The Wonderful Roundabout

a great roar and orange flames shot up like burning snakes that cracked and hissed. They lasted only for a moment, if at all. By the time the prince had come to his senses, nothing was left on the smooth dirt but a crooked, ugly old frog with bulging eyes.

  ‘What sorcery is this?’ the prince asked. ‘Are you a conjurer? Why are you in my path?’ The frog lay motionless on the dirt, croaking away as if the prince wasn’t even there. The stranger had such a coldness about him that the prince forgot all about his boulder and said a little prayer to himself, that he would get home safely and see his mother and father again.

  ‘You don’t seem like a bad soul’ the frog then started, out of nowhere. Its gaze was still fixed on the boulder and its eyes looked so empty that the prince imagined the nothingness inside them reaching out to swallow him. ‘You climb this wretched boulder every day to challenge yourself. But what do you really know about challenge? What do you really know about coming head to head with fear, and doubt, and destiny?’

  The prince had no answer. He stared at the grass between his claws. He had thought it himself. He was not a warrior. He was not a commander. He was barely anything. The spoiled son of an old, respected king. Completely unprepared for taking his father’s place. His father. The great defender of the Valley of Green.

  ‘I can make you what you wish to become. I can make you great and powerful and wise.’

  ‘But there is a price, I assume?’

  ‘There is always a price, Prince. A small one to pay for such an offering.’

  Let’s hear it, then.

  ‘You have to find a way to turn me back into a man. And until you do, you will be bound to me.’

  ‘Like a servant?’

  ‘You will not have to do chores for me, like a servant, but you will not decide anything by yourself. I shall be your counselor in everything. Everything.’

  ‘So I will be a king with no power of his own?’

  ‘You will be the most beloved king there ever was.’ When he said it, the wizard frog conjured things as the prince would have them before him. The prince saw himself leading an army to victory and being cheered on by all his men. He saw himself defending the city from a swarm of locusts and saving each and every one of his fellow lizards.

  ‘Very well. I do not know exactly where this will lead. But anything is better than living like a spoiled brat without any merit. I accept your challenge. I will serve you and you will turn me into a warrior, a conqueror and the defender of my

  people. So be it.’

  The prince had just finished his words, when the frog disappeared with a giant puff of smoke. The fog was so thick that it darkened everything, causing the prince to start coughing and gasping for breath. He ran to find air but the darkness had no end. He fell to the ground. When his knees touched the dirt, he suddenly felt that he was being pulled down with tremendous force, as if a whirlwind was dragging him inside. It lasted only a moment, but when he opened his eyes, scared, with his heart pounding and his head burning, he was in his bed, in the castle dormitory.

  Outside a fiery red dawn was breaking. He looked out of the window to see the shadow of the boulder he always climbed. It look just like a hunched old frog, with bulging eyes.

  THE LIZARD PRINCE AND THE FIRE FROG

  PPart II

   ‘A nightmare. It was just a nightmare’ the prince thought. ‘I didn’t do that. I haven’t laid my life at stake for the promise of an old frog. Oh, dear me… It felt so real. But it was nothing. Nothing.’ The prince turned in his bed and fell fast asleep again. At the last moment, had he been paying attention, he would have heard the slightest voice in his head saying: ‘You have my permission to fall sleep.’ But he had not been, and the morning fell upon him without any warning.

  ‘Get up! Get up! Get UP!’ the voice screamed. The prince jumped out of his bed, grabbed his sword and pointed it threateningly to the door. But not a moment passed before he staggered to his feet and started muttering gibberish. ‘Open your eyes at once!’ the voice sounded again. Indeed, the prince did, as, despite his gestures, he had yet to wake up.

  ‘Now hurry to meet your father. He’s waiting for you, he has something to tell you.’

  The prince didn’t pause to think. We rarely do when we hear the voice inside our heads. Maybe he took it for intuition. Maybe for another dream. But he rushed to the study where his father usually wrote long letters in the mornings. His father was still a powerful man, despite his age. He was perhaps the most beloved king of his dynasty. He was the first king to abolish the slavery of tree frogs and, in so doing, end the great civil war. This had happened years before the prince was born but the memory of it was very much awake in the heart of the people that had started to know prosperity again after long decades of sending their loved ones to the Bloody Valley, never to return again.

  ‘I do not have good news, my son. I’m glad you came to see me so early. Do you remember your military training?’

  ‘Perhaps better than anything, father.’

  ‘Good. You will need it. And you will be leaving us for a while, son.’

  ‘Where is it your will that I go, father?’

  ‘To the north. To the kingdom of the tree frogs. Their king just died without an heir and a swarm of locusts, sensing weakness, is at their gates. You will go to defend them.’

  ‘I will leave as the next dawn breaks.’

  ‘Good. Let us talk for a while now, son. It will be some time before we do it again.’ the king said, closing the door to his study.

  THE LIZARD PRINCE AND THE FIRE FROG

  PPart III

  The prince left his father’s study in a trance. His legs took him to the drawing room, where the giant windows opened upon the river valley. The fog was clearing from above the water.  The prince gazed at it with his mind wandering. He turned his head to the gleaming boulder he used to climb and in a moment the memory of his dream fell upon him with all its weight.

  ‘The old frog… The old wizard. What did I dream? Could it be true? This war… Out of nowhere. Is it real? Am I still dreaming? This forest, as old as it is… Has it ever seen a lizard as foolish as me?’

  The next day the prince left to defend the tree frogs and their kingdom without a king. He was welcomed at their city gates with cheers. ‘Hooray for the son of King Atlas!’ they called. The prince felt petty and meek.

  ‘Will I be able to defend these creatures? These mothers who bring their babies to see me? These boys who run in the street and skip stones in the water? Will they be alive in two days time when the locusts invade? Will I rise to the challenge? Or will I fail and make both mine and their parents weep? Stories of great victories are easier heard than lived. I am scared for my life.’

  In the morning of the invasion a great wind howled from the west. It was cold and harsh, like a giant throwing needles getting ready to swallow the earth whole. The sky was a dark, silvery gray. The swarm of locusts appeared on the horizon like an eruption of tar, rising up from the ground. ‘There are so many of them.’ the prince thought. ‘And so few of us.’

  He summoned the fire blowers up on the city walls. The catapults were aligned on the streets. Every creature capable of heavy work had built catapults. There were hundreds of them, each loaded with the thickest, stickiest spider web in the forest.

  The swarm of locusts grew larger and larger. In moments it seemed to cover the entire horizon. The prince measured the distance with his spy glass.

  Catapults reeeady!’ he called. ‘Aim! Fire!’

  A rain of silk lifted from the castle and moved above the field. It reached the tower of tar and poured over it, white and fine, like snow. The horizon grew whiter and whiter, as if the earth was absorbing the darkness. The clear, white sky lasted barely a moment. For no sooner had the first wave of attack been stopped, than another rose behind it. Taller, darker and angrier. Like none that had ever been seen.

  THE LIZARD PRINCE AND THE FIRE FROG