6. Parog's Memory

All night they had thought, sometimes silently for hours, sometimes discussing. Claes repeatedly said they should close their eyes and relax.

At first, Meogg thought he was trying to make bullfrogs sleep again, which was apparently his life’s purpose. But that wasn’t it. It helped. He was an expert at animal bodies, the process behind sleeping and resting. Meogg was happy she didn’t have to jump for a bit and kept getting distracted by the funny dreams she imagined.

And when sunrays lit up the frogs, Meogg looked at her family with wide eyes.

She jumped enthusiastically. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

“Got what? Too much energy?” said Holog. He rubbed his muscular hind legs that were still store from the previous security system he had triggered.

“Imagine you’re Cosmo. Attackers are coming for you. Attackers with four legs, big prey animals. And you’re a bird … on an island where you can’t fly.”

“Sounds inconvenient, doesn’t it?” said Claes. “Maybe he made an exception for himself.”

“But if that was so, he could have just flown away, right?”

The others nodded. “So he has to run. But those four-legged creatures would be much faster than him. So how did he stay ahead of them?”

Animals have always underestimated the gods, said the voice. But that little frog of yours might be right.

“Using the security systems.”

“But we just learned a lot of security didn’t trigger. That he had to activate them himself, so was hindered by them too.”

The Sand King turned into the animal with the best eyes he knew: the Gosti, little monkeys with eyes as big as their brains, and predecessors of the Apra. The folk that, hopefully, found this island very soon and would join their side.

“You think he had … a secret passageway?”

Meogg nodded. “And you’ll only be able to find the entrance by sound.”

And now, said the voice in his head, I want you to stop criticizing my decisions all the time! You and the bullfrogs will win this race.

“It seems plausible,” Claes mumbled. “Going in circles seems the only way, like a long spiral that slowly leads to the center. If you could go in a straight line, you’d be much faster.”

The group hopped on, though at a slower pace than before. Parog regularly stopped walking altogether, until Claes saw no other option than to carry him in his sandy hands.

All eyes and ears were directed to their right side. A wall of trees and rocks, too high to jump over, too dense to go through. Unless you had a sharp knife and buckets of patience. Somewhere, somehow, they felt there had to be a secret path to the center.

This continued, seemingly for ages, until Claes saw a landmark that he recognized. We’ve almost walked a full circle, he thought. Maybe we’re off track.

That’s when he noticed Meogg was no longer with them. He spun around in fright and saw her small shape hanging upside down from a palm tree, hundreds of meters back.

“Water!” she shouted. As Claes neared her, he heard it too. The soft babbling of a brook. A rushing that you immediately forget, that can always be in the background without noticing.

There was no brook here. They were far from the coast and hadn’t seen a drop of water in a while. Claes and Meogg placed their ears against the wall and followed it to where the sound seemed louder.

Meogg jumped on top of a protruding rock. Claes immediately recognized the three scratches again, now knowing it was Cosmo’s claw.

Here goes nothing, he thought. He took a running start at the wall and, at the last moment, turned into a massive block of sand, compressed to something tougher than granite.

The explosion pushed all the frogs backward. But the wall remained intact; only Claes lay scattered across the ground and against palm trees.

Until drops of water got involved. Tiny streams came through the wall, thanks to the small holes Claes had made. They led them to a spot several meters further, where the water was sucked back into the wall.

Meogg knocked once on the rock.

It opened a gateway.

“Slowly, slowly,” Claes said as the frogs happily leaped ahead at full speed. “We don’t know where the path goes next.”

The warning didn’t come a second too late. Around the corner, the brook already turned into a rushing river, and a few trees later it was a churning sea through a deep ravine. The bridge to the other side looked as if it had just been built and never used.

I don’t trust it, Claes thought. Even if a bridge was never used, after all those years it would be weathered and discolored.

He crawled onto the pillars holding up the bridge. These, too, were so spotless that he left the first scratches. I may be able to save myself, but the frogs will be lost if they fall.

“He never came this way,” he said. “We have to—”

“Yes he did.” Meogg pointed with her tongue at the pillars on the other side. A tuft of feathers stuck to it, roughly cut from a wing by a protruding tip. The feathers were huge and colored exactly like Cosmo’s. “This is the way.”

Do it, said the voice. Olombos is nearing. You’ve lost a lot of time already.

Claes shook his head and wanted to walk away. The voice now took over his body too and steered him onto the bridge instead. The frogs followed.

“If something goes wrong, I don’t know if I can save you.”

“Nothing will go wrong,” said Meogg, who had to push Parog along at the back of the line, otherwise he wouldn’t walk anymore.

She whispered to him. “Just a few more steps, grandpapa, and then we’ll be at the heart of the island. Oh, there’s such beautiful nature there! You’ll see, it’ll really perk you up.”

Claes carefully walked on. He was already halfway across the bridge. The water churned wildly below, but the bridge didn’t even creak under their weight. The bullfrogs stood next to him, bunched up.

“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!” Parog screamed his lungs out.

He waved wildly, hitting Meogg and knocking her to the end of the bridge. Claes ran back and tried to tie Parog’s legs with sand, but he was surprisingly strong and knocked the Sand King over the edge.

Claes saved himself with a desperate grab at the bridge, but four planks broke off, which soon after took the entire left railing with them.

“Big mistake! Great pain!”

The whole family was needed to hold Parog down, but the damage was done. The rest of the bridge collapsed, plank by plank, like dominoes that slowly tilt over, but will eventually surely fall.

Meogg stood alone on the other side.

“It’s not fair, I don’t understand, it’s not fair,” Parog whimpered.

Then he fell silent, both his voice and his body. He cried while Claes picked up the entire family and leaped back to the other side, which was far closer.

The bridge was gone, broken apart and swallowed. Separated, Meogg could only watch as her family held Parog.

“What’s not fair?” they asked. “What’s the big mistake? Where does it hurt?”

Parog didn’t respond to anything and saw ghosts again. What was a big question to him, remained an even bigger question for the rest.

Claes and Meogg looked at each other.

“Go on without us,” he shouted over the noise of the crashing water. “We’ll find another way.”

The Sand King couldn’t bear to see Parog suffer, or how his family, and even a god, had to helplessly watch. For a broken leg, you had medicine. For a broken heart, you had time.

For a broken mind there was no simple remedy, Bella had always said.

Claes and Meogg stared at each other for minutes, unable to convince themselves to walk on.

Until she shouted back: “Maybe … tell Parog a beautiful story instead.”