Imogene decided to take the sound, whatever it was, as encouragement. “I’m relieved to see that you’re not troubled at my appearance, because I’ve had a rather unfortunate experience with a witch, and—”
The boy interrupted, “Go on, Harry. What’re you playing at?”
Harry? The only Harry she knew was the wainwright’s boy. “Oh,” said Imogene. Then, remembering how Harry had described the witch as living just down the road from his friend, she said, “Oh, you must be Tolf.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Same as I been all my life.”
“Hello, Tolf. I know this might be hard to believe, though not so hard as it might be for someone who lives elsewhere, but I’m Princess Imogene.”
Tolf snorted. “Yeah, and I’m King Wellington.”
Startled, Imogene took time to consider. Since her world had been turned upside down, it was, in theory, possible that her father . . .
But, no, it wasn’t. Tolf talked like a peasant, not a king; and Tolf wasn’t overjoyed to see his daughter safe—if somewhat froggified—which her father would have been.
Tolf, she realized, was mocking her.
“No, really,” she said.
“Yeah?” Tolf said, in a tone he no doubt thought was really clever. “Then how’d you know my name? Explain that, why doncha? How would a princess know my name?”
“Harry told me.”
“Oooh,” Tolf said. “‘Harry told me.’ Pretty convenient, that, since you are Harry. But I gotta say, Harry, you almost got that posh princess voice down pat. A little bit overdone to be absolutely believable, but good.”
Imogene had had just about enough of this nonsense. “Look—” she started.
But Tolf interrupted. “No, you look, Harry. I already told you: I’m not calling my sister out here and telling her, ‘Hey, Luella, I bet you’re too scared to kiss this here frog.’ ’Cause once she did, then Luella would turn around and find some unsuspecting fella to kiss her—and, believe me, Luella’s pretty good at finding fellas to kiss her, and I don’t think a little setback like being a frog would slow her down much. Once she was a girl again, she’d tell Ma how I tricked her, and—whew!—would Ma tan my hide!”
“I am not Harry. I am Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t kissing you, neither, Harry, even if you’re pretending to be a girl. You got yourself into this mess. You get yourself out.”
“I’m not asking you to kiss me!” Imogene shouted in her loudest croak. “All I’m asking is for you to take me home, back to the castle, so my parents—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tolf said. “Give it up, Harry. You’ll never convince the king and queen, neither. And if you did, once they found you out, you’d be in even worse trouble than you are now. You haven’t thought this out. Soon’s you get someone in the castle to kiss you and you turn into Harry the wainwright’s boy instead of Her High and Mighty Highness Princess Imogene Etc., Etc.—whew! That’d be even worse than my Ma finding out I’d tricked Luella into becoming a frog.”
“But—”
“Gotta go, Harry.” Tolf jumped off the fence rail and headed back toward the house.
“But—”
“Good luck to ya.”
“But—”
The door slammed shut behind him.
“You’re dumb as a post, Tolf,” Imogene muttered. For good measure, she added, “I’d be willing to stay a frog for ninety-nine years rather than kiss you!”
But then she thought about what she’d just said. And she wondered if staying a frog was exactly what was going to happen to her.
Chapter 6:
A Princess Must Be Assertive and Persuasive, Though Never Pushy
(Yeah, lots of luck with that one)
Boys! Imogene thought. They’re all just about entirely useless.
She wondered if she’d have any better luck with Tolf’s sister, Luella. Or with his parents. But there was no telling if any of them were even home, much less if they would prove any easier to convince than Tolf.
Still, she thought, what do I have to lose? The sun was quite low in the sky, and back home at the castle servants would no doubt be in a frenzy of getting-supper-ready-to-serve-to-the-royal-family activity. Her absence would be noticed soon, if it hadn’t been already. She needed to avoid having her parents worrying about her. Because she had come to learn that parents can act strangely: if they’re worried that something bad has happened to their child but it turns out that this is not the case, parents permit themselves one brief moment of relief, followed by hours of How could yous and reprimands and “consequences”—which is a fancy word for “punishments.” If Imogene was to avoid this, she had no time to lose.
She jumped closer to the house and examined the door through which Tolf had entered. Unfortunately, he had closed it tight behind him. Where was the boy’s carelessness when she could use it? She positioned herself directly below the window at the back of the house. “Hello!” she called. “Announcing a royal reward for doing a small service for Princess Imogene.” Her frog voice did not carry so much as her human voice did—which her mother habitually complained she could hear throughout the castle—and no one came to investigate.
So Imogene jumped her way around to the front. But the front door was closed, too.
Even the door to the small barn in the side yard—home, no doubt, to the chickens and the goat—was shut.
And, now that she thought about it, that was unusual. Most people only closed the barn door at night and in harsh weather, leaving it open during the day just in case the animals wanted to get out of the sun or rain.
Even odder: though the door was closed, the latch was not secured.
Maybe someone was in there, she thought, perhaps a member of Tolf’s family preparing the barn for housing the animals overnight. Still, without windows and with the door shut, anyone in there would be working in the dark.
Imogene hopped closer. “Hello!” she called from directly outside the door.
Someone was in there, she was sure of it, because she heard faint stirrings. Not faint as in mice running for cover, but faint as in humans trying to be quiet.
“Hello,” Imogene repeated. “Anyone here?”
From inside the barn, a male voice answered, “No.”
Someone shushed him.
Imogene used the only name she had. “Luella?”
The same male voice whispered frantically to whoever was in the barn with him, “It’s your mother.”
A female voice, presumably Tolf’s sister, Luella, hissed back, “It’s not.”
“Well, it’s somebody looking for you.” The voice made the speaker sound well-spoken, if not exactly bright.
Some more shushing, this time more insistent.
Imogene said, “I can hear you.”
After sighing loudly enough that Imogene could hear that, too, the girl Luella called out, “Everything’s fine in here. Um, no need to come in. I’m just doing a little bit of . . . oh . . . fluffing up the straw for the goat here. Alone.” A forced laugh. “Of course. Of course, I’m alone. Why wouldn’t I be? All by myself. I’ll be finished in a bit. So, um, why don’t you wait for me in front of the house?”
Well, obviously something was going on that shouldn’t have been.
Imogene would have declared it none of her business and gone elsewhere—except she had nowhere else to go. Back to the pond, with the frogs and the frog-eating birds? Back on the road, where there were cats and dogs and wagons and people flinging radishes? Back to the witch, who was no help at all—and annoying as well? Imogene told the people in the barn, “Oh, all right. I’ll leave and go wait patiently by the house.”
“In front of the house,” Luella reminded, since that faced the other direction and someone standing there would not be able to see the barn door.
“In front,” Imogene agreed.
After a brief pause, she heard the male voice whisper, “Is she gone? I didn’t hear her leave.”
&
nbsp; Of course they hadn’t heard her leave. There was nothing Imogene could do about that. Frog footsteps—even annoyed frog footsteps, even annoyed-teenage-girl-frogs-stamping-their-feet footsteps are generally quieter than the most attentively-trying-to-be-secret human footsteps.
“She must be gone,” the male voice stated, maybe in reaction to a headshake or a shrug from Luella. “Inquire whether she’s still there.”
Luella tried to hush her friend. “Bertie!” she complained.
Imogene tapped her little webbed foot impatiently.
Eventually Luella and this Bertie must have agreed that if they waited much longer, the person who had been out there would come back. Imogene heard someone—someone with big galumphing boots—tiptoe to the door. She stood her ground, but attentively, ready to jump off to the side if those boots started heading toward her.
The door was pushed open a crack. Imogene caught a glimpse of blond hair as a young man poked his head out, then in, so fast he couldn’t have seen anything and might in fact have only succeeded in making himself dizzy. He repeated the movement, marginally slower. Then once again, this time sweeping his gaze over the yard.
“Gone,” he announced to Luella, still hidden somewhere behind him inside the barn, “whoever she was.”
He pushed the door the rest of the way open, and Imogene caught her first good look at them.
They were both older than she was, maybe even sixteen or seventeen years old—just about adults—which meant that the young man, Bertie, was not nearly as old as Imogene had guessed from his voice, which was deep and rich and more refined than Luella’s. Imogene realized she’d been picturing someone like Sir Denley, who proclaimed the news in the town square and announced visitors to the castle on state occasions. Luella was pretty in a clean-faced, bosomy sort of way that reminded Imogene of Tolf’s comment that his sister would not have trouble finding someone to kiss her. And as for Bertie . . . Imogene suspected the young man never had trouble in that area, either. His clothes were fancier than most farmers wore—especially the hat, which sported an ostrich plume.
“Hello,” Imogene said.
Luella squealed. Bertie took a step back into the barn.
“Please don’t be frightened,” Imogene told them. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could have kicked herself for saying them. Except, of course, that frogs aren’t built in a way that she could have kicked herself. The trouble was, she knew that many adults—and, she suspected many almost-adults—didn’t like to admit to being frightened. She started over again. “I’m sorry to have startled you—”
But Luella, peering over the arm Bertie had extended in readiness to slam the barn door shut, asked in a tone somewhere between fear and distaste, “What’s that?”
“It’s a frog,” Bertie said, after glancing around the yard to make sure that’s all it was.
“Frogs don’t talk,” Luella said.
“Well, you see—” Imogene started.
Luella continued right over her, saying to Bertie, “I ain’t never heard of a frog that could talk. Have you?”
Apparently Bertie was the sort who could never bring himself to say “I don’t know,” who always had to be an expert about everything and always had to have the last word. “Well, yes,” he said in his authoritative voice. “As a matter of fact, I have.”
Imogene and Luella both looked at him skeptically.
Bertie continued, as though amazed that Luella didn’t know what he was talking about. “African speaking frogs?” he said.
Luella shook her head.
For that matter, so did Imogene.
Bertie said, “I would have thought news of such a marvel would have spread by now, even to a backward place like this. You see, the troupe of actors to which I belong often performs in front of emperors and kings and dukes. Such people go mad over anything new. The latest fashion is to have a parrot, which is a colorful bird from the deepest jungles of Africa. And parrots can be trained to talk. Not intelligently, like people, but they can repeat what they’ve heard.”
Imogene thought, Yes, well, not all people can speak intelligently.
And sure enough, Luella, squinting at Imogene, spoke up. “I heard of parrots, Bertie. This is not that backwards of a place. But this is a frog, Bertie, not a bird.”
Bertie proved he was not the sort to ever back down from a debate. “I’m getting to that, my sweet. So in high society there’s always one duchess who wants to out-fashion another, and the very newest thing is to have a speaking frog from remotest China.”
“I thought you said it was an African speaking frog.”
“No, the parrots are from Africa; the frogs are from China.”
“You said Africa.”
Bertie considered. “Yes, my treasure, but the Chinese part of Africa.”
Imogene cut into the bickering. “Excuse me for interrupting,” she said, “but actually I’m from right here. You see, I’m Princess Imogene, and—”
Luella asked Bertie, “If it’s a Chinese speaking frog, then how come I can understand what it’s saying? How come it don’t speak Chinese?”
“My love,” Bertie told her, “it’s like a parrot. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It’s only repeating sounds. Just as not all parrots speak African. It all depends on how they’ve been trained—and by whom.”
“I don’t know . . .” Luella said, unconvinced.
“Excuse me,” Imogene repeated. “I am not African or Chinese. I come from just around the corner, the castle up on that little hill. You can see the one turret from here. I’ve had a spell put on me . . .” This time she interrupted herself when Bertie stooped down to take her in his hand.
Hmm, Imogene thought, wondering if it was a good idea to let him do that. But she was also thinking that—face to face—it might be easier to convince him of who she was, and what she was not.
“See,” Bertie said, holding Imogene out on his palm to Luella, who shrank back as though Imogene had sharp teeth and claws, “notice the smooth skin. Frogs from around here have warts. Chinese frogs don’t.”
Imogene corrected him, “Most frogs don’t. Toads have warts. But I’m not either a frog or a toad. I’m a princess. Your princess. Princess Imogene Eu—”
“Isn’t she adorable?” Bertie asked.
Which is a nice thing to have someone say about you, whether you’re a frog or a princess or someone in between.
“I suppose,” Luella said.
Before Imogene could tell them, That’s very kind of you, Bertie got a quizzical look on his face and said, “Or he.”
Which was not nearly so nice a thing to have someone say, no matter what kind of girl you are.
Bertie picked Imogene up with his other hand and held her upside down, and that was downright humiliating as well as dizzying. He said, “Hard to tell with a Chinese speaking frog. But I suppose we might as well call it ‘she’ since it sounds like a girl.”
Still upside down, Imogene told both of them, “I am most definitely a girl. I am Princess Imogene Eustacia—”
Somehow or other Bertie had talked himself into believing his own story. He interrupted once more. “She will be a sensation at our performances. Now all we need is a bucket . . .”
“Performances?” Imogene said. “Bucket?”
“See?” Bertie told Luella, finally righting Imogene. “She’s learning new words, which she will now be able to repeat, just as I told you.” Then, as Luella handed him a bucket, he said, “Perfect!” and dropped Imogene in. “And the headscarf from your pack, please.”
It must have been the bucket from which the animals were expected to drink, for there was water in it. Imogene, who had not expected any of this, sputtered a bit as she came up to the surface, and she tried reason one more time, saying, “I’m sure my parents will pay you generously—”
And taking the time to say that cost her the last chance to escape, for Bertie tied Luella’s scarf over the opening of the bucket, so that Imogene could breathe
, could hear, could even see a tiny bit of daylight through the weave of the fabric. But she could not hop out.
Bertie said, “Now let us go, my love, before your parents return and try to stop us from embarking on our grand adventure.”
Even though he’d said my love, it took Imogene a moment to realize he was talking to Luella, and not her, since Imogene’s parents would certainly try to stop Bertie from taking their daughter away in a bucket.
He asked, “Can you manage your pack while I carry the bucket?”
Apparently Luella could. “This is so exciting!” she said. “Running away from home with you to join your company of actors! I can’t believe that someone the likes of me will have a chance to see the world, like you talked about! To perform in front of all them emperors and such! Won’t my family turn green with envy?”
Imogene didn’t bother saying that Luella and her parents didn’t know the first thing about turning green. “See the world?” she screamed up through the scarf as Luella closed the barn door and started walking. “You can’t take me away from my home and my family!”
“I see what you mean, Bertie,” Luella cooed, lacing her arm around Bertie’s, so that the bucket with Imogene in it jostled with every step the two of them took. “She is a most clever little Chinese froggy.” Despite acknowledging Imogene as a frog, Luella said in a parroty voice, “See the world! Awk! See the world!” Then she told Bertie, “With your experience on the stage, and what you’ll teach me about being an actor, and with this frog—we are going to make us a fortune! And we don’t never have to come back home!”
Chapter 7:
A Princess Should Always Be Open to New Experiences
(There are experiences, and then there are experiences)
Eventually Imogene wearied of shouting. The scarf Bertie and Luella had tied over the bucket’s opening to keep her from jumping out made her prison a bit dark and stuffy. They’d put a rock in there so that she could climb up out of the water, but they had a terrible tendency to jostle and tip the bucket as they walked so that she kept slipping off the rock, and—once she was in the water—she became a floating target who had to dodge the rock as it bounced around the confined space. Besides, nothing she said could convince them that she was Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington, and her throat was beginning to get scratchy. Frog throats are not meant to carry on in human language, and she saw exactly what Harry had meant when he’d complained early in their acquaintance that shouting to get her attention had given him that ticklish need-to-clear-your-throat sensation that people refer to as having a frog in the throat.