The man peered at the mushrooms with his magnifying glass, his cloak tossing behind him in the breeze. “Hmmm. An eruption of mushrooms can mean only one thing.”
“That it rained yesterday?” asked the boy.
“Of course not. It means dragons, or faeries, possibly a goblin.”
The boy crossed his arms. “What kind of a detective are you?”
The detective straightened, pocketed his magnifying glass, and winked. “The very best kind.”
It’s hard being a frog princess. People just aren’t ready for that gender swap. Boys poked at her with sticks, carried her around in buckets for hours at a time, and occasionally tossed her at a girl to make them scream, but they never kissed her. They never even considered kissing her.
Still, she supposed there are some small beauties to life as a frog. Her hair never got tangled, she didn’t have to go to school, and she could swim all day. Those things count for something, but she misses her old friends. She misses books and clothes and her old dog, Charlie.
So she sought me out and asked for my help. She wants me to ask you, if you know any little boys, to dare them to kiss frogs. This, she feels, just might work. It seems to me if little girls can do it, then little boys can find the courage too.
He whispered to himself as he placed rocks into the puddles. Ancient rhymes and old spells spilled together without reason. He smiled to see pieces of the sky become trapped in the water’s reflection. A few more rhymes and he’d be able to smuggle them home in his pockets.
Not that he knew what to do with them. He’d probably just tuck them into jars and leave them on a shelf to frighten youngsters. It seemed a disappointing conclusion for his work and a sad fate for a bit of sky.
He added a new rhyme. The bits of sky grew restless, reaching up with wings which lifted them from the sand and flew them back up where they belonged. Much better to have invisible birds flying around than a chunk of depressed stratosphere trapped in a jar, he reasoned.
All at once the woods fell silent. There were no planes, no sounds of traffic, just silence and the forest. Time appeared suspended. As she wandered through the forest, how tiny felt the thread that held her to her time. It seemed as possible a knight in a suit of armor might come crashing through the bush as a plane might fly overhead. She lingered there, playing with the threads of time, more than willing to believe she had a choice.
Old Mr. Snodgrass lived near the garden on the hill. His failing eyesight and his funny bulbous nose made him a favorite among the local widows, who flocked to his side with little cakes and books he could not read. Mr. Snodgrass, who had trained as an anthropologist and yearned to remain relevant, saw his chance. He hired an assistant and dictated his theories. Together they created his masterpiece; a book entitled The Mating Rituals of Aging Widows.
The local widows were horrified. They stopped bringing him little cakes right away. Mr. Snodgrass lost several pounds before he realized how much those cakes had meant to him. He relented at last, and married the woman who had brought his favorite cakes. Soon after the wedding he discovered she bought them at a corner store. They do not discuss his book.
At her foot lay a four leaf clover, colored purple so she couldn’t miss it. It looked ragged and strange, but she didn’t mind. She considered luck to be a rather tricky thing, so she hid the four leaf clover away in a book about folklore.
Inside, the clover pressed between the pages of a story about trolls and used up its luck burrowing into the story. She still has the book, so if you’d like to crawl inside a story and meet a troll or two, just ask. She’ll show you the page, pack you a lunch, and send you along the clover’s trail.
The Captain kicked at the ground and grumbled to himself. His crew made him furious. They were lazy and clumsy and ruined his best sails. He came across a spider and watched it for a while. His anger ebbed as he marveled how the spider rushed onto a web with ease to catch its prey, despite it flapping in the wind. An idea occurred to the Captain.
The next day the harbour hummed with strange tales of a mad sea captain who replaced his entire crew, save the cook and the cabin boy, with a clutter of spiders. No one knew what to think as they watched the ship sail out to sea with flawless symmetry, each sail just so and the rigging just right.
When she’d had enough, she boarded her petaled boat and sailed away on a convenient tide. She took her magic with her, willing herself not to care that the land would soon be empty of stories and hungry for wonder. She set her course by a shooting star and the memory of a waking dream. Where she might end up she did not know. This, of course, offered half the adventure and all the fun.
These are battle-weary warriors of late summer, scorched in the heat and short on rain. Their stories seldom told, their tattered bodies litter the landscape as their lives come a close. I asked her of the battles she fought, but she turned from me and sighed. She kept her secrets for another generation to spill and left me full of questions.
He believed it his destiny to be king of the world. Such is the ego of a frog in a pond. His power grew so great tasty morsels of fly flesh buzzed by him for dinner and his servants croaked in unison when he called them. He lost his crown somewhere in the shallows, but who could forget his amphibious face, his regal bearing? He had the makings of a legend and when his chance came, he would not miss it.
Jennifer Shelby 