“A frog?” I asked Logoya.

“A juggernaut frog,” she corrected me. “They’re armored and they have strong fangs and claws. Pretty big, too, for frogs. No point in sending a regular frog into a nest of hundreds of casket rats; it wouldn’t last a minute.”

“But why any kind of frog?”

She shrugged. “Frogs are how the magic works. Do you want me to explain Barene magic to you?”

“Well, this part of it, yes, please.”

“That’s a shame. Pull up your trouser leg.”

“Wait,” I said.

“Do you want your leg healed or not?”

“Don’t harry me! I need to think about this.”

“What is there to think about? If you want your leg healed, pull up your trouser leg.”

“And then you’ll turn me into some kind of fighting frog? And I’ll go down into those tunnels–” I could see them there, dark holes underneath the squatting stone crypt. “–and fight some death rats and bring this ring back up to you?” I could spot a casket rat now, scuttling along the carving at the bottom of the crypt. Grey, slimy, and sinewy, with some kind of brambly black growths around its foul ears.

“That’s exactly right.”

“It could take me days to find a ring down in all that.”

“Then you’d better get started.”

I didn’t want to do it. Of course I didn’t. “Isn’t there some magical way you can bring the ring to the surface?” I asked.

“There is, actually. I could cast a spell to turn a soldier into a juggernaut frog, and then–“

“All right, all right. Isn’t there something else I could do for you instead?”

Logoya shrugged. “I told you that you got here at the wrong time. Three swings ago I would have had you digging out raspberry cane. But you’re here now and I want that ring.”

I hadn’t realized until that moment how delightful it would be to dig out raspberry cane. I sighed, and pulled up my trouser leg.

“Thank you,” she said. She took a small bottle and brush out of her cloak, and painted my scar with the contents of the bottle. I remember it smelled metallic. But my leg felt the same.

“It still hurts,” I told her.

“I know,” she said. “That wasn’t the part that heals you. This is,” and she began drawing elaborate patterns in light all around me, with a beech twig for a quill. I turned around and around trying to see all of the symbols and images she created on all sides of me, hanging in the air like mist, glowing like embers. I was careful not to touch them. I don’t remember how long it took her to complete her work. Less than an hour, certainly. When she finished, she examined it all carefully, and reached out and touched a part of her light-painting that looked like a star. She said, “Ybel, become a juggernaut frog, and find Aara’s ring.”

**

I don’t remember what happened after that. No, that’s not true; I do remember that my leg stopped hurting. But I don’t remember being a frog. The whole thing was long enough ago that some of the details would have faded anyway, but I never remembered anything that happened underneath that crypt. There was a vagueness, kind of like the Great Nap, that went on for some time. Then, after that time, I realized I was myself again. I sat on the ground surrounded by Logoya’s light-designs, gasping and shuddering, covered with mud and with hundreds of tiny faint bite and claw marks that didn’t quite break my skin. Logoya was smiling over the ring she had just pulled out of my mouth.

“How does your leg feel?” she asked.

I tested it. It felt like a perfectly normal leg that had nothing wrong with it. I spit out some grit and rat fur and said, “It feels wonderful. Thank you.” I stood up. I could put weight on either or both of my legs. I stepped and jumped and ran. It really did feel wonderful. I remember that it did. It still does, when I think about it. I pulled up my trouser leg to see. There was still a scar, but differently shaped and not so angry. “It’s better than I hoped it would be. Why can’t I remember anything from when I was a frog?”

“It’s like that for some people,” Logoya said. “Do you want to remember it?”

There was blood under my fingernails, and little shreds of flesh and fur. “By every drop of piss ever spilled, no,” I said. “Never. I don’t even want to remember this. How long was I underground?”

“Five days and nights,” she told me. “After the first few hours I set a spell to watch for you and went back to my cottage to read poetry.”

“Five days and nights,” I said. “I should be starving to death.”

“Oh, I imagine you had plenty to eat down there,” Logoya said, and I puked all over the entire forest for the next couple of hours.