I REALLY didn't want to put the "Next" at the end last time, just leave it as is. Creepy and all.

Aren't I silly?

-M.R.

VII. FREEDOM TAKES GREEN

Naveen HAD BEGUN TO FEEL THAT he was making a habit of waking up disoriented in strange places. He was extremely woozy, and would really have rather liked to throw up.

Nonetheless, he tried to rise to his feet, promptly tripped over them, and fell onto his side again. "Ugghhh…"

Even without speaking, his tongue felt misshapen, sticky. In fact, Naveen felt as he had upon waking on the ship bound for New Orleans, in the throes of a massive hangover. But this time, he hadn't even been drinking.

Or had he? Naveen ran his fuzzy tongue over the roof of his mouth as he assessed the situation. His head ached; in fact all of him ached—he felt as though his bones had all been dislocated and then set back in place; his tongue, eyes, and limbs simply felt wrong somehow; and to top it all off, Naveen had just come to the disturbing realization that he was naked.

"Faldi faldonza…" he mumbled. He couldn't remember a thing. How much had he drunk, and with whom? How had he ended up lying on his side, in pitch darkness, stark naked? (And why, for that matter, had it taken so long for him to notice that?) Had he been robbed?

"Laurence…?"

No answer.

Opium. A click in his brain. Something about opium.

Naveen mentally uttered a word which the author hesitates to record, even in the original Maldonian.

If he had also been drinking heavily—which years of experience told him was probably the case—then it was no wonder he had a big hole, a critical lapse, in his memory. He didn't even know where he was, but that, at least, he could maybe figure out: Judging from the sliminess of the ground beneath him, the darkness, and the faint strains of music he could hear, Naveen must be lying where someone had tossed him, wine-sodden, behind a bar or tavern. Naked, of course. How humiliating. Hopefully none of this had happened before this deep darkness fell (did New Orleans always have such dark nights? Hadn't he seen wrought-iron lampposts everywhere?). if anyone had seen and recognized him, how on earth would he explain to Mr. La Bouff?

"Faldi faldonza!" Naveen swore again. Between the faint music and the thought of Mr. la Bouff, Naveen realized he was missing the masquerade ball. He would have some degree of explaining to do to his kind host, whether Naveen had been seen carousing or not. "Stupid, stupid, stupid—"

Suddenly a crack of light appeared at Naveen's eye level (he was still lying on the floor). Naveen scrambled up onto his haunches (a feat which did little for his aching body), thinking hard. What with the headache Naveen could feel beginning, his brain was as strained as if it were his eyes, being used to peer through the—no longer complete, at least—blackness. Obviously, this light had appeared under a door, and Naveen must bang on the door and demand help, hoping his nakedness didn't tell against him. Where, oh, where was that fool Laurence when Naveen really needed him?!

Several things happened at once. Naveen sprang forward from his crouching position. Barely had he time to wonder why he had moved in such a fashion before the top of his head—and his face—slammed into…what?

"Arghhhhhhhh…"

Flat on his back, seeing stars, Naveen not only realized there was a low ceiling above him, but could feel against his feet a cool smoothness. Glass? Yes; that would explain why he hadn't seen the wall in front of him; there was a window there. Huh. So he wasn't outside, after all. Then where…?

Naveen slammed his fist against the floor in frustration, hard, like a toddler having a tantrum.

And the door opened.

Naveen yelped in surprise. Laurence's face was looming towards him. Not only was it much, much bigger than usual, but the expression on the butler's face was, though unmenacing, not one Naveen liked the look of at all. If it weren't for the pounding aches everywhere, Naveen would have been quite sure he was dreaming.

"Laurence! Help!" said Naveen, scrambling to his feet (and hitting his head on the ceiling again). He let out another yelp as he looked around him, clutching his poor head, and blinking in the light.

"He'll b-be q-q-quite secure in h-here, Doc-Doctor F-Facilier," stuttered Laurence.

"He had better be. For your sake, of course."

Doctor Facilier!

Naveen had heard that smooth-talking voice before, as well as the name of the man to whom it belonged, and instinctively recoiled from it; he never wanted to hear it again. "Laurence!" he cried again, because what he had seen, if appearances were to be believed, was that he, Naveen, was much smaller than he was used to, was shrunk. And was in a jar. Which was in some sort of cupboard.

"Now let's get going," ordered Doctor Facilier. "We're already late. And that's tacky. Put that amulet on."

Laurence, clearly taking his prince's vain mouthings for lack of oxygen, picked up the jar, loosed the lid almost halfway, and set it back in the cupboard. However, he looked at Naveen himself as though he didn't really see him. He let the cupboard door fall closed with a bang; fortunately for Naveen, it ricocheted open just an inch or so, leaving the cupboard dimly lit.

The lights dimmed, but did not go out. Naveen heard footfalls, and then silence, which was a relief, as hardly any of the conversation had made sense to him.

Naveen could feel panic rising in his chest like nausea (a comparison he could make quite accurately, given the sickness he felt even at that moment), and questions circled in his head like vultures waiting to strike. What had Doctor Facilier done to him? Why? And how the hell was Naveen going to extract Laurence from the witch doctor's clutches if he, Naveen, was small enough to be held captive in a jam jar?! He should have, oh, he should have listened to Mr. La Bouff—

Naveen stopped before he could go any further, knuckling his fists into his closed eyes in an attempt to concentrate, and swallowing hard. He would worry about all of this momentarily. The first order of business was to get out of the jar.

Naveen considered his options, settling back down on his haunches: which was surprisingly comfortable. The most effective way for him to escape his prison would be to push the jar over the edge of the cupboard—but even were he to survive the drop to the floor…Naveen winced. While the jar would be effectively shattered, he didn't fancy picking glass shards out of his skin.

His best bet was to somehow remove the lid, and then, also somehow, hop out. Naveen placed both hands on the underside of the jar lid.

And realized that more had gone wrong than he'd previously thought.

The light was dim, and Naveen was still dizzy, but his hands were, he thought, funny-looking. He wiggled then experimentally, and found that he could not feel his thumbs. His hands were also, he discovered, slightly stuck to the lid of the jar. Close to panicking, Naveen wiggled his fingers again, grunting a little with the exertion of trying to prove himself crazy—but when he opened his mouth, his tongue flew out and stuck to the ceiling, too.

"Hunh?" he said aloud, as best as he could with his tongue stuck. "Muh has ah gaweeh?"

A double take proved him right: Naveen's hands were, as he had just asked himself, green. They were also three-fingered, and webbed in between the fingers. And—

Green.

What had Doctor Facilier said? Naveen was beginning to remember, but he was horrified. You wanna be free, hop from place to place…Naveen had thought, in passing, that "hop" was a strange word to use…but freedom takes GREEN.

"Nuh…" A dawning suspicion had begun to grow in Naveen's mind.

It's the green, it's the green, it's the green you need—and when I looked into your future, it's the green that I seen.

"NUH!" Naveen thrashed around in the jar. He had a dawning suspicion that his first dawning suspicion was nothing but fact. What else had Facilier said?

Transformation Central…

The jar toppled over, and the lid popped off, sending Naveen skittering across the wooden boards and out of the cupboard, into a richly-furnished room. Naveen should have been relieved to be free, but terrified as he was, he shivered violently, and scrambled towards the warmth of the fireplace.

Can you feel it?

A slight movement behind Naveen startled him. He whirled, cowering, thinking his yells and clumsiness had alerted someone. Hopefully not Facilier…

You're changing, you're changing, you're changing, all right—

And now Naveen screamed, truly and loudly. What he saw, stretching out before him, was his shadow.

The shadow of a frog.

Naveen ran—no, hopped!—for his life; as though he could outrun the shadow or what it meant. A window opened into the night and Naveen sped through it almost reflexively. He retched as he ran, although his stomach was empty.

Next: DE FRAGEE PRUTO, in which Naveen stops panicking, somewhat.