Beach Day

48: A Frog Prince

The young alchemist opens her eyes. She's on the side of a hill, looking up at the sky above her: thick, unforgiving pine needles in an endless sea of green. She hates pine needles, and the woods are cursed anyway. She isn't sure why she's out here, under the shadows of a stretch of trees with no path between them. Stick to the path, right? It's the warning they gave to the little girl in the green cloak.

She isn't that girl anymore, of course. There comes a time when you must put away childish things, and so the cloak goes into a chest at the foot of your bed and you start putting your hair up like a woman. That's where she put it, with an old diary and a torn dress and apron. Those were the only things she brought with her when she came here. So far from home, a reinvention was very much in order.

She stands, brushes herself off, and rids herself of the pine needles clinging to absolutely everything. Hands brush trousers, brush pieces of a thick winter coat, brush the tongue of a sturdy boot. All is as it should be.

Now, how did she get out here? She steps from the hill to the trees beyond, looking for sunlight and packed dirt and trying desperately to remember. Bits and pieces come back to her. She was working on something. She was working on something and it went wrong, she thinks. She isn't sure what happened next.

She finds the path easily enough. It's just down the hill; it's just around the tree. She knows the superstition well. They yelled it to her from between trees, beasts and men alike: stick to the path. Oh, whatever. She's no maiden. She's barely a girl, as far as the definition goes. Even so, the young alchemist sticks to the path, walking through the cold with every intention of getting back to the small, nearby settlement. She has work to do, after all. She has a project to finish; she has hands to clean and debts to settle.

It isn't as easy as that, of course. The woods are tricky. More than messing with her mind (conjuring forth memories of her parents and their hands pushing the front of her shoulders), it changes the scenery as she walks through it. It's a perfect recipe for getting horribly lost.

This is fine. She knows exactly what to do. Outside these trees and these damn pine needles, the world is still bright with afternoon sun against the gray sky. Here, it descends into darkness quicker than she would like. It's an effect of the curse on this land, she supposes. She reaches into a pocket of her jacket and takes out a small flask of oil, then into another for a lantern. It's something she made: metal folded into itself, glass pristine and uncracked between the iron joints. Maybe she won't know where she's going, but she can at least see a few feet in front of her face.

Those voices whisper to her from the shadows and the trees again: unwanted, unwanted. This is also fine. In her reinvention, she has learned not to care about the shadow and what it tells her. She grits her teeth, bears it, and pushes forward into the dark with the lantern lit, glowing gentle, atmospheric against the bark.

Lantern held aloft, the alchemist continues onward, deeper into the trees. She isn't sure how she knows it, but she knows: once she finds what's pulling her farther in, there will be a way back at the end of the road. She isn't sure what it is or what form it will take. Here is the quest, as simple as it is: keep going.

Lantern in front of her, swinging with every step, the young alchemist continues. And the trees scream that she is unwanted; and the trees want her to know that she is not welcome here; the trees remind her, "You do not have a family. You do not have a home. You are unwanted. You would do better to join us between the bark."

A home is overrated. What she has built in this cursed land is better than a home. It's a site of research and of semi-solitude. It's a place of utility within the town; they only need her insofar as she helps them. The solitude treats her well, otherwise. Could she ever ask for anything more? Would she ever ask for anything more? To do so would be selfish. She heard talk of an aunt far up north, but the truth is that she would never burden anyone with her presence— and the truth is, she is content to be on her own. It's lonely, but that is by design.