way older than me, you're way mistaken. Guess what? Life doesn't work that way."
Franco glanced at me. He was two feet from the frog. Why wouldn't be just catch him already? The frog had given him permission to pick him up.
I nodded.