Warts and All Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Frog Prince

  Warts And All

  “Warts and All”

  A Fairy Tale

  Melissa McShane

  Introduction: The Frog Prince

  I’ve had a soft spot for this story since I was young, despite the fact that the princess is a spoiled brat. After all, she reneges on her deal with the frog when he retrieves her golden ball for him, has to be shamed by her father into being his “friend,” and ends by throwing him into a wall. There’s really no reason for her to end up marrying the poor young man, and really, why would he want to?

  So my version is, like most of the stories in this collection, more inspired by the fairy tale than a retelling of it, and the main character is quite a bit nicer than her counterpart in the original. That meant coming up with another solution to the frog’s problem—and for that I drew on several other sources. But now I’m wondering about a more faithful retelling of “The Frog Prince,” one in which the princess’s behavior makes sense and her happily-ever-after is earned. A story for another time…

  Warts And All

  The weather forecaster had predicted a cool, overcast spring day. What a liar. It felt more like high noon on the hottest July day you could imagine, the sun beating down on me like a brass hammer, raising a sweat beneath my hair and my arms and down the middle of my back. I surreptitiously hiked up my uniform skirt an inch and flapped my arms to raise a breeze, which died immediately. Heavy, unmoving air that smelled of mown grass enfolded me in a damp embrace. It made me think pitying thoughts about the gardeners who cared for the palace grounds, though they’d probably mowed the lawns early that morning before the brutal sun could torment them as it was doing me.

  The hedges, clipped into perfect geometric shapes, gave off a scent, too, though it was sharper and more resinous. I rounded another bank of hedges, following the sound of water, and found what had been taunting me for five minutes: a marble fountain, spraying cool water higher than the hedges from a brass fish perched atop its pillared basins. I sank gratefully to sit on its rim and dropped my backpack at my feet. Bring your packs, Miss Brenley had said, you never know when you might be seized by inspiration, but I’d been hauling my pack containing notebook, pen, wallet, and water bottle for an hour and hadn’t been seized by anything but a desire to sit on the bus until this field trip was over. Though the bus was probably hotter than outdoors, with all those glass windows that didn’t open and the leatherette seats that soaked up sunlight like a drunken sailor and gave it back in butt-blistering waves of pain.

  I opened my backpack, which promptly fell over, and took out my water bottle. Its metal sides were cool to the touch, but the water it contained was lukewarm. I didn’t care. I drank deeply, capped it off, and closed my eyes. The mist of the fish’s spray caressed my face, and for a minute I thought about taking off my socks and shoes and going for a wade. But they’d warned us about the palace’s security measures, how they weren’t limited to the guards patrolling the grounds, armed with batons and magic wands, and I was sure wading in the fountains would result in some kind of magical retaliation.

  My own magic wand rested in its sheath at my hip, ready for use. Not that I was capable of doing much with it. I’d only had it two weeks, since my fifteenth birthday and official recognition as a witch. But it was there, and I was licensed to use it. I ran my fingers over its smooth length, then whipped it out of its sheath and aimed it at a nonexistent attacker. “That’s right,” I said, “just try it. I dare you.”

  “You’re talking to invisible people again, Chloe,” Stacy said, coming around the hedge in time to see this piece of theatrics. She dropped onto the fountain’s edge and stripped her backpack off. “I can’t believe we’re still here. What brains I had have boiled away inside my skull.”

  “We’re supposed to be Inspired By Nature,” I said, pitching my voice high to match our creative writing teacher’s dulcet twitter. “I’m inspired to find a shady corner for a nap.”

  “This is hardly nature. It’s the best-groomed patch of earth in the city,” Stacy said. “We should have gone to Lancet Park. That’s got animals altered by the Wilder War. Tell me you don’t love the idea of Miss Brenley being chased by a manic squirrel.”

  “You know I do.” I took another drink and considered dousing myself with the rest of the water. But no, I’d just look bedraggled.

  “I look awful,” Stacy moaned. She had out her compact and was examining herself in the tiny mirror. “I can’t believe you let me go out looking like this.”

  “You look fine.” Stacy looked better than fine, as always. Where I was sweating, she had worked up the finest of damp glows that made her look radiant rather than unkempt. Her makeup was still perfect, and her curly red hair hadn’t gone frizzy despite the damp heat. She even made our school uniform look stylish.

  “There are a ton of cute guys from Linley Prep doing the palace tour. We should talk to them,” Stacy said.

  “Linley Prep? Those guys? They’re all stuck up and too wealthy to give us the time of day.”

  “That’s reverse snobbishness, that is. You should give them a chance.”

  “I’d rather not get in the way of their actual snobbishness, thanks.”

  “We go to an all-girls’ school, Chloe. We have to meet boys somehow.”

  “Girls?” One of the palace guards, sweating harder than I was in his old-fashioned black jerkin and wool trousers stuffed into riding boots, came around the corner. He had his wand out, but held it under one arm, a non-threatening gesture. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to rejoin your group. The palace grounds are closing early today.”

  I put my water bottle back in my pack and hefted it onto my shoulder. “Why is that?”

  “There’s an event tomorrow the groundskeepers have to begin preparing for. It’s nothing to worry about.” He wasn’t looking at us; his eyes roved the grounds restlessly, looking for more strays to round up.

  Stacy and I rose and headed toward the parking lot. “What a relief,” Stacy said. “Maybe they’ll let us go home early. It’s not like we had anything else planned this afternoon.”

  “You know Miss Brenley will want us to write about our Magical Experience.”

  Stacy elbowed me and surreptitiously pointed ahead and to the left. “That’s a Magical Experience waiting to happen.” A cluster of boys in Linley Prep uniforms, black with red trim and therefore even warmer than our blue and gray skirts, strolled across the lawn ahead of us.

  “You realize that sounds like a euphemism for sex.”

  “Whatever. They’re cute, right? Even you have to think so.”

  They were cute, but I was too hot and too sweaty to give my best friend the satisfaction. “If you like that type.”

  “They’re five different types, all of them cute. Geez, Chloe, you’re bent on sucking the fun out of life today.”

  “Sorry. I’m too sweaty to want to meet boys.”

  Stacy gave me a once-over. “You look good. Not sweaty.” But she hung back rather than cross the Linley boys’ path.

  The bus driver was gone when we reached the bus, and only a few other girls hovered nearby. None of us wanted to step voluntarily into the oven. I shifted my pack and the notebook inside rubbed against the water bottle with a sound like a croak. Whatever was going on at the palace, it required the presence of dozens of guards. Most of them were gently ushering visitors to the gate. I surveyed the palace itself, a sprawling edifice with windows that shone in the fierce glare and crenellated towers bearing siege weapons that were not at all medieval. A flag flew atop the highest tower, signaling that the royal family was At Home today. If I’d been less hot and sweaty, I’d have felt awed at having been so c
lose to his Majesty. Maybe that could be my Magical Experience for the day.

  Miss Brenley, her tweed-clad figure showing no signs that she was affected by the heat, bustled up, accompanied by no fewer than three guards. “Well, really,” she twittered, “I don’t see why you have to be rude about it. We have a perfect right to be here.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, we have orders,” the tall, beefy guard said. His shorter companions nodded. Miss Brenley fumed.

  “I really fail to see how their crisis is somehow our fault,” she said when the three were gone. “It’s shocking how some people let power go to their heads. Come, students, everyone onto the bus, and we’ll return to school for you to write about what you experienced.”

  “Crisis?” Stacy said. “They said they were getting ready for an event.”

  Miss Brenley waved that off. “They were far too agitated for people who were simply interested in clearing the grounds. I think they received another bomb threat and didn’t want to cause a panic.”

  I sat incautiously fast and hissed as my bare legs came in contact with the overheated leatherette. With my backpack on my lap, I said, “That sounds like an Experience to write about, Miss Brenley.”

  Miss Brenley smiled and shook her head. “It’s hardly transformative, Miss Spurlock. Write about the glories of the natural world, tamed by man. Therein lies true beauty.”

  My mother was a renowned horticultural witch and our family garden was on the list of national preservation sites. I knew all about the glories of the natural world, tamed by man—or at least by woman—and the palace grounds didn’t overawe me. But I said, “I suppose so, Miss Brenley,” and settled in for the ride back to school.

  By the time we returned to Villienne Academy, I felt broiled alive and ready for a bath, but as per my prediction, Miss Brenley didn’t have pity on us. I scrawled out a few lines in my notebook, Miss Brenley being a big believer in the handwritten word’s effect on one’s creativity, tried not to fall asleep, and woke when the bell rang signaling the end of another long day.

  Stacy had a piano lesson, so I walked home alone. Now the promised clouds were rolling in, but the heat hadn’t dissipated, so they weren’t a relief. The air weighed on me, dense with moisture and smelling of asphalt and exhaust fumes even this far from the main roads. I trudged along and thought about getting another drink, but I was afraid if I stopped to get out my water bottle, I wouldn’t be able to start walking again.

  The smell of my mother’s garden greeted me before I could see it, that wonderful scent of lilacs growing out of season just because my mother liked the way the fragrance blended with that of the roses. I came around the corner to the public gate, not yet open to the public. Mom could have opened the garden in early spring, but she thought it was bad for us children to be distracted from our schoolwork by people tromping around what was effectively our backyard. The glossy blue half-gate gave passersby a glimpse into Henrietta Spurlock’s garden paradise, every leaf and every stone laid out by her to lead the viewer through all four seasons in one day. It was just as well Miss Brenley had never connected her student Chloe with the famed horticulturalist, or she’d never stop pestering me for a private showing.

  The house lay past the garden, with a modest yard that looked tiny next to its overgrown neighbor. It was practically a gingerbread cottage, with its thatched roof and white scrollwork on the blue shutters that matched the garden gate. Every other house on the street looked normal and modern, but Mom had applied for a variance so the house could be a quaint annex to the garden. There was even an outhouse, never used, twee down to the crescent-moon cutout on the door. Mom never understood why I didn’t like to invite friends over.

  “I’m home,” I shouted, slamming the door behind me and sprinting up the stairs without waiting for a response. Nobody was home, probably—Mom and Dad would be at work, Jared was at football practice, Delia was no doubt hanging out with one of her many frenemies. I had the house to myself. Just the way I liked it.

  I shut my bedroom door behind me and dropped my backpack, hearing that odd croak once again. It was cool and dim in the light from the oncoming storm, its white walls bare and the plum-colored carpet free of lint. Stacy said it meant something dire about my personality, that I didn’t have posters or art or anything on my walls. I thought it meant I was tidy and well-organized, thank you very much. I flopped onto my neatly-made bed and sighed at how cool the white pillow felt. Bath, yes please.

  I went into my en-suite bathroom, my one perk as oldest child, and turned the taps until the water flowed lukewarm into my freestanding porcelain tub. Even the sound made me feel cooler. I stripped off my skirt, over-warm knitted vest, and button-up shirt and padded to my dresser in my underwear to find a T-shirt and shorts. Thunder rumbled, and I cast an eye on the skies. Maybe not shorts.

  More thunder, and another croak from my backpack. Croak? I dug through my backpack. Water bottle, notebook, pen, wallet—

  My fingers brushed something soft and pliant that moved. I sucked in a startled breath and yanked my hand away, then looked closely at the bottom of my backpack. In the dimness, the thing was visible only as a roundish blotch against the pale canvas. I reached for it, and as I got my hand around it, it croaked again. “Ohhhhh,” I said, pulling the frog out of the bag, and “Oh. Oh no!” Its skin was warm and barely moist and rubbery, and its breathing was rapid—too rapid, I was sure.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,” I exclaimed, rushing into the bathroom with the limp frog in both hands. It was large for a frog, the size of my two fists together. I gently lowered it into the bath and turned off the water, which had filled the tub to a depth of about four inches. The frog floated limp and unresponsive. I knelt beside the tub, clutching the lip with both hands, and watched it drift. It was alive, I was sure of that, but for how much longer?

  Then it moved. One leg kicked out languidly, then the other, and soon it was swimming half-submerged in the bathwater. I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good, you’re not dead,” I said.

  “No, I’m alive. Thank you,” said the frog.

  I shrieked and threw myself away from the tub, scrambling to get my feet under me. “You can talk?”

  “I…yes. I forgot how, for a while,” the frog said.

  “Frogs don’t talk! They especially don’t say thank you!”

  The room went silent. I edged forward and peered over the rim in time to get a face full of water as the frog thrashed its way to the slick porcelain side of the tub. “I’m a frog!” it croaked, in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rustling. It scrabbled its tiny fingers on the tub wall, trying and failing to get purchase. “A frog! Get me out of here!”

  “Stop, stop,” I shrieked, fending off splashes of water. “Calm down!”

  The frog’s harsh breathing sounded louder echoing off the sides of the tub. It flung itself at the tub wall again, its hind legs splashing up more water. “Call…somebody! Help me!”

  “I’m trying to, but you have got to calm down or you’ll hurt yourself.” I pushed my wet hair back from my face and tried to calm my own breathing. “Are you…not supposed to be a frog?”

  “I’m human. I think. I can’t remember.” The frog stopped struggling and floated, its legs splayed out in as perfect a gesture of defeat as I’d ever seen. “I can’t remember much of anything.”

  “Human.” I sat up, realized I was still in my underwear, and scrambled away from the tub with another shriek. If it was human somewhere inside that froggy body, I did not want it seeing me half naked. I grabbed jeans and a shirt and dragged both on as quickly as I could, then returned to the tub. The frog still floated there. If not for its rapid breathing, I would have thought it was dead. “So…someone turned you into a frog.”

  “I guess. I…everything’s hazy. I remember someone waving a stick at me, and the smell of grass clippings, and a dark place, and then you put me in the tub.” It moved its hind legs spastically, a jerk that propelled it toward the drain. “I think I
was dying of dehydration.”

  “A stick. You mean a wand?”

  “I don’t remember. I think he was trying to hit me. Then everything went dark for a bit. I do remember shouting. A lot of shouting. And crawling into something shady.”

  “That must have been my backpack. I set it down while I was in the palace gardens.”

  “That sounds familiar. The palace, I mean. Like it’s a place I know well.” The frog croaked once, then added, “I have flashes of memory that I think are the palace. Bedrooms, and a dining room, and the throne room…but that’s all, just flashes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I…can’t remember that, either. I know I’m male, and not a kid, but that’s all.”

  I sat with my head against the cool side of the tub and closed my eyes. I had a frog who used to be a man in my tub. An amnesiac frog. “But we know you had something to do with the palace. A guard, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel right. But I’m not sure of anything anymore. Could you get me out of this tub, please? Swimming is tiring me out.”

  I scooped him up—he weighed almost nothing—and set him on the bath mat, where he drew his limbs in beneath him and sat as tall as he was able, which wasn’t very. “What else is there? A guard, or a servant, or…”

  They were far too agitated for people who were simply interested in clearing the grounds, Miss Brenley had said. Trying not to start a panic. And the guard who’d escorted Stacy and me to the bus had been scanning the grounds the whole time, looking for something. Or someone. “Do you think you live in the palace?”

  “When I think about it, the memory is comfortable,” the frog said, “like it’s familiar. Does that help?”

  “I don’t know. You said you were attacked?”

  “I remember someone shouting at me before pointing the wand at my head, and being afraid.” The frog let out another croak. “Excuse me.”

  “You’re familiar with the palace,” I said, not paying attention, “and you were attacked by someone who turned you into a frog. And the guards were all in an uproar when we left.” It was starting to come together, a horrifying, impossible scenario that nevertheless fit all the facts. “I think…I think you may be Prince Jonathan.”