In a Glass Grimmly (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

The Wishing Well

O
nce upon a time, there was a kingdom called Märchen, which sat just next to the modern countries of England, Denmark, and Germany.

I need to interrupt. Already. I apologize. No one in the history of the world has ever pronounced the word “Märchen” correctly. Some people say Marchin’, like what the ants go doing if you’re from Texas.

That’s not right.

Some people say
MARE-chen
. That’s closer, but still wrong.

Others say
MARE-shen
. That’s about as close as I’ve ever gotten to pronouncing it right, so it’s probably good enough for you, too.

But if you really want to say the name of the kingdom that this story takes place in correctly (and I don’t know why you would, I’m just offering, because I’m nice like that), you’ve got to say MARE, then you’ve got to make a sound in your throat like you’re hocking a loogie, and then you have to say
shen
. Like this:
MARE-cccch-shen.

You know what? You might just want to say Marchin’.

At the center of the kingdom Märchen was a castle. Behind this castle was a hidden grove. In the grove was a well. And at the bottom of the well there lived a frog.

He was a sad frog. He did not like his well. It was wet and mossy and dirty, and very very very very very very very smelly.

All day long the frog sat at the bottom of his well as salamanders splashed around him. Now, maybe you know it, and maybe you don’t, but salamanders are not the most popular creatures in the animal kingdom.

But why? Salamanders seem all right to you. They’re lots of pretty colors, like shimmery purple and glowy red. They have tiny black eyes that stare at you oh-so-very-cutely. And they have these little mouths that are permanently curled into tiny, maybe-smiles.

All of this is true. But, in addition to the pretty colors and the tiny eyes and the maybe-smiles, they have these shrill little voices which they use to ask the most idiotic, mind-numbing questions that you have ever heard.

For example:

“Why is blue?”

Or, “Who is a stone?”

Or, “What tastes better, a fly or a fly?”

Or, “Who is uglier, me or Fred? Is it me? It’s me, right? Me? Is it me?”

The sad frog’s only solace, amid the damp, and the filth, and the smell, and the salamanders, was the sky. All day and all night, the frog stared up at a little patch of sky that peered down into his clearing. Sometimes it was gray like slate, other times it was inky black, other times it was washed with a burning red. But most of the time the sky above his well was a clear, deep blue, with white shapes like fluffy rocks that floated across its face. All day and all night he stared up, unblinking, at that sky.

And then, one day, while the frog was staring up at his sky, he heard a peculiar stomp-stomp-stomping on the forest floor. It was followed by a sudden whoomp, and then a cry. Curious, he climbed the slippery stone wall to the top of his well and peered out.

Sitting on the forest floor, with matted hair and muddied clothes, was a little girl. Her face was red with anger and exertion. Her lips were all scrunched up and furious. But her eyes . . . The frog studied them. Her eyes . . . Well, her eyes looked just like the patch of sky above his well when it was its clearest, deepest blue.

“They can’t play with my ball!” the little girl bellowed at no one in particular. “They can’t. It’s mine!” She began to throw the ball up and down, glancing over her shoulder from time to time to see if she had been followed into the wood, and returning, disappointed, to her ball each time she discovered she had not been.

The frog watched, mesmerized. And where you or I might have begun to suspect this little girl of being a selfish brat, the frog, not knowing many (any) humans, saw only a maiden who had somehow captured the sky and kept it jailed behind her eyelids. And he suddenly felt that if only he could spend the rest of his days in the presence of this beautiful creature he would be perfectly and totally happy.

So the frog began to croak at the top of his lungs. Maybe she’ll notice me! he thought. And then he thought, Maybe she’ll take me home with her! And then he thought, Wait, she doesn’t live with salamanders! And so he put every ounce of hope that flowed through his froggy little veins into each expert amphibian warble.

But, of course, the girl did not notice him. She only threw her ball up and down, up and down. The frog sat there croaking for a full hour, but never once did she look at him. Finally, she stood up and took her ball out of the wood. The frog, in despair, threw himself from the edge of his well, down to the depths, hoping that the long fall would kill him. It didn’t. Instead, the salamanders began to nudge him with their blunt noses.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!”

“Are you dead?”

“Are you? Frog? Frog?”

“What is it like to be dead?”

“Am I dead?”

“Am I smelly?”

“Who’s smellier, me or Fred? Me? It’s me, right?”

The frog shoved moss into his ear holes.

But, to the frog’s great joy, the girl returned to the wood to play with her ball the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. And every day, the frog wooed her with the most magnificent croaks he could muster. But she never noticed him. Still, he took pleasure in watching her, examining her utterly perfect beauty, and imagining all the happy times they might one day spend together.

Alas, dear reader, you know as well as I do the mistake that our poor friend, the frog, is making. We all know that beauty is well and fine, but that it is unimportant when compared to questions of goodness, kindness, intelligence, and honesty. And, watching the girl throwing her ball in the air, the frog could determine nothing of these things. In fact, he knew next to nothing about her.

He did not know that this wasn’t just any little girl he had fallen in love with. She was the princess, the king’s only daughter. He also did not know that, as pretty as she was, she was a horror. Sweet and pretty on the outside, cruel and selfish on the inside.

If you know anything about children, dear reader, perhaps this will not surprise you. Perhaps you know that one of the greatest dangers in life is growing up very pretty.

You see, when you are very pretty, people tend to remark on your looks. They smile at you more easily. They are more permissive of your faults. Soon, you come to believe that your prettiness matters, and that you are better because you are pretty, and that all it takes to get through life is a batting of your eyelashes and a twisting of your hair around your little finger, and that you can scream and pout and shout and tease because everyone will still like you anyway because you are so unbelievably pretty. This is what many very pretty people think.

Beware, then, for this is how monsters are made.

And I fear that our poor frog has fallen in love with a pretty little monster.

One day, the girl came to the well rather later than usual. As she played with her ball in the small clearing, the sun began to set, and the edges of twilight rose like a black mist in the east. The darkness made it harder to see the ball, and so, on one particular toss, the princess missed it, and it bounced directly into the well.

The girl yelped and ran to the well’s edge. She peered down into the dark. The frog, who had never been so close to the girl, stared at her and tried not to hyperventilate.

Suddenly, the girl began to wail like a foghorn. She wailed and wailed and wept and wailed some more. Well, it pained the frog to see her like that. He croaked at her, trying to comfort her, but she paid no attention to him.

Oh, if only she could hear me! he thought. If only she knew I was trying to help her!

As the girl wept into the darkness of the well, tears ran down her face, dropped from her dimpled chin, and splashed into the black water below.

Far up above, the first few stars had just begun to appear in the sky. The tears that fell into the well shook the surface of the water, and with it, the stars’ reflection. Now maybe you know it, and maybe you don’t, but this is the only way to wake the stars. And awake they did.

Meanwhile, the frog was trying with all his might to croak something that the girl might understand. “I can get your ball!” he tried to tell her. “I can help you, beautiful, radiant, perfectly nonamphibious creature!” And as he stared into her cerulean eyes, now fading to gray in the dying light, he went beyond wanting to help her, and even beyond longing to help her. He wished for it, in loud, croaking, frog-wishing sounds.

Well, the stars heard his wish, and they granted it.

What? The stars
heard
the frog?

And they grant wishes?

Yes, they did.

And yes, they do.

Without any warning, his croaks became perfectly comprehensible to the girl, and what had before been, “Ribbit . . . ribbit . . . ribbit . . . ” became, “Please, beautiful girl, let me help you!”

The girl stood up like a bolt. “Who said that?” she asked.

“I think I did,” said the frog, as surprised as she was.

“You can talk?” she asked.

“Apparently,” he replied, bemused. “I . . . I was offering to help you.”

“Oh, would you?!” she cried, and the frog nearly fell to pieces. “Oh, I would do anything! Really I would! Just get my ball and I’ll give you anything! You can have my jewels, or my fanciest clothes, or my crown . . . ”

Your crown? the frog thought, but he didn’t say it. He hadn’t known that she was a princess. But of course, upon examining her again, what else could she have been?

With all the gallantry he could muster, the frog replied, “Of course I’ll get it! You don’t have to give me anything . . .” He stopped. Her mouth—looking like an unbloomed rose—had moved just slightly as he spoke, and his emotions began to betray him. He stammered, and turned a brighter shade of green. “Umm . . . ” he muttered. “Unless . . . ” he stammered. “You could always . . . ” he stuttered.

“Anything!” the princess said. “I’ll give you anything!”

“I was just thinking . . . that we might be friends . . .”

“Oh, of course we’ll be friends!” the princess said. “I think we’ll be ever so close, if you would just fetch my ball!”

Well, the princess didn’t mean it, of course. It was just something nice you were supposed to say to lowly people (and, apparently, to frogs) so as not to hurt their feelings. She had learned all about not hurting people’s feelings ages ago.

But the frog, not having met many (any) humans, didn’t understand that. And he, poor frog, believed her. So, with a brimming heart, he dove into the depths of the well and brought up the princess’s ball. She instantly grabbed it, shouted with joy, said, “Oh thank you, frog!” and immediately ran toward the castle. The frog, who had expected to spend a bit more time with her, now that they were ever so close, hopped down from the well and tried to follow her.

“Wait!” he shouted, “wait for me! I can’t keep up!” But of course, the princess did not wait for him. She pretended she could not hear him.

Later that night, the king sat at dinner with his daughter. As they ate their salad course, the quiet was broken by a faint splish-splash splish-splash, coming from just under the windows. Then it seemed to start up the stairs. The princess went deathly white.

There was a pause, and then there came a knocking on the door.

“What’s that?” the king asked.

“What? I don’t hear anything,” said the princess.

The knocking continued.

“That!” said the king.

But the princess had already leaped from her chair and rushed to the front door.

She opened it a crack. There, waiting wet and expectant on the doorstep, was the frog. She slammed the door and returned to the dinner table.

The king examined her pale features. “Who was it, my dear?” he asked.

“Oh, nobody,” she said, and shoveled far too much salad into her mouth so as not to be able to say any more. The knocking came again.

“It is someone,” the king insisted. “Who is it?”

The princess burst into tears. “He’s an awful, ugly old frog!” she cried. “He fetched my ball for me when it was lost in the well, and I told him he could be my friend! Oh, it’s terrible!” The princess’s wails echoed off the ceiling. “Waaaaaaaaaaaoooooooooooooh!”

The king, who had learned long ago that the princess could turn her tears on and off whenever she wanted to, insisted that she open the door and bring the creature in.

Meanwhile, the frog nervously knocked at the door again. Perhaps, he thought, the princess hadn’t seen him when she opened the door. He was rather small, of course. Easy to overlook. He repeated this to himself, attempting to cover up a deeper fear that she had, in fact, seen him, and slammed the door because of it.

But his fears were allayed when the door opened again and the princess appeared. He broke into his broadest frog-grin and said, “Good evening, Princess. I was just passing by, and I thought I might stop in to call upon you. Is this a convenient time?” He had rehearsed this speech during the three hours it took him to hop from his well to the castle’s door.