Fair Peril (7 page)

LeeVon passed his long hands over the top one, and it was neither flowered nor blank anymore.

“Here.” He passed it to the importunate kid. “This will give you everything you need.”

When the kid had left, LeeVon went to the staff bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. A foggy old mirror. Everything seemed dark in it, including his own reflected face.

“A little too goddamn weird,” he muttered.

Driving home after work, with the green book called
Batracheios
lying on the car seat by her side, Buffy listened to a woman on talk radio describing how she was going to fill her ex's convertible with tapioca pudding. It sounded like a wonderful idea. Too bad Prentis didn't have a convertible; he hated tapioca.

But unexpectedly, her thoughts veered with rueful insight to Adamus: was a pissed-off paramour what had happened to him? Was he some vengeful ex-girlfriend's idea of joke's-on-you? Was he really a man in a green skin, turned into a bullfrog by a maddened mistress? All the fairy tales ever said was that a wicked witch had cast a spell. They never said why. Wicked witch; was that male chauvinist folklore code for “angry woman”? Angry with a reason?

Or was Adamus a victim, a scapefrog, an innocent?

A thousand years. Either way, a thousand years was an awfully long time.

Not that she believed any of this.

She had to find out his story; she just had to. When she got home, perhaps he would ask her to tell him a story. He liked her stories. God bless him for liking her stories. If he did not ask to hear one, she would offer. And she would think of one that would prompt him to tell her his.

She smiled. It was a plan.

But when she walked into her skewed little dwelling and looked to the aquarium, he was not there.

Four

The wire mesh top was knocked clear off the glass prison and lay on the floor, bricks and all. One brick had taken the Gro-Lite down with it to sprawl on the linoleum like a corpse made of twisted metal and a shattered glass bulb; the aquarium hulked dark. At first Buffy thought Adamus might still be in there. Classic denial. She turned on the ceiling light and thundered over to look.

No frog.

Where was he? Had somebody broken into her house and stolen her frog? No, the evidence pointed to an escape. A kitchen cabinet door hung open. An empty Cheerios box lay prostrated amid oat dust. Hungry frog. Oh, poor baby. He had probably leaped at the top of the aquarium until it fell off. Strength of desperation.

“Adamus!” Buffy called.

There was, of course, no answer.

“Addie, I'm sorry, I'll fix you breakfast from now on.” He'd better damn well like Pop-Tarts. “Where are you?”

No answer.

Could he have left the house? Buffy checked the doors and windows, feeling cold and afraid for unexamined reasons—there was no time to analyze her emotions; she needed to find Adamus.

The windows were locked, the doors likewise. He had to be still in the house. She didn't see how he could have gotten out.

“Addie!”

Nothing.

She searched, forced to assume that he was hiding from her—but where? She tried watery places. The toilet—thank God he wasn't in there. The bathtub—no. The laundry tub and washing machine in the basement—no. The kitchen sink, then under the kitchen sink—nothing.

Then she started over and simply looked every place she could think of. In the deep, dark, dirty corners of kitchen cupboards. Under tables. Behind furniture.

Three hours later, Buffy had made her third full sweep of the house. She had moved every piece of furniture. She had emptied every cubbyhole large enough to hold a frog. Years' worth of quiet, peaceable dirt had been disturbed and now aspired to the status of dust in the wind, agitating her sinuses. The place looked like somebody had turned it upside down and shaken it; even the attic dirt was on the move. Buffy hadn't had her supper and what was worse, she didn't want any. And she hadn't found Addie.

He just wasn't anywhere. He was gone. Just plain gone. Somehow he must have found a way out of the house while she was at work.

It was dark outside.

She gave up, sat her hunkers on a kitchen chair, and stared at the darkness outside the window as only an exhausted middle-aged woman can stare. Adamus. Gone. Now she was never going to know his goddamn story.

Now he would not listen to hers anymore.

Damn it, for all that he talked and talked, he was the only one who listened to her. Talking frog, hell, what she needed was her listening frog back again.

Why did everybody have to go and leave her?

She stood up. “I'm going to bed,” she muttered, although there was no one to hear her or care. She walked to the desolation of her bedroom—it looked as though a bomb had dropped in there—pulled some clothes off, crawled onto her cheap mattress, and huddled under her blankets. At least she would get a good night's sleep for a change. There was nobody around to bother her.

Story of her life.

She wept.

Never in her life had Buffy learned to cry with any modicum of dignity. Once, when she was a child of about ten years old and she was crying and being annoying, her mother had ordered her to look into the mirror and see how ugly she was. The twisted redness of her own face had shocked her, and ever since then she had resisted crying and was therefore all the more fated to cry unaesthetically. Some women could cry graceful, silent Audrey Hepburn tears; Buffy was not one of those. She wonked, she honked, she bellowed, she quacked, she bawled, she roared. Her own noise humiliated her and made her cry louder. She traumatized the house to its foundation with her crying. Definitely not a princess. Who cared; there was nobody to hear her. Nobody gave a damn.

Buffy cried her pillow wet, blew her nose on it, then turned it over, gave a few final yawps, and slipped into sleep.

Bent over like a fishhook, Mom picked at the lawn. It was not dignified or seemly for a woman outside, where people could see her, to get down on her hands and knees like she was scrubbing a floor, so Mom bent from the waist to pick the bits of twig and maple wing, oh those messy maple trees, to pick the leaf stems and the litter the inconsiderate squirrels and chipmunks and birds had left behind, half-gnawed acorns, seed husks, scraps of eggshell. She had bent from the waist this way so long and so often that this was her body's shape now, like the crook of somebody's cane. Her hands had grown crooked too. She didn't like it. Her back hurt, and her legs. She sniffled to herself; there was nobody else to hear her. Everybody else was in bed, but she had to get it done or he would be angry at her. She had to pick up all the mess off the lawn. It wasn't fair. There wasn't enough light for her to see properly, even with all those tall lamps on poles all over the place, but she still had to do it. Her trembling hands groped deep in the grass for leaf trash, separating the brown from the green. She had to get all the brown out, or he would be angry. She had to get every little bit, even though her back hurt and her legs hurt, too, and her hands were dry and crooked and sore, caked with brown, the skin of her fingertips cracking, rubbed open. Her bare knobby feet, too, they were getting sore. But she had to get the lawn clean. He would be angry if she didn't.

“Mrs. Murphy!”

Bent over, Mom had only a peripheral sense of something white moving, a person walking up to her.

“Mrs. Murphy! What are you doing out here? It's nighttime.”

It was one of those nice young women, nurses. Mom felt herself start to cry as she turned to her, unable to straighten as she held up the evidence. “Look at my poor hands!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Look what he's making me do. I have to pick up all this.”

“Your husband? He's dead, Mrs. Murphy. Nobody's making you do anything.”

“He'll be angry if I don't get it finished soon.”

“It's time to sleep.”

“No, I can't. He'll be angry.”

Her back hurt. Her legs hurt. Her hands were cracked and seeping. And the nurse, trying to lead her away, still didn't seem to understand. Nobody had ever understood, except maybe that other little girl in white, what was her name, somebody's daughter, wide bride, got married way too young, what
was
that poor child's name? Mattress? Madness? Maddie?

Sometime later in the night, Buffy awakened to the touch of chilly hands slithering up over the edge of the bed. “Heard ya calling me, baby,” whispered a throaty voice.

Buffy's eyes popped open to encounter pop-eyes at close range. Huge, glistening golden eyes. She was so startled that she could not move or scream; she just gawked.

“What a babe.” He hoisted himself onto the mattress with a grace perhaps owing to years of mounting lily pads. “You lay the eggs, baby,” he said in a voice froggy with emotion, “and I'll squirt the milt on them.”

Buffy yelped, thrashed her way out from under the blankets, and grabbed him.

“Addie?” She hoisted him by the armpits. It took both hands to lift him. He was as big as a year-old baby. How had he gotten so large so fast? But it was indisputably Prince Adamus d'Aurca; she would recognize that green-lipped smirk anywhere. “Addie!” She was so glad to see him that she almost kissed him, which would not have been a good idea—but then she realized where he had placed his clammy four-fingered hands. “You grabby little creep!” Reacting with more force than forethought, she thrust him away from her, throwing him against the wall.

“OW!”

Buffy gasped, terrified that she had hurt him and equally terrified that he would turn into a prince with kind and beautiful eyes. The latter she need not have worried about. He merely plopped to the floor, where he sat, green and not at all symmetrical.

“Addie!” Buffy lurched toward him.

He cowered, whimpering, “Mercy, voluptuous one.”

“Well, don't grope me!” She knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”

“I—I sneer at wounds,” he said shakily. “I am a prince of the house of Aurca.”

She saw no damage. He seemed fine. Already getting his attitude back. “Prince, my patootie,” Buffy grumbled, saggy with relief. “You're still a frog. I always knew that throw-him-against-the-wall thing was a euphemistic crock.” The sleep-with-the-princess version had a lot more of the knell of truth about it. It wasn't the prince who was supposed to get knocked up.

“Try it again,” he said with apparent sincerity. “Harder.”

What was this, S and M? “No, thank you. You sure you're okay?” Gently she picked him up, holding him at a safe distance from herself. “Nice to see ya. Where you been keeping yourself?” His skin was slimy-wet and smelly. “Ew!” She stood up and headed toward the bathroom, plopped him into the bathtub, and hit the light switch.

In the sudden glare he cringed again. “Mercy, massive lady.”

“Mercy yourself.” Now she could see that his smooth jade skin was dewed with punky water and smeared with a reddish clay she knew she should recognize. She did recognize it. “Oh, for God's sake, you were in the
sump hole?
”

“Princess, prithee kiss me. Your song in the night has enslaved me.”

“Give me a break.” Buffy reached for a washcloth.

“Your power turns my bones to jelly, but I know that your soul must be as generous as your flesh. Kiss me and let me cling to you, let me cling to you for a week and make milt.”

“Addie,” said Buffy sternly, “this is sexual harassment, and I hate to tell you, but you're not worth it; all you've got is a cloaca. Knock it off.” She twisted the spigots, turning on the bathwater.

“But—but that is wonderful. You make the silver pizzle pee in the white pond. Ow!”

“Too warm? No, too cold. Poor baby.” Buffy knelt by the tub and started sloshing water over her dirty frog.

“Don't! Don't wash it off.”

Buffy held off with the washcloth but wrinkled her nose. “You've got to be kidding.” Evidently clay that smelled like rotten mushrooms was perfume to him, like ripe, dead, road-killed ground hog to a dog.

“You don't like it, sweet lady?”

“Nooooo, why should I not like it? You just stay here and be stinky. I'm going back to bed.” It was no use trying to put the frog back in the aquarium, as big as he had grown. Buffy snapped off the light, leaving him in three inches of water in the bathtub, and closed the door on him to keep him there.

No sooner had she positioned her head on its pillow than the croaking began. Ribbet, Adamus sang, riiiibbet, oh RIIIIIIBBBETT RRIBB RRIBBB RIIIIIBBET. And if aquarium-sized Adamus had been able to vibrate the house, bathtub-sized Adamus sounded capable of launching it right through the pearly gates.

Buffy smiled. “Music to my ears,” she whispered. She stuffed her forefingers into her ears, thrust her head underneath her unsanitary pillow, and went peacefully to sleep.

The first thing the next morning, Buffy faced a moral dilemma: what to do with Adamus while she used the bathroom, for which her need was urgent. “Turn your back, please, your Princeness,” she told him.

He did not turn. With a blank, suffering look on his broad face, he whispered, “I'm hungry.”

“I don't know whether I should feed you!” She stood jiggling her legs and biting her lower lip; more damn problems. Her food seemed to have an alarming effect on Adamus. He was discernibly larger than he had been the evening before. If this didn't stop, he would soon be human-sized. And what if he didn't stop then?

“I'm
starving,
puissant lady!” Buffy heard a catch in his voice. “I can't help it. I am not trying to grow so greatly.”

“It's not your idea?”

“No!”

Maybe it was the damn additives, chemicals strange to his medieval body. Damn processed food. Nothing she could do anything about.

“If I promise to make you waffles, will you wait outside the bathroom?”

“Yes.”