Opposites Attract

Opposites attract, they say, don’t they? Well, you couldn’t get much more opposite than Frances and Frederick.

Frances – or Franny, as her friends and family called her – was a quiet young thing. Her parents tried to get her to be more outgoing, but nope – that was her way. And because she was quiet and kept to herself, she missed lots of chances to enter into relationships; all the available eligible bachelors around about found partners that were much easier to engage with than her.

If the truth be told, though, it wasn’t simply a case of Franny being a shrinking violet. The fact was that she just couldn’t see the attraction in the boys that might be suitors. And so she moped around, smelling the flowers and missing out on the thrills that youth can usually offer.

Enter Frederick. Franny saw him one morning, hanging around near her home. If she’d asked anyone, they’d have told him he was ugly, grotesque even, and certainly not for her. She knew differently because of a thing called ‘chemistry’ – and who can explain how that works in the complex business of love?

Franny didn’t try to declare herself to Frederick from the word ‘go’, concerned as she was that their differences might be a deal-breaker. So she had to be satisfied with peeking out from behind bushes to spy on him as he dipped in and out of the pond on the edge of the village, his skin glistening in the summer sunshine. The more she watched, the more she fell in love with him, especially liking his smooth movement through the water – fruit, evidently, of a natural affinity with that particular element.

Now, in another world and another time, Franny might soon have summoned up the courage to approach the object of her affection, but life in the kingdom was a little unstable. Among other things, this translated into an unreasonable level of suspicion of others, a general desire to maintain the purity of the population a logical consequence – at the expense of potential social enrichment through inter-cultural exchange.

The instability in the kingdom was simply down the lack of a king. They’d had one, and a very good king he was, but he’d fallen foul of a gypsy witch – an especially evil hag called Griselda – who had cast a particularly nefarious spell on him.

The reason for the bad feeling twixt king and witch was a moot point. Some thought that being a power-hungry harridan, she'd used the king as an example to keep everyone else in thrall to her. Others said that would have been too extreme, even for a witch as nasty as Griselda, and claimed the king had merely caught her unawares one day, startling her, and in revenge…

Whatever, the fact was that their good, beloved king had disappeared from one day to the next and no one knew where he might be. The result of his absence was clear: society was edging towards rampant immorality, if not anarchy, with the king’s positive influence forgotten and toxic ideologies gaining ground.

So Franny was reticent about getting too close to the one whose name she didn’t even know, for fear of blowback from the community and those closest to her. Then one day, the decision on approximation was taken for her.

“Hello there!” he said, making Franny jump; he’d come at her from behind while she was dozing by the pond.

Once she’d collected herself and had fought against the instinct to flee, she gave him all her attention.

“What might your name be?” he asked, smiling the sweetest smile. Franny was a good judge of character and decided immediately that however objectively repellent on the surface, this was a good soul.

But the question bamboozled her. She tried to speak but instead of words, all she could manage was a faint guttural sound.

He didn’t seem to mind and proceeded to do all the talking.

“My name is Frederick,” he said. He was lying down on his stomach in front of her now, his head cupped in his hands. His face carried all the fascination of an explorer mounting a ridge and encountering a new world beyond.

“I live over there,” he said with a tilt of his head. “I like to come here. It feels like home more than … my home.”

Franny was still stupefied, another tiny sound the only thing that escaped from her throat. Why can’t I talk to him?, she thought. Why can’t I tell him how much I–

Her musing was cut off by his continuing.

“And I like so much to watch you, ma chérie,” he whispered. Franny didn’t have a clue what he was saying but she loved the whispering as it seemed to bring him closer to her, though the space between them remained the same. “I cannot tell my folk about that because … well … I am not sure they would understand. But I feel this … this … unnatural attraction towards you. Do you know what I mean?”

If Franny could have blushed she would have – the whispering was doing all sorts of things to her.

At this point, Frederick made his excuses and bade Franny farewell, leaving her with a strange dichotomy of feelings: joy at what her heart confirmed was love, and sadness already at his absence.

Franny returned to the same spot on subsequent days, her sadness becoming increasingly deep despair that he didn’t re-appear.

When will I see him again? she asked herself. Will I ever see him again?

It wasn’t until almost a week later that she espied Frederick approaching their spot, an expression on his face that spoke of relief and determination.

“I have talked with my folk,” he said, cutting to the chase. “I told them that I was leaving, that I had found the one. They did not understand. I tried to explain that I was drawn to you, like the tides are drawn to the shore. They said I was deranged. That may be true. Perhaps I am mad – madly in love with you, that is.”

Franny was lost for words (as usual), but his tone was once again messing with her.

“And I believe … I feel … that you share my sentiments,” he was saying. “So let us consummate this mutual passion with a kiss.”

He didn’t wait for permission but moved his lips towards Franny, who was frozen by the drama of the moment.

Upon contact, something very strange happened. There was a fizzing, and a popping, and a sparkling, and a puff of smoke. When the smoke had cleared, Franny and her love were sitting side by side on the bank of the pond, both astonished by the transformation … by his transformation.

Finally, Franny could express how she felt.

“Croak!” she uttered.

“Croak croak!” he replied.

“Croakity croak croak croaky croak!” she gushed.

She recognised him immediately. With the spell broken, good King Frederick had returned. He would bring order to the mounting moral chaos that had threatened to destroy the kingdom in his absence. But that was for later. For now, the two embraced rapturously.

And all in the pond – especially Franny and Frederick – lived hoppily ever after.