You’ve met Tony Rath, now here’s his other half, Tina. Tina has been selling stories for nearly thirty years, including a poem that was published on a bus in Hackney! Please don’t ask why. She is noted for her knowledge of vampires in fact and fiction, though the following story has shapechanging of another kind. When I started this anthology I made up my mind I wasn’t going to have any more stories on the theme of the Frog Prince. Not one. Not even half of one. Well, maybe a bit. But this is different.
“This is going to be a very difficult letter. You see, I don’t really know where to start, or even who to address. Dear everyone, I suppose. Well, then – Dear everyone – I’m really sorry. No, truly I am. I know you did your best for me, and don’t think that I’m not grateful. You stood by me when the tabloids mounted that campaign suggesting that I’d left eight hundred fatherless tadpoles in the Well at the World’s End, and you said that DNA tests wouldn’t be necessary to disprove the allegations, although I was perfectly willing to—”
The prince sat back for a moment, staring down at the thick, marbled paper. And was that because they really did trust me, he wondered, or because they were afraid the tests might show that those tadpoles were my offspring? After all, I was in that well for a hundred years, and a frog can get pretty lonely – am I sure even now that those tests would have put me in the clear? He sighed, and started to write again.
“And when that cable channel wheeled out Sir Mortimer Groaning, the pop-genealogist, who said that in spite of my having clearly undergone a successful transformation there was always a chance that I would introduce frog genes into the royal bloodline, you came right out there, fighting for me—”
Although perhaps it might have been done with more, well, sensitivity. He remembered his then future father-in-law shouting at his fainting then future mother-in-law, who’d had a preview of the tapes.
“For Heaven’s sake, woman! Look at your own family, I mean look at them with an unprejudiced eye, and tell me that most of them wouldn’t be improved by the addition of a few frog genes. I mean to say, frog genes aren’t the worst thing in your blood-line, if you’ll allow me to remind you of it. Look at your aunt Ethelburga. I know your family always told everyone that she was rescued by young Siegefried from that dragon just in the nick of time, but I’m not so sure of that. Oh, I know, they arranged a quick marriage, because of course it was love at first sight, they said, and then a good long honeymoon to allow them both to recover from their ordeal, and lo and behold they come back from a year in the wilds of Ruritania with those triplets. Well, they could be Siegefried’s, I suppose, he was no oil painting, but I do have to say that Franz and Ernst are the only young men of my acquaintance who have never needed to borrow a cigar lighter. And that girl, Ethelinda, she’s got scales! Iridescent green scales! – Not unattractive, in an odd sort of way,” he added thoughtfully.
His then future mother-in-law muttered something into her sodden handkerchief.
“Yes, madam, I do know that your mutual great-grandmother was a mermaid, but it seems very odd to me that scales haven’t come out in any other part of the family. And you are not going to tell me, I hope, that she was also a fire-breathing mermaid!”
The prince smiled wryly. His now never-to-be father-in-law had not really liked him any more than the rest of the family had. But he loved his daughter and the circumstances of his transformation had been, well, even in this day and age, just a tad unfortunate. The old man might even have been grateful that he was so anxious to go through with the wedding. There can be few fathers who react with delight when they discover that their only daughter’s pet frog has turned into a young man overnight, especially when she has chosen to keep him in her bedroom . . . Not that the princess had seemed to mind at the time . . . but he mustn’t think about her. He went back to his letter:
“In fact, you all did your best to make me welcome and I know that it’s my fault that I just didn’t fit in. I did my best too, but I’m afraid that a hundred years in the well at the World’s End hasn’t really fitted me for a life in the spotlight. There always seems to be so much to do here—”
Always, he thought, an abattoir to open, or some provincial mayor to engage in stilted conversation, or some deadly dull state function to attend. But he might have been able to put up with it all, even the mayors and the abattoirs if – but when he’d seen her stricken face tonight – it was tonight’s banquet that had finally finished him, of course.
“—And I’ve come to believe that I’m just not the right person to do it. It wasn’t really the incident tonight. That was no one’s fault, and I’m sure—”
Well, it was someone’s fault, actually. He’d seen Franz and Ernst, sniggering in those long moustaches they wore to conceal their ever-so-slightly non-human dentition, just before the man-servant had lifted the lid on the dish he was presenting to him to reveal – frog’s legs! He couldn’t help it. He’d rushed from the table, and later sent a message that he was too ill to join the rest of the family at the grand ball. And then he’d locked his bedroom door, and, in fear and hope, he’d sat on his bed and dialled a certain number. Would she be in? Would she, after all this time, still be alive? And if in and alive, would she be willing to help?
He tried to remember the exact circumstances of his transfrogmification. Everyone – even the tabloids and the satellite channels – had assumed that it was a christening curse: some bad-tempered old bat whose invitation had gone astray in the post had turned up at the ceremony anyway and given the baby webbed feet. It happened every day. Well, every hundred years, and mostly in royal circles but it did happen. The trouble was, he didn’t think it had been quite like that. A hundred years is a long time, but he had a feeling that it had been more – personal. And that she hadn’t been an old hag at all . . . the phone was still ringing. She wasn’t going to be there . . . and then someone picked up the receiver at the other end of the line.
“Had enough, have you, then?” she had asked in that achingly familiar voice, even before he told her who was speaking. “Thought you might. Well, I can transform you into a frog again, but that’ll be it. A frog you’ll be and a frog you’ll stay. No more disenchantments for you, my lad.”
“That’s just what I want,” he said.
“Quite sure?”
“Quite sure,” he echoed desolately.
“All right, then. Here’s what you do—”
He looked at his letter. It already said too much, and at the same time not nearly enough. Abruptly he picked up his pen and scrawled:
“Sorry again. Love you all. Don’t try to find me. Goodbye.”
Then he went out onto his balcony. It was an easy jump to the garden, particularly for him. He was very good at jumping. Following the witch’s instructions, he moved quietly over the dew-wet lawn. The Well moved about a bit, and just now he had been promised it would be at the end of the gardens. He thought, as he had found himself doing so often recently, of his years in the well. It was astonishing how much time you could spend watching cloud shadows on water. And leaves. It was true, that old saying that no two leaves are alike. And of course there were more exciting times: fierce crystal days of frost when the edges of the Well crisped into ice, and, almost best of all, those long still evenings at the end of a hot day, when the upper part of the Well water was almost the same temperature as the cooling air, and you could lie on a lily leaf, not sure if you were in water or sky . . . For a moment he hesitated, gazing back at the darkened palace – thinking how much he had wished he could show his princess just how wonderful his Well had been – and then a rustle in the bushes jerked him back to the present. He rather hoped it was Franz or Ernst. No one was going to stop him now, and he would much prefer to clobber either or both of those gentlemen than an innocent palace guard.
But then a bright head emerged from the undergrowth, followed by a pair of pale shoulders and a white satin dress.
“Where are you going?” hissed his betrothed.
“I’m going back to the Well,” he said desperately. “I must. It would never have worked—”
“It won’t work here,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
“What!”
“You want to be a frog, I’ll be a frog. That’s what marriage is about, after all.”
“But the kingdom—”
“Let Franz and Ernst fight over it if they want it. If anyone will let them, after the scandal.”
“What scandal?” he asked.
“The scandal that is going to break in tomorrow’s papers. You see, Aunt Ethelburga’s dragon had a mate. She was brooding her eggs at the time, which perhaps accounted for the thing with Aunt Ethelburga, and in spite of the trauma she managed to hatch them all. Two boys and a girl. Apparently this is what dragons usually produce. The boys don’t want to talk, they’re willing to let bygones be etc, typical male, but the girl will. She is, she claims, Franz and Ernst’s half-sister. And she’ll take a blood test to prove it. And she’ll do topless pix if the price is right.”
“Topless?” he said blankly.
“Dragons,” she said, “are rather unusual. They hatch their young out of eggs, but they also suckle them. And this young female is quite – sinuous. I understand that she has six outstanding reasons for appearing on page three in one of our most popular tabloids.”
“Six?”
“Six. Dragons have six.”
“Does Ethelinda—?”
“No one knows – but she’s never appeared in public wearing a bikini – of course, that could be because of the scales.”
“How did you find out about – all this?”
“We’ve always known, but until tonight I was ready to go along with the family cover-up. Until I saw your face when he took the cover off that dish.”
“But – I thought when I looked at you that you’d given up on me.”
“No. I’d given up on them.”
He whistled softly. “Are you sure you want to be a frog? I mean, the Well at the World’s End can be very quiet—”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’ve burned my boats, really. I want to spend a hundred years watching cloud shadows.”
“I never thought you were listening when I told you about them.”
“I was listening, all right. What do we have to do?”
“The witch said: Follow the Silver Road across the lawn.”
“Silver Road?”
“Snail trails,” he said prosaically. “They’ll lead us to the Well, and by the time we get there—”
“We’ll have changed.” She hauled up her satin skirts and led the way, peering at the grass for snail tracks. He followed her, completely taken aback by this turn of events. As they walked towards the Well the sky began to lighten. The tiny trails of snail slime glowed, glittered and expanded. They really were following a Silver Road. And as the witch had promised, the Change began to happen. His horrible dry skin became cool and delicious, another whole organ of sensation: he could feel the freshening morning air, and the sweetness of the dewy grass in every exquisite inch of it; his clumsy feet and hands became delicate webbed paws – he hopped free of his banqueting clothes and glanced nervously towards his betrothed. Her dress lay on the grass, and the most beautiful lady frog he had ever seen was negligently disengaging herself from a pearl necklace.
“Do I look all right?” she asked shyly.
“You look – wonderful.” He kissed her emerald snout, and paw in webby paw they scurried towards the Well, reaching the kerb just as the sun rose. They dived into its wonderful, cool mysterious depths – and vanished for ever from mortal sight.
To live, happy for ever ever after.