Once
there was a lovely little girl with blue eyes and golden hair.
She was so very pretty her mother could not resist her every
wish. And, as so often happens, this little girl did not
appreciate her mother's kindness, but took it for granted.
Indeed, she complained when her mother was just a few moments
late with her glass of milk or didn't cut the most fragrant rose from
the garden.
The
family lived in a great big house with a wide garden in back.
All around the garden was a high wall topped with sharp spikes
and shards of broken glass to keep anyone outside from climbing
over.
One
day, as this little girl wandered through the garden looking for
something to complain about, she found a small door, just her height, in
the wall behind a hedge. Without a second thought she opened the
door and stepped through even though she had never been outside the
walls even once in her life. Just her luck, the door did not lead
into the street outside as any ordinary door would, where brutish
criminals doubtless would have kidnaped her, but led instead to a lush
green meadow where fairies dwelt. These fairies were just as
entranced by this little girl as her mother was.
They frolicked with her for hours on end. The little girl
gave not a thought to time for the sun always shines in fairyland and
everything she could want appeared before she asked for it.
To her mind, this was a great improvement on things. But
the fairies knew they couldn't keep this pretty little girl without
sending someone back in her place. So they found a she-toad,
dressed her in the little girl's clothes, and tucked her in the little
girl's bed, where the toad drifted off to sleep hardly knowing what had
happened.
When
the little girl's mother came to wake her darling daughter in the
morning, her heart almost broke to find a lumpy-faced toad in the
child's place. She gasped loudly, unable to comprehend what could
have happened. The woman's own mother came in and saw the truth at
once. "You have doted too much on this child.
Too much rich food has swollen her lips.
Too many fine clothes have thickened her skin.
Too many pretty pictures have made her eyes pop out.
Strange that it should all happen at once, but such is the price of
indulgence. Haven't I warned
you that no good could come of such doting and coddling?”
The
poor young mother hung her head in sorrow and shame.
"Nothing
to be done about it now," said the grandmother sternly.
"Embrace your poor child and do what you can to make up for
past errors."
So
the girl's mother swept the toad up in her arms and wept.
Copious tears bathed the toad's head. You would think that the
toad would appreciate the moisture after a long dry night, but tears are
very salty and the toad was very startled. The toad opened her
mouth and let out something between a croak (a common sound from a toad)
and a shriek (a sound toads almost never make) that was very unpleasant
for everyone.
"There
there, there there," said the girl's mother with deep affection
though her heart was breaking. She
gently patting the toad on the back and before long the toad was soothed
and even began to feel a little warm inside. The sad truth is toad
children do not have affectionate parents.
When they become parents themselves they only know what they've
been shown and do not become any more affectionate.
"Poor
little Charlotte," said the girl's mother softly.
Charlotte was her daughter's name and now it became the toad's.
The
next morning Charlotte's mother dressed the toad in a pretty little
bonnet and frock and took her to school. Charlotte the toad
staggered beside her new mother, for she was unused to walking only on
her hind legs. Her new mother held one of her webbed hands firmly
and Charlotte found this comforting in an entirely new and gratifying
way. Happily she struggled to keep pace with her mother's broad,
determined steps.
When
they turned the corner dozens of noisy children ran this way and that,
throwing toys and rocks at each other, screaming nasty words, and
pushing each other into puddles and mud.
Charlotte shook with fear. She'd seen her friends and
relatives maimed or killed by the careless pranks of young boys and
girls. She hid behind her new mother's skirts.
But Charlotte's mother was now determined not to shield her child
from the difficult side of life. Gently but firmly she pushed
Charlotte forward through the crowd. As more and more children
noticed this strange new presence in their midst, an unusual quiet
spread throughout the playground. Boys and girls stared,
astonished at Charlotte's rough skin, wide lips, and bulging eyes.
By
the time Charlotte's mother brought her changeling to the school's front
door, all of the teachers appeared, drawn by the school yard’s
preternatural calm. The headmistress, her back stiff and straight,
looked into the fierce green eyes of Charlotte's mother and then down at
the prettily dressed creature. The headmistress herself had not
been a pretty girl--though she had not been as peculiar as
Charlotte--and found her normally stern heart melted by this mother's
passionate devotion to her unattractive child. She at once took
Charlotte under her wing and placed the toad-child in all the proper
classes, even though Charlotte could make only guttural croaking
sounds.
After
weeks of strict but supportive tutoring, Charlotte found herself able to
speak in basic, one-syllable words. Her mother and the
headmistress embraced each other tearfully when Charlotte managed to say
the word “pillow.” Charlotte
herself practically burst from happiness at the love in both women's
eyes. Even Charlotte's grandmother, who normally found nothing
kind to say about how Charlotte was raised, glowed quietly and placed
her hand softly on Charlotte's mother's shoulder as Charlotte squatted
at a small table, swatting determinedly but ineffectively at a small
porcelain tea set.
Meanwhile,
in beautiful fairyland, the original Charlotte had begun to grow
bored. This was unreasonable, for anything you can imagine comes
true in fairyland. The sad
truth is that the original Charlotte--though perfectly smart and
certainly pretty--was not very imaginative. Without one's own
imagination the efforts and notions of others--even others as inventive
as all the fairies were--begin to pall. Charlotte fretted and
curdled and threw her golden spoons and her mother-of-pearl dishes,
spilling ambrosia and nectar and delicious fruits everywhere. The
fairies were distressed, for no one had ever lost interest in fairyland
before. They redoubled their entertainments and took Charlotte on
whimsical adventures through the most delightful landscapes ever seen,
but Charlotte was only briefly distracted. The moment the next
flower failed to be more brightly colored or richer in scent than the
last one, her face settled into a dour scowl, her eyes half-lidded with
disdain.
The
fairies began to panic when confronted with this foreign and frightening
dissatisfaction. Finally, for the good of their entire society, it
was decreed that Charlotte must be returned to her original home.
Charlotte was mesmerized into a slumber.
A small squadron of fairies carted her into the ordinary world,
into her very own bedroom, where they tucked her carefully into her very
own bed. They searched briefly for the toad they had left in
Charlotte's place; unable to find her, they assumed she had been quietly
drowned, as happens most often in cases like this, and flew back to
their beloved home.
The
new Charlotte was not at home because her mother and grandmother had
taken her to the theater, where they saw a comedy about something
Charlotte didn't understand at all, but her mother and grandmother
laughed and that made Charlotte very happy. On the way home
Charlotte's mother wrapped her arms around Charlotte as their carriage
bounced and jostled on the cobblestone streets. Charlotte grew
sleepy-eyed as her mother carried her into the house and up the stairs,
singing a quiet lullaby as Charlotte drifted off. Charlotte's
grandmother opened the bedroom door for the mother and her poor ugly
child then lit a candle so they could see well enough to fluff the
pillows and turn back the blankets.
When
they saw the original Charlotte sleeping angelically where she always
had, both women froze in place for a moment, confused. Then
Charlotte's grandmother blew out the candle and they both walked quietly
from the room, while the toad still slept in her new mother's
arms. Carefully, so as not to wake her, the grandmother took off
all of the toad's pretty clothes and tossed them into the kitchen stove
where they swiftly burned. Then the two women took the toad-child
into the back yard and, after three swings to gain momentum, threw the
toad over the high surrounding wall, making sure that she did not get
caught on the spikes or broken glass on top.
They didn’t want her to be impaled there, where they would have
to see her every day.
Three
days later, while running upstairs to her room in her stockings
screaming about the ugliness of the shoes her mother had just bought for
her, golden-haired Charlotte slipped, fell between the spines of the
bannister and tumbled down to the floor below. When she had been
taken away in a carriage with its windows drawn, Charlotte's mother,
grandmother, and the school headmistress--whom the other two women had
taken into their confidence--discreetly searched the surrounding
neighborhood, but found no sign of the toad. They then searched
the house and the surrounding yard in the dim hope that the toad might
have found her way back in and was quietly living in a pile of dirt
below the snapdragons or under a rock behind the tool shed. But
they found nothing and neither did they find a small door in the wall
behind the hedge, for the fairies--mindful that when worlds are crossed
trouble often follows--had taken it with them, never to return.
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