This marks the first short story I published that wasn’t horror between the years of 2021-2023. It was such a fun exploration of the hero’s journey, and small scale worldbuilding. Unfortunately the press which released it had to close it’s doors due to extenuating circumstances, but I hope you will enjoy it here in it’s entirety.
Thank you for reading!
The world began blind. All things did. But the myths rumored the world would end in blindness as well. And according to Cap, that was a rapidly nearing problem.
Jungle suspected Cap had resolved himself far too early on that fact, though. The purple hued frog lifted his head in the murky darkness surrounding him and blinked. They had reached the edge of the moss-covered tundra that Jungle’s kindred frogs—his pod, as they knew them—called home. Jungle set his gaze beyond the mossy flatlands and toward the descending cliffs of the ancient mountain.
“Cap?” Jungle asked. “How long, again, did you say we have?”
Tendrils shivered against Jungle’s back. Cap, the short, stocky Psichi mushroom Jungle had recently bonded with, whispered back a reply.
“I don’t know.” Cap was curt and sharp. “We need to go! He’s the last one.”
“Could be a she,” Jungle murmured and hopped toward the path that wound around the knobby hills that would follow their descent down.
They were not really hills. This was not truly a mountain. It was, and it wasn’t. Here in the murky lake, the only mountains were the carcasses of large ancient frogs whose spirits had long left them. The unfortunate many who never ascended.
No frog had ascended since the darkness fell. Perhaps long before that. Jungle had heard all the myths. The rites of ascension and the paths to the celestial realm had all been lost.
But Cap said he knew where they were. In fact, the young fungi was rather adamant about that, despite the many visions other prophetic fungi had granted. For all the prophets, no fungi had found a path yet, though. So Jungle had to hedge his bets on Cap.
This was, after all, why the young fungi now rode on the junior frog’s back.
Cap’s snippy voice brought Jungle back to the world around him. “I don’t care, he or she, we don’t have time to argue. Please, hurry!”
Jungle hopped on, forward along the path. “How do you know about this great frog anyway?” he asked.
“Rumors follow roots,” Cap retorted. “Even frog rumors. Fungi like to talk. The elders especially.”
“You’re starting to sound like an elder,” Jungle sighed. He picked out a bend in the path and followed it. They were off to find the ancient frog. The last frog who remembered the sun.
Jungle wondered how old a frog had to be to remember the sun. Darkness prevailed here in the misty lake. It covered even the tops of the very mountains themselves.
“All adolescent fungi do is listen,” Cap complained. “They listen all day and can’t do anything until they get chosen. Thank the sun’s rays you picked me.”
Jungle wasn’t sure he was going to be so thankful if this chatter kept up. Cap hadn’t stopped chattering. Of course, there was quiet during the rite of choosing. There was always quiet.
The rites came twice a year. Frogs would migrate from the pools in the mountains and follow the trails to the tribes of the fungi. Every pod had their own trails, and their own deals with the fungi, but for the most part Jungle was certain all pods had the same tradition of migration and choosing.
It had finally been Jungle’s year. Three floods and Jungle was old enough to choose a bondmate. No easy task for any frog. After all, the fungi were a revered and respected kind, but you didn’t want to bond with someone you couldn’t tolerate. Worse, no frog wanted a fungi who couldn’t give dreams and visions. Thankfully, the Psichi fungi were a system revered for their visions.
Cap hadn’t given Jungle a single vision, though, only talk. His many-spotted mushroom cap had caught Jungle’s eye. The elders had warned Jungle to be wary of choosing on appearances.
“Hurry,” Cap went on.
Jungle groaned and stopped hopping in the middle of the trail. “It will be at least a hundred hops to the next pool, Cap, can I please have some silence?”
“You’re the one asking questions.”
Jungle silenced himself and hopped off. Above himself, though, Jungle caught Cap whistling through his frills an ancient frog tune. The fungi truly did listen. Perhaps too much.
Jungle hopped on. Only ninety hops to go. The next pool was one the elders had warned him about. The Pod of Dressi frogs. Common looking, and often slow, but stout believers that the frogs who died and were entombed as mountains had achieved true ascension. Dressi adhered to the idea that frogs lived on through the fungi who spawned on their backs from the original spore.
The Dressi believed in the end times, though. That all frog kind would be wiped out. The fungi too, and that the world would be consumed by a flood. Jungle remembered learning about them as a tadpole.
The Dressi did not take kindly to those who believed different. Still, they were Jungle and Cap’s only chance.
Jungle’s elders had sanctioned the journey insofar as they sanctioned all journeys of enlightenment. It wasn’t uncommon for a young frog to seek his own prophecy. But Cap’s request had been very specific. They needed to see the last frog who remembered the sun. That was the only way to stop the world from ending.
Jungle knew stories about the ancient frog. Myths, mostly. All frogs who survived more than two hundred floods had a few myths to their names. No one knew this frog’s name, though, for names were forgotten in exile.
Any frog who grew too large became exiled to the lake. It was on them to find their enlightenment and seek their ascension. None could tread upon their backs, except the Dressi.
That was why Jungle and Cap hopped on, another forty hops, toward the pool of Dressi.
Jungle himself was squeamish at the idea of contact with the great frog given the customs, but the elders had assured him the Dressi would make it possible. They could satiate Cap’s desire to speak with the ancient frog without breaking the laws.
“I am beginning to wonder how no one gets sick off of this,” Cap moaned.
Jungle slowed. “Off of what?” he asked and rolled his eyes back; though he could not see Cap, he caught a blur of the mushroom’s white top.
“This motion,” Cap said. “It’s positively nauseating.”
“You will get used to it,” Jungle said and hopped on. “But I will try to be gentle along the way. I guess we’re both still getting our legs under us.”
“I have roots,” Cap retorted.
“Roots,” Jungle corrected. He sighed and leaped longer, softer strides. They passed large knobs covered in brown moss. It dripped moisture. Everything in the lake seemed to have a film of wet covering it. Jungle hopped past.
“Cap, what do you know of the mountains in the lake?”
“I know that’s where we live.”
“Do you know how many there are?”
“No. Do you?”
“I was told there are hundreds, but the elders said more are made every day.”
“That’s a lot of frogs dying.”
Jungle sank into his next hop, deflated. A lot of frogs were dying. They couldn’t seem to stop dying. For all the fungi who offered their visions, and for all those that eased pain, it did seem rather pointless.
“That’s why we’re going to find the sun, right?” Jungle asked.
“We’re going to capture the sun, and the world will keep going,” Cap corrected. “Maybe then less frogs will die.”
“I heard the sun is in the same plane that frogs ascend to.”
Cap shivered, probably shaking his domed head. “No, the sun is a big burning ball in the sky that used to be held by a ring of mushrooms. I’m going to bring it back to them. We’ll hold the sun again!”
Jungle wondered how Cap knew what the sun looked like, given that all Fungi were blind. Perhaps, like everything else, it was because Cap had heard it from someone.
“Well it’s probably a good thing either way,” Jungle said. He could see the tall fungi that grew near the entrance of the Dressi pool. The Dressi did not carry fungi; instead they allowed the fungi to grow near the pool and only took them onto their backs before death. A way to harbor their little circle of life.
Jungle hopped past the sentry fungi. He felt Cap’s tendrils wrap around him tight.
The sentries seemed to take no notice, though.
Jungle frowned. He had been wondering why none of the other fungi ever spoke to him. Even those whom his friends had chosen, even the elder fungi, had all lain silent during the choosing. Perhaps it was cultural, not to speak in the presence of someone you weren’t bonded to.
No one else had minded Cap’s chatter, though.
Maybe they already knew the fungus was weird. Jungle should have noted that earlier on.
A large frog hopped into Jungle’s path as he slowed. The young frog leaped back to avoid a collision and quickly stuck his nose to the ground. “Honored elder,” Jungle blurted out. “I’m from the Genrit Pod! Please have compassion and hear me.”
That was the correct greeting, right?
“By the ancestors,” the old frog bellowed. His body was double Jungle’s size already. Not large enough by far to be exiled, but showing his age. “A Genrit,” the word came off the old frog’s tongue as if it were a stuck fly. “What sends you hopping here?”
Jungle looked up. He licked his eyes twice to show additional respect. “I’ve come asking a favor.”
Cap shuddered with excitement. “Finally!”
The Dressi elder sat back on his haunches and peered down at them. “A favor of what manner?”
“The exiled.”
A low rumble, the kind which extends a frog’s throat and makes it boastfully bloated, echoed in the Dressi elder’s chest. “The exiled, you say. You wish to break your own culture’s code, so you come to us.”
“Yes.”
“No,” said the elder. He leaned forward and landed on his forelegs. “We will not.”
“But!” Jungle tried to hop after the retreating Dressi. “I thought—”
“—you are a tadpole!” spat back the Dressi, “if you thought we would help a Genrit break his own codes.”
Jungle sank back onto all fours. Cap’s shuddering stopped.
“He has to help us!” the fungus screeched. It made Jungle’s head hurt. “We came all this way!”
“Be quiet,” Jungle panted. He inched forward. “Elder,” he called and pitifully licked his eyes. “Please. Is there nothing you will do for me?”
The old Dressi turned. His mottled skin mottled darker and his eyes closed to slits. There was not enough room for Jungle’s tongue on them.
Jungle felt the accusatory disrespect sink in like an unpleasant dryness.
“Which frog do you seek?” the Dressi demanded.
Jungle bowed his whole body. “I don’t know his name.”
“Tadpole!” The Dressi spat back. “Then how were you going to seek help?”
“Tell him about the sun!” Cap urged.
Jungle shuddered, unsure if that was a good idea. He tried to look up anyway, with wide eyes, hoping the respect of exposing them was enough. “He’s the last frog who has seen the sun.”
At that, the Dressi elder harrumphed and choked on his own tongue in humor. “You mean to tell me you seek Ruel? The most ancient of frogs? I most certainly will not disturb her.”
Jungle leaped back as the Dressi spat out his tongue in an attack at the young frog’s eyes. Jungle snapped his eyes shut quickly.
Her?
“We got a name!” Cap rejoiced.
Jungle retreated. He should have known the Dressi would be unhelpful. In every story they always stopped the hero in their tracks.
The old Dressi frog had lumbered off by the time Jungle had opened his eyes.
Jungle sighed. They would need to go around this pool. His skin felt dry at the notion, but it was all they could do.
Jungle rapidly hopped back to the trails and glanced at the sentries. They watched in silence.
“He attacked my eyes,” Jungle shivered as he leaped up the mossy knobs and climbed along them in a direction that would take them around the pool. He stopped, though, halfway. “Cap, we don’t know where we’re going.”
“But we have a name!” Cap’s moodiness fled in the face of his optimism. His optimism made him chatty.
Jungle sank at the base of a massive knob hill. “What good does that do us if we have no directions?”
“We could ask for directions.”
“We just tried! And anyway, we can’t—”
“Jungle stand up!” Cap’s voice grew urgent. “I feel a tremor.”
Jungle reared back up and scrabbled back around the knob. He heard the faint thud of a front set of legs and then a back, and then the recoil of a launch. Another frog was hopping their way.
Should they hide? Should they wait it out?
“Talk to them,” Cap urged.
How did the fungus always seem to know what Jungle was thinking?
“I just do,” Cap added.
Jungle shook his head, not caring if it made the fungus nauseated. Jungle hopped out around the knob again. A bright green frog came leaping down. Jungle looked up, and realized only too late the frog was landing where Jungle stood.
They both cried out as they collided.
“Cap!” Jungle squirmed free, legs kicking hard. He hoped the fungus hadn’t been flattened.
“Alive.” Cap’s voice swirled dizzily.
Jungle righted himself and came face to face with a frog only a bit larger than him, and far brighter. While Jungle sported the purple hues which blended him into the darkness, this frog was almost phosphorescent, as phosphorescent as anything could be without light. Its green skin shimmered moistly.
“Is it just me or do they look mad?” Cap whispered.
Jungle’s eyes widened. He licked them both repeatedly. “I’m sorry!”
The other frog had run into him, though.
“Don’t think that matters,” Cap whispered.
Shut up, Jungle thought.
“Fine.”
The other frog looked down on the penitent young bondmates. Then burst out in a croak of laughter. “I thought I flattened you boys!” An eye closed halfway. “You are…boys, or have you not been sexed yet?”
Jungle’s tongue stuck stiff to his eye at the horror of the idea of being sexed as an adult frog.
The elder frog only laughed more. “That one got you, didn’t it. Course you’re boys, I can see because you got no spots.” The frog hopped around. “Unlike me.”
She wriggled her shoulders and then turned back around to face the two. Jungle noticed also the flat top of a red mushroom on her back. Below it ropes lashed a fly trap at the frog’s side. The jar buzzed full. There were fireflies inside, blinking away.
The elder frog lowered her face so she was level with Jungle. “Well, since you aren’t flattened, what’s this talk of directions?”
Jungle looked away. “We um, needed directions to…” the words were heavy on his tongue and threatened to loosen it, so it lay useless before him. Or worse, he might swallow the thing.
“We’re looking for directions to Ruel!” Cap insisted. “C’mon, say it.”
“That!” Jungle’s head popped up.
Again, the elder frog closed one eye. “That? Directions to that? And what in the misty lake pray the ancestors tell me, is that?”
Jungle blinked. “Um, what Cap said. That is what we need.” He backed up an inch or two. This elder frog looked like she might have a long sticky tongue.
“Cap? OH!” Her laughter returned. “You must mean your bondmate. Of course, of course. You must know I can’t hear a word he says. Only you can hear his prophecies.”
“Me?” Jungle’s voice echoed between the knobs they sat between. Somewhere around them, a drop of water fell from a moss tuft. It hit the ground in the silence.
“Yes, only you,” repeated the old frog. “Only I can hear Pink back here. Did your elders teach you nothing? What are you? Dendi? Issin? Ahhh oh, no, here’s one, Telethar?”
“Genrit.”
Her tongue flicked up to one eye. “I’m so sorry.”
Jungle sank down and huddled up in self-disdain. “You all keep saying that.”
“The Genrit aren’t well known for being open minded, you know. And they’re recluses. All their young go out for enlightenment and come back half-brained dimwits babbling about visions. It’s because they trust too much in those Psichi. They’re too strong. It’s all acid to the brain, you know.”
Jungle felt Cap stiffen. The fungus was repeating obscenities from both frogs and fungi.
And yet the elder frog couldn’t hear them. And Jungle couldn’t hear any other fungi.
Did this mean…? Cap could only be heard by Jungle, which meant all his words were telepathic. That explained the visions.
The elder frog licked her eyes three times. “I’ve insulted you enough. Anyway, back to your directions.”
“You aren’t Dressi,” Jungle sighed. “You can’t help us.”
“Oh, I can’t?”
“Well.”
“Ruel!” Cap repeated, breaking the string of curses. They picked back up. Jungle couldn’t think straight over the young fungus.
The elder frog proved right about one thing. Cap was going to liquefy half Jungle’s brain if he kept this up.
“We’re looking for an exile frog,” Jungle finally admitted as the cursing calmed. “Ruel.”
“I knew her,” the old frog licked one eye sadly. “You won’t find her. She’s gone into the lake. I assume you already asked the Dressi to speak on your behalf.”
Jungle bobbed his head. Cap bobbed his.
“Well then, they’ve given their answer. But,” the elder frog looked back. “The Dressi are all frogs with their tongues up the wrong end. They don’t help anyone despite the stories. That’s why they don’t care about your laws, because they don’t care except about lounging and making up fly’s tales.”
Jungle nodded.
“What do you wanna know from Ruel anyway?” The elder frog reached back and in one motion took the lid off the jar and caught a firefly. The lid was replaced before another insect could escape.
The firefly vanished into her mouth.
“The sun,” Jungle repeated what Cap was hammering into his skull at the same time. “We’re trying to find the sun.”
“Oh. Hmmmm.” The ancient frog bowed down and her eyes widened. At least she trusted them. “Well if you wanna know about the sun, I can take you at least to the base of the mountain near her. Maybe, and you didn’t hear this from me, if you get to the peak, she’ll talk to you. I remember her telling stories about that thing.”
“You know where she is?”
“Yes. At least, I think I do. She talked about where she’d go in exile a lot, you know.”
Jungle could hear Cap’s voice leaping inside his head. It was all excitement, and it was beginning to feel like the headache one gets after drying out. Jungle lowered himself to the ground.
It wasn’t wrong to speak with an exile if one did not climb their back. Most frogs merely abstained so as not to interrupt enlightenment. But the fate of all future frogs, and their enlightenment, might rest on this.
If Cap was right. So far, Cap was only annoying.
“Will you take us?” Jungle licked both eyes, twice.
The old frog laughed. “What’s your name, tadpole?”
“Jungle.”
“Inventive. I’m Festa. Good to meet you, Jungle. And Cap?”
“Yes.” Cap’s tone was hurried.
“Yes,” Jungle repeated.
“Well, Festa sighed. “I have hunted all day, so I admit I must rest a bit, but if you will rest with me, I will take you.”
Jungle hopped a little closer, hesitant. He eyed the fireflies.
“Are you hungry?” Festa crouched under a mossy patch that covered the knob to their right. The moisture slicked her back.
“A little.”
Cap’s frustration welled up as his tendrils tightened. “We need to go!”
“I’m tired too,” Jungle said. A hundred hops was a great length. They’d traveled further than Jungle had ever gone in his life.
“Ah, the days of bonding,” Festa settled by the moss. Jungle slowly crouched beside her, just enough to moisten his skin.
“I miss them,” Festa sighed. “We never fight anymore. You don’t have to say it all out loud, though.”
Jungle looked up at Festa. “I don’t?”
“They read your thoughts, you know.”
Oh, Jungle thought.
“I don’t want to stop.” Cap’s tendrils became tighter. The hurt pressed into Jungle’s skin. He huddled up tight. They needed to rest. They’d get further if they rested.
Please.
“Fine,” Cap huffed.
Jungle felt the release. His eyes settled closed. Thank you.
#
Jungle hopped in Festa’s shadow down the back of the mountain. They’d gone at least three hundred hops and Jungle’s toes were beginning to go sore.
“How much further?” Jungle complained.
Cap had been deceptively quiet all day.
“Ah, I don’t know.” Festa hopped ahead. This was easier for her, being older and therefore covering more ground in a single hop. Jungle needed five hops just to keep up with her. At least Cap was no longer complaining about getting dizzy.
“Where are we going?” Jungle went on.
Festa lifted her head and then took another hop. “To the pond.”
“Pond?”
Festa hopped atop a short knob. “Yes,” she said and snapped up a firefly from her jar. “Have you never been to the pond?”
“Not if it’s this far away,” Jungle scrambled up beside her and reclined on the knob. “I only know the pool where I grew from a tadpole into a frog.”
“Ah.” Festa shook her great head. “The pool is where all the mountains reside. You might know it as the misty lake, or by other names. Some say the first tadpoles were born into it. Now, it’s just a big marsh.”
“Why do we need to go there?” Jungle crouched and peered into the darkness. He could smell something rather sour and moist very close by.
Festa hopped down. “To cross to another mountain, of course. We aren’t as big as the ancient exiles, so we’ll go by lilypad.”
Jungle hopped after her. He turned his eyes back far as they would go and wondered at Cap’s silence. Did fungi sleep? Or was Cap dizzy again?
“I’m not asleep, and I’m not dizzy,” Cap’s voice dredged up in the back of Jungle’s mind. “I’m thinking.”
“About?” Jungle asked.
“Shhhh,” Festa hushed him. “Not good manners to talk out loud, remember? Talk in your heads.”
Jungle sighed. Festa was nice. She shared her fireflies, and fun myths about the sun. She told them one Ruel had told her about how the sun would mysteriously vanish for hours on end. Some frogs thought an old celestial frog was playing tricks on them.
Festa knew about the celestial frogs too, and sometimes she made jokes, but she reminded Jungle too much of the pod mothers sometimes. And the elders too.
“I’m just wondering what Ruel will say,” Cap chattered. “If they’ve seen the sun, why didn’t they catch it and bring it back? Why didn’t any of the elders before them?”
I don’t know, Jungle thought. He should’ve known any conversation with Cap would be about the sun. Jungle kept after Festa.
They made it down to where the air was all damp. It sank onto Jungle’s skin and settled like a thick blanket of moss. Jungle crept after Festa, who wandered down to where the mountain ended and thick, inky water began. Lilypads sat all around, floating on the water.
Lithe little frogs hopped over them once Jungle looked close enough. His eyes widened. “Pad hoppers,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Festa neared them. She cleared her great throat. “Excuse me, can we get a ride?”
A tiny green frog peered up at them. He held in his hand a thick stalk. “Ride where?”
Festa pointed her head right. “To the east, please. Far east. Far as you can take us.”
“Fee is three fireflies.”
Festa unlatched her jar and set it in front of the tiny frog. “Will that be enough?”
He snapped one out of the jar with his long tongue and contemplated the leftover four. “Hop on.”
They all clambered onto the lilypad, which surprisingly held under even Festa’s weight. Their pilot pad hopper took the front and began to move the lilypad via the stalk in his fingers.
“I’m Ina,” he told them as they slid along the water. “What takes you far east?”
“Oh,” Festa smiled coyly. “The sun.”
Ina scoffed.
Jungle huddled on his portion of the lilypad. Everyone seemed to scoff at Cap’s idea. The elders at least had thought he was noble for going after enlightenment.
Cap shivered in anger on Jungle’s back. “Mud frogs,” Cap cursed.
That wasn’t nice.
“I don’t care.”
Jungle sighed. The inky water rippled around them.
“Why does everybody think the sun is silly?” Jungle looked up at Festa.
She kept her eyes on the mist overhead, watching for flies. “Not silly,” she said. “But the sun is gone. What good is there in bringing it back?”
“Enlightenment?” Jungle offered. “And keeping the world from ending…”
Festa scoffed. “And what good is that to someone of your age? You have your whole life to find enlightenment. If the world was going to end, it would’ve done so already.”
“Do you want enlightenment?”
“I want a big, juicy fly.” Festa’s tongue snapped out in the air.
Jungle blinked as they passed another mountain. He looked up at it through the mist. It seemed taller from the pond. How were they ever to reach the top in time?
“We’re running out of time,” Jungle sighed.
“Yes,” Cap agreed. “Hurry up.”
Jungle couldn’t. He watched Ina. The pad hooper took his leisure paddling them away from the mountain. It vanished in a few strokes, though, and Jungle leaned back.
Cap, he wondered. Do fungi seek enlightenment?
“No,” Cap said firmly. “Fungi seek the sun.”
#
Ina moored them to another stationary lilypad at the base of a great mountain and shaded his little eyes to the mountain. “You wanna go up there?” he asked. “To Dart Mountain?”
Jungle saw Festa’s eyes grow wide. “Dart Mountain?” she asked. “Is this the furthest mountain?”
Ina pointed to the left. “No, but that’s Ruel. She’s still…”
“I know,” Festa said. She retreated and turned to Jungle. “Alright, tadpole, time to rethink the plan.”
“What?” Cap and Jungle echoed in unison.
Festa shook her head. “No one sets foot on Dart Mountain. And I mean no one. The fungi there will kill you and your bondmate and take you over. Turn you into their slave.”
“We don’t even send our young there,” Ina said.
Jungle looked at him. “What?”
Ina staked his stalk on the lilypad. “All pad hopper young make their own journeys, you know. They have to travel to the furthest mountains and return. Prove they’re worthy of the pond. That’s how they earn their pads,” he gestured to his stalk and pad. “But no pad hopper frog goes to Dart Mountain.”
Jungle shuddered
“We have to go!” Cap thundered in Jungle’s skull. “We have to talk to Ruel!”
“Can we…avoid the fungi on Dart Mountain?” Jungle asked.
“Nope.” Festa sat back and set her lips in a long thin line. “No one avoids them. Dart Mountain is a mountain of pure death.”
Jungle frowned. “How?” Any kind of enslaving frog-and fungi-eating mushroom sounded like it would be impossible to bond with. The only mushrooms that grew on a mountain came from the spores of the ancient frog’s bondmate. Jungle knew when he died, all of Cap’s spores would make the next generation of fungi grow on Jungle’s back.
“Dart was mad,” Ina said. “Or so the legend says. Thought that it was only by doing the bidding of the fungi that he’d find enlightenment.” Ina pointed his stalk. “Notice how small he is. Didn’t get far in life, clearly.”
Jungle’s skin felt dry at the implications.
“Sorry, but we are not risking our brains and lives on that mountain,” Festa said. “I suppose your sun seeking will have to wait.”
Jungle looked to the left. A larger shadow sat there, still moving with breath. Jungle licked both eyes once.
“We should just climb up there and ask,” Cap said firmly. “Who’s gonna know?”
“No!” Jungle spat out.
Festa narrowed her eyes at him again.
Jungle shied back. He licked both eyes twice. “Sorry,” he said.
Festa shook her head. “What’s your fungus’s brilliant idea?”
Jungle closed his eyes, just to protect himself as he shied back to the furthest corner of the Lilypad. “Climb…Ruel’s…back…”
“Hmph.” Festa sat heavy on the Lilypad. “That’s against all tradition, tadpole.”
“I know.”
“I know,” Cap added. “And I don’t care.”
“Maybe there’s another way to find the sun,” Jungle offered both. “Maybe we don’t need to talk to Ruel.”
“No!” Cap blurted out.
Ina hopped between the two parties. “You know, for all I care, I just ferry around these pads all day. No one cares if I touch the wrong mountain. We send our young out, and they hop all over everyones back. Can’t find a mountain you haven’t visited, even if it’s still alive. So if you ask me, I don’t think old Ruel would mind too much.”
Festa looked away. She licked her right eye, angry. “No. I won’t condone it.”
“They don’t…hate you if you touch them?” Jungle looked up at Ina. “Even if they’re alive?”
Ina looked back. “They’re exiles. Most of them are lonely. Trust me, the young come back with stories.”
Jungle felt Cap bristle, hopeful. Jungle’s own shoulders hunched. Lonely. It made sense. Enlightenment never sounded like it was meant to be lonely. You were supposed to go and find other frogs who survived, find the living. But everyone here was just waiting for death, no matter what they said.
That had to be lonely.
“Okay,” Jungle said. He looked at Ina. “Will you take me to Ruel?”
“I won’t stand for this,” Festa turned. She leaped off their pad onto another, a stationary lilypad. “I’m staying here.”
Ina put his stalk in the water. He turned his back on Festa. “Stay if you will. I’ll pick you up later.”
“This is a mistake,” Festa said. “You know it is.”
Jungle faced the darkness before himself, though. “I know,” he said. “But the elders sent me to find my path. I’m finding it.”
#
“There she is.” Ina planted the lilypad as best he could. Stalks poked up around them from the mist. Jungle tentatively looked up at the knobby back of the living mountain before them. He swallowed and almost took his own tongue down his throat too.
Cap stiffened in awe. “Amazing…”
“Moment of truth,” Ina said. “On or off, your choice.”
“Go!” Cap cried.
Jungle hesitantly hopped to the edge of the lilypad. He looked back at Ina.
“Thank you for taking me. Do you really think Festa is right, though? Am I doing the wrong thing?”
“Festa’s traditional,” Ina sighed. “You know what, tadpole, here.” Ina held out his stalk. “All pad hoppers who travel this far have more than earned their paddles.”
“But I’m not—”
“I don’t care,” Ina offered the stick again. “Take it. And if you get cast out for all this, well, know you can come back to me.”
Jungle took the stick. “Thanks.”
Jungle faced the mountain. His heart and throat swelled. This was the moment, the moment to choose.
Closing both eyes, Jungle took a leap.
He landed on a coarse, moist back. The sensation of breath came as the ground swelled and Jungle almost lost his balance.
Cap was practically blooming with excitement. “Let’s go! To the top!”
Jungle couldn’t even see the top. He looked back at Ina.
“I’m gonna go get your friend and take her home. I’ll come back.” Ina broke off a fresh stalk from the patched around him. He waved.
Jungle nodded. He faced Ruel’s back again. This was wrong.
“But you did it,” Cap assured him.
“It was still wrong.”
“Only until we prove everyone else wrong,” Cap added.
Jungle leaped forward tentatively. The knobs were harder to grasp, given that Ruel was alive and still breathing. But Jungle kept going, panting after several hops.
“I can’t do this,” Jungle said.
He heard water slosh. Jungle looked back to see Ruel moving in the pond, shifting, ever so slightly.
“Can’t do what?” a great voice boomed out.
Jungle started. “I’m sorry!” he licked both eyes, repeatedly, and cowered against Ruel’s back.
“Is that…a voice?” Ruel boomed out. “I hear someone down there.” She tried to turn. More water sloshed, this time up and over Jungle as he clung to her back.
“Stop!” he cried out, shivering and shaking.
Ruel paused. “Oh,” she sighed. “You must be on my back.”
“Y—Yes,” Jungle stammered out.
“She’s scary,” Cap mumbled. “And making me dizzy.”
“I know.”
Ruel sat still, breathing even again. “It’s been so long since I heard a voice,” she sighed. Her back arched forward. “Are you here to talk to me?”
“Yes,” Jungle said.
Ruel bowed her head forward. “You’d better get up here, then.”
#
It took over five hundred hops. Jungle counted every single one. Having the stalk to carry didn’t help, but it made Jungle feel a sense of pride, a sense of belonging as he carried it.
On the way up, they passed some mushrooms, but they were tiny and no more than early spores. The ecosystem here had yet to grow.
Cap also blabbered the whole way, gloating over being right that Ruel would talk to them. Jungle said nothing until he’d reached the twin peaks that were Ruel’s eyes. He paused there at the tip of her head and tried to breathe.
Jungle knew he should have rested sooner.
Ruel sat up again once Jungle was secure on her head, but her moving still made him think he was going to tumble down her back and into the water. Jungle trembled until Ruel was still again.
“So,” said the exiled frog. “You came to talk to me. How wonderful. I haven’t had anyone in so long.”
Jungle looked up at the darkness over him. “We came to ask about the sun,” he said. “Other frogs say you’ve seen it.”
“Fungi too!” Cap insisted.
“And fungi,” Jungle added.
“Hmmmmm,” Ruel’s throat expanded with the sound. She sank down a little. “Yes, I’ve seen the sun. It was brilliant. I thought my very eyes might burn out of their little sockets.”
Jungle wasn’t sure that qualified for brilliant. Gory, perhaps.
“Do you…know where to find it?” Jungle chanced to ask.
Ruel’s head lifted a bit. He heard a smile in her throaty voice. “Of course, it’s right there.”
Ruel’s head turned left. Jungle stared at nothing.
“Where?” he asked.
Ruel sighed. “The sun used to shine right through there. But one day it vanished. An old theologian said something might be blocking it. A punishment for the sins of the frogs.”
Jungle lowered his head. The sins of the frogs wasn’t a new one to him. No one knew what they were, but everyone assumed the frogs had once done something horrible. And for it, the sun vanished. Maybe Cap was right, and the world was ending.
“The sun was owned by the fungi,” Cap interrupted. “It wasn’t some frog sin. Someone stole it. We’re taking it back!”
“Anyway,” Ruel went on, not heeding them. “I saw the sun as a tadpole, and when it vanished, my whole pod was in uproar. So they sent me and some others, you might find their mountains now. We climbed up here and found—”
Jungle held his breath.
“—stone,” Ruel said. “Just stone. No sun, only cold hard rocks.” She lifted her nose. “That’s why I sit here now. I always wondered if maybe there was some way through, to the other side. But I’m far too big now.”
Jungle crouched and frowned. “Are you…sure?”
Some frogs’ brains could grow addled with years. Maybe Ruel’s fungi had melted part of her brain.
“Sure as I am of my own name,” Rule said firmly. “See for yourself! Hop up on my eye. Reach out.”
Hesitant, Jungle hopped toward one of the peaks of her eyes and climbed it carefully. Reaching out, Jungle pressed one hand out in the blackness.
Jungle’s sticky fingers found exactly what Ruel described. Rock, harder than even the ground on a mountain. There were rocks rumored to be in the misty lake too, but Jungle found the substance strange against his fingertips. It was cold and smooth, but it did not give or move when he pressed on it. It felt lodged, like he sometimes was between his brother and sister frogs when sleeping.
Jungle hopped down. “It’s there,” he said.
“We have to move it!” Cap’s tendrils tightened and loosened and practically vibrated. “Please, please, Jungle!”
“You couldn’t move it,” Jungle said to Ruel. “Why?”
“It only slipped and slid on our fingers, “ Ruel said.
Jungle looked at the stalk Ina had given him. Hands might not be any good, but what about something stiffer? Like the stalk?
“What are you thinking?” Cap asked. “What I’m thinking?”
Jungle didn’t know what Cap was thinking unless the fungus told him.
“I’ll tell you.” Cap inhaled. “We need to use the stalk on the stones. Like…a spear!”
They were thinking the same. Jungle nodded. “Ruel, may I sit on your eye?”
“Don’t damage it.”
Jungle hopped up onto her eye. He lifted the stalk and struck it at the stone. Dust fell. Jungle fought the urge to sneeze and struck the stone again. Something moved.
“Again!” Cap cried.
Jungle swung and something cracked. More dust fell. A thin shower of yellow slipped through. Jungle stared at it. Ruel blinked her other eye and moved.
“Child, that yellow ray. Is that—”
“Sun!” Cap practically yelled. “Jungle, again, again!”
Jungle felt the infectious fervor and began to ram at the rocks with the stalk. More of them cracked and moved until finally a chunk fell out. Ruel recoiled as stones fell from the sky and tumbled down. They crashed and splashed into the water below. Jungles fingers scrabbled for grip as Ruel moved.
The dust and Ruel settled. Jungle slid down her eye. He looked up, blinded.
“It’s warm.” Cap shivered under the rays.
“The sun,” Ruel breathed.
In a few blinks, Jungle could look out. The burning ball in the sky was indeed warm, and bright. It was also brilliant.
Jungle dropped his stalk. “We did it.”
“Quick!” Cap urged. “Grab it so I can take it home!”
Jungle was too busy looking around the sky beyond the sun, and at the ground under his feet. His eyes had adjusted for so long that now they hurt in the glare, but he also could see so much more.
And yet, when he looked up, he saw no frogs in the sky. No floating mountains. Where were the celestials?
“Jungle!” Cap’s voice slammed into Jungle’s thoughts. “I want to hold the sun!”
Jungle blinked. He stretched out both front legs and tried to reach the blazing orb with his webbed fingers. His eyes closed the closer he reached.
His grasp fell short. The sun was too far away.
“I can’t,” Jungle said. “I can’t touch the sun!”
In a rumble, Ruel laughed. “Oh children,” she said. “No, you can’t touch the sun. It’s much too far away.”
“But what about the celestial frogs?” Jungle hopped down and onto the top of her head, looking down desperately.
Ruel shook her great head. “Who knows,” she said. “Perhaps they too are further away than we can reach.”
Jungle flatted on the top of Ruel’s head. He felt Cap too, flat against his back. They hadn’t found anything at all.
Ruel’s knobby back bristled. “It is good to be warm again,” she sighed. Her great body heaved and swelled.
Jungle looked up, his eyes half lidded in dejection.
Ruel turned her whole face to the sun. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve gone where not even I could.”
Jungle looked up. He squinted at the white light. It did feel nice. He wanted to lay here and rest his weary body until he’d soaked up all the sun’s warmth. Maybe Ruel was right. They hadn’t caught the sun, but the sun had found them. If anyone were to hold the sun, they might hide it away again and keep it for themselves.
Maybe it was better that the sun lay out of reach.
“Cap?” Jungle asked and closed his eyes. “We didn’t catch the sun. But do you still think the world is ending?”
Cap’s fibers shivered, renewed with energy and certainty. “Nope.”