Frogs

A Short Story

We see two frogs splayed on the path to the loch. The one beneath is fatter, darker, stiller. The one on top kneads its toes into the dark one’s body. They pulse like a heart, freshly pulled.

            What are they doing? she asks, breaking her silence. We watch the dark one move its mouth as the little one palpates it.

            Seems dead, she says, looking back to the path, moving on without me.

As we look for a place to pitch the tent, she calls me over, points to a blackened snarl of sinew. I pick it up by its leg. We joke it’s cursed, but when I place it back, I lay it on a tall stone. It must have dried out in the sun, she says. Mummified frog. We bow to it, laugh uneasily, pitch on the far side.

In the night I hear them croaking. They migrate inland, lurching along the shoreline. I lie there, listening, as silhouettes move across the membrane of the tent wall.

            Let’s watch, I say, touching her.

            She lies there, cocooned, mouth moving in her sleep.

            I unzip the tent, see them scudding up from the still water. Some are fused together; one clasping the back of another in a desperate kind of love.

In the morning we return in silence, stop when we find the splayed frogs again. The little one remains, its kneading slower. Its body is pressed against the dark one, so they are almost the same.

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