Frog Island

A Story by ZackOfBridge

Kind of a kid's story, but don't let your children read it

Between the trees, and just beyond the marshes, the boys ran with damp, blistered feet. Long stretches of their day had passed in the chasing of bullfrogs and tattering of their clothes. One of the boys, Richie created a dagger from chipped stone and thick sticks. The rest of their day and into the night now became devoted to hunting beasts in the forest. None of the three boys possessed any knowledge of hunting but each could repress their compassion enough to find and kill any creature they happened upon.

Pull back from beyond the marshes and come to the shore of a small snow-melt lake kept full by a small concrete dam. On the shore young red-haired girl stood in a yellow sunflower spotted dress. She walked towards the water, the damp sand filled the spaces of her toes. The drowsing sun lowered under the trees and aided the strawberry flowering of her hair. A light, lively atmosphere of gnats hung over the surface of the lake. Her feet dipped into the first of the water, cold, and the bullfrogs, anxious of her arrival, dived away. Tadpoles, some with the first sprouts of legs escaped under her steps.

Across from her a dwarf island of grass and a single tree at the tip of a grade sat in the water. The boys, like conquistadors with missing teeth and grimy cheeks, claimed it at dawn. Frog Island they called the little island. They named it after the previous inhabitants who were captured, killed or made amphibious refuges after the invasion. The boys, as masters of the island were also lawmakers with a specific, intolerant ideology. Girls were not to set foot onto the Island. Any female trespassers would be condemned to frogs and tadpoles, even a snake if they could get a hold of one, in the underpants.

The girl in the yellow dress moved fast through the water but quiet. Her yellow dress hadn’t even taken to sinking, but followed in her wake on the surface. No shouts were announced at her back. The boys had certainly gone farther from the marshes where the animals were comfortable. Water touched her knees now and still her yellow dress did not sink but floated full circle around her like egg yolk. She smiled and wondered whether the boys would still want Frog Island after a female coup. She saw rocks on the shore of Frog Island. Excellent rocks to skip on the water and even better for protection. She moved on the tips of her toes, no longer stepping but doing small mud-ballet hops. Her dress sank and then she stood on Frog Island, unimpressed and defiant.

She mortared rocks into the water from her place in the grass. The sun drifted an invitation to the moon and the sky waited in that half state of day and night where the clouds of salmon pink stretch. Crickets strummed and the flow of water sounded like secrets the mountains tell one another. It was peaceful. It was damn boring. The girl, her dress still damp, collected a handful of pebble rock, stood to her feet and underhanded them into the water as a ‘so long Frog Island.’

Behind her the water stirred much louder than the splash of pebble rock.

A quick girl, “Leave me ‘lone! I’v’gt evry right to’be on’da Island,” She held a stick in one hand and a stone in the other. She’d heard that these instruments were fine tools for breaking bones. “Just cause, I’ma girl don’t mean I can’t throw, ‘r swat at’cha.”

“Could not doubt, little yellow girl,” said a voice, guttural and without a body to match it. The girl in the yellow dress was not one to cower, even when daylight cowered to the moonlight, so she ran to the island’s edge. Two rounded eyes like swamp bubbles peeped over the water. The eyes blinked separately. Knowing not what to do, but not wanting to stare at the water much longer, she casted the stick towards the wading eyes. After a reasonable splash the water settled and the eyes were gone, had receded. Still, she held the stone level with her head.

Quiet, even the bullfrogs as far as the marshes took silence in their throats.

And from the water a great lash speared towards her; it tugged the stone from her hand. Now the water moved again, around a figure that rose from the shore. The moonlight touched the skin of the figure different than it would one of the boys. The skin of this figure had sheen. Also, it was green. Paralysis kept the girl in place even as the figure, apparently a large frog who walked on two legs, advanced onto the shore of the island. Each of the frogman’s steps on land seemed a conscious effort not to hop. He walked with pace, and his legs dipped low with each new step. His arms folded over a protruding stomach for what looked like convenience. His back was to the girl and his head turned upward to the moon, though he did not show any signs of having a neck. His eyes, those swamp bubbles captured the light of the moon and held it like gems hold the greed of men in their beauty. As an afterthought, he spit the girl’s stone to the ground. “Girl, with me, sit?” His language had come far from those poor creatures the boys chase around each morning, but still the frog, no matter how anthropomorphic, could not escape the croak.

“Okay,” She said. His invitation to sit freed her legs to move and she did towards the grassy center. She sat and speculated.

“Always questions are necessary.” He turned with a pivot of his spine and sat next to her. Sitting was awkward for him. He hunched forward and held his shins in his hands.

“You’re a frog--so why’re you so big?”

“Of many years, and of many songs, every night to moon of sky and water.”

“Moon uh’water? There’s no moon uh’water,” the girl said. She looked at her amphibious companion. When he breathed his throat filled up, but besides his respiration he kept still as though to imitate the moon. In her life she knew only one moon, and no one taught her differently. She looked at the great white plate set upon the blackness of the night. she’d sure know if there were two of them.

“No?” The frogman pointed to the water, it was dark as the sky, but shone a crisp reflection of the moon.

“That ain’t real’ah’moon.” The girl laughed, and arced a stone at the still moon of the water. It became ripple rings.

“Moon is real to fish, frog, and pollywog when we look up from lake bottom.” Frogman said passively and waited for the ripples to spread far and for the moon to return to the surface.

“But, ye’ can’t real’ah touch eet or nothin’” The yellow dressed girl held to her defiance judging that an old frog must be a patient frog.

“You, yellow girl, have touched the sky moon?” He looked at her, the light of the two moons gleamed from his glossy eyes. There may have even been the slightest twitch of an ironic smile. “Honor both moons I with song, and honor me life and strength for in water and on land.”

He stood, and she stayed to the ground. All quieted. The chirp of crickets subsided and the croaking of bullfrogs hushed. The frogman steadied one palm upon his stomach and placed an open hand to his mouth. He took a breath that enlarged the entirety of his torso, his shadow grew twice in size. And the frogman began his hum. It resonated as though from the lungs of the Earth. The girl’s teeth chattered with the vibration. Rhythmically he pressed his stomach and a new bass atone pitched out between the two moons. The creatures of the pond joined. Those unable to sing, the fish and the insects, complimented the orchestration of frogs and trebling crickets with enthusiastic dance.

The girl watched on as fireflies from no place but the stars themselves whisked through the night-dark like luminescent conductor's batons. The fish, with moonlight skipping from their scales hopped from the water. The eccentric fish whom migrated from the west did these great dives and flips and others just came up for the fresh air and good tunes. The frogman signaled the girl to raise from the ground and pitch her voice to the vastness of the forest as she had done with the stick to his eyeballs. She imitated the frogman, pressed her hand to her abdomen and forced the voice of her soul to rise to the moon of the sky and glide lithely over the moon of the water.

Then it all fell, the crickets, the roar of the bullfrogs, the fireflies burned out, and the fish drowned. The conductor, and the composer, the frogman gasped and the moon fell from the sky and before all was dark the girl saw a dagger pressed into his back. A boy churned it deeper. The frogman croaked as the last of the light from the sky and the water drained.

“I killed it!” Richie cried out in the blackness.

“The hell was it?”

“Was a monster, dintcha hear it howlin’” Laughed one of the boys, the spit of success sputtered from his mouth.

The girl in the dress without color hid in the darkness, not wanting frogs and pollywogs stuffed into her underpants.

The End.

© 2015 ZackOfBridge

Author's Note

Based on a true story from my fiction notebook

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Reviews

Chadvonswan

I would've really enjoyed a conversation with Frogman. This story was like To Kill a MockingFrog, but with more of a sexist thing going on. This is weird, when I was a kid I wrote a story called Frogstone Island but it was about pirates who went to an island full of frogs and treasure. This was good, pulled right out of your hat of ideas, all golden. F**k Richie as well.