CHAPTER SIX

The

Gray Valley

Once upon a time, a boy named Jack, a girl named Jill, and a frog named Frog stumbled through high mountains and rocky valleys in a land very far away from the kingdom of Märchen. They were tired; they were hungry; they were thirsty; and they were sick to death of walking.

The sky was as gray as the loose stones that lay on the sides of the mountains, which was as gray as the sodden sod in the shallow valleys. The wind blew cold and wet, and would have been gray, too, if wind had a color.

At last, Jack, Jill, and the frog collapsed on their backs on a wide, smooth stone, and wondered if they were dead yet.

“So hungry,” Jill moaned.

“So thirsty,” Jack groaned.

“So worried,” said the frog. “I hope we don’t starve to death.”

“Yes,” said Jill, “not starving to death would be nice.”

“So would not thirsting to death,” said Jack.

“Thirsting isn’t even a word,” said Jill.

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the word?”

“I don’t know. Dying of thirst.”

“You can starve to death. Why can’t you thirst to death?”

“I don’t know. You just can’t.”

“Oh.”

This is, of course, the kind of inane conversation that occurs when people are slowly losing their minds.

Through it, the frog was staring up at the sky, as he used to do when he lived in his well. For not the first time in that frog’s long life, he was wishing he were back in it, salamanders and all. He could hear them now: “What is smelly?” “When is smelly?” “Why is smelly?” “Who is smelly?” “Am I smelly?” “Who’s smellier, me or Fred? Is it me? It’s me, right? Me?” He sort of missed them.

“Frog, I have a question,” said Jack, who was now lying on his back, staring at the sky.

“Shoot.”

“How do you talk?”

Jill looked over at Jack, and then at the frog. “Yeah,” she said.

The frog sighed. He purposely did not look at Jill. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Okay,” said Jack.

“Okay,” said Jill.

“Okay what?” said the frog.

“Okay, tell us the story,” Jack answered.

The frog thought about it for a minute. He continued to purposely not look at Jill. And then, at last, he said, “All right...”

So the frog told them the story of how he came to talk. He started with the very smelly well, moved on to the very annoying salamanders, then described the princess with her ball, and so on, all the way through him trailing his froggy blood after him, all the way back to his well.

When he’d finished, Jack said. “That’s a good story.”

“Thank you,” said the frog.

“My favorite part was when your leg got eaten by the weasel,” Jack added.

The frog did not thank him again.

But Jill was silent. She stared into the great gray sky. After a long time, she said, “I think that was my mother.”

The frog watched her. Jill said nothing more. But the frog could tell she was thinking. Thinking hard.

The frog glanced up. Three black specks had appeared through the heavy cloud. He watched them as the specks grew into dots, and the dots into blots, and the blots into splotches, and the splotches into birds, and the birds, at last, into ravens.

The frog catapulted himself out of Jack’s pocket and dove for a dark crevice beneath a stone. Jack and Jill gazed at him like he was crazy. Then they heard the wings.

They looked up in time to see three black shapes fluttering down and landing on the stone beside them. The children stared. Three large and stately ravens shook their plumage and stood, dark and imperious, before them.

A vague sense of dread took hold of the children.

“What do you think they want?” Jack whispered.

“I know what they want,” Jill whispered back. “They’re scavengers. They’re here to eat us after we die.”

“What?” cried one of the ravens.

Jill toppled over backward.

Jack ducked as if something were about to strike him in the head.

“What did she just say we were going to do?” demanded another raven.

Jack’s eyes were spread wide. Jill’s head tilted wonderingly off to one side.

“They said we were going to eat their corpses,” the third raven replied.

“That is the most repulsive thing I have heard in many, many years,” declared the first.

“Did that raven just talk?” Jill hissed at Jack.

“I think they all did,” he whispered back.

“Why are you whispering?” whispered the second raven. “We can hear, too, you know.”

Jack and Jill silently wondered if they were hallucinating.

“Really, I’m not sure why you’re so surprised,” said the third raven. “You travel with a talking frog.”

“Speaking of whom . . .” said the second. The frog was still trying to fit in the crevice between the rock and the ground. Really, he was not slim enough and just didn’t seem to want to admit it.

“What is he doing?” asked the third.

“I imagine he’s afraid of us,” said the first. “We do eat frogs.”

The frog’s three legs kicked and scrabbled with renewed energy at the dirt beneath the stone. Jack reached out and scooped him up and put him in his pocket.

“You can’t eat him,” he said, glaring at the ravens.

“Don’t even think about it!” added Jill fiercely. And then, a little less fiercely, she said, “And how did you know he can talk?”

“We know things,” said the first raven.

“Yes,” said the second, “It’s sort of what we do.”

Jill, crinkling up her nose, asked, “Like what kinds of things?”

“We know that you are Jack and Jill,” said the third raven.

“And that you are hungry and thirsty and lost,” said the second.

“And that you seek the Seeing Glass,” finished the first.

The frog poked a single eye out of Jack’s pocket. “Do they know where it is?” he hissed.

“Do you know where it is?” Jack relayed to the ravens.

“Yeah, we heard him,” said the second raven.

“We know where it is—” began the first.

“Where?”

“But we’re not telling,” concluded the third.

“What?!” Jack shouted. “Why not?”

“Because the Seeing Glass,” said the second raven, “is not really what you seek.”

No one spoke for a moment. The wind howled over the slick rocks and gray hills.

And then Jill said, “Yes it is. If we don’t find it, we die.”

The wind howled for another moment, and then the second raven said, “Right. I suppose that’s true.”

“But, dear children, you are con-fused,” said the third raven.

“Absolutely,” said the second.

“Totally,” said the first.

Jill said, “If you’d just met three talking ravens, wouldn’t you be?”

“Not really,” said the third talking raven.

But the first raven said, “Not confused. You are con-fused.”

Jack furrowed his brow. “What’s the difference?”

“We’re glad you asked,” replied the second raven.

And the third added, “Though we knew you would.”

“When you’re confused,” said the second raven, “you’re mixed up, right?”

“Right,” said Jack.

“Well, con-fuse means fused together, mixed with something—or someone—else.” The second raven paused significantly.

After a moment, Jill said, “I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The first raven took over: “You, dear children, are con-fused. What you want, what you think, what you believe, all get mixed up with what other people want for you, or think you should want, or believe about you. Do you see?”

Both Jack and Jill nodded their heads and said, “No.”

The third raven took over. “Jill, you are con-fused with your mother. You think she is perfect, and that everything she does is good, and that you should be just like her and do just what she wants you to do. Right?”

Jill’s mouth grew tight and small. She shrugged.

“Did you see the silk?”

Shrug.

“Did you really think you’d look beautiful in it? Before your mother said you would?”

Shrug.

The third raven turned to Jack. “Jack, why did you trade your cow for a bean?”

Jack looked up at the raven heavily. He, too, shrugged.

“Did you think it was a good deal before Marie said it was?”

Shrug.

“When is the last time you disagreed with something the boys from the village said or did?”

Shrug.

“Children!” the third raven exclaimed, exasperated now, “You are con-fused. Totally, utterly con-fused. As long as you are, you will never find what you seek. Even though it’s right here.”

Jack scrunched up his face and looked all around him.

Jill looked down at herself and then back up the ravens.

“When you do what you want, not what you wish . . .” said the first raven.

“When you no longer seek your reflection in others’ eyes . . .” said the second.

“When you see yourselves face to face . . .” said the third.

“Then,” the ravens intoned in unison, “you will have found what you truly seek.”

Jack and Jill glanced at each other.

Jill said, “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

“No idea,” Jack replied.

They turned to ask for further explanation, but the three black forms were already whirling high into the air. The two children, and the frog, watched as the ravens shrank and shrank against the immense gray sky, until, finally, three black specks disappeared into the clouds.

“That was weird,” said Jill.

“Yeah,” said Jack.

After a moment, the frog asked, “What should we do now?”

Jill said, “I don’t know, but I am thirsting to death.”

Jack agreed. “And I’m about to die of starve.”