Page 57 of A Castle of Broken Memories

He sprung from the sloshing bucket up onto my shoulder.

I grinned. “Wise choice.” You know, in case the spell goes wrong and we accidentally tear this place down. Another “what if” I planned to ignore for the moment.

We headed back to the shelter, where I could see Mariana was busy starting a fire in the pit I’d dug outside. Harp looked on with interest, firing off suggestions about the best stick placement. Mariana only smirked and asked when exactly enchanted string-pluckers had become such experts on campfire building?

Harp laughed, her strings trilling delightedly, and the tiny frog who’d been calmly riding my shoulder leaped off and made a mad, hopping dash in her direction.

“What? No thanks for the ride?” I called after him, but he was clearly an amphibian on a mission. He hopped right up to Harp’s feet and let out the most plaintive ribbit I’d ever heard.

“Why, hello there.” Harp smiled and held her hands out invitingly. The frog didn’t hesitate. He jumped right up onto her waiting palms. “Aren’t you the cutest thing?” she cooed, lifting him up so that they were eye-to-eye. “Why, I—” Her smile wavered, a look of confusion creeping onto her face.

“Do I… know you?”

Ollie let out another ribbit and rubbed his head against Harp’s thumb. She stared down at him, lips parted in an “oh”. A tear slipped down her cheek.

I glanced at Mariana, but she only shrugged, looking as confused as I felt.

“Harp?” I asked tentatively. “Is… something wrong?”

“I don’t know, I…” She sniffled while another tear wet the opposite cheek. “I just have this overwhelming feeling, like I should know who this is. But that’s crazy, right? Because I’m a harp, and this is a frog, and I’ve never even been in this room before…"

“For what it’s worth, it looks like he knows you, too,” I pointed out, and the frog’s head bobbed up and down in an eager nod.

“We know each other?” Harp asked, and the frog nodded again. “How? Have you been to the other rooms, or… oh! Are you one of the giants, only transformed by the curse?"

Ollie started to shake his head, then paused, rubbing a four-fingered hand over his face in frustration.

“If only you could speak,” Harp sighed.

“He can’t talk,” I reasoned, “but maybe he can draw. I have some paper and ink inside the shelter. Why don’t I carry you inside, and we’ll see what we can come up with?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Harp exclaimed, her eyes lighting with excitement. “What about you, Mariana? Are you coming?”

Mariana shook her head as she filled my iron cook pot with well water. “I want to get this potion done before the sun goes down. I’ll meet you guys inside when I’m done, and you can fill me in on what I missed.”

I hesitated, noting the stiff set of her shoulders and the tension lining her jaw. She was still worried about her friends, but at least she had something constructive to focus on. And as much as I wanted to bend down and place a kiss on each of those tiny little stress wrinkles, a Mari on a mission wasn’t someone you wanted to interrupt. Even ten years wasn’t long enough for me to forget that much. So, instead, I squatted down, hefted Harp up onto my shoulder, and proceeded to do a five-minute dance with the door before figuring out how to angle us both inside the cramped structure.

“Sorry,” I muttered, hurriedly rolling up the map we’d left splayed across the table and searching my stuffed chest for the necessary items. “I’ve been meaning to reorganize…” I spied a roll of parchment and snatched it up. “Aha! Here we are. Now all we need is…” I pushed a glass jar full of mushrooms to the side and pulled out a half-empty pot of ink. “This!”

Ollie hopped from Harp’s hands to the table, where I spread the blank paper. I furrowed my brow, looking from the ink pot to the waiting amphibian. “I guess I’ll just put some here like this?” I poured a small puddle of ink onto the corner of the paper, and the frog hopped over to inspect it. He tentatively dipped a webbed hand in the pooled ink and pressed a mark onto the paper. The result must have been satisfactory enough, as he dipped his hand again before moving to an empty space and swirling a single finger across the blank surface.

Dip, hop, swirl. Dip, hop, swirl.

Harp and I watched in fascination while a rudimentary picture unfurled before our eyes. There was a little house with four stick figures grouped beside it, and the frog gave one of them long hair and a wide open mouth, with music notes inked all around her. He jabbed a finger at this one then pointed up at Harp.

“Is that… me?” she breathed, fingers stretching out as if to touch the still-wet ink.

Ollie nodded eagerly, then pointed at the shorter stick figure standing on the end beside the singing girl before pointing at himself.

Harp sucked in a sharp gasp. “And that’s you?”

Ollie did a victorious little jig.

I looked back and forth between the two in confusion. “So, you two used to live together? As humans?” The frog’s face wrinkled in concentration, and he painstakingly wrote out six sloppy letters: b-r-u-f-e-r. “Brother?” My jaw dropped. “Your Harp’s brother?”

The frog leapt into the air, his body twisting happily. Harp’s hands framed her cheeks, her expression alternating between shock and confusion. But then, slowly, she lowered her hands while a look of awed realization took over. “You had brown hair and… hazel eyes,” she whispered. The frog hopped to the edge of the table, his bulging eyes shining as he gazed up at her.

“There was a dusting of freckles on your nose,” she continued in that same, hushed tone. “But it was hardly noticeable beneath the smudges of dirt.” She brushed a trembling finger over her own nose. “You used to sneak into my room when our parents were fighting.” Her eyes widened. “I would sing you to sleep.” Her voice cracked. “How could I have forgotten that? Forgotten you?”