he said, "You take that back! I am the Crown Prince!"
Maisy pressed her lips together, chewed for a moment, wiggled her nose, then looked down, clearing her throat. "Sorry, Prince," she mumbled.
"What? I didn't hear you!"
"I'm very sorry, Prince," she said more loudly, staring into the air over the table rather than looking at him.
Rupert sniffed loudly. "So you should be. Now I order you to stop learning to read and write."
"No! Me Mam told me I could learn."
"Well, I'm the Prince, and I say you can't."
"Oooh." She squinched her mouth shut and Rupert stomped closer and triumphantly snatched the quill out of her hand, closing the book she was writing in with a loud thump. Then he stuck out his tongue and walked away. Maisy shook with fury. She panted for a few seconds and then stood up on her chair and yelled, "You're not a prince! You're not! You're just a big, ugly toad!"
Blimp. Bonk. A toad sat on the dirt floor of the cottage where a second before Rupert had stood. The little girl clapped both her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. Rupert made a croak which sounded like a question and Maisy's hands dropped away from her face. She was very pale. "Oh dear, oh dear." She climbed down off the chair and approached him. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Prince. Me Mam told me I shouldn't say things unless I mean them, but I didn't know I could do that." Rupert hopped backwards as she drew nearer. She held out her hand. "Come on. Come to me. I won't hurt you."
But the toad turned on its hind jumpers and fled out the door. There, it was disoriented. Everything was so huge. The sun was blinding, and the chickens, with their sharp beaks and claw-like feet, terrified its small green form. It hopped-ran for what felt like miles over the sparse ground, and then it saw a glimpse of water and sheltering grasses and reeds. With panting relief, it leaped into the pond and instantly felt better, as though it had arrived home. It drifted there for a while, and then it heaved itself onto the bank, where it sat, thinking, and fighting the temptation to eat the insects buzzing around it. Toads don't usually think. But toads aren't usually crown princes, even if crown princes might sometimes be toads.
3.
Just then, Kate was walking along the edges of the pond, looking for bugs and other fauna and flora to study for her project. She had already collected a variety of insects in a jar in her carry bag, but her eyes widened with delight when she spotted the pensive toad.
"Excellent!" she exclaimed. "Now, what kind of a frog are you?" she asked herself, peering at it carefully and thinking of what she knew about frogs, which wasn't very much yet. "What are you called?"
"Rupert! Rupert!" it told her, but all she heard was "Ribbit! Ribbit!"
Kate was not a squeamish person, nor a cruel one. She liked wild things, so she was kind to the toad that she thought was a frog, kneeling and studying how it looked so that she would know more about these things and could look it up later in the books she had hidden in her room. She carefully drew a picture of the toad in her leather-bound notebook and wrote notes alongside, like: green from top to toe, and in brackets (toe?), while she peered closely at its limbs and considered whether they could even be called feet. After a moment, she returned to observing what was what, rather than pondering on things she didn't yet have answers for. Big googly eyes, she noted. Sits very still. Does not appear interested in bugs or spiders.
"Rupert! Rupert!" it croaked again.
"Hmm," she said, looking the toad over. She told it, "If I wasn't a scientist, I might leave you to get eaten by the turtles in the lake." That was something she knew about frogs, that they could be turtle chow, and she thought the frog's eyes became even more googly after she had spoken. She giggled at the idea. "Since I've never seen a frog like you before, I think I'd better keep an eye on you."
She reached for the frog and put it into her carry bag, then continued on her trek around the pond, adding several varieties of pond reeds and a lizard, which unfortunately jumped out and ran away when she wasn't looking. It wasn't as content to sit in the shadows of her carry bag as the frog appeared to be. Finally, she headed back up to the palace, carefully avoiding any area where she might bump into Cousin Garil. In her room, she took out her finds and laid them carefully on the dresser. She looked with some concern at the frog, which just sat there. She touched its forehead; it was cool.
"I wonder if you're quite all right," she mused. "You seem awfully placid for a frog. You haven't tried to hop away once."
She went to her bed (she had decided to keep the science books hidden under the mattress, which might make for some uncomfortable sleeping that evening) and pulled out the weighty tomes, plonking them onto her bedcovers and flicking through them to find an entry on frogs. She discovered that frogs were called amphibians, because they lived on both land and water, and she found that very interesting. She looked at lots of pictures of frogs, frequently looking over her shoulder at the one on her dresser, but she couldn't recognise her frog at all. Finally she decided to focus on the insects instead, and spent several hours poring over the pages of a book, discovering countless fascinating facts about the bugs she had collected. Then it was dinnertime, so she put the frog in her water closet, so it could float around in her pitcher of water if it wished, and hurried down to dinner.
4.
Rupert did not come to dinner and Cousin Garil said, "What's this? Growing boys never miss a meal. Kate, where is your brother?"
She looked at him in surprise since she thought she wasn't meant to speak at the dinner table. "I don't know," she said. Frankly, she was preoccupied with eyeing Rupert's pot pie, which looked far more delicious than her silverbeet salad, and she was wondering if Cousin Garil would notice if she swapped them around. Sadly concluding that he would, she munched on her greens and watched cautiously as Cousin Garil's brows became increasingly thunderous at Rupert's absence.
After dinner, the palace was turned upside down with the chambermaids and kitchen maids and all other sorts of maids looking for Rupert. Kate hurried up to her bedroom to hide her books again, in case her chambers were inspected as part of the search. When she came into the room, the frog was sitting on her dressing table, in front of her mirror, staring at itself.
"How did you get out here?" she asked, then wondered cheerfully, "What do you see in there?"
It turned its head her way. "Ribbit!" (Rupert!) it said, and if she hadn’t known that frogs don’t have expressive voices she would have thought it said it miserably.
She took it back into the water closet and told it to make sure to hide if anyone came in, because if Cousin Garil discovered she had a frog he was sure to kick up a fuss. She hid her insect jar and her plant samples under the mattress along with the books. The bed was beginning to get quite a bump in it, but she didn't think that anyone looking for Rupert would notice that sort of thing.
When the palace was fully searched and Rupert still hadn't been found, Cousin Garil enlisted the aid of all the grooms and butlers and stable-boys to search the palace grounds for him. Kate offered to help search, but Garil told her to keep quiet and stay calm. He left her behind, even though Kate was feeling calm and knew she could have helped, since she knew all of her and Rupert's favourite playing and hiding spaces. However, since Rupert was gone and Cousin Garil was out with everybody else looking for him (except all the maids — they were chatting over a late dinner of pot pie), she was able to reclaim their golden ball, and she took it out into the courtyard to bounce and kick around.
She was doing this when a little freckly-faced girl came wandering into the courtyard, scanning the ground anxiously and calling out, "Here toady, toady, toady."
Kate caught her ball and asked, "Can I help you?"
The little girl jumped and stared guiltily at Kate. "I dunno."
"What are you doing here?" Kate asked kindly. "This is the palace courtyard. I've never seen you here before. Where do you live?"
"Um … I live with me Mam in the cottage by the forest."
Kate was surprised, for sh
e had heard about the woman who lived in that cottage. She was the Palace Witch. "What are you doing here?" Kate repeated. "Were you looking for something?"
The girl grimaced and nodded, looking down.
"What is it?" Kate asked. "Lots of people are out looking for my brother, Rupert, but I can't help with that search so I might as well help you with yours."
The girl stared at her wide-eyed. "Is … Is Rupert the prince? Are you the princess?"
Kate nodded. "I'm Kate. What's your name?"
"I'm Maisy." And suddenly Maisy was bawling at the top of her lungs, "I turned the prince into a toad, and now me Mam's found out and I'm gonna be in so much trouble if he's been eaten!"
Kate stared at her, open-mouthed. "You turned Rupert into a toad? You mean, that's where he's been all this time? Stuck in the shape of a toad?"
"Yes," Maisy wailed. "I didn't mean to do it. But he made me good and mad and it happened accidental-like, and then I let him hop away and now I don't know where he is, or if he's all right, and I feel so baaaaadddd!"
Kate smiled with the pleasure of making a scientific discovery. So THAT's why that frog looks so different: it's a TOAD. She patted Maisy on the shoulder. "Sssh, sssh. It's okay. I think I know where he is."
Maisy's wailing cut off abruptly and she blinked and sniffed. "You do?"
"Well, I picked up an unusual