Frogged (11 page)

Ned came to see what was the problem, wearing the robes of King Rexford the Bold. (
Of course
Ned would give himself the part with the most lines, Imogene thought.) “Oh,” he said as soon as he saw Luella glaring at Bertie wearing the queen's costume.

Luella positioned herself directly in front of Ned, with her hands on her hips, and her voice quivering with anger. “You said,” she told him, “that I would play the part of Queen Orelia.”

“No, I did not,” Ned answered, calmly for all that Luella was within range to spit at, kick, or throttle him. “I said that you had inspired me in my reconceiving of the character.”

Imogene spoke up in Luella's defense. “You
implied
.”

Luella nodded in acknowledgment of Imogene's support, then spoke through clenched teeth, telling Ned, “You said—”

“And,” Ned hurriedly added, talking over her, “I said that you would play a key role, the most important role to our success.”

“And what role would that be?” Luella demanded.

Ned stepped closer to the cart. And surely, Imogene thought, it wasn't coincidence that this moved him farther from Luella. His hand hovered over the various painted crowns, tiaras, and jewelry that Luella had cast aside in her search through the costumes for Queen Orelia's dress. He settled on a necklace with painted enamel beads that Imogene could only suppose were meant to be sapphires, if you stood far enough away, and he draped this around Luella's neck. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “This piece brings out the blue of your eyes. Would you like a crown, too? I think a crown would suit you.”

Luella pushed his hand away before he could set the crown on her head. “Who am I playing?” she asked.

“Who?” Ned repeated. Then switched that to “Whom?” apparently unable to stop himself from correcting the farm girl's grammar. “Well, I wouldn't so much say it's a case of
whom
. . .”

“Who am I playing?” Luella shouted at him.

“Since we will all be on the stage—” Ned started.

Imogene cut in by saying, “And by
we
, I take it you mean
the actors
. . .”

Ned hesitated, as though weighing whether there was a safe answer to that. He glanced back and forth between Luella and Imogene. “The men, yes,” he admitted, “we need
someone
”—he gestured to indicate Luella—“to pass among the crowd with the hat.”

“For the donations,” Bertie added, entirely unnecessarily. “In recognition of our performance.”

“Because,” Ned finished, “crowds are notorious for dispersing as soon as the last lines are spoken, precisely to avoid paying for the entertainment they've just enjoyed. But for a pretty girl like you, smiling and winking at the men, they will be willing to part with a coin or two and consider themselves the richer for it.”

“Smiling and winking?” Imogene croaked, outraged on Luella's behalf.

Really, though, Luella was outraged enough on her own. She shouted, “You lied to me!”

“I never did,” Ned insisted. “Of course, I don't know what Bert might have said to you . . .”

Bertie squirmed before finally admitting, “In my eagerness to have you join us . . .” He thought better of this. “. . . me—to have you join
me
—I might have . . . perhaps the word I'm looking for is
overstated
. . . a bit . . . the extent to which Ned was likely to allow you to participate . . . Maybe.”

“And,” Ned said, “I did warn you that an actor's word was not to be trusted.”

“You're all pigs!” Luella told them.

Imogene felt a little swinish herself, since she had suspected just such an outcome and had not warned Luella.
But she wouldn't have believed me,
Imogene told herself. Still, her voice came out very little as she reminded Luella, “I'm not a pig. I'm a frog.”

“Yes!” Ned said, obviously relieved for the break in the awkward moment. “So you are! You most assuredly are! And we must do something about that.”

This should have sounded like good news, but somehow Imogene doubted it was. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“We must make you look like a crow.”

“Excuse me?” Imogene said.

“I've written in a part for you. You are to play the messenger crow of Stoc, the wizard dwarf. You will be a sensation!”

Luella squealed, “She gets to be in the play, but I don't? She don't even want to be an actor! She wants to be a princess.”

“Be that as it may,” Ned told Luella, “you, my dear, would never pass as a crow.”

“Neither would I!” Imogene cried.

“Trust me,” Ned said, which was highly unlikely, given the circumstances.

Imogene became aware that Luella was looking at her in anger and revulsion.

“How could you?” Luella demanded, and she turned and walked away from all of them.

“I . . .” Imogene said, “I . . .”

Watching Luella stomp away, Ned said to Bertie, “She didn't take the hat. Is she going to take the hat around, or isn't she?”

“I don't know,” Bertie admitted.

Ned called after Luella, “Feel free to wear the necklace while you're passing the hat. But you can leave it here when you're finished.” Still, he said to Bertie, “I don't think she's going to pass the hat. She took the necklace, and she's not going to give it back.”

“It's just a cheap fake,” Imogene told him. “And so are you.”

“Ouch,” Ned said, but not very convincingly. He gave a smile that Imogene was certain any nine out of ten people would find charming. “Let's go over your lines.”

Chapter 10:

(So, what's the proper dress for improper occasions?)

 

 

Imogene's costume was a knitted coin pouch.

A coin pouch.

Life on the stage can be SO humiliating,
Imogene thought.

Already Ned's decision to have her perform in the play had cost her the one friend that she'd currently had in the world—even if Luella could only be accounted as a temporary, sort-of friend. Now there was this pouch. The costume element came from a bunch of feathers stuck into the unimaginative brown lump of yarn. In addition to the fancy plumes borrowed from the hats in the costumes chest—one each of pheasant, ostrich, and peacock—were ones Ned had picked up as they walked: Imogene recognized starling and sparrow. And one that might, by purest chance, actually be crow. Two of the feathers had their shafts bent and angled and placed in such a way as to look like wings.

Assuming that a crow could have such skimpy wings.

And that one wing could be gray and the other brown and black striped.

Ned backed Imogene into the feathery pouch, then tugged on the drawstring so that the material puckered around and framed her face—the only part of her that showed. Even then, she had to hold on to the edge with her tiny frog fingers to keep the opening positioned in front of her face and to keep from disappearing entirely into the sack.

“Perfect!” he exclaimed.

“Perfectly ridiculous,” Imogene countered. “Why do I have to be a messenger crow? Why can't I be a messenger frog?”

“Because
frog
doesn't rhyme with
know
and
snow
.”

“What?” Imogene snapped.

Ned recited:

 

“Tell unto the king, for he needs must know,

no friends survive for to rescue him now.

Dead they lie, scattered about the meadow,

their blood like rosebuds n'er destined to bloom,

beneath the cover of the new fall'n snow.

You are alone, my king—they cannot come.

Fly, fly, and tell him thus, my faithful crow.”

 

Imogene repeated the lines in her head. “It could be
fog
instead of
snow,
” she pointed out.

“No, it couldn't,” Ned answered, obviously horrified at the suggestion.

“But, yes, listen.” Imogene stood as tall as a frog wearing a wig of feathers could and recited:

 

“ . . . beneath the cover of the creeping fog . . .

Fly, fly, and tell him thus, my faithful frog.”

 

“That makes no sense,” Ned objected.

“As much sense as your version.”

Ned looked appalled that anyone could say such a thing.

Imogene continued, “And my way helps that one line about the new fallen snow, where there are too many syllables.”

“That's why it's new
fall'n
snow,” Ned said, swallowing the last syllable of
fallen
.

Imogene opened her mouth to protest some more, but Ned cut her off. “I am the writer,” he told her. “You are the actor.”

“I,” she corrected him, “am the frog who is being made to look ridiculous.” She thought about that for a moment, realized what she'd just said, and changed that to “the
princess
who is being made to look ridiculous.” She once more mentally ran through the lines, then added, “But surely those words are spoken
to
the crow, not
by
the crow?”

Ned inclined his head in agreement. “They are spoken by Stoc, the dwarf lord.”

“And do I answer?”

“No. But four scenes later you deliver the message. You must remember to speak slowly, loudly, and to enunciate, so that even those in the back rows can hear.” Looking well pleased with himself, Ned declaimed:

 

“Lord Stoc of the talons, your greatest foe,

has sent you this message for you to hear:

Those who would save you lie dead in the snow,

their blood like rosebuds n'er destined to bloom,

beneath the cover of the new fall'n snow.

You are alone, my king—they cannot come.

Thus I have spoken, his messenger crow.”

 

When it became clear there was no more, Imogene said, “That's it? That's just a reworking of what Stoc said.”

Apparently, Ned knew this already. “Well, yes, the messenger crow has been sent to deliver a message. That is, in fact, why it is called a
messenger
crow and not a
why-don't-you-go-visit-the-king-and-tell-him-whatever-your-little-crow-heart-desires
crow.”

“You don't need to raise your voice,” Imogene told Ned. “I understand what you're saying from a
messenger
point of view. I'm just saying that—from a
play
point of view—does the audience want to hear the same thing it's already heard before?” Imogene thought she was being tactful with his writerly feelings by not saying “the same foolish thing,” but apparently this wasn't enough.

“Just say the lines the way I've written them,” Ned snapped. “
I
will decide if and when they need to be changed. You're just lucky I could think of
any
part for you.”

He'd written the role specifically for her, Imogene knew. The crow had been mentioned before—a necessary plot device to explain how King Rexford knew not to wait for the men he had sent for at the end of act two—but the crow had never actually appeared before. How could it have? Ned could never have dreamed he'd have someone on hand who was the right size to play a crow.

Still,
lucky
wasn't the word that came to Imogene's mind.

But she did start to feel as though things might be looking up when Ned told her he wanted the people of Balton Keep to see her up close—and without her silly costume, thank goodness—before her debut in the play, so that they could truly appreciate that she wasn't just a trick of stagecraft. People who could be expected to know about stagecraft was a good sign. They would be a more sophisticated group than the farmers and few tradespeople of St. Eoforwic and Mayfield. They wouldn't easily swallow a story about a frog who was—as Ned always said so dramatically—Princess of the Frog Pond, and who just happened to know how to talk.

While Imogene doubted King Salford or his queen would come to a performance such as theirs, at the very least she could expect him to hear about it and to recognize her name. He might question the idea of a frog who claimed to be the stolen-away princess of a neighboring realm—especially if news of her disappearance had reached here.

In any case, it was the best chance she'd had since Luella and Bertie had made off with her. So she started out hopeful when, once more, Ned gathered in a crowd by chatting with the local children.

As ever, Ned talked to Imogene, then held her up to his ear for her “answers,” until some child—this time it was a sweet little boy who almost broke Imogene's heart by reminding her so much of her little brother, Will—complained that he couldn't hear.

“Come closer, Tom,” Ned said once he'd found out the child's name, and then he held Imogene up so that she could whisper, “Hello, Tom.”

But this time, after the child proclaimed that the frog did, indeed, talk, Ned interrupted the hooting of the older children by saying, “Now, let me tell you something about my frog. This is not an ordinary frog—as Tom here can attest. For, as you fine people have so rightly indicated”—he held his arm out to include them all—“frogs can't talk. Absolutely. You are entirely correct. What an outstanding audience.”