The boy, the letter and the toad

Dwennon burst through the door to his chambers and slammed it behind him, waking the servant boy.

“Lock the door and fetch me an envelope.” he shouted, striding to his desk. He swept his robes behind him and sat down, snatching a sheet of paper from a cubby to his side. He flattened it on the desk and glared at it for a second, then inked a quill aggressively.

“Damn that man and his arrogance.” he muttered. The servant boy crept over and left an envelope on the corner of the desk. For a few minutes the only sound was the scratching of the quill. Dwennon finished the letter, signing it with a great flourish, then folded it and slipped it into the envelope. He melted a blob of wax on the fold and slammed his ring into it, sealing it closed and splattering the envelope with drops of purple wax.

Someone banged on the door. “Open the door, in the name of the king!” came a muffled shout.

Dwennon stood and paced, ignoring the banging, murmuring to himself “I fear we are treading a narrow path through disaster, and my letter may be the only thing that gets us safely through the next few hours – but who to trust? Who will see the danger and do the right thing, rather than turn events to their own advantage?” The banging on the door grew louder.

“Dwennon, open the door, I know you’re in there!”

“Shut up you dogs! I’m trying to think!” Dwennon pulled a great crystal orb from within his robes and gripped it with the tips of the fingers of his left hand. A bolt of energy flew out and hit the door handle which glowed white hot and drooped toward the floor, drops of metal hissing down the wood. Behind the door, someone screamed.

Dwennon sighed and scribbled a name on the envelope, then thrust it at the boy. “Go out the back way, take this to Pucklechurch at the palace. If the old bastard’s not there, then check the Horse and Hound. Do not tarry, the very fate of the kingdom lies in your hands!” He pulled a tapestry away from the wall to reveal a narrow passageway, barely wide enough for a man to enter sideways, and hurried the boy through, letting the tapestry fall back in place behind him. “Run, boy! If this letter doesn’t get to its destination, we are all dead!”

The banging on the door had been replaced by the rhythmic hammering of an axe. The frame splintered and the door toppled inwards. Three guards burst through followed by a short man with a heavy fur coat over one shoulder. He walked over to Dwennon’s desk, ran his eyes over the papers arrayed there, then swept his arm across the table, pushing books and papers and ink bottles all tumbling to the ground with a crash.

“Good morning, Dwennon.” he said, playing with a large emerald ring on his finger.

“Edgar. You contemptible whoreson. I see that you have chosen your side in all this.”

“My side? I am, as always, on the king’s side.” said Edgar, kicking over a potted plant to send a shower of dirt over the clean flagstones.

“Even when he has lost his mind?”

Edgar snorted. “Dangerous words, Dwennon.”

“You have seen how paranoid he has become, he’s not left his chambers for months. He talks only of the Karmeshi family and their new son. It is clear for all to see, you are just too cowardly to say anything!”

“You know Dwennon, I’ve been looking forward to this. I never liked you.” He yanked a wall hanging to the ground.

“That was a present, your bird strangler!” Dwennon moved so that he stood between Edgar and the tapestry that hid the secret passage. “Would you see our kingdom crumble for a grudge? Do you know what he intends to do?”

“That is not my concern–”

“He plans to murder that child, Edgar. A boy of four. The same age as your son. Can you not imagine what the Karmeshi will do? They have a valid claim to the throne, they will gain support from the other families, he is giving them the excuse they have always craved. It is madness, Edgar.”

Edgar’s smile wavered for a moment.

“We must warn the boy’s mother, Edgar. We can still stop this.” continued Dwennon.

Edgar stepped closer, lowering his voice so that nobody else could hear. “Warn her? And give their family an excuse to move against the king? Who do you think they would spare? Me? You? My wife? My child? You are so young, Dwennon. You may be smart, you may study until your eyes swim and your body aches, but you have no mind for politics.”

He stepped back. “Arrest the traitor,”  he said. The guards surrounded the wizard. Each reluctant to make the first move. Dwennon stepped back towards the corner, pulling the orb from his robes and placing it in the air in front of him. It hung there spinning, an angry red mist growing in its centre.

“You will do no such thing, unless you wish to die in screaming pain.”

Edgar hurried back into the corridor, “Arrest him, kill him, just don’t let him leave!”

The guards glanced at each other. One took a step closer, moving his hand to his sword. Dwennon flung out a hand and the man’s head softened, wobbled, then resolidified in the shape of a fish. The fish man fell to the ground wide eyed, gasping for air, clawing at his newly formed gills.

The other two guards pulled their swords free, terror clear on their faces. Dwennon screamed a curse and the orb flared black and spat crackling arcs of lightning at the nearest of the two who stiffened and fell to the ground. His chest began to spasm and writhe before bursting open, a swarm of earwigs erupting from his body. A smell of burning hair and ozone filled the room.

“Do you see?” screamed Dwennon at the remaining guard, “let me leave and I will–”

Before he could finish the guard rushed forward with a high-pitched scream, thrusting his sword into Dwennon’s belly. Dwennon gasped and clutched his side. The guard pulled the sword back and slashed at Dwennon’s throat. Blood fountained out of the wound and splattered on the ceiling. Dwennon collapsed, his dark blood mixing with the black ink on the floor. The orb fell to the ground, smashing on the stone floor next to the wizard’s lifeless body. The earwigs vanished.

The panting guard dropped into a guard stance, his sword ahead of him, facing the unmoving body. Minutes passed. Nothing happened. He slid closer and poked the body with the tip of his sword. The body did not move. “Oh…He’s dead.”

Putt ran down the passage. The tapestry fell back in place behind him, plunging the narrow way into darkness. His legs pumped invisibly beneath him, and for a second he questioned if he was moving forwards at all, or just floating in darkness. Vertigo gripped him and he quickly reached out with one hand to brush the wall as he ran. He knew every step of these passages. They spread out beneath the whole city, running from the docks in the West, beneath the university, then East beneath the market quarter, all the way into the palace.

After seventeen steps he swung right, taking a passage that dipped downward. Another forty-six steps, then it levelled out. Water dripped on him from the stone above. He was passing under the river. He heard footsteps coming and paused for a second to let another servant squeeze past him in the other direction, then he ran on, right, left, careful of the hole in the floor, then up until the passage widened and he could smell fresh air. Well, outdoor air. City air. Food, spices, shit, horses.

He emerged from the passage in the back room of a bookshop on the edge of the market quarter, brushed past the shop keeper without a word and out into the street, eyes watering in the light. The palace was only a few streets away, looming above the ramshackle market quarter, white and clean and shining – like a pearl dropped in a privy.

He stepped into a nearby alley. This delivery was probably not nearly so urgent as Dwennon had suggested. The man loved to be dramatic. He made out that he was an all-powerful wizard. A cunning puppeteer. The man controlling the kingdom behind the scenes. It didn’t fool Putt. Putt had cleaned Dwennon’s toilets. The wizards in the university barely did any magic at all, they just sat around poring over books or staring at orbs and scribbling notes. Once he had caught Dwennon watching a pebble in silence for twenty minutes.

He found a dry doorstep and sat down, pulled a knife from his pocket and slid it beneath the wax seal on the letter. He always read the letters if he could, just in case they contained information he could sell.

You need a sharp knife and a steady hand to avoid cracking a fresh wax seal, and Putt was concentrating so intently that he didn’t notice Bootle sidle up until he blocked the light.

“‘Ello Putt,” said the boy above him. He was taller than Putt and twice as wide.

“Oh shit,” said Putt.

Bootle smiled. “Not seen your face around here for a while, Putt. Almost like you been avoiding me. Me. Your oldest and goodest friend.”

“Look, Bootle. It’s not my fault. My mate sweared that rooster was a winner. How could I know it was ill and all?”

“It didn’t even finish the first fight, Putt. Just up ‘n keeled over. Like some bastard done fed an ill bird mustard ‘t perk it up for selling, ay Putt?”

“Wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, Bootle. I’m only the middle man. Wasn’t even my bird.”

“Not my problem, Putty, not my problem.”

“Well it sort of is,” said Putt slowly, “when you think about it.”

Bootle bent down, pressing his oily face closer to Putt’s. “Watch. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”

Putt took the opportunity and stood up very fast, aiming his forehead at Bootle’s already squashed nose, sending it flying back with a shower of blood. 

“‘Oo ‘ittle shit” screamed Bootle, and lashed out a foot, catching Putt just as he tried to slip past. Putt crashed to the ground and felt Bootle catch one of his legs. He kicked wildly, his boot connecting with something soft. Bootle screamed and Putt scrambled to his feet, pounding down the alley and towards the market proper, with its awnings, narrow streets and plentiful hiding places.

Bootle wheezed behind him, breathing through his mouth, spluttering through the blood that was running from his nose.

Their footsteps faded. The alleyway fell silent. The only signs of the struggle a trail of blood and a slightly crumpled letter, half ground into the mud.

Drent the mailman sighed contentedly as he played a stream of piss against the alley wall. He went on for a long time, a cloud of steam rising around him in the cool air. He’d been holding that one in all the way through town. It was the worst part of delivering packages in the city. In the villages you always had a quiet country road where you could let loose without needing to get down off the cart, but around here they’d chop your dangle off if they saw you doing that. Might piss on a noble by mistake and lose your head as well.

He was hiking up his pants when he spotted the flash of white in the mud at his feet. He bent down and pulled an envelope from the muck.

“Oh, my.” he sucked his teeth. It must’ve fallen from one of the mail bags when he stopped. He tried to wipe away some of the mud to see the address, but it only made things more smudged than before. He flipped it over and saw the seal in purple wax. Purple meant university.

“Oh my, oh my.” The wizards at the university wouldn’t just cut off your head, they’d turn your bowels inside out or change your head into a fish. Sure as horses the letter itself was trapped. He held it at arm’s length. He needed to handle this right careful. He pulled a bound sheaf of papers that was bound for the university for scribing and slipped the envelope between two sheets of parchment. There. Now it was somebody else’s problem.

Kansa the scribe dropped into her chair with a sigh. Life was so terribly, terribly difficult. If only she had been born plain or stupid. Such girls suffered less. Alas she had been cursed with a pretty face, a fine figure and a keen awareness of both. How she envied the empty-headed noble women who flitted around the palace like butterflies. How she longed to be a dour-faced washerwoman, unworried by the vagaries of love.

For Kansa was locked in a tragic, dramatic, romantic, allopelagic love. A love from which she would never escape. A love to set mountains a’trembling. A secret love, kisses stolen in the moonlight. Words that burned like fire, exchanged in dark corners. Sneaking through hidden passages early in the morning with rumpled clothes and tousled hair and a buzzing wonderful soreness in her body. A secret love, for she was but a beautiful young girl of common birth, and he was a powerful and misunderstood wizard with dark brooding eyes and muscular thighs. And yet, even a great love like theirs had been brought low by a silly little argument. A stupid, inconsequential lovers tiff.

She sighed again, leaning her head on a dictionary with her hair splayed out on the desk in what she was sure was a beautiful pose. If only they were not both so proud. He would never apologise, and nor would she. She had been terribly tempted, barely able to resist, but his rooms had been locked and she had failed to bump into him in the corridors however hard she tried, and his house in the city had been empty for the last few days, and he hadn’t been in the club where he usually spent the evening.

She tapped her pen on the head of the ugly toad statue on her desk. He had given it to her as a present the first time she had visited his chambers. She despised the thing. Its beady eyes seemed to follow her around the room.

Agnes walked in with a pile of papers under her arm. “Do you know what happened upstairs? There’s guards everywhere.” She dumped a third of the papers into an already over-full box on Kansa’s desk. “Oh Kansa, are you still moping about that silly wizard?” Agnes sat down heavily on the chair opposite Kansa and began sorting through the papers in her hand. “You deserve better, you know. You’re so pretty.”

“Yes, well. I love him, I can’t help it.” she said, and she turned the toad statue to face away from her.

“You should come out to the dance with us tonight, maybe you’ll meet someone to take your mind off him.”

“What, someone like your Bert?” Kansa shuddered. “No, nobody could possibly replace Dwenny, I am linked to him, inextricably interspersed.”

“Intertwined?”

“Yes, we are amalgamated.”

“Well. Perhaps some work will help,” said Agnes, and she pulled a paper from the top of the stack. Notes from a talk on a possible link between the common newt and the Draccus Urodela, written in the barely decipherable scrawl particular to wizards, professors and physikers. She took a fresh sheet of paper and began to transcribe the notes in her perfect block letter handwriting. “What do you have?” she asked Kansa, whose face was still laid down on the desk.

Kansa feebly pulled a paper from her inbox without raising her head. She sat up suddenly. It was an envelope. A muddy, crumpled letter. She picked it up between two fingers. It was slightly damp. “Ew. Who put this in my inbox?”

“A letter? That should have gone through the mail room.”

“I bet it’s Kitty playing a joke on us, she’s such a vindicable whore.” She flopped the letter towards the bin that sat between their desks. It fell short. Agnes picked it up with a sigh.

“It’s got a purple seal.”

At once, Kansa was on her feet, grabbing the envelope back and looking hungrily at the wax. “Oh Agnes, it’s Dwenny. It’s from him. Look, it’s his seal. He must have snuck it into my inbox so as to communicate with me secretly.”

“Then why is it all muddy?”

“Perhaps he was waiting outside my room last night in the rain, torn between his duty to the country and his deep love for me, burning with desire yet shackled by his genius and honour. He must have slipped and dropped it in the mud, and decided it was best not to give it to me in person, lest his passion overwhelm him.”

“Well if it were me, I’d have put it in a fresh envelope.”

Kansa ignored her and slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope, her face flush with excitement. She savoured the anticipation. The many possibilities promised by an unopened gift. What had he written?

The last time she had seen him, they had been walking through the university gardens. They hadn’t been holding hands lest someone see them, but with every step, her fingers would brush his. Dwennon had stopped and said without looking, “I don’t think we should meet like this, anymore,” or something silly like that.

And she had told him to stop being stupid, and had grabbed his hand. And he’d shaken her off and said various stupid things about responsibility and danger and blah. And then she had grabbed his ridiculous glass orb from his pocket and thrown it in the pond.

Maybe this letter was an apology he had been too embarrassed to give her in person. “I’m sorry, I love you, I was wrong,” it might say.

Or a poem. She was sure he could manage a good poem. He was quite smart in his own way. She felt the envelope. It wasn’t very thick. Maybe a short poem, about her beauty.

Or maybe he had written to ask her to run away. Yes! A daring plan. “Meet me at midnight, beneath the clock tower.” They would slip away in the darkness, ride through the night, move to an exotic city where she wouldn’t need to be a scribe anymore, live together in a cottage and have a puppy and children and pretend they were normal folk and grow turnips, but be happy regardless, because they would be together and that was all that mattered?

Or perhaps…she felt the flush from her face…perhaps it wasn’t that at all. Perhaps it was the opposite. The ugly idea crouched in her mind like that damn toad statue, impossible to ignore. She looked over at solid reliable Agnes who had almost finished copying her first page of the day. Agnes would say “most likely the letter says the same thing as he told you in the gardens–that you are ill-suited for each other, that you are too hot-headed and that he no longer wishes to see you. He sent you a letter because he is worried that you will make a scene and cause him bother. And it’s muddy because he dropped it in a puddle and didn’t care enough to go and get a new envelope.” Kansa felt tears gather in her eyes. There wasn’t a romantic bone in that girl’s body, that was her problem. The letter trembled in her hand.

“Are you alright?” asked Agnes.

Kansa nodded, pressing her eyes closed to hide her tears. She felt like her whole identity was unravelling before her. She would end up with a ’Bert’, and live in a tiny little room in the city, and work until her arms got all thick and muscular like old Mary in the next room.

One tear escaped and ran down her jaw to hang suspended from her chin. Damn it. She was crying again. She knew she cried too much. But it didn’t count if the tear didn’t fall, right? She wiped it away.

And as long as she didn’t open the letter, then nothing bad had happened, right? An unopened letter could be anything, it could be the poem, or the apology, or a proposal or an escape plan. In a way, it would remain all of those things at once.

And with a thin scream she leapt to her feet and rushed to the fireplace in the corner of the room, flinging the letter onto the coals. Kansa fled the room, furiously wiping her face, her hair streaming prettily behind her.

Agnes put down her quill with a sigh and stood up, brushing off her dress. “Oh Kansa…” and followed.

On the coals, steam rose from the damp envelope, and one corner began to curl and blacken…

Back on the desk in the empty scribing room, Wilburry Staghorn stopped pretending to be a toad statue and tried to wipe his nose, stretching his little hands as far as he could. He had been battling a tickle right at the tip for the last hour, and now that the girls were gone and he could finally move, his stupid toad legs were just too short to reach the tip.

Damn her, must she poke and prod me, so? he thought as he rubbed his face against her inkwell. It had been three weeks since Dwennon had caught him selling fake potions of vigour to the other apprentices and turned him into a stone toad in punishment. Three weeks that he had been crouching on this damn table all day. Nothing to do at night but read meeting minutes. He was 54 for god’s sake. It had been bad enough to be the only apprentice in the university who had to worry about shaving and gout, let alone pond-rot. Dwennon hadn’t even said when he would turn him back. He wriggled his fat little body on the table, letting the tension out of his muscles, then he hopped off the desk and waddled towards the fire.

Embarrassment on embarrassment he sends me to watch this idiotic little girl. She has to be his most insufferable mistress yet. What was he thinking sending a letter to her so publicly?

He reached the fireplace and flicked out his tongue, grabbing the envelope and pulling it out just as a flame appeared on one corner. He put out the flame with a webbed hand, tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter.

His wide mouth fell open in surprise. This was no love letter. He saw the political implications at once. If the king went ahead, it was sure to be war. The delicate balance of power that kept the university safe might be broken. The city itself was at risk. He narrowed his eyes.

Why did you send this here, Dwennon? To her? What am I missing? But it matters not. This is an opportunity. Who will benefit most from the information? The queen perhaps. She can move first, wrest power from her husband and squash any unrest before it has time to grow. And the queen need not know that Dwennon is the source of this information. She will be sure to reward the messenger. Riches, land, wives. Forget this apprenticeship, I can hire my own wizard.

His white marble belly quivered with excitement and he pushed the letter back into the coals, watching until it burst into flame. Out the window he could see the palace. Not far for a man, a great and arduous journey for a toad.

Two hours later, he was regretting ever having seen the letter. He was tired and angry and had almost been carried off by a heron. The palace was minutes away now, just on the other side of the market square. And yet, from where he sat crouched under a crate, it might as well be miles. Ahead of him lay a forest of legs (man, dog and horse), all swinging and stamping and kicking. Perhaps I should go around, he was thinking, when a pudgy hand closed around his body. He wriggled and flapped his legs as he was lifed from his hiding place to stare into the face of a child.

“Ooo look’ee Billy, I found a toad,” said the revolting little boy.

Another boy’s face appeared, leering down at him. “They’re good eating, toads.” said the one that must be Billy.

“Naw, not toads. Frogs you can eat, toads are poisonous.”

“Not if you boil ‘em.”

“Well my ma says that ‘ol king wassisname was killed by a witch and she used toad soup to do it and it killed ‘im right quick from bleeding from the eyes and his face even went all warty and yellow afore he died so there,” said the boy in one breath.

“You ma doesn’t know a thing about cooking, Todd. I’ve eaten her soup, that sure as near killed me.”

Todd pushed Billy in the chest. “Shut your face Billy, or–”

“Put me down at once!” shouted Staghorn as loud as he could.

Todd screamed and threw Staghorn away, sending him flying through the air into the middle of the market square. He landed on his back just as a foot began to descend on him. He wriggled madly out of the way and rolled onto his front. Another foot caught him and he flew back in the wrong direction, hitting an old man and rolling down his back. His head spun. A wooden potato cart rolled just past him and he leapt towards the running board, scrabbling up onto the muddy surface to cling there with all four limbs. At this point the horse pulling the cart turned and saw him. It was a nervous creature, raised on a farm and unused to such large crowds. Like most horses, it was suspicious of dogs, chicken, mice, birds, odd shaped logs, mud, leaves, children and running water–but especially of toads. The horse whinnied in horror then tried to run away.

The cart took off through the market, skittering along on one wheel, sending potatoes rolling across the street as it slid through a stall. There were screams as people tried to get out of the way. The driver heaved at the reins but the horse paid no heed, it rolled one mad eye at the toad that was somehow keeping up with it, then accelerated. An ox cart blocked the way and it turned into an alley, hooves skittering on the cobbled street. The cart crashed into one side of the alley and began bucking from wheel to wheel, throwing the driver off. They burst out the other side to find themselves heading straight for the thick brown water of the palace moat, (which also served as the palace sewers and rubbish disposal system). The horse tried to stop, but the cart carried on, pushing horse, toad and potatoes into the water.

A few hours later, once the horse had been rescued and the crowds laughing onlookers had dispersed, Staghorn dragged himself up the bank. He was cold and tired and wet and covered with stinking brown mud.

Curse all men, all women, all horses and especially all children, thought Staghorn. The palace rose above him, sheer walls of white stone, cut so perfectly that there was no visible mortar joint between each block. The drawbridge would be raised for the night by now, all the doors closed and bolted. He couldn’t afford to wait until the morning, it would be too late by then. Unfortunately he had a good idea of how he could get inside in time.

The waste shaft was long, foul and slick. By the time he reached the queen’s personal privy it was night time. He emerged, his heart hammering in his chest, panting and light headed. He let himself fall to the floor with a splat, then began crawling the final few feet to the bed, leaving a trail of black muck behind him. It would all be worth it. To be back in his body, and rich! No, a new body, a younger one. Maybe a female one this time. He’d always wanted to be blonde. What should his feet look like? They would be covered with gold rings, certainly.

The queen lay in her bed, asleep. He clambered up the duvet, and mounted the queen’s pillow. He paused a moment to let his breathing calm. He didn’t want to frighten her, he needed to be articulate and clear. He must make her understand his meaning at once, before she had time to be frightened by the shit covered toad on her pillow. The information he carried felt heavy in his head. Thousands of lives hung on this moment. The whole kingdom rested on his warty shoulders.

He arranged the sentence in his mind, took a deep breath, and said