Fair Peril by Nancy Springer

pool in the forest.”
    Taut and quivering, rearing on his fingertips, Adamus stared at her. “You are two people,” he said nearly in a whisper. “I do not understand you.”
    â€œ I’m two people?” She spoke gently. “You should talk.”
    â€œBut—but you are a woman.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œHow can these thoughts be in you? How can you be like me?”
    She contemplated several levels of meaning to that. “Addie,” she said sweetly, “go jump in a lake.”
    â€œHow can I? You hold me a prisoner here.”
    So that she would not have to listen to him any longer, she opened Batracheios again, but something had changed: instead of the usages of frogs, a list of punishments confronted her. “The evil mother was brought before the court and put into a barrel that was filled with boiling oil and poisonous snakes.” “They put her into a barrel studded with nails on the inside, hammered on the lid, and rolled it down the hill into the river.” “In the red-hot slippers she danced until she fell down dead.” “Burned at the stake until she was ashes.” “And the pigeons pecked out her eyes.” Sickening punishments. From the fairy tales; Buffy recognized this Grimm stuff. And it was always a wicked mother/stepmother/witch who was getting the business. How come? Why not a wicked father once in a while? Sexist folklorists.
    Hastily Buffy turned the page.
    She was rewarded. An interesting headline caught her eye. She read silently. Very interesting indeed.
    All that day between baby-sitting her frog, she read her swamp-green book, and the more of it she read, the more there was. Like Adamus, Batracheios seemed larger each time she looked, and harder to understand.

Five
    â€œPickle-faced scant-hearted prickmedainty thick-necked ogress,” Adamus hissed snakelike between his gums.
    â€œI can’t make you speak, remember?” Buffy rang the doorbell of the house that used to be hers, trying not to wonder what sort of personality defect caused her to be there. Trying not to think how idiotic it felt to be standing on the doorstep of that big pseudo-Tudor house, listening to the door chimes sounding inside—she had always loathed door chimes. Dingdong bell, pussy’s in the well, whoa, contemplate that. Come to think of it, the really bizarre thing would be to move back into this overwrought faux-genteel mansion. Come to think of it some more, the most bizarre thing of all was that she was standing on the doorstep with a forty-pound, two-foot frog in a rented mini-tuxedo standing erect and volubly outraged by her side.
    Emily opened the door, sweet and regal in a wheat-colored tunic and leggings.
    â€œHi, tootsie. Happy unbirthday.” Emily’s birthday was not until August, when she and all her friends would be away at various camps and resorts; she always had her party in the spring. Seeing the unbirthday girl, Buffy felt a warm upheaval swell her ribs and tried to snag the kid in a hug. Whenever she was around Emily, child, daughter, her chest ached for contact, her arms ached. She reached out. But with a quelling glance Emily eluded her. Preserve that teenage cool.
    â€œ Mom, ” Emily protested, “I wanted you to bring the real frog.”
    Buffy tried to salvage some of her own cool. “Define ‘real.’”
    But Emily had no patience with ontology. She gave her mother a blank stare. “You know what I mean. Your frog frog, not some sort of a puppet.”
    A quintessentially froggy voice quoth, “’Tis I, Princess Emily.” Adamus swept her a bow.
    â€œOh!” It was such a childlike gasp that Buffy had to smile. Emily’s hands flew to comfort her mouth, which seemed uncertain whether to shape delight or fright. “How, uh, how—”
    â€œSteroids,” Buffy said. And the girl would probably believe her and think, Ew, gross; my mom, what a user.