Princess and Frog

In the gardens behind the palace, the Princess Beatrice chased after her crystal ball, which sometimes had a life of its own. It quickly rolled along the paving stones and turned off the path to fall into a small hole in the sunflower patch. The Princess knelt before this hole with impeccable grace, for she never discarded her charm and poise, even when nobody was present to witness it. Perfectly confident that she could grasp the crystal ball now, she reached her hand into the aperture, but she could not feel the crystal. No, she thought, she would not give up her favorite possession to some badger or rat. She had far more use for it than had whatever furry animal resided inside that hole. Biting back impatience, she pushed her ruffled, lacy sleeve up and reached further into what she preferred to think of as a rabbit hole, not a snake hole.

As the Princess reached further into the hole and wrinkled her nose at the texture of dirt, her large blue eyes espied the most beautiful frog she had ever seen. It perched on the rim of the rabbit hole, or whatever the little cavity in the ground was, in which her crystal ball had disappeared. The frog was three inches long and bright blue with black splotches. It had shiny, smooth skin, as though it had been made of china, and at first the Princess was not sure whether it was alive or sculpted of porcelain, until the frog turned its head to look back at her with round black eyes. It then, to her utter amazement, stood up on its hind legs and bowed to her.

“Good morrow, fair Princess,” the Frog said. The Princess opened her mouth to speak, but then she closed it again, stood up, and stepped back. Without taking her eyes off the Frog, the Princess tried not to wrinkle her nose, while she brushed off the dirt that clung to her bare arm. She did not know what to think of this, until she remembered the evil enchantress whom, she heard, lived in the next county. The Princess had never met this or any other enchantress, but she was perfectly willing to believe that she was evil, since all the courtiers said so. Perhaps this talking frog was one of the Enchantress’s experiments.

“How do you do,” the Princess said with a nod to the Frog. “I am the Princess Beatrice, only daughter of the rulers of this fine kingdom.” She rolled her long sleeve back down as she spoke, till a ruffle of lace fell over her pale hand.

“And I am,” the Frog said, “Ah, let me say that your Highness may call me Luccio.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Luccio,” the Princess said, and she could not but smile. “And may I say, I have never before met a talking frog.”

“Your Highness, I am a rare and, if I may say so, magnificent species of frog. I am vastly more intelligent than other frogs.”

“If you are so vastly intelligent, perhaps you can think up a way to return my crystal ball. The provoking toy has rolled into this rabbit hole.”

“I shall be happy to serve your Highness! But, if I so dare, I must first ask a favor of your Highness.” The Princess frowned. As a whim, she decided to humor the strange creature.

“Very well then, your Swampiness,” the Princess said.

“I ask that you allow me to live as your companion in the royal palace.”

“You, a frog, wish to live in the palace?” The Princess stared. The frog’s wish to live in civilization, she realized, was less astonishing than his ability to speak like a courtier.

“Yes, I wish to dine at your china plate, to warm myself by our cozy hearth, and to rest on your silk pillow.”

“Actually, the royal dishes are gold, not china.”

“Indeed?” Luccio said. “In my—oh, no matter. I wish to dine at your Highness’s golden plate, to warm myself by your cozy hearth, and to rest on your silk pillow. If you promise me this, and your companionship, I shall recover your Highness’s crystal ball.” The Princess sighed. Her dear mother had given her that crystal ball when she scarcely talked, and she had begun divination before she could read. She could not sacrifice it for pride.

“Yes, I promise that you will accompany me to the palace, and that you will dine on my golden plate and warm your self at my cozy hearth.”

“And rest on your Highness’s silk pillow?”

The Princess rolled her eyes to the bright blue sky and said, “And rest on my silk pillow.”

“I thank you, gracious Princess!” the Frog said with another deep bow. He then jumped into the aperture. The Princess could not see anything in the deep recess, but she heard the scrambling of his little webbed feet against the dirt walls. The crystal ball rose from the aperture, and the Princess reached for it and grabbed it, before the frog emerged and plopped down on the ground.

“Oh, thank you so much, Luccio!” the Princess exclaimed, as she hugged the ball as though it were a lap dog. “You do not know how much this means to me.” She slipped the crystal into a brocade drawstring bag that hung from her velvet belt. The frog emitted a self-satisfied croak as he bowed once more.

“And now,” the Princess said, “I supposed you want me to pick you up and carry you into the palace.” The frog, to her further astonishment, hopped backward one pace.

“Please, I beseech thee!” He said. “Do not touch me, for I am a slimy and disgusting frog!”

“Such nonsense!” the Princess said, gazing at the bright blue and black frog. “You are such a lovely creature.”

“Your beauty, Princess, if I dare say, far outshines mine. But come, if you carry me in your pouch, I should not dirty you.”

“Very well then, your Swampiness,” the Princess said with a graceful curtsy and an arch smile. She untied the drawstring bag and, kneeling down, she held it open before the frog, which jumped in.

2
Caterina the Enchantress, curious to know how the Prince fared lately, sat down to her crystal ball and concentrated. She visualized the Prince: tall, fair, golden-haired and green-eyed. She remembered his arrogant grin and his strutting walk, his excess of jewelry and his extremely short and tight doublet. She remembered how he looked, with a cruel twist to his lips, as he stood over her dying sister, who carried his child in her womb and whom he had killed. The Enchantress gazed into the crystal, and she could see the Frog with the Princess. She had punished him to become the most beautiful frog in the world, and indeed he must be that. It seemed a fitting punishment for his abuse of women when he was a man, and for his complete disrespect for women. He had a slimy frog’s soul, and now he had a frog’s body, and would hopefully remain in that form. The Enchantress was not in the habit of using her magic to hurt others, but in this situation, she had convinced herself that she was not hurting anyone: quite the contrary, she was preventing the Prince from hurting more young women, as he had hurt her sister. Caterina must stop this monster, one way or another, no matter what the means. Seeing him with the Princess, she did not think he could harm her in his present form.

The crystal transformed from mist to a dinner scene. The Enchantress saw a tall table covered with a bounty of food and wine and with enormous god candelabrum. On either side of the table were guests, but instead of talking and laughing, they all stared at the Princess, who shared her plate with a little blue and black frog. Rather, the Princess sat back and pouted, while the frog ate heartily of her cake. The Frog stopped eating for a moment, as though he suddenly realized that all eyes rested upon him. He shrugged his narrow blue shoulders and said, “It is almost as good as flies.” The guests gasped and murmured, and the Princess’s cheeks turned a becoming pink.

The Enchantress sighed and turned away from the crystal. She walked to a tall, slender window and pressed her face against the cold glass. Below her stretched millions of trees on a mountainous countryside. Usually this view made her happy, but now she felt mostly dread. The Prince had remained a Frog for four years now, but Catarina like to check up on him, as she would study the progress of any experiment. She did not approve of this latest turn of events, and she dreaded what would happen to this foolish princess if she catered to the Frog Prince.

The Enchantress loved the castle she had inherited from the elderly Enchantress, who had trained her to be what she was today. She did not even mind the leaky ceiling and the drafty corridors. This castle represented freedom: she enjoyed her solitude alone with her cats and potions and thoughts, alone and free from the sort of abuse that her sister had encountered in the world of cruel men. Traveling strangers and visiting family members wondered at how she could survive on her own like this, and they even offered to find her a husband, a notion she found repellent. No, here in this castle, she was herself, and neither her individuality nor her personal safety was at risk.

The Enchantress and her twin sister had grown up with their parents, in their humble cottage, rather than in a damp old castle. Yet Catarina had a gift for sorcery that, as she grew up, she dabbled in as best she could without an instructor. Her sister showed no inclination toward sorcery; she wanted to please a man and hoped to marry a wealthy one.

When she met the Prince in the woods, he charmed her, and like so many other women, she gave him her heart, among other things, to her detriment. The Enchantress closed her eyes and remembered the day that her sister broke the royal seal on a letter and, upon reading a few lines of this letter, exclaimed over it. Caterina, who was not yet the Enchantress, looked over her sister’s shoulder and read:

My Darling One,
You are sweeter and more noble and beautiful
than any princess or duchess I have met. I wish to spurn
convention and spend the rest of my life by your side,
regardless of what the court thinks.
Pray do not show this note to your parents. Meet me
At the spring, under the great weeping willow, and I shall
elope with you at midnight tonight.
Ever yours.

“Is this not the most wonderful news!” her sister exclaimed, turning her glowing eyes to Catarina, who reread the missive twice.

“Certainly, if the Prince really means to marry you,” Catarina replied.

“Oh, of course he means to marry me! Why else would he send me such a letter! Please, please, do not tell Mama or Papa when they return. They won’t know until they wake tomorrow morning and cannot find me, and by then they cannot stop me!” Catarina sighed and closed her eyes, wondering how to act. She did not want to betray her sister, and yet she had a bad feeling about this whole situation.

“If you do not want them to know, you had better hide that letter,” she said. “They should be returning from the market any minute now.”

Her sister’s bed was indeed empty, when Catarina woke the next morning, and when her parents asked, she trembled, but she informed them of the elopement, as calmly as she could, while she set the breakfast table. Her father was pleased that his daughter, a country girl, had captured a prince, but her mother was not as happy. “Suppose,” she murmured repeatedly. “Just suppose.”

Catarina stepped outside for a walk after breakfast. She headed for the weeping willow at the brook, but upon recognizing the Prince standing under the tree, she quickly hid behind an ancient elm. He had an evil and triumphant gleam in his eyes, as he cast one look downward, toward the ground. He then swung up onto his black steed and rode off without seeing Catarina. She would have been vastly relieved that he had not espied her, if it were not for her conviction that he had done her sister harm. Her heart pounded too fast as she wallowed in dread.

Emerging from behind the elm, she approached the weeping willow and found her sister lying beneath the tree, on the bank. She was somewhat wet, as though she had been in the water. Catarina tentatively touched her sister’s arm, which was not only wet but also cold. Her skirts were hitched up around her thighs, and her face was bruised. She no longer breathed. Catarina’s throat ached, but she emitted a long and wordless shreak.

Within the week, Catarina’s parents both died of grief, and she moved into the castle with the older and wiser Enchantress, who gave her a complete education in magic.

3
Now that the embarrassing dinner was over, Princess Beatrice thought she could endure anything, even letting the Frog warm itself by the hearth, although the guests stared even now. Truly, it was beneath her dignity to continue catering to this Frog, but she had made a promise, and she would not break it. Breaking such a promise would, in the Princess’s opinion, be a low and vile deed, and she could not live with herself if she knew that she had done a low and vile deed. Therefore, she smiled and exchanged meaningless banter with anyone who spoke to her, including the Frog. She had been brought up to please and to charm, especially for the opposite gender, and particularly if they were royalty looking for a bride. The Frog was obviously no royal prince looking for a bride, Beatrice thought, but it was still a fellow creature, and she remained consistently polite to it. Finally, her father stood beside her and spoke low.

“My dear child, do you not think this has gone on enough?”

“Father, I must stay with my promise,” the Princess said with a charming but faintly melancholy little smile.

“Why not suffer the Frog a few minutes and then shove him back to the pond? It is one thing to hold onto a promise, but surely this is too much hospitality, surely. The longer the Frog stays, he will not leave.” The Princess cast her eyes to the floor. She did not like to argue with her father or to disobey him, and now she found herself torn between her duty to him and her duty to keep her promise.

“Father, you have brought me up to be honest and fair and obliging. I remain faithful to my promise and to my impeccable upbringing.”

“Yes, yes, I see.” Her father seemed mollified, to the Princess’s vast relief, and he seated himself in a velvet-upholstered throne. The Princess sat down to the spinet and played a melancholy ballad. She did not see the Frog jump onto the spinet, but there he sat atop the instrument, where he croaked along with the ballad, staying in tune somehow, despite his hoarse, flat voice. The guests stared in horror at the Frog, and some giggled. The Princess did not swipe the Frog off the spinet, as she envisioned herself doing. She consoled herself with the thought that, in the morning, she would command her maid to put the Frog out; she had not promised to continue this hospitality for any specified length of time, and by the morning the Frog will have eaten off her plate, warmed itself by her hearth, and slept on her pillow.

When the Princess went up to her bedchamber and arrived there to see that the Frog already perched on the pillows, she left the bedchamber and lay down on a bench in her dressing room.

“How about this, your Highness. If you kiss me, I shall immediately return to the garden. But you have to kiss me first. Then you can have a restful sleep without me on your pillow.”

4
Once again, the Enchantress spied on the Princess and the Frog Prince.

The Princess, who had placed the Frog atop a scarf-covered pedestal in order to see him better, looked straight at him and wrinkled her nose. She walked around the pedestal, twice, without taking her eyes off the smooth blue and black frog. He sat there complacently enough, and he did not move his slick little head. The Enchantress suspected that the Frog had at least asked the Princess to kiss him. It had not occurred to the Enchantress, even for a second, that any princess would consider going through with it. As beautiful as the Prince was in his present state, he was still a frog, a creature typically reviled by princesses. Finally, to the Enchantress’s horror, the Princess leaned toward the Frog and placed a soft kiss on the top of its head.

The Princess staggered back, covering her lips with both her hands, as she gasped for breath. She could not breathe. The moment her lips touched the Frog, they began to sting horribly, like the worst wasp sting ever. Her eyes filled with tears, through which she could see the Frog become misty and grow larger and larger until he was the size of a dwarf and toppled the marble pedestal, which thumped, only scantly muffled, against the velvet-covered floor. The Princess’s lips and throat burned as though someone held a poker to them, and the pain was so excruciating that she was not terribly astonished to see, sprawled on the floor, no longer a giant blue frog, but a naked, life-size young man with golden hair. Choking, she fell to the floor, clasping her throat and trying to say, “Help!” though the word would not come out. Her burning throat felt as though acid were eating it away. The Frog Prince grabbed the fringed scarf that had draped the pedestal, and he wrapped it around his body while he grinned with triumph and with relief, in spite of the dying Princess before him.

“I did not mention,” the Prince said, bending over the gasping Princess, who crawled away from him in horror, “that I am a Prince under a curse, and I also did not mention, for I think obvious reasons now, that you should not have touched me because I was a poisonous frog.”

The Princess now saw an extraordinary-looking human being behind the Prince: she was a tall and stout woman with long, wavy, dark red hair falling to her knees. Her eyes widened with horror and her mouth set in a determined line, as she moved silently toward the Prince and picked up the fallen marble pillar. As the Enchantress swung the pedestal, the Princess closed her eyes. She heard the crunch of the Prince’s head under the pedestal, before she blacked out completely.