Lemon paddled for her life, images of slimy and scaly reptiles with long, sharp teeth dancing through her thoughts. Whatever it was that had touched her leg was still there; she could feel it tugging on her fur! Thankfully, the river wasn’t that wide, or that deep, or even that fast. Even calling it a river was probably an exaggeration. It was more like a channel that cut through the mud.
She crawled out of the water and gave herself a vigorous shake, flinging droplets of muddy brown water everywhere, and also sending something small and round flying off to plop in the mud. Lemon spun in a circle several times to get a look at herself, first in one direction, then reversing to see the other side. As far as she could tell, there was nothing stuck to her anymore.
Secure in the knowledge that she’d escaped whatever grisly fate that muddy sludge of a river had in store for her, she padded over to investigate the thing that had hitched a ride on her fur. It looked like a little round ball of mud, and smelled like one too. But it wobbled, and as far as she knew, mud didn’t do that. So that meant something had to be inside the little mud ball.
Lemon scooped it up with Wizard’s Hand and dunked it in the muddy water a few times, then gave it a shake to fling the last glops of mud away. Now intensely curious and trying to figure out just what it was she was looking at, she brought it closer to her nose. It still smelled like mud, but it had legs, and bumpy brown skin, and two black eyes that peered back at her. And…
“A frog? Or… maybe a toad. What’s the difference again?”
She felt kind of silly now. Of course there would be frogs (or toads?) next to a stream, half-buried in the mud, or swimming in the water. Now that she knew to look for them, she could see three more just near her, sitting there, waiting for a fly or a mosquito to buzz by. And there were plenty of those, which probably explained why the frogs/toads were so fat and squishy.
Lemon released her captive toad (she decided they were toads based on how brown and bumpy they were) back to the water’s edge, gave herself another good shake, and trotted away from the sludge river. Hopefully she wouldn’t be taking any more swims like that. Next time there might be something much worse hidden in the muddy water.
The longer she walked, the more frustrated she became. The entire area was like a maze, except maybe it was a maze that didn’t have an exit. Time and time again, she found herself cut off by more water. Sometimes it was a small lake or pond, other times it was another stream. The whole region was flooded, and it was making it hard for her to get out of there.
As the sun rose higher into the sky, she started to get annoyed. Lemon knew she was lost, had known as soon as she’d woken up and seen where she was. That was fine though. She’d gotten lost before, and she always found her way home eventually. No, what was frustrating was that she knew she only had so many days to make it to the conference, and that if she kept going in circles in the tiny gray smear on the map, she was never going to get there in time.
She wished she could see farther, like humans did. Midnight claimed that humans could spot things four or five times farther away than Lemon could, which would be very useful right now. Unfortunately, her spectacles only let her see human colors, not human distances. What she really needed was a tour guide, someone to point her in the right direction.
Lemon laid down in the mud, which was at least nice and cool, even if Hogarth would insist that she needed a bath afterwards, and idly chewed on a sausage. It looked like the only way she was going to get out was to just go in a straight line, swim where she had to, and hope for the best. Once she was out of the gray spot on the map, she would run extra hard to make up for all the time she lost swimming.
That was the plan, until something thunked down on her head. Lemon let out a yelp of surprise and scrambled to her paws. Whatever had landed on her went flying away to splash into the mud, where it righted itself and turned to face her.
It was the biggest toad she’d ever seen, almost as big as she was. It had mottled gray, brown, and green skin, a wide mouth, and two narrowed eyes that glared at her from under thick, heavy, downward slanted ridges. The toad regarded her steadily, then, when she didn’t make a move, it hopped forward. Its throat bulged once, and its tongue whipped out to slash at her.
Lemon let out a yip of surprise and backpedaled out of range, but the toad simply chased after her and tried to smack its tongue into her again. This time, her yip was more pain than surprise. That tongue hurt! Lemon stopped backing away and let out a growl.
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“You’d better back off, toad!”
To her surprise, the toad did stop. It stared at her, unblinking, with those black orbs it had for eyes. Then its throat started bulging and contracting rapidly, and to her great surprise, a moment later, a rough, coarse voice croaked out, “This is my territory. Leave if you don’t want me to take you out.”
“I would if I could. I’m, ah, well, I’m a little bit lost, you see. If you could just point me in the right direction?”
The toad barked out a laugh. “Why would I do that? First you come barging in, throwing my minions around, being rude, making a general pest of yourself, and now you have the gall to ask me for a favor?”
“I didn’t know they were your… uh, minions. I’m really just trying to get out of here, I swear.”
Lemon wasn’t sure if the fact that the toad was intelligent was a good thing or not. On the one paw, maybe she could reach some sort of an agreement that would get her out of here. On the other, if the toad attacked her again, it would be much, much more dangerous than a regular old dumb animal was. It could clearly use some magic, and now that she thought about it, there was no way it was storing a tongue that long inside its mouth.
The toad regarded her in motionless silence, just staring at her. Finally, it said, “You can leave. Go back the way you came.”
“But I can’t!” Lemon protested. “The bird-ladies in the Harp E Woods chased me this way. If I go back, they’ll attack me. And besides, I need to go that way anyway.”
Lemon pointed her snout towards her shadow, not that the toad seemed to care. “Not my problem,” it said with an evil laugh. “Go back, or fight me.”
“But the bird-ladies will attack me. They’re mad at me for ruining their Bad Magic.”
Somehow, the toad gave the impression of freezing, despite the fact that it hadn’t been moving to begin with. “You’re the reason the harpies are all riled up?”
Suddenly, Lemon felt like she’d admitted something she should have kept secret, like that time Midnight had asked her if she’d slept in Hogarth’s bed when they had gone on an overnight trip and Lemon had foolishly told her that she had. The blankets smelled like Hogarth, and she missed him, and besides, she was barely a puppy then. It wasn’t like she’d taken up a lot of room.
That didn’t stop Hogarth from locking his bedroom door for the next four years. It was only when Lemon had started cleaning up the tower that he’d left the door unlocked so she could clean in there too. All because Midnight couldn’t keep her stupid nose out of stuff that didn’t concern her.
“Noooooo?”
“You just said you were.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
Lemon’s tail drooped. “I was wrong.”
“You want to go that way?” the toad asked, pointing over its shoulder with its tongue.
“Yes?”
She was confused now. The toad was obviously scheming something, but sniffing out schemes was not one of Lemon’s strong points. In her experience, being straightforward about something was the best way to make sure everyone got what they wanted. Whenever someone was trying to be sneaky, it was because they wanted something and they didn’t want the other person to have something.
“Okay. Come on, let’s go.” The toad turned itself in a slow circle and started hopping away. When Lemon didn’t move, it looked back and added, “Come on. I thought you wanted out of here.”
“Why did you change your mind?” Lemon asked.
“Oh, that’s easy. Because the swamp hag lives in that direction, and if you want to go that direction, you’re going to have to go through her. So either you beat her, which is great for me, or she beats you, and that’s problem solved too.”
“What’s a swamp hag?”
“Looks kind of like a harpy, but without the wings or feathers. Green skin, crooked teeth. She likes to capture toads to use in her potions. I heard her once say that ‘eye of newt was just a guideline’ to one of the harpies. She was popping out one of my minion’s eyes at the time.”
Harpy? Was the toad talking about the bird-ladies. Wait, was that what the map meant? It made sense, looking back on it. She’d gone through the Harpy Woods. No wonder there hadn’t been any music! And now she was near a swamp hag, which meant that she was in a swamp.
“So you want me to get rid of the… the swamp hag for you,” Lemon said. “And in return you’ll show me how to get out of here?”
“Sure, if you want.”
“Why can’t we just go around the swamp hag?”
The toad let out a gurgling croak and said, “Because then there’d be nothing in it for me. If you don’t want to do it, turn around and go back to the harpies.”
Lemon shuddered and shook her head. She padded after the toad and it started taking great, bounding leaps away. Each one was big enough that it could have jumped completely over her from snout to the tip of her tail, and it ended with a great loud smack as it hit the mud belly first.
“My name’s Lemon. What’s yours?”
The toad didn’t turn around to look back at her. “Gargly. I’m the toad boss around here. Now come on, let’s go. I can’t wait to watch the hag do some magic on you.”
Lemon let out a low whine, but she followed the giant toad. It was that or try to find her own way out, and she’d already gotten herself thoroughly lost. “Tell me more about the hag, please. What kind of magic does she do?”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. How tough could a swamp hag be if all she did was sit around bullying toads?