“
I know this is hard to believe,” said Toadling, when he had been silent for far too long. “I know. I…I am very ugly and she will be beautiful and there is no reason that you should believe the fairy instead of the girl. The stories go the other way.” She had heard the stories that the people of the keep told each other, tales of fairies stealing children and causing mischief, souring the milk and spoiling the harvest.
After a year or two, when they had forgotten to be afraid of her, they would tell the stories without remembering that she was there.
She did not contradict them. What would she say? That a great lord of Faerie would hardly stoop to cursing a cow, that if a fairy was angry—a real one, not her weak, croaking self—they would be more likely to turn the cow into an armored beast that smashed down the walls; or curse the king with a desperate, humiliating passion for the cow, or simply blast cow, keep, and all living things around it into a fine gray dust.
“Not all the stories,” said Halim. “There is the one of the monster that comes to the knight, and when he gives her everything she asks, she turns into a beautiful lady.”
Toadling gave a hoarse laugh that turned into a toad’s croak— harr-uccc-kk! The sound startled Halim a little, she could tell. “No,” she said. “I won’t turn into a beautiful lady at the end of this. This is what I look like.”
“It’s all right,” said Halim. “This is what I look like, too. And I think that knight was a king or prince or something. Um. I’m not going to turn into one of those, either, I’m afraid. I’m well out of the line of succession.
”
”
T. Kingfisher (Thornhedge)