A mouse fell in love with a frog. It had never seen a frog before and was amazed by how the creature moved. The frog didn’t scamper and scurry, the way mice did, it hopped and jumped, and when it sprang clear of the long grass, it almost seemed to fly.

Unable to take its eyes off the creature, the mouse began to follow it across the field. The frog soon noticed, of course, and turned to greet its new companion. But the mouse gasped and ran away and hid. “Come back, silly one,” the frog called. “No need to be afraid.”

“I’ve a long way to go and it would be nice to have some company,” the frog explained. “Oh, but where are you going?” the mouse enquired, peeping from its hiding place. “To my winter pond,” replied the frog, as it set off again. “You’d like it there, it’s quiet and restful.”

The mouse was thrilled at the invitation. It scampered alongside the frog and, after a while, it summoned the courage to declare itself. “I like the way you move,” it whispered. “I like the way you move too,” the frog replied. “So gentle, and nervous, and so quick to run away.”

The mouse almost jumped—frog-like—for joy. “Yes!” it cried. “Yes!” Then it began to dart back and forth around the frog, while the frog, for its part, began to gambol and skip around the mouse. “Do you mean it?” the mouse asked. “Of course, I mean it,” the frog confirmed.

The pair might have danced like this for the rest of the day had a shadow—in the form of a kestrel’s wings—not passed over the field. In an instant, the mouse had found the safety of the hedgerow. Only then, as its heart pit-a-pattered in its tiny chest, did it think of the frog.

When the danger had passed, the mouse rushed to search for its friend. “Where are you?” it called. “Where are you? What have I done?” It knew the kestrel had not struck, but feared the frog had fled and they would not find each other again. The mouse began to sob.

But the frog had sheltered under a rock and when it heard the mouse’s lament, it came forward. “Don’t cry, little one. Here I am,” it said. “Oh, I thought you were dead,” the mouse sighed. “I’m so sorry I left you. I was selfish. I won’t do it again,” it gushed.

“But you will do it again. It’s in your nature. You run away,” the frog observed. This was hard for the mouse to deny. “But I always come back,” it replied. “Ha! It would be better if you never left,” said the frog, half-joking. “Wait there,” the mouse exclaimed, then ran off.

The mouse came back with some grapes from the vineyard and a long thread of twine. “We can tie ourselves together with this,” it suggested. “I don’t want to be separated again.” The frog sucked thoughtfully on a grape. “It could work,” it said. “It would show we were committed.”

They found it uncomfortable, at first, traveling with the twine fastened around their waists. But they learned to move in tandem—the frog hopping, the mouse scampering—as if limbs of the same body, and when the twine got tangled, they laughed, sorted it out, and moved on again.

But when they reached the pond, the mouse saw the water and began to panic. “I can’t go in there,” it said. “I can’t swim.” “Just follow me,” the frog replied. “You’ll soon pick it up. I won’t let you run away again.” And it leapt into the water, taking the mouse with it.

The frog sighed with relief as its lithe muscles responded to their natural environment. It forgot about the mouse—until the mouse started to splutter and choke. The frog got angry. The mouse wasn’t doing what it was told. “Relax,” it said. “Don’t fight it. Just do what I do.”

Eventually, the mouse seemed to calm down and the frog decided to push further into the depths of the pond. “It’s nice and cosy and safe down there,” it called to its companion. “You like it.” But the mouse was dead and did not reply.

It was only when the frog reached the silt and the sludge at the bottom did it realise its friend was dead. “Oh, my silly little one,” it said. “Why didn’t you do what I asked? Why did you struggle? Why did you try to run away? Our journey was almost at an end.”

Slowly, the corpse of the mouse began to decay. Its bloated insides lifted it towards the surface, taking the frog along with it. But the frog did not want to return to the surface and started to tear furiously at the knotted twine that attached it to its dead companion.

The frog’s efforts made the corpse twitch and jerk on the surface of the pond and the movement caught the eye of a passing bird of prey, a kestrel, as it happens. The kestrel seized the mouse and carried it to its nest, with the frog swinging helplessly beneath it.

“What have you done?” the frog lamented, as it sailed through the air to its death. “What have you done? Why did you struggle? Our journey was almost at an end.”

© Richard Parkin 2021

further reading: misadventures in the land of fables #6