Frogspell

by C. J. Busby

  Lady Griselda started bustling about, unpacking cauldrons and spell ingredients and her best robes, and Sir Bertram stomped off to find some friends to join him in a practice round for the ‘Knight Who Can Quaff the Most Ale in a Single Swallow’ competition, which he generally won. Max winked at Olivia, and they set to work helping to unpack in the most unhelpful way possible, with the biggest number of annoying questions they could think of. Meanwhile, Adolphus flew around the room getting periodically tangled up in the tapestries. After five minutes, Lady Griselda had had enough.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, go and practise your spells or something and leave me in peace! I’ll be quicker by myself! And take that dratted dragon with you.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” said Max, happily dumping the pile of clothes he was holding, and they set off down the turret staircase with Adolphus skittering down the stone steps behind them.

  They headed straight for the west wing, where they knew there were always empty rooms. Merlin lived in this part of the castle, and most people were keen to avoid any confrontation with the extremely powerful wizard. Max, however, thought everything he’d heard about Merlin was brilliant, and was always hoping they would run into the wizard so he could finally meet him and tell him so – but so far they never had.

  “Right,” said Max, as they settled into a small room with narrow windows, off the fourth-floor corridor. It was empty except for some old tapestries on the walls and a few bits of wooden furniture. “Time to practise the frogspell antidote and check the reversal works.”

  They had brewed up the general reversal spell the day before, as well as some carefully controlled frogspell potion, but they had not had time to test them before leaving for Camelot. The Novices’ Spell-Making Competition was the next day, right at the end of the festival, so they had a day and a half to perfect their act.

  “So,” said Max, pulling one of his hunting gloves on to his right hand, “If you’ll just stand there in the middle of the room…”

  “I’m sorry?” said Olivia, pretending great surprise. “You were intending to try this out on me?” “Yes, on you,” said Max, slowly and deliberately. “Seeing as you’re my assistant, and seeing as assistants test potions, not wizards.”

  “Well,” said Olivia, folding her arms and looking very determined. “Since you’re not exactly a wizard, Max, and seeing as I’m doing you a very great favour by agreeing to be your assistant tomorrow, I think it’s probably down to you to test your own potion today. I’m not getting turned into a pink elephant with green spots because you got one of the ingredients wrong, thank you!”

  Max sighed. That was the trouble with younger sisters. They’d be fine for a while, almost like they were completely trustworthy, and then they’d let you down when you really needed them. Drat. He would just have to take the smelly potion himself, then.

  “All right,” he said, taking off his glove and handing it to her along with a translucent green glass bottle on a chain. “Here’s the antidote to change me back and a glove to wear when you hold the frogspell potion. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally get changed into a frog, now, would we?”

  He carefully took a small blue bottle out of his belt pouch and shook Ferocious out at the same time.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” said Ferocious as he tumbled onto the stone floor. “You’re about to voluntarily spell yourself into a frog. As if you didn’t cause enough trouble the last time. Some people never learn.”

  “You know – sometimes I miss the days when I couldn’t understand you, Ferocious,” said Max, sighing. “This is important. It’s going to get me out of sword practice for good and maybe save me from getting my arm chopped off in one of Dad’s madder moments. Besides making Snotty Hogsbottom eat dirt.”

  “And it’ll be fun!” added Adolphus excitedly. “Max will go whoosh! In stars!”

  “Oh, right. Well, wake me up when the antidote doesn’t work and I’ll consider giving you a big wet rat kiss.” And with that Ferocious curled up behind one of the trailing tapestries and went to sleep.

  “Right,” said Max, and took a deep breath. “Put my glove on and hold out your hand.” He shook one little drop of blue gunk out of the bottle onto Olivia’s gloved hand and then stowed the bottle in his pouch.

  Olivia threw the blue gunk at Max’s head.

  BANG!

  He disappeared, and in his place was a small orange frog with blue spots.

  “Uurrghh!” he said. “I’d forgotten how weird it is, being changed into a frog.”

  “OK,” said Olivia. “That worked. Now for the antidote.”

  She took the stopper out of the green bottle and prepared to shake a few drops onto the frog. But at that moment, the door to the room opened, and a loud, sneering voice interrupted them.

  “Well, if it isn’t little Olivia Pendragon in here all by herself. How nice to see you again. And where’s your good-for-nothing brother?”

  The boy in the doorway was tall and pale, with spiky, black hair and an expression of contempt. Behind him was a shorter, stockier boy with red hair and a pug face. His eyes were slightly squinting and he looked mean.

  “Oh hello, Sn– er Adrian,” said Olivia nervously, putting the stopper back in the green bottle and throwing it hurriedly round her neck. “What are you doing here?”

  She shuffled across in front of the frog, hoping Max would get a chance to hop under her skirt, but the movement caught Snotty Hogsbottom’s attention and he dived for the floor.

  “Aha!” he said, coming up with the orange frog held firmly between finger and thumb. “What a delightful creature! Your pet, Olivia?”

  “Um, yes,” said Olivia. “Give him back please! I need to – er – get back to our rooms to help Mother.”

  “Oh, I expect you do,” drawled Snotty in a bored voice. “But you see, I have some questions for you. And I don’t feel like letting you have your Frog back unless you answer them. Isn’t that right, Jerome?”

  The shorter boy nodded, and moved closer. Olivia was now trapped between the two of them. Adolphus, not quite sure what was going on, had been sniffing around the boys’ feet, but he now decided they were friends and went to hunt woodlice in the corner, waving his tail happily.

  “Well, okay,” said Olivia, trying not to sound bothered. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know where your dratted brother is and what spell he’s cooking up for tomorrow. I want to know exactly what spell, because I want to make sure it doesn’t win. And to make a counter-charm I need to know what it’s for, see?” said Snotty nastily, putting his face close to Olivia’s and waving the frog in front of her.

  Max, despite being held in a pincer grip, wriggled his back legs in outrage. No wonder his bucket spell hadn’t worked last year! Snotty Hogsbottom had been operating a counter-charm. The dirty rotten cheating scumbag!

  “I’m not telling you!” said Olivia, hotly. “You horrible cheat! Why should I sneak on my own brother?”

  “Because,” said Snotty meaningfully, “If you don’t, I shall be forced to drop your frog into the moat. And I’ve heard there’s a six-foot-long pike in it.”

  He moved to the window and held his arm out over the water. Olivia could see Max shaking his frog head frantically. But did that mean, ‘No, don’t tell him, I’d rather die!’ or ‘No, don’t let him drop me in the moat, tell him everything, I’m not proud’?

  Olivia sighed.

  “All right, you win. He’s planning to turn me—”

  The frog croaked loudly, and frantically waved its back legs.

  “Purple,” finished Olivia, and Max sighed with relief. But not for long.

  “Purple?” laughed Snotty. “What a loser! That’s the easiest spell in the book. I guess he really doesn’t have any ambition, after all. Well, thanks,” he added carelessly, and opened his finger and thumb so that the small orange frog dropped like a stone to the grey water fifty feet below.

  “You cheating toadwart!” yelled Olivia, hurling herse
lf at Snotty, but Jerome had her pinned to the wall quicker than you could say ‘drowned frog’ and Snotty walked calmly past her with a chuckle.

  “Oh dear, my hand slipped. But what a fuss about an old frog. Plenty more in the castle duck pond.”

  As he passed her, Snotty sprinkled around a few drops of liquid from a flask hanging from his belt and Olivia found herself completely unable to move a muscle in her arms or legs. She slid down the wall to a sitting position with a thump as the two boys strolled from the room, laughing loudly.

  “Come on Jerome,” she heard Snotty say as they shut the door with a loud thud, “Need to do some sword practice and then it’ll be time to get that brat away from the castle for Father.”

  Encounter with a Wizard

  The moat was extremely deep and very murky. Max entered it head first, having completely lost any sense of what was up and what was down as he tumbled, with flailing arms and legs, down from the window. At first he panicked that he couldn’t breathe, but then he remembered that he was a frog and wouldn’t need air for ages, so he relaxed. He stopped sinking and started to float gently back up through the water. Not only was he not dead, he realised, but it was actually quite pleasant down here. He couldn’t see very far in the greenish gloom, but there were a few small silvery fish swimming nearby and not far from where he was floating, he could just make out the outline of the castle wall.

  Max swam up to the stone wall and considered the situation. It was vertical and very smooth. He tried pushing his feet up against it, but they just slipped and propelled him backwards into the murky gloom. He swam a little further, looking for a crack between stones. He found one that looked quite deep and promising and stuck a front leg in, hoping to get enough of a grip to pull himself up.

  Ow!

  Something in the crack had bitten him! Max peered in and saw what looked like an angry crayfish waving its long pincers at him. He hurriedly moved on. This was getting a bit serious. He could try the other side, but that was just the same, and at the surface he’d find himself outside the castle without any prospect of crawling back in through a window to find Olivia and the antidote.

  Suddenly, Max heard a strange whooshing noise and a cloud of small fish whizzed past him, swimming as if their lives depended on it. Then Max realised that that was probably because their lives did depend on it. Ripples of water followed them and a huge, ominous, dark shape started to emerge from the gloom. Snotty’s words as he had held him out over the moat came back to him with crystal clarity: “I’ve heard there’s a six-foot-long pike in it” Pike, as Max knew very well, are savage hunters – big, mean, freshwater predator fish, the river’s equivalent of the Great White Shark. Big ones like this could swallow a frog in one mouthful.

  He dived, hoping desperately that the pike would be too interested in the shoal of fish to notice one small frog. Unfortunately, the movement caught the pike’s attention and it turned, cast around a little for the scent and then dived after him.

  ***

  Olivia was boiling with rage, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She appeared to be completely immobilised. She could, however, talk.

  “Ferocious!” she yelled. “Where are you, you good-for-nothing useless coward? Why didn’t you bite their ankles or something?! Adolphus! You are the most soft-headed dragon that ever lived! Go and singe their eyebrows off!”

  “Oh, sorry!” said Adolphus, bounding up from the corner where he’d been chasing woodlice. “Did you need me?”

  Ferocious emerged yawning from behind the tapestry.

  “Did someone call my name?”

  “Yes!” said Olivia crossly. “Max has been chucked in the moat by Snotty Hogsbottom and I can’t move a muscle because he put a spell on me on the way out.”

  “Ah,” said Ferocious, sagely. “Things not going so well, then.”

  “Ferocious! You’ll have to jump in the moat and go after Max. Adolphus can’t because he wouldn’t fit though these windows.”

  “And I’m afraid of heights,” added Adolphus happily.

  “See if you can find him before the pike does. Then both of you need to find your way back here to get the antidote.”

  “Oh, not much to ask, then,” said Ferocious, wrinkling up his nose. “Just leap into pike-infested waters, somehow extract a small orange frog and escort him up to the fourth floor of the castle without being stepped on. Always the way, isn’t it? Good old Ferocious to the rescue. Off we go again, risking life and limb. Ho hum.” Nevertheless, he scrabbled up to the window and launched himself out into the air, landing in the moat a few seconds later with loud plop.

  “Well,” said Olivia. “Let’s hope he finds Max and that neither of them gets eaten by the pike. Now we just need to think of a plan to get me unstuck. I wonder – Adolphus, can you get at the green bottle with the reversal potion?”

  Adolphus bounded up happily and looked all around eagerly.

  “Green bottle? Yes, yes, I’ll get it. Adolphus to the rescue – whoopee! Potion in a bottle, umm – bottle spell – er – can’t see it Sorry, what colour did you say?”

  But at that moment, the heavy oak door to the room creaked open and a tall, fierce-looking man wearing a long grey cloak walked in and then stopped in surprise.

  “Dragon’s teeth! What are you doing in my room, young lady?”

  “Um, sorry,” said Olivia, trying hard to sit up straighter but not moving a muscle. “I didn’t realise it was your room, your worshipfulness.”

  “No, sorry, sorry, sorry,” said Adolphus, equally in awe of the forbidding-looking man.

  The man looked at them both very hard, then sat down on a large oak chair by the door. His dark chestnut-brown hair had streaks of grey and there were lines round his eyes, but his look was bright and fierce, like a bird’s. Under the cloak he was wearing dark leggings and a grey tunic, and he had a long sword attached to a plain wide leather belt.

  “Well,” he said at last. “It appears that you’ve been enchanted, young lady, so before we do anything else, I’d better release you.”

  He gestured towards her with the long elegant fingers of his right hand and suddenly Olivia found she could move. She stood up and curtsied gratefully, and the man nodded in acknowledgement.

  “Now. Perhaps I’d better introduce myself. I am Merlin and this is my room. Usually, I lock it. I’m rather surprised you managed to get in. Did you come by yourself?”

  “No, my lord,” said Olivia. Merlin didn’t look anything like she had always imagined him. In fact, come to think of it, she was sure she had seen this tall, fierce-looking man before, but had always assumed he was one of the king’s many knights. “I came with my brother, Max. We had no idea it was your room. We wanted somewhere to practise for the competition tomorrow.”

  “Ah. So your brother is a novice,” said Merlin thoughtfully. “And you are?”

  “Lady Olivia Pendragon. And this is Adolphus.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Merlin to both of them. “Now. If you were enchanted into immobility, I’m assuming something rather nastier happened to your brother?”

  “Er, well, he was a frog,” said Olivia uncertainly.

  “He was turned into a frog?” said Merlin, his eyebrows shooting up.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Olivia, wringing her hands and wondering how much to tell the wizard. She looked up at his piercing grey eyes and decided that truth was probably the best policy. “He invented a spell to turn people into frogs,” she said hurriedly. “And we were practising it. Then Snotty – er – Adrian Hogsbottom came in and threw him in the moat, not realising he was Max – and magicked me so I couldn’t go and tell on him. And please, we really need to try to find him, if he hasn’t been eaten by the pike. And now Ferocious is down there too – that’s Max’s pet rat. I really hope they’re all right!”

  To Olivia’s annoyance, she found she was on the verge of tears and her voice had gone all high and squeaky. Adolphus licked her hand comfortingly. She took a deep breath a
nd looked at Merlin. He was looking very thoughtful, sitting in the great chair with his chin on his hands.

  “Interesting,” he mused, almost to himself. “A frogspell. Of course, the Pendragons are a very magical family all in all. Well, well. I shall have to meet young Max. I shall definitely have to meet him. But we must find him first.”

  He rose and went to the window that looked down on the grey waters of the moat. “Now—”

  He was interrupted by a loud banging on the door, which was opened almost immediately. Olivia gasped as she realised that the man who had burst in was the king! Arthur was tall, with dark, straight hair and a worried, careworn look. He glanced at her distractedly, then went straight to Merlin.

  “Merlin!” he said urgently. “The prince has gone missing! We’ve looked through all of his quarters – Sir Gareth is searching the rest of the castle now – but he’s just vanished! We thought he was with his mother, his mother thought he was with his nurse – it seems no one’s seen him since early morning!”

  Merlin frowned. “Who knows that he’s missing?”

  “Myself, Sir Gareth – you His mother’s been told he’s playing with Sir Gareth’s boys – and we have to keep it that way. If it gets out he’s missing…”

  “It’ll be war,” said Merlin grimly. “We need to keep this to ourselves. We can’t raise the alarm, or even alert the guards. But we’ll find him – he must be in the castle. I set up a spell around the walls for protection and there’s no one who could break that enchantment, except—” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “Your sister, the Lady Morgana le Fay – when is she due?”

  Arthur raised his eyebrows. “This evening, I believe. But why? Might we need her help, do you think?”

  Merlin laughed shortly. “I hope not. I think I’ll do my best to find the prince before she arrives, my lord. But we need to hurry.”

  Arthur nodded, and strode out of the room, and Merlin turned gravely to Olivia. “I’m afraid you’ll have to search for your brother yourself, my lady. Good luck! But I must warn you – you are not to tell anyone about what you have heard here. We don’t want this news to reach the wrong ears. So not a word!” He gave her a stern look, then swept out of the room after the king, shutting the door behind him with a thud.