A Prince among Frogs (2 page)

“And you came here because …”

“We heard that Grassina had taken it upon herself to get rid of all the monsters around that town Chancewood … Chanceworld … something like that.”

“Chancewold,” said Grassina. “Tell me about the monster. What does it look like?”

“It’s gray and has a floppy body like a half-empty bladder covered in warts. It stays in the water most of the time, but when it does come out, it crawls around on three big flippers. It has long tentacles with leaf-shaped tips, and it smells like a slop bucket that hasn’t been emptied for a month.”

“That’s one of mine, all right,” Grassina said, frowning. “I guess I won’t be able to work on the garden after all. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready to go.”

“I remember that monster,” said Emma, placing her hand on her aunt’s arm. “I’m the one who sent it away. If anyone should deal with this, it’s me.”

“Don’t be absurd. I created the monster, so I’ll take care of it.”

Emma shook her head. “You can’t go alone. I’ll go with you and—”

“You’ll do no such thing. Haywood will go with me. You’re the Green Witch and your responsibilities are here in Greater Greensward. Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with many monsters over the last few years. Haywood and I will be back before you know it.”

Although Emma didn’t look happy, Millie relaxed and gave an unconscious sigh of relief. She didn’t mind helping her mother if she needed it, but then her mother very rarely needed help. All Millie wanted to do was plan her wedding; with her mother there, she just might get the chance.

Two

B
efore she met Audun, Millie had thought she knew everything there was to know about being a dragon. But after they fell in love and Audun had had to earn the right to learn how to be a human, she discovered there were a lot of things she didn’t know. Most of them, like how ice dragons differed from fire-breathing dragons, were interesting, but only a few affected her directly. Her sweet tooth was one such discovery. She’d always thought it was part of her human side, so she’d been surprised when Audun, who had been a dragon at the time, nibbled a honey-laced confection and declared that it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. It had never occurred to Millie to try anything sweet as a dragon, but when she did, she discovered that dragon taste buds amplified the flavor so that her entire mouth tingled. After that, Millie got in the habit of fetching a huge bowl of porridge in the morning, dribbling a generous serving of honey over it, and taking it back to her chamber to eat. She was sure most of the other inhabitants of the castle would find it disconcerting to see a dragon eating breakfast in the Great Hall, and she didn’t want to have to explain why she turned into a dragon just to eat breakfast.

She was in her chamber eating her porridge on the second day after Grassina’s departure for the tropical island when she heard a knock on her door. Thinking that it was Audun, she left the bowl on the floor and shuffled across the room, keeping her wings tucked to her sides so she wouldn’t knock anything over. Opening the door, she was surprised to find her grandmother Queen Chartreuse waiting on the other side.

After one glance at her granddaughter, the queen pursed her lips in disapproval. “Can’t you refrain from turning into a dragon at least for one day? And if you can’t restrain yourself, I wish you wouldn’t do it inside. This castle was never built for creatures with your … bulk.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?” Millie asked, backing into the room. Unlike her mother, Millie had never balked at speaking her mind to her grandmother.

“I’m saying that I’d prefer to talk to you while you’re a human. There,” said the queen as Millie obliged her by changing form. “That’s better. Some people have come to see your mother. If you’d been eating in the Great Hall as you should be, you would know that she was called away to speak to a herd of centaurs who have been stealing horses from local farms. They call it liberating them, which is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Your mother had just left when these people came to see her. Ordinarily, I would send them to see Grassina, but she’s away, as you know. Your grandfather and your father have gone hunting, leaving me to deal with everything, but I put my foot down when it comes to dealing with something like this. You’re going to have to talk to them, so wipe the porridge off your chin and come with me.”

“Who are these people?” Millie asked, following Queen Chartreuse down the corridor. Her stomach was beginning to clench—not a good thing when it was full of porridge. She doubted that she’d be much help in a magical way, and she dreaded telling people that she couldn’t do anything for them.

“Fairies! Young people like you have no problem talking to them because you’re used to it, but when I was a girl, they never came to visit the way they do now. And I’m not like your father’s mother, Frazzela, who dotes on fairies. I have no idea what to say to them. Then there’s the wing issue. If they have wings, I try not to stare at them, but I know I will anyway, which is rude. And if they don’t have wings, I wonder why not—I always do—and then I lose track of whatever they’re saying. They shed fairy dust, too, which is so untidy. Now you go on ahead,” the queen said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “You’ll find them just outside the door leading from the Great Hall into the courtyard.”

“No one invited them in?” asked Millie.

“Of course not,” the queen said, wrinkling her nose with distaste. “You’ll see why when you meet them. Oh, and by the way, you
have
gained a few pounds lately. You really must cut back on the sweets.”

Three fairies were waiting by the stairs in the courtyard, looking as if they weren’t sure they should be there. They turned to face Millie as she reached the bottom step. She’d met the fairy dressed in the soft green gown and matching floppy cap before. Moss had visited her mother and even come to some of the parties at the castle, but the other two fairies were unfamiliar.

“Good day, Millie,” said Moss. “Is your mother, Princess Emma, here? We have a problem and we think she’s the only one who can handle it.”

Millie shook her head. “She left this morning and I have no idea when she’ll be back. Maybe I can help,” she added, more because she thought she should than because she wanted to.

“You can if you’re as powerful a witch as your mother,” said the fairy with the pale skin and gown made of shiny green leaves. The nostrils of her thin, arched nose flared when she looked at Millie, giving the fairy’s narrow face a scornful expression.

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced my friends to you,” said Moss. “This is Poison Ivy, and this is Trillium,” she added, indicating the shorter fairy with dark red hair that hung down her back almost to the ground. Her flower-petal dress was only a shade or two lighter than her hair, and it glistened as if sprinkled with dew.

“It’s nice meeting you,” said Millie. “But I’m not a witch.”

“I knew coming here was a waste of time,” Poison Ivy said, tilting her head back so that she looked down at Millie.

Taking a deep breath, Millie tried to tamp down the irritation welling up inside her at Poison Ivy’s rudeness.

Trillium sighed and said in a whispery soft voice, “Perhaps we should go.”

Millie started to agree with her. If the fairies thought they needed powerful magic to deal with their problem, Millie probably couldn’t help. Aside from her dragon magic, she had very little magic of her own. She could find lost items, but only if they were things she used all the time and had lost recently. She could turn the pages of a book with the wave of a hand, but only one at a time. She could even blow out a candle from across the room, but she couldn’t light it again unless she turned into a dragon. Millie wanted to tell the fairies that they’d have to return when her mother was home, but then she glanced at Poison Ivy again and knew from the curl of her lip that the fairy expected her to back down. The irritation she’d felt before flared into a spark of anger.

For most of her life, before Millie had learned how to control her temper, she turned into a dragon each time she got angry. Even now, controlling her temper wasn’t always easy. She knew that if she let little things bother her, even the smallest spark of anger could flare into full-blown rage. Millie glared at the narrow-faced fairy, then purposefully turned toward Moss. “If you tell me what the problem is, I might be able to help.”

Moss shook her head, and her cap slipped down over her eyes. She pushed it back with a rueful smile and said, “That’s very nice of you to offer, but I don’t see how you can possibly help us. It’s a plant problem, you see, and not a nice plant, either.”

“Is it one of your plants?” Millie asked, glancing from one to the next but letting her gaze linger longest on Poison Ivy.

“Don’t look at me!” Poison Ivy declared. “My ivy has nothing to do with this. I only came along to help.”

“There’s no need to act defensive,” said Moss. “I’m sure Princess Millie didn’t mean anything.”

“Ha!” said Poison Ivy.

“It’s not one of our plants at all,” whispered Trillium. “It’s a plant so nasty that it doesn’t
have
a fairy to watch over it.”

“That’s right,” said Moss. “No fairy wants anything to do with it. It’s new to the enchanted forest. We think some horrid person brought it here to stir up trouble. Thank goodness there’s only one.”

“It comes from a rain forest far away,” Poison Ivy added. “Too bad it didn’t stay there.”

“What’s so awful about this plant?” asked Millie. She was intrigued now. A plant couldn’t be that bad, could it?

“What plant?” asked Audun as he descended the steps behind her.

“Are you a wizard?” Poison Ivy said, looking Audun up and down. “Because we could really use a good one.”

“This is my betrothed, Audun, and he’s not a wizard.”

“Even so, I’m sure we can deal with a plant,” Audun told them.

Poison Ivy snorted. “Not this plant!”

Trillium tugged on Poison Ivy’s sleeve. “We could show it to them,” she said in a voice so soft that Millie had to strain to hear it.

“I’m not sure … ,” Moss began.

“Why not?” said Poison Ivy and sneered at Millie. “I’d suggest that you follow us on your broom, but you’re not a witch, so—”

“Would a magic carpet do?” Millie asked, anger building inside her again. “I’ll be right back.”

She left Audun talking to the fairies while she went to her chamber to fetch the carpet her mother had given her for her last birthday. It was also an excuse to leave the fairies for a few minutes. Generally, the only people who were rude to Millie were those who didn’t know either that she was a princess or that she could become a dragon at will. Moss had mentioned in Poison Ivy’s presence that Millie’s mother was a princess, so it couldn’t be that. However, there was a good chance that Poison Ivy might not know about Millie’s dragon side; Emma had been using magic for years to keep it a secret. Millie was tempted to turn into a dragon to show the fairy just whom she was dealing with—which was exactly why she couldn’t let herself do it. Once she was a dragon, the temptation to fry Poison Ivy would be hard to withstand.

The magic carpet was right where she’d expected to find it—buried under all the things she had tossed into the back of the storage room. She pitched the old shoes to the other side of the room and set the broom she’d never been able to fly next to the basket of toys she’d loved when she was younger. Maybe she’d give a few of the toys to Felix.

And then there were all the things she kept because she was sure she would need them someday: her great-grandmother’s old chipped scrying bowl; the bouquet of crystalline flowers that her great-aunt, Grassina, had given her and that Millie had broken with one accidental swipe of her tail; the troll-hide trunk that her mother had wanted to throw out; her great-aunt’s old magic mirror. Millie had propped the mirror against the wall to keep the magic carpet from unrolling, but the dark wood frame was so heavy and awkward to move that she considered getting someone to help her. Instead she turned into a dragon just long enough to lift the mirror aside as if it weighed nothing at all.

She would have remained a dragon long enough to carry the carpet out of the room, but she was too big to turn around in the small space, so she had to change back into a human. When she was finally able to drag the narrow carpet into the center of her chamber, she spread it out on the floor and sat down in the middle with a sigh. This was not at all how she had meant to spend her day! Now all she had to do was remember the magic words to control the carpet and she could take care of this silly errand. The fairies were worried about a plant, for goodness’ sake. Even she could handle a plant!