When the feeling of spinning finally stopped, Ellie blinked into the gloom and realized she was lying on the floor. Mortimer had vanished, probably in a fit of pique. She wondered what she looked like now. Probably she should have specified something a little more particular than “ugly.” In his frustration, the odious fairy might have made her old as well.
Putting her hands up to feel her face, Ellie was startled to realize that her hands felt cold, and clammy. And they didn’t have enough fingers.
What? Why would he have taken one of her fingers? And why was she so short?
Beginning to grow alarmed, Ellie tried to rise from the floor and let out a shriek when she hurtled through the air instead, slamming into the side of a cabinet with a rather wet thud.
She fell back to the floor, her heart thumping wildly, and heard the door to the room swing open.
“Where is that wretched girl?” she heard Farrel mutter, and began to call out to let him know where she was, until some instinct stopped her.
She didn’t look like herself any more. How was she going to explain that? She needed a plan, needed to think about how she was going to handle her transformation before she confronted her former fellows.
Ellie was looking around for a place to hide when Farrel emerged unexpectedly from between the dusty rows of crates and boxes and caught sight of her on the floor.
“Nelson!” he howled at the top of his lungs, which was rather louder than Elisette would have expected. “How many times must I tell you not to leave the back door open? Get in here and help me get rid of this thing!”
Thing? What did he mean “thing”?
Ellie tried to scoot backwards, but her legs didn’t seem to work properly. What had Mortimer done? She stuck out her foot. Looked down.
Her foot was webbed. She had a webbed foot. Five toes, webs, wet green skin.
She thrust a hand out in front of her in the dim light. Four fingers, with round sticky pads. All green.
Ellie screamed.
Farrel leapt.
After that, everything was a bit of a disaster.
Cambren suspected there was a more princely way to handle the conundrum, but two days after the assembly found him riding sheepishly in the direction of the library again. He had no idea where to find what his father wanted, and he hoped Elisette might be willing to help him. She’d basically offered, and he really didn’t know what else to do.
After experimenting surreptitiously with one of his better silk shirts, Cambren had realized it was going to be no simple feat to find a bolt of silk that would slide through a ring. Especially his mother’s. Queen Luna had possessed tiny, fine-fingered hands. Hands he missed very much when he wasn’t keeping himself busy enough to forget.
His mother had always had a smile and a hug for her sons, and had never been too busy to bandage their hurts and laugh at their jokes. Perhaps her death hadn’t hit him as hard as it had Father, but Cambren missed her deeply.
When he arrived at the library, Cam paid a boy to hold his horse and made his way slowly up the front walk, wondering what he was going to say. Elisette had probably heard of the challenge. Would she think this was cheating, asking her for help? Should he explain that he didn’t care about winning, but that he also didn’t want to disappoint his father?
Before he could open the door, it swung inward abruptly, revealing a trio of scholars in full retreat. They were in such a hurry, they nearly knocked him over, and uttered only the most cursory apologies on their way to the street.
Through the open door, Cam could hear a most unusual cacophony of shouts and general pandemonium. By now curious, he poked his head in and was confronted by the rumpled and furious form of Farrel, who appeared out of breath and entirely displeased to see him.
“Your Highness,” Farrel managed to wheeze between pants. “What do you need?”
“Well, I’d like to see Elisette, if it isn’t too much bother,” Cam said diffidently.
Farrel made some unintelligible sound that was very nearly a snarl. “If you can find her, you’re welcome to her,” he growled. “I’m finished being her butler. I have far more important things to do than fend off her admirers, and if I ever find out who let that frog in here, they’re both going to be sacked!”
Cambren choked back an entirely inappropriate laugh. A frog in the library? No wonder everything was in an uproar. He rather hoped they wouldn’t find it for a good long time, which would allow him the opportunity to wander around and look for Elisette. Sidling past the irate doorkeeper, he tried to stay out of the way of the apprentices who were poking under tables and shelves, no doubt hoping to find the green-skinned intruder before it encountered any more patrons.
Cam searched several areas of the library without discovering Elisette, or a frog, and ended up at last in the fiction room. His leg ached after so much exercise, so he took a seat and wondered whether he ought to just give up and go home. Perhaps it would be best if he simply admitted that his father’s challenge had defeated him. But what if his brothers did the same? That would injure his father deeply, and make it appear that none of them truly respected their father’s rule.
No, he needed to do something.
Pushing back from the table, Cambren was about to rise when he heard a faint plop.
And then another.
Grinning a little, he crept around the end of one of the shelves, to find an impressively large green frog making its way towards the window on the far side of the room.
“Aha!” he whispered. “There you are, you clever thing you.”
To his surprise, the frog actually swiveled to look at him before hopping away faster.
Cambren couldn’t bring himself to leave the creature to the mercies of the librarians, who would probably not be kind once they caught the poor slimy thing. And it amused him to think of them chasing after a frog that was no longer in the building.
Four strides took him close enough to scoop it up and hold it in front of him while it wriggled wildly in his hands.
“You really ought to hold still,” he admonished in a theatrical whisper. “I’m the only friend you have in this place, so if you want to live, I suggest you stop wiggling and let me sneak you out of here. That Farrel fellow looks angry enough to cook your legs for dinner if he ever manages to catch you.”
The frog instantly went still.
“That had better be a coincidence,” Cam remarked conversationally, as he considered his options and eventually settled on tucking the slimy creature under his shirt with a bit of a shudder. “I’m not sure I’m ready for the notion of a frog that can understand speech. Though why it should be different than dogs who come when they’re called, I have no idea.”
The frog seemed to have frozen against his skin, which was just as well. He would have had a much harder time walking out nonchalantly if it had been wriggling where everyone could see it.
Cam remembered belatedly that he’d come in to see Elisette, but perhaps it wasn’t the best time. He could come back later. At the moment, for some reason, he’d appointed himself savior to a sadly displaced frog, and he’d best see to that duty before he considered any others.
Come to think of it, what was he going to do with his new charge? He couldn’t just let it loose in the street. Someone would either pick it up and attempt another stupid prank like this one—endangering its life in the process—or simply step on it in the bustle of evening traffic.
Perhaps he could leave it in the pond at the back of the palace gardens. Few people spent time in the garden since his mother died, and the pond had been overgrown for years now. It was dark and deep, shadowed by a pair of ancient trees and filled with weeds—just the place for a large, hungry frog, especially now that the weather was warm.
Satisfied with his plan, Cambren strolled out of the fiction room, his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl pasted across his face. Apprentices scrambled to get out of his way, and even Farrel chose not to accost him as he limped past the foyer and out the
front door, closing it behind him before he began laughing.
“Do you know,” he remarked, whether to the frog, his horse, or the boy holding his reins he wasn’t sure, “I don’t believe I’ve ever contemplated smuggling a frog out of a library before. I find that I now feel far more accomplished than the feat probably warrants.”
The boy gave him an odd look and scampered off, drawing another ripple of laughter from Cam. The day was turning out to be more enjoyable than he’d anticipated, even if he had missed Elisette.
It was a pleasant ride to the back of the gardens, and the frog neither stirred nor uttered a sound the entire way. By the time Cambren reached the pond, dismounted, and reached into his shirt to remove his passenger, he was beginning to worry that he might have smothered the poor creature.
It was alive, however, though it appeared stunned and even wider-eyed than the average frog.
“I do apologize for the uncomfortable method of transportation,” Cam told it politely, as he carried it towards the water’s edge. “It was the only way I could think of to save your life, so I hope you’ll forgive me someday. By way of apology, I’ve selected this excellent pond as your new home. Hopefully, you’ll be well and happy and live a long life filled with worms and snails and whatever else frogs find appealing.”
With that he drew back his arm to toss the limp and unprotesting creature into the water.
The moment it left his hand, the frog began to flail wildly and emitted a piercing shriek, which only cut off when it splashed loudly into the pond and disappeared.
Chapter 5
As the cold, dark water closed over her head and cut off her panicked scream, Elisette’s last glimpse of the world was the shocked face of Prince Cambren. Her “savior.” A man who had most improperly permitted her to ride around pressed up against his bare chest, and also the man who’d just become the only person in the kingdoms ever to drown a frog.
She’d always been terrified of the water. Forget about swimming, she didn’t even like crossing bridges. And now here she was, sinking to the bottom of a dark, nasty pond without the slightest idea how to save herself.
Ellie kept her mouth and eyes shut. She didn’t dare try to breathe, but hadn’t she read somewhere that frogs could breathe through their skin?
She was a frog. Something inside of her screamed the words in horrified disbelief, but that didn’t change the facts.
Wait, now that she had webbed feet, this swimming thing couldn’t be that hard, right? She just had to forget that she was underwater, and that she was terrified.
Instead of just thrashing her limbs, Ellie attempted to emulate the movements of her brother, Martin, when he used to show off by diving into the river and swimming all the way across without coming up for air. Nothing much happened, but she did feel the mud of the pond’s bottom squidging between her toes and kicked away from it in disgust. The kick proved to be astonishingly powerful, and propelled her quickly through the water.
The second kick shot her past the surface to somersault through the air, before she splashed back again with her mouth open in surprise.
Pond water tasted unbelievably awful.
Keeping her mouth tightly closed, Elisette kicked again, and this time arrived more sedately at the surface, where she blinked the mud from her eyes until she spotted the shore. Another kick propelled her forward just a little too hard. She flew in a shallow arc and fell with a splat into the muck just beyond the waterline.
Before she could give vent to so much as a groan of relief, Ellie was suddenly grasped in warm, powerful hands and lifted off the ground. Her stomach lurched as she was turned around, wobbled back and forth, and eventually brought face to face with an extremely confused Prince Cambren.
“I might be mistaken,” he said curiously, looking deeply into her eyes, “but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a frog scream before.”
“I was screaming because I can’t swim, you dolt,” Ellie snarled in outrage. “How could you just throw someone into a pond like that? I could have died!”
Somehow, she was flying through the air again. The ground came up to meet her, hard, and forced the breath from her body in a wet, squelching croak.
“That hurt!” she shrieked. “You can’t just go dropping people.”
She heard a thump and then scrabbling. The horse nearby began to shift its feet nervously.
Ellie sensed rather than saw someone easing up behind her, so she deliberately jumped and turned, though her leap took her rather higher than she’d anticipated. High enough that she had an excellent view of Prince Cambren throwing himself backwards, wide-eyed with shock.
“I didn’t…” he gasped out. “That is, I didn’t mean to…” He lay in the grass, only a few feet away, but Ellie could still hear him breathing more quickly than normal. “What are you?”
“I’m a frog,” Elisette replied nastily, still peeved about being nearly drowned and then dropped.
“Yes, obviously.” Prince Cambren sat up and rubbed a hand through his hair, looking utterly bewildered. “I can see that you’re a frog, I’ve just never encountered one… Well… You’re different than other frogs,” he said helplessly.
“That’s what all the princes say,” Ellie snipped, not sure how she was talking, but relieved that Mortimer had left her that much at least. The wretched beast. He’d better hope she never saw him again because she would…
Well, probably she would do absolutely nothing. She was a slimy, green, water-dwelling, bug-eating animal only a few inches tall. There was nothing she could do about anything, ever again.
Shuffling in an awkward circle, Ellie began to hop slowly back towards the pond. She had no desire to live in it, but she probably ought to at least stay near it. Clearly, she couldn’t live around people any more. Prince Cambren was as open minded as any human was likely to be, and even he was shocked by what she’d become.
“Wait.”
His uneven footsteps came up behind her.
“I’m going to pick you up again,” he said, “but I promise I won’t drop you this time.”
“Or throw me into a pond?” she muttered crossly.
“That either,” Cambren said. “But how was I to guess that you couldn’t swim?”
“You could have asked!”
“How was I to guess that a frog wanted to be asked if it could swim?” he pointed out reasonably. “That would be like me asking my brother Dauntry if he wants to be king.”
“He is a bit obvious, isn’t he?” Elisette agreed, at which point Cambren almost broke his promise not to drop her.
“How do you know Dauntry?” he demanded.
“I’m a talking frog who can’t swim,” she replied as haughtily as she could manage. “Why should it be so surprising that I’m acquainted with royalty?”
Cambren burst out laughing, provoking a laugh out of Elisette as well, though she sobered immediately when it came out as a wavering croak.
“You’re right,” the prince agreed. “I can’t think why it didn’t occur to me before. So tell me, my little green friend, how did you come to be loose in the library?”
If Ellie had been human she probably would have blushed and given herself away, but then, that was perhaps the only advantage to being a frog. No more blushing, ever. But frog or not, she simply couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth, especially not after he’d carried her under his shirt. It would be deeply humiliating, and besides, why would he even believe her?
While Anurans were familiar with magic, they didn’t actively court it, and fairies in general didn’t go around turning people into animals. Most fairies were benevolent, when they interacted with humans at all. How had it been her family’s rotten luck to end up with the one raging misanthrope in the entire fairy realm?
“I, er… was dropped there,” she told him, which was not entirely a lie.
“But where did you come from? Do you have a family? A home? Is there any way I can help you get back?”
Frogs might n
ot be able to blush, but apparently they were very capable of tears. An enormous, salty drop rolled out of one of her eyes and down her face, to land with a plop on Cambren’s palm.
How had she been so lucky as to end up being found by the one human being in the kingdoms kind enough to offer help to a frog?
“Thank you,” she croaked, “but I’m afraid that’s impossible. I… I can’t go home.”
Through her tears, she could see distress on the prince’s face. “Are you not from Anura?” he asked. “I’m sure I could find a way to send you to wherever your home is. Unless—” He cut himself off with a frown. “Are you from the fairy realm? I suppose it might be normal to have talking frogs there, but I don’t think I could send you back.”
“No!” she almost shrieked. “Not the fairy realm.” Her entire body shook. “I have no desire to see another fairy ever again.”
“Aha!” Cambren’s face lit up. “Then you were cursed by a fairy, weren’t you? Are you a frog they gifted with speech, or a human cursed to be a frog?”
“Does it matter?” Ellie snapped. She didn’t want him to guess. She couldn’t bear for him to know the truth. “I’m stuck like this.”
The full horror of it hit her in a rush. She would simply disappear from her lodgings and the library. Even if anyone bothered to look, no one would ever find her, and they would certainly not take the time to contact her family. She would never see her sisters or Martin again, and they would live out their lives mourning her death or disappearance, never knowing what had befallen her.
Unless she could break this miserable curse. What had Mortimer said? She would be stuck with this until… until what? She’d been so excited that he had actually listened to her plea, she hadn’t payed attention to the end of his little speech.
The only thing she was sure of was that he’d added something after the “until.” There had to be a way to break the spell.
A Beautiful Curse Page 6
