Frogkisser!

  “Bah! It isn’t as bad as everyone makes out,” Gotfried scoffed. “I quite like being an owl.”

  “Better than being a frog,” said Anya as she went out the door.

  Finding a forked hazel twig presented no difficulty—Anya knew there were two hazel trees in the walled garden. The twigs were useful in a variety of magics, so her stepstepfather had taken pains to cultivate the trees, in the same way that he encouraged toadstools to grow on the wetter walls of the dungeon.

  She was sorting through some fallen branches looking for a piece that could be broken off when an enthusiastic wuffling noise announced the arrival of one of the younger royal dogs. Named Ardent, he was still growing into his very large paws and, though officially no longer a puppy, was not much beyond that stage. Consequently, he ran everywhere at full speed and talked too quickly.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “C-c-an I do-do-do it too?”

  He barked, of course, but Anya had no difficulty understanding him or any of the other royal dogs. They had considerable magic and if they wanted humans to understand them, then the humans did. It was a mark of their disdain if you only heard barks and growls, as was the case for Duke Rikard. Over time, with practice talking to the dogs, Anya had learned to understand some other animals as well, though she had never got far with fish or amphibians. They gargled their words too much for a human to comprehend their speech.

  “I am finding a stick,” said Anya, and regretted it even as she spoke. Stick was a very important word for dogs.

  “A stick!” enthused Ardent. “Th-th-row it! Throw it!”

  “Not now,” said Anya. “I need to make a dowsing rod to find Morven’s Denholm, who’s been turned into a frog.”

  “F-f-f-frog hunting! Frog hunting!” exclaimed Ardent, leaping around Anya in circles and wagging his tail.

  “No, not frog hunting. Frog finding. Ah, this will do.”

  She held up a stick that forked two-thirds of the way along. Ardent began to leap up at it, but managed to restrain himself, only skipping forward a little bit. He pretended that was what he had intended to do all the time and looked innocently up at Anya, his tongue lolling and his mouth in a grin.

  “Well done, Ardent,” said Anya, knowing how difficult it was for the young dog to restrain himself. He wanted to be involved in everything. “If you promise to behave and not to eat any frogs, you can come with me to find Denholm.”

  “I don’t eat frogs!” Ardent replied, instantly closing up on Anya’s heels.

  As they left the garden by what had once been a guarded and locked postern gate but was now just a hole in the wall, the dog added, “At least I don’t eat frogs too often. They don’t taste very nice.”

  “Better cooked,” confirmed Anya. The bank of the moat beyond the wall was muddy and sloped quite steeply, so she had to be careful not to slide in. The moat monster was loyal, like all the occupants of the castle except for Duke Rikard, but he was also very old, inordinately deaf, and rather blind. She didn’t want to get snapped up, become severely injured, and then have to sit through the monster’s tearful apologies as well. “Their legs anyway. Some of the villagers catch them here and cook them up.”

  “Mmmmm,” said Ardent. He liked cooked food. Also raw food and semicooked food, and things that might be food and so were worth chewing on for a while to make sure they weren’t food.

  Anya dipped the hazel stick in the moat. She supposed the flooded ditch would count as a pond. It was pretty stagnant and there were floating mats of what could only be pondweed. Quite a few frogs were lying on one nearby, taking it easy.

  “Denholm?” called out Anya, but there was no answer, and none of the frogs moved off their weed island. “Oh, I suppose it would be too easy if he just answered when I called. Come on, Ardent. Back to the library.”

  It was time for a spell.

  In the library, Gotfried had not gone owl. But he was perched on top of his desk over an open book, with his head craned forward oddly and his back arched.

  “Princess! I have found the spell. Here.”

  He spun the book around so Anya could read it. Ardent reared up and put his forepaws on the desk so he could read too. The royal dogs were very smart and Tanitha, the matriarch of them all, was strict about the pups learning to read.

  “Twine the hair around the pond-dipped branch … several minor words of power … ” Anya followed the instructions as she read. This wasn’t usually a good idea when casting spells. (You should always read all the way through first.) But she was in a hurry. Which is also not a good idea when casting spells. (Never be in a hurry. Being in a hurry makes things go wrong.)

  Fortunately, it was a simple spell. Anya did everything in the right order and spoke the words of power, familiar ones she had used before. She felt a tingling in her throat as she said them, and afterwards she sneezed a few times, which was quite normal. Magic demanded a price, be it a minor allergic reaction for a small spell or a complete freezing of all good human emotion for a big spell, which was what had happened to Duke Rikard.

  “I think that’s done it,” said Gotfried with satisfaction. “Look!”

  The hazel stick was moving in Anya’s hand, twisting towards the door and the moat.

  “Yoicks! Tallyho!” cried Ardent, launching himself out into the corridor. Anya heard his claws scrabbling on the flagstones as he stopped and turned himself around to wait for her to show him where to actually go.

  “You might need this,” said Gotfried, handing Anya his butterfly net. “It should be strong enough to hold a frog, but you’d better take a bucket as well.”

  Anya got a bucket from the kitchen on the way, the dowsing rod writhing and twisting in her hand in its eagerness to find the person whose hair was wound around it.

  “You don’t need a net or a bucket,” said Ardent. “I c-c-an hold a frog in my jaws. Like this.”

  He demonstrated by snapping at the leg of a kitchen stool, breaking it in half. Spitting out the broken pieces, he continued, “Not exactly like that. I mean more like—”

  “No,” said Anya firmly. “We’ll use the net and the bucket. You stay back and do not—I repeat, do not—even nose the frog. Any frog. Stay away from all the frogs.”

  “I c-c-ould do it.”

  “I know you could,” Anya soothed. “I just want to do it my way. All right?”

  Ardent mumbled something and spat out another small piece of wood. But he fell in behind Anya happily enough as she made her way back out through the walled garden and the hole in the wall to the moat. The dowsing rod was almost leaping from her hand, but it wasn’t until it nearly pulled her into the stagnant water Anya belatedly realized that of course she would have to go in. She didn’t mind swimming, but she didn’t want to swim in the weed-choked, slimy water of the moat.

  Kneeling down, she slapped the water with her left hand in a careful rhythm, one-two-slap-slap-slap, paused for several seconds, then repeated it.

  The frogs stopped moving around on the floating weed island, and a duck that was nearby quickly launched itself into the air as a vee of ripples disturbed it, the sign of something large moving under the water.

  “Moatie!” cried Ardent happily, wagging his tail.

  The ancient monster’s head rose out of the moat, water cascading off his long, scaly snout and spiky neck. His deep-set eyes glowed yellow like the hottest part of a candle flame. He looked extremely fearsome, an effect only slightly lessened when he opened his jaws to reveal a pink mouth and large square teeth more suitable for munching mounds of vegetable matter than rending flesh. They could still rend flesh if they had to, of course—hence only slightly less fearsome, because usually people expected really sharp teeth like those of a shark when they saw Moatie, and got a small and generally false sense of relief when they saw his square munchers.

  “Time to eat the Duke?” roared Moatie in a voice that could be heard throughout the castle, the closer villages, and even the forest, a mile away. Everyone could underst
and the monster because once upon a time he too had been human. The details of his transformation were lost in the mists of time. Gotfried believed Moatie had done it to himself on purpose.

  Moatie’s threat to eat Duke Rikard was one of the things that kept the sorcerer from behaving too badly towards the princesses, at least until such a time as his sorcery grew strong enough to deal with the creature. The moat monster was admittedly extremely ancient and slow-moving, but he was also about sixty feet long, armored from head to foot, resistant to magic, and could smash down any door in the castle and slither up or down any of the stairs.

  “No, not yet,” bawled Anya as loudly as she could, in an attempt to overcome Moatie’s deafness. “It’s me, Princess Anya. Would you mind carrying me around the moat to look for a frog?”

  She held up her dowsing rod close to his nearsighted eyes. The stick was twisting around, pointing at a clump of lilies about twenty yards to her right.

  “Anya. I wasn’t sure if it was you or Morven. Climb on.”

  “And me!” barked Ardent.

  “And the dog, of course,” said Moatie. “Which one are you?”

  “Ardent. Son of Jorum and Kithlin, daughter of Fango and Goldie, daughter of Smartnose, daughter of … well, lots more. All the way back to Tanitha.”

  “Ah,” said Moatie. “Come on, then, both of you.”

  He lowered his head and lifted up a ten-foot-long section of his neck, a broad expanse of scaly flesh. Anya climbed on carefully, balancing her bucket and butterfly net, with Ardent close behind. They found a nice flat area between some big bony plates and braced their feet.

  “Over to your left,” called out Anya, carefully watching where her dowsing rod was pointing. “Slowly, please!”

  The huge monster moved through the water so easily he hardly sent a ripple to the shore. The frogs on the pondweed island ahead watched him suspiciously, but did not jump off.

  “Even slower,” Anya requested. “Stop!”

  The dowsing rod was pointing directly at one particular rather-more-yellow-than-green frog who was sitting by itself, which was unusual, since the frogs generally clustered close together. Looking at it … him … Anya felt sure she could see a hint of Prince Denholm’s blond hair in the frog’s shiny skin.

  Holding on to one of the monster’s bony plates, Anya leaned down with the butterfly net and deftly scooped up the frog, before quickly transferring it, still in the net, into the bucket.

  “Back to shore, please, Moatie!” she ordered, quite satisfied with having found Prince Denholm so quickly. At the same time, she had to quell a nagging sense that it had been too easy.

  What if the Duke stepped in to make sure Prince Denholm stayed a frog? Sooner or later, the uneasy truce between Rikard and the princesses would be broken.

  Anya growled under her breath. Ardent growled too, and looked around for enemies to bite.

  The monster moved swiftly to the shore, sending up a wave that swamped all the pondweed islands and sent dozens of frogs croaking and complaining into the moat.

  Anya and Ardent disembarked by the hole in the garden wall. Anya patted Moatie near one huge nostril, being careful not to get too close in case he inhaled and sucked in her hand and arm. Cleaning moat-monster snot off yourself taught a young person caution, as Anya had learned when she was six. Ardent barked his thanks.

  “Tell me when to eat the Duke!” roared Moatie. “Don’t forget!”

  “I won’t,” promised Anya. “Thank you, Moatie.”

  She hurried through the garden, carefully holding the bucket with the net-wrapped frog. It wouldn’t do if Denholm jumped out somewhere along the way. Ardent followed close at her heels, pausing only to sniff at an upside-down bug scrabbling about on the foot of the private stairs to Morven’s chambers.

  Anya had expected Morven still to be at least sobbing on her lounge, if not caterwauling on the carpet, so she was surprised to see her sister sitting by the tall window, looking radiant and cheerful. The explanation for this could be found in the song coming through the window. Someone was singing outside, a truly transcendent male voice delivering the familiar tune of “Loved I Not a Shepherdess Who Proved to Be a Princess Hiding among the Sheep.”

  Morven’s favorite song.

  Anya’s eyes narrowed. Morven was not known for the steadfast nature of her relationships, but transferring her affections to a new prince this soon would be a record, even for her.

  “Who’s that singing?” Anya asked casually.

  “I know not.” Morven sighed, placing the back of her hand against her forehead and miming a bit of a swoon. “He is incognito, but by the purity of his voice and the two cloth-of-gold-garbed servants who are holding the music, he must be a prince.”

  “Well, forget about the new prince for a moment,” said Anya sternly. She pulled the net out of the bucket and extracted the frog, holding it tightly in both hands. It croaked dismally and its back legs kicked in an effort to get away. “You’ve got to kiss Denholm!”

  Morven made a gagging noise and looked away.

  “I’m not kissing that!”

  “Just shut your eyes and pretend to be kissing Denholm,” said Anya, holding the frog closer. It kicked even more strongly, as if it objected to being kissed as well.

  “I’m not kissing a frog!” screamed Morven. She turned determinedly to the open window and waved her hand. The singing got louder and more extravagantly phrased, with a couple of fluid trills as the prince below showed off his marvelous voice.

  “You are such a selfish beast,” said Anya, but she knew it was no use. Not for the first time, she wondered if perhaps it might be better to let Duke Rikard take over the kingdom after all. Morven would be such a terrible queen. But Rikard would be even worse, and he would never leave them both alive … or at least untransformed.

  Morven ignored Anya, and continued smiling and waving.

  “Now what do I do with you?” Anya asked the frog.

  “Blee-blup,” replied the struggling frog, which wasn’t much help.

  “Gotfried might know some other way to return you to your natural form,” said Anya with a sigh. “Come on, Ardent.”

  Back in the library, Gotfried was whittling away at the door of the cupboard where he liked to sleep when in owl shape, making a large hole in the middle so he could fly out more easily.

  “Morven won’t kiss the frog,” Anya announced. “Is there some other way to turn Denholm back into a man?”

  “What? Won’t kiss him?” asked Gotfried. He shook his head. “Princesses these days … ”

  “Some princesses,” Anya corrected. “Is there another way to turn him back?”

  “Yes, yes,” mumbled Gotfried. He looked up at the ceiling and then across the shelves. “True love is the best dissolving agent for such spells, but there are other ways. Now, I did have a little pot of lip balm somewhere—”

  “Gotfried! I really want to get this sorted out so I can go back to my reading,” said Anya impatiently. “Why do you want lip balm anyway?”

  “Oh, it’s not for me,” said Gotfried. He looked along the tall shelves again. “I seem to remember I flew with it somewhere … ”

  “Forget the lip balm! How can I transform Denholm back again?”

  “Ah, but that’s what the lip balm is for. It’s Transmogrification Reversal Lip Balm. Almost anyone can put it on and then kiss the transformee, and it works just as if … well, almost as well as if there was true love involved.”

  “Really?” asked Anya. “It’s that easy? And you’ve got some of this lip balm?”

  “Oh, it’s not easy, nor a simple mixture,” said Gotfried. “It took me years to make a small jar. The ingredients are very hard to come by. The base is witches’ tears, for example. It is extraordinarily difficult to get those, witches being what they are. But I like to have some on hand, in case of … ahem … difficulties in my own situation.”

  “It’s probably in your secret hiding place,” said Ardent. His legs went completel
y stiff and he stretched his neck out to point with his nose towards a dark corner of the library.

  “What’s that?” asked Gotfried nervously. A pattern of owl feathers shimmered across his face and he began to crouch.

  “Not now,” ordered Anya. “Get a grip on yourself!”

  “Your secret hiding place,” repeated Ardent. “Behind the reading chair.”

  “It’s meant to be secret,” hissed Gotfried.

  “Just go and get the lip balm, please,” said Anya impatiently. “We’ll look the other way.”

  She turned about and grabbed Ardent’s collar, dragging the dog’s head away as well. He struggled for a moment, but obeyed when she scratched his ears.

  Gotfried stalked over to his secret corner and made furniture-moving and rummaging noises before returning with a small bronze pot. Unscrewing the lid, he held it out to Anya. She saw a very small amount of rather dried-up looking orangey-yellow balm inside.

  “Pawpaw flavor,” said Gotfried. “It has quite a pleasant taste.”

  “Pawpaw!” exclaimed Ardent indignantly. “You make it out of paws!”

  “No, no, Ardent,” Anya explained. “Pawpaw is a tropical fruit. I’ve only read about them, though. I’ve never seen one.”

  “Help yourself,” said Gotfried, proffering the pot. “Smear it across your lips and then kiss the frog.”

  “Hmm.” Anya looked at the dried-up lip balm and then at the admittedly quite slimy frog. “Perhaps you should do it, Gotfried.”

  “It will work much better for a princess,” said Gotfried.

  Anya sighed. Everything seemed to work much better if a princess was involved, provided that princess was her. Every difficult task in the castle ultimately descended upon her shoulders. Like the cellar records, which Steward Hogar had got into a fearful muddle. It had taken Anya weeks to sort them out, in the process finding forty-eight dozen lost bottles of wine.

  Luckily, she was equal to every task, but sometimes she wished someone else could share the work. It wasn’t easy looking after a useless older sister, combatting an evil sorcerer’s plots, and trying to get a magical education all at the same time.