by Mike Ashley
His then future mother-in-law muttered something into her sodden handkerchief.
“Yes, madam, I do know that your mutual great-grandmother was a mermaid, but it seems very odd to me that scales haven’t come out in any other part of the family. And you are not going to tell me, I hope, that she was also a fire-breathing mermaid!”
The prince smiled wryly. His now never-to-be father-in-law had not really liked him any more than the rest of the family had. But he loved his daughter and the circumstances of his transformation had been, well, even in this day and age, just a tad unfortunate. The old man might even have been grateful that he was so anxious to go through with the wedding. There can be few fathers who react with delight when they discover that their only daughter’s pet frog has turned into a young man overnight, especially when she has chosen to keep him in her bedroom . . . Not that the princess had seemed to mind at the time . . . but he mustn’t think about her. He went back to his letter:
“In fact, you all did your best to make me welcome and I know that it’s my fault that I just didn’t fit in. I did my best too, but I’m afraid that a hundred years in the well at the World’s End hasn’t really fitted me for a life in the spotlight. There always seems to be so much to do here—”
Always, he thought, an abattoir to open, or some provincial mayor to engage in stilted conversation, or some deadly dull state function to attend. But he might have been able to put up with it all, even the mayors and the abattoirs if – but when he’d seen her stricken face tonight – it was tonight’s banquet that had finally finished him, of course.
“—And I’ve come to believe that I’m just not the right person to do it. It wasn’t really the incident tonight. That was no one’s fault, and I’m sure—”
Well, it was someone’s fault, actually. He’d seen Franz and Ernst, sniggering in those long moustaches they wore to conceal their ever-so-slightly non-human dentition, just before the man-servant had lifted the lid on the dish he was presenting to him to reveal – frog’s legs! He couldn’t help it. He’d rushed from the table, and later sent a message that he was too ill to join the rest of the family at the grand ball. And then he’d locked his bedroom door, and, in fear and hope, he’d sat on his bed and dialled a certain number. Would she be in? Would she, after all this time, still be alive? And if in and alive, would she be willing to help?
He tried to remember the exact circumstances of his transfrogmification. Everyone – even the tabloids and the satellite channels – had assumed that it was a christening curse: some bad-tempered old bat whose invitation had gone astray in the post had turned up at the ceremony anyway and given the baby webbed feet. It happened every day. Well, every hundred years, and mostly in royal circles but it did happen. The trouble was, he didn’t think it had been quite like that. A hundred years is a long time, but he had a feeling that it had been more – personal. And that she hadn’t been an old hag at all . . . the phone was still ringing. She wasn’t going to be there . . . and then someone picked up the receiver at the other end of the line.
“Had enough, have you, then?” she had asked in that achingly familiar voice, even before he told her who was speaking. “Thought you might. Well, I can transform you into a frog again, but that’ll be it. A frog you’ll be and a frog you’ll stay. No more disenchantments for you, my lad.”
“That’s just what I want,” he said.
“Quite sure?”
“Quite sure,” he echoed desolately.
“All right, then. Here’s what you do—”
He looked at his letter. It already said too much, and at the same time not nearly enough. Abruptly he picked up his pen and scrawled:
“Sorry again. Love you all. Don’t try to find me. Goodbye.”
Then he went out onto his balcony. It was an easy jump to the garden, particularly for him. He was very good at jumping. Following the witch’s instructions, he moved quietly over the dew-wet lawn. The Well moved about a bit, and just now he had been promised it would be at the end of the gardens. He thought, as he had found himself doing so often recently, of his years in the well. It was astonishing how much time you could spend watching cloud shadows on water. And leaves. It was true, that old saying that no two leaves are alike. And of course there were more exciting times: fierce crystal days of frost when the edges of the Well crisped into ice, and, almost best of all, those long still evenings at the end of a hot day, when the upper part of the Well water was almost the same temperature as the cooling air, and you could lie on a lily leaf, not sure if you were in water or sky . . . For a moment he hesitated, gazing back at the darkened palace – thinking how much he had wished he could show his princess just how wonderful his Well had been – and then a rustle in the bushes jerked him back to the present. He rather hoped it was Franz or Ernst. No one was going to stop him now, and he would much prefer to clobber either or both of those gentlemen than an innocent palace guard.
But then a bright head emerged from the undergrowth, followed by a pair of pale shoulders and a white satin dress.
“Where are you going?” hissed his betrothed.
“I’m going back to the Well,” he said desperately. “I must. It would never have worked—”
“It won’t work here,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
“What!”
“You want to be a frog, I’ll be a frog. That’s what marriage is about, after all.”
“But the kingdom—”
“Let Franz and Ernst fight over it if they want it. If anyone will let them, after the scandal.”
“What scandal?” he asked.
“The scandal that is going to break in tomorrow’s papers. You see, Aunt Ethelburga’s dragon had a mate. She was brooding her eggs at the time, which perhaps accounted for the thing with Aunt Ethelburga, and in spite of the trauma she managed to hatch them all. Two boys and a girl. Apparently this is what dragons usually produce. The boys don’t want to talk, they’re willing to let bygones be etc, typical male, but the girl will. She is, she claims, Franz and Ernst’s half-sister. And she’ll take a blood test to prove it. And she’ll do topless pix if the price is right.”
“Topless?” he said blankly.
“Dragons,” she said, “are rather unusual. They hatch their young out of eggs, but they also suckle them. And this young female is quite – sinuous. I understand that she has six outstanding reasons for appearing on page three in one of our most popular tabloids.”
“Six?”
“Six. Dragons have six.”
“Does Ethelinda—?”
“No one knows – but she’s never appeared in public wearing a bikini – of course, that could be because of the scales.”
“How did you find out about – all this?”
“We’ve always known, but until tonight I was ready to go along with the family cover-up. Until I saw your face when he took the cover off that dish.”
“But – I thought when I looked at you that you’d given up on me.”
“No. I’d given up on them.”
He whistled softly. “Are you sure you want to be a frog? I mean, the Well at the World’s End can be very quiet—”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’ve burned my boats, really. I want to spend a hundred years watching cloud shadows.”
“I never thought you were listening when I told you about them.”
“I was listening, all right. What do we have to do?”
“The witch said: Follow the Silver Road across the lawn.”
“Silver Road?”
“Snail trails,” he said prosaically. “They’ll lead us to the Well, and by the time we get there—”
“We’ll have changed.” She hauled up her satin skirts and led the way, peering at the grass for snail tracks. He followed her, completely taken aback by this turn of events. As they walked towards the Well the sky began to lighten. The tiny trails of snail slime glowed, glittered and expanded. They really were following a Silver Road. And as the witc
h had promised, the Change began to happen. His horrible dry skin became cool and delicious, another whole organ of sensation: he could feel the freshening morning air, and the sweetness of the dewy grass in every exquisite inch of it; his clumsy feet and hands became delicate webbed paws – he hopped free of his banqueting clothes and glanced nervously towards his betrothed. Her dress lay on the grass, and the most beautiful lady frog he had ever seen was negligently disengaging herself from a pearl necklace.
“Do I look all right?” she asked shyly.
“You look – wonderful.” He kissed her emerald snout, and paw in webby paw they scurried towards the Well, reaching the kerb just as the sun rose. They dived into its wonderful, cool mysterious depths – and vanished for ever from mortal sight.
To live, happy for ever ever after.
THE SWORDS AND THE STONES
E.K. Grant
E.K. Grant, who also wrote as Gordon Shumway and as Gharlane of Eddore, liked to keep an air of mystery about him. but it was only after his death in 2001 that it was learned his real name was David Potter. He was a computer technician at California State University and he became well known in the early days of the internet for his quick, humorous and often telling comments on various science-fiction user groups. He liked to claim that at various times he had been a journalist, a professional photographer, a police reservist, a private pilot, a salvage driver, a sky patrolman, a small-arms instructor, and a wilderness search-and-rescue specialist, and in his imagination and on the computer I'm sure at one time he was all of those. But here he displays his skills as a writer.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be a mighty-thewed warrior with a massive, majicked, two-handed sword slung over his back. He was supposed to be huge, and strong, and gifted in the arts of war. He wasn’t supposed to be famished, dehydrated, bleeding through a dozen clumsily bandaged minor wounds, and having trouble breathing.
Worse, the Singing Sword hadn’t ceased its pained caterwauling since it had been broken. The half-blade in his pack tended to moan at a slightly higher pitch, an elfin whining counterpoint to the soft wailing of the half-sword in his belt scabbard, that set his teeth on edge. No one had ever warned him a magic Singing Sword would switch to an agonizing duet if it got broken.
Thol leaned against a cairn of stones, pursing his lips and blowing hard. He’d found it helped the dizziness. Below, far below, and leagues to the west, he could see the Rapid River snaking its way across the Valley of Ild, the breadbasket of the Gilded Kingdom. The very thought was torture; it was late enough in the season that there was no snow left, and at these higher elevations, there were no freshets of snow-melt handy for drinking. For two days he’d had no water left in his gourd. The springs were dried up and the trees turned to desiccated dead wood, stark in the high-altitude winds that tore the moisture from his lips and left him croaking through a tortured throat. If he didn’t find water soon, he wouldn’t be able to make it back down into the valley. But this was where the Sword wanted to go, and it was a case of go where the Sword wanted to go, or listen to it howl even louder.
He’d tried burying it, but it caught up to him the first time he stopped to sleep; so he buried it under the biggest rocks he could move, and it caught up to him the first time he stopped to sleep. Hanegral the Mage had made that sword for the Royal Family of Ild, and it was bound and determined to stay with the last surviving member of the family.
He shifted his weight a bit, trying to move into the cairn’s shadow, and the hilt of the half-sword at his belt banged into the rock with a metallic clinking noise. The Sword emitted an ugly sound, a sort of musical snarl. A mountain marmot poked its head out of the rocks on the uphill side of the trail, looked him over, and said, “Beat it, guy. You’re on my land, and the wife and kids want to come out and sun themselves.”
Thol shook his head. He’d heard about mountain visions caused by thin air and exposure, but wouldn’t have believed it could happen to him. He tried to spit at the marmot, but his mouth was dry as desert stone. “You’re not real,” he said. “Get lost.” His throat was so dry that his voice barely sounded, and it hurt from the attempt.
The marmot looked at him quizzically, braced its forepaws against a large rock, and rocked it out of the loose pile. It fell and rolled, gathering speed, and bounced across the path to smack against Thol’s ankles, knocking his feet from beneath him. He started sliding, and barely managed to jam a clenched fist into a gap in the rock when his lower body was already over the edge. As he levered himself back up to the path, another big rock came bouncing at him, and he moved his head aside barely in time to avoid being bashed a good one right between the eyes.
“Hold still, will you?” complained the marmot.
“Not a chance,” said Thol. “I didn’t climb all the way up here to get killed by an overgrown rat.” He moved frantically, making it over the edge and back onto the pathway in time to leap aside when the next big rock came tumbling past.
“Curse you!” said the marmot. It squirrelled its way through the loose rock-fall stacked against the uphill side of the pathway and took up a position directly above Thol. “Now just hold still a second while I get this one moving, that’s a nice human.” It set its forepaws against a rock twice the size of Thol’s head, and strained at it. It teetered slightly.
Thol drew his half-sword, ragged-tipped and about a forearm long, and moved closer. Marmot blood would be a great thirst-quencher, and he could worry about talking marmots after he found out if uncooked marmot meat was palatable. Great Golth knew he’d eaten worse things in recent days.
“Help! Murder!” screamed the marmot, and darted into the depths of the rock slide, chittering snottily.
Thol moved closer cautiously, and realized there was some sort of chiselled sign in the rock-wall behind the big rock the marmot had been pushing. Keeping a wary eye out for further attacks, he moved it aside, and found two deeply incised runes that must date from ages ago, since the rock in the cuts had weathered to the same shade as the surface. Danger? Beware?
“BEWARE (the)
He realized there was more below, and shoved loose rocks aside to read much newer, shallower runes someone had added. “AND THE MARMOTS.”
The marmot popped out again, close above, and another head-sized rock bounced down, grazing his shoulder. Reflexively, he swung the broken sword, turning it at the last moment to smack the marmot with the flat side, dazing it. He grabbed the thing by its head and yanked it out of the rocks, amazed to find that it had six legs, the front two ending in tiny hands. He tossed it on the ground belly up, put a foot firmly on its chest, and threatened it with his sword while it recovered.
“What goes here? Six-legged talking marmots? Not to mention attacking instead of hiding. Where’s the wizard?” He looked around, keeping an eye on the marmot under his boot.
The marmot squeaked, making gasping noises. He moved the broken sword-edge against its throat and eased up a bit.
It gasped for air and said, “Get off, you oaf! I’m suffocating!”
Thol pressed down again. “Nothing doing. I’m dying of thirst, and I figure marmot blood should do about as well as water.”
There was a sudden wail of panicked squealing to his right, and he looked over to see another large marmot, and a half-dozen small marmot faces, sticking out of gaps in the rockfall. “Noooooo!” they chorused.
“The wife and kids?” he asked.
“Do your worst,” said the marmot. “Just leave them alone.” It angled its head up to provide easier access to the side of its neck.
Thol took his foot off the marmot and sheathed his half-sword. “Hmm. Ten points for the value system, even if you are a snotty roadside murderer. No more
rocks, and we call it even, okay?”
The marmot thought for a second, nodded, got its feet under itself, and staggered back into the rocks.
There were scrabbling noises, and then its head poked out between a couple of rocks. “There’s water further up the slope behind us. Look for the cave. Be real polite to the old man. He doesn’t like company either.” The marmot heads all disappeared into the rocks, as though attached to the same puppeteer’s string.
Thol scrambled up the heap of rocks and realized that the rockfall covered an old side-trail, winding up the mountainside out of view. There was crumbled scree all over it, with no footmarks apparent in the loose surface.
Intriguingly, his sword was crying in a less agonized tone; this must be the direction it wanted to go. It took him a palm-width of sun movement to reach the top, since he had to keep stopping to breathe. He passed a series of rune-signs, variations on the ancient warning by the rock-slide, all containing the odd-animal symbol. Moving warily, he peered around a large rock and saw the opening of a cave, with potted plants all around it and a small pool of water in front, and forgot his fatigue.
He approached carefully, stepping around crudely chiselled steles covered with rune-signs he did not recognize although the odd-animal symbol was a recurrent motif. He went straight to the pool, kneeling warily, trying to look in all directions at once as he filled his gourd. Being this close to water and not being able to leap into it was agonizing, but this was unknown territory.
“Good,” said the old man who hadn’t been there a split second before. “You’re not one of these undisciplined louts who goes face down in the first puddle, presenting an easy target.”
The half-sword at his belt chimed a happy, bell-like tone, and Thol suspected he’d found his man. He asked, “Your name wouldn’t be Hanegral, would it?”