The Legend of Frogstone

In the middle reaches of the east fork of the Cataract River at a place called Redhart Bend, the spring thaw forms a broad marsh that reaches to the base of the southern cliff wall. There, the crested silver frog finds renewal, free to spread ribbons of eggs away from the rush of the Cataract.

Longer than books have been written, the frogs have entered the marsh just above the downstream side, passing in pairs and trios over one particular river rock, which has become domed and rippled with smooth grooves from millennia of their trailing webbed feet as they glide over it. What instinct drives them to glide over that one rock in the wide verge of the marsh is a mystery which may always best remain unsolved.

As summer's heat pushes in and the Cataract diminishes, the waters of Redhart Bend's marsh recede just in time to reveal vast hoards of tiny frogs emerging from their childhood to seek their fortunes and flies along the river, not to return to their birthplace until the swelling of the following spring, but always returning, like salmon, and always paying homage to the sacred rock of the crested silver frog.

One autumn came a young hunter through the marsh, for it is not called Redhart Bend without reason. Pausing there to rest and cock a keen ear, he spied the rock, its rippled polish catching the light of a westering sun and became so enamored with it that upon his return from the wilds, its simple beauty came to grace his mantlepiece.

Yet as the rock presented its beauty to be seen, its mysterious character remain hidden within. None, least of all a young hunter unschooled in the unfathomable way of the wilds, would have guessed that the following spring, the frogs would not return into the marsh, becoming perplexed and distressed by what was missing. Instead, they went far up the river to find many diverse eddies in which to renew their kind.

As the high reaches of the Cataract provided abundant breeding grounds for the crested silver frog, the misty heat and storms of early summer also took large numbers of the young ones, borne aloft in rising vapours to be showered upon the lowlands.

The homeland of the young hunter was given into fear and turmoil by the coming of the rain of frogs, but as the high winds marched on, the frogs were carried in greater numbers over a border that they could not know, into the neighboring land. There, the rain of frogs was taken as an assault upon their sovreignty from across the border by unfathomable means, a sure sign of evil afoot nearby.

So began a just war that lasted as long as the rains of frogs persisted and ebbed and escalated with it cycles. Many battles and incursions were carried on over the years, lives and homes were destroyed and plundered, families and friendships ripped apart, and the heinous acts that accompany war were visited upon the people of the lands, but no resolve could be had as the fearsome rains returned year by year.

Booty brought home by a soldier after one foray included the beautifully simple rock from the marsh at Redhart Bend, taken from the mantle of the young hunter in a raid. As luck would have it, the soldier's grandfather came by and, having been up the Cataract, knew the frog stone by sight, knew that it did not belong in a lowland home by instinct, charged the soldier with escorting the old man across the dangerous province to return it to its rightful place.

The silver crested frog of the Cataract River rediscovered their sacred stone and abandoned the eddies of its high reaches to return again to the spring marsh at the bend to breed. The frog stone will someage show crossing grooves like unto the opposition in the lowlands that gradually died away as the rains came to bring only water, for it was placed sideways to its original situation. But it remains the only way the frogs will enter their rightful nursery, and the emblem of peace in the lands.