The Frog and the Man

I pulled the control stick up, but it still wouldn’t budge. The sky was getting dark, and I had no idea where I was. “Mayday! Mayday! Little man is crashing. I repeat! Little man can’t get out of cabin and is crashing!” I shouted at the transmitter, hoping someone would hear me. The reply was unclear, and then, the smoke came closer to me. I inhaled my last breath, felt my last heartbeat knocking in my chest, and I started to feel very dizzy. Then, I felt my eyes close, and I fainted.

 

I woke up in the middle of the desert, with my head bandaged, and my fighter pilot’s leather jacket still on. The sun was right above my head, and I saw my canteen laying beside me. The cap was open, and some water dripped out. But as soon as it did, it evaporated in the hot air, as if you were pouring oil onto a frying pan. I stood up, and grabbed my canteen. I thirstily tried to drink the leftovers, but there was no more. I knew I wouldn’t survive out here, so I went back to my plane, resigned to die… but then, I saw a frog sitting on my seat, croaking.

Its head slowly turned towards my direction, still croaking, and stared at me directly in the eye. It seemed to have hypnotized me.

“Come closer…” he said. Staggered and staggering, I moved back instead of moving forward.

“Y-y-you ca-a-aaan taa-aallk?” I asked, stumbling over my words. Suddenly, he leapt off the seat and started towards me.

“Yes I can,” he replied, his triangular mouth shaping human words.

***

He provided food and shelter for me. The days were not as hot as the first day, but the nights were as cold as being in a freezer. At that time, mysteriously, he found warm blankets for the night, and light clothing to change into at daybreak. I had many conversations with him through the nights that we spent together, as I was unable to sleep, and it seemed to me, that he never slept.

I remember one of them went like this:

“Where am I?” I asked him.

“You’re in a desert.” He had an old and croaky voice, which sounded like he hadn’t been drinking water for days, er … decades. But I was really curious to know what made his voice so enchanting.

“Which desert? And how can I get back home?”

“You don’t…”

“Then…”

“Yes,” he sighed.

Then, he told me a story about his life: “I have been living here since from the early Middle Ages. And now I am very old. I can talk, because I used to be a human. But King Arthur banished me from his castle in Wales, and now I am in the desert. I lived for many centuries, and I finally found hope.”

By hope, I thought he meant the plane. But he later explained that he meant me. I didn’t know what to do, or how to act, so I just repaired to my plane and stayed by his side.

“You have to do something for me and for yourself,” he said one day. “Go to the end of the desert and find the well. Inside the well there is a magical stone. Climb into the bucket and go down. Then, after you go down, you will see a golden and shining object. Retrieve the stone and come back up. Come back and you will see me… as an old man.”

“That sounds easy,” I muttered.

“Yes indeed, but it’s not. Now, come back before Friday night. Now it’s Monday night. Don’t forget.”

***

I started on Tuesday morning, with a bottle of water, and nothing else and walked for over four hours. Not even a compass, as my airplane’s had burned up and the frog didn’t have one. So, just a bottle of water. I followed his instructions and tried to find the “end”. But where was it? I searched for an appropriate place to sit down and rest after the five-hour walk. But suddenly, I stood up and saw a huge amount of sand rushing towards me. I blinked again, and there was nothing different, only the wind getting stronger, choking me with sand. Sandstorm! I lay down as quickly as I could…

The sand was choking me so hard, I couldn’t even breathe. So, this journey is indeed harder than had I thought it would be. Sandstorms, probably a snake later, and perhaps I would not even be able to retrieve the stone!

After the long suffocating sandstorm, my vision finally started to clear, and I was up and walking again. I walked for about two more hours, if you could say that, and then took another brief rest. This time, the sand was soft and smooth, unlike the choking sandstorm.

After a while, the sun went down. Tuesday night, I thought to myself. I found some rocks and wood, and built a simple yet delightful shelter. There, I didn’t sleep soundly. Tossing and turning, I thought of what other dangers would occur the next day.

Then, I simply closed my eyes and counted numbers and sheep that flowed through my mind. The next thing I knew, I was asleep, snoring and dreaming of happy things.

The next morning I woke up by the growling of my stomach. I was as hungry as a bear, which would gobble up anything in its way, even trees, or branches, or leaves. (Or maybe even bugs. YUCK! Even though they have protein.)

I woke up and walked. Suddenly, I saw a well, made of yellow brick. It was about one meter high, and the hole, from this distance, seemed unpleasantly small. Maybe it was the “end” of the desert, where I would recover the stone. How hard could this mission actually be then?

I saw a figure near the well. The figure was tall and skinny, with gleaming white eyes. He wore a very long gown with a hood, and he seemed to be staring at me. His gown was black, and even though the hood didn’t cover his whole face, what I could see also seemed black too. I went near the creepy figure, and then I narrowed my eyes. He was holding something that was gleaming gold.  I snatched the golden and gleaming thing from the figure, but terrifying and eerie figure quickly vanished.

***

I was desperate for the stone.

I decided to go down the well, deeply sighing, and as I climbed into the bucket, I had a terrible thought: what if the figure cut the rope – then I would get trapped in the well, suffering all by myself.

I broke into a cold sweat, and little shivers rumbled down my spinal column. I lowered myself until I was touching the still water, and then I saw my reflection. I was full of dirt and my face was covered with sand. I made myself get out of the well, so I tugged the rope, and I went back to the surface. This is hopeless, I told myself.

I wanted to give up: I was through with this. I found myself turning around and trying to walk back to the frog. No, I mustn’t give up. I forced myself back into the well, and then lowered myself down, again. This time at the bottom, the water was not still. Instead, it had tiny wrinkles. After a devastating stay in the bucket with the water wrinkling by itself, I decided to get out and explore. I had a feeling that something in the water was calling me to go deeper. I closed my eyes and held my breath. Then, I leaped off the bucket. I felt something wrap around my leg, and it pulled me down. Strangely, I relaxed. This could be leading me towards my way back home, or to a death so horrible, no one would ever want to imagine it, I thought.

***

 

I coughed out the water that was stuck in my lungs. A few dragon-people were surrounding me, murmuring and then looking at each other. I sat up, and all the dragon-people backed away. One asked me this, which I didn’t understand:

“Kabooshka weore canka?”

I stared at him. Another one who looked smarter translated for me, but his accent was really strong.

“He said, ‘Where are you from’?” the smarter dragon-person stated. 

I replied with hesitation, “Umm… The United States of America…?” The dragon-people had heads of different colors, and they all wore traditional Chinese clothing. Many scales covered their faces and they all wore a crown. And then the first dragon-like thing asked me something.

“Kashoofs flakeos jakske?”

“Um… How did you know about dis prace?” the other dragon translated in a, what I call, very Chinese accent.

“I didn’t. I just jumped down the well,” I said nervously.

“Wrksdjfh fjsdkfj iaejhdkajdsfh adsjeudna ufhuwuan ifna ehaufna eifha fha ekelf,” he said again.

The translator then rolled his eyes impatiently and said, “He reads minds, and so he read that you, you ah… need a magical stone, right?”

I stared at him disbelievingly. “Y-y-ess. I need a stone!” I shouted. The first dragon, the Dragon King, pointed towards a door hidden behind a curtain and said, “Haija qurano fajf asj stoine.” After a while, a few dragon-people fetched a golden, gleaming object. Thinking about the deadline, I asked the dragon-people, “What day is it?”

They answered politely: “Thursday night.”

Oh gosh. I took three days to go from the other “end” to here. “Is this da object dat you were looking for?” the translator added, again with a Chinese accent.

“Uh… Yes I think.” I stared at all of them while mumbling.

They whispered to each other and then the translator said, “Your name is Jacky Anderson, right? We’ve waited a long time for you.”

“Yes! And how did you know?”

“Okay. No more questions. Get this stone and step onto da transporter,” he indicated.

I quickly got hold of the stone and then stepped into the green transporter. Then the same dragon told me, “Say fanks to da frog man.”

Before I could react, there was a sudden beam of light, and then all the dragon-people disappeared. Before I knew it, I was back to where I started, because I approached an airplane, and an old man with a very wrinkled and bearded face. I blinked and saw a man smiling at me, and then he said, “Thanks Jacky.”

“Umm… No problem.” I faked a smile. “Oh, and a dragon-headed person said thanks to you? Did you do anything for him?”

“Well, yes.” He said while narrowing his eyes and trying to recall. “I’ve done something very important for him – getting rid of this stone – just now.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“The dragon-people didn’t like this stone,” he said. “They said that it haunted them for many decades, and wanted me to get it, for I was a wizard that could make things disappear.

“Disappear? To where?”

“To anywhere it wanted to go, but not back to the original place. Anyway… they told me that in my dreams, that I was a special one, and I had a feeling it was real, and it is real. But after King Arthur turned me into a frog, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get rid of it for them. And then, in my frog dream, they said that the stone could turn me back into a human. But I knew that I couldn’t do what I was told. Fortunately for me, I found you.”

“So can you send me home? I’m desperate to find my family.”

“Your wish shall be obeyed.”

He chanted in ancient tongue. I closed my eyes. Abruptly, I think I was transferred into the military base I was working in, because I heard many people crying, and many people laughing, as if the sounds were coming through a long metallic tube. This lasted for what seemed weeks. I learned slowly that I was awake, and then it seemed like it took another month to open my eyes.

One day, they finally opened. I saw that I was in a hospital. Then, I heard a voice beside my ear. Some whispering was going on. I opened my eyes slowly, only to see a plump and rosy nurse beside me.

 

“Welcome back,” the nurse said. “You fought in the World War I. Your plane crashed in a desert, but then a scout plane saw that you were alive, so they took you back here. You have been in a coma for two years already. And there was something about you and a frog.” She paused.

I smiled at her. Yes, the frog journey, I recalled. I will always remember that.