“It’s interesting that you’re not all fairy. I am not all prince, either. Though, as a child, I was told I had royal blood; the kingdom from which I had come was small and had insufficient fortune to keep me well all my life. Therefore, I was educated with a view to becoming industrious and independent. My foster father told me that, when I was twenty-one, he and my foster mother would return to the tiny kingdom from which he had come, and which he missed agonizingly from time to time, though I cannot say why. The stories he told of it were uniformly boring. It had no natural splendors that he could remember, and its architectural heritage he described as rural revival, though a revival of what, he could not say. Still, I looked forward to the day when I should be master of my own destiny, little knowing that such matters are subject to many reversals totally outside one’s own competence.
“When I was about ten, I learned that my mother and father, whom I had never met, had died in an avalanche. I grieved, though not greatly, since I had never known them.
“As do all boys, I came to the age of physical maturity somewhat ahead of any mental or emotional stability with which the physical surges and urges might be controlled. I had a bittersweet and blessedly brief affair with a dairy maid, an unsuitable partner, one might say, though she had a lovely complexion, very pretty hair, and a vocabulary not exeeding one hundred words, most of them to do with cows.”
The frog reminded me of someone. I couldn’t tell who, but he did. His manner of speaking reminded me of someone.
“I then wooed and won the hand of the fair Elaine,” the frog went on. “A very suitable match. We were to be betrothed on my eighteenth birthday. She was some years younger, and it was thought we would be wed when she was fifteen or sixteen and I about twenty-one. In the interim, my foster father was of the opinion I should seek sophistication through travel. While he did not recommend any attempt to go to the Holy Land, then, as you know, held by the infidels, he did recommend a journey to Santiago de Compostela, to which he had journeyed in his youth with great cheer and good company.”
Through the murk of memory, the fish swam nearer.
“However,” said the frog, “before I could depart on the journey set out for me by my foster father, with due regard for continuing my education and experience in ways that would benefit me, I happened to go riding into the forest and became lost. On attempting to find my way out, I came upon a tower in which a maiden sat singing. Her name was Rapunzel, as I learned when an old and opinionated fairy came out of the underbrush, carrying a clock, and insisted that the maiden let down her hair.”
“Carabosse!” I said. “It could only have been Carabosse.”
“However did you know, Grandmother? It was indeed the fairy Carabosse. Well, to make a long story short (for I see you have almost completed your sewing), the fairy tricked me in a very unpleasant way, and when I climbed what I thought was a rope of hair securely attached to the head of Rapunzel—a very lovely maiden, indeed—I found the old fairy instead. She harangued me at length upon the subjects of time and beauty, ending her discourse by putting an enchantment upon me that I should become a frog and remain so until kissed willingly by a princess!
“Since that time, it has been my hope that I would first be kissed, then returned to my natural state, though I fear that neither Rapunzel nor the fair Elaine will have waited. Some thirteen years have passed since then. Both of them will be old maids of twenty-five, or buxom matrons, mothers of many.” The frog wept briefly. “Though I have spoken to my foster father about the matter, and he assures me the estate will be still be mine when I achieve manhood once again.”
I finished the cap and put it upon my head. The elusive fish swam up and looked me in the eyes.
“You are my great-grandson Giles Edward Vincent Charming,” I said.
“Well of course, Grandmother,” said the frog. “I would not have addressed you so familiarly otherwise.”
This was specious, but I did not argue with him. I had been one hundred and three when I had visited Carabosse. If, while I dallied returning to Ylles, she had come immediately to the world of men to enchant my great grandson, as she no doubt had, and if thirteen years had passed since that time, I was now one hundred sixteen years old. The century had passed during which Beauty was condemned to sleep. Or was that in the curse? And which curse? Joyeause’s curse, or Carabosse’s? Or Disney’s? I started to blurt all this out, then stopped. Beneath the thinking cap, faculties long unused—nay, faculties never used before—began to stir.
“At one time,” I said, “I think it was in 1417 or the year after, while in Bayonne, I bought a book by Christine de Pisan. It was called, I recollect, The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Do you know of it, by chance?”
“I’m sorry, no, Grandmother. I am unacquainted with feminist literature.”
“She directs her discourse toward princesses, including in that number the daughters of dukes. Would you agree with her inclusive idea of royalty?”
“The daughters of dukes are certainly very noble, Grandmother. Certainly they might be included among princesses.”
“Then let me kiss you, child. I have not seen you since you were two years old.”
I leaned forward and kissed the frog. The air shimmered. I felt dizzy. A small earthquake made the stones beneath us shift, ever so slightly. When I looked up,
