by Heide Goody
Freya was already moving the William and Kate mugs onto the dresser at the side of the room, fearing for their safety. “Do you think you might be overreacting?” she asked.
At that moment, the door crashed open and in swaggered Tiw. “Lot of shouting in here!” He blew a kiss to Freya, who blushed. “What’s up old man?” He clapped Woden on the shoulder.
“Nothing.” Woden scowled and examined the back of his hand.
“It’s WENSday,” said Freya over her shoulder as she climbed down the cellar steps with the tray of William and Kate mugs, seeking a safer spot for them.
“THAT old thing!” boomed Tiw. “Well it’s happening all over the place now. You know what I saw the other day? A class of primary school pupils doing a spelling test for days of the week. Do you know that nearly half of them spelled Tuesday starting T-I-W? Tiw’s day! Clever lot they were.”
“They did not! Utter rubbish!” yelled Woden.
“Oh, but they did. Then some others were having a German lesson, and after they learned that Mittwoch is Wednesday they said to their teacher ‘Miss, Miss, why don’t we have Midweek in English? It would make so much more sense.’”
With a roar Woden stood up, overturning the table.
Tiw was fiddling with the CD player so he missed the returned Freya’s dive: deftly catching the last of the mugs before they hit the floor.
Tiw put on his favourite Peter Frampton song. “I want Tiiiw to show me the way,” he crooned, dancing around the room, ignoring Woden’s scowls.
Freya crossed the room and turned it off. “Now stop it. You know he’s not really singing about you.”
Tiw raised his palms to the ceiling. “I think you’ll find that there’s lots of songs about me, if you listen carefully. I was always the popular one. The people’s god.” He waggled an eyebrow at Freya.
Woden kicked the overturned table aside. It jarred against the dresser, rattling all the china. He stormed upstairs, roaring with rage.
“I think it’s time you went,” said Freya to Tiw.
She took a deep breath as Tiw left, and carefully put down the mug she was still holding. “Woden!” she called up the stairs, “he’s gone now. Why don’t you come down and I’ll pour you a nice glass of mead?”
She could hear him banging around up there. She sighed and poured herself a glass.
Moments later he was coming down the stairs, bumping against the walls as he struggled with something large and heavy. She rushed to look. “Oh no. Don’t be such a fool, Woden. You know you can’t mess with that!”
He staggered in with an ancient ash wood box, large enough to be a piece of furniture in its own right. Woden gave a small gasp of relief as he put it down on the floor.
“Woden, please!” Freya tried to pull him away as he lifted the lid, but he batted her aside.
“No! I’ve had enough. It’s time the world felt my anger.” He picked up the large, age-blackened battle-axe and hefted it in his hands.
Freya’s eyes widened. “Please tell me you’re not going to try and swing that thing indoors. It was never meant to be used in the house!”
Her last few words were lost in a din of shattering glass and falling shelves. Woden grunted with the effort but he kept swinging the axe, around and around his head. When he had built some momentum, he roared with exhilaration and swung it faster still.
“WHAT is going on in here?” boomed a voice from the doorway.
“Thor, he’s got your hammer!” yelled Freya.
Thor strode forward “Put that down, you silly old fool! Even if you do manage to make a thunderbolt, it could go anywhere.”
There was a blinding flash and the floor shuddered. Black smoke filled the room; Freya coughed and retched as she tried to see. There was also a feral howling.
“Look what you did, you daft old prat!” Thor said.
Freya saw that Woden’s foot was stapled firmly to the floorboards, pierced by a jagged thunderbolt. The howling was Woden.
“We need to help him.” Freya said.
“Owww!” Woden agreed.
Thor carefully placed his hammer back into the box. “We’ll help him when this is put away safely,” he said, carrying the box upstairs under an arm.
With the aid of herbs and lots of mead they eventually settled Woden into a restful position, his bandaged foot elevated on a stool. He’d made them put the thunderbolt above the mantelpiece, in pride of place. He waved his glass towards it.
“I made that you know,” he slurred “It’s a good day. A very good day. What day is it?”
“It’s Thursday, dear.” said Freya. She ducked as the glass flew over her head and smashed against the wall behind her.
FROG PRINCE
Ella didn’t know much about woods. She recalled hearing that the British Isles was, at one time, covered in woodland, but nowadays woods were generally small things. Tucked away in those corners of the country where people had yet to feel a need to replace those messy oxygen-makers with housing developments and shopping centres; along with dual carriageways to facilitate travel between those houses and the shopping centres (or Drive-Thru McDonald’s where the weary shopper could grab a McThing on the way home). Ella had little personal interest in woods. She was glad they existed: she loved plants, understood the importance of natural habitats and biodiversity and had been an oxygen-user pretty much her entire life; yet she didn’t feel the burning need to visit them and say thank you or anything.
Therefore, she wasn’t overly sure what she might find in a wood. Trees, obviously. And mud; trees needed something to grow in. Ferns and grasses seemed appropriate and, unless she was misremembering her Enid Blyton, woods would contain blackberry and raspberry bushes, along with other fruiting plants from which well-behaved middle-class children could harvest the makings of a fine jam. Animal-wise, she was a bit sketchier. Squirrels seemed an obvious candidate for woodland life. Badgers too. Foxes? Rabbits? Did deer live in woods? Wolves? Were there wolves in England?
Whatever the case, Ella was confident that no woodland resident should be saying “Psst!” to her from the undergrowth. Ella looked up from her smartphone map (helpfully showing her location as somewhere in a large and featureless patch of green) and frowned at the tangled undergrowth of branches and grasses. The undergrowth did nothing despite her frowning at it a long time. She was on the verge of deciding that she’d imagined the sound and moving on when—
“Psst!”
“Who’s there?” she said.
Nothing.
“I said: who’s there?”
Nothing.
Ella blew out a slow, calming breath and stepped towards the undergrowth. “If you turn out to be a really shy mugger, you are going to regret it,” she said. Pushing branches aside she stepped through into the darkness between the trees. There was a punky mouldering smell in the air. The canopy of trees above her closed off the world outside, muffling sounds like a pillow.
Ella’s foot caught against something and she stumbled. She flung out a supporting hand but it skated off a smooth, wet tree trunk. She fell to her knees. Her phone spun from her hand in a slow arc that was as beautiful to watch as it was depressing. It dropped into the weed-covered pool before her with a fat ‘plop!’
She scrambled in the mud and reached into the cold water. Unfortunately, phones tend not to float and the tiny succession of bubbles popping on the surface did not bode well.
“Blast!” she snapped, wringing the water from her now sodden sleeve.
With her phone and its unhelpful little map gone, she had just moved from ‘probably lost in the woods’ to ‘definitely lost in the woods.’ It was long past noon. In a few hours she would be facing the very real prospect of a night in the woods.
“There really aren’t wolves in England, are there?” she said aloud.
“It’s not the wolves you need to worry about,” said a voice.
Ella sprang to her feet and stared. By the edge of the pool, a large frog sat beneath a leaf and
blinked at her.
“I do not do talking animals,” she told it firmly.
“Do?” said the frog.
“You,” said Ella.
“You don’t like animals?” said the frog.
“I’m fine with animals. As pets or in the wild or in zoos, but I’m not going to put up with them talking or wearing little waistcoats or driving cars.”
“I’m not wearing a waistcoat,” pointed out the frog.
“You know what I mean.”
The frog regarded her coolly. “Sounds a little racist to me.”
“It’s not racist,” she told him. “It’s not because you’re green, it’s—”
“Green?” said the frog. “My skin tone ranges from a golden sheen to a peaty brown with – you’ll notice – patches of rich yarrow and taupe. Just because I’m a frog you assume I’m green and play the banjo. Racist. Deeply racist.”
“Whatever.” Ella looked at the sky in the vain hope that she had miraculously developed the ability to navigate by staring at a cloudy sky and would be on her way again, no longer talking to an amphibian.
“Do you want your phone back?” asked the frog.
“Not talking to you,” said Ella.
“I could get it for you.”
She looked at it. She knew the story. “By any chance, are you actually a prince who was cursed by a wicked witch—”
“Fairy.”
“—fairy and you’re now doomed to be a frog until a beautiful princess takes pity on you and kisses you.”
Somehow the frog’s wide mouth widened into a smile. “That’s more or less it.”
“More or less?”
“I mean, you’re nice. You know: like a seven, maybe an eight on a good day; but I wouldn’t necessarily call you beautiful.”
“Oh, insults now!”
“Do you want your phone or not?”
Ella sighed. It was probably drowned and beyond saving, but hadn’t Daisy said there was some trick with uncooked rice which could dry out the most waterlogged phones. Besides, the insurers would be more likely to pay out if she could actually return it.
“I do,” she said.
“Very well, mademoiselle. Back in one shake of a frog’s tail.” The frog leapt high before diving into the pool. Ella waited. Pond scum drifted slowly on the dark surface.
Noisily, the frog broke the surface. “Take it! Take it!”
Ella crouched and took the mucky rectangle from his forelimbs while he trod water. He hopped out and groaned mightily as though he had just performed a feat of Herculean proportions.
Ella wiped the filth from the screen with her thumb. “This isn’t my phone.”
“Sure it is,” said the frog.
“No, it’s not. This is an iPhone. My phone’s a crappy Samsung.”
“It’s an upgrade then.”
“It’s not my phone!”
“Fine,” said the frog, jumping back in. A minute later he resurfaced with a phone between his dextrous, gooey-fingers. “Here.”
Ella took it. “This isn’t it either.”
“What?” said the frog.
“Not mine.”
“Sure?”
“Yes!”
The frog dived again.
Ella looked at the gloomy clearing around her: the slick mud at the pool edge, the tangle of roots and grass encircling it.
The frog grunted as he came up for the third time.
“How long have you been here?” she said, taking his latest recovery.
The frog, hauled himself onto land, sides heaving. “Pardon?”
“I’m sure this place, this charming water hole, doesn’t get many visitors. And yet you’ve retrieved two phones and this— This is a purse, frog-boy.”
“Is your phone in it?”
“No,” said Ella patiently. “But it does contain – bear with me – one pound, three shillings and fourpence. And a very soggy pools coupon dated 1956.”
“And it’s not yours?” said the frog.
She waved her small shoulder bag at the frog. “I have my purse here,”
“You don’t have two purses?”
Ella gave it a look. The frog dived.
On its eighth dive, after bringing back a third phone, a Sony Walkman, a sorry-looking rag doll, and a threadbare leather ball stitched with gold, the frog surfaced with a crappy Samsung phone made all the crappier by the additional pond slime and silt.
“That’s it,” said Ella.
“Ta-da!” said the frog and collapsed on the muddy poolside, exhausted.
Ella held the phone by a corner as brown sludge dribble out of the charging socket. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“I’ve heard of that,” wheezed the frog.
“The ground here is really quite slippery. And these tree roots: looks like someone’s actually dug them up; worked the ground to expose them.”
The frog was dismissive. “Natural soil erosion.”
“You’re like one of those claims lawyers who hangs around accident blackspots, aren’t you?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” The frog, almost recovered, edged closer. “Now, I’ve done you a little favour—”
“When you think about it, the chances of you accidentally encountering a beautiful princess in this wood are astronomically remote. Over the years, you’ve probably tried to skew the odds, however slightly, in your favour.”
“All I’m asking for is a kiss,” pouted the frog.
“I’m not kissing you.”
“Come on, darling. Play fair. You said you would. You can’t change your mind later.”
Ella paused in the act of wiping her phone with a tissue. She crouched in front of the frog. “Right. It’s clear we need to have ‘the chat’,” she said.
“The chat?”
“One, don’t ever call me darling. I’m not your darling. I shouldn’t think anyone’s your darling. Two, I promised you nothing.”
“Oh, that’s not fair! Your consent was implicit when you asked me to get your phone from the—”
“Three!” said Ella firmly. “It doesn’t matter if my consent was implicit or not – and I should point out that implied consent is a dodgy concept from the off – you can’t start demanding physical favours.”
“I’m not demanding anything,” argued the frog. “This was a fair trade.”
“Oh, so I owe you?” said Ella darkly.
“Yes.”
Ella finished wiping down her phone. “And now I’m starting to wonder…”
“Yes…?” The frog no longer sounded so certain.
Ella stood. “If I had come into the woods and found a person in handcuffs, what would be my first question?”
“How can I help?”
“I’d be asking: ‘Why is this person in handcuffs?’”
“Clearly you’re the suspicious type, But you can trust me. I’m a prince.”
“A Nigerian one by any chance?”
“What?”
“And maybe once I’ve kissed you, you’ll want to reward me for my help but, oh, your money is tied up in a bank account somewhere. If I just lend you a few thousand, you’ll repay me tenfold.”
The frog blinked. “How did you know? All I need to do is pay off a lawyer in Zurich and the money’s yours.”
Ella shook her head. “I’m being spammed by a frog.”
“So – it’s a deal?” said the frog.
“No.” Ella shook her phone. Mud soup continued to ooze from the casing. “I think you need to tackle your problems at the root, frog.”
“Root?”
“You need to ask yourself: ‘How did I get myself into this problem?’”
“I told you. The fairy.”
“Really? Do you see any other frog princes around here? No. ‘How did I get myself into this problem?’ And then follow that with, ‘How will I get myself out of this problem?’”
“I found your phone,” reasoned the frog.
“I’m not going to be your enab
ler. You don’t wait for someone to come along and kiss you; you go out and find someone. Or find that fairy.”
The frog quivered in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m rich. I’m handsome. The rewards—”
“You want a kiss?” said Ella.
“Yes!”
She shrugged. “Let me tell you a joke first.” She wrapped her phone in wads of tissue and laid it in her handbag. “A man walks into a bar—”
“If this is the one about the twelve inch pianist, I’ve heard it,” said the frog.
“He goes and sits at the bar and, while he’s having a drink, a frog hops up next to him. The frog turns to him and – this’ll be familiar – the frog says, ‘I’m a beautiful and fabulously wealthy princess and I’ve been turned into a frog by an evil sorcerer. If you’ll only kiss me, I’ll reward you in ways you can’t imagine.’”
“Solid sales pitch,” said the frog.
“The man holds out his hands,” said Ella, holding out her own. “The frog jumps into them and the man stuffs it into his pocket.”
The frog’s eyes bulged. “What! Why?”
“A little muffled voice cries from the man’s pocket: ‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m a beautiful princess and I can give you untold riches.’ And the man says, ‘I know. But I’d rather have a talking frog.’”
Ella smiled at the frog and wiggled her outstretched fingers. “Time for your kiss.”
The frog looked at her hands and slowly backed into the pool. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Wise choice,” said Ella. She brushed the worst of the dirt off her hands and looked around. “Do you know which way’s north?”
The frog (who had now sunk until only his wet eyes poked above the surface) gave her a glare. With a kick of his legs, he was gone.
WITCHES
Sarah ran to catch up with Noelle at the train station. “What did you make of that then?”
Noelle pulled a face. “Every time we get a new coven leader we get a new initiative. Then we have to sit and listen to them telling us how it’s really different to the old initiative. All of these so-called initiatives — and I mean all of them could be summarised as ‘be nice to each other’. We’d save a lot of time if they just sent us an email saying that.”
