Merlin looked down. His pocket was moving and the outline of the frog was clear. There was no use denying there was a frog in his pocket. He finally released Arthur from his prison but kept a firm hold on him. "Gaius wanted me to pick up a frog."
Gwen's eyebrows were furrowed, trying to make sense of his answer.
"You see he uses the urine of a frog to make—"
Gwen held up a hand, "Stop right there, I don't want to hear anymore. I'll never want to take another cure from Gaius again if I hear the rest of that sentence."
Grossing Gwen out would keep her from thinking too much of the frog or so Merlin hoped. He hurried on before Gwen had time to find fault in his answer.
"You're back." Gaius was still up and mildly surprised at seeing a frog in Merlin's hands. "Do you have time to take care of a pet?"
"It's not a pet. It's our fearless leader, who wasn't afraid of a witch when he should have been. I wasn't with Arthur when it happened and I have no idea how to undo it. I haven't even seen the woman that did it."
Gaius' mouth dropped and he squinted his eyes trying to see some resemblance of the king in the frog.
"Do you have something I can lock him up in?" Merlin asked.
Gaius still looked a little shocked by the news. "Is it wise to lock up the king?"
"He thinks he's a frog. It's for his own good, but I really hope he won't remember any of this."
"In that case, I do have a small cage somewhere in the back. I'll see if I can discover how to reverse the spell while you look for it."
Gaius began looking through his books and Merlin began taking care of Arthur the frog. Merlin found the cage and put a bowl of water in with Arthur. Thinking he might be hungry, Merlin began hunting around the room for flies. "You know you would think he'd be easier to take care of as a frog, but he's not. I still have the same duties I always did fixing his bedding, fetching his food. At least, there's no polishing of armor and I must say the silence is refreshing, but I do kind of miss the old Arthur."
"You'll be missing your head if we don't turn him back."
"Thanks for the reminder," Merlin said dryly. "Have you found anything?"
"As a matter of fact I have."
Merlin was astounded. What information didn't Gaius have in his books?
"It says here that the only way to break the frog spell for a prince or king is for a princess or queen to kiss the frog."
"Are you sure?" Merlin couldn't help but question the logic of such an absurd rule.
Gaius held up the book. "It could be a complete fairy tale. You never know about these things. They don't happen often enough to record any accurate data."
"Well, it shouldn't be a problem. I'll just tell Gwen what happened and she'll kiss him. Problem solved."
Gaius shook his head, "No, it seems there's another rule that stipulates that the princess or queen can't know she's kissing a prince or king and breaking a spell. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish it."
"This is going to be tricky," Merlin said, bending down to look at the bug-eyed king. "He's not much to look at and Gwen doesn't strike me as the type of girl that goes around kissing reptiles and amphibians."