Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince

by Megan Morrison

  Syrah sank down into his thoughts, barely noticing the triplets’ hungry complaints as they unpacked their carriage and climbed the steps. Why would anyone have put a basket of snacks in the governor’s carriage when nobody was supposed to be eating? Had Calabaza made up his own sandwiches before traveling? It seemed unlikely. He was used to being waited upon by his staff. Had Roma done it? No, she wouldn’t have wanted Calabaza eating anything, and she had probably protested when he had. Would the kitchen staff at the Royal Governor’s Inn have packed Calabaza a late supper for travel? No, that didn’t make sense either — the kitchen staff in Plenty would have known right away that it was dangerous to eat anything until after the investigation.

  When the triplets decided they were finished, they raced down to the kitchen for lunch. Syrah stayed behind in Walter’s room and hopped onto the windowsill, still thinking. Back at the Royal Governor’s Inn, just before they had all left Plenty, he had seen the light of a lantern out in the carriage house. Maybe whoever had been carrying that lantern had put the food in the governor’s carriage. But why would somebody do that? And why would they do it in the dark?

  He had a bad, sinking feeling in his frog guts. There were a number of people who didn’t want to see Calabaza elected again, that was for sure.

  But attacking him with snacks didn’t make any sense. Nobody had known yet that the oats were the source of corruption; that hadn’t been discovered until this morning. So even if somebody had wanted to hurt Calabaza, they wouldn’t have known to do it with oats.

  It had probably just been an oversight, Syrah decided. The staff at the Royal Governor’s Inn had likely put a basket of snacks in the carriage yesterday morning, and then they’d forgotten to take it out later, in all the uproar of the Purge. So it had still been sitting there when they’d all left Plenty, and Calabaza had been unable to resist.

  That night, Syrah searched the Thatch again for useful writing implements. He went in every room with an open door and he nosed into every corner and every not-quite-closed drawer he could get himself into, looking for another piece of chalk, or maybe an open ink bottle with some wet ink left in it. He found no chalk at all. He found plenty of ink, but every bottle he came across was tightly corked, and he knew better than to try uncorking them himself. He’d end up with a mouthful of poison, and that would be the end of this miserable adventure. They’d find him dead on a desk, have no idea who he was, and chuck him into the garden to fertilize a flowerbed.

  It was nearly three in the morning before Syrah finally gave up on the idea of writing. Maybe he should use small objects to spell out his message. He’d tried this strategy before, but always unsuccessfully. He had pushed leaves into formation only to have them blown away; he had made letter shapes out of pebbles, jacks, and even coins, but either someone had kicked them, or scooped them up, or just walked right past them. Sometimes, he wondered how many other people were out there, cursed to live out their lives as tiny, insignificant creatures, writing messages that nobody ever saw. He swore to himself that when he was a man again, he would pay attention whenever animals wanted him to. He would mind their signals, just in case.

  Syrah heard soft footfalls on the stairs. A moment later, Deli tiptoed past him. She checked behind her and adjusted a large pack that she carried on her back. She cut down the back corridor, toward the messengers’ door. He followed, curious. Where was she going before dawn? And what was in that pack she carried?

  He couldn’t follow very far. Deli let herself out and shut the door, cutting him off. Anyway, he wouldn’t have wanted to follow her outside, where the owls were still hunting in the darkness.

  And since Deli was out, he realized, it meant her bedroom was empty. Maybe she’d even left her door open. He hadn’t been in Deli’s room since they were little kids, and he hadn’t been able to gain access to it last night. Maybe he’d find an ink bottle open in there. It was worth a look.

  He made his way upstairs and into the family wing. Deli’s door was open a crack, and Syrah bounced toward it and wriggled in through the opening. The room was decorated in graceful antique furniture, scarred by centuries of use — even in the darkness, Syrah’s frog vision allowed him to see it clearly enough. The air smelled like sweat. Deli’s trunk of belongings from the ATC stood open beside her wardrobe, only half-unpacked. It looked like she’d been sorting through it.

  Everything else in the room was characteristically tidy. The bed was already made. Syrah hopped around on her desk and found a tightly shut ink bottle and a stack of several finished letters — including one written and addressed to Rapunzel. He pushed that one with his forefeet until it fell behind the back of the desk, where he hoped it would be forgotten for good, and then he scanned the room, looking at her walls and her bookshelves, her bedside table and her open trunk. Maybe there were objects in here that he could arrange into a message. He probably didn’t have enough time for it — wherever she had gone, she couldn’t be gone long or her family would miss her — but it was still worth a look.

  Several competitive medals hung on her walls, but there was no way for him to get them down. Lots of clothes sat in piles on the floor, but most clothing was too big for him to move. The objects on her desk were heavy; the books on her bedside table and bookshelves too thick for him to budge with any speed. He hopped down to the floor and peered under her bed, but there wasn’t any mess there for him to work with. There was, however, a packet of papers tucked under the bookshelves, in the very narrow space between the bottom shelf and the floorboards. Maybe he could spread those around. He reached his forefeet under the bottom shelf, planted his moist toes on the topmost paper, and tried to drag it toward him.

  The whole stack moved. He dragged at it again, and it moved more. Working slowly, he managed to pull the papers out from under the bookshelf, until he realized that he had a whole file in front of him. If he opened it up, he could move the papers inside individually. He hopped around to the open side of the file and stuck his forefeet underneath the flap, then moved forward, lifting the file cover. He nosed his way underneath it until he was inside the file, then hopped forward, pushing the cover up until he was able to knock it all the way back. It fell open, and when Syrah saw what was stored within, he goggled.

  TRAITOR PRINCE ESCAPES!

  It was the Town Crier from the day after he’d vanished from the Thatch. He read it, horrified to find that it painted a terrible picture of his behavior. It said he’d betrayed a century of family loyalty, refused to accept his deserved punishment, and then broken away from the guards who were meant to escort him out to the coast. It called him a fugitive, and warned that he was “on the loose,” “desperate,” and “possibly dangerous.” A reward was offered for information on his whereabouts as though he were some kind of criminal.

  Was this what they all thought? That he had just run away?

  Uncomfortable, he recalled that, at first, he had run away. He had wanted to punish them all for kicking him out. He had hoped to give them all a scare. But when he had never come back again, surely someone had realized that he was in trouble. They couldn’t all think he was still on the run somewhere — could they?

  There were other Town Criers in the stack. Syrah pushed the top one off the pile, revealing a second story, this one from the morning after the wedding. SECRET LOVE LETTER REVEALED, read the headline, and, under that, DELICATA GOURD PINES FOR PRINCE SYRAH. Syrah glanced through this article too. He knew what it held — he had handed that love letter to the scribe, after all — but he had never had an opportunity to read the article afterward.

  Times have changed indeed.

  Near a hundred years ago, former Governor Luffa Gourd, then Princess Luffa of Yellow Country, lost her entire family to the Pink scourge. In her teens, she returned to Cornucopia with an army and reclaimed the country. She restored independence to Yellow, rebuilt its economy, reinstated its monarchy, and then, always a bold forward thinker, abolished the monarchy and established a new age of democracy
. One might expect her only female descendent, Delicata Gourd, to share her grandmother’s famous guts.

  One should lower one’s expectations.

  Delicata’s contribution to the modern chapter of Yellow Country history is significantly lesser: She spends her time lost in a paroxysm of pathetic — and decidedly unrequited — adoration for Prince Syrah Huanui. Reading her love letter to him (reprinted below in full), one gets a sense that the current generation has completely lost perspective on the past. Delicata declares herself to be breathless, hurting, and willing to sacrifice. Does she even know what these things really mean?

  Syrah read it over again, shocked. This was what the scribe had made of that love letter? This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d only been trying to embarrass Deli, to pay her back for embarrassing him, but instead the scribe had made Delicata Gourd sound shallow and self-centered and petty — exactly the opposite of what she actually was.

  For the first time, it occurred to Syrah that he had gone too far. His actions had been out of proportion. Deli had embarrassed him in front of a few people; he had embarrassed her in front of the world.

  He felt hot and prickly and uncomfortable all over. He tried to ignore it, and instead pushed the Crier aside with his feet and sucked in air through his nostrils as he revealed a third Crier, and a third headline.

  THE VANISHING OF PRINCE SYRAH

  The article, dated two weeks after his disappearance, laid everything out. The circumstances of his departure from the Thatch, the chase he’d led through the fields, the way he had vanished into the woods, never to reemerge. Farmers had been questioned. Leads had been investigated. Rivers and lakes had been dragged. Somehow, Prince Syrah was simply gone.

  This. This was his opportunity.

  He heard footsteps approaching. Deli was back. Syrah began to push the Crier about his disappearance toward the middle of the bedroom floor. He would sit here, on this paper, and Deli would understand.

  She crept through her bedroom door and pushed it quietly shut. Only now, as the early morning light touched Deli’s skin and made it seem to glow, did Syrah realize that the sun had risen. She took off her backpack, threw it on the floor, and pushed it under her bed with her foot.

  “RAWP!” called Syrah, from his position in the middle of the Crier. Deli came toward him, frowning. Her eyes fell, not on him, but on the Criers beneath him. “What the …” she said, and crouched down.

  “RAWP RAWP RAAWWWWWWP!”

  Deli gently moved Syrah aside, and as her hand connected with him, he knew where she had been. I just want to train all day — I know I should give it up, it’s just launchball — I’m a monster for sneaking out like this with Pa unconscious — I can’t stand it here much longer.

  He wanted to tell her she wasn’t a monster at all. He had no idea how she put up with her family’s constant demands on her. He wished he could say that she was incredibly dedicated and passionate, and that she ought to give herself a break.

  If she would just notice him now, and see who he was, then maybe he could tell her.

  She reached for one of the Criers that Syrah had pushed aside. The one with the love letter in it. Her face tightened when she picked it up. “Who took this out?” she muttered.

  “RAAAAAWWWWWP!” Syrah bounced right on top of the word PRINCE to help Deli make the connection. “RAWWP RAAAAAWWWWWP!”

  She looked at him. Looked back at the paper. Her eyes narrowed.

  Yes, he thought frantically, I’m begging you, Deli — put it together — know that it’s me —

  A knock at the door made Deli gasp. She sprang to her feet, threw the door open — and froze.

  Harrow was standing there, his arms piled so high with baskets and bags that Syrah could only see his eyes, but he glowered at them anyway and croaked his venomous fury at being interrupted at this critical moment. He wished he were one of those poisonous frogs that could knock a man dead with one touch.

  “What are you doing here?” Deli demanded. “You can’t just come up to my room.”

  “I told you I’d come back,” he said, his voice muffled behind the pile. “I finished my morning chores, and Pa’s going to need me out in the fields this afternoon, so this was the only time I could make it.” He paused. “Uh — can I put this stuff down?”

  Deli got out of his way, and he staggered in and set everything on the floor next to her open trunk.

  “The boys were supposed to bring all that up,” she said.

  “They got most of it,” said Harrow absently. He stood up straight again, but his gaze stayed on the floor. His eyes had found the Criers that were spread out behind Deli’s feet. He studied them while Syrah continued his desperate hopping. “RAWP!” he cried, bouncing on the word Syrah until the bottoms of his feet were sore. “RAWP RAWP RAWP RAWP —”

  “That frog ought to be outside,” said Harrow. “Must be looking for a mate, making a racket like that.” He reached down, but Syrah jumped out of reach and hid himself under Deli’s bed.

  “I didn’t take those Criers out,” Deli said defensively. “The triplets must’ve done it.”

  “Okay,” said Harrow.

  “I said I didn’t.”

  “And I said okay.”

  “If you think I’m wasting time feeling sorry over Syrah, with everything that’s going on —”

  Harrow snorted. “I don’t think that,” he said. “He should be horsewhipped for what he did to you. Feel sorry over him? Not a chance. Good riddance.” He went for the door. “I’m gonna get the rest of the gear.”

  Good. Get out. Syrah readied himself to spring out and get Deli’s attention on him once more.

  “Wait,” said Deli suddenly, and Harrow’s boot steps stopped. “Thanks. For saying that.”

  “It’s just the truth,” said Harrow. “Wherever Prince Syrah disappeared to, I hope he got what was coming to him.”

  Syrah made a noise of agonized frustration. He hopped out from his hiding place and leapt back onto his name with a splat, but Harrow only reached for him again, and he had to jump back under the bed so as not to be thrown outside.

  This is what happened to him, he cried out silently. He’s a frog, and he’s right here, and you’re both SO STUPID. He let out a long, miserable croak.

  “Maybe a fairy got him,” said Harrow. “Taught him a lesson. Turned him into a pumpkin.”

  Syrah gave an agonized cry that came out as a pathetic ribbit, but he kept on ribbitting until the ribbits became painful. How much frustration was it possible to endure, he wondered, before the feeling would flat-out kill him?

  “Actually,” said Deli, “I think … but it’s pretty strange.” She stopped. “You’d never believe it. About what happened to Syrah, I mean.”

  Syrah shut his mouth and listened hard.

  “Well now you’ve got me curious,” said Harrow. “Try me.”

  Yes, try him, thought Syrah, hopping close enough to the edge of his hiding place that he could roll his eyes upward and see Deli’s expression. It was anxious. She searched Harrow’s face.

  “Want to take a walk with me?” she said, and then she quickly added, “Just as friends.”

  “I guess I’ve got time for a walk. Sure.”

  “Then come on,” said Deli, heading for her door. “I’ll show you exactly where Syrah went.”

  SYRAH croaked, more in surprise than in an attempt to sway their attention. Where was Deli going? What did she think had happened?

  “You mean you know?” asked Harrow, following quickly. “But you never said anything.”

  “I can’t prove it and nobody’ll believe me,” she replied. “Trust me. When I tell you, you’ll think my head’s hit the launchball bar one too many times.”

  Syrah leapt after them, following with all the speed he could manage. He went with them downstairs, through the back door of the Thatch, and into the Gourd family grove. He bounded as fast as he could to keep up as they wandered out into the vast pumpkin, melon, and squash patches that sprawl
ed over the back half of the property. Here, they began to outpace him so that he could not keep up. But he could not fall behind. Panicked, he sprang for the back of Harrow’s boot, missed, and sprang again. He landed on the toe of the boot, splayed his legs, and gripped the top with all his might.

  Harrow stopped walking. “Is this that same little frog from your room?” he asked. “Has to be. Never saw a frog so green.” He crouched to pluck him off, but before he could grab him, Syrah hopped onto Harrow’s sleeve, then sprang up to his shoulder and sat there. “Never saw a frog act like this,” said Harrow in surprise.

  “He’s tame,” said Deli. “He’s somebody’s pet. Walter’s taking care of him.”

  “Huh.” Harrow turned his head and lifted his shoulder to frown thoughtfully at Syrah. “Huh,” he said again.

  Real articulate, Oat Boy.

  “I don’t mind if you ride along, I guess,” Harrow said to him. “Seems to be what you want.” Syrah croaked in the affirmative and gave an emphatic hop. Harrow regarded him curiously for another moment, then turned his attention back to Deli. They started walking again. “So, where are we headed?”

  “Just wait.” She strode toward the edge of the Gourd property, checking back over her shoulder once or twice as though nervous that she might be seen. When Syrah realized where she was going, a thrill of anticipation and terror shot through him. They were headed to the wood where the wishing well lay. Maybe she really did know what had happened to him.

  They plunged into the cool sanctuary within the wood, and Harrow let out a breath of awe as the light changed. The world around them glowed with secret, green intensity. Every leaf, every vine, every moss-covered stone seemed to sing green.

  “How have I never seen this place?” Harrow murmured reverently. “Must be a fairy wood.”

  “We used to say it was, when we were little,” said Deli.

  “We … Syrah and you?” said Harrow, a bit too carefully.

  “We all grew up together,” she replied. “Syrah and I were the same age, so yeah. We used to play imps and fairies in here and pretend it was magic.”