Toad Words

by T. Kingfisher

  It was just as well that the wine was drugged. I slept in the corner of the hall for a week, until the first thought in my mind upon waking was Food and not Lie with me tonight.

  There was a long stretch without knights and I dared to hope a little. The ground where the gray horse had been butchered was cloaked with ferns and I could look at it without seeing bones. But eventually spring followed winter, over and over, and another warrior forced his way through the woods to my hall.

  The device on his shield was strange to me. He did not kill his horse, but the next one did—his horse and his hound as well. I wept over the hound. I don’t know what he made of that, and he did not live long enough to tell anyone about it.

  So it went for a long time. None of them agreed to my last demand. There was a group of a half-dozen that came with a net and boar-spears. They were the closest to killing me, I think. I was not able to get the last spear out of my hide by myself. My claws could not grip a spear shaft easily, and it was high up on my back, under the shoulder. I pawed at it until it festered, driving the broken shaft deeper, and while the magic would not let me die, it did nothing to heal me either.

  The pain might have driven me truly mad at last, but a hermit had settled into the forest that year, and when I came blundering and feverish out of the woods, he did not run away.

  I say a hermit—he might have been a saint. St. Francis, who preached to the birds, might well have ministered to monsters. This one kept up a steady stream of nonsense and prayer, and when I flopped myself down on the ground, he came towards me, muttering of Androcles and the lion. He stepped up on my shoulder and pulled the spearpoint out—I bellowed—and that was the end of the matter.

  “Eh?” he said, waving the spearpoint at me. “Eh? All right and tight inside your skin now, Beast? Shall you eat me now? Perhaps I should eat you instead! You look as if you would taste of onions. I might, you know. If I had cheese.”

  I visited him often after that. Never when I had just killed. I did not trust the magic to lie quiet when there was blood on my claws. But after a week or two, when I had lain in my den and dreamed red dreams, I would shake myself off and roll in the stream, and go to see my friend again.

  “Now where do you go, Beast, when you are gone for so many days?” he asked. “No matter! I am wearing the moon in my hat tonight, do you see?”

  I had no speech, except when the magic dragged it out of me, but I liked to hear him talk. It reminded me of being human. Sometimes I brought him fish. He didn’t seem to mind the toothmarks.

  “Such a great beast you are!” he said. “Your eyes glow in the dark, and your claws are larger than my little knife. You will have the larger share of the fish, then, and I will have the smaller.”

  I had not known that my eyes glowed in the dark before. It is not the sort of thing you notice yourself.

  You may think that it would bother me to have myself so described, but it had been…oh, a very long time. You get used to things. When I caught a glimpse of myself in a still pond, I expected to see a monster now. My eyes saw very well in the dark, much better than any human. My hide was coarse and hairy and knobbed with scars, but it turned spearpoints aside. I did not love my claws, but they were mine, and they were useful for dispatching fish.

  And knights.

  The hermit grew old and died. I think it was that that made me most aware of the passage of time. His beard had been black when he came to live in my part of the forest, and when he died, it was dirty white and thick enough for a swallow to nest in. The saplings by my door grew into trees, and one came down in a windstorm, and three more grew up in its place. Seasons had piled up together while I brought the hermit fish and listened to him twitter like an old bird.

  I dug him a grave with my paws. I was clumsy picking him up. My claws tore at his skin a little, and that distressed me much more than killing the last few knights had done. I howled my distress until the ground shook, but I believe that he would have forgiven me. He was a kind man, although he ate far too many mushrooms.

  I lost track of the years then, in grief. In my father’s hall, long ago, they used to say that it is not a good idea to mourn someone for more than a year and a day, for fear that their ghost will not lie quietly. If the old hermit’s ghost walked in the forest, I never saw it.

  Does it seem strange to you, to say that in my great grief I also found moments of great joy? Perhaps it was strange. I grew very old in the forest, but not among people, and my understanding of human hearts remained that of a girl.

  Nevertheless, there were moments. I recall standing in chest-deep water, the sun glittering hot through the trees, and watching minnows tug at my fur where it drifted in the water. When I climbed on the shore and turned back to look for them, I saw myself in the water. Duckweed hung from my horns like garlands, and I bellowed with laughter at the sight. When I tossed my head, the duckweed flew in all directions, and I laughed harder, stamping and prancing and howling until the trees shook.

  There was a spring when the foolish wood-doves built a nest low to the ground, inside the hall itself, and raised three chicks. For weeks I did not move more than a hundred yards from the spot. The chicks were endlessly fascinating—first wet and slick and unfinished, then awkward balls of skin and fluff, and finally graceful deep-breasted birds with round eyes. When they fledged at last, I missed them terribly, but I was prouder of their first flight than I had been of anything I had accomplished in my short life as a human.

  Time passed. I endured.

  The last knight came to me in autumn. I was not surprised to enter the hall and find him—his horse was tethered outside, and had shrieked and pulled violently against the rope when I came into view. I didn’t blame him. I was a terrifying beast, and I had eaten far too many horses.

  They had cut down one of my saplings. It took me a little time to realize why the face of the hall looked different, but I roared when I saw it.

  There were huntsmen in the hall, in addition to the knight. They had set up a temporary camp in the hall, it seemed—there were rings with red-eyed hawks on them, a deer roasting over a fire, and a pack of hounds cowering in the corners. They had smelled me coming long before I arrived.

  The huntsmen fled through the tumbledown slabs of stone, clambering over the rafters and throwing apologies over their shoulders to the knight. “My prince,” they called him.

  Interesting.

  The hounds were more faithful. They crept to the prince’s feet and whined in their throats.

  I stomped on the floor, up and down, until the walls shook. “Give me meat!” I thundered.

  Refuse me, I thought. Let us end this quickly.

  “As you wish,” said the prince, taking the deer from the spit—a spit made of my sapling—and tossing it down in front of me. “This is your hall, and I have trespassed.”

  I ate the deer. It took five or six bites. It was the first time I had eaten cooked meat since the hermit died.

  “More meat,” roared the magic.

  “You have eaten it all,” said the prince.

  “Kill your horse then,” said the magic. Please, say no. Your life is forfeit already, prince. Please refuse me. I do not want to choke down your horse’s flesh.

  “As you wish,” he said again, and went outside to kill his horse.

  None of the other knights had brought hawks with them. I ate them next. They died with hoods on, their necks wrung, and they were not even a mouthful each.

  I wept for the hounds. So did he. That was the moment that I remember most clearly. He sobbed as he killed them—one hoarse dry sob apiece—and I sobbed as I ate them. The last one whimpered piteously as its fellows died, and looked up at the prince with terrible trusting eyes to the last.

  I prayed to fall down dead, but the gods had abandoned me long ago. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted the world to be unmade, so that it never came to this moment at all. He looked at me, and I saw that I had made him choose between his own life and
something that had loved him, and the knowledge of his choice fell between us like a blade.

  I ate the hounds. He has never forgiven me for that.

  “Lie down beside me,” I said that night, in a voice choked with wine and misery. The prince nodded jerkily and laid his mantle across the floor. “As you wish,” he said aloud, and then, in a whisper, “God have mercy!”

  My hearing was very good. I shuddered and lay down.

  The prince was as good as his word. He lay down beside me, on stones slicked with the blood of hawk and horse and hounds, and we touched. I could not feel him—my hide is far too thick for that—but I could smell him, and hear his heart beating against the stones. I stared into the darkness. I was sure that beside me, he was staring into the darkness as well.

  He was revolted to lie down beside a monster. I was revolted to lie down beside a man who would kill his own hounds to appease a forest beast. Our mutual loathing was a strange and unwelcome intimacy. I felt as if I could smell his thoughts.

  The sleep that came upon me was the magic’s doing. I slept as one dead.

  When I woke the next morning, I felt small. I went to sleep larger than a bear and woke as a woman. My hands were tiny clawless things. My hide, that could turn swords and spears, had dwindled to skin as thin as paper. There was a naked man beside me, and he was awake as well.

  He did what men do with women. I did not fight him. I was too small in my new skin, and my bones felt as fragile as a goshawk’s. If I had put my hands against his chest and pushed, surely they must have snapped, and gained me nothing.

  Regardless, I do not think he took much joy of it. It was all of a piece with the terrible night that had passed, with the dead hounds and the dead hawks and the dead horse. It hurt, but not as much as a boar spear in the back, and I did not make any sounds at all.

  There is little enough left to tell of the story. He was a younger prince, and could marry a mysterious woman of questionable origins without stirring too much outrage. The magic may have laid itself on him, or perhaps he felt that it was only just, after having lain with me in the hall. He is always an honorable man, my husband.

  Well.

  I am not, it must be said, quite as I was. I can still see in the dark better than a mortal woman should. When the light flares up, my eyes reflect it back green, like an animal’s. My fingernails are very sharp, and I take care to keep them blunted.

  We have had no children. It is, I think, for the best.

  I still have a hard time with mirrors.

  I am not aging quite as I should either. They have had priests in to bless me, but it does neither the priest or my husband any good. He is growing old and I am not. This is another thing that he cannot forgive me for.

  Before too long, he will be dead. He has taken a cough that will kill him soon, I think. His people do not love me, and I am very tired of them, of all their voices that never stop chattering, and of this closed-in place, and this brittle skin that keeps me bound.

  On that day, when he has died, I will leave this place. The forest is still there, and the tumbledown hall. The magic is there, too, in rags and tatters. I hope that enough is left.

  I will walk through the open doorway, framed by the trees that used to be my saplings. When I set foot on the stone floor, on the stain left by the blood of men and dogs, my hide will grow thick again, and the ground will shake under my footsteps. These fragile, foolish fingers will be replaced by my own strong claws. I may die of the change, but I would rather die than live like this.

  If I live long enough, I will drag myself down to the still water, and look down, and see myself.

  As I should be.

  THE SEA WITCH SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT

  I didn’t take her voice for myself. I want to set the record straight on that, right up front. People got a lot of crazy notions in their heads, the way the story got around, and that was one of them.

  I’m not saying I never did an evil deed—anyone who says they haven’t is lying through their teeth—but I didn’t take her voice for myself. I didn’t need it. I’ve got a perfectly fine voice, thank you, trained by whale divas, and it’s mine.

  Seriously, you start stealing people’s voices and using them yourself and pretty soon you don’t know which voice is yours and which one’s an echo and then you’re mad and howling and people are standing around in caves during low tide asking where the screaming’s coming from and someone else is saying “Oh, it’s just some trick of the acoustics.”

  Go ahead, laugh. That trick of the acoustics is my Great-Aunt Meryl and you don’t want to wait for high tide. I’ve seen her tear the head off an elephant seal. With her nails.

  Best not to start down that channel at all, really.

  No, I took her voice for two simple reasons—she was a twit and she was in love. I took one look at her and knew that she’d spill everything she knew in the pretty human boy’s ear, and then where would we be?

  It doesn’t go so well when humans know about us, have you noticed? Ask one selkie if she’s feeling happier now that she spent a decade on shore with some jerk who stole her hide off the rocks. (Sure, some of them think it’ll be romantic—bull selkies aren’t anybody’s notion of charming, though they do have a certain over-muscled appeal—but it’s not so romantic when you’re spending your youth cooking and cleaning for an illiterate fisherman and bearing his brats through a pelvis that isn’t nearly so accommodating as it used to be.)

  I’d say “ask a Stellar’s sea cow” but you can’t, because they’re all dead. And just try to find a sea mink. I was very fond of sea mink. They were inquisitive little devils and they made chirpy noises when you stroked them. I haven’t forgiven humans for the sea mink. Or the sea cows, for that matter.

  Do not get me started on the great auk.

  Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the minute somebody in a position of authority—like, oh, I don’t know, a prince—figures out that there’s a whole underwater civilization, we’re in the deep muck. It might start out civilized at first, but it won’t stay that way. Somebody’s bound to figure out that there’s a lot of very useful things in the ocean.

  Rare things. Hidden things. Things of power.

  You want to hide something from the prying hands of mortals, you drop it in the sea. It’s been going on for years. I’ve got things in my pantry that could unmake continents if you could find them and get them into the right hands. Or wrong hands, as the case may be.

  And it doesn’t even have to be the magic rings and the enchanted swords and the world-breakers and the leftover ansible. Let the humans start mucking about with our people on a purely practical level and it still won’t end well.

  Hell, they could keep sirens in cages on whaling ships to call the whales in—fish-speakers to drive the king-of-herring’s subjects into the nets—and you don’t even want to know what they’ll do for mineral rights. Gold’s the least of it. There’s a place down around the edge of the cape where you can find diamonds the size of an eel’s skull. Pray the humans never find out about it.

  Plus, of course, there’s our women. No, not me. I’m not saying I’m not attractive, but at my age, I’m more interested in a good meal and a good nap. You find me a man who wants both those things, maybe with a conversation about the finer points of mantis shrimp breeding thrown in, then we’ll talk.

  But you have two cultures breaking against each other, it’s the young women who are going to come out the losers. Any two cultures. Pick two. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Some things don’t change.

  I’ve got nieces, you know.

  So yes, I did take the little fool’s voice. Her prince wasn’t going to find about us on my watch.

  (But Ursula, you say, she could just have written it all down! Taking her voice wouldn’t stop that! To which I say—did you ever meet her? It took her three tries to write her own name. Our contract was a verbal agreement because otherwise she’d still be reading it and the prince would be dead of old age.)

/>   Anyway I gave her voice to an albatross, if you must know. She was tired of endless gliding, had ambitions to be an opera singer. I made her dream come true.

  Made the poor fool of a mermaid’s dream come true too, for that matter. Gave her legs and brought her to the prince’s attention. That last was included free of charge and was never part of the original contract.

  It’s not my fault the prince wasn’t much interested. I imagine you meet a lot of beautiful women when you’re a prince.

  He wasn’t a bad sort, really. He was very polite. He could see she was a few grunions short of a run and he made sure they took good care of her.

  Good thing he was a decent sort. The kind of prince who sees a beautiful girl staggering along the beach, half-naked, unable to talk, with a scarred throat (look, nobody can fix gill slits all the way, I did my best and I’d like to see you do better) moving like she’s drunk and falling down a lot—anyway, the kind of prince who sees a girl like that and says “Oh yeah, I gotta get me some of that!”?

  Yeah, not a nice person. Probably bashes great auks over the head for fun. You don’t want to deal with a prince like that.

  (And yes, I would have stopped him. I don’t like to see creatures suffer, even stupid young ones in love. Maybe especially stupid young ones in love. He wouldn’t have gotten very far. I’ve got some very interesting stuff in the pantry and the King of Gulls owes me a favor.)

  Well, anyway.

  It was a long time ago now. Not by my standards—I’m more or less immortal, just like Great-Aunt Meryl—but by hers. The prince became the king in due time, and he married a smart, good-natured young woman who came with a dowry and a very expedient political alliance.

  But he didn’t forget the young woman on the beach. He was a good king. He took care of her. Even after he died, he made sure of it.

  The girl who used to be a mermaid is old now. She walks on the beach—very slowly these days, for the stones are small and turn underfoot—and she picks her way carefully. They send a strapping young man to walk beside her, to make sure she doesn’t fall.