The Frog Collector

Lilian kept staring at Agatha who, despite being calmer, doubled her attention. After an uncomfortable silence as they walked toward the house, Lilian asked:

“How big you are, I haven’t seen you for many years! Fifteen maybe? You are a little younger than my daughter, but I think she would be your height”.

“I don’t remember”, said the princess.

“Oh… of course not!”, said the woman with a wry smile and continued: ”Your father must have completed the job he intended… of taking the magic out of the kingdom. That was the wisest thing King Edgar ever did!”.

Agatha, amazed, began to say:

“Do you know my father? Then you know that I am…”

“The princess? Of course!”, interrupted Lilian. “And you can be sure that Mirian already knows it too. That’s why I allowed you to enter here. I have a magic that allows me to know who approaches this place, so I can use some magic to keep them from discovering my home. But when I saw you nearby I already knew you were the princess”.

The woman barely let the princess speak:

“Your father and I used to work together. We used to try to convince people to leave the black flowers and the magic”.

The princess looked again at the floor lined with flowers and said:

“Yes… The king managed to extinguish the flowers, or at least he thinks so. Back in the kingdom, it’s as if they never existed. Yesterday I didn’t even know they existed, nor the magic they do. But I see that there are still plenty of them”.

“These plants only exist because of Mirian. As long as she is alive there is the possibility that she will plot something against the king or the kingdom and if magic needs to be used against her we have these flowers here. It was your father who authorized me to keep them. I’m glad I convinced you to come back because otherwise she would get what she has wanted all these years”, Lilian said to the princess’s surprise.

“I don’t understand anything anymore”, said Agatha, not knowing how to deal with the amount of new information she was receiving these days.

“Don’t worry, you’ll understand everything”, said Lilian.

They continued walking, the princess was silent. Sometimes she opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t. Lilian noticed.

“Do you want to ask me something? You can ask me anything you want. I’ll answer everything I can”, Lilian said, calming her down.

“Why did you say that this place was a home?”

Lilian was silent for a while and then said:

“It’s not a story I like to tell, but it was after my daughter died that I asked the king to make this place for me”.

“Does my father know how to make these domes?“,thought the princess as she received another batch of new information. The woman continued:

“I was in the invisible prison made by your mother, Queen Ellen. There were many people there, but with the death of Isra and the queen, the era of magic came to an end. It was easy for this era to end because all the people had some problem because of the flowers and when king banned them, there was not much resistance. However, some people inside the prison still insisted on wanting to use the flowers. Until they themselves gave up and came out of the prison when King Edgar came to talk to them. I remember that there was one person inside the prison who insisted on staying inside. He didn’t want the king to remove him. Although he was a good person, this man wanted to be the last one out, he wanted to show all the people in the prison the evil of the flowers and make everyone there with a pure heart and then he would come out last. He was the one who gave me the roots of these plants that I now have here and told me to only destroy them when there was nobody left in the invisible prison. But he couldn’t get out, for he died. I wish I could remember his name, but I cannot. In the end, only me, my daughter and my mother were left.

After a while the king befriended my daughter. He would even take her out of prison to play and then take her back. Because of the pure heart of the child, she had no problem getting out of there. I was afraid of him separating me from her, but he did this to show me that it was better to be free outside than to be locked up there forever. After a while I also saw that I could get out too. We both had pure hearts and the king allowed us to always leave the prison and come back. But my mother however never allowed the king to try to take her out, she never wanted to leave the flowers and I never left the prison for good so as not to leave her alone. I thought it was wrong to abandon her, even though she never treated me well”.

Lilian paused for a moment and said:

“As you may have already suspected. Yes… Mirian is my mother”.