The Wizards Frog Plan, Chapter One

The first frog incident reported was said to be at Brownie square, at 5 o’clock sharp.

The market was going on. As usual, a town visitor had been tricked out of the odd apple or two, and was yelling at the fruit seller at the top of his lungs. The fruit seller, however, was steadily maintaining that the visitor was simply unfamiliar with the laws of Toadaburg- if some idiot let himself be tricked, it was his own fault and no one else’s. Therefore, the idiot should take the punishment; in this case, the visitor should take a few less apples.

In the end, the fruit seller won the debate (having most of the population of Toadaburg behind his reasoning) and the visitor turned and stomped off, muttering about how toads were fairer, and how it would be nice to be one.

"That can be arranged," said a silky voice from behind his shoulder. The visitor turned around and saw a huge, black mustache. It took him a few moments of staring to realize that, attached to the mustache, was a small man with oily hair (though not quite as oily as his mustache) and a decidedly evil expression on his face.

Swallowing hard, the visitor mumbled something about not being serious. It was never safe to joke about things like being turned into animals around here- not this close to the Sorcerer’s Forest. Some wizard or witch might just take you seriously.

Just then, there was an explosion on the other side of the square. All the housewives who had previously been gossiping about the mayor’s daughter (who refused to marry Sir Ocelo) turned to look, likewise the sailors stopped kissing their sweethearts (whom they hadn’t seen in three years) to look, and the sweethearts themselves looked, gazing through dark eyelashes, and the rest of the riffraff also turned to look for the source of the noise.

The source was never spotted, however, and all of the villagers gradually went back to what they had been doing. Now the housewives were gossiping about how Anne Mower’s son was in trouble with the sheriff.

Eventually, a baker had discovered that while he was gaping at the other

side of the square, ten of his prized loaves had mysteriously disappeared, and right across the street, a ragged group of street urchins were trying to look innocent while stuffing bits of steaming bread in their mouth.

In the pandemonium which followed (the baker snatched a knife from the neighboring butcher and ran at the urchins, screaming something about ‘bloody little thieves’) no one noticed that the visitor and the man with the mustache had disappeared. Instead, exactly were they had been standing, there was a mud brown frog with green speckles.

The frog was behaving in an altogether unfroggy sort of way, hopping frantically through the legs of the crowd, croaking like crazy at the top of its lungs. It had acquired several puzzled looks from the housewives (who were now discussing the problem of street urchins in Toadaburg) before one of the meaner village boys squashed it beneath his toe.

No one ever saw the visitor again. But, as the townspeople dismissed worrying as a waste of time, no one thought much of it. However, they were soon reminded, when the man with the mustache was seen again….

After turning someone into a frog and causing an explosion on the other side of the square, Maarle was tired. He twirled his huge mustache between long, thin fingers and muttered something under his breath. He quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then, assured that they were all still staring across the square, disappeared with a cloud of smoke and a noise he’d once heard a dying cat make.

He reappeared in front of a rock wall with a door set into it. He quickly walked past the door and into the living room of his home.

For a house that was made out of rock, Maarle’s living room was surprisingly comfortable. Squashy, red armchairs sat in front of a crackling fire that gave off no heat(it was the middle of August, no extra heat was needed) and pictures of nature scenes adorned the walls. It was a room that would have shamed one of the Toadaburgian housewives if it had been compared to their own, humble dwellings.

Maarle simply wrinkled his nose and looked at it in disgust.

"Saardene!" he called at the top of his voice, his face turning into something resembling a tomato as it turned red in anger.

A moment later, a girl of thirteen or fourteen appeared at Maarle’s side. "It looks better this way," she protested, not even asking why her father wanted to see her.

"The color red," Maarle muttered testily at his daughter "and nature scenes, are not acceptable for an evil wizard! Change them back!"

Saardene sighed, but the chairs turned to black, the paintings disappeared and

the fire turned an evil looking purple-blue mix. The carpet, however, which had previously been black, turned a cheery red.

Maarle gave up. He turned the carpet black again and turned his daughter into a frog. Then he sat in one of the black chairs and practiced looking evil for the conference he would be attending in Witchville.

Saardene, now a bright green frog, hopped out the door and into the spicy air of the Sorcerer’s Forest, not nearly as panicked as people who are turned into animals usually are. She was used to it. Her parents found her lack of evilness quite aggravating. A day when she wasn’t turned into a frog was unusual. She had found a friendly witch who would turn her back every time.

The only disadvantage to this system, Saardene thought as she hopped down the needle-covered path, was that a frog took an annoying long time to get anywhere, and it was fifteen minutes before the witch’s (Loral, as she was named) cottage came into veiw.