فصل دوازدهم

12

The Toad

Ofelia had given up wiping the woodlice from her arms and face, which by now were covered solidly in mud. She felt as if she would be crawling through the intestines of the earth forever. The lost princess, if the Faun was right, looking for her underground kingdom.

She found it harder and harder to breathe, and all the tunnel had revealed so far was darkness. Darkness, roots, wet soil, and armies of woodlice serving whom? Ofelia had just asked herself that question when she heard something moving behind her, something heavy and huge.

She peered over her mud-covered shoulder to see a massive toad just a few feet behind her. His wart-covered body was as large as a cow and he was plugging the whole tunnel. The Faun’s book had portrayed the creature quite perfectly, but he’d looked so much smaller in the illustration!

“H-hello,” Ofelia stuttered. “I am Princess Moanna, and I . . .” She took a deep breath. “I am not afraid of you.” That was of course not the truth, but hopefully the Toad couldn’t read a human face. Ofelia could for sure not read his. A belching croak escaped the bloated body, while the golden eyes were blinking as if the huge beast couldn’t believe something so furless and fragile had crawled all the way down to his lair.

Ofelia kept her eyes on the creature as she opened the pouch and let the three stones slip into her palm. All around her the mud was alive with woodlice.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” she asked, her voice shaking even more than her sore knees. “To live down here eating all these bugs, growing fat, while the tree is dying?” She swatted a woodlouse from her arm while another crawled over her cheek.

The Toad’s answer was swift. He unfurled his enormous sticky tongue and slapped it across Ofelia’s face. It grasped the woodlouse and left her cheek dripping with saliva. But what was worse—her fingers let go of the Faun’s stones!

The Toad drew his tongue back into his gaping mouth, while Ofelia desperately searched for the stones in the mud.

The Toad was quite annoyed with the furless creature.

He was sure the Tree had sent her. Groaning angrily, he opened his mouth and showered the intruder with the poisonous slime that was eating the Tree’s wooden heart. Oh yes. It would for sure eat the furless flesh of his uninvited visitor as well. The Toad was vastly satisfied with himself.

Ofelia wasn’t giving up, despite the venomous slime burning her face and arms. She opened her trembling hand and saw that along with the stones she’d plucked from the mud, she’d grabbed a few woodlice that were rolling and unrolling themselves on her palm. Rolled up they looked exactly like the stones.

“Hey!” she called, holding up the scrambling insects. She could only hope she’d grabbed the right stones along with the woodlice. The mud made them all look alike.

The Toad licked his lips, while he stared at her outstretched hand with his golden eyes.

Finally!

The intruder showed at least some respect. He was very pleased, although her offerings were poor. The Toad loved to devour his servants. He found the crunching sound they made when he cracked them with his toothless gums to be very satisfying.

Yes, he would accept the offering.

Ofelia didn’t move when the huge tongue slashed through the air like a whip. It enveloped her hand so firmly she was sure the Toad would rip it off. But she still had her hand when the tongue withdrew, and—Ofelia looked at her fingers dripping with saliva—both the woodlice and the stones were gone.

It took the Toad a moment to swallow and digest his prey. So long a moment that Ofelia was already sure she’d grabbed the wrong stones or that the Faun’s gift had failed.

But then the Toad opened his mouth.

He opened it wider and wider.

Oh, how his intestines were burning!

As if they’d just been filled with his own poison!

And his skin . . . it was crawling, as if all his woodlice servants had begun to eat him alive! Oh, he should have strangled that pale-skinned creature with his tongue! Only now did he realize what she had come for. He saw it in her treacherous eyes. His golden treasure! But that realization came too late. With his last dying breath he retched out his own stomach, a mass of pulsating amber flesh, and his huge body deflated like a torn balloon leaving behind nothing but a lifeless pile of skin.

Ofelia crawled to the lump of flesh, though the sight and smell of it made her sick. And there it was! The key the Faun had asked her to bring was sticking to the Toad’s entrails along with dozens of twitching woodlice. The slime covering it stretched like the shimmering threads of a spider when Ofelia grabbed it, but finally it let go.

The key was longer than Ofelia’s hand and very beautiful. She clenched it all the way back through the endless tunnel, although it wasn’t easy to crawl with just one hand. When she finally stumbled out of the broken tree, the sky was already dark and rain was pouring through the canopy of the leaves. How long had she been gone? All the joy she had felt about completing her task and getting the key vanished. The dinner! Her new dress!

Ofelia stumbled to the branch where she’d hung her clothes.

But the dress was gone and so was the apron.

The fear piercing her heart was almost as grim as the fear she had felt in the Toad’s tunnels. She sobbed as she searched the forest floor, pressing the key to her chest, which was so cold from all the mud and the rain. When she finally found the dress just a little way from the tree, the green fabric was caked in mud, and the white apron was so dirty it was nearly invisible in the dark. Above her the branches creaked in the wind and Ofelia thought she heard her mother’s heart break.

The rain was so strong by now that it washed most of the mud off Ofelia’s face and limbs. It was as if the night was trying to comfort her. In her despair Ofelia held up the dress and the apron into the falling rain, but even a million of its cold drops couldn’t turn them green and white again.