And the way he turned around and walked away looked like the end of the conversation.
“Aren’t you going to help me?” she called after him.
“Nope,” he called back.
And that most certainly was the end of the conversation.
Not sure how far her croaky little voice would carry, she shouted after him, “You could at least bring me there.” He couldn’t hear her, not at that distance, but it was hard to give up. “Just to the edge of her property. Even if . . .” He’d reached the top of the little hill. Well, it was really more of an incline than a hill; it only looked like a hill to someone who was just two and a half inches tall. But in any case, Harry reached the road that led to the mill itself, and he disappeared beyond the corner of the building with never a glance backwards. Her voice dropped to a mutter, and she finished, “Even if you’re too afraid to face her again.”
Imogene sighed.
Well, she would just have to not be afraid. She would have to get there on her own.
Imogene began jumping. And jumping. And jumping.
A pesky gnat made a nuisance of itself by circling her head.
Imogene fully intended to swat it away, but instead of her hand coming up, her mouth opened and her tongue shot out.
“Ech!” She tried to cough the bug out of her throat, but her throat did the exact opposite of what she wanted—and she swallowed it instead.
“Ech! Ech! Ech!” But it wouldn’t come back up.
She tried to convince herself that so long as she was a frog, eating a gnat was the same as eating peaches in cream was for her princess self.
But she wasn’t that easy to fool.
Just never mind, she reflected, even though she was still fighting not to gag. The best thing you can do is to turn back to your princess self as quickly as possible.
And the best way to do that was to confront the witch as quickly as possible.
Surely, Imogene theorized, the witch would have to listen to good sense and agree that there was no reason Imogene should suffer for what the wainwright’s boy had done.
But, again, Imogene wasn’t that easy to fool.
Still, she jumped up the grassy incline that had become a hill and estimated that was about a tenth of the way she had to go. She might have to take a few rests as she traveled, but this was certainly doable.
She jumped onto the road, since that—being more level than the grassy slope—should be easier.
Her big froggy eyes caught a movement off to the side, and she hopped back just in time to avoid being run over by the wheel of the cart that the greengrocer was pushing.
Not becoming a froggy slick on the road would have been indisputably a good thing if only she hadn’t landed on top of the bare foot of the greengrocer’s daughter, a five-year-old who was walking behind and off to the side of the cart and who apparently didn’t like frogs. Or, at least, didn’t like frogs unexpectedly landing on her.
The girl screamed—which Imogene thought was an overreaction no matter how you looked at it—and kicked her foot up into the air, which flung Imogene back into the grass from which she’d just come.
The good news was that Imogene landed on something soft.
The bad news was that she landed on something furry.
The really bad news was that the soft, furry thing she’d landed on was a big orange cat. And the way it was crouched where road met grass—right where Imogene had come out from not more than a jump, a scream, and a kick away—suggested that the cat had, in fact, been stalking her.
Who could have guessed that such a fat old cat with a frog sitting on its head could move so fast? Or so nimbly?
First, it jumped straight up into the air as though it, too, had a bit of frog in its makeup.
With no better plan than not to fall off, Imogene dug her green webbed toes into the orange fur.
Then, the cat tried to twist itself to get its mouth over to the back of its head.
With no better plan than not to get eaten, Imogene hunkered down where she was, which seemed as though it had to be the most difficult place for the cat to reach.
Finally, the cat threw itself into the dust of the road and rolled.
Too dizzy to have any plan at all, Imogene fell off.
The cat jumped to its feet.
Imogene tried to jump to hers, too, but apparently frogs get dizzy faster than cats. Or, in any case, their dizziness lasts longer. Whatever the reason, her legs wobbled and buckled beneath her, while the cat—all fluffed out, stiff-legged, and spitting—advanced on her.
“Mad cat!” the greengrocer shouted, stepping between his small daughter and the cat that looked about to attack her—if you hadn’t noticed the frog that the cat had been working to dislodge, the frog who now was too feeble to jump to safety. “Move, Astrid!” the greengrocer commanded, shoving his half-shrieking, half-sobbing daughter out of what must have looked to him to be harm’s way. He reached into his cart to find a weapon amongst the produce he hadn’t been able to sell after a morning at the market: two or three wilted heads of lettuce, a small pile of mostly limp carrots, the onion—split now—that had rolled around loose in the cart but was too far for him to reach. Instead, he pulled up the bucket of water in which he’d had radishes soaking, and flung the water—leftover radishes and all—at the cat.
Apparently the cat didn’t like having water dumped on it even more than it didn’t like having a frog land on it.
With an angry yowl, the cat ran off, which was a good thing for Imogene, because one of the radishes had bonked her on the head, so that now she was not only dizzy, but she had a headache, and she was less likely than ever to be able to jump out of the radish-water puddle and into the grass.
“Did that nasty old cat hurt you?” the greengrocer asked.
Imogene was about to answer, No, but thank you for asking, when she realized the man was kneeling in front of his daughter, speaking to her.
The girl was sobbing—as though she had ever been in danger—but managed to get out, “Not the cat. The frog tried to bite me.”
Imogene could have denied the accusation, but she doubted a talking frog would help the situation. Besides, even if she was able to convince these two that she was, in fact, Princess Imogene froggified and should be returned home, what would that accomplish? Her mother would no doubt get one of the very worst of her headaches and have to go to bed for at least two days. Her father would put on a brave face—as king, he’d have to—but he, also, would be sick with worry. And even with all that, what could they actually do? Would they be any likelier than Imogene herself to be able to talk the witch into reversing her spell? Either the witch would be reasonable, or she would not. Imogene had read enough fairy tales to worry that a royal decree on the matter was less likely to soften the witch’s heart and more likely to make her stubborn.
Imogene watched the greengrocer pick up his daughter. He set her down to ride in the cart, her legs swinging over the back edge, near where he would stand when he was pushing the cart, so he could keep an eye on her safety. “There, there,” he said. “Frogs don’t bite.”
“Jumped on me,” the girl insisted.
“Did it?” the greengrocer said with exaggerated enthusiasm. Lifting up the handles of the cart, he resumed pushing. “That’s considered great good luck, you know, to have a frog land on you.”
“It is?” the girl asked, calming down to a sniffle.
The two of them passed beyond Imogene’s hearing while the greengrocer was asserting that being frog-jumped was one of the luckiest things in the world, right up there with rain on your wedding day. This was so like Imogene’s own father, who was always making up similar nonsensical things to cheer up his children, that Imogene took a moment to reconsider her decision about whether to go home to get her parents’ help.
But the sticking point was that bit about going home. If, by making it from the pond to the road, Imogene had traveled a tenth of the way to the witch’s house, that meant she had t
raveled about a forty-fifth of the way back to the castle. Too many chances to get stepped on, Imogene thought. Or eaten. Or squished by a cart wheel. And, yes, she might be able to ask someone for help. But then she’d have to worry about how people might react to her saying, “Hello. I may look like a frog, but, really, I’m Princess Imogene. Please carry me back to the castle, and I’m sure my parents will give you a token of their appreciation for your trouble.” What if she got swatted before she could get all that out?
See the witch first, Imogene told herself. If that doesn’t work out, THEN you can worry about what to do next.
And so Imogene jumped and jumped and jumped . . .
. . . and jumped and jumped and jumped . . .
. . . and jumped and jumped and jumped some more.
If she saw somebody coming, she jumped off the road so as to avoid their big feet. (Her mother thought she had big feet? Everybody’s feet look big when you’re a frog.) Once, when the somebody coming was a dog, Imogene had to jump farther off the road, into a pile of firewood stacked in someone’s yard. The dog came to investigate and poked its paw into the spaces between the wood, trying to get at Imogene, but fortunately it barked in its excitement, and the homeowner came out and shooed it away.
By then, Imogene’s head felt ready to split open. She hadn’t had many headaches in her life, but this one made her a little more sympathetic toward her mother’s inclination to take to bed with hers. Who could have guessed being rolled over by a cat and getting hit on the head with a radish and jump-jump-jumping toward a witch’s house could make someone feel so miserable? The dizziness had come back, and Imogene was convinced she was doubling the distance she had to travel by no longer being able to jump in a straight line. If another person—or another dog, cat, cart, or radish—came down the road, would she ever be able to get away? And even when a fly buzzed her, she was too tired to shoot her tongue out to get it, which she didn’t know whether to take as a good thing or bad. Her tongue felt as big and dry and unmovable as a tree root in her mouth. She forced herself to keep jumping because she feared that if she stopped, she’d never be able to start again.
But eventually she realized that the pounding in her ears wasn’t totally because of the headache; part of it was actually hearing the blacksmith at work in his shop at the end of the street, pounding a piece of metal on his anvil.
Before you get to the blacksmith’s shop, Harry had said. That was where the witch lived. And, sure enough, two houses before the smithy was a neat little cottage with three scrawny apple trees in the yard. From the way Harry had talked about her having so very many apples, Imogene had thought the witch must have an orchard in her yard. But Imogene hadn’t passed in front of another house with any apple trees at all—or at least she didn’t think she had. Surely, as distracting as her aching head was, she would have noticed. This must be it: the house where the witch lived.
So Imogene had arrived—which was, of course, what she’d wanted. But it was still scary. Tottering with exhaustion, she jumped into the yard, up to the front door . . .
And then she had no idea what to do.
“Hello,” she called. “Anybody home?” But her tired frog voice was no louder than a demure princess whisper. Mother would be so pleased, Imogene thought, because her mother was always reminding her to use her in-castle voice.
Imogene no longer had hands with knuckles for rapping, and frogs’ legs aren’t made for kicking at doors.
Loud as she could, she once again croaked, “Is anyone home?”
After all that, no one answered.
Maybe, Imogene thought, the witch was in her backyard.
Fighting the inclination to remain where she was and to wait for the witch to find her—which would be by far the easiest thing to do—Imogene forced herself to jump around to the backyard. There was a little well here and an herb garden and more trees: cherry and peach and what might have been a pear, but no more apple trees. Still, I imagine keeping the village boys out of the fruit trees must be a constant chore for her, Imogene thought. No wonder she sometimes gets cranky.
Imogene’s headache must have made her not so observant as she should have been, for only after noticing all those other features of the backyard did she see the witch. She was sitting on a chair in the shade of one of the peach trees, reading a book.
The Art of Being a Witch? Imogene wondered.
The woman was not so ugly as Harry had led her to believe. Just wrinkled, like Imogene’s grandmothers. And with hair that—although white—looked as hard to control as Imogene’s own. So, all in all, with her feet up on an embroidered stool and a cup of tea resting on a tree stump by her elbow, the witch looked friendlier than Imogene had dared to hope.
Imogene jumped closer, although her head was swimming and her muscles ached, and she trembled so badly that she actually tipped over on her last couple of landings.
The witch must have seen her out of the corner of her eye, for she was looking up from her book when Imogene addressed her. “Hello,” Imogene said, deciding one could never go wrong with good manners. Her voice was even croakier than usual. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but—”
The witch threw the book aside without even closing it and jumped to her feet. Then she scooped Imogene up in her hand and flung her into the well.
Chapter 4:
A Princess Should Be Quick-Witted
(EVERYBODY should be quick-witted)
The water closed over Imogene’s head.
I’m going to die, Imogene thought, for she didn’t know how to swim.
Her brother, Will, despite being five years younger, already knew how to swim. But of course swimming was yet another of those things that princesses—or even ladies—just didn’t do.
Dying, alone—thanks to being flung into a well by a witch who hadn’t even waited to hear what she’d come to say—was bad enough. Making things even worse was the knowledge that her parents would never know what had happened to her. At first, Mother would be annoyed when Imogene didn’t return home by late afternoon, and she would probably start practicing her reprimand—Imogene was sure her mother kept a list of motherly complaints and chastisements that she would periodically read over and rehearse in order to be prepared for whatever Imogene did wrong. But as afternoon turned to evening, both Mother and Father would shift to worry—worry that would become more and more frantic as the evening started to grow dark. Footmen and guards and servants would be sent out looking for her, through the night . . .
. . . the next day . . .
. . . the next weeks . . .
. . . and all the while they would never learn a hint about what had happened to her.
Harry the wainwright’s boy, of course, could not tell what he knew and what he might surmise—not without getting blamed for what he had done. Imogene was fairly certain that, if questioned, he could be counted on to say, “What? Who? Where would I ever get the chance to see someone the likes of her?”
Would the witch begin to suspect that the talking frog she had tossed into the well might be the missing princess? Imogene wondered if the witch would feel bad then.
Probably not. She was, after all, a witch.
Then again, Imogene realized that she was having a lot of time for all these thoughts and wonderings.
She opened her eyes, which she had closed when she’d hit the water. She’d floated up to the water’s surface, her little frog body buoyant, and her little frog legs were instinctively moving her in circles.
Oh, she thought, that’s right. FROGS don’t have to wait for their mothers to give permission for swimming lessons.
Imogene floundered for a second as she thought too much and her human brain made her frog body forget what it knew.
A hand reached into the water and supported her.
A gnarled, old woman’s hand.
A witch’s hand.
In that moment, Imogene realized that she hadn’t even been in the well itself; she’d been in the well’s bucket. An
d the bucket was resting near the surface.
The witch was looking at her with what could almost pass as concern and gently asked, “Are you all right?”
And Imogene realized her headache was gone, her aching muscles were no longer trembling with exhaustion, and she felt, in fact, fine.
“Yes,” she answered with surprise.
Like Imogene’s mother, the witch could evidently change moods at a moment’s notice. The quiet worry on her face shifted into that same I-can’t-believe-you’d-do-such-a-foolish-thing look that was, again, very like Imogene’s mother.
“Frogs,” the witch said, “are amphibious. You need water. You can’t go traipsing around on dry land the same as you could do as a person. Didn’t you wonder why you couldn’t even hop straight? What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry,” Imogene said, even as she realized this was the second time this afternoon that she was apologizing to someone who, if you looked at the situation only slightly differently, might be expected to apologize to her. She added, “I guess I was thinking like a princess instead of like a frog.” She didn’t know if the witch recognized her in all her greenness, and just in case she didn’t, Imogene thought it might be useful for the witch to know that this particular girl-turned-frog was somebody important. Or at least someone with important parents. Parents who would come looking for her. Which meant it might be safest and best for everyone for the witch to just go ahead and turn Imogene back into a girl now.
Obviously not nearly so awed or intimidated as Imogene had hoped, the witch set her down in the grass and said, “So, now you know. Stick to where it’s wet.”
The witch went back to her chair and resumed reading.
Had she not heard the part where Imogene had said she was a princess?
“Excuse me . . .” Imogene said.
“All right,” the witch said, never glancing up from her book.
Imogene sighed impatiently. “No,” she said more forcefully, “I mean: Excuse me.”
Still not glancing up from her book, the witch took a sip of her tea and said, “Really. Think nothing of it. Accidents happen. I’m glad I was here to help.”