A Prince among Frogs (5 page)

“It was funny!” said the orange-striped manticore.

“How many are there?” asked Audun.

“I don’t rightly know,” the man replied. He rubbed his chin and added after a moment, “Couple dozen, I expect. They come out a few at a time during the day, but they all come out at night, leastwise it sounds that way.”

“Then that’s when we’ll come back,” said Millie. “One more question before we go. What do they eat?”

“Just about anything, I think. They ate all our chickens, and we haven’t seen nary a mouse nor a rat since they got here.”

“They ate all the frogs in the pond, too, Grandpa,” said the little boy. “And I saw one eat a snake yesterday.”

“They may be small, but they’ve got powerful appetites.”

“It sounds like it,” said Audun. “Do you have somewhere we can keep these two for now where they can’t get away?”

“I have an empty barrel you can use if you’ll put ’em in and take ’em out. But if you come back tonight, watch your step. Those little monsters like to trip you in the dark.”

They were seated on the magic carpet flying over the enchanted forest once again when Millie asked, “You have a plan, don’t you?”

Audun nodded. “We’ll trap them, but our trap won’t look like one. I caught a desicca bird by hiding in the sand once. With the right kind of bait, I should be able to catch some miniature manticores the same way. We just need to get a few things at that fishing village I saw on the river last week and we’ll be all set.”

It was dusk when they returned to the village of Dewly Glen. This time they arrived as dragons, flying so high over the forest that anyone looking up would see little dots and think they were birds. Even from high up, their dragon vision could make out the tiny figures in the village going about their business. Millie and Audun waited, gliding on updrafts until the last door was closed and the last window shuttered. Moving as silently as wind and wing allowed, they spiraled down, landing in a grove of trees.

They waited until they heard the voices of manticores coming from the village before creeping to a mound of dirt just beyond the last cottage. Keeping an eye out for the little beasts, Audun curled up in a circle and lay still while Millie covered his body with dirt. When only his face was exposed, Millie stepped to the center of the circle and set down a large wooden box made to trap fish. She opened the lid and a torrent of mice poured from the box. Before they could scurry off, Millie untied a cloth bag and took out a wheel of cheese, which she dropped on the ground beside the box. Their noses quivering, the mice turned to the wheel of cheese. With a beat of her wings, Millie rose into the air and returned to the trees, where she hunched down, waiting for Audun’s signal.

Both dragons lay still, their ears pricked as they listened to the cacophony of the manticores’ voices. Nearly half an hour passed before a manticore came close enough to smell the scent of the mice. Blaring the news of his discovery, the beast summoned his friends to the feast. Millie’s limbs twitched as she readied herself to fly to Audun, but she didn’t open her wings until he raised his head and coughed, a loud sharp sound that made mice and manticores freeze where they stood. Only a few heartbeats later she was landing beside Audun, who had shaken himself free of the dirt and was catching manticores and stuffing them into the wooden box through a small door on the side. The beasts became frantic when they discovered that the door didn’t open outward and that they were trapped. The little creatures in the box filled the air with the ear-shattering din of their distress, while the ones outside fought with tooth and claw, neither of which could penetrate the dragons’ hide. It took both dragons’ efforts to collect the beasts and shove them into the box as they tried to escape.

When the last one was in the box and the door was securely fastened, Millie sat back with a sigh. “Remind me never to do that again. My great-grandmother shut wasps and bees in a crate once. I think this might have been worse.”

“Wait, here’s another one,” Audun said, dragging a particularly stubborn manticore away from his tail, where it had been gnawing with much effort and no effect.

Millie opened the door so he could shove the little beast inside. The noise in the box was so loud it made even the dragons wince. “Do you think that was all of them?” she said, looking around.

Audun refastened the latch on the box. “I hope so, but there’s no way of telling, at least not tonight.”

“We’ll have to come back in a few days and ask the villagers,” said Millie.

“Let us outta here!” shouted a voice from inside the box.

“We will!” Millie shouted back. “As soon as we get where we’re going.”

“And that can’t be any too soon,” said Audun. He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. “We need to finish this and get back to the castle before dawn. I think a nasty storm is headed this way, and I don’t want to get caught in it if we can help it.”

When they took off, Millie carried her magic carpet in her claws while Audun lugged the box. The flight north was a familiar one, although neither of them had passed that way in more than a year. The two dragons flew side by side, soaring over grasslands, forests, and a few scattered villages where only the sleepless would have seen the dragon silhouettes against the bright disk of the moon. They reached the mountains in the early hours of the morning, when the air was still and every sound seemed loud. Tall mountain peaks surrounded the valley where they landed and set down the crate. Although it was midsummer and there was grass under their feet, the air was chilly enough to turn to fog with each puff of Millie’s breath. A stream ran through the center of the valley, its water nearly as cold as the ice from which it came, but the dragons bent down to taste it and found it pure and sweet.

Audun opened the crate, releasing the kitten-sized beasts. Once out of the crate, the manticores made such a clamor that the echo seemed to shake the mountains themselves, yet the beasts had no interest in either attacking or fleeing from the dragons. Instead they stood in a group, peering into the dark while the balls on the tips of their tails twitched in agitation.

“What is this place?” asked one as Millie and Audun prepared to leave.

“Somewhere that you can do anything you want without hurting anyone,” said Millie.

“You should be fine here,” Audun added. “There are caves where you can live when the snows get deep, and you’ll find plenty of fish in the stream.”

“And mice!” said a manticore just before it pounced on something small and furry rustling the grass.

“Good luck!” said Millie as she and Audun took to the air.

“They’re going to need it if they try crossing those mountains,” Audun told her. “Those peaks are higher than they look.”

They were on their way back to Greater Greensward when Millie said, “I’ve been thinking. Why do you suppose no one saw the manticores until now? I mean, if they were descended from that one Grassina changed, why didn’t they make their presence known before this? It’s been years since Grassina was a girl and used her magic on that manticore.”

“That’s a good question,” said Audun. “It does seem odd that they’d appear so suddenly.”

Millie nodded. “Like that awful tree with the spines. All this
would
have to happen while my mother and Grassina were away!”

“Yes,” Audun said, looking thoughtful. “It’s almost as if someone had planned it that way.”

The storm that Audun had predicted caught up with them as they were flying south over the Bullrush River. A gentle rain pattered on their backs for a few minutes before turning into a torrent. Water pelted their faces and sluiced down their scales, running into their eyes so that they had to close their second set of eyelids to see. Although the lids were transparent, they made everything look a little less distinct. The wind grew fierce, pummeling them. Lightning flashed as the dragons flew over the enchanted forest, and they landed at the castle in a deluge that had already made the moat overflow its bank and created small rivers within the castle grounds. The sky was so heavy with thick, gray clouds that even if the sun were high, its light couldn’t have gotten through.

Millie was convinced that it had to be past dawn when she and Audun landed in the courtyard and ran up the castle steps. They both changed back to their human forms as soon as they were inside, shuddering in the pounding rain that soaked them to the skin even as they worked together to close the door against the force of the wind.

Sighing with relief, Millie led the way to the Great Hall, a shortcut to the stairs that led to their rooms and dry clothes. Although Millie wasn’t surprised to see the torches lit as if it were still night, she didn’t expect to see a murmuring crowd gathered around her grandmother in the Hall. Queen Chartreuse was wringing her hands as tears streamed down her pale cheeks. Guards strode purposefully through the Hall, their expressions somber.

“Grandmother, what’s wrong?” Millie asked, running to the side of the queen.

“Felix is gone!” sobbed Queen Chartreuse. “Someone came in the night and stole him away!”