Pumpkin Patch Princess

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Purple Goopy Lips

Everyone raced to the well, but it was too deep and dark to see anything. The sounds of splashing echoed off the stones.

"Alfonso!" Maud cried. "Are you all right?"

"Don't worry, he should be okay in the water," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. Would he be as efficient a swimmer as a real frog?

"Alfonso?" Daphne asked in a shaking voice.

Suddenly, the splashing stopped.

"Alfonso?" Maud shrieked. "ALFONSO?!"

After a long, tense moment in which I thought I would witness my trainer cry, the frog appeared with the spade in his mouth, his tiny purple arms shaking from climbing up the well. When he dropped the tool at Daphne's feet, she stared at him, struck dumb by the heroic act.

"Alfonso, you scared me senseless!" Maud cried, scooping him up in her hands.

The princess burst into tears again. "Oh, Alfonso, it must be you!" she sobbed. "No one understood my love for gardening the way you did."

It was unclear how much of this confession the frog heard, because he had collapsed into a dead faint.

"He's exhausted. Muffet, could you take him to our room?" Maud asked. "Meanwhile, I'll get the solutions ready to try out immediately."

"Put him on my back," Muffet offered, looking happier now that he had unloaded the burden of his past. "Just shake him off a bit first. He's still dripping."

Maud wiped Alfonso gingerly with her sleeve before placing him on the cat.

Daphne wiped her eyes. "All right. I believe you, Maud. I'll do it. I'll kiss the . . . the frog."

The fairy godmother beamed. "If you'll be kind enough to show Muffet to our rooms, Noelle and I will go get the solutions from the carriage."

On the way to the stables, Maud told me about what had gone into the mixtures. "All of them have the pepperwood and boarhound powder you got me, some sprigs of cairn berry plant, and wax for texture, but in different doses. I'm experimenting," she added with a twinkle in her eye. "All we need is linwood bark and we're set."

But when we got to our carriage and Maud reached into the hidden drawer under her seat, she frowned. "That's strange. My case isn't here."

"Looking for something, ma'am?" asked a stablehand nearby.

"Just a case I left in the carriage. I didn't think the footman would look so thoroughly."

"Ah, I think I know what happened," the man said. "That carriage is not the one you came in."

I examined the wheels, which were much rustier than the ones on our carriage. "You're right! But where did this one come from?"

"A young woman dropped it off and took yours just now, when you were with the princess," he explained. "She said she was C.A.F.E. personnel and wanted to make sure you had a functional carriage."

"Why would she give us a rustier one, then?" I demanded.

Maud shook her head. "Someone drove a second carriage all the way from headquarters just to take our perfectly good one away? Something about that doesn't make sense."

"Nothing about that makes sense." An image flashed into my mind: Jessaline sneering, as she vowed to do whatever it took to win Sloane the House seat. "Did the woman have red hair, by any chance?"

Maud glanced quickly at me, but the stablehand shook his head. "She had dark curly hair. But she certainly carried herself like a fairy godmother. Very nose-in-the-air, very uppity . . ." He caught Maud's eye. "No offense, ma'am."