Simwan scrutinized the hard-shelled, slow-moving wall that blocked their path. “Okay. Which one?”
“Pick an old one. Turtles and such live a long time. An old one should be a wise one.”
Rose was nodding sagely. “That makes sense.” She paused, staring at the hundreds of creatures piled high in front of her. “Uh, how do you tell an old turtle from a young one?”
“Look for the gray hair.” No one was ever half as amused by Pithfwid’s humor as was Pithfwid himself. “Oh, botheration—I’ll sniff one out.”
They settled on a truly antediluvian wood turtle, wood turtles being reckoned among the smartest of their kind. It was an undistinguished-looking individual, with a typically turtlish gray, diamond-patterned shell and a neck of no great length. Together, they formed a circle around the wood turtle, who was patrolling slowly along the base of the turtle wall.
Halting, it started to turn around, only to see an expectant N/Ice blocking its retreat. With Rose on its left and Amber on its right and Simwan and Pithfwid crouching down in front of it, their cornered subject had nowhere to go. Nor was it likely to break into a sudden sprint and dash off between someone’s legs. Settling on Pithfwid as the instigator of its confinement, it emitted a short, challenging hiss, then relaxed. Simwan decided that more than anything else, its response smacked of bored resignation. Its first words confirmed this view.
“All right. What d’ye great clumsy mammals want of me?” It reserved particular scorn for the encircling humans. “Me name’s MacCunn, I’m visiting from Nova Scotia, and I’ve no time for childish shenanigans.”
“We won’t keep you long, then,” Simwan assured him. He indicated the endless wall of Testudines that was blocking the way. “We just need to get into the northern half of the park.”
Its head swiveling from side to side on its muscular neck, the wood turtle eyed each of the Deavys in turn. “Then why don’t ye just take an uptown bus?”
Amber shook her head. “We can’t. To arrive at where we have to get to, we have to go through the park. Through each and every manifestation of the park. If it were as simple as just traversing the Ord version, we wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
The turtle MacCunn considered. “Och, that do make good sense, it do.”
“So how do we get through?” Straightening slightly, Simwan indicated the armored wall. “We don’t want to hurt any of you, and we don’t want to get hurt ourselves. Can we just ask your relatives to temporarily move aside so we can pass? Or could you maybe ask them for us?”
“Canna make it happen, boy,” the turtle told him sorrowfully. “’Tis not in me power. The wall represents all that is I and me kind. Only the King o’ the Pond can call for a breach in the barrier. Ye’ll have to talk to ’im.”
“Where do we find this ‘King of the Pond’ who can let us pass?” Pithfwid asked politely.
“In the pond proper.” Turning as slowly as steamed broccoli on a lazy Susan at a Boy Scout picnic, the wood turtle gestured to the west. “I can show you, if you like.”
“We would like,” Simwan replied. “But in the interests of exspeediency, and if you don’t mind …” Bending, he carefully picked up their reluctant guide, holding him firmly with both hands.
A contented MacCunn voiced no objections to this more rapid mode of travel. It was a short walk to the edge of the main pond anyway.
A complex chorus of croaks and ribbits greeted them as they arrived at the edge of the lily pad–pocked, reed-fringed expanse of dark water. Among the occasional raindrops, dozens of pairs of bulging, spherical eyeballs stood out, peppering the pond’s surface like so many glistening marbles. Turtle Pond was as hospitable a home to hundreds of frogs as it was to the hard-shelled reptiles that had given it its name. There didn’t appear to be more than a turtle or two in the actual pond, however. The majority had gathered to form the smelly wall that stretched off to east and west. Incapable of perceiving the barrier, Ords could walk right through it. Not the Deavy brood, however. Being a non-Ord, Simwan reflected, had its drawbacks as well as its advantages.
Well, this shouldn’t take too long, he decided. Gently, he set the wood turtle down at the edge of the water. “How do we find this King of the Pond?” he asked.
MacCunn raised a foot and pointed. “Be ye blind as well as half daft? He’s right here in front of ye.”
All four Deavys, plus Pithfwid, scanned the ground, the water, and the dense reeds and brush beyond. Other than the undergrowth, they saw nothing but dozens of frogs and the occasional off-duty turtle.
“I don’t think I’m blind,” Amber observed, “but I don’t see anything that looks especially kingly.”
MacCunn had already lumbered halfway into the water. “I tell ye, the one ye seek is right here under your very eyes. Dinna ye know the legend?” By way of illustration, he proceeded to whack the frog closest to him with one front leg, sending it spinning out of the shallows and onto the mud. Dazed, it lay on the bank and struggled to collect itself. “A beautiful damsel kisses a frog, and it turns into a king.” By this time the turtle was completely submerged except for its head and the back of this shell. “I’ve done what I kin for ye, and that’s all I kin do. Not being a beautiful damsel, I canna do your kissin’ for ye.”
The Deavys studied the still-stunned frog that was numbly stumbling from side to side on the bank at their feet. It was palm-size, dark green with black spots, and decidedly slimy-looking. Rose looked at Amber. Amber promptly turned to look at N/Ice. N/Ice, in turn, focused her gaze expectantly on Rose. Simwan, being anything but a beautiful damsel, felt much relieved. “Rock, paper, scissors,” suggested Amber halfheartedly. “It’s the only fair way.”
“All right. But still …” Unable to think of a better way out of the slippery conundrum with which they had been presented, Rose unenthusiastically agreed to the process, as did N/Ice.
Simwan looked on as his sisters stuck out their right hands and counted down to a hesitant but unavoidable one-two-three. Rose was the loser, having gone with rock, while both her sisters had materialized paper. For a moment, she thought of throwing the rock she had conjured at one of the frogs. That wouldn’t do, of course. She had to kiss one, not whack it unconscious.
“Go on,” Amber encouraged her sister.
“Do it,” a more solid-than-usual N/Ice urged.
Swallowing hard, Rose knelt down and picked up the frog. Whether because it was still stunned from the smack MacCunn had given it or because it was otherwise disoriented, it did not try to hop from her hand. As her sisters, Simwan, and a mildly interested Pithfwid looked on, Rose brought the squidgy creature toward her face.
“Oh, yuck!” she muttered. “I don’t know if I … I can’t …”
Though Simwan rarely played Big Brother, he did so now, eyeing Rose sternly. “Quit stalling.”
“Oh, all right!” his sister snapped at him. “Blither it all, anyway.” And with that she brought the frog up to her face, puckered her lips, closed her eyes, and kissed it square on the mouth.
“Eeww …” Amber’s expression wrinkled up like a week-old onion. “She did it.”
“Yuck squared,” commented N/Ice succinctly.
Opening her eyes, Rose blinked. A soft, surreal golden glow had begun to envelop the frog. It began to bloat, to expand in her hand. Very quickly it grew too big and too heavy for her to hold. Bending, she set it down on the damp soil and stepped back. As the Deavys surrounded it, the cylinder of light rose, taller and higher, until it was greater in width than any of them and taller than Simwan.
As the pulsing glow began to fade, a shape became visible within the dying radiance. It was a man of middle age: bearded, powerful of bearing, and chiseled of face. His head was crowned by a symbol of office: a tall, gleaming white hat that …
A white hat?
The last of the luminous casing vanished. The man stood
there, regarding them querulously. All was silent for a long moment, until Amber finally observed, with more than a hint of uncertainty in her voice, “You don’t look like a king. Not even of a pond.”
“King? Who’s a king?” The man had a pleasant voice and a strong European accent. “I’m Tartelli, the baker. Who are you?”
“We’re the Deavys,” Simwan explained. “We were told that in order for us, as non-Ords, to proceed on our chosen path through this park, that we have to ask the King of the Pond—this pond—to order the turtles barring our way to make a portal for us.” More than a little annoyed, he glanced at the surface of that mysterious body of water, but the wood turtle was nowhere to be seen. There were only frogs. “The one who instructed us said that a beautiful damsel—in this case my sister Rose—should kiss you to turn you into the King.”
Looking apologetic, Tartelli shook his head regretfully. “I’m just an enchanted baker. Are you sure you were told to kiss me?”
Simwan hesitated, eyed his sisters. “Well, no, maybe not. What MacCunn said was ‘A beautiful damsel kisses a frog, and it turns into a king.’ ”
Obviously wishing to be helpful, the baker nodded knowingly. “I see. A frog. Not the frog, or this frog, or even that frog. Just a frog.”
“He said that it was right here in front of us,” Rose objected, still wiping furiously at her lips with the back of her left hand.
“Well?” Turning, Tartelli indicated the pond behind him. As ever, it was chock full of frogs. “I think your helpful turtle friend was just using me as an example.”
“Do you know which one is the King of the Pond?” A touch of desperation colored N/Ice’s query.
“I’m afraid not.” The baker sighed regretfully. “We’re most of us here separately enchanted, you see. And even to other frogs, most frogs look pretty much alike.” He smiled at Rose. “That was a very nice, innocent little kiss, by the way. I’m sorry I’m not the one you want.” Stretching, he tilted back his head and surveyed the cloudy sky. “It’s nice to be human again for a little while, but frankly, I’d rather be a frog. Catching bugs is a lot easier than baking pies, and I don’t have to get up early in the morning to get to work.”
Simwan seized on just four of the enchanted baker’s words. “You said ‘for a little while.’”
Tartelli lowered his arms. “Oh yes. Unless accompanied by a suitably complex fixing spell to make the restoration permanent, the effects of a damsel’s kiss only affect the relevant enchantment for a short while.”
“So,” Amber was thinking aloud, “how do we find the King?” Based on what the helpful Tartelli had told them, she was afraid she already knew the answer.
She was right.
“Trial and error, I’m afraid.” He shrugged his white-clad shoulders. “If you’re serious about it, I suggest you get started. You don’t want the effects of your kisses to start wearing off before you’ve found the one you seek.”
“OH YUCK!” Though all three Deavy sisters exclaimed it in harmony, it did nothing to take the edge off the method all three were going to have to employ.
Standing back and looking on, Simwan almost felt sorry for them. He was able to temper his concern by remembering every nasty trick, every practical joke, they had ever played on him. Together with Pithfwid, he stood under a tree and watched as the girls removed their shoes and socks, rolled the legs of their jeans up to their knees, and waded out into the chilly, murky, shallow pond. One at a time, they would scoop up a frog, bring it up to their grimacing faces, and kiss it. Glow after towering glow repeatedly illuminated the mist and drizzle as enchanted amphibian after enchanted amphibian was provisionally restored to temporary humanness.
It was a tiring, boring, exasperating task: one in which Simwan was glad he did not have to participate. Frustration mounted in tandem with the increasing number of transformed frogs. Through the magic of their kisses the busy, and increasingly numb-lipped, Deavy coubet brought forth from the depths of the pond enchanted policemen, firemen, a dry cleaner, a couple of street musicians, a Coptic priest, several thoroughly bewildered members of Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde, a Polish tailor from Krakow, assorted sailors who had been lost overboard from their respective vessels, marooned, or who had overdosed on assorted alcoholic stimulants, and the entire basketball team of the town of Bantaral, Paraguay, who had been lost in a plane crash in the lowland jungles of the Amazon.
An attack of unrepentant nausea finally forced Amber to the sidelines, where Simwan did his best to comfort her while her two sisters osculated valiantly on. Rose was beginning to stagger herself when the thirtieth (or maybe it was the fortieth) entity she had brought back to humanness regarded her with a mixture of uncertainty and sternness and declared loudly, “Who disturbs King Thadd, and with a maidenly kiss summons him to resume this shape?”
Not sports shorts or fireman’s coat, but rather regal robes draped the handsome, impressive figure. The crown that adorned his high-browed forehead was more of a crownlet: short on jewels and workmanship, but lustrous with gold beads and hammered plate. His eyes were dark and penetrating, his nose majestic, and his neatly trimmed beard ever so slightly flecked with gray. As the self-proclaimed king proceeded to lick the memory of Rose’s kiss from his lips, a newly alert Simwan thought the revealed royal tongue a bit long. “I summon you,” a greatly relieved (because she would not have to kiss any more frogs) Rose informed him. Gesturing with one arm, she added, “I, Rose Deavy, and my sisters, Amber and N/Ice, and our lazy good-for-nothing-except-making-jokes-about brother, Simwan, and our most estimable cat, Pithfwid.”
The King of the Pond looked around. Already, policemen and musicians, sailors and basketball players, were periodically reverting to their previous batrachian bodies.
“No ordinary kisses can suspend such strong enchantments.”
“We have to travel to the north end of the park, and to find what we seek there we have to travel through the park. Certain parts of its reality that are closed to Ords are open to us, and vice versa.” Turning to his right, Simwan indicated the wall of turtles that cut through the middle of the pond. “This barrier of Testudines is one of the versas. We have to get through. To do that we were told to put the request to you, as King of the Pond, to grant us passage.”
“And rightly so,” the monarch of the muck agreed. “The question remains: Why should I?” He inspected Simwan up and down. “I do not know you. I do not know, or care, about your purpose in crossing the park. It has nothing to do with me, or with my realm.” Extending and raising both arms, he gestured expansively. “The Pond is a dominion unto itself, clear and clean and devoid of the illnesses that infect both the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds. We enchanted who dwell within it delight in having as little as possible to do with either.”
This wasn’t going as Simwan had hoped. “Please, Your Majesty. You don’t understand. If we can’t continue our journey, then we won’t be able to fulfill our quest. If we fail in that, terrible things are going to happen in the town where we come from, and maybe beyond. Our mother …” He had a sudden burst of insight. Or maybe it was just one of those occasional sharp, unexpected pains that sometimes stabbed him behind his left eye. He’d know in a moment.
“A stream runs behind our house, on our property, and there are ponds there, too. Every year both are full of frogs, and if we can’t go on with our journey, that stream is going to be diverted and those ponds are going to dry up, and all those frogs are going to lose their homes.” He paused to let that sink in and then added for good measure, “Thousands of them.”
The king looked appropriately stunned. “That sounds like a truly catastrophic event. But,” and he brought his face closer to Simwan’s, “how many of those frogs are enchanted folk? For that matter, how do I know that any of them are enchanted?”
Stuck for an answer, Simwan tried to stall by looking thoughtful. This resulted in him adopting the express
ion that tended to make Ords frown at him and pretty girls giggle and point. It was not what he intended.
It was Rose who came to the rescue. Like the rest of the coubet, she was not intimidated by much of anything. Certainly not by a mere king.
“As far as my sisters and I are concerned, all frogs are enchanted!”
Straightening, the sovereign of slime eyed her sternly—and then broke out in a wide grin. An exceptionally wide grin that, given its source, was to be expected.
“A wise response. Not necessarily a knowledgeable one, but wise. In truth, all frogs are enchanted. I suppose I should not be surprised by your reply, since you and your sisters are also enchanting.”
Almost old enough to blush at such a compliment, Rose did the next best thing by turning away so he could not see her face.
“Very well.” Splashing quietly and carefully through the pond, the king faced the slowly shifting wall of turtles and tortoises. “I’ll cede you the path you seek. But it will cost you.”
One hand dropping reflexively to his side, Simwan felt of his wallet. The pocket demon within stirred slightly, then went back to sleep. Would an enchanted king see the ruse inherent in enchanted currency? “We’re just four kids visiting the city. We don’t have a lot of money.”
“Money?” The now outwardly affable king smiled through his beard. “What would I do with money? If it was wealth that I wanted, I would have found a way to stay human.” His attention shifted back to the coubet. “What I would like is another kiss. From each of you, if you please.”
The girls exchanged a glance. “Okay,” agreed Amber readily as she stepped forward. One by one, she and her sisters planted firm but chaste kisses on the king’s face, choosing their angle of delivery and site of contact as carefully as any bomber pilot targeting an objective.
N/Ice was last. She didn’t even wipe her lips when she stepped back. “That wasn’t so bad,” she murmured. “I thought it might be slimy.”
The Deavys Page 20
