had been my fate."
Rune is becoming tired and impatient with this apparition princess who is more of a wet blanket than the bog moss. “At least you had a father who loved you and was proud of you. I have had no father in my life; Mother says he was a princely beast who is no more, and she won’t say anything else, no matter how much I plead, or tease, or throw things in a tantrum. She’s bigger and stronger; she always wins.”
“Perhaps it pains her too much to talk about him,” Helga sighs and her aura becomes pale, pale blue.
“What about me! What about my pain,” Rune shouts and jumps to her feet, which quickly sink in three inches of bog. “Why did she use the word princely? Is my father a prince? What else can explain the face I saw in the magic mirror?”
“Show me,” Helga says.
“I left the blasted thing at Lake Leda before I jumped on the swan’s back,” Rune tries to kick a stump, but the hold of the bog releases her foot slowly with a thwack and her knee strikes her bottom jaw driving a canine tooth into her upper lip. Rune is swearing up a storm, but stops suddenly when she notices Helga changing color once again. Helga points west where the setting sun resembles a gray-yellow egg yolk. Her aura darkens to deep green and her shape shifts into an eighty-pound frog with bulbous belly, a plethora of warts and great bulging black eyes.
"Holy Mother Nature!" Rune whistles with admiration. “It can’t be getting dark already.”
Helga's eyes dart to the left as a bright spot of color appears over the bog lake and wings toward them.
"Let us be human!" the Andersen Land philosopher squawks. Helga whips her amphibian tongue through the air like a fly caster, knocking one Nile-green feather from the bird's tail.
"Poor me, poor me, I suffer as a human being can suffer in indescribable melancholy which always has to do with my thinking about my own existence." The bird makes a U-turn and flies back from whence it came.
"Why did you do that?" Rune shouts.
The frog girl opens a mouth large enough for Rune to sleep inside and sounds a deafening croak. Rune slaps her hands over her ears and leaps behind the nearest tree.
"Because if the bird had kept flying in that direction, it would have met a pack of boys armed with bows and arrows," a sweet, small voice sounds from the tree above Rune. “She scared you didn’t she, you big sissy beastie.”
“Who said that? Who is up that tree?” Rune demands.
A curled orange leaf unfurls to reveal an elf. He is perfectly beautiful, his arms are crossed and his black eyes twinkle; his nose and ears are both long and pointed. He wears a green suit and hat and black slippers with silver buckles. "This be my tree, ye big hairy ugly beastie thing--don’t be thinking you will sleep here for the night, and you better find a tree or the acid of the bog will singe the hair off your hairy bottom and you’ll look more like a baboon than you already do. A beautiful princess indeed! I heard every word ye and the spirit said. Phooey--Helga was born to suffer, and ye being an enchanted princess is as likely as meself being a Hottentot potentate."
“I wasn't scared. I thought she might explode all over me," Rune says, scratching her leg where the dried mud is beginning to itch and burn.
However, underneath Rune's coarse coppery colored fur, a tingling spreads from her scalp to her chest and it's not from the mud. She's embarrassed about being afraid; she could count on the talons of one hand the number of times she'd been afraid. In Rune's forest home, there was little to fear and everything was familiar. She climbs a tree and scans the bog, its dense floating mats of duckweed, acres of cattails and reeds, thin tall alder, swamp maple, birch trees growing out of brown water, and the enormity of leaving home envelopes her as totally as the fog envelopes the bog.
* * *
Morning breaks in the Andersen Land Bog at nine AM, a cool
Rune is becoming tired and impatient with this apparition princess who is more of a wet blanket than the bog moss. “At least you had a father who loved you and was proud of you. I have had no father in my life; Mother says he was a princely beast who is no more, and she won’t say anything else, no matter how much I plead, or tease, or throw things in a tantrum. She’s bigger and stronger; she always wins.”
“Perhaps it pains her too much to talk about him,” Helga sighs and her aura becomes pale, pale blue.
“What about me! What about my pain,” Rune shouts and jumps to her feet, which quickly sink in three inches of bog. “Why did she use the word princely? Is my father a prince? What else can explain the face I saw in the magic mirror?”
“Show me,” Helga says.
“I left the blasted thing at Lake Leda before I jumped on the swan’s back,” Rune tries to kick a stump, but the hold of the bog releases her foot slowly with a thwack and her knee strikes her bottom jaw driving a canine tooth into her upper lip. Rune is swearing up a storm, but stops suddenly when she notices Helga changing color once again. Helga points west where the setting sun resembles a gray-yellow egg yolk. Her aura darkens to deep green and her shape shifts into an eighty-pound frog with bulbous belly, a plethora of warts and great bulging black eyes.
"Holy Mother Nature!" Rune whistles with admiration. “It can’t be getting dark already.”
Helga's eyes dart to the left as a bright spot of color appears over the bog lake and wings toward them.
"Let us be human!" the Andersen Land philosopher squawks. Helga whips her amphibian tongue through the air like a fly caster, knocking one Nile-green feather from the bird's tail.
"Poor me, poor me, I suffer as a human being can suffer in indescribable melancholy which always has to do with my thinking about my own existence." The bird makes a U-turn and flies back from whence it came.
"Why did you do that?" Rune shouts.
The frog girl opens a mouth large enough for Rune to sleep inside and sounds a deafening croak. Rune slaps her hands over her ears and leaps behind the nearest tree.
"Because if the bird had kept flying in that direction, it would have met a pack of boys armed with bows and arrows," a sweet, small voice sounds from the tree above Rune. “She scared you didn’t she, you big sissy beastie.”
“Who said that? Who is up that tree?” Rune demands.
A curled orange leaf unfurls to reveal an elf. He is perfectly beautiful, his arms are crossed and his black eyes twinkle; his nose and ears are both long and pointed. He wears a green suit and hat and black slippers with silver buckles. "This be my tree, ye big hairy ugly beastie thing--don’t be thinking you will sleep here for the night, and you better find a tree or the acid of the bog will singe the hair off your hairy bottom and you’ll look more like a baboon than you already do. A beautiful princess indeed! I heard every word ye and the spirit said. Phooey--Helga was born to suffer, and ye being an enchanted princess is as likely as meself being a Hottentot potentate."
“I wasn't scared. I thought she might explode all over me," Rune says, scratching her leg where the dried mud is beginning to itch and burn.
However, underneath Rune's coarse coppery colored fur, a tingling spreads from her scalp to her chest and it's not from the mud. She's embarrassed about being afraid; she could count on the talons of one hand the number of times she'd been afraid. In Rune's forest home, there was little to fear and everything was familiar. She climbs a tree and scans the bog, its dense floating mats of duckweed, acres of cattails and reeds, thin tall alder, swamp maple, birch trees growing out of brown water, and the enormity of leaving home envelopes her as totally as the fog envelopes the bog.
* * *
Morning breaks in the Andersen Land Bog at nine AM, a cool
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