“She might have got you here but she ain’t shown you how to use it,” a voice says near my feet.
About the same time as I look down, I also notice the smell of rotting meat. I’m surprised there aren’t more flies around here. Specifically, I’m surprised that there aren’t more flies around the cloaked frog that’s looking up at me. It doesn’t look particularly healthy, being kind of swollen and brown-grey with flesh falling off it and green pus. It puts me in mind of the giant. It even sounds like her, only quieter.
“Did you get the feather?” it asks.
I hold out the eagle feather in my hand.
“That did not come from a fish,” it says.
I protest. “It did! There was an eagle and it attacked a salmon and tried to carry it off and the salmon bit the eagle and-”
The frog jumps and grabs the feather from me. It sniffs at the feather, although how it can smell anything over its own stench is beyond me, and then puts it down on the stone in the middle of the circular patio. A circular stone surrounded by rings of stone.
“It smells of the Salmon at least,” says the frog. “I also got a hint of the Big, Bad Wolf, and I really don’t want to know what you’ve been up to to get him involved in your mess.”
I pretend like the wolf wasn’t all that intimidating. “He didn’t seem all that big and bad.”
The frog gives me A Look that my mother would have been proud of. I force a shrug, as I no doubt used to do when my mother caught me out, too. I just wish I could remember it.
“Now, where do you want to go again?” the frog asks.
“Home, I guess.” Not that I have any idea where that is. I just know it’s not here and not like this.
The frog gives a curt nod. “Close your eyes and try to picture it.”
I close my eyes and ignore the rest of the instruction.
“Why am I here, anyway?” I ask, suddenly realising I have no clue how I got here.
Well, aside from travelling via the restaurant and the salmon pond, but I’m not entirely sure they count as explanations as I was there doing tasks.
“It’s entirely too late for deep and meaningful philosophical conversations,” the frog said grimly. “Let’s just get you gone and then we can get back to normal.”
I giggled. I didn’t mean to but this place is so far from normal it’s a fever dream.
“That doesn’t help,” says the frog. “Aaaaaand there we are. You can open your eyes now.”