Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

Midnight Pumpkins by James Powell

Be prepared to be reminded of a story by Robertson Davies we published last December — but only in the fate that befalls young Count Sonderborg in this enchanting new tale by James Powell. Be prepared to feel the greatest compassion for young Count Sonderborg.

“Tell the royal nitwit to stop pestering my goddaughter,” said Donnabella through clenched teeth. “Tell him to waltz right on by if he runs into her at another ball. Tell him I’ve got bigger and better plans for her.”

“Maybe we should let the young lady decide that for herself,” answered Sonderborg sharply. He regretted his tone at once, for Donnabella’s eyes flashed fire and her wand appeared from behind her back, making runic notations on the air as it came. The light tap sent a cold, electric thrill through Sonderborg’s body.

Suddenly his shoulders slumped violently down into a terrible stoop while his knees rocketed up past his ears. Donnabella and the doorway were looming high above him now. Deep inside him, from the very depths of his soul, a small hard bubble was making its way upward toward the light and growing as it came. Though he struggled with all his might to repress it, the bubble crowded up into his mouth, bulging out his cheeks and the skin below his chin. He fought to hold it back, refusing to make the admission the bubble demanded. Suddenly he couldn’t hold out any longer.

“Rivet!” he boomed...

When Crown Prince Hugo (may his father live forever!) felt the need to strike a regal pose, he liked to ape one of the ancestral likenesses hanging in the Royal Portrait Gallery. Shutting the door on the ballroom noises, he looked left and right for eavesdroppers and lay a much-ringed finger alongside his nose in imitation of his grandfather, King Secundus II, whom history has nicknamed the Terrible Twos. It was an impersonation weakened by poor posture. Young Count Sonderborg, who was cursed with tidiness, fought the urge to grab the prince by the shoulders and straighten him as one might a crooked picture on the wall.

“An orange carriage, Sonderborg,” said Prince Hugo, resuming his story. “Footmen in green livery. A grey-whiskered coachman who shouted the team of white horses out the gate with a thick Skandahoovian accent. But in her coy, girlish flight from us, our mystery girl lost this on the palace steps.” Prince Hugo drew a glass slipper from inside his starred tunic. “Find her for us, Sonderborg. Your prince will marry no other.”

“Might I suggest the traditional kingdomwide trying on of the slipper, Your Highness?” asked Sonderborg.

Prince Hugo assumed the startled, umber-colored expression of King Guido, the Ever-Unexpecting, as the artist Clementi captured him with one leg in the royal trousers. “But if word got out she’d run away from her Crown Prince, people would say she was insane, unfit to bear royal children,” insisted the prince. “That’s why we turn to you, Sonderborg. You are discretion itself. Nor are we unaware that your family has fallen on hard times.” (Sonderborg’s grandfather had lost everything speculating in magic bean futures of the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk strain just before such things were outlawed by the Omnibus Magic Bill.) “Succeed in this task and we will make you master of one of our country estates. We had in mind Fen House. Do you know it?”

The prince’s perfectly shaped smile slipped a notch at Sonderborg’s affirmative bow. “True, the grounds could stand a dose of drainage,” the prince admitted. “But don’t forget, you’ll also have your sovereign’s gratitude when we inherit the throne.”

“May your father live forever, Your Highness,” prayed Sonderborg earnestly.

“Of course, of course,” replied Prince Hugo with considerably less enthusiasm.

Because the Crown Prince’s Ball was still in full swing, Sonderborg, who had come with friends in their carriage, decided to walk back the few miles to the city. The promise of Fen House made him anxious to begin. For years now, he had been secretly engaged to that soul of patience, the Lady Cunegunda, a plump, ever-smiling little thing with chestnut eyes. Whatever Fen House’s shortcomings, finding the mystery girl would reinscribe the Sonderborg name on the roll of the landed gentry, removing her father’s main objection to the marriage.

The count left the castle on foot, stepping out hopefully with a healthy red slice of moon riding ahead of him just above the treetops. His initial examination of the glass slipper had convinced him that it shouldn’t be too difficult to trace. It wasn’t blown glass, because there was no pontil mark which the blower’s pipe would have left behind. Nor was there a seam, which meant it hadn’t been molded. So the slipper had to have been made by magic. What else was left? And that meant he could expect help from his old college friend, Inspector Rinaldo, who headed up the Magic Squad, the department charged with keeping the kingdom safe for the free-enterprise system by tying the can on illegal magical practices. After all, free enterprise rang hollow if one guy had a genie out of a bottle working for him gratis while the next guy was paying union scale. And sound currency would be a joke if enchanted horses were allowed to sneeze doubloons or certain hens laid golden eggs, or there really existed that fabled credit card (“Don’t leave Never-Never Land without it!”) whose holders are never, never billed.

Before Sonderborg had walked far, he came upon a hollowed-out pumpkin lying by the side of the road. Smiling, he looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching and was all set to dropkick the thing into the bushes when he noticed a fat, thickly bespectacled man in light-grey tweeds sitting in a tree right above his head. To cover his embarrassment, the count asked, “Excuse me, sir, but did a young woman in an orange carriage pass by a few minutes ago?”

The man blinked. “Who?” he asked, dabbing at his lips with a red-and-white-checkered napkin. Then he hiccuped loudly and something silver flashed in the moonlight. Sonderborg stooped and picked up what, except for its very small size, appeared to be a button such as liveried footmen wear. When he looked up again, the tree was empty and the fat man was disappearing through the forest, running on silent tiptoe, his short arms outstretched and dipping now to this side, now to that, like a boy playing airplane.

Sonderborg watched him go with a thoughtful eye.

In his youth, Inspector Rinaldo’s grandfather and the grandfather’s six brothers had been changed into swans by a grudge enchantment. Their sister broke the spell by weaving each brother a coat of nettles, but unhappily failed to complete the grandfather’s right sleeve within the time prescribed. As a result, all his descendants, including Rinaldo, had a white swan’s wing where a right arm should have been. Small wonder the Inspector hated magic in all its forms.

When Sonderborg reached police headquarters; he found the corridors filled with men armed with fire axes, battering rams, and buckets of wet cement. Rinaldo explained that though the Omnibus Magic Act had outlawed wishing wells years before, certain bootleg operations still operated — mainly basement sump holes where, if you knew the password, they’d let you in to toss a coin or two and make your wish. Tonight the Magic Squad was going to close down these dens of illegality. But Rinaldo could always spare an old friend a minute.

He held the glass slipper up to the light with his good hand and said, “Fairy-godmother stuff for sure, Sondy. You know the drill. There’s this kid moping around because he can’t make the prom. Enter his fairy godmother in a shimmer of harp. One wave of the wand and, voila, his acne clears up and he’s sporting a spiffy new tux, fat cat’s-eye cufflinks, and a pair of official Fred Astaire dancing pumps. Yes, Sondy, the powers-that-be knew making fairy-god-mother stuff illegal would be like shooting Santa Claus. So they framed the law so that fairy godmothers can work their magic only if they derive no financial profit — the formal-clothes-rental people made them put that in — and provided the spell lasts no longer than midnight of the day it’s cast.”

He held the slipper up to the light again. “There must have been a manufacturing defect. This thing should have self-destructed at the stroke of twelve.” Handing back the slipper, he said, “Got to go before the cement sets, Sondy. Sounds to me there’s a fairy godmother in the woodpile somewhere.”

After midnight, when the pressure’s off, fairy godmothers picnic until dawn in a bower hung with Chinese lanterns deep in the Crabtree Forest. Sonderborg found Natalie, the one he was looking for, sitting at a picnic table apart from the others in front of a heap of potato salad, cold cuts, and pickles. An immense, broad-beamed woman with fist-sized dimples in her elbows and knuckles like elephant knees, she wore the conical hat and bo-peep skirt which has somehow become the uniform of her profession. “Good to see you again, Fairy Godmother,” he smiled.

“Fairy Godmother? The name’s a knife in my heart, Sondy,” moaned Natalie. “Better call me the Curse of the Sonderborgs. What have I done for you lately? What good’s a fairy godmother who can’t make a house call now and then?”

“Now, now, Fairy Godmother,” soothed Sonderborg, sitting down opposite her. Natalie’s crying jags were a family legend.

“I’m a bum, a lazy bum,” insisted Natalie, and punished herself by taking a huge bite from a garlic sausage. Then she brightened. “Beer all round, Masterson!” she ordered. A long-legged man wearing smoked glasses, a leather suit, and a leather cape with a scalloped hem was hanging by his knees from an overhead tree limb. He squeaked to acknowledge her order and flew off on a staggered course through the trees in the direction of the beer keg.

“Blind as a post and doesn’t hit a tree,” marveled Natalie. Then she added, “Well, Sondy, what brings you here? Natalie hopes she can help, but since the Tooth Fairy Purges we’ve all had to lie kind of low.”

The count told his story. When he was done, he produced the glass slipper and asked, “Do any of your colleagues go in for stuff like this?”

Natalie sniffed. “Only one. She was never much for style. The see-through look went out a long time ago. Anyway, we don’t see her around here much nowadays.” Sonderborg waited for a name. But Natalie looked away. “Sondy, let me tell you a story with a moral,” she said at last. “Masterson and me hadn’t been married a week when we had this little lovers’ spat and” — she nodded at her crystal wand stuck in the horseradish jar — “I changed him into a bat. Oh, it was just a love tap and he changed right back. But that’s when we knew the honeymoon was over.

“Other quarrels followed as summer follows spring, and I — well, I did it a couple more times. That’s a hell of a whack to the old metabolism, believe you me. And gradually Masterson started favoring the bat side, until finally he got to be as you see him now. So here’s the moral to my little story, Sondy: don’t mess with fairy godmothers.” She nodded at the glass slipper. “Particularly, don’t mess with that one.”

“But Crown Prince Hugo—”

“May his father live forever,” prayed Natalie.

“Wants to marry the girl,” insisted Sonderborg.

Natalie popped the heel of the garlic sausage into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds. “Come to think of it, the fairy godmother in question might just find a godchild married into the royal family a real handy thing to have,” she concluded. Sonderborg’s fairy godmother wagged him closer with a ponderous finger. The count leaned forward like someone laying his neck on the axe-man’s block. “Donnabella,” said Natalie. The “d” and “b” were garlic knockout punches. Sonderborg sagged and grabbed the bench with the back of his knees.

Donnabella, a blue-haired woman in a smart business suit, with glasses on a rhinestone chain, answered the door of her apartment on exclusive Rose Garland Street herself. She listened coldly while Sonderborg explained why he’d come. But before he’d finished, she shouted over her shoulder, “Lovey, is that you I hear in the icebox?”

“Who?” came a muffled voice from inside the apartment.

“I said no snacks between meals!” called Donnabella in a voice that snapped like a whip. She listened for a moment. Then, satisfied, she turned back to Sonderborg. “Messenger boy,” she said through clenched teeth, “tell the royal nitwit to stop pestering my goddaughter. Tell him to waltz right on by if he runs into her at another ball. Tell him I’ve got bigger and better plans for her.”

“Maybe we should let the young lady decide that for herself,” answered Sonderborg sharply. He regretted his tone at once, for Donnabella’s eyes flashed fire and her wand appeared from behind her back, making runic notations on the air as it came. The light tap sent a cold, electric thrill through Sonderborg’s body. Suddenly his shoulders slumped violently down into a terrible stoop while his knees rocketed up past his ears. Donnabella and the doorway were looming high above him now. But there was something else. Deep inside him, from the very depths of his soul, a small hard bubble was making its way upward toward the light and growing as it came. Though Sonderborg struggled with all his might to repress it, the bubble crowded up into his mouth, bulging out his cheeks and the skin below his chin. He fought to hold it back, refusing to make the admission the bubble demanded. Suddenly he couldn’t hold out any longer.“Rivet!” he boomed.

Donnabella pushed him out into the hall with a fastidious toe. “Let’s don’t let our paths cross again,” she warned and closed the door.

Flatfooted and blinking, Sonderborg sat on the hall runner for a moment. Then the cold electricity returned. His shoulders straightened, his ears zoomed up above his knees, and in a twinkling he was himself again. More or less.

No man who has not experienced one can appreciate the full horror of a frog-change. As he sat there watching Rinaldo thumb through the filing-cabinet drawer, Sonderborg moaned inwardly over his vanishing hair and twisted his long mottled fingers in despair. Rinaldo yawned widely. The sump-hole raids had been a long-drawn-out business and weren’t over yet. “I’ll tell you what the law says, Sondy,” he said. “It says use the Sow’s Ear Rule of Thumb. That means a guy can’t use magic to change a less into a greater. He can’t change a sow’s ear into a silk purse. However, it is legal — though clearly bad business — for the guy to change a silk purse into a sow’s ear. So if you want to be technical, there’s no law against the guy changing someone like yourself into a frog, if you follow my drift. However, it’s definitely a felony to do it without your consent.”

“I should think so,” said Sonderborg, his indignation bordering on tears.

As Rinaldo pulled a file from the drawer, he added, “Of course, you’ll need witnesses to swear you didn’t ask Donnabella to do it to you.”

“But who’d ask somebody to change them into a frog?” protested Sonderborg loudly.

Rinaldo shrugged a swan’s wing and slumped down into his chair. “It’s a kinky world out there,” he said. Then he began humming through the file as though it was the score of a dull musical. At last he said, “You were wondering how a fairy godmother can afford Rose Garland Street, times being what they are. It says here that Donnabella’s gone legit. She’s started a place called Pedigreed-Pet Plaza, where the wealthy can board their dogs and canaries when they go on trips. It looks here like she’s doing quite well for herself in the world of business. A while back she became the first of her kind to be named to the board of a major corporation, Merlin Armor. At the time the bleeding-heart liberals called it tokenism. But she’s been named to others since. Seems to me she was just put on the board of what-do-you-call-it, the company that makes those divining-rod devices the fair-labor-practice people use for detecting the presence of elves on a job site.”

“Brownie-Point Industries,” said Sonderborg.

“You’ve got it,” said Rinaldo, closing the file and looking up at the clock with very tired eyes. “Well, you keep me informed, Sondy. If she’s up to something, we’ll burn her good.”

Sonderborg left the office, leaving Rinaldo to catch forty winks with his head tucked under his wing.

When he got back home, Sonderborg tried for a little shuteye himself, but his sleep was haunted by stork-filled dreams. By mid-afternoon he had taken up a position in a doorway across the street from the Pedigreed-Pet Plaza. Donnabella’s plans seemed to involve sending her godchild to one of the many balls held each night, this being the height of the social season. As fairy godmother, she would have to be there at her godchild’s place at the start of the evening to cast the spell. Ergo, reasoned Sonderborg, sooner or later Donnabella would have to lead him to the mystery girl.

Pedigreed-Pet Plaza was an old townhouse dressed up with a marble facade, canopy, and braided doorman. As the afternoon progressed, a few young matrons in fine carriages arrived, presumably to visit pets. Then a carriage pulled up containing Trade Smith, a bearded gentleman whose name and face were familiar to everyone, appearing as it did along with that of his brother Mark on a box of popular throat lozenges. More recently, Trade Smith had made the rotogravures by marrying the leggy young manicurist now seated beside him in the carriage. The couple entered Pedigreed-Pet Plaza.

A half an hour later, the woman came out alone. As the doorman helped her back into the carriage, a loud squawking broke out overhead. A large forest-green parrot was sidling back and forth on a second-story windowsill, shouting something the count couldn’t quite catch. Then a hand — was it Donnabella’s? — clamped around the feathered neck and pulled the bird back inside. The honeymoon’s over, thought Sonderborg. Then he frowned. What on earth made him think of that?

At five o’clock, Donnabella left for the day, carrying a wire cage in one hand and a leather pool-cue case under her arm. Sonderborg followed at a safe distance all the way to the Central Market. He was puzzled by her purchases at the white-mouse stall, perplexed when she added to the cage the finest Norway grey in the rat peddler’s pushcart, and utterly bewildered when she sought out the lizard man, who wore his wares tied up in neat bunches by their green tails around the brim of his sombrero.

It wasn’t until she stopped at a Mr. Pumpkin franchise on her way home that things began to fall into place. He remembered the abandoned pumpkin by the roadside, the grey-whiskered coachman (a Skandahoovian? yes — but more specifically, a Norwegian), the green-liveried footmen, the team of white horses. The count’s heart beat faster. The mystery girl was about to ride again!

Pleased with himself, Sonderborg rounded the corner with careless haste. But Donnabella lay in wait for him, wearing a cruel smile. She had set down her purchases. The pool-cue case was unzipped and empty. “Messenger boy,” she said, as she finished screwing the two halves of her wand together, “you don’t listen good.”

Sonderborg tried to break and run, but the wand tap came. In a twinkling, he’d gone frog again and was hopping left and right to avoid being punted out into traffic. At last he managed to duck through a sewer grating in the curb and trembled at the bars until she crossed the street.

The Lion’s Tooth was a small bar across the street from Donnabella’s apartment. When he’d gulped down his second double brandy, Sonderborg ordered a third. Then to distract himself from his own miserable state — his neck and ears were rapidly going the way of his hair — he set himself to figuring out what Donnabella was up to. The usual fairy-godmother routine was to marry the kid up a notch or two. It looked like Donnabella was doing a hell of a lot better than that. But what was in it for her? A little business thrown Pedigreed-Pet Plaza’s way? Hardly. Or did Donnabella present a bill when the honeymoon was over?

Sonderborg straightened up with a start. Suddenly the whole damn thing fell into place, piece by diabolical piece. His smile was still smug and wide when he noticed the fat glossy blue fly buzzing against the window about ten feet away. Sonderborg hadn’t eaten yet that day and it popped into his mind that that fly would probably have a refreshing peppermint taste. The thought sent cold tears of saliva falling from the roof of his mouth down onto his tongue, which stirred like an awakening serpent. Suddenly the tongue darted forward, crowding in coil after coil against the back of his teeth. Sonderborg frowned uneasily. Then his eyes sprang open wide and he grabbed the edge of the bar with both hands. “Oh, no!” he prayed through clenched teeth. “Oh, please, no!”

“Have you eaten, Sondy?” asked Natalie, interrupting the count’s story. They were back at the picnic table in the lanterned bower. His dismal nod made her put down her sandwich, wipe a palm on her knee, and take his chin in her hand. “Sondy, how come you look so lousy?” At that moment Masterson returned with their beers.

Sonderborg took a long, long pull on his. “I’m okay,” he insisted, and continued with what he’d been saying.

“So Donnabella offers some girl in a rotten family situation — you know, wicked stepmother, ugly stepsisters — the chance to leave home, marry a titan of industry, and live on Easy Street. Soon the blushing bride lures the hubby to Pedigreed-Pet Plaza, where he gets a demonstration of what it means to have Donnabella as an in-law. Take it from one who knows, a little taste of being a doggy or a pussycat goes a long way. Pretty soon he’s signing anything that’s put in front of him — powers of attorney, voting proxies, anything.” Sonderborg stopped and spread his hands helplessly.

“That’s what they’re up to. The trouble is, I can’t prove it. Puppies and pussycats tell no tales. The trouble is—” Here the count’s voice broke and he turned away. “Fairy godmother,” he said, “you see what she’s done to me. Can’t you help? Can’t you change me back to the way I was?”

Natalie shook her head. “The only law the fairy-godmother jungle knows is Don’t be a buttinski. Besides, I can’t buck Donnabella. She carries a big wand, a Magnum Super Six.” She looked at him for a long time as though her heart was going to break. Then she added quietly, “Of course, if you could maybe steal her wand for me—”

Sonderborg’s was a proud line. One of his ancestors had bearded the deadly Cockatrice in its nest. Another had followed Good Prince Tristan into sledded exile beyond the Winter Glacier. The count smote mottled palm with mottled fist. By damn, he’d do it!

Later that evening, back in The Lion’s Tooth bar, Sonderborg, grim-faced, determined, and balding, waited for Donnabella to leave her apartment. Yes, he’d track her to the mystery girl. Then, as the fairy godmother swaggered about with the terrible wand under her arm, he would sneak up behind her, grab the damn thing, and run like hell, that’s what he’d do!

And perhaps he would have. But a wind sprang up off the harbor and the tossing trees filled Rose Garland Street with stork shadows. In the midst of this, Donnabella finally appeared, carrying her wand and the afternoon’s purchases. But by then Sonderborg’s courage had drained completely away. Rooted to his spot at the bar, he watched Donnabella and Cunegunda and Fen House and his manhood disappear around the corner. He caught the barkeep’s eye and ordered another round.

For several long hours, he brooded over his glass. Then he called for pen and paper and went to a table. First he wrote a lengthy farewell to Cunegunda, explaining he had decided to become a hermit and live far from the eyes of man in some ruined chapel by the marge of a pool. Next he wrote a letter to Rinaldo, outlining his suspicions about the Pedigreed-Pet Plaza, hoping perhaps to harm Donnabella for having brought him so low.

It was almost a quarter to twelve when Sonderborg dispatched his letters at the postal-carrier-pigeon cote on the corner. As he started to go, a fat, tweedy man with a red-and-white-checkered napkin under his chin emerged from Donnabella’s apartment building and hurried off down the street. It was the man from the night before, the one in the tree above the abandoned pumpkin. Could he also be Donnabella’s Lovey out for a forbidden midnight snack? Had Sonderborg found another, a safer way to the mystery girl?

In spite of Lovey’s habit of swiveling his head completely around and looking backward as he walked, the count managed to follow him to Embassy Row. There, in a splendid courtyard under the Sandalian banner (twelve fluttering fishes argent on a field azur), stood an orange carriage. At the fat man’s approach, the white horses set the cobblestones to sparking under their nervous hooves and the coachmen, swallowing a hefty Norwegian oath, cringed back in his box. Suddenly the lounging footmen were all jittery arms and legs. Smacking his lips over their plump green calves, Lovey bounded lightly up to the roof of the carriage.

Almost at once, a pretty, overpainted girl with hair piled high and a sparkling ballgown hurried from the embassy. She was followed by the babyfaced heir to the Silver Bullet Munitions fortune, whose product had been instrumental in driving the werewolf clan back into the darkest depths of the Crabtree Forest. The lovesick playboy helped the mystery girl up into the orange carriage, imploring her to come with him the very next night to the Rapunzel Ropeladder-Works Ball. Her coy giggle was the coachman’s signal to crack his whip and send the carriage clattering out into the street.

Sonderborg ran after it, hoping to find a fourwheeler for hire along the way. But the street was empty. As the carriage turned a far corner, the Cathedral bell tolled the first stroke of midnight. The count shook his head, knowing he could never catch up now by running. Then an intriguing thought came to him. How much more sensible to put his feet together and hop. His first try resulted in a gratifying, effortless forty-foot jump. The next hop was even better, and the one after that brought him to the corner. But two more hops and he was standing lost and crestfallen at a six-way intersection. As he wondered which way to go, the last pitiless stroke of midnight sounded and died away.

All at once he heard the frantic scurrying of many little feet. Then three white mice, two lizards, and a fat grey rat burst from one of the streets and scattered every which way. Close on their heels came Lovey, running low to the ground, cheeks bloated purple, jaw chewing with quick greed. Sonderborg raced back the way they had come. There, beyond the hollowed-out pumpkin in the gutter, his quarry, the mystery girl, barefoot now and in rags, was quietly unlocking the door of a shabby house.

After firing off a quick pigeon to Crown Prince Hugo, Sonderborg waited for him across the street in a twenty-four-hour donut shop called Night Crullers. As he drank his coffee, he let the counterman tell him about the mystery girl and how step-people, both wicked and ugly, were indeed involved.

The prince arrived in short order, hair freshly oiled, chrysanthemum bouquet in the crook of his arm, the very image of Fratollini’s portrait of Bastian the Suave. When the situation had been explained to him he said, “You may withdraw, Count Sonderborg, Master of Fen House. Your beloved prince will take it from here.” The Crown Prince then crossed to the house, knocked loudly, and struck a pose, as if the front door were a full-length mirror. When one real sleepy mystery girl appeared with a candle at an upstairs window and hoisted a slop bucket up onto the sill, the Master of Fen House thought it best to get the hell out of there.

Just as Sonderborg reached home, Rinaldo pulled up in a police wagon to tell him the Magic Squad had raided Pedigreed-Pet Plaza and found all the proof it needed. Motioning the count to get in, Rinaldo said, “Donnabella made one big mistake when she changed Trade Smith into a parrot. That bird blew the whistle on her whole operation. And parrot or not, his testimony will stand up in court.”

The police wagon arrived at Rose Garland Street just as a sergeant and ten constables charged into Donnabella’s apartment building and pounded loudly up the stairs. Then there was an ominous silence, which ended in the terrific racket of a wild downward stampede. Now a flock of terrified, shoving sheep was jammed up at the front door. Now they had burst out into the street, where they huddled together in a trembling flock. Then they slowly turned back into policemen with long sad faces and curly white hair. “Baad luck, Inspector,” said the sergeant. “She bleat — she beat us to the draw.”

“I told you to wait until I got back with the wandproof vests,” said Rinaldo, selecting a glen-plaid one from the police wagon and buttoning it on.

“Do these things really work?” asked Sonderborg skeptically.

“Like a charm,” Rinaldo assured him. “Remember that old drag-chain you used to have to wear in case you got struck by lightning? The Merlin Armor people have eliminated that altogether.”

“Then do me a favor,” begged Sonderborg. “Let me lead the next charge. I’ve got a score to settle.”

A mural of that famous charge now decorates the police-head-quarters cafeteria. Splendid, truncheons at the ready, a fresh batch of bright-vested constables are dashing up the staircase, led by a larger-than-life Sonderborg with full head of hair, arm in an “upward and onward” gesture. A moment later in time and the artist would have had an entirely different mural. For as the count’s foot touched the last step, he remembered that Donnabella was on the board of the same Merlin Armor that made his vest! Suppose her grand design was to infiltrate and sabotage the kingdom’s anti-magic defenses — Merlin Armor, Brownie-Point Industries, Silver Bullet Munitions, and all the rest — so she could end up ruling everything with an iron wand? Sonderborg tried to slam on the brakes, but the charging constables behind him swept him through the open door of the fairy godmother’s apartment.

When Donnabella stepped out from behind the door, flexing her wand between her fists, all way of retreat was blocked. “Hey, look, Lovey,” she said with a wicked smile, “Messenger Boy’s come to visit again.”

“Who?” grinned Lovey, smiling down hungrily from his crystal perch on the chandelier.

Then Donnabella waded in, hacking and slashing, changing the startled police into snack-sized creatures that Lovey pounced down upon and swallowed whole, spitting out little badges and tiny pairs of handcuffs. In all the confusion, amid the shouts of owlish glee and the squeals of snack terror, Sonderborg managed to duck under Donnabella’s mighty backhand and make it out into the hall.

But the evil fairy godmother caught up with him at the top of the stairs and changed him once again into a frog. But before she could stomp him into the floor, a lucky bolt from a police sharpshooter’s crossbow knocked the wand out of her hand. Twisting and turning, the crystal thing tumbled through the air and crashed into a thousand pieces at the bottom of the stairwell. Rinaldo and the cheering sheep-police charged up the steps to subdue Donnabella and her bloodthirsty consort.

For Sonderborg it seemed an eternity before his soul gave a halfhearted heave and he became himself again.

It was a beautiful day, set under a storkless sky. The carriage, one of those old-fashioned domed vehicles completely encircled by a running board, smelled of macassar oil. Sonderborg watched the reedy countryside roll by, wondering why Natalie had chosen to go on ahead. Masterson’s explanation — he was hanging by his knees from the luggage rack — had been detailed and animated but pitched too high for the human ear.

In any event, Sonderborg was happy to escape the city which had become a madhouse. The king had suspended the Omnibus Magic Act to allow the Royal Wizard, a correspondence-school graduate with a mail-order wand, to locate and restore to their human shapes the Pedigreed-Pet Plaza captives who had fled in panic in the course of the police raid. During the night, the wizard had run amok, turning every stray creature that crossed his path into a human being. The next morning, all across the city the burgers awoke to find total strangers curled up on the rug before the fire or eating cheese in the pantry. The ensuing uproar brought the king low with a heart attack. Crown Prince Hugo was said to be playing with the Scepter and Orb again.

The carriage passed through a country gate and down a winding road, between marsh grass and rushes topped with red-winged blackbirds, and then stopped before the half submerged stones of Fen House. Natalie waved from under a tree, where she was eating from a hamper. Sonderborg stepped from the carriage and started toward her. But he stopped dead in his tracks. There on a broad lily pad in the Fen House moat was the most beautiful frog he had ever seen.

“Rivet!” said the frog in a charming contralto.

“Cunegunda!” cried Sonderborg. “Cunegunda, is that really you?”

“You mean Masterson didn’t explain, Sondy?” asked Natalie, swallowing a hard-boiled egg. “Well, to make a long story short, without Donnabella’s wand I can’t change you back. But I can change you forward, if you follow my meaning. I mean you don’t really have too far to go in that direction, anyway. And your wonderful Cunegunda here thought it might be easier for you to make your mind up if she was waiting for you on the other side, so to speak.”

How Sonderborg’s heart went out to the plump little frog! He took a deep breath. “Then let’s not keep her waiting,” he said firmly. Masterson flew down with the traditional blindfold and cigarette. Sonderborg refused them both with a rather theatrical gesture.

“Nor do I want your pity,” he declared. “Far better to be a simple sow’s ear in some rustic setting with one’s loving mate at one’s side than to be a frivolous silk purse eating alone from plates of gold in a city that has become a sham and a shambles.”

Taking one last look around him, he squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. Natalie’s wand hit him a solid blow. Count Sonderborg flickered and became a haze. The haze condensed down and down until it formed a big round frog. With a hop and a plop and another hop, he was up on the lily pad and looking deep into Cunegunda’s wonderful chestnut eyes.

“Rivet!” they sang together, contralto and baritone joyfully combined.