EVAN STEUBER

The Church of the Frog

         Once upon a time there was a beautiful frog and a hideous princess.

         The problem was there weren’t any princes around, just other hideous princesses. The problem was there weren’t any single frogs in the pond. No cis male or cis female frogs. No intersex, agender, third gender, genderqueer, nonbinary, transmale, transfemale or gender fluid frogs. No + frogs. Just married frogs.

         Our princess was pan, but none of the other princesses were. Not to mention that commoners were widely understood to be idiots, even amongst themselves. Consequently, the princess expanded her search for a partner beyond her species. It was vital she marry; when she accomplished things she needed someone to point to with deference, say “they did it.” Otherwise no one would believe anything happened. She was fierce, with a strong will and good leadership skills. People thought that hideous. Best to temper it with a man or man-substitute.

         The beautiful frog wished to marry because he was lonely.

         Frogs in this land were smart and capable, sat perched all day on lily pads philosophizing, or so it was believed. Citizens stood round the pond with slack jaws, amazed by the unintelligible yet clearly brilliant ribbits. What knowledge was denied them for lack of an inter-species communication system? The local wizard once tried to create such a system from potions and spare wagon parts, blowing “speech bubbles” through the cylindrical center of a wheel. Still, the frogs offered no discernible response. Just more ribbits. The Church of the Frog was full of such experimentation, speaking in elastic tongues.

         Despondent from her perceived hideousness and the absence of royal mates, the princess moved to the frog pond. She commissioned a large mechanical lily pad, careful to credit the wizard with the idea.

         “Poor, stupid princess,” people said. “Just needs a prince to guide her.”

         What she needed was a frog, a beautiful one, with those large, egg-shaped black pupils surrounded by a pool of veiny, yellow-orange. Slick coat of grass-green. Shiny and good looking in a miniature suit of armor.

         The beautiful frog floated by her at least once a day. He often thought about inter-species relations; not as a sexual fantasy, but as a logistical issue. He spent his nights listening to the love croaks of his peers, alone and adrift, and now puzzled and intrigued by the presence of the princess.

         Sometimes when the wind blew their lily pads touched. The princess swore the frog’s horizontal mouth popped open to speak sweet nothings. Successfully, as she could not understand him. But the frog was merely impolite, gazing in bafflement like the congregation of frog worshippers who seldom left the pond’s perimeter. No one had ever dared to actually coexist with them, instead content to be perpetual spectators. The looks the princess gave him suggested she wanted more.

         In practice such a union was tricky. The beautiful frog considered himself a generous lover, but he did not wish to be put in danger; he could not foresee fulfilling his spousal duties without doing so. The hideous princess spent her time floating considering similar issues, but consultations with the wizard found no ready solution. Transmogrification was considered junk magic.

         While they were not show-offs like humans, frogs had a far more developed understanding of science and magic. The beautiful frog grew up hearing tales of magnificent feats of transformation, procedures banned after it was discovered how significantly intellect was affected when a frog became human. Some speculated the human race as a whole was a product of these experiments.

         What had not been attempted was the transformation of humans into frogs. When the beautiful frog presented this option to his peers, they worried even were such a thing possible it risked creating a contingent of ignorant frogs that might pollute their noble principles. But this worry assumed a large-scale human-frog transformation, and the beautiful frog had only one woman in mind, the smartest and strongest, which was to say most hideous in all the land.

         Gathering supportive members of the community, a couple hours work produced the following message, made from torn and rearranged lily pads: “Wanna be a frog?”

         The princess had only ever considered the inverse. Still, the idea of being other than the drooling mass of humanity appealed to her. She agreed. The frogs surrounded her and croaked in unison, and in an instant she was a frog wearing a dress and tiara. The two were soon after married, and the princess established a cozy and unpretentious lily pad from which she ruled the people.

         Despite the common worship of frogs, no one had ever considered inter-species relations, or magically turning into a frog. “It ain’t right,” people said. “It’s supposed to be man and wife, not…well, whatever that is.” Whatever it was was distasteful, perverted, an upsetting disruption to an order established long ago by those who benefited from said order. Notwithstanding their complaints, they were not smart enough to come up with a solution.

         Once upon a time two months later, a prince from a faraway land arrived in the kingdom. He’d heard of the princess’ plight and had come to claim her hand, her property, and all the credit for her ideas. Learning what had recently occurred, he was disgusted. In his kingdom frogs were delicious, not prospective mates. Going into the temples and the town-squares he whipped the locals into a frenzy. A kingdom-wide frog-gigging was to rid the people of their superstitions and moral superiors.

         The prince trotted the single mile to the pond and made quick work of the frog society. It had peacefully existed for thousands of years. He claimed the princess as his pet, though shortly after forgot to feed her. Her last croak was heard throughout the kingdom, a plaintive cry that was widely celebrated.

         The people lived in perpetual ignorance and squalor, and the prince lived happily ever after. The wizard won a medal for best lily pad.

Evan Steuber hails from Kentucky where they spent their first twenty-some years working in restaurants and retail, meeting the love of their life, and getting educated. Evan's short story "Pronoun Confusion" (originally published in Lumina Online) was recently included in the 2019 Best of the Net anthology. You can find Evan's creative work in other journals such as Apofenie, Crack the Spine, and The Gravity of the Thing, and you can follow them on Twitter @justevanjs