Frogged (15 page)

“Harry?” Luella practically spat out the name. “Harry, the wainwright's boy? That Harry? He's as big a nuisance as someone who ain't related to you
can
be.” She paused as a thought came to her. “And, Imogene, he ain't even good-looking. I have to admit: You surprise me.”

“I didn't kiss him because he's good-looking!” Imogene protested.

“No joking!” Luella scoffed.

“I kissed him because I thought that would be the end of the spell. I had no idea it would bounce back onto me.”

Once more, it was Ned who brought them back around to the topic. “So, I'm guessing by the fact you're still a frog, lo this fortnight later, that this spell doesn't wear off. It needs to be . . . kissed off?”

Imogene grasped hold of the first part of what he'd said. Could the solution be as simple as that? “
Do
spells wear off?” she asked. It would be just like the old witch to have not known that—or to have forgotten to mention it.

Or, at least, Imogene liked to think so.

But Ned was shaking his head. “Don't know,” he admitted. “I've had no personal experience with magic until now. I wrote a play, once, where time was the solution.”

Imogene's patience snapped. “You also wrote a play with a flying crow portrayed by a very non-flying frog.” When Ned only shrugged, she said, “So you just made up the wearing-away thing? There's no reason to believe that will happen in this case?”

Ned said, “There are time frames that appear repeatedly in the old stories, which might be significant, or might mean nothing: One entire day. Three days. One week.” Perhaps reluctant to be the bearer of bad news, he hesitated before adding, “A year.”

“A year?”
Imogene squealed, trying hard not to imagine this.

Ned broke eye contact before finishing, very quietly, “A hundred years.”

Ever a faithful friend, Luella said, “Well, that's just wrong.” But she didn't offer any reason behind that sentiment from which Imogene might take hope.

In the silence where they realized nobody had anything left to say, Imogene could now hear the distant voices of people in the woods that surrounded them. They were calling her name.

“Well,” she said, “standing here gains us nothing. Luella, can you please bring me up to the castle? I'm hoping my father, or one of his advisors, can think of something.” But she suspected this was wishful thinking.

Before Luella could move, Ned said, “You could wait for him there. Or you could wait for him here, which would be quicker.” To Imogene's blank look, he explained, “I told you:
Everyone
is in the woods looking for you.”

And a moment later, she realized that the voices were getting closer. One of the search parties was coming back in, either to refill their water skins at the stream or maybe to break for the evening meal.

When they emerged from between the trees, it turned out to be the group Prince Malcolm was leading. She recognized him immediately, even though it had been two years since she'd last seen him—when her family had done the traveling, to celebrate his eleventh birthday.
Wow!
she thought. He'd changed a lot in the interval between eleven and thirteen, having grown taller, with his face leaner and his body filled out nicely. She chided herself for noticing, asking herself,
What am I thinking? I'm not interested in boys.

Well . . . not yet.

But if I was . . .

Luella, she thought, would approve of this one.

She even thought:
Good thing he's too young for her.

But that was self-wounding nonsense. Because the circumstances were that she had changed more than he. And any change that involved turning green was
not
a change for the better.

She'd had time to think all that as twenty or so tired, mud-spattered, twig-bedecked people followed Prince Malcolm out of the woods. Two of them stopped short. The woman squealed, “Luella!” and then she and the man with her ran forward with their arms outstretched.

Realizing she was about to get squashed in a three-way hug, Imogene jumped in the only clear direction: from Luella's shoulder to Ned's.

Ned looked as startled by her decision as Imogene felt, but he stepped clear to give room to Luella and her family. Luella cried; her mother cried; her father blew his nose in a handkerchief and stared down at his feet as though this would prevent anyone from noticing that his eyes, too, were wet. Tolf was there also, though he'd hung back a bit. Now he gave Luella's upper arm a brotherly punch.

It was Prince Malcolm who cut things short. “Your daughter?” he asked, his voice already deepening into the tones of a man. But obviously he could already see that and was just using the question as a politeness, an excuse to step forward and intrude on a family's reuniting. He said to Luella, “Mistress Luella, we are all indeed delighted to see you safely returned to your family, and we look forward with eager anticipation to the chance to hear your story in great detail. But, first, I must ask: Any news of Princess Imogene?”

Oooh, nicely handled,
Imogene thought, admiring the ease with which Malcolm took charge.
A natural king, that boy,
she thought. Had such ability come with
his
thirteenth birthday? At eleven, he'd been rather full of himself and somewhat irritating.

Luella started, “Ta—” then stopped short. Clearly, she had been too preoccupied to realize Imogene had jumped away. She turned her head to look at her right shoulder, where Imogene had been riding, and her face went white. “Nobody move!” she ordered, and she hurriedly searched the ground down among all the feet surrounding her.

Imogene cleared her froggy throat. “Here,” she announced.

People hurriedly glanced all over the clearing before some finally settled on her.

“Ta-dah!” Luella said, although the moment had already lost some of its drama.

“Imogene?” a shaky voice asked.

A voice Imogene recognized as her mother's. Except her mother wasn't here, only these peasants with Prince Malcolm . . .

Ned's words came back to her. “Everyone,” he had said. “
Everyone
is in the woods looking for you.”

And only after all that did Imogene recognize the dirty, sweaty, tired-looking woman who stepped forward from the others. In her snagged and ripped dress, with no makeup, and her hair tied back, she had not one stitch of regality about her.

“Oh, Imogene!” her mother said, able—amongst all of them—to focus in on her daughter's voice, and to recognize it from one word, despite Imogene's improbable amphibian appearance. She cupped her hands and gently, gently—and not the slightest bit squeamishly—picked Imogene up off Ned's shoulder. “I am so glad you're safe,” she said, which hardly seemed a reasonable comment, given Imogene's current condition.

But Imogene guessed that her mother had been imagining even worse.

And she herself was left with more feelings than words. In the end, she settled for “I'm sorry you were so worried.”

“What happened?” her mother asked.

“Well,” Imogene said, “I got turned into a frog.”

“Yes . . . ?” her mother prompted. “How?”

Imogene noted that Harry was amongst the searchers. The sneaky, lying wretch. She saw him catch her looking at him, and his eyes darted back and forth as he no doubt weighed trying to slip off quietly against simply bolting. She considered telling the whole story but decided that the whole story, really, wouldn't gain her anything. The word Ned had used earlier came back to her. “Mischance,” she said. “Magical mischance.”

Luella's father said, “But what does that have to do . . . ?” His gaze bounced from Imogene to Luella and back. “Because her mother and I kind of thought Luella—”

His wife smacked his arm to keep him from announcing to the world that they'd feared their daughter had run off with a man.

Tolf, Imogene noted, was looking hard at her, no doubt remembering the frog who had come to him for help, claiming to be a princess. Now he was about as green as a person who wasn't a frog could be.

“Luella,” Imogene explained to everyone, “has been helping me and watching over me.”

“Oh.” Luella's father was obviously surprised. Luella's mother looked proud and pleased. Luella's brother looked dumbfounded. Then the father's gaze shifted to Ned. “So you . . . ?” he started. “You and Luella . . . ?”

“Never,” Ned proclaimed, his hand over his heart as though shocked at the suggestion. “As beautiful as your daughter is—and she is
very
beautiful—as kindhearted and good . . . and innocent . . .”

Imogene remembered the context in which she'd last heard him use that word: as a substitute for
dimwitted.

He shook his head. “I would never dishonor her that way.”

“And so you are . . . ?” Luella's father persisted.

“A weary traveler,” Ned said. “The three of us”—he indicated himself, Luella, and Imogene—“met here just moments ago.”

Imogene
could
have said,
Yes, but not for the first time.
But she let it slide, because otherwise she'd have to betray Luella.

Her own mother brought the conversation back to Imogene's frogged state. “How do we turn you back to yourself?” she asked.

“Well . . .” Imogene said.

Once more, Prince Malcolm stepped forward. “Please pardon my boldness,” he said, “but, from my reading, I do believe I know the solution, and—”

“No!” Imogene cried. “Back away!”

Startled, Prince Malcolm backed away.

“You don't understand,” she told him. “If you kissed me . . .” She had the sudden uneasy worry that he might have had a different solution in mind, and that she had just needlessly embarrassed herself. But he nodded for her to go on. She sighed for all that she would miss in her life. Because, really, being a human had
so many
advantages over being a frog. She continued, “The spell doesn't end. It just gets passed on.” Then, to be sure that he—that all of them—understood, she finished, “If you kissed me, if anyone kissed me, then that person would become a frog in my place.”

“All right,” Prince Malcolm said. “Nonetheless . . .” Once more he stepped forward.

“What do you mean
nonetheless?
” Imogene demanded, ready to jump out of her mother's hands if that became necessary. “Didn't you hear what I just said?”

“It would have been hard not to,” Malcolm pointed out, which Imogene guessed was his polite way of saying she was perhaps a bit louder than a perfectly proper princess should be. He, for one, was definitely much improved in manners since the last time they'd met, when he'd thought the funniest thing anyone could say was
underwear.
Now he said, “But that's what princes do: They help where they can, particularly where princesses are involved.”

“Well, I'm sure that's very brave of you,” Imogene said. And it
was
brave, she thought. Impressively so. The boy was sweet and brave as well as being good-looking. She continued, “But I wouldn't want the responsibility of knowing you were intentionally going to spend your life as a frog because of my carelessness.” Well, it was really Harry's carelessness, but she had every intention of being a better person than Harry. Another thought came to her. “Or,” she finished, “that you were planning on passing the spell on to some other unsuspecting soul.”

Prince Malcolm did
not
put his hand to his heart, but all in all looked more sincere than Ned when he declared, “I would never do that. That would be wrong.”

Luella suggested, “Maybe you could find someone who
wants
to be a frog.”

And, while everyone looked at her with varying degrees of
Did she really say that?
astonishment, Imogene thought,
Who—besides a frog—would ever want to be a frog?

The answer was
Nobody.

And that, she saw, was the solution. “Luella! You are brilliant! We need a frog!”

“Luella ain't any kind of brilliant,” Tolf pointed out. “We already got a frog. What we need is a princess.”

It was Imogene's mother who caught on first. “Here,” she said, and unceremoniously handed Imogene to Malcolm. “Don't drop her.”

And with that, she hiked her skirts up as though totally unmindful of her queenly dignity, and she waded into the stream.

“Quiet!” Imogene commanded.

The people all held very, very still.

And in the silence, Imogene could hear frogs croaking. And among all the croaks that she recognized as meaning “Food!” and “Dark's coming!” and . . . and, well mostly, “Food!” she heard the distinctive croak that she thought of as the “Hey, girls!” call.

“To your right,” she directed her mother. “The far bank. Under that big leaf.”

That particular frog's croaking had changed from “Hey, girls!” to the “Up!” warning, but luckily the creature decided to take its chances by staying still rather than by diving. Imogene's mother scooped him up in her bare hands as though holding frogs, even frogs who weren't her daughter, was something she'd always done. “Now what?” she asked.

“On the rock,” Imogene said. In case the frog made a break for it, she didn't want him too close to the water.

Ned moved in to supply a steadying hand for the queen to use to haul herself up the bank of the stream, her shoes squishing with each step. She set the male frog down on the rock, then held her hands out, doing her best to keep him contained.

He could jump over your hands in a heartbeat,
Imogene thought as Malcolm brought her closer. But the male frog had caught sight of her, and he stayed where he was.

Malcolm held her out, and Imogene puckered her little frog lips. Frogs are not really good kissers, but apparently this one was willing to give it a try.