Days turned into weeks. Maybe months.
Not only did I lose track of time, but I felt I was losing my mind. Each day as a frog made me feel less and less like my human self and more and more like I was permanently turning into the creature I vowed to destroy.
Thiswas the true game of survival: a constant pursuit of bugs to eat, of safe places to rest. Of running from frog catchers.
I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to stand, even less to talk. Anytime I heard a human voice, my instinct was to flee, not to listen. So I had no idea how much time had elapsed or what conversations I might overhear on the whereabouts of my kingdom, the throne, the villages, anything.
The words on the ball continued to plague my mind: A kiss from a true princess will break any spell.
It was all I could think about, all I could hope for.
But where? How? There were no princesses in Kaiora kingdom… besides Cressida… and was she even looking for me? Did she realize what happened? My memories were fleeing, as if my small frog brain struggled to latch onto my human mind–wherever that mind might be.
And yet, somehow… I still hoped. Still fought, because if I didn’t fight for my kingdom and for my survival, who would? I don’t know what kept me going from month to month, day to day, minute to minute…
But perhaps it was my kingdom, and the fact that if I disappeared, who would rule them? Would the foreigners come in? Had they already come? Because one day, the frog catchers stopped.
Disappeared.
And everywhere I went, I found myself hopping away–running away from other frogs. They looked at me with their big black eyes, their slick greenish yellow skin, and I knew they would attack me if I didn’t leave.
I was not one of them, and never would be.
If there was one thing I didn’t want to lose, it was my humanity. Even if I felt it fading from me with each passing day.
Someone was splashing.Violently. Loudly. Over and over. It was the most noise I’d heard up here since becoming one of these disgusting little coquis, and it startled me. Was it a frog hunter that came up this far? Why were they splashing like that then?
I climbed up the side of the tree, internally cursing when I involuntarily let out a loudcoqui!
Wretched frog form…How long had I been like this? The days turned into weeks and I lost track in my will to survive. After Princess Cressida screamed, she ran away, and I swam out of the pond, calling after her, begging for help. But she had disappeared, and I knew I was in more danger than anything.
Frog hunters were all over the gardens, and the involuntaryribbitsounds that exhibited themselves as high pitched, incredibly annoying “coqui!” were spilling out of my mouth likehiccups. One of the frog hunters spotted me and came running towards me, net in hand.
I screamed and leaped away as fast as I could. To this moment, I was sure I only survived through divine intervention. I managed to climb up the terrace–or, rather,hopped–then tracked into the highest and deepest parts of the forest, where the waterfalls and freshwater ponds were as plentiful as the sands on the sea. The frog hunters were up here for days on end, and I had to keep moving in order to hide from them.
I’d had too many close encounters. I’d learned to stay in areas that were very dense in brush, somewhat filtered by the noise of the waterfalls and water, and cold. I was dying, really, in the cold, but there were fewer coquis that dared come this far, and, therefore, fewer bullying frogs.
But lately, there had been no signs of frog hunters.
Either they’d given up going this far, or the royal decree to eradicate all the frogs had come to a halt. It gave me hope that my father had gotten word of what had become of me. Yet so many questions remained: did Cressida see me turn into a frog? And, if so, wouldn’t she have told my father? Wouldn’t he come looking for me if he knew that?
It was awfully exhausting to think through all of it, especially with my doubts creeping up. What if father didn’t care to come after me? Perhaps he thought I was weak to fall prey to any kind of magic, something that was foreign to our island, or maybe Cressida really didn’t see me transform?
After all, when I came out of the water and called after her, she just ran away. Did she even hear me talking, or was I just making a “coqui” noise without realizing it?
More questions pounded in my tiny amphibious brain: how did I turn into a frog? Who turned me into a frog? Did someone curse me? Was it Cressida? Or did someone hide in the garden that day I turned to a frog?
In any event, I was alive. And now I had to figure out this noise, or I might get surprised by a coqui hunter.
As I peered over the branch into the pond below, I gaped. The first thing I saw was the rainbow tail, connected to a scaly bright blue body. The tail dazzled in shades of reds and pinks, blending to rich orange, sunshine yellow, bright green, sea blue, indigo, and finally vibrant violet at the tips of the tail. It was beautiful and breathtaking, but what caught my breath and made me gape, even as a frog, was that the top half of this thing… thisfishbody was aperson.No…
A mermaid.I’d heard of mermaids before. They were the stuff out of fairy tales. Some people said that mermaids used to live in our waters thousands of years ago, but they became extinct by choosing to walk on land. Nobody believed they were actually real, including myself.
Until now.This was a mermaid, no doubt about it.
She had olive-tanned skin, with a light blue, mesh blouse covering her top. And her dark brown hair…Whoa.
I blinked.
