Free Fair Peril by Nancy Springer Page B

and he would transform, and she who had been his mother would become his bride.”
    There was a long pause as Buffy waited for the rest of the story to come seeping out of her and Adamus waited for Buffy to tell it.
    Buffy said slowly, “One day the frog crept out of his cradle to see the sunbeam girl, his goddess, all swaddled and smothered in a dress of white lace as if in a rain cloud, veiled in white lace, weeping bitterly. Also in the room stood a personage three times as tall as she, all draped in black lace, and this was her terror, her mother. And the mother took the child by the hand and led her out of the room and away.
    â€œThen the frog was smitten with fear—for himself, for her—and with a sense of what it means to be a prince. He followed, leaping along the hallways. He saw her sitting small and white and veiled in a carriage, and he leaped to cling and ride along as the strong gray horses pulled it away.
    â€œThe carriage rolled faster and the gravel flew up and pelted him where he clung until he knew he would have to let go and fall and be killed, a frog lying small and flat and brown on the roadway—but he did not let go; he hung on. The dust choked him until he knew he would have to let go and fall and be killed, a frog lying dry and dead in the weeds beside the road—but he did not let go. He clung until finally the carriage slowed and stopped at the tall stone entrance of a great palace the frog recognized from long ago. His heart pounded in his frail chest, for the sunbeam girl had brought him home.
    â€œThen she descended from the carriage, her glow all veiled in cloudy white, weeping like rain.
    â€œHer mother draped in black led her into the palace by the hand, and the frog followed, leaping like a shadow behind her. Surely, he thought, they had brought her here for some religious rite, a baptism, a communion, to enter into a white-clad cloister, perhaps—for he knew she was far too young, too innocent, for that other white-clad rite. She had kissed him only that morning, and he had felt her innocence like dawn dew upon her lips. She remained nothing more than a girl child, and he remained nothing more than a frog.
    â€œStill, his heart pounded hotly in him, for deep in his belly a thought squirmed like a hookworm, that she might be meant for him. This was his home.
    â€œThen he saw the bridegroom awaiting her. A man four times her size, harsh and gouty, like a toad.”
    Buffy stopped abruptly, realizing with a shock what she was doing, whose story she was telling. The toadlike man—it was her father, whom she remembered with more ambivalence than affection. She carried his picture clearly in her mind as she spoke, as clearly as if he lay in his coffin before her. There was no mistaking him.
    The child bride was her mother.
    Nobody had ever told Buffy in so many words, but families have their own ways of conveying stories. She knew well enough: they had made her mother marry him. A bride at the age of fourteen. Given away by a widowed mother to a man who promised to take care of the child and give her everything she needed.
    By the standards of the day, he was a good man. A good provider. He had provided his wife with a nice, hot kitchen, a new baby once a year, a whack on the mouth if she talked back.
    What that wedding night must have been like.
    â€œThe mother let go of the girl’s hand,” Buffy said in a low voice to Adamus, “and the bridegroom seized it, and he took her away to the inner sanctum, and when she came out, she was not a sunbeam girl anymore.”
    Buffy ended the story there, folding her hands on top of the green book in her lap.
    â€œBut the prince, the frog!” Adamus exclaimed. “What happened to him?”
    â€œShe could not see him anymore. The tears had washed all the light out of her eyes. She no longer talked to him or sang to him or rocked him in her arms. She would never kiss him. So he went back to his