Page 9 of The Frog Prince
It sounded closer now, surrounding Otto instead of coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It made his skin itch and his muscles tense as his body prepared to fight or takehim away to safety. He was shivering, his back covered in a cold sweat and his eyes wide.
The whisper of an echo was still lingering in the air when movement caught Otto’s attention. He snapped his head to the side.
Life as he knew it ceased to exist as the Frog Prince stepped into the dim light at the bottom of the staircase.
Children sang nursery rhymes about the monster in the water. Young girls and boys were warned about being snatched away to be the Frog Prince’s bride. The descriptions varied, but it was always something grotesque and terrifying. Otto had chased those stories into the forest.
Nothing could have truly prepared him, however. No words would have been adequate to explain what he was looking at.
Webbed feet and long, thin legs encased in ratty brown breeches that ended at the knee, stretching much too far above ground for it to be natural. Narrow hips sat too high, a vine holding the waistband up. A wide, puffed-out chest heaved with each breath, covered in a green waistcoat and a tailcoat that had traces of opulence hidden beneath the filth and destruction.
Every shade of green dappled his damp skin, patterns Otto couldn’t quite make out visible on the few areas where skin showed along his shins, hands, and feet. The rest of him was covered in a high-necked white shirt under the waistcoat and tailcoat.
His arms were just like his legs—elongated and unnatural, bent at the elbow and ending in four fingers with bulbous tips that cradled the frog Otto had saved. They looked spindly and delicate as they brushed over the frog’s body, but Otto feared the damage they could do would be enough to end him.
“You claim common sense,” the Frog Prince said slowly, “but come here alone, looking for a monster…”
Otto finally looked up and into his face for the first time.
An elongated oval-shaped head. A wide, dark-red mouth stretching to where ears would be if he had them. A flat, barely protruding nose, and huge, bulging, wide-set eyes in a shade of green Otto had never seen the equal of fixed on Otto’s face.
He was a trick of nature. A game magic had played and lost. Human enough not to be a frog, but frog enough to make everything human about him fade almost to nothing.
The prince took a step closer, holding Otto’s gaze now he had it, not allowing him to break free. Otto pressed himself back into the trunk, realizing his mistake too late. He’d trapped himself between two impenetrable obstacles.
The distance was closed in no more than a breath or two, leaving just enough room for the cloying air to move between them. Otto could taste his scent. Damp. Salty. Earthy.
“Have you looked your fill?” the Frog Prince asked, cold breath hitting Otto’s cheeks.
They were of a similar height, but the prince’s presence made him seem larger than life, weighted and imposing.
“I haven’t—”
“Seen anything like me before?” The Frog Prince leaned closer still, filling up his vision with green. Otto flinched, those sharp emerald eyes catching every moment of his panic. “Do I scare you, young master?”
Heat crawled into Otto’s cheeks, his heart thundering in his ears. He didn’t know if there was an answer he could give that would not end with him dead on the floor. “I…”
The Frog Prince watched him struggle, eyes still wandering over every inch of his face with unnerving languidness.
“I have kept these woods and the frogs here safe for many years.” He finally spoke again. “Do you think you can come here and hurt them?”
Otto swallowed the bile in his throat and shook his head once more. “I swear on the heavens I was helping,” he croaked.Bravery was much easier when your own doom wasn’t staring you right in the eye.
“The heavens have no place here. They turned their back on it long ago,” the Frog Prince whispered back.
Otto felt his knees shake, felt his eyes mist and his brain fog with the futility of it all. Was this it? Had he come all the way here just to be slain before he could even try? “I swear—”
The Frog Prince cut him off. “Have a seat.”
Otto sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Wh-what?”
“Sit,” he repeated, moving away and walking through the water toward the old well.
He didn’t touch it, only stared at it.
Otto’s knees gave out and he folded to the ground, sliding down the trunk he was leaning against. Dirty water seeped into his clothes and cape as he released a gust of air and tried to inhale again and again with little success.
“You can breathe,” the Frog Prince said with his back still turned, the tone flat and giving no indication as to his mood. “I have decided not to harm you. For now.”
