Page 3 of The Frog Prince (The GriMM Tales #6)

Two

Otto

D isorientation set in on day three. The suffocating canopy overhead blocked any real sunlight from peeking through, making every hour that passed look the same.

Murky and drab and colored green. It made it hard to tell whether it was night or day.

Made it hard to keep track of the passage of time.

Made it feel like he was lost in a space outside of reality.

He gave up counting seconds and minutes and hours after day three. He kept losing count and questioning his calculations as to how long he had been away from home. Arguing with his own mind and realizing it only made everything worse.

He rested when he felt like he couldn’t take another step, leaning against rough bark and allowing sleep to pull him under for just minutes at a time.

It fogged his brain and lengthened every shadow.

Every breath he took became louder, like he was announcing his presence to the entire forest and waiting for whoever or whatever heard him to take interest in the intruder.

He tried talking to himself under his breath when the silence became too much, but he found soon enough that he wasn’t interesting company to keep. All he did was voice his worst nightmares out loud, allowing them to take shape.

He abandoned that activity when he made his own heart thunder in his chest by wondering if the wolves he could sometimes hear howling liked the taste of human flesh.

It felt like the forest had taken him and changed him in the handful of days he’d spent wrapped in its darkness. He wondered who he’d be once he finally went back home. If there’d be a shred of his own self left anymore.

The Otto he knew took pride in being levelheaded. His entire life, he’d been the reasonable one. The responsible one. The one people went to for sage advice and calm consideration of all options.

So why was he here? Why had he opted to go mad in this grave of wild nature?

Why had he decided to allow a friend to become a foe?

Because the nature he knew was healing, nurturing, protective.

This place was none of those things. This felt vindictive and threatening.

So why was this the best his mind could conjure after so much time spent mulling it over?

He knew the answer.

It wasn’t the best.

It wasn’t even good.

What it was, was the only option he had left. The desperate scream of a drowning man before the waves swallowed him. His final hope to keep the most important thing in his life.

He stopped between two harrowingly tall trees, their branches heavy with thick leaves, bent and looming like long, spindly fingers reaching for him.

Otto felt seconds away from being grabbed by something he had no chance of fighting off, despite his stature.

His size didn’t matter here. He was a speck in the eyes of the gargantuan trees.

He looked around, wide chest heaving with exhaustion and anxiety under his dirty blue shirt and threadbare cloak.

It looked like every other part of the forest he had trailed through.

Nothing differentiated this particular stretch of it.

It was just as dark. Just as foreboding. Just as menacing as every other one.

Otto felt his throat constrict in panic.

Had he already been here? The rotten, disintegrated leaves on the ground looked familiar, didn’t they? Was this even the right way? Was there a right way? If he gave up now, would he know how to get back? Could he turn back without giving his all to find what he was looking for?

This wasn’t the plan.

It wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to lose hope without ever truly finding it.

He leaned his back against one of the trunks, palms on his knees as he tried to even out his breaths. He blinked against dark spots dancing in his vision, trying to remember what he knew. Trying to recall the things he had heard before. Directions. Instructions.

The stories varied.

Deep in the forest near a large boulder that cut the stream in half.

Just on the outskirts of the forest, near a small marsh.

Not even in this specific forest, but one in a kingdom far away.

He didn’t know what the truth was. He didn’t know who to trust. And after days of eating scraps, sleeping just enough not to keel over and being in a constant state of petrifying fear, he didn’t think he had the capacity to think properly anymore.

His thoughts were coming in scattered images.

Nothing was connecting as it was supposed to.

None of it felt like part of a bigger picture that would help him find what he needed.

He only had fragments and a desperate need to make them fit.

It had to work. He had to try.

He pushed himself away from the trunk and trudged forward, noticing the ground beneath his feet turning softer. Mushier. Sucking at the worn-out soles of his boots with every step before releasing them with a wet sound.

He pressed on doggedly. The trees around him gave way to gnarled bushes, the twisted branches swiping at his feet as if alive.

He fought his way through a thick bush that grew in the middle of the flooded path he was taking, water sloshing into his boots and licking at his ankles.

He hacked away at the bush with a small knife until he could pass.

The branches were left naked in his wake, piles of spiky leaves floating in the muddy puddles.

He was about to step over the mangled bush and continue on his way when one of the piles shifted. A few leaves fluttered from the top of it, revealing two bulging black eyes framed by red circles staring at him.

A frog.

He paused for a moment, crouching down to move the sticky leaves away from the creature. The head and the top of its small orange-speckled body were poking through the shallow water, front legs kicking wildly, but the frog wasn’t moving.

Otto frowned, reaching beneath the water, shivering at the feeling of slimy, decomposing foliage slipping between his fingers as he searched for whatever was trapping the frog.

He touched along the bottom slowly, finally locating the frog’s hind leg caught beneath a rather large stone.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Otto said, fingers making contact with the frog’s body.

It flinched slightly away, but allowed him to grip the rock between his fingers and move it gently off its leg. The frog floated up and gripped Otto’s pant leg with its front legs, hefting itself out of the murky water. The injured leg dangled beneath it.

Otto gritted his teeth at the sight.

The frog tried to wiggle farther up his body, but it was in obvious pain as it gave up and remained dangling from his clothes, small chest heaving. Giving in to the pain. Looking at him almost pleadingly.

Otto had to go.

He didn’t have the time to do this.

But he could hear the sounds of animals all around him.

He could hear them circling, stalking. Not them, specifically.

Not at the moment. But how long would it be before the tiny frog became prey?

How long until something stronger and faster came and snatched it away?

How long before his help was rendered useless?

The healer in him screamed at the mere thought of letting a living thing hurt without even trying to help.

With a sigh, he reached down and plucked the frog from just below his knee. He did his best to examine it, but he knew nothing of amphibian physiology. Perhaps later. For now, he needed to move, and the frog would be safer with him.

“Are you up for a quest, little one?” he asked, putting the frog in the front pocket of his shirt and letting it settle in there. The frog croaked a tiny bit before quieting and stilling.

Otto took that as a yes and set off on his path again. If one could even call it a path anymore.

The water was getting deeper, nearly to his knees now, and it made it feel like the forest was fighting him with each new step he took. The tree branches got thinner still, and the light changed from overwhelming green to something worse. Yellowish. Rotten. Dying.

The air grew even more humid, sticking to his face and lungs and skin. Suffocating him.

He looked forward, seeing stretches of wet and broken branches sticking out of the water like spears. Like threats.

And then something in the distance.

Something that looked both like it didn’t belong and like it was part of the forest. Born from it. He stumbled toward it, toward the first thing that had felt different in days.

He fought against roots and mud until the ground beneath his feet felt firmer. Until it felt like he was actually walking instead of wrestling with something holding him down.

He looked down and frowned at what he saw beneath the shallow water. Stone instead of mud. A hard surface instead of mush.

A pathway.

He followed it for just a few moments before he came upon it—a flat surface with several piles of rocks evenly spread out. In front of them, a well stood beneath a flight of stairs leading to the remains of what must once have been something grand.

A castle.

Or, at least, what was left of one. It had been eaten by the forest seemingly centuries ago. Gnawed at and consumed and swallowed whole.

Otto could see walls, and holes where windows used to be. There was a gaping opening where a roof had caved in, allowing the trees to grow inside. The water sloshed around the edges of it, getting deeper the farther down the path Otto went.

He walked toward the steps, running a hand over the edge of the small well, feeling his heart in his throat. Something about this place felt…wrong.

There was an aura about it that made Otto feel like he wanted to run. Like he should run before—

“Another one.”

The voice echoed from somewhere, sticking to Otto’s skin like it was made from the same humid air. It was slightly croaky. Scratchy. It didn’t sound human.

It was too late to run.