I tottered to my feet, made a few graceless passes, and chanted the proper words. My vision cleared at once, and I stared at the well coping where a large green frog sat regarding me with bulging eyes. “How marvelous, Grandmother,” he said. “We had a fairy after all.”
“I am not your grandmother,” I snapped. At my age it was not easy to snap. The few teeth I still had seemed loose.
“I know you are probably not really my grandmother,” said the frog. “I was only being polite.”
Indeed, he was a particularly polite frog. I could not recall, through the fog of my aged memory, that I had ever encountered a frog of such poise before. I cast about for recollections of other frogs, finding such memories sparse and unprofitable, mixed inexplicably with memories of dinners in Bayonne and Lourdes and garlicky servings of something I had preferred to think of at the time as chicken.
“Of course,” said the frog. “I am not really a frog, either.”
I had already guessed that. “You’re a prince disguised as a frog,” I hazarded. “To prevent your being killed by your enemies.”
He shook his head. Since a frog has little neck, this involved shaking the entire body. The coping was slippery, and he fell into the well once more, emerging moments later very wet and out of breath.
“Actually,” he said, “I am a prince enchanted into a frog for some reason which I am utterly incapable of understanding.”
I was busy threading the needle and spared only a moment to look inquiringly at him.
“Since you are going to be occupied with your sewing, perhaps you would like me to entertain you with my life’s history,” the frog suggested.
I nodded. Certainly there was no reason why not. Until I got the thinking cap done, there was nothing else I could do but sit and sew. I was already planning how to make the cap, by folding the scarf into fourths, diagonally, as one does to make a cocked hat out of paper, and then sewing the folded side closed and turning it up to make a brim. Since the frog seemingly had not interpreted my nod as permission to go ahead, I repeated it more firmly as I tied a knot in the thread.
“Ahem,” he began, clearing his throat.
“My earliest memories are of a childhood surrounded by loving people. My foster father and mother, my nursemaid, the servants, the young man who was hired to play with me, later my tutor. When I was old enough to be told anything at all, I was told that my true father and mother, a prince and princess, lived far away, in another kingdom from which it was thought advisable I be excluded, inasmuch as I was not an heir to the throne and my presence might serve as an excuse for usurpers to cause dissention and unrest. I was told that this step had been taken in order to assure me a happy and extended life, since claimants to thrones, even legitimate ones, often live shorter lives than other, less exalted persons.”
“I have known of such cases,” I told the frog. “History is rife with them.”
“So I was informed,” the frog went on. “Since I am not ambitious, this explanation was satisfactory to me. The allowance my foster parents received for my care was sufficient to guarantee a pleasant life, and the maintenance of the estate on which I was reared was a sufficient career to interest me. I learned agriculture, beekeeping, cattle raising, dairying, egg production, fodder storage, gardening, horsemanship, independence, jar molding, kennel keeping, lamb raising, manpower management, nut growing, orchard keeping, poultry breeding, quarrel quashing (among the serfs), rabbit hunting, sheep grazing, timber cutting, usury, viniculture, wool clipping, xyloglyphy, yoke making, and zealotry.”
“What is xyloglyphy?” I asked, amazed.
“Wood carving,” he replied. “It was the only x I could think of.”
“And zealotry?”
“One must be zealous, mustn’t one. About something.”
“And you learned usury?”
“To avoid it, Grandmother.”
I started to remind him I was not his grandmother, but halted. Dim thought swam through my turgid mind. A fish I could barely see. Something he had said. “Go on with your story,” I said.
“My foster father, a good man, and my foster mother, a good woman, though at times impatient, gave every attention to my education. I had the finest tutors from the time I was a child and learned Latin, Greek, French, and the common tongue as well as the trivium and quadrivium, including grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, composition, and history. I learned to play four musical instruments and sing in a pleasing voice a great number of popular ballads and instructive songs.”
“How many times have you told this story?” I asked, taken with the well-rehearsed tone of the verbiage he was spewing.
“Many times, Grandmother,” he sighed. “More times than I can count. Has it begun to sound overly familiar?”
“A bit more spontaneity might be welcome,” I said, turning the seam in the cap I was making. “However, whatever comes most naturally to you will do.” I sighed, fretfully, suddenly overcome with hunger.
“What’s the matter, Grandmother?” the frog asked.
“I’m starved,” I said. “Literally starved. I have been too long in Faery, and my mortal body has not been fed.”
“I can find you an apple,” the frog said, leaping off the coping and hopping into the woods which surrounded the rose-hedge. I remembered then that there had been an old orchard there, one that had not been used for generations, except by lovers, lying on the sweet grasses. Within a little time, the frog hopped back again, removed a ripe apple from his mouth, and wiped it upon my ragged skirt, apologizing for the only way he had to carry it. I felt a sudden spasm of affection for the frog.
The apple was crisp and sweet. I bit into it, gently, in order that
