Fair Peril (6 page)

Sob? She must have been dozing, dreaming.

It was 2:37
A.M.
by the curtly precise readout of the digital clock on her nightstand. Buffy sighed. As she turned over, Adamus let out a lamentation so intense that it shook the cobwebs loose from her ceiling and showered them down upon her. She thumped out of bed and padded forth to remonstrate with him.

“Dammit, Adamus.” She clicked on his Gro-Lite to see if he had thrown himself upon a sword or something. No such luck. He sat in the shallows staring back at her with eyes like golden amulets, mystery symbols, pagan rings.

Sleep deprivation and the deep of night do strange things to a storyteller. Buffy found that she was no longer angry at all. Rather, gazing fascinated into those black-and-golden orbs, she felt a sense of great echoing distance, then a rush of sudden insight, almost a vision—of a time when the nights were bottomless shadows lit only by fire, a time of tiny villages isolated amid leagues and leagues of primordial forest, a time when children who wandered off were never seen again, a time when a traveler rode out of the woods maybe once a year to tell new stories to help the old ones hold the world at bay—the time a little boy, Prince Adamus, was born into.

Awed, she whispered, “Addie. Tell me your story.”

He stared back at her.

“I mean it. What is your story? Tell me all about it.”

He did not speak, but in his silence and the night, she knew well enough: in order to deserve his story, she had to give him one.

She stood barefoot in her dirty kitchen, facing him, yet she knew herself to be the minstrel visiting his palace. His regal gaze upon her was the same color as the torchlight; she felt her own shabbiness, her clothes worn from years of travel, her thoughts worn and shabby, so that nothing in her repertoire of stories—shaggy-dog stories, folk tales, ghost stories for children's parties—nothing in her shopworn supply was good enough to offer him. She knew she had to offer him something deeply true. In order to deserve his story, she had to give him her own.

“Once upon a time,” she told him softly, “there was a little girl named Maddie.”

His pale throat throbbed like a white heart. His golden eyes watched her.

“And Maddie looked like most little girls, round pink cheeks and wise eyes, but there was something odd about her. Maddie looked at the sky and saw stories about wind angels. She looked at the sea and saw stories about wild horses in the waves. She looked at the hills and saw stories about stone giants. She thought in stories. The world was made of stories to her. Some of the stories came to her easily like sunshine and some were dark and difficult like stormy nights. But any kind of story, all of them, she gathered like bright chewing-gum wrappers and ladybugs and dandelions to carry in her pockets and keep in her room and heap in her bed at night when she slept.”

Buffy paused, collecting the pieces, because this was one of those difficult-in-the-night stories. She was coming to the hard part, when one day, she couldn't say exactly which day, some wind shaped like her mother had blown into her room and said, “What is all this mess?” and swept all the stories away.

It hadn't happened exactly like that, of course. She wasn't going to be able to tell it exactly the way it had happened. But that didn't matter. Her story would not be accurate, but it would be true.

“Each day Maddie would offer a bouquet of stories to her mother,” Buffy said, “and her mother would say, ‘That's nice, dear,' and drop it in the trash can. So she carried a story in her cupped hands to her father. But he said, ‘Go do the dishes.' So she brought stories to the other children. But they said, ‘Let's play something else.' In school she was always watching for stories, for truth, not for facts, so the teachers thought she was stupid. When she grew to be a big girl, not a little girl any longer, the boys she dated wanted her to give them access to her anatomy, not stories. When she grew to be a very big girl and got married to a man who said he would take care of her, he did not want her stories, either. He did not like them cluttering up the bed. So Maddie gave up gathering stories anymore.”

Buffy hesitated again, because she did not yet know how the story ended. Though she did know—she had given up her stories, but they had not given up on her.

“But the stories would not let her alone. The wind angels whispered in her ears. In her dreams the wild horses ran out of the waves and up the beaches and carried her away. The hills called to her, the stone giants told her stories that rang like stone hammers in her mind, dark and difficult. Once upon a time there was a girl named Maddie, the stone giants said. Maddie was a storyteller. Now Maddie was dead. She threw away the bright chewing-gum wrappers and the ladybugs and the dandelions and she grew up into a fat, boring person named Buffy. Maddie the storyteller was no more.”

The frog gave a sudden leap to sit at the apex of his brick-and-rotten-board throne, staring at her.

“So she …” Buffy's voice began to misbehave, and she found that she could no longer maintain the storyteller's distance and tone. She was losing it, damn it. “So I'm trying very hard to bring her back to life, you see.” In a pathetic whisper, not at all like a professional minstrel, she said, “I'm trying.” Damn it, she was screwing up. What was going on?

“Addie,” she appealed.

His throat swelled like white bubble gum. He resonated with a tremendous froggy burp. The glass of the aquarium rattled.

“Oh, for God's sake.” Shaken loose from her—reverie, whatever it was—Buffy could have smacked him. Stupid frog. What was she doing standing there spilling her guts to a stupid frog? She clicked off the Gro-Lite and went back to bed.

The next morning Adamus was even larger than before. Excluding legs, and compared to a shoe, he had achieved about size 7 ½. Women's, that is.

Buffy went to work and fucked up mightily from lack of sleep.

This could not go on. If the frog kept growing at the rate he was, and if he kept his pricky attitude, she was not going to be able to handle him. She needed some input.

Over lunch hour Buffy went to the public library to see her good buddy LeeVon in the children's room.

LeeVon was one of those rare people who was so emotionally transparent that you had to like him even though he was incomprehensibly weird. He had a skinhead haircut, multiple piercings, and thick, black-rimmed Sartre glasses that seemed to serve some purpose other than to correct his vision; they had non-functional lenses. He wore black leather to work every day of the library year, rode a Harley with similar regularity, and had a tattoo of Peter Rabbit on one arm and Mr. McGregor on the other. When LeeVon flexed his biceps, Peter hopped and Mr. McGregor shook his hoe. The children adored the tattoos and LeeVon. Buffy had gotten to be friends with him through Storyteller's Guild—he was a stellar storyteller, better than she was, but so lazy about self-promotion that his talents were largely confined to story hour at the library, where he had been a fixture since forever; the place might have fallen into rubble without him. A college dropout hired in more liberal days, back before degrees were de rigueur and parents started to look for child molesters under every peculiar haircut, he was now so firmly installed that even the protests of paranoid newcomers could not dislodge him—perhaps because no one else would have worked for the salary he continued to accept. Whatever. There he was, fingering his nostril rings and munching an egg salad sandwich on pumpernickel, his combat-booted feet up on the desk, when Buffy walked in.

“Buffmeister!”

“Hey, LeeVon.” After her mostly sleepless night, she could muster only tepid enthusiasm.

“How's it going?” Being LeeVon, he really wanted to know.

But life was too weird to talk about, even to LeeVon. “It's going okay.”

“How's your mom?”

“I went to see her a week ago and she didn't even know me.”

“Alzheimer's is hell,” said LeeVon with clean, satisfying sympathy.

“What makes it worse is she hasn't changed all that much.”

LeeVon's eyebrows levitated.

“She's been a mess practically since I've known her,” Buffy said. “Dad made her crazy.”

“Have I ever met your father?”

“I hope not. He's dead.” Buffy changed the subject. “I'm looking for a rather specialized book about frogs.” Never mind that this was the children's room; in this library, when you needed the right book you went to LeeVon.

He sat up and beamed at her, his face angelic above his black leather collar. If you could see past the nose, lip, and eyebrow rings and all the rest of it, you had to notice that LeeVon was a beautiful man, ergonomically designed and porcelain-skinned and ageless even though he had to be as old as she was. He drawled, “Waaal, paint me green and call me Kermit! That gold-plated mother-in-law of yours was in here yesterday looking for books about frogs.”

Buffy felt cold, incorporeal fingers run up her spine.

LeeVon swung his feet down and peered at her more closely through his thick glasses. His delight faded. “What's the matter, Best Beloved?” LeeVon called everybody Best Beloved, as in the
Just So Stories.
He adored Kipling, though if asked, he would explain that he had never kippled. “Something wrong?”

“Nah.” Just lack of sleep. It was a free country; why shouldn't Fay study up on frogs if she felt like it? “I've got this bullfrog at home,” Buffy said, “driving me crazy. Talking. Keeping me awake at night.”

“Really? What's it saying?”

“Huh?” Buffy was feeling more than usually hazy. “At night he says, ‘Ribbet.' The rest of the time he mostly says, ‘Kiss me and I'll turn into a prince, you potbellied, snaggletoothed hag.'”

LeeVon laid the remains of his egg salad sandwich to one side, positioned his elbows on his desk and his chin on his interlaced hands, and studied her. Then he said the only safe thing. “You are not snaggletoothed.”

“Damn straight I'm not. He can be quite rude. I need some sort of how-to-train-your-frog book. Sort of the
No Bad Dogs
of frogs.”

Carefully LeeVon said, “I did understand you to mention that this is a talking frog, Best Beloved? As in, uh, a frog that talks?”

“Right. One of those kiss-me frogs like in the fairy tale.” Buffy saw the look LeeVon was giving her and her voice rose. “C'mon, LeeVon, it's not like I
believe
he would turn into a prince. But he does talk.”

“In English.”

“Absolutely in English. Look, I figure there's a logical explanation.”

“Of course. You are a logical, rational person, Best Beloved, which is why you won't accept alimony from your rich-lawyer-politico ex.” The sarcasm was gentle. “May I ask at what pet shop you acquired this remarkable animal?”

“Prentis? He came from the pound.”

This quip amused Buffy far more than it did LeeVon. While she yawped and hooted, he merely sighed and waited, chin on hands, brown-eyed gaze steady, for her to quiet down.

“Sorry,” Buffy said, subsiding into chuckles.

LeeVon shrugged. “Every conversation has to bottom out.” He straightened and stretched. “I have no frog-training books,” he said. “Frogs are not like dogs. Frogs are not known to come when called. I do, however, have this.” He reached down and pulled a fat green tome out of the cubbyhole at his feet. A wide, mischievous smile jingled his various facial rings. “I will have you know I did not offer this special volume to Fay,” he said. “That woman gives me the horrors.”

“LeeVon, how very unprofessional of you.”

“Thank you.” Aglow with humble pride, he passed it over.

Buffy took it in both hands, then found that she needed only one; it was oddly lightweight for so sizable a volume. On the plastic-sheathed cover, a large frog in a green evening suit and creamy waistcoat ogled back at her. The title shone in ornate letters of embossed gold:
Batracheios.
No author.

“You are not going to be able to train your frog,” LeeVon said. “I wouldn't try it. But this may help you to
understand
your frog a little better. What's his name, by the way?”

“Adamus.”

LeeVon looked thoughtful.

“Prince Adamus d'Aurca. To hear him tell it.”

“Huh. Well, you gotta watch those princes. Be careful, Best Beloved.”

After she thudded out the door, LeeVon got up from his desk and stalked to the window, looking out. Watching her stride away.

“There she goes,” he muttered.

Behind him, a carbuncular kid who probably should have been in school was asking for a book about birth control. LeeVon ignored him.

There she goes, and she has it and she doesn't know what to do with it. But me, I know all about it, and I don't have it.

I don't have anybody and I probably never will.

Another lonely weekend loomed ahead. The same useless mating games. The same crowded bar.

The pimply kid was getting plaintive. LeeVon said, “Just a minute,” and watched Buffy disappear around the corner, her large buns pumping under her teal-blue work slacks. There, she was gone.

His friend. He liked the Buffmeister about as much as he liked anyone. But sometimes friends were no damn help.

The carbuncular kid was becoming frantic. Probably in danger of getting his girlfriend pregnant. LeeVon said, “All right, okay,” and returned to his chair. Once there, he tried to focus his attention on the kid. Just a normal, nice kid, he sensed. Well intentioned, a little dense, thought he was invincible until he got in trouble and then he panicked and didn't know what to do. More responsible than most. LeeVon said, “A book on birth control. It so happens that I have one right here.” He reached under his desk, where he kept a stack of blank books he bought heavily discounted at various remainder stores, most recently Ollie's Outlet, Good Stuff Cheap. Chintzy flowered covers. Pulpy blank pages.