(no subject)

The princess had everything she could ever want, but she couldn’t sleep at night. The croaking of the frogs from the swamp beside her castle kept her awake. As the swamp grew larger and larger, the frogs grew louder and louder. Night after night, she lay awake in agony, her beauty shriveling into exhaustion. The princess’s father worried as the dark circles under his daughter’s eyes grew as fast as the swamp. Worry stole his sleep as well. So he ordered the frogs exterminated, every last one, and there was a great murdering of frogs and the swamps were drained and then, there was quiet.

But the quiet did not last long.

The night after the great emptying of the swamps, the princess heard the croaking of a solitary frog. She called out for her father, who called out for his soldiers, who called out for every man in the kingdom to search the swamp for the one surviving frog. While all the men searched for the frog that got away, the princess lay in bed tossing and turning with the sound of its croaking echoing off the walls and shattering her dreams, until suddenly, she felt movement beneath her. She hopped from her bed and jumped off her mattress, so thick and soft it was a wonder she could feel anything move beneath it at all, and yet there, below the mattress, croaking loudly, was a pea green frog. It was big and warty and bug-eyed and loud as a missile. She screamed, but no one was left to hear her. They were all out in the swamp, searching. The princess knew that she was all alone, so she took a deep breath and dove at the frog, grabbing it as hard as she could with her delicate hands. It felt slimy and sticky and she looked at it and she hated it for its ugliness as much as for ruining her sleep. So she squeezed and squeezed to kill the frog, but as she squeezed, she caught its eye and the eyes, those ugly bulging eyes looked so profoundly sad that she was filled with pity. She stopped squeezing and, instead, she kissed the frog.

And there was light, like a nuclear blast, and the frog transformed before her into a prince, the prince of the swamps, and he was angry at the murder of all his frogs and the draining of his swamp. He demanded that she seek redemption.

‘It wasn’t my idea!’ she objected.

‘But it was done in your name,’ he said. ‘And the guilt is yours to bear.’

The princess could not undo what had been done and so, racked with guilt, she offered all her riches, and the frog prince took them, but he said, ‘It is not enough.’ She offered her father’s kingdom and all its power, and the frog prince accepted, but said again, ‘It is not enough.’ The princess offered herself to the frog prince in marriage and the frog prince accepted, but after the wedding, as she offered her body to him as well, he said once more, ‘It is not enough.’ She offered her love to him too, her desires and her cares, all the compassion and truth she had, every part of herself she knew and those parts she had yet to discover, her past and her future, she offered to him, and he accepted and they grew old together, and she made him happy and he too, in a way, made her happy and they had many children, but as he lay upon his deathbed, his breath coming out like the croaks of a long-forgotten frog, he said again:

‘It was never enough.’

And he died and her debts would never be forgiven, and for her curse, she would live on alone until all the swamps in the world were silent.

(no subject)