Chapter 1
The Golden Frog
Pushing ahead with a forearm over his face, through a thick mass of tangled shrubs and ivy, between leaning trunks of darkwood trees, crawling under a fallen bough dense with moss and hanging vines, Zeke looked up and found himself unexpectedly emerging into a small clearing in the old growth forest. As he rose, just inside, wiping the dirt and dried leaves from his gray shirt, his eyes locked on a massive twisting tree stump that loomed menacingly high on the far side, commanding the space with a sinister presence. The air seemed suddenly cool, and Zeke realized he could hear himself breathing in the eerie stillness.
“Whoa, that doesn’t look right,” he whispered.
Wandering alone in the woods was not ordinarily his kind of thing. In normal times, for any kind of outing, it would be Squeegie at least, his bestest since 4th grade, and probably Frank and Arturo, maybe Marcus and his little brother Ernie. They’d be cracking jokes, outdoing each other with extreme opinions on TV shows and comic book characters, wondering how things might be different when they got to high school. But Squeegie and the rest were 150 miles away, and Mom and Dad were on the other side of the world, doing relief work in Nigeria, which they decided was not for a kid like him. So here he was for the summer, at Aunt Meg and Uncle Noah’s place in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the Hoosier National Forest. The only person he knew there who wasn’t a complete adult was his cousin Alina, who at 14 was already a high schooler and hence in a distinct realm of existence. She was nice enough, a bit weird, but not someone you’d expect to go off exploring with you in the local wilderness.
So here he was, all by himself, facing the creepy tree remnant and trying to decide if it was juvenile to feel scared. Yes, definitely creepy, something unnatural about it. It towered above him, the bottom eight feet of an ancient tree trunk, but there was no log or fallen debris, no path of destruction out from the base, as if the rest of the tree had been wrenched off and tossed far away by a tornado or storm giant. It lurched to one side from the ground, then leaned back and bent achingly around, rising to a crown of four wooden spikes that pointed like barren claws to the sky. The wood, almost black, was pitted and roughly angled, hard and unforgiving, with pockets of musty pulp, dank and clammy, despite the dry weather.
If any creature lives in there, thought Zeke, I bet it’s something nasty. He took a cautious step forward.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, and his head snapped around. Nothing. Just a sense in the air that something had zipped by. Must be a bird, or a squirrel. He searched the space with his eyes, scanning the undergrowth and hanging branches. Whatever it was, it’s gone now, or invisible.
Turning back to the lurching stump, he took a breath to steady himself, determined to take a closer look, and moved ahead another step. Then three things happened at once. From some hidden chamber in the misshapen trunk, a spray of pale moths gushed up and fluttered out of sight, like a coughing plume of dusky smoke. Zeke ducked, startled, ready to run, but kept his nerve enough not to scream. At the same time, there was another flash of movement at the edge of the clearing, and something that was not a bird or a squirrel let out an audible gasp.
Zeke’s eyes darted that direction, up, down, side to side, scouring the trees, brush, ground cover, suddenly conscious he was not alone. Nothing, again. But wait. There, past the fallen bough he’d crawled under, down low beside a thorn bush, concealed by a splash of ferns, he spotted a pair of eyes, a face, someone staring back unblinking. Zeke flushed with surprise, but it looked like a little kid, not a threat. Leaning down and edging slowly nearer, he fixed his eyes on the face, expecting it to disappear if he looked away for even an instant. The amber eyes stared back, frozen, but sinking deeper into an expression of desperation as he approached. At three paces away, hands on knees, Zeke bent lower, and they stared silently at each other, face to face. Finally, the face quivered and the amber eyes flashed left and right, as if hoping to spy something else the boy might be looking at. Then the face blinked with a nervous smile.
“You see me, don’t you?”
It was a bare whisper, not a voice.
“If you’re trying to hide,” Zeke responded, “you’re not doing a very good job.”
“You’re not supposed to see me.”
“Are you lost?” Zeke started forward, but the kid hissed with alarm, so he stopped.
“Stay back! I’ll not be grabbed!”
Still a whisper, but urgent. Zeke held up his hands, reassuring with steady eyes. “No one’s gonna get grabbed, I won’t hurt you, promise.”
Able to see it better, the face appeared more unusual. Childlike, frail, a scrawny kindergartener, but the skin seemed tough, weathered, and the eyes though bright and alert looked older. The hair was wild and thick, and the eyebrows arched up to points. The quick eyes examined him, too, pausing at the dark mole on Zeke’s left temple.
“You bear the mark of Good Sir Kiel,” still whispering, “and yes, you’ve got Sir Kiel’s clever dark eyes as well. Do you understand my meaning?”
Zeke shook his head, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know, of course you don’t, look at you.” The face twitched, thinking. “What do they call you here, what name?”
Zeke frowned. “We’ll introduce ourselves, all right?” The nervous face shrugged, okay. “I’m Zeke. Actually, Ezekiel, but no one calls me that.”
There was a snorting half-chuckle, then the words came out in a jittery chatter, eyes wide and expressive, telling secrets.
“You can call me Flit, that’s what I do, flit from place to place. I’m different from you, you don’t flit, but you’re different, too. You’re in many places, but all at once, do you see? No, you don’t see, but you almost do, you’ve got clever eyes, or you wouldn’t see me. You can see very well, but that’s not always good, no, it can be very bad. Tell me, Ekeziel, you were bravely approaching that yonder,” a chin up and glance left towards the bleak tree trunk, “what caught your eye there? Tell me, what do you see?”
Zeke tried to follow along, but this was getting weird. Flit, the kid’s name was Flit. Going on and on about seeing, what did he see, what particularly did he see in the huge stump on the other side of the clearing. Is there something there, after all? He looked sideways at the odd child, reluctant to break eye contact, but the kid nodded with an encouraging smile, glanced over at the tree and back again. Zeke blinked, thoughtfully, and turned his head.
The twisted mass of dark wood commanded his attention once again, a brooding presence that seemed to hum with shadows. Zeke followed the lines and turns from bottom to top, a solid base of hard strength, a dissonant jumble of pitted slabs and sharp edges pulling up, stretching into dismal spires that appeared to clutch in rage at the sky. Peering closer, he got the sense that the air of menace rose not from the structure itself, but from some energy radiating up from it, or pulsing around it, the tree itself was a vessel for another. Yes, the turmoil of shapes, without moving, started to take form in his mind, still bent and discordant, but resolving into a configuration, a receptacle for an unseen figure of power. That’s it.
“It’s a throne,” he said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
He turned back to Flit, but his companion had disappeared. Shouldn’t be surprised, that’s what he expected, but still a disappointment. Zeke searched about, sighing, then jumped when the raspy voice whispered down from above.
“Aye, you can see. The Dark King’s throne. He’s not here now, not yet, hopefully never will be. But best to stay away from it.”
Even with the direction of the voice to place the location, it was hard to see Flit up above, lounging on a bough at the near end of the clearing. With tan skin, brown hair and drab greenish clothes, only the sparkling eyes kept the figure from blending into the foliage. The fidgety face was still now, reflective.
“Who’s the Dark King?” Zeke asked.
“That’s really not for me to tell, and maybe not for you to know. But here we are, and your eyes are already looking deep, maybe you were supposed to see me, perhaps I’m supposed to help you understand.”
“Understand what? You’re talking in circles.”
“Talking, yes, I do a lot of that, but I’m not very good at it.” Flit frowned down at him, making a decision.
“Talking won’t help, you’re a seer, you need to see. Maybe it’s time for you to see better, maybe not, but we can find out, yes, I have an idea.”
“Flit, you’re still not making any sense.”
“Ezekiel, tell me, is there a marsh nearby, in the direction of the sunset, perhaps?”
To the west, towards Meg and Noah’s place, the wetlands. According to Aunt Meg, it was why the twelve acres of forest still stood there on private land, between their comfortable stone house at the end of a cul-de-sac and the farmland to the east. The wetlands were a protected habitat that prevented development, stopped anyone from bulldozing the trees to put in a subdivision or a supermarket. Zeke had picked his way with care through the squishy ground on his way into the woods.
“Yes, I guess you’d call it a marsh.”
“Ah, then maybe so.” Flit dipped lower, speaking even softer. “If you want to know more, go to this marsh at sunset, and search for a golden frog. It will be on a large rock, by itself, next to the water, soaking in the last rays of the sun, fat and gold. With your clever eyes, I think you can find it.”
“A golden frog? Really?”
“Yes, you’ll see. Slip up to it, quiet and quick, and grab it with both hands. No matter what you see, don’t let it go, it will try to make you drop it, but hang on tight with both hands, no matter what. Hang on until it gives you its gift.”
“You’re saying the frog will give me a gift?”
“I’ve probably said too much. Time to flit away. But stay away from the Dark King’s throne. And don’t let go of the frog.”
Zeke blinked, confused, and in an instant Flit was gone. This time for good, he sensed. He looked back at the tree stump, which still looked strange, but no longer resembled a throne at all. What on earth made him think it looked like a throne?
. . .
He wanted to tell someone what he’d seen, the crazy looking tree fragment and the stranger looking child, but something made him feel cautious, unsure of himself. It seemed pretty weird to describe to Aunt Meg or Uncle Noah, they might wonder if he was the kind of boy who imagined things, and Alina was maybe a sympathetic ear, but he didn’t want her to think he was an oddball, either. He could confide in Mom or Dad, if they were close, but it wasn’t a major enough event for a special phone call to central Africa. Maybe next time they talked, in a few days. Squeegie was the guy he really wanted to talk to, the one who’d just absorb it as solid fact and immediately start trying out theories about what was going on. But Squeegie didn’t have a cell yet, and Zeke hesitated calling the home phone. Maybe later, before bed. Maybe then he’d have a better feel for how to tell the story.
It was easy enough to minimize the interactions in the house and get through supper with short answers to the polite questions, the woods were neat, he looked forward to exploring some more. When he offered to help load the dishwasher, and Noah said he could take a turn tomorrow instead, Zeke found himself saying thanks, might be nice to take a little walk before dark. Alina even said, without any prompting, that if you go anywhere near the wetlands you better douse yourself with bug spray, this time of year. So there it was, a chance to check out the marsh, an hour or so before sunset.
It was past a grove of trees behind the house, down a tumbling slope, out of sight from civilization. The woods thinned out and collapsed into shrubs, which became sparse in a flat expanse of tall swaying grasses, yellow and green, lush and misty. There was an oblong pond of still water, brown and opaque, dense with lily pads and reeds, and a hundred rivulets and tributaries feeding it, some with a gurgling flow, too small and slow to call a brook, most just standing puddles, groundwater in equilibrium with the surface. You could work around the wetness carefully, watching your step, through the rushes all the way to the edges of the pond, but the ground was spongy and slick with mud. It seemed like it would be full of wildlife, and Zeke heard a variety of birds that he couldn’t spot, but besides an abundance of mosquitoes, mayflies and the occasional dragonfly, he couldn’t find anything bigger, no snakes, turtles or fish. And not a single frog.
What did he expect? A magic gift-giving amphibian? Flit was just a nutty kid, making jokes or talking nonsense. But still, Zeke scanned the perimeter around the pond, looking for rocks catching the rays of the setting sun, with anything remotely resembling a yellow toad perched on top. He couldn’t stop himself from expecting something. After an hour of searching, though, it was growing darker, time to head back, before Meg and Noah came looking for him. He hated to give up, but the sun was sinking fast, just a sliver on the horizon. Then he saw it.
There, as he scanned the shoreline one last time, a glint of light like a piece of glass catching a ray of sunlight. Focusing in, seemed like nothing, a dingy slab of stone like many others, a bit muddy perhaps.
But it seemed to be dimly glittering. Then he really saw it. A flat rock, yes, but not muddy, something covering the top, yellowish, fat, reclining like a worn sequined cushion, glistening. A golden frog.