XI. DIPPER MOUTH BLUES
"TH-THOSE AREN'T LOGS," TIANA STAMMERED, backing up against Naveen as big yellow eyes opened in the bumps that Naveen had taken for knotholes.
The logs were, in fact, alligators. And they were all moving towards Naveen and Tiana.
Naveen wondered if they would go away if he closed his eyes. He almost tried it, but Tiana startled him, yelping as the "log" they sat on moved. Its head rose out of the water, leered at Naveen, and said in a throaty, terrifying voice, "I got dibs on the big one."
Before Naveen could do or say anything, the thrashing of the alligators as they all lunged at once and glanced off of each other, propelled Naveen into the gray water. Fortunately, a frog was a creature well-built for swimming, and Naveen sped towards the submerged bank like the Devil was after him—or Dr. Facilier, or a hungry alligator, for that matter.
"Gotcha!" Rather than being after him, another alligator moved swiftly between Naveen and the riverbank, but Naveen instinctively dived under the monster, so that by the time it resurfaced and joined the others in their argumentative search for Tiana, he was pressed up against a rotting tree stump on the bank.
Echoes of "I saw him first!", "Where'd they go?", and worst of all, "Come here, you plump, tasty morsels!" drifted across the bayou.
Naveen really hoped they hadn't eaten the waitress, or else he, a pampered prince, would be all by himself in a deserted bayou—and, as much as it pained him to admit again, incapable of anything useful here. Meanwhile, he eyed the tree speculatively, hoping its wet wood wasn't too slick for frog feet to scale. Weak with relief, he saw Tiana peering out of a hole in the trunk, encrusted with old dead vines. "Psst!" he hissed. "Lower one of the vines!"
Tiana raised an eyebrow that under much more relaxed circumstances would have made Naveen applaud. "Find your own tree!"
At this propitious moment, a flash of lightning lit Naveen against the tree and the alligators exploded again with a repeating loop of "There he is! There he is!", enlivened with "I see him! I seem him! I see him!"
"All right!" screeched Naveen, and he knew it. He really, really didn't want to turn his back on the alligators, but he begged Tiana, "Look, look, help me get out of this swamp—"
"Bayou—"
"Bayou—" he wanted to scream SHUT UP AND LET ME FINISH!, but obviously he didn't have that luxury. "—and once I marry Charlotte, I shall get you your restaurant."
Silence. Then the vine flopped onto Naveen's head, and he was hoisted up just before the biggest alligator's teeth—"Youall're gonna taste so good, basted and battered and fried!"—snapped right where he had been standing.
"Quick, quick! Pull me up!" he yelped, as the alligator clawed at the trunk.
But its being a very tall tree trunk, the alligators gave up soon, despite threats of "You can hop, but you can't hide!", which was exactly what the frogs were doing, so there, and "We got all night!"
Inside the hollow trunk, it was surprisingly warm and dry. A sense of security returned to Naveen for the first time in—well, at least eight hours—and he was able to look around at leisure for the first time, too.
Not that there was much to look at inside a dark, hollow log…except the waitress, who was sitting against the wall almost right next to him, her eyes closed.
Naveen shrugged. She had been very pretty as a human. And now she was a frog. And he was a frog. And this waitress, this Tiana, was very pretty as a frog. And he had very much enjoyed actually kissing her, if not what happened after. He shrugged again, grandiosely, this time ending up with his arm "accidentally" around her shoulders.
Tiana, who had been sitting with her eyes closed, opened them with a start. "Huh?" She tried to swivel around to look at Naveen, but his arm on her shoulders made it difficult. Which was, of course, the point.
"Well, waitress," Naveen said expansively, "looks like we're going to be here for a while. So we may as well get…" he waggled his absence of eyebrows at her, "…comfortable." He rested his other hand lightly on her thigh nearest him, and leaned in for the final coup.
The downside of this particular position was that when Tiana's foot shot out reflexively, she kicked him in…well, the worst possible place. Naveen keeled over instantly, making what could only be described as cat noises of agony.
Tiana had by now leapt over to the other side of the trunk faster than when the alligators were after them. "Keep your slimy self away from me!"
Naveen stopped making incoherent mewing noises long enough to glare at Tiana through blurry eyes and fire back, "I told you, it is not slime. It is mucus!"
.:..:..:.
Naveen must've been much more exhausted than he'd thought (which was pretty exhausted to begin with), because the next thing he knew, he awoke to weak sunlight filtering through a jagged hole above him.
The jagged hole, at least, made him remember where he was, and why, and also made this the first time in a long time that he'd woken up somewhere strange and recognized it almost instantly. The thing that was not, however, unfamiliar about waking up—for Naveen, anyways—was that a slight weight and a faint breathing seemed to rest somewhere in the region of his shoulder.
"Mmph…no, Mama…nuhgonnaplaycardswizzooo…Lotte…milkneggs…"
Naveen looked down slowly, savoring the sight of Tiana happily asleep in his arms. She was, in fact, not only no longer across the tree from him, but also slightly on top of him, and Naveen wished he had a frog-wieldable camera so he could prove to her later that this had happened.
"Donwannakissveenagain…shottatabasco…"
As it turned out, he didn't need to. After a few wickedly gleeful minutes on Naveen's part, Tiana's fingers dug slightly into his chest; her eyelids fluttered; she exhaled, opened her eyes…and looked, dumbstruck, straight into his.
"Good morning, Tiana," said Naveen.
Tiana, he could tell, was already NOT having a good morning. With a sound that was half-shriek, half-squeal, and half-gasp (Yes. Three halves. Naveen hated fractions), she shot out of his arms, smashed into the opposite wall, and slid comically down. "Was I…" she gulped. "Did I…do anything…weird?"
"Uh. Yeah. You snuggled up to me," said Naveen, crossing over to her. "And," he added, smiling into her mortified face, "you talk in your sleep. And by the way, it would not kill you to play cards with your mother once in a while."
"Who said—"
"Or to kiss me again." He smirked.
Tiana glared at him. "You snore. Gators are gone," she added quickly, leaping out of the hole.
By the time Naveen emerged into the now-bright sunlight, yawning (it was, after all, obviously at some unholy hour before noon), Tiana had crafted some kind of raft. "We gotta get back to New Orleans and undo this mess you got us into," she informed him, unfriendly now that she was awake.
"Pfuit!" responded Naveen in kind as he jumped onto the raft. He had never actually heard anyone say Pfuit before, only read it in books, but was pleased with how it came off, so much that he repeated himself. "Pfuit! I was not the one parading around in a phony-baloney tiara."
Naveen found another unexpected source of success when a twig strung with spider webs, idly plucked from a protruding bush, made an excellent frog ukulele. His frog fingers becoming swifter as they became accustomed to strumming, he settled back onto the cattail cushions, sighing contentedly as he picked one of his favorite jazz tunes. "Music to paddle by," he explained, and got so carried away that he was startled when Tiana stopped poling and cried, "I could use a little help!"
"Oh," said Naveen. "I will play a little louder," said Naveen.
Tiana rolled her eyes and went back to paddling, so Naveen shrugged and sank back again, playing louder as promised. In a very few moments Tiana was complaining again, although she had barely begun.
"How about a little less picking and a—"
Naveen opened his eyes. Tiana's had widened.
Naveen whirled around, grabbed Tiana away from the lone alligator, and they both cowered as it opened its jaws wide…and exclaimed "I know that tune! Dippermouth Blues?"
Naveen opened one eye. The alligator had now pulled a trumpet out of nowhere and was playing exactly what Naveen had been! Laughing, recognizing a kindred spirit, Naveen let go of Tiana, cried "Play it, brother!", seized his makeshift ukulele, and joined in.
When the tune ended there was immediate chaos.
"Where you been all my life?"
"Where did you learn to play like that?"
"What, on thishere Giselle of mine?" The alligator chuckled. "The bayou's the best jazz school in the world! All the greats play the riverboats. Old Louis'd give anything to be up there, jammin' with the big boys!"
Naveen could sympathize; oh, how he could sympathize. "So, why don't you?"
"Oh, I tried once. It didn't end well." Louis's face took on a grim expression.
"Uh-huh," said Tiana, coming up behind Naveen and breaking the spell. "It has been a real pleasure meeting you, uh, Louis, and thank you kindly for not eating us, but—" she tugged at Naveen's arm "—we best be on our way."
"What—where y'all goin'?" whimpered Louis sadly. Naveen made a sad face back at him, but also made gestures, grunts, and shrugs indicating that Tiana was not a force to be gainsaid.
"To find somebody to break this spell," answered Tiana offhandedly, proving his point.
Of course Louis's attention was caught. "What spell?"
"Brace yourself, my scaly friend!" proclaimed Naveen confidently—there were no heavy books in sight, and Louis was not a squeamish girl. "We are not frogs. We are humans."
Naveen later said that he didn't know which was worse, having your body or your pride squished flat; as it was, Tiana and Naveen looked expressively at each other for almost five minutes before a supine Louis poked his head over his still-chuckling belly. "Y'all serious?"
Naveen nodded. "I am Naveen: Prince of Maldonia…And she is Tiana. The waitress. Do not kiss her," he added in a whisper.
Did EVERYONE in New Orleans have preternatural hearing? Tiana's voice could be heard almost immediately. "Now just a second! I mean—not that I want to kiss anyone—"
"She has a problem with kissing people," Naveen added for Louis's benefit, although he was purposely stage-whispering this time.
"—but this goon here is the one who got himself turned into a frog by a voodoo man, and now—"
"Voodoo?" Louis shuddered. "Like the kind Mama Odie do?"
"Mama Who-dee?" repeated Naveen.
"Mama Odie. She the voodoo queen of the bayou. She got magic and spells, all kind of hoodoo."
"Could you take us to her?" said Naveen and Tiana, simultaneously.
"Owe me a soda," Tiana muttered.
"I might take you up on that," Naveen muttered back, sarcastically.
Tiana grimaced.
"Through the deepest, darkest part of the bayou? Facing razor-sharp pricker bushes and trappers and hunters with guns?" wailed Louis, who had missed the exchange. "NO."
Tiana looked discouraged, but Naveen smirked at her. "Watch and learn.
"Louis! It is too bad we cannot help you with your dream. If only you were smaller…less toothy…you could play jazz to adoring crowds without scaring them. Oh, well."
Louis, who had been playing trumpet to himself this whole time, missed a partial. Naveen pretended not to notice. "Anyway, enjoy your loneliness, my friend. Abinaza!" He walked back towards Tiana, who said, "Cute, but it's not going to…"
He held up a hand to stop her. 3…2…1…
"Hey, you guys!" Louis was suddenly close to their faces. "I just had me a crazy idea! What if I ask Mama Odie to turn me human?"
"Louis!" exclaimed Naveen loudly, for Tiana's benefit. "You are a genius!"
"Hallelujah!" agreed Louis. "This is gonna be one heck of a fun journey!"
Next: A ROYAL GUARANTEE, in which Louis wants courage, Tiana wants to go home to Kansas and her little dog too, and Naveen wants a heart and some brains.
