The Frog Prince, or Iron Henry
In the garden was the princess, playing with a yellow ball. It was meant for juggling but she had only the one, so she played by throwing the ball up in the air and catching it, wondering whether it is more tranquil to make things up as you go along or to have the story laid out for you and merely tell it...as her thoughts wandered along such paths, the ball fell into the well with a splash.
For a time, she was ready to cry. There was no way she could reach the water at the bottom of the well, and the ball was heavy. What if it had sunk? The old well had a bucket, but the rope was frayed and the bucket cracked. Still, she did not despair. She’d try what she could to get the ball back.
The princess threw the bucket down the well, holding the rope, not trusting the old crank and winch. She hauled it back up after a moment and found nothing, just a few droplets of water running through. She tried again, and there was only a bit of moss, a tuft of green like a sponge. Down went the bucket once more.
All this time, as the girl fished for her ball, the birds in the trees were singing, and a frog was croaking somewhere nearby. Presently, she realized the croaking was echoing from the well, and it was getting louder. As the girl drew the bucket up this time, she found not only the frog, but her ball.
The beloved heirloom was shiny and wet, but no worse for its fall into the well. The frog, too, shone damply and looked rather smug. With a croak he accepted the girl’s thanks, and she tucked the ball into a pocket, turning to go, only to find the frog’s eyes watching her expectantly.
She had already thanked the frog. What more could he want? And it wasn’t as though he’d actually helped rescue the ball, was it? She could imagine him pushing the ball up with his great green snout and plopping it into the bucket for her, then settling in beside it as the bucket rose from the dark depths, the light and birdsong getting clearer and brighter, and seeing her own face beaming with happy surprise...Surely that was absurd. But if she were the frog, the princess imagined she would have been in love at first sight just the same.
It must be said, the girl thought herself very beautiful, and so she was, in that moment. Her hair was shining, her face flushed, her eyes wide with relief and wonder.
Rather than taking the frog back home with her, she promised to come back later and spruce up the old well where he lived. Much as the frog would rather go along with her, this was something, knowing should be back to visit. She never intended to return in person, though. She would send one of her handmaids to the carpenter or the mason, and they could do the repairs in the frog’s little home.
Even this, though, was soon forgotten, for the girl heard that a circus wagon had arrived in town. All thought of her promise was driven at once from her mind. And to be fair, not much thought had been given to it in the first place. The girl would remember only much later, when she felt the ball in her pocket, slightly damp, and then it was only with a twinge of regret.
By then they were already on their way to town to see the circus: the girl and her father, with their servants in attendance. All of them were excited to see the show, but none of them as much as Iron Henry. In middle age now, he had served the little girl’s father since they were boys, and since the birth of the princes, he had looked after the daughter, taking her on walks in the woods and teaching her games. It was Iron Henry’s yellow juggling ball she was playing with that morning when she found the frog and made her thoughtless promise.
In fact, little did she know, but for many years her father and Iron Henry had been training and planning to run away to join the circus. They swung on trapezes across the river, they rode on horses and bulls through the pasture. They tossed axes and knives into apples and pineapples above one another’s head, and naturally they became expert jugglers. Yet for all their hard work, Iron Henry and his master never had gone to join the circus. So it was with great delight, but with a secret sorrow, too, that they found front row seats whenever the circus came to town.
As for Iron Henry’s name, the girl’s curiosity was never satisfied. Why was he called that? Many times she asked him, and he always told her a different story, but never anything that convinced her. “It’s for the gray hairs you’ve given me,” he’d say, or, “Because of the iron toes in my boots,” or even, “there’s iron bands around my heart, to keep it from breaking--but that was before you were born, don’t you worry about that.”
Now, as their wagon creaked along through the town gate, the girl and Iron Henry tossed the yellow ball back and forth, and she asked him again about his name. “Why, Henry’s a name fit for a king!” he was saying with a smile, “and there’s more than one King Henry to prove it. Why shouldn’t it be good enough for me, even if it is Iron and not gold on the likes of me?”
The girl pouted and threw the ball harder than she meant to, but somehow Iron Henry always caught it, no matter how fast or unexpected her toss.
She looked around at all the splendid decorations as they arrived in the main square. All the townspeople had hung out flags and pennants, and there were fresh flowers in the windows of all the shops. The fountain at the center of the plaza had been covered in flower petals, and behind it they’d raised the jolly circus tent, strewn with glittering beads and patterned in red and white diamonds. The way in was open, a patch of black like the mouth of a whale, and lights winked inside as people took their places around the ring, which was still pitch black.
Suddenly, whether it was the water of the fountain or the echoey sound of the crowd or that black mouth of the tent, or her own feeling of responsibility at last, something reminded the girl of her meeting with the frog who saved her ball from the well, and how she had promised to do something about his ramshackle house all neglected there in the clearing of the woods that edged the garden.
The princess turned to tell Iron Henry, but he was gone.
All alone and at a loss for what to do, she felt the reassuring weight of the ball in her pocket. The princess took it out and looked at it. A moment before the dark had been impenetrable, the same as looking into the bottom of the well, but holding the yellow ball, a dull gold in the gloom, she now began to be able to make out the shapes of things around her.
The burghers of the town were settling themselves like happy hens and contented house cats on their more comfortable seats near the ringside, while the common rabble jostled and stood as tall as they could in order to peer over the heads of their neighbors on the benches raised precariously all around the ring. Near where the princess stood, lost and gathering herself by the entryway, people queued haphazardly at the counter of the bar-and-grill erected on the spot by a few of the crafty circus people. Smells of melting cheese and foaming ale wafted out amid the clatter of frying pans and shouted orders.
Cutting through this purposeful clamor and the aimless hubbub of the crowd came a ragged fanfare. It made up in sheer volume for its wrong notes and off-kilter tempo, and after a moment the princess made out the glint of trumpets and tubas across the dark expanse of the ring: the source of the dubious music, the town band, had begun to oompa and shrill its way in earnest through a traditional polka. By and by a few candles were brought out for the musicians to see the bandleader better, but if their playing improved, it was not very noticeable.
Still, the audience cheered for their giving them something to focus on, a place for their attention to occupy. A few people even began to dance.
Somewhere, the princess knew, the king her father and dear Iron Henry must be looking for her. They must be so worried! And for some reason, she thought again of the poor frog, all alone in his well: as alone without her as she was without them.
She held the ball up, hoping that its color might make her more visible in the crowd. But even standing on tiptoe and reaching as high as she could, the princess hardly could have been seen any more than she could see past the townsfolk pressing around her. More and more of them were hurrying to take their places, or to haggle over food and drink, or to pick a careless pocket, or to whirl about their dance partner without another thought.
The idea came to her to throw the ball up into the air. Surely it would catch Iron Henry’s eye then, wherever he was. And if he didn’t come to her side in the blink of an eye and catch the ball before it hit the ground, she’d be very shocked indeed. With a little shiver, though, she held back from her toss at the last moment. She was thinking of the frog who had saved the ball just that morning from being lost forever at the bottom of the cold dark well, and here she was about to cast it away. How could she be so reckless? She must tell Iron Henry at once, go back at once and repair the well as she’d promised. But how could she find him?
All this time, the princess had ben jostled and squished gradually farther and farther from the chaos by the entrance, where at least there had been the glare of the barbeques and little intermittent gleams of daylight from the curtained way in, and as the wild dancers weaved around her, she found herself moving towards the circus ring.
In a flash like lightning, only it was in her head, she caught a cuff on the ear from a particularly freewheeling girl not much older than herself, herself propelled by the overzealous dance partner of her heart or of the hour. So that her outflung hand slapped the princess across the face, and the princess’ own hand, outstretched before her, lost hold of the ball.
When she recovered a little, she saw it: high above, pirouetting through the air. Pinging off of high dives and bounding along trapeze bars, the ball, it seemed, might never come down, until in a long graceful arc it swooped to the ground, rolling to a stop right in the center of the ring.
She hurled herself forward, swimming through the press and dodging dancers, but as soon as it stopped moving, the ball was all but impossible to see in the center where no light reached. She kept her eye on the place it must be, though, and pushed towards it with all her might.
Here and there in the crowd some people must have caught a glimpse of a bright something tracing its path overhead as they happened to be looking around the tent, tapping their feet to the music. The band members saw it fall, and the waltz they had been playing came to a discombobulated halt. People were pointing and shushing their neighbors, bidding them look at what no one could quite see. A hush fell over the tent where before had been all kinds of sounds. Dancers bumped into one another and held their partners still, holding their breath, as everyone thought it was the circus show starting at last after their makeshift entertainment.
In the stillness it was suddenly much easier for the princess to grope her way forward, and she realized with a start that she’d slipped past not just the farthest-forward partakers in the dance but beyond the front row seats. She ducked under the rope ringing the empty space for the act.
In the silence, just one sound could be heard clearly, though it had been there all along--the burble of the fountain outside, a sound like sunlight in the darkness.
In the open space the girl stumbled forward, the vision of water trickling down in daylight all she could see, though it was only in her mind, of course. She pictured a neatly repaired awning over the well, with a neatly wound rope about a neatly oiled winch. Somehow the fallen stones of the coping were cleared of moss and remounted in their places, though she had hardly been able to lift them just that morning. And a brightly varnished bucket, brimming with water that trickled over the sides, was hanging neatly over the well where the water ran splashing cheerfully in the depths. And peering over the edge, green as soft moss and with a lily flower tucked under one side of his chin like a fiddle for her, she saw her frog.
So reaching for the juggling ball the princess’ hand met another hand reaching out in the darkness, too. Astonished, she felt something cold and slimy in her palm, even as that warm and rough and familiar palm closed over hers. In her hand, whether summoned by the promise she’d envisioned so fully kept or swimming there through hidden watercourses underground that linked well and fountain, (or brought by some resolve of his own, secretly stowed about her own person), she saw she held the frog. And there before her knelt the loyal servant, Iron Henry, releasing her hand and picking up the yellow ball. A spotlight shone on them, which her father had persuaded the circus master to turn on after they’d split up to look for her. All this happened in a moment.
And in that same moment or a split second after, a tiny fragment of time, all the princess’ old revulsion washed over her again, and she flung the frog away from her, only to see her guardian react as quick as ever, catching the poor creature as gently as he could, as if by instinct. To do so, he’d had to let go of the yellow ball, which neither of them noticed.
For in that same instant, as it rolled underfoot forgotten, the princess leapt forward to keep Iron Henry from falling, bowled over as he was by the sudden transformation that took place as soon as the princess-flung frog struck him. It was a frog no more that he held, but a handsome prince.
And whether it was the princess who caused it, or Iron Henry himself--for fairies and their magics can’t stand anything that’s iron--the spell that had been laid on the young man was broken at last. He and the princess fell in love at once, and Iron Henry’s heavy heart nearly burst with joy. He’d found his lost child and become the star of the circus, just as he’d always dreamed.
As for the king, he gave his consent twice over: both his daughter to be married, and his oldest friend to take a well-deserved vacation. At his leisure, Iron Henry would go performing with the circus at all the towns where it stopped that holiday season in the land celebrating the royal wedding. And the princess and her prince with their own hands repaired the well, from which you can draw water to this day, and lived happily ever after.
- A retelling after the Grimms, after Pullman, and before looking into Barfield's
