by Radclyffe
Springboarding from one fallen log to the next, I landed with ballet refinement, but the thicket grew dense, and the branches slashed at my clothes. My dress tore, my weak stitchwork snapping apart. Thorns sliced at my shoulders and cut at my ankles, and I screamed, terrified as I danced into the swamp. The ground turned soft. My feet sank in the mire, yet still I spun like a top, my motions slowed but never stopping.
I cried again, and a voice called behind me.
Looking back, I saw my blue-eyed dancing partner. Throwing off his jacket, he waded after me, grabbing my hand. As he pulled, I slipped, sinking up to my neck. Something held me down, something fought at my legs. My foot wrenched in the bog; there was a pop, and an air bubble splattered mud across my face. The boy hauled me out, and when I looked down I wriggled my toes.
The shoes were gone.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his suit drenched, my dress a mudslide.
“I don’t know,” I stuttered, looking back at the swamp.
“That was amazing,” he burst aloud, still excited from our waltz. “I’ve never danced like that! You’re…you’re amazing, I mean, where did you learn to do the thing—with the turn and the dip? Do you remember?”
“I just…had it in me, I guess,” I said, feeling exhausted, doe-eyed, and lost.
“The whole town musta seen us! I don’t think two boys ever stole a cotillion before.”
“The…whole town?” I murmured, half wishing he’d let me drown.
“And did you see the girls back there?”
“The…girls?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, “they were stumped—but there weren’t a single girl back there who didn’t want to move like you. I guarantee. You were like a dream.”
Falling silent, my hands in moss, my legs tired, I listened to the cicadas.
“My name’s Sam, by the way,” he said, laying his formerly clean jacket over my shoulders.
“James,” I answered, as he slowly helped me up.
“Careful now,” he said, “it’s slippery. Have you got your footing?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I think so.”
Barbara Davies (barbaradavies.co.uk) lives in the English Cotswolds and has been published by Bedazzled Ink. Her short fiction has appeared in The Lorelei Signal, Lacuna, Tales of the Talisman, and Neo-Opsis, among other ezines and magazines.
This story is based on “The Princess and the Frog.”
The Princess and the Frog
Barbara Davies
Princess Margery watched the last silk-clad servant in Tokju’s retinue disappear into the distance. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
She would not miss the exotically dressed ambassador one bit. Nor would anyone else in her father’s kingdom, come to that. Not that that would bother Tokju. As far as she could make out, he had spent his month-long visit alienating everyone unfortunate enough to have dealings with him. King or commoner, he despised all alike, and he had found everything animal, mineral, or vegetable lacking in comparison with its counterpart in the Empire Beyond the Sea. As for the suite of apartments allocated to him for the duration and luxuriantly furnished to his specifications, he pronounced it “barely adequate.”
“Stupid old fart,” she muttered, using the phrase Bruna had coined for him.
A memory surfaced of that day last week when Tokju had come upon her unawares. She was lounging under a walnut tree in the palace garden, engaged in her favorite pastime: kissing Bruna. From his exclamation of revulsion, such things weren’t allowed in the Empire Beyond the Sea. But calling the daughter of the king and her girlfriend “disgusting perverts” could hardly be deemed diplomatic.
Bruna had laughed. “Ignore him, Marg. If he can’t appreciate love, that’s his loss. He’ll be gone soon, and besides,” her eyes had crinkled at the corners as she lowered her voice, “it gives me an excuse to cook up some prank to play on him.”
Fearful of endangering the negotiations then under way, Margery had taken her girlfriend’s advice. But the treaty between their two kingdoms on which her father and his advisers had worked so hard remained unsigned. Now she wondered whether Tokju’s insult had been calculated to cause a diplomatic incident.
But that didn’t bring her any closer to solving the mystery of Bruna’s whereabouts, and she was feeling neglected. Perhaps the chamberlain had sent his niece on an errand. Grumbling under her breath, Margery went in search of her.
*
“Bruna?” said Prince Oliver, when a worried Margery approached him later that evening. “She was lurking near Tokju’s apartments the last time I saw her.” He looked up from the game of draughts he was playing with an attendant, a sly grin curling his lips. “You don’t suppose she went with him, do you?”
She gave her brother a cross look. “Don’t talk rot.” It was an odd coincidence, though, now that she came to think of it. She went cold. “Suppose the ambassador has kidnapped her.”
“A chamberlain’s niece?” Oliver’s eyebrows rose. “What leverage would that give him?”
“He might have done it just to spite me.” She saw his puzzlement and went on, cheeks warming. “He saw us together and made it very clear he disapproved.”
With a triumphant grunt, Oliver swept three of the attendant’s pieces off the board. “From what I can tell, Tokju disapproves of everything.”
But Margery was no longer listening. She had turned on her heel and was marching toward the apartments the ambassador had occupied. If Bruna had been hoping to play some silly prank on him, she might still be there—trapped in a cupboard perhaps.
Sounds of activity met her as she turned into the corridor leading to the guest wing, and two housemaids hurried past her, clutching baskets of dirty bed linen. A ladder came into view on which a groom was perched, removing one of the heavy brocade wall hangings. More servants were taking up the expensive carpets and sweeping the floors.
The steward supervising the operation saw Margery and hurried over. “May I help you, Your Royal Highness?”
“Have you seen Bruna?”
“The chamberlain’s niece? Alas, no.”
“I saw her in the kitchen earlier,” called out one of the men taking up the carpets. “She was rummaging through the scraps intended for the pigs—”
The steward frowned him to silence and went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Bruna has a fondness for archery, doesn’t she, ma’am? Perhaps she is practicing at the butts—”
A shriek interrupted him and he turned to address the housemaid who was its source. “Really, Lily! Whatever you have come across surely cannot merit such a…” His eyes widened, and Margery followed the direction of his gaze.
“It’s only a frog,” said the man who had spoken of kitchen scraps, this time addressing the room at large. “Ain’t you ever seen a frog before?”
“Not one like that,” said Margery. For a start it was a bright, virulent yellow, and its toes were long and thin, and tipped with fleshy pads.
“Tokju must have left it behind,” said the steward, gathering his wits.
“Figures,” muttered the groom from his ladder. “Only he could have a pet that ugly.”
One of the maids, braver than the others, took off her apron and prepared to catch the creature. “I wouldn’t,” said Margery, remembering something she had read once. “Skin that color usually means it’s poisonous.”
“Poisonous?” The maid came to a halt.
“Just leave it,” suggested someone else. “The palace cats will finish it off quickly enough.”
Vice versa, more likely, thought Margery. “We can’t have something poisonous wandering around the palace,” she said. “Someone fetch the menagerie keeper. He’ll know what to do.”
*
“It’s undoubtedly covered with a poisonous exudation,” said the menagerie keeper rather pompously, before directing two of his assistants to catch it with the aid of butterfly nets. But the frog had other ideas, and an hour later, the nets were still empty and it was in hiding, thou
gh no one knew where. With a sigh, Margery left them to it and returned to her own chamber.
While her maid undressed and readied her for bed, her thoughts returned to the missing Bruna and her sense of disquiet grew. Bruna should have returned by now. There had been no sign of her in Tokju’s rooms. But if not there, then where—
Movement caught her eye: a flash of yellow on the windowsill. She swung round, just as her maid caught sight of the frog too and gasped.
“Don’t touch it.”
The maid threw her a glance. “I don’t intend to, ma’am. Nasty slimy thing.” She frowned. “What’s it doing here?”
An excellent question, thought Margery. Had it followed her to her room? She was on the second floor. Could tree frogs climb walls as well as trees? No matter. It was here now. And she couldn’t risk sleeping in a chamber with a poisonous creature on the loose. If it were to emerge while she lay dreaming, smear its poison on her cheek…
“Shoo!” Clapping her hands together, she took a step toward it. The frog remained unmoved, regarding her with those strange, bulging eyes.
Something pale blue flew across the room, missing the frog by a hair’s breadth and landing with a thud: one of Margery’s favorite silk slippers. If it got yellow slime on it, the slipper would be ruined. She turned to remonstrate with the maid, but before she could say anything, the frog hopped under her bed.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I—”
Margery waved the maid to silence. “Never mind. Send word to the menagerie keeper I want it caught. By noon tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The maid curtsied and prepared to leave.
“In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to have to make other sleeping arrangements.” The maid blinked at her in confusion. “Because tonight,” she went on, “I’m sleeping in your bed.”
*
The palace clock chimed midday. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to empty your chamber of all furniture, Your Royal Highness,” said the menagerie keeper.
“All of it?” Margery’s brows drew together. “Even the bed?”
The frog had led him and his assistants a merry dance, but really! The four-poster bed? It was massive and would require dismantling by a carpenter and then reassembling. Being deprived of its comfort for a single night had been a trial. The maid’s bed was hard and lumpy, and, if that hadn’t been enough, the maid’s loud snoring from the truckle bed in the corner had kept waking her. If she had to spend another night like the last one…
Unobtrusively, Margery stretched the stiffness from her shoulders. If Bruna had been here, she would have been laughing like a drain. Oh, Bruna. Sadness washed over her. Where are you?
“I fear so,” said the menagerie keeper. “If we’re to have any chance of catching the damned—” He blushed. “I do beg your pardon, ma’am. We must deprive the creature of all possible hiding places.”
“Is there no other way?” This was getting out of hand.
Calculation entered his gaze. “If you were to permit us to kill it…The fumes from some toxic substance, perhaps…”
Her eyebrows rose. “You propose filling my bedchamber with toxic fumes? And all this just to kill some hapless exotic pet abandoned by its owner?”
“Some hapless poisonous exotic pet,” he corrected. Then he sighed. “But when you put it like that, ma’am. Perhaps we have been going about this all wrong. Rather than chasing the frog, perhaps we should be enticing it.”
It occurred to Margery that she had yet to see the creature take refreshment of any kind. It must be feeling hungry by now. “What do tree frogs eat?”
“I have no idea. But ordinary frogs eat crickets and worms and the like. And drink water,” he added.
“Then bring me some of those,” she said. “And a large cage.”
*
It was typical, thought Margery, that as soon as the menagerie keeper and his men departed, the frog should emerge from hiding. It squatted like a statue and regarded her.
If I were to dive and make a grab for it… She remembered the poison on its skin. Not without gloves.
It hopped a pace toward her, then stopped and regarded her once more.
Margery frowned. It didn’t seem aggressive. And if it had once been a pet…Was it lonely? Missing its master? Had Tokju, for all his disregard for anyone besides himself, petted and pampered it, and perhaps even whispered fond nonsense in its virulent yellow ears?
“Why me?” she asked. It had followed her from the guest wing, after all.
The frog’s loud croak, the first from it she had heard, startled her. Coincidence, or was it trying to communicate?
“Ahem,” said someone from her open doorway. The frog hopped out of sight.
Hands on hips, Margery glared at the intruder. It was one of the menagerie keeper’s assistants, and he shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. “Begging your pardon, Your Royal Highness, but I was told to bring this to you and ask if it will do.”
This turned out to be the large golden birdcage he was carrying. Its bars were too narrow for the frog to get through. If she could entice it inside…
“Thank you. It will. That will be all.”
He set the cage down, bowed, and retreated. When his hurried footsteps had faded into the distance, the frog’s head peeked out from under the bed.
“It’s all right,” said Margery.
The frog emerged into the open. Evidently it trusted her. She felt as honored as she did whenever one of the palace’s wild cats chose to sit on her lap and be stroked. Suddenly the idea of catching and caging it was distasteful. It couldn’t help its color or the fact its skin was poisonous. And it hadn’t actually tried to hurt anyone.
“Perhaps I should make you my pet. Would you like that?”
Another loud croak made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She could almost swear it understood what she was saying. Nonsense. It’s your tone of voice. It can tell you mean it no harm, that’s all.
“Very well.” Crouching, she held the frog’s gaze. The expression in its eyes was unfathomable yet also faintly familiar. “In that case I must give you a name. Hmm. How about Froggy?” The frog didn’t react, so she straightened up. “Perhaps not. And I must find you something to eat.” Where had those crickets and worms got to? She strode across to the bell pull and gave it a hefty tug.
*
The frog dipped a padded toe in its water bowl and smeared it across the tiles.
Margery wrinkled her nose. “If you do that with your food as well, we’re going to have words.”
The live earthworms and crickets provided by the menagerie keeper had proved a problem. Though the frog was able to retrieve most from the dark corners of her chamber—its long sticky tongue flicking out and then retracting with its prey—some had escaped and even made it into neighboring chambers. Prince Oliver had complained of finding a worm on his shaving brush. And from her maid’s sullen expression, she was growing tired of finding them in her room too. As a result, though the frog preferred live food, it was now being fed an unsavory-looking mess of mashed, dead crickets and earthworms, provided fresh every day.
Water splashed, as once more a toe daubed a tile. Puzzled, she watched the wet line evaporate. “Is this a trick Tokju taught you?” The frog let out a croak and tried again—this time drawing a curve. Margery’s eyes widened. “Are you trying to write something?” But as before, the water evaporated before she could make sense of it.
She crossed to her writing desk, retrieved the inkwell and some paper, and set them in front of the frog. But its padded finger was far thicker than a pen, making the inkwell useless. She poured ink into a saucer, set it down, and waited, slightly apprehensive. This was going to get messy.
“Your Royal Highness?” A page was standing in her doorway, clutching a letter. He gave her and the frog a curious look.
“Yes?”
He proffered the letter. An ornate red wax seal held it closed, she noticed, as she got up and took it from him. She di
dn’t recognize the flamboyant handwriting in which her name was written. “Who sent this?”
“The chancellor. He said to tell you they found it in the ambassador’s rooms this morning, when they were clearing out a chest of drawers. It was right at the bottom,” he added.
“The ambassador’s rooms?” Her eyebrows rose. “You mean Tokju?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In which case there can be no reply. Thank you,” she added.
Only distantly aware of the page’s departure, and of the faint scrape of an inky toe across the paper, she opened the letter and read its contents.
Princess Margery,
I have arranged things so that by the time this letter is uncovered I will be well on my way back to my own land.
This “old fart,” as you and your girlfriend so “amusingly” referred to me, does not take kindly to being on the receiving end of insults and pranks. Indeed, you would have been wise to treat me with much greater respect and prudence. For I have at my disposal an armory of curses.
By now you will have discovered the poisonous yellow frog. I do hope you haven’t eliminated it as a pest, but I cannot be held responsible for the actions of others. Have you recognized her yet? Yes, it is your friend, transformed.
I am not heartless. There is a way to break the curse and restore your friend to her annoying, perverted self once more. You have but to kiss her on the lips. What’s that? The frog is poisonous, so such a kiss must surely prove fatal? I’m afraid you are correct. Nevertheless, that is the only way to break the curse. “Amusing,” isn’t it?
The choice is yours, Princess. Choose wisely.
Tokju
It must be a hoax. Someone playing on her dislike of Tokju and her anxiety about Bruna’s absence to provide amusement. Her brother perhaps. But as she reread the letter, over and over, she knew it couldn’t be Oliver’s handiwork, and a sense of rising panic replaced her anger.