“Heart attack,” said the cat professionally. Cats know a lot about death. “Couldn’t take the transformation. Big to small, small to big, places a great strain on the heart.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Anya, thinking of Denholm. This was another thing to worry about, besides him getting eaten. And then there was Gotfried. He was turning into an owl too often, being so frightened by the Duke.
“Oh yes,” said the cat, licking his paws. He was a sooty kind of gray-black cat, but his paws were pure white. Anya was fairly sure his name was Robinson, but the cats never liked to admit to names. Being named might lead to being held responsible for something.
“Transformation’s not good for the brain, either,” continued Robinson. “It gets confused. Don’t know if you’re mouse or man after a while. Depends on the individual of course. Well, I must be off. There’s starlings got into the observatory roof. Have to clean them out. With your permission, Your Highness, Your Dogship.”
“Yes,” said Anya and Tanitha together.
“Thank you for bringing Harris here,” Anya called out as the cat zoomed away. “We’ll … I’ll ask Cook to organize the funeral.”
“The Duke’s magic is growing stronger,” said Tanitha. “And he is using it more wildly. Let us go out into the world. The air is fresher where the Duke has not been at work.”
“I don’t like to just leave Harris,” said Anya, looking down on the little curled-up, dead mouse with its bald patch between the ears. “He is … he was … one of my people, after all.”
“Springer, go and tell Madame Harn what has happened, and ask her to come and put Harris in a little basket,” instructed Tanitha. “He can lie with the flowers in the still room until this evening, when we will bury him. You’d better tell Cook as well.”
Madame Harn was the castle’s herbalist. Anya didn’t like her very much, mainly because the woman was unfriendly to everyone. But she was efficient and would take care of Harris.
Anya and Tanitha crossed the drawbridge, but instead of walking down the cobbled road towards the village that lay in the valley below, they turned to walk alongside the moat, on the raised path between the flooded ditch and the water meadow that stretched beyond. There was no one else about, save a brown-shouldered kite high above, hovering in wait for some small creature in the grass.
“I don’t know what to do, Tanitha,” Anya confessed.
“Yes, you do,” said Tanitha. She paused to sniff a clump of grass by the side of the path, squatted, and left her own remark for some later dog.
“I don’t think I do. I mean apart from finding Denholm.”
“That’s the first thing established,” said Tanitha. “Find the frog prince.”
“Right … ” confirmed Anya, her troubled brow relaxing a little. “One thing at a time. I have to find the frog prince and turn him back. Which could be difficult, since Morven won’t kiss him for sure, and I used up all the lip balm … ”
“One thing at a time. Always eat the food in front of you first, before looking for more. Ah, here comes Gripper with a hazel stick, and young Ardent with the hairbrush … and a sock.”
Fortunately, Anya did not have to resort to looking inside Denholm’s sock for a toenail clipping or scrap of skin, as there were several long golden hairs caught in the hairbrush. Denholm’s name was also engraved on the back of the brush, with his coat of arms, so it seemed definite that this time the hair would be his.
It took only a few minutes to repeat the spell and re-create the frog-dowsing rod. When Anya stopped sneezing, she raised it up, expecting it to point to the moat. But the rod shook and twisted in her hands and she had to spin about to follow it, until the hazel stick was pointing with great certitude down the valley towards the village.
“Oh no,” groaned Anya. “One of the villagers must have caught him to eat.”
“But he is not eaten yet,” said Tanitha. “Or so I presume. The dowsing rod would not point to a dead person?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Anya.
At that moment, both of them caught sight of a man emerging from the water meadow and stepping onto the road that wound down to the village. He was barefoot and dressed in the traditional bright-yellow-and-green-striped cassock of a frog gatherer. He bore a staff over his shoulder that supported a dozen small wicker cages. Each cage contained at least one freshly gathered frog.
“Hey!” shouted Anya, springing off into a run, the dowsing rod quivering in her hand. “Frog Gatherer! Stop!”
Tanitha added some helpful barking and trotted along more sedately behind the princess. Ardent tried to run past her, but a nip at his tail made him fall into line behind the dog matriarch, where he added a few loud barks of his own. But the frog gatherer was some distance away, and evidently hard of hearing, for he did not turn around or answer Anya’s shouts.
It took five minutes for the princess to catch up with him, and even when she called out right behind him, red-faced and puffing, he didn’t turn around. In fact he didn’t stop until Anya raced past him, turned on the spot, and held up one small commanding hand.
“Stop!”
The man jumped in the air, almost dropping his staff and all the frog baskets that hung from it.
“Princess Anya!” he bellowed. “What are you doing here?”
“Chasing a frog,” Anya replied. She recognized him as the younger of the two main frog gatherers, a villager called Rob the Frogger. He hadn’t been deaf when she’d spoken to him before.
“What?” roared Rob the Frogger.
“I’m chasing a frog!”
Rob frowned, carefully laid down his staff and the baskets on the road, and extracted two plugs of what looked like dried pondweed from his ears.
“Sorry, Your Princess-ship,” he said. “It’s the croaking, I can’t abide it. Gets me down, it does. Sometimes I think they’re complaining about how they’re going to be eaten. What was it you were wanting?”
“A frog,” said Anya.