Spitting out gray threads, still tasting the fabric, Imogene once more started:
“Lord Stoc—”
Bertie raised the pole higher and swung again. On this second try, he got the correct elevation. But went too far. She once more bounced off fabric, this time beyond the so-called window.
The opening of the feathered pouch had shifted sideways, even with her holding on, so that half her face was covered.
Speaking through clenched lips—clenched partly because of annoyance, partly because her little frog stomach was threatening to eject all the flies she’d eaten that day—Imogene said:
“Lord Stoc—”
Somebody toward the front of the audience shouted out: “In truth, look between the stones of the tower! I do believe I can actually see Death’s hand coming for that ill-fated king! And yon poor crow’s developed a stutter as well as lost a wing!”
Bertie jerked his arm back out of view—which, of course, sent Imogene soaring even farther from the window, and from the shaken-loose pheasant feather that was meant to pass for a crow wing but was now fluttering earthward.
Enough was enough. Imogene determined to wait until Bertie landed her correctly on the sill of the opening before she’d recite her lines. She was too dizzy to count on remembering them, anyway.
Ned must have decided that the gap needed filling—or that the audience needed reminding of his last line. He had just repeated, “Hark!” when Bertie’s improving aim but overly zealous swing sent Imogene through the window opening, hard and fast, directly at Ned’s nose. He took a quick step backwards to avoid a faceful of crow-costumed frog, but he had the presence of mind to catch hold of the strings that attached Imogene to the pole so that she dangled, like a snagged mackerel—almost the exact opposite of crow-like—from his fist. He managed to get out, “What dark-omened portent can this be?” before the pole, ripped from Bertie’s hand, clattered to the cobblestones of the town square.
There was a moment of stunned silence, during which several more of Imogene’s feathers wafted ground-ward.
The silence lasted only until Bertie, off balance, crashed through the scenery.
Though Imogene had not seen her before, she recognized Luella’s voice from the audience. Luella, who had stayed after all. She would have made a good actor, Imogene thought, for her voice certainly carried: “Oh look! It’s the lovely Queen Orelia. Floating like. Dancing. Up by the castle window. It’s a miracle!”
The audience whooped and clapped, any mood of heroic drama gone.
And that was before Bertie, still staggering, stepped on his dragging hem and ripped the entire skirt portion off his dress.
And before—trying to keep from falling—he grabbed hold of the scaffolding. And pulled it down with him.
The play was over, and none of the actors even bothered to pass the hat.
Chapter 11:
A Princess Watches Out for Others
(Though sometimes others need to watch out for a princess)
Ned handed Imogene, still dangling from the strings attached to her costume, to one of the town lads who had been helping to move the scenery scaffolding. Since that piece of equipment would need quite a bit of reassembling even if it was ever to be workable again, the young man might have had grounds to declare his term of employment as having ended; but he agreed to bring her back to the cart and to put her in the cauldron full of water while Ned tried to salvage what he could of the acting troupe’s reputation.
The young man carried her, stepping over bits of debris from the scaffolding, and dodging the overripe fruits and vegetables that some from the town were beginning to throw at the stage area. Still encased in her costume/sack, Imogene kicked her back legs, trying to work her way up and out through the opening that was gathered around her face. She had just gotten one front leg free when the man tossed her into the water.
The little sack immediately soaked up enough water that it became too heavy to float. Imogene, still mostly encased in wool and feathers, was dragged down to the bottom.
All right, she thought, lesson learned: So apparently there are worse things in the world than flying.
She continued to kick and struggle to get free of the costume, but that did nothing to make her more buoyant and only used up the little bit of air she had in her lungs.
The worst part was that she suspected the lad hadn’t done this out of malice; he just wasn’t all that bright. It would never have occurred to him to wonder if a frog dressed like a crow might have trouble keeping afloat.
It was bad enough that she was going to die while still in frog form. But to die as a frog, by drowning, in a crow costume—this was downright embarrassing. It was little consolation that nobody she cared for would ever know.
But just at the moment her froggy lungs protested they could hold her breath no longer, just as she was about to inhale water, a hand reached under her and pulled her soggy self up to the surface. Imogene expected to see the town lad, having realized his mistake and feeling repentant for it. Instead, there stood Luella.
With the mark of true friendship, Luella never commented on the hacking, retching noises Imogene was making, nor complained about the water Imogene coughed up onto her hand. Instead, she only observed, “That’s one pitiful costume.”
“Absolutely,” Imogene managed to gasp out once she was done gagging.
Luella disentangled Imogene from the dripping mass of yarn and feathers. “Still want to go home?” she asked.
And once more Imogene answered, “Absolutely.”
Luella tossed both Imogene’s crow costume and her own fake sapphire necklace into the cauldron that had formerly been Imogene’s home-away-from-home. Then she fetched the pail in which she and Bertie had originally carried Imogene. Although it had been cast aside in the back of the actors’ cart, its size and its handle made it portable. She filled it with fresh water, then asked Imogene, “Pail or shoulder?”
“Wait,” Imogene said. “Let me think.”
She was aware that not many people would be willing to let a frog do their thinking for them and counted herself fortunate that Luella was one of them.
“Shoulder for now,” Imogene said. “Which way toward home?”
“West,” Luella answered, and she took a step in that direction.
Imogene nodded. “All right. So, what we want to do is make sure people see us heading west.”
“Toward home,” Luella agreed, also nodding. Then she asked, “Why do we want people to see us?”
“So that they’ll tell Ned.”
Luella was concentrating so hard she got squinty-eyed. Either that, or she didn’t consider this a good plan but didn’t want to say so.
On the other hand, Imogene really didn’t think Luella could make up her mind that fast. So Imogene explained, “Except that as soon as we’re out of town, we’ll circle around to the east, heading away from home.”
Luella thought about this for a few moments before finally saying, “Which will probably make getting home take longer.” But she had caught on, for she finished, “So, Ned and Bertie and them’ll assume we’ve gone home and check that way first and not be able to find us, because we won’t be going that way until after we figure they’ve given up. I had a boyfriend did something like that once when my Da suspected we’d been kissing in the barn and went after him.”
Imogene thought, Of course you did, but only said, “Right.”
And that was how Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington left the acting life behind and started off home by intentionally heading in entirely the wrong direction.
The rain began soon after they left the town of Balton Keep behind, before they veered off to the east. Then the northeast. Then the east again. Zigzagging. At first, Imogene was pleased, thinking that the hard, steady rain would wash away any tracks of their passing, making finding them harder. If anyone wanted to find them. One moment she was sure that Ned would pursue her relentlessly, the next—remembering the broken scaffolding and the
foodstuffs the townsfolk had thrown—she wondered if he might not consider the troupe better off without her.
A full day of constant, bone-chilling rain was more than enough, even for a frog who’d spent her first few days worried about becoming too dry. Being wet was nice; getting pelted by raindrops became tiresome. And with the sun hiding deep behind clouds, not only was it sometimes difficult to keep their directions straight, but also there was no way for a cold-blooded frog to get warm, making her drowsy and sluggish, with no energy to keep up with Luella’s constant complaining—most of which had to do with how unattractive wet hair looked.
No hair to fret about was perhaps the single advantage Imogene could come up with in being a frog.
They didn’t dare stop moving, and they avoided people so that—in case Ned did come around asking—there would be no one to say, “Ah, yes! Girl and frog. We saw them yesterday.” This meant that they slept outdoors, under the not very rain-proof shelter of some bushes in the woods.
Imogene had more than enough to eat as her frog instincts directed her to all the best places to find bugs hiding out from the rain. Luella had gathered up a few of the more solid vegetables that had been thrown stage-ward in the closing moments of the play, but they were quickly decomposing, and the damp certainly didn’t help.
Finally, the second full day, the sun came out. Yay! Except that then everything was hot and steamy. Including Luella’s clothing. Which—despite being wet for the past day and a half—could not in any sense be considered washed nor smelling fresh. And apparently humidity was even worse than downright wet as far as Luella’s hair was concerned.
What troubled Imogene more was that Luella had developed a sniffle. Imogene wasn’t sure if that was from catching a chill that would develop into something worse, or if it was from homesickness. As for herself, Imogene was missing her own family more than she would have ever thought possible: her standoffish mother, her sometimes silly father, her often pesty brother, the regularly scheduled lessons and chores and social obligations that had used to seem such a bother.
“I think,” she told Luella—who, if she wasn’t ill already, was definitely on the verge of it, as well as being hungry, worn out, and heartsick—“that we must have put enough distance between ourselves and pursuit.”
“All right.” Luella didn’t even have the energy to sound particularly pleased at the news. “Does that mean we should turn back now?”
“I think,” Imogene stressed, “that it means we can stop hiding from people. Or, at least, you can. A girl alone will stand out less than a girl and a frog together. Even if the frog isn’t talking.”
Of course, Imogene reflected, even with wet hair, a girl as pretty as Luella was going to stand out, with or without a frog.
In the days and nights that they had spent together, they had not discussed the past. Still, while Luella never actually said that she had come to believe Imogene was a princess, she no longer called her “Froggy,” and she no longer asked what China was like. The closest she came to admitting that she had been mistaken to trust Bertie was to say, in the middle of nothing, “I think I’m going to swear off men.”
Well, Imogene thought, someone like Bertie will do that to a girl.
In any case, now Luella only asked, “You won’t be talking?”
“I won’t be with you,” Imogene said. “What you should do is go up to one of these farmhouses and offer to do some light work for your keep today—for better food than that one moldy turnip you have left, and for a dry bed. I’ll be fine waiting outside, and I can rejoin you tomorrow morning, when we’ll turn toward home.”
Luella looked at Imogene long and hard. Long enough for Imogene to grow uneasy. Until finally Luella asked, “You’re not planning on leaving without me, are you? Abandoning me?”
It surprised Imogene that the thing she herself was most afraid of turned out to be exactly what Luella was anxious over. “No. I’ll be here. I’ll wait.” She didn’t ask, How’s an inexperienced frog ever going to find her way home all on her own? But she did wonder how Luella viewed the situation, what her fears were.
Luella found an elderly couple who needed help because just that morning the wife had twisted her ankle and fallen—arms outstretched to break her fall—into the hearth in their kitchen. Fortunately, the twist, the burn, and the bruising were not so severe as they could have been, but the woman was willing to let Luella eat and spend the night, if Luella agreed to prepare the meals, make the beds, do the washing, tend the chickens, milk the goat, bake the bread, collect and hang to dry the herbs from the garden, fix the leaky thatch, and do all the other day-to-day chores that could not stop just because the farm wife was feeling poorly.
“Sounds perfect,” Imogene said.
Luella placed Imogene’s bucket where it was unlikely to be noticed or kicked over: behind the house, in the shadow between the wall and the water barrel that stood by the back door. Still, just to be safe, Imogene’s day consisted of ducking underwater whenever a member of the family happened out the back door. In between that were swims, hops, finding bugs, wondering how she would ever shed her froghood, worrying that she would never shed her froghood, missing her family, worrying about her family, wondering if it would be better for her family if she didn’t return to them—not if she couldn’t go back to her true form—and chatting with Luella every time Luella came out to fetch water.
“The woman is nice,” Luella told Imogene. “Very sweet.”
“That’s good,” Imogene said.
“The husband,” Luella explained, “is busy working his field.”
“I understand,” Imogene said. “The growing season doesn’t stop for household emergencies. Besides, most men are so incompetent in the kitchen, he’d probably be more hindrance than help.”
“And the son,” Luella finished, “has just returned home after serving in the king’s army, and he ain’t decided yet how he’ll seek his fortune; but—as you say—men are generally no good in the kitchen, anyway.”
“Son?” Imogene echoed. “What son?”
Luella rolled her eyes. “The one who just returned home after serving in the king’s army. He’s much too clever to settle for being a farmer like his Da, but he don’t know yet what he wants to do with his life. He’s really smart, Imogene. He’s sure to be good at something that will gain him fame and riches.”
Imogene was ready to knock her little green head against the rock in her pail. “Just as a guess,” she said, “does this son happen to be good-looking?”
Luella, who had appeared so pasty and drawn such a short while ago, flushed and smiled shyly and said, “Why, yes. I suppose he is.”
“I thought you’d given up on men,” Imogene reminded her. “Men like, for example, Bertie?”
“I have,” Luella assured her. But she fluffed her hair as she said it. “I need to go back in now to check the kettle I left on the fire.”
Imogene tried to console herself. How much trouble could Luella get into in one day?
But the following morning, Luella announced that the woman was feeling even stiffer than before, and that she’d asked Luella to stay on for a bit.
It was pretty boring for Imogene for one day.
Very boring for two days.
Mind-numbingly boring for three.
Especially with the suspicion that the woman wasn’t the main reason Luella wanted to extend her stay—suspicion strengthened by the fact that Luella made fewer and fewer trips to the rain barrel, and shorter ones, and always seemed in a rush to get back into the house. The house from which Imogene seemed to be hearing a lot of laughter and good cheer.
Imogene started to wonder if there was any time limit to the froggifying spell beyond which she would no longer be able to turn back to human but would be bound into frog shape forever. There was no real reason to believe so. However, neither was there a strong reason to believe not. Did it mean anything that the old witch responsible for this whole mess hadn’t said anything about a need
to either rush or be doomed?
Imogene thought back. And decided that, with the old witch, one couldn’t assume anything.
I could, she thought, kiss someone, anyone, for just a bit. Trade places for maybe a few hours.
A day at the most.
Only until I get back home.
Then I’d change him back.
Really.
Really I would.
But that was dangerous thinking.
And unworthy of a princess.
Finally the old woman was able to get along on her own.
At last!
Luella told Imogene, “The son has invited me to stay.”
Oh no! Imogene wanted to yell at her. Maybe shake her for good measure. Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!
Instead, she spoke very calmly through her frog lips. “I need to get home. Please, Luella, I have no other way of getting there except through your goodwill. Truly, I am Princess Imogene, King Wellington’s daughter, regardless of what Bertie said. If you take me to my parents, they will give you whatever you want. They can easily have you brought back here afterward. Please, Luella, don’t leave me to try to get home on my own.”
Luella picked up Imogene’s bucket. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I told him no. I know my parents will lecture me until I’m gray and toothless for running off with Bertie, but the fact is I miss them. And my wretched little brother, too. And our farm. So I’m thinking: Why should I always be the one expected to leave my family and friends and go off with him? Surely there’s got to be a him who’s willing to come to me.”
And that was how Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington and Luella the farm girl once more took to the road—this time heading west, well and truly traveling toward home.
It took days, as Imogene had known it would, until finally, finally, she saw the very tip of the turret at the northeast corner of the castle, the turret that—through some miscalculation of her great-grandfather’s master builder—had somehow ended up just a bit taller than the rest, so that it was always the first anybody saw, no matter from which direction they approached.