The Frog Collector

“Father!”, exclaimed the princess, running to hug him.

“My little one!”, said the king when he saw her. “Are you all right?”, he asked surprised. “I thought you would be inside. You weren’t in your room, so I knew you had come to meet the witch again.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, I had to look for Prince James. The delay could have cost him his life”, she said, showing her beloved.

“We’ll talk about it later… But I’m glad he’s all right!”, the king said, seeing the healthy boy.

“My lord”, said the prince, putting away his sword and bowing.

Everyone bowed as well, except Lilian.

“So you appeared… was it really magic?”, asked the king.

“It was! Nothing in this world would make me abandon your precious daughter, my lord”, said the young man.

The king nodded and looked toward the direction of the invisible dome.

“She never gets tired…”, he said to himself.

The king looked around in amazement to find Lilian, who lowered her gaze when she saw him.

“Lilian, what a surprise. Who is this?”, asked the king seeing the girl near her.

“Mirian tricked us that time. Emily was alive the whole time”, Lilian said to the king’s astonishment.

“How cruel…”, he said and looked at the two of them ruefully.

Then the king declared:

“I see that everything is fine here. I invite you to dinner tonight at the palace. We have a lot to talk about”.

“My father… we need to enter the dome again”, said the princess almost in a whisper.

The king gave him an inquiring look.

“If I may summarize, Edgar, unfortunately we have forgotten in there the magic flowers that Mirian has always wanted, and every minute she is closer to finding them. We have to go in and stop her from catching them and getting out of the prison. Now, we still have an advantage while she doesn’t find the flowers, but we are losing precious time that we can’t afford to waste. We have to act now”, said Lilian, uneasy with the delay.

Everyone looked at Lilian in amazement that she had called the king by name.

The king stared at Lilian for a while and then enunciated:

“All right! Let’s go in then. Everybody come with me, except you, James. Your parents are looking for you throughout their kingdom. Go find them and put an end to their despair. I want you to go with him too, Agatha”.

“All right, my lord”, replied the prince.

“Father, please, I can be useful if Mirian uses magic. Besides, I want to repay the good that Lilian did for me by bringing James back”, cried the princess.

The king was very reluctant, but agreed:

“That’s fine, but I’m doing this because I know you’re going in anyway. We need to talk about this later… Be careful!”

Agatha sketched a slight smile.

“In that case I will go too, my lord. Please send a messenger to tell my parents that I have been found”, said James.

The king ordered one of his men to take the message to James’ parents. Then he turned to everyone and gave a speech:

“Let’s go! Be prepared for battle if necessary. Let no one be left behind”.

They all walked towards the invisible prison. When they reached the edge of the dome, all the soldiers touched each other’s shoulders and one of them touched the king’s shoulder and so they entered the place.

“Don’t be turned into anything”, said the princess to James, who smiled.

They held hands. Agatha called Emily and Lilian and they both touched the princess. The prince drew his sword again and, although he still felt some pain, held it steady. Then the group walked in behind the army.

They started to head toward Mirian’s house.

“Come with me, Lilian”, ordered the king. “I am happy that Emily is alive and that you are reunited with her”, he said as Lilian approached.

Lilian smiled and looked at her daughter’s direction.

“I think I should ask your forgiveness”, said the king to the astonishment of the woman who could not say anything. He continued:

“If I hadn’t called you to come with me that day, this wouldn’t have happened. And also, if I had come back here at least once more, maybe I would have seen the girl alive and could have warned you so that we could get her out. But I decided not to come here anymore, and I put this place as a place forbidden to the inhabitants of the kingdom. I know nothing will bring back all those years you wasted being away from her, but at least accept my apologies”.

Lilian, still in shock, bowed slightly and replied:

“Your Majesty! It’s all right. If it wasn’t for your daughter, I might never see her again, but now I can still live with her for many years. So it’s all right… Let’s concentrate on Mirian”.

The king smiled and looked at his daughter, who was now talking to Michael, who had also come with the king’s soldiers.

***

“Your Highness”, said the head of the guards, “I hope you are not angry or sad with me. I had to tell the king”.

“It’s okay, Michael. You just did your job”, the princess told him.

“Thank you, Your Highness. You know you are very dear”, thanked Michael, and walked away to take his place among the soldiers.

The princess smiled.

***

The group arrived at Mirian’s house. There was no sign of her on the way, no movement inside the house that had all the windows and doors open. The garden at the back of the house was destroyed. The soldiers surrounded the place and prepared to enter.

They were planning to break in together to surprise Mirian when someone shouted, “The witch is over there!” and pointed behind the house in the distance where the witch was kneeling and digging in the dirt in despair. Everyone was apprehensive.

“Stay five soldiers to accompany the boys. The rest of us will go there, we need many to face the witch if we have to”, ordered the king.

The king, Lilian and the soldiers went towards Mirian while the five soldiers, Emily, Agatha and James entered the house.

When they reached the living room, they saw the furniture overturned and destroyed. Emily made mention of running into the bedroom, but one of the soldiers told her:

“Wait! We’ll go ahead in case there is any danger or trap”.

They entered the room, investigated it, and since they saw no one, they allowed the group to enter. Two guards stayed at the entrance of the room while the others went to check the other rooms of the residence so that there would not be any unpleasant surprises.

Emily entered and went to the closet at the back of the room. The princess and the prince admired the size of the room.

“A room this size for one person?”, asked the prince.

“There were more people here in the old days… I’ll tell you more details later”, replied the princess as they went to meet Emily.

The girl felt a chill as she gazed at the broken closet, checked it hard, and said:

“It seems that she didn’t find it”.

Then she took out a black flower she was carrying and ate the center of it.

“Where do you…”, began to ask the princess.

“This? I picked it when you were leaving for Mom’s house”, said Emily smiling and started to look around.

Then Agatha remembered seeing the girl pick up something on the floor as she was leaving towards Lilian’s house. Emily ran her hand over the piece of furniture, said words that the couple didn’t understand and that made James very curious, and then took out an old box from the bottom of it. Emily was overjoyed and showed the many flowers inside the box to her friends. They looked at them for a while.

“Finally… Now you can be free”, said the princess to Emily, who was teary-eyed.

The soldiers who were checking the house came back to the bedroom door, saw that they had made it, and were cheerful.

“Let’s go quickly”, one of them said.

The group headed toward the door with James at the front. But they stopped, startled, when they saw part of one of the walls of the room move. Little by little, eyes and mouths appeared, and then they understood that it was Mirian camouflaged there.

James shouted to the soldiers at the door who had not yet noticed the witch and threw his sword at Mirian, but the old woman dodged the sword which jammed into the wall, turned towards the direction of the soldiers, shouted a mysterious phrase and several bolts of lightning came out of her hand killing all five men. She turned to the James, Agatha and Emily who were shocked and said:

“So that’s where it was all this time”.