Read A Prince among Frogs for Free Online

box and the door was securely fastened, Millie sat back with a sigh. “Remind me never to do that again. My great-grandmother shut wasps and bees in a crate once. I think this might have been worse.”
    “Wait, here’s another one,” Audun said, dragging a particularly stubborn manticore away from his tail, where it had been gnawing with much effort and no effect.
    Millie opened the door so he could shove the little beast inside. The noise in the box was so loud it made even the dragons wince. “Do you think that was all of them?” she said, looking around.
    Audun refastened the latch on the box. “I hope so, but there’s no way of telling, at least not tonight.”
    “We’ll have to come back in a few days and ask the villagers,” said Millie.
    “Let us outta here!” shouted a voice from inside the box.
    “We will!” Millie shouted back. “As soon as we get where we’re going.”
    “And that can’t be any too soon,” said Audun. He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. “We need to finish this and get back to the castle before dawn. I think a nasty storm is headed this way, and I don’t want to get caught in it if we can help it.”
    When they took off, Millie carried her magic carpet in her claws while Audun lugged the box. The flight north was a familiar one, although neither of them had passed that way in more than a year. The two dragons flew side by side, soaring over grasslands, forests, and a few scattered villages where only the sleepless would have seen the dragon silhouettes against the bright disk of the moon. They reached the mountains in the early hours of the morning, when the air was still and every sound seemed loud. Tall mountain peaks surrounded the valley where they landed and set down the crate. Although it was midsummer and there was grass under their feet, the air was chilly enough to turn to fog with each puff of Millie’s breath. A stream ran through the center of the valley, its water nearly as cold as the ice from which it came, but the dragons bent down to taste it and found it pure and sweet.
    Audun opened the crate, releasing the kitten-sized beasts. Once out of the crate, the manticores made such a clamor that the echo seemed to shake the mountains themselves, yet the beasts had no interest in either attacking or fleeing from the dragons. Instead they stood in a group, peering into the dark while the balls on the tips of their tails twitched in agitation.
    “What is this place?” asked one as Millie and Audun prepared to leave.
    “Somewhere that you can do anything you want without hurting anyone,” said Millie.
    “You should be fine here,” Audun added. “There are caves where you can live when the snows get deep, and you’ll find plenty of fish in the stream.”
    “And mice!” said a manticore just before it pounced on something small and furry rustling the grass.
    “Good luck!” said Millie as she and Audun took to the air.
    “They’re going to need it if they try crossing those mountains,” Audun told her. “Those peaks are higher than they look.”

    They were on their way back to Greater Greensward when Millie said, “I’ve been thinking. Why do you suppose no one saw the manticores until now? I mean, if they were descended from that one Grassina changed, why didn’t they make their presence known before this? It’s been years since Grassina was a girl and used her magic on that manticore.”
    “That’s a good question,” said Audun. “It does seem odd that they’d appear so suddenly.”
    Millie nodded. “Like that awful tree with the spines. All this would have to happen while my mother and Grassina were away!”
    “Yes,” Audun said, looking thoughtful. “It’s almost as if someone had planned it that way.”

    The storm that Audun had predicted caught up with them as they were flying south over the Bullrush River. A gentle rain pattered on their backs for a few minutes before turning into a torrent. Water pelted their faces and sluiced