Part 12 (2/2)

”No.”

”Then what's the word?”

”I don't know. Dying of thirst.”

”You can starve to death. Why can't you thirst to death?”

”I don't know. You just can't.”

”Oh.”

This is, of course, the kind of inane conversation that occurs when people are slowly losing their minds.

Through it, the frog was staring up at the sky, as he used to do when he lived in his well. For not the first time in that frog's long life, he was wis.h.i.+ng he were back in it, salamanders and all. He could hear them now: ”What is smelly?” ”When is smelly?” ”Why is smelly?” ”Who is smelly?” ”Am I smelly?” ”Who's smellier, me or Fred? Is it me? It's me, right? Me?” He sort of missed them.

”Frog, I have a question,” said Jack, who was now lying on his back, staring at the sky.

”Shoot.”

”How do you talk?”

Jill looked over at Jack, and then at the frog. ”Yeah,” she said.

The frog sighed. He purposely did not look at Jill. ”It's kind of a long story.”

”Okay,” said Jack.

”Okay,” said Jill.

”Okay what?” said the frog.

”Okay, tell us the story,” Jack answered.

The frog thought about it for a minute. He continued to purposely not look at Jill. And then, at last, he said, ”All right...”

So the frog told them the story of how he came to talk. He started with the very smelly well, moved on to the very annoying salamanders, then described the princess with her ball, and so on, all the way through him trailing his froggy blood after him, all the way back to his well.

When he'd finished, Jack said. ”That's a good story.”

”Thank you,” said the frog.

”My favorite part was when your leg got eaten by the weasel,” Jack added.

The frog did not thank him again.

But Jill was silent. She stared into the great gray sky. After a long time, she said, ”I think that was my mother.”

The frog watched her. Jill said nothing more. But the frog could tell she was thinking. Thinking hard.

The frog glanced up. Three black specks had appeared through the heavy cloud. He watched them as the specks grew into dots, and the dots into blots, and the blots into splotches, and the splotches into birds, and the birds, at last, into ravens.

The frog catapulted himself out of Jack's pocket and dove for a dark crevice beneath a stone. Jack and Jill gazed at him like he was crazy. Then they heard the wings.

They looked up in time to see three black shapes fluttering down and landing on the stone beside them. The children stared. Three large and stately ravens shook their plumage and stood, dark and imperious, before them.

A vague sense of dread took hold of the children.

”What do you think they want?” Jack whispered.

”I know what they want,” Jill whispered back. ”They're scavengers. They're here to eat us after we die.”

”What?” cried one of the ravens.

Jill toppled over backward.

Jack ducked as if something were about to strike him in the head.

”What did she just say we were going to do?” demanded another raven.

Jack's eyes were spread wide. Jill's head tilted wonderingly off to one side.

”They said we were going to eat their corpses,” the third raven replied.

”That is the most repulsive thing I have heard in many, many years,” declared the first.

”Did that raven just talk?” Jill hissed at Jack.

”I think they all did,” he whispered back.

”Why are you whispering?” whispered the second raven. ”We can hear, too, you know.”

Jack and Jill silently wondered if they were hallucinating.

”Really, I'm not sure why you're so surprised,” said the third raven. ”You travel with a talking frog.”

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