The tiny frog perched carefully on the edge of the teacup, balancing delicately and doing his best to seem inconspicuous. No one had noticed him yet, but they would. For now he listened, focusing far more intently than any frog ever had.
“No, we’re not going to…”
“But I thought you said-”
“Quiet! Somebody might be listening!” The man’s voice was panicked, and the frog watched him look around. He didn’t think to look at the teacup. The frog lowered his body, and when the sound of a passing truck drowned out all sound he quietly plopped into the lukewarm tea. With only his protruding eyes goggling out of the dark, milky liquid, he continued to listen.
Assured that nobody was lurking behind the secluded café table with open ears, the man leaned in to his companion; a middle-aged woman with long dark hair and distinctive freckles. Her brown eyes were narrowed, arms crossed over her chest. She wanted answers. The man, square and dark with intimidating eyebrows and a primitive face, looked unwilling to give them. His eyes still darted nervously, and when he first started talking the frog couldn’t even hear through the layers of tea. Carefully he pulled himself higher, his head just over the edge of the cup.
“…to kill him, I just want to watch him…”
“Watch? What do you, what does that mean, watch? I thought, I mean, I thought we were going to, you know, because…”
“Keep your voice down! We’re not going to. Fallan has ordered us not to; therefore, we watch.”
The woman thought for a moment, looking disappointed. She sighed. “Does Fallan know where he is, then? If we’re not to kill him how are we-”
“Stop saying kill! You…”
“Alright, alright! If we’re not going to, you know, I mean where is this guy? All I’m asking is if Fallan knows where he is. That’s what I want to know. If Fallan…”
Her next words were obscured for the frog by another bout of traffic and a rather noisy dump truck; without thinking, he dared to pull himself a little higher, straining to hear.
“…then all I’m saying is…”
“Look, Fallan knows where he is, of course he knows where he is.” The man looked mean. “Are you saying you doubt Fallan, Magilra?”
Magilra looked terrified. “N-n-no, not at all, not at…that’s not what I was saying, come on, Barsek, you can’t be…no, no.” She took a deep breath. “Where is he?”
We think he’s in – eeeyagh!”
He leapt from his chair, knocking it backwards with a solid metallic crash. The frog found himself flying through the air, desperately gripping the edge of the cup, before splattering spectacularly in Magilra’s stunned face. She shrieked wordlessly. But the frog had leapt to the table, and was about to leap for the ground when Barsek grabbed him roughly in one meaty palm.
“A spy!” he screamed, waving the frog in the air at Magilra. “He was listening!” He brought the frog to his face. “Alright, frog – who do you work for? Who sent you? Who-”
“Barsek!” Magilra hissed sharply, warningly. He looked up at her, dripping with tea; then, suddenly becoming aware of his surroundings, he slowly looked around the café patio.
Everybody was staring, eyes wide and shocked. Some people had even stood up, craning their heads for a better look. Worse, most of them were laughing, snickering behind their hands. Barsek flushed a brilliant red, threw down a few coins, and hurried out of the café, croaking frog in hand. He marched out with as much dignity as he could muster, Magilra fluttering after him with a handful of napkins, accompanied by the now uproarious laughter of the crowd. Even the waiter couldn’t hold a straight face.
They quickly retreated to the parking lot and the dim interior of a generic white sedan, safely hidden by small tinted windows. Barsek stuffed the frog into the glove compartment. Magilra pulled her legs as far from it as she could, looking pale, but did not comment. In fact, she said nothing at all. When Barsek let her off at the train station, he growled something about being in contact then reached over and slammed the door in her face.
She stood for a moment, staring after the car, covered in brown stains and holding a wad of napkins. The last few minutes were a blur. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at the frog, just felt it slap her face and seen it croaking in Barsek’s grip. It had been eerily silent during the drive; she wondered if Barsek had killed it. She couldn’t understand his terror of the frog, and the way he had interrogated it was downright embarrassing. In the end she decided that there was a lot she didn’t know. Perhaps the frog was dangerous. Maybe he even deserved it. She turned her attention to the tea stains; scowling irritably, she fished a napkin out of her pocket and scrubbed at them as she walked to her train, forgetting all about the frog.
The frog, however, was carefully planning his escape. He knew that Barsek would have to open the glove compartment to get him out. That gave him a brief – a very brief – window of opportunity to leap away. He prepared himself, crouching on the shifting papers, gloves, cigarette boxes, loose napkins, crumpled Kleenexes, and…
“Hello, Frog.”
The spider crouched in the darkness near the frog’s leg, peering up at him with a smile in her voice. As the frog’s heartbeat slowed, he breathed a sigh of relief. “How did you know?”
She shrugged, a tiny movement of her eight delicate legs. “I didn’t. I’ve been here all day. Certainly didn’t mean to – came in here looking for warmth and couldn’t find my way back out.” The sudden hope that had sprung up when he heard the spider’s voice dropped again, and all the energy went out of him.
“You can’t help me escape, then?”
For a moment, the spider said nothing, merely watching him with her inscrutable black eyes. Then, silently skimming over the papers weightlessly, she made her way through the dark to the thin line of shifting light that outlined the opening of the glove compartment. She paused for a moment, and the frog held his breath, not quite daring to hope what her answer would be; then her crisp, small voice said with a hint of smugness, “I didn’t say that.”