Prince Amphibia Croaks
A fable of deceit and diabolical deception
Once upon a time, there lived an annoying and persistent frog named Lily.
Daily, she appeared as the sun was rising high in the sky. On a sun-warmed rock at the water’s edge, she relaxed, absorbing the heat, surveilling the still pond waters.
Every day, I watched her watching, my throat pulsating, my regal head pushed just above the waterline.
Frankly, the intensity of her bulbous brown eyes was terrifying!
“Go away!” I commanded for the umpteenth time, afraid that her presence would disrupt my plans.
“You summoned me!” she insisted.
Stupidly, I allowed myself to be drawn into the bickering. “I did not! I am summoning a beautiful human princess. When she kisses me, I will turn into a handsome prince, and we will live happily ever after.”
“Moron!” declared my would-be paramour. “Your father, King Frederick, wants you to return with me to the kingdom. He is beginning to think he spawned a court jester! You have been gone for so long; he despairs of his eldest ever succeeding the throne.”
“Go away!” I ordered angrily.
“You know I cannot,” her heavy eyelids flickered. “You croaked the royal mating call, and I responded. It was decreed many years ago that we were betrothed, but year after year, you ignore the King’s command, turning your back on my advances.”
“Phht,” I responded, languidly flicking my tongue to entrap a dragonfly lunch. “My father, Freddo the Ridiculous, has no jurisdiction over this pond, just as you have no royal dominion over my affections. My heart belongs to Freya, and she will surely respond to my call of devotion.”
I promptly sent an irresistible call out to my elusive love, praying that one day soon, my Freya would obey my princely love summons.
Princess Lily snorted her derision and rolled her protruding orbs of devotion. Then, without another word, she slipped soundlessly from her flat rock and disappeared from view.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time she would ever answer my, not-intended-for-her, mating call. Guess the gal was finally ready to admit she was treading water without making any headway.
I felt no pleasure in hurting Lily’s feelings, but I was pleased to see her go. My watermark was set very high, and she ought to have known she was way beneath my courting plimsoll line.
“Ribbit!” I exclaimed, relieved to be rid of the persistent female. “Perhaps now I can concentrate on my true beloved.”
For the next season or two, I concentrated my attention on the far end of the pond. I practised my mating calls until I had a frog in my throat, often despairing but never relenting. Croaking, waiting, hoping, croaking.
Then, one day in early spring, my calls were answered!
She walked, nay glided, down to where the pond languidly lapped its mossy bank. I watched, love-struck, as she slipped from her slippers of glass, sat at the water’s edge and cooled her dainty toes.
I attempted another amorous croak, but my love-swollen throat threatened to choke me.
My Freya! My Freya had finally appeared, and I was paralyzed into inaction.
I gazed silently; my princely countenance barely submerged as I adored the princess’ slippers, reflecting the sparkling sun from the cool of Spring’s grass. They were a pair of glorious prisms, winking, blinking, enticing me to draw nearer.
I moved cautiously. Something wasn’t quite as it should be!
Fables and fairy tales had been told to me as a tadpole, but my memory of the folklore was hazy. Suddenly, I was unsure. I stopped my cautious forward movement to ponder my suspicions.
Freya was exactly as I remembered from the fairy tale; lithe, beautiful, with golden curls spilling from beneath a dazzling tiara. Her garments were crafted from spun silk and her shoes, as previously mentioned, sparkled as if fashioned from diamonds.
Was that it? The shoes? Did the frog prince’s Freya wear glass slippers? So, what if she didn’t! Life imitates art- isn’t that the saying? Imitates is the operative word here. The saying isn’t; life is exactly the way art portrays it, and if it were, it would be a cumbersome, stupid citation that would never have become a popular paraphrase.
Having settled my slightly disquieted mind, I moved through the water towards my beloved’s toes, which were nimbly wriggling in the shallows.
I have never observed such tantalising perfection!
Freya possessed two fragile feet, narrow and straight with softly curving arches; her slightly webbed, arrow-straight toes stirred the water into a gentle frenzy. My pounding heart responded with utter joy- my throat relaxed, emitting an irresistible love call!
Freya’s feet stopped paddling, instantly frozen mid swish.
The intensity of my call had startled us both. In reflex, I sank just below the water, my princely browns blinking furiously, afraid that Freya might flee.
Miraculously, she remained frozen in place, a monument to human perfection. Her large brown eyes scanned the pond’s surface.
I dared to utter a gentle “Ribbet” while my heartbeat a bongo rhythm, mercilessly expanding my perfect green breast.
Without warning, my Freya broke the spell, reclaiming movement as she darted forward and scooped me from the shallows.
Was my dream about to manifest? Was I about to receive the embrace that would release the handsome prince that had resided within for what seemed like eons? Was I about to live my happily ever after?
Yes! (And, bugger it- No!)
Freya’s full lips pursed as her golden head bent towards mine, but just before our lips met, the disquiet that had bothered me earlier vengefully returned. But it was too late!
Understanding arrived with Freya’s cold kiss!
The glass slippers had been a dazzling decoy, a ruse to distract me from her toes- straight and beautiful but a sham, deceitfully glorious, a webbed subterfuge; masterful chicanery.
As the princess’ lips grazed my own, I knew I had been royally duped by Lilly!
I have heard tales told of love’s first kiss, where the meeting of lips explodes into shooting stars or dazzling firework displays. I held my breath (just as well I did as it turned out), still holding on to the possibility of a miraculous outcome; a happy ever after with my Princess Freya.
Instead of a glorious display of pyrotechnics, I heard an eardrum-destroying sonic boom followed by what can only be described as a thorough dousing of stagnant pond water. The dainty hand that had once cradled my apprehensive body suddenly released, and I fell- spinning through a deluge of stinking, stale fluid, to land heavily on a hard, slippery surface.
When my confusion abated, I realised I had become a pawn in the devilish games of my father, King Frederick, Lilly the Preposterous, and the court magician, David Hopperfield!
A glance to my side revealed that my assessment was correct. Princess Lilly was standing beside me in a fetid puddle of water, gazing adoringly at my frog body. The shock of remaining a prisoner in my amphibious body, standing in my father’s court, was nothing compared to the appalling apparition that was Princess Lily.
She had aged dreadfully! Her rough green skin hung in folds from her skinny body, and her lacklustre eyes, no longer bulbous, sank horribly into her shrunken skull.
“What the hell happened to you?” I exclaimed, wildly glancing between my aged father, resplendent on his lily pad throne, and Princess Lily, stinking and frail on the golden tiled floor of Frederick’s court.
“Hopperfield sure bungled this!” I screeched the accusation. “Good lord, Lilly, you look at least twenty years old!”
“I am over twenty, and so are you,” she whimpered pathetically. “In your stupidity, you have ignored me for too long, and now we are merely shells of our youth.”
I staggered back in shock, shaking my head in horror and disbelief.
“If you don’t believe Lily,” commanded my father, his voice still strong in his advanced twilight years, “come forward to the mirror pond and see for yourself.”
I struggled painfully, moving slowly toward my father’s feet, and gazed with trepidation at my reflection. I repelled at the image floating before me, a horror example of amphibious decay. It was a wonder that I could still draw breath!”
“Impossible!” I cried in complete denial. “This is more of Hopperfield’s mischief!”
“Believe what you like, but you have squandered your youth and are now too old to produce heirs, as is Lily. Therefore, I have brought you both here to advise you of my impending abdication and the succession of your youngest brother, Prince Caudate.”
My father struggled to his hind legs and commanded, “Hopperfield, banish them to spend their remaining days in the pond from whence they came!”
Spring is morphing into summer, and daily, I watch pitiful Lily struggle to her sun-warmed rock to absorb the heat of the day. She no longer turns adoring eyes my way when I send out a wanton call.
Things have changed. I have relinquished my dream of a human companion, but I am gravitating towards a pretty female frog who has appeared lately in answer to my pleading croaks.
I have noticed that Lily raises her sunken eyes in derisive response to my flirtations with the new girl. Lily says I am a silly old fool and that I should spend my remaining days sun-baking on her warm, flat rock.
That is never going to happen!
I may be banished, but I am still the eldest son of the now-deceased Prince Frederick. Some rights and privileges go with my birthright, privileges that I refuse to waste on the likes of the wrinkled Lily.
And so, they all lived crappily ever after.
The moral of my fable is: Even though you can’t teach an old frog new tricks, you can trick him into believing a beautiful girl will want him for his charms, even though she is probably just waiting for him to croak!
