An Army of Frogs Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names,

  characters, places, and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pryce, Trevor.

  An army of frogs : a Kulipari novel / Trevor Pryce with Joel Naftali.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-0172-6 (alk. paper)

  [1. Frogs—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Spiders—Fiction. 4.

  Scorpions—Fiction. 5. Fantasy—Fiction.] I. Naftali, Joel. II. Title.

  PZ7.P9493496Arm 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012027726

  Text copyright © 2013 Trevor Pryce

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 Sanford Greene

  Book design by Sara Corbett

  Published in 2013 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fund-raising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.

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  Contents

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATOR

  ITH THE STEALTH OF A warrior, Darel hopped along a wide branch, tracking the two scouts below. A waterfall roared in the distance, and a tasty-looking fig wasp flitted past. Darel ignored a pang of hunger, resisting the urge to shoot his tongue at the wasp for a quick snack.

  Dinner could wait until he’d dealt with the enemy.

  The banyan tree rose a hundred feet above Darel, into the wide Australian sky, and was anchored to the earth by dozens of ropy-looking roots. The warm glow of sunset filtered through the leaves and dappled the ground beside the two scouts.

  They crept past the dark mouths of burrows, then stopped. The stout one scanned the roots of the banyan. The smaller one glanced around nervously, alert to every fluttering leaf and chirping insect.

  Invisible to the enemy, Darel clung to the side of the branch with his finger pads. He touched the handle of his dagger for good luck, then leaped from the tree. He landed on a lichen-spotted boulder above the path, his blood thrilling to the hunt.

  He grabbed a nearby stick and, with a low growl, sprang at the scouts.

  The smaller scout screamed, but the stout one thrust with his stick, his yellow eyes determined.

  Darel parried the blow, and the two sticks met with a loud thuk. “Back to the desert, scorpion!” he cried.

  “Surrender, croaker,” the stout one sneered, “or I’ll—” He dodged wildly when the knobby end of Darel’s stick whizzed toward him.

  “Or you’ll what?” Darel asked. He jammed his stick into the forest floor and pole-vaulted over the enemy, twisting in the air to smack him from above.

  It was a beautiful acrobatic move, except his stick slipped and he crashed to the ground.

  “Ha!” the scout croaked, and chopped at him with his stick.

  Darel rolled away, scrambled to his feet, and lunged. His thrust missed by a mile, but that was only a feint, and his powerful kick sent the scout hurtling toward a rain puddle, where he collapsed in a moaning heap.

  With a twirl of his stick, Darel turned and crouched, ready to strike the smaller scout.

  “If you hit me, I’ll tell Coorah!” the small frog blurted, his eyes bulging.

  Darel chuckled and relaxed, tossing the stick aside. “Don’t worry, tadpole. What’re you doing here, anyway?”

  “Playing with Gee,” the young frogling said, looking toward the pudgy frog in the puddle—Darel’s best friend, Gurnugan.

  “He’s tagging along,” Gurnugan said, rubbing his bruised stomach. “He’s my little brother, after all.”

  “Maybe he’ll learn something, Gee,” Darel said, tossing his best friend a honey snail from his pouch.

  “Yeah.” Gee caught the snail with his tongue. “He’ll learn that instead of going to the swimming hole with the other frogs, you spend every day practicing to be a warrior.”

  “Not every day.”

  “And you make your best friend play the scorpion.” Gee sighed. “Plus, you hit me in the belly again.”

  “Well, that’s a scorpion’s only weak spot.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  Darel grinned. “No, yours is pretty well padded.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Anyway, you know you love sparring.”

  “You love sparring! I love honey snails. Got any more?”

  “Not for you,” Darel said, patting his pouch. “And how’re we going to become better warriors if we don’t keep practicing?”

  “I’m good enough, Darel. It’s not like the scorpions are going to come marching into the Amphibilands. They don’t even know where we are.” Gee cocked his head. “Speaking of which, where were you? You came out of nowhere.”

  “The banyan tree.” Darel pointed his thumb upward. “You didn’t look high enough.”

  “The tree? Come here.” Gee tugged Darel to the puddle’s edge. “Look in the water. What do you see?”

  “Um, us?”

  “Us,” Gee agreed. “Two ordinary wood frogs. You are not a tree frog.”

  “Never said I was. I just—”

  “You know what color that is?” Gurnugan asked, pointing at Darel’s reflection.

  “A sort of noble green?”

  “A sort of muddy green, Darel. Mostly brown. You are not going to grow up and become a tree frog.”

  “I don’t want to be a tree frog.”

  Gee sighed and looked at his little brother. “Three guesses, Miro. What does Darel want to be when he grows up?”

  The small frog blinked his inner eyelids thoughtfully. “A hunter?”

  “Not a hunter.”

  “A diver?”

  “Not a diver. This is Darel we’re talking about. Think crazy.”

  “Oh, I know! A wombat!”

  Gee furrowed his brow. “No, you tadpole, not a wombat.”

  “A platypus?”

  “That’s four guesses. And no, not a platypus. He wants to be”—Gurnugan waved one chubby foreleg—“a Kulipari.”

  Miro giggled.
“He can’t be a Kulipari!”

  “Why not?” Darel demanded. “My father was a Kulipari. He was a unit leader. He was a hero.”

  “And he was a corroboree frog,” Gurnugan said, “the only frog in the world that can produce its own poison. But you take after your mother. You’re a wood frog, through and through.”

  “Take that back!” Darel said, glaring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Gee said, raising his hands. “But … look at you.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “You think you’re a Kulipari on the inside? Are you poisonous?”

  Darel’s shoulders slumped. “You know I’m not.”

  “Well, there you go, then.” Gee turned to his little brother. “That’s where the Kulipari’s power comes from—poison. When they tap into their poison, their eyes turn black and their skin glows, and they can do impossible things. At least, that’s what the stories say.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Darel said. “When I was a tadpole, my father showed me.”

  Miro’s eyes bulged. “Is it true that one Kulipari can beat a hundred scorpions?”

  “They move so fast,” Darel told him, “they’re only a blur. They’re strong as a falling tree and tough as packed mud. You see this dagger?” He touched a finger pad to the dagger at his side.

  Miro nodded.

  “It was my father’s. He could throw it from here to the pond and shave the whiskers off a dragonfly.”

  “Dragonflies don’t have whiskers,” Gee said.

  “They did before my dad got to ’em!”

  They laughed. Then Gee shot Darel a worried look. “But, buddy? You’re a wood frog; there’s no poison in you. And you know what wood frogs are good for?”

  “Working,” little Miro said. “Even I know that. And working and working and working …”

  A pinecone blurred past them, missing Darel by a toe pad’s width.

  N A MUD-COLORED FLASH, DAREL LEAPED through the air and landed on a tree stump across the clearing. “Coorah!” he shouted.

  A lean figure hopped onto the path, laughing softly. She was slender and graceful. She was also a wood frog, but her skin glowed bronze in the evening light, and her eyes glinted with a combination of mischief and wisdom.

  “Caught you off guard, lazybones,” Coorah said, fingering another pinecone. “That means you owe me a wattleflower!”

  “You and your herbs—” Darel began.

  “And if I hit you,” she continued, “you promised to bring me three!”

  Darel charged at Coorah, croaking his war cry, and she threw her second pinecone.

  Coorah’s father was the best healer in the village, and everyone expected that one day she’d be even better. But that meant she spent all her time experimenting with new medicines instead of practicing how to throw things at moving targets. She missed Darel by three feet.

  Darel puffed his throat in triumph as he stalked toward her. “Surrender! Only one flower for you!”

  With a teasing light in her eyes, Coorah crooked her finger at him as she leaned against the stem of a leafy plant.

  Darel approached warily. Coorah was the only other frog who believed that the scorps and spiders might attack again—even Gee went along mostly to humor Darel. Coorah was a healer, though, not a fighter, so her preparation for the upcoming invasion involved finding new herbs and inventing new treatments.

  But she was clever, too. Tricky.

  So he didn’t rush forward. Instead, he carefully hopped closer …

  Until Coorah gave the stem beside her a quick shake. A dozen overripe figs, which were balanced on the leaves above, fell in a rain around Darel—except the one that landed on his head and burst open.

  Gee and Miro laughed, but Darel continued forward, fig pulp dripping down his cheek. A true warrior was not distracted by such things.

  “I surrender,” Coorah said, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “You are definitely the mightiest warrior in all the Amphibilands.” She paused for a second. “Or at least the stickiest.”

  “In the old days, before the Kulipari left,” Darel said loftily, “warriors were shown some respect!”

  “Even wood frog warriors with less poison than a boiled macadamia nut?” Coorah teased. “Who offer their friends wattleflowers to sneak-attack them?”

  “How else am I going to learn?” Darel grumbled. He felt foolish, because she and Gee were right; he was a wood frog playing war—he wasn’t a real soldier, despite all his grandiose daydreams.

  Coorah must’ve heard the self-doubt in his tone. She brushed a chunk of fig from his shoulder.

  “At least you’re actually getting better,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out how to treat war wounds with lily pollen, and my dad just wants me to make tea for tummyaches.”

  “Yeah, but your grandmother said you’re a natural,” Darel told her. “You’ve got a gift for battlefield healing.”

  “I guess,” she said, her eyes troubled. “Sometimes I think I’m just wasting my time.”

  Miro hopped closer and took Coorah’s webbed hand. “Can we go back now?” He glanced at his big brother. “Mom and Dad want us home, Gurnugan. If we’re too late, we’ll get ponded.”

  Gee just shrugged, even though he hated the thought of having to stay inside for a week.

  Darel knew Gee would do whatever he did. Gee always backed him up, even if it meant a punishment later. He didn’t like fighting, but he practiced with Darel almost every day. He didn’t like stalking the older frogs in the village to hone his tracking skills, or leaping from the highest leaves of the banyan to the branches below, or bodysurfing down the rapids.

  Gee didn’t like doing things that no self-respecting wood frog would dream of doing. But he did them, so Darel wouldn’t have to do them alone.

  Darel sighed. He’d rather stay outside under the half-moon with the nocturnal frogs, practicing his climbing and burrowing and head-butting—though wood frogs didn’t climb or burrow or head-butt.

  But he couldn’t keep dragging Gee into trouble. Gee hated getting scolded. And he hated getting head-butted, too.

  Besides, Darel didn’t want to disappoint his mother. Not that she ever complained. She knew her son, knew that the one thing he wanted most in the world was to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. They’d both been unit leaders in the Kulipari. They’d both fought in legendary battles, and his father had died to keep the Amphibilands safe and hidden inside the Veil.

  Except Darel didn’t have poison—he didn’t have a single drop of his father’s power. He might become a warrior without poison, but he’d never become a Kulipari.

  And yet … he couldn’t stop trying. Because instead of his father’s poison, he’d inherited his mother’s stubborn determination.

  She outhustled any other two frogs in Australia. She worked long days in her fly shop, and then, after the shop closed, she took food to the old frogs, helped any neighbors who needed assistance, and raised the triplets—Darel’s siblings, who were still in the tadpool nursery.

  Yet, when he came home scraped from rumbling with the white-lipped frogs or aching from bodysurfing the rapids, she’d just say, “You’re your father’s son.”

  He’d sigh. “I’m yours, too.”

  “And that is why you should know better.” Then she’d kiss him on the forehead and patch him up.

  She never complained, but a true Kulipari did not shirk his duty, so Darel nodded to Gee, and they joined Coorah and Miro. They followed the river past pale green munumula trees with their long, weepy branches, hopping slowly to match the younger frog’s short-legged leaps.

  “When’d you put those figs there?” Darel asked Coorah, shooting out his tongue to snag bits of the fruit from his arm.

  Coorah grinned. “I didn’t. I just saw them and decided to lure you into a trap.”

  “Next time,” Darel said, hopping with her through the grass hummocks, “bait it with barbecued flies. I’m starving.”

&n
bsp; “Your pouch is full of honey snails! And it’s bad enough that you make Gurnugan be the scorpion every time. You think I’m going to start setting traps for you like a spider?”

  “You’re evil enough,” Darel said, then dodged her sharp elbow.

  “Um, guys?” Gee said.

  “You’re probably a nightcaster, too,” Darel continued. “Weaving deadly spells in your malevolent web.”

  “‘Malevolent’?” Coorah said. “You don’t even know what that means.”

  “Um, guys?” Gee said again.

  “I do too!” Darel told Coorah. “It means ‘evil.’”

  “Guys!” Gee’s nostrils narrowed. “Speaking of evil …”

  They stopped and looked at him. His yellow eyes bulged with worry, staring toward the outskirts of their village.

  “I think we now know whose figs those were,” he said.

  AREL PEERED INTO THE GLOOM of the evening and saw a half dozen frogs waiting in a tangle of vines that protected the village’s worm farm. They were white-lipped tree frogs, the world’s largest—they called themselves “Great Tree Frogs.” Their slitted eyes and protuberant lower lips gave them a sulky look.

  They jumped from the shadows, led by a frog named Arabanoo, who was tossing a rotten fig in one hand. He eyed Darel. The other members of his gang, three brawny girl frogs and two slightly smaller boys, glowered beside him. Each held a gross-looking fig.

  “Don’t you dare throw those,” Coorah said, as the gang came closer. “Or I’ll sprinkle itching powder in your beds.”

  “There’s nothing we don’t dare,” Arabanoo told her. “We’re not mud-bellies.”

  “That’s true,” Darel said. “You’re sap-lickers.”

  “Don’t you two start!” Coorah snapped. “Go pick on someone your own size, Arabanoo.”

  “Gurnugan is my size,” he said, inflating his throat pouch. “At least, he’s my weight.”

  “He’d be your height, too,” another white-lipped frog said, “if he was lying on his back!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Arabanoo demanded of Darel, as he moved to hop around them.

  “Where do you think? The village.”

  Everyone called it that—the village—even though there were dozens of villages in the valley.

  Some of the villages were in the canopies of interwoven trees, and others were in deep burrows carpeted with moss and illuminated by glowworms. There were swamp villages with reed huts, floating pond villages, and creek and grass and waterfall villages. There were even some frogs who lived in the coastal scrub, near the beach, and mostly ate crabs.