The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(43)

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I was crying because I lost something that I love.”

“Are crying,” the frog said. “You haven’t stopped yet.” Which was a fair thing to point out, if slightly unkind. “Be still, and stop crying—or carry on crying for as long as you like, I suppose. Whichever you prefer, only, I can help you find it.”

“But you don’t know what I’ve lost,” he said.

“Oh,” the frog said vaguely, “didn’t you mention it?”

“I don’t believe I did. I’m sure I didn’t, actually.”

“Tell me what it was, then,” the frog said, “or better still, I can simply tell you what’s in this well that wasn’t here an hour ago, and you can tell me if it belonged to you.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes, oh,” the frog said. “I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring you back your plaything?”

“But I did not ask you to help me,” he said, “so why should I promise you anything?”

“You are sitting on my well,” said the frog. “You are beautiful, and you are crying, and I saw you before anyone else did; that is almost the same thing as asking, or being asked, anyhow.” The frog brushed its long, thumbless hand over his, and the man’s youngest daughter had no answer for that.

“I don’t know what I should promise you,” he said. “You can have anything else that I own. I could bring you something, if there was something that you wanted, and that you could not get for yourself, I suppose. My chain of office that my father gave me.” That was all he could think to offer.

The frog said, “Keep your boyish treasures—I don’t want them, nor is there anything you can fetch for me I could not get myself. I do not need an errand boy. But if you will accept me as a companion, and let me sit next to you at your father’s table, and eat from the plate you eat from, and drink from your cup, and sleep in your bed; if you would promise this to me, then I’ll dive back into the well and bring your golden ball back to you.”

“Yi-i-i-i-ikes,” the boy said slowly. He thought of his father’s words: You are responsible for your beauty. “Well,” he said. “I could promise all this to you, if you brought it back to me.” He hoped that maybe the frog was joking, although he had no reason to believe it was; people rarely joked with him. He thought, as he often did before making a promise, that perhaps he would not have to keep it, or that maybe the promise would not be so bad in the keeping as it had been in the making.

But no one was ever joking when they asked him to make a promise, and everyone always remembered when he owed them something. And it should be remembered here that he was the youngest daughter, after all, and had not yet learned as much about being a daughter as some of the others. At any rate, as soon as the frog heard him say yes, it stopped listening to him and dove back into the water, a dark clot darting swiftly under the surface, until it disappeared from sight entirely.

A few minutes later the frog paddled up to the edge of the well with the golden ball bulging between its thin lips and spat it out onto the grass. Its tongue was a livid purple and bulged out of its mouth. But the youngest daughter was too happy to pay much attention to how the frog looked. He was so relieved, in fact, that he picked up the ball immediately and ran for home.

“Wait,” said the frog, wheezing and dripping. “Take me along. I cannot run as fast as you can; that is not my fault but yours.” But he could no longer hear the frog, and quickly forgot about it and what it had done for him in the forest.

The next day the youngest daughter was sitting at the table with his father and all his sisters, when something with a lipless mouth and thumbless hands hauled itself up the front steps of the house. It knocked on the door and called out, “Daughter, youngest, open the door for me!” So he ran to see who it was, and opened the door wide to see the frog sitting there, panting from the strain of crawling up the stairs. He slammed the door shut and sat back down at the table. His father saw his face and asked, “Why are you so distressed, and who was at the door?”

“It was a frog,” he said. Then: “We are going to have to wash the front steps.”

“Did someone knock on our front door and leave a frog there,” his father asked, “or did the frog knock and expect to be let in?”

“Well,” his youngest daughter said. “I think it wanted to be let in.”

“I did not ask what the frog wanted,” his father said. “I asked if the frog expected to be let in.” All the other daughters had stopped pretending to eat at this point and stared in open excitement at the prospect of watching one of their number get into trouble.

“Well,” his daughter said. “Only—yesterday, when I was sitting near the well in the forest, my golden ball fell into the water.”

“Sitting near the well, or on it?”

“On it, Father. Sitting on it, and my golden ball fell into the water, and I was crying over it, and I was crying so much that the frog brought it back to me, and because it insisted on repayment, I promised him that he could be my companion, but I did not think it would be possible for the frog to leave the well, because—don’t frogs have to live in the water? And now it is sitting outside the door and wants to come in.”