A bullfrog, certainly. And close.
I crouched inside the canoe, drifting toward where I thought the sound had come from, on the edge of the muddy bank just a handful of yards ahead. The tip of the boat struck land, and I slid forward, flashlight extended. I picked the images apart—the void of the water, the algae on the wood chips and stumps, the root of a seasick willow reaching out, its leaves dripping.
The thick air hummed. It pressed against my cheeks, my neck, against the slick wet film in the rims of my eyes. I stared so long into the stillness that I almost forgot what I was looking for.
Then, in the damp, a flicker like the spin of a dime flashed once in the tears stuck to my lashes. Something was moving, reflecting in the infant moonlight ahead of me on the bank. I froze, holding my flashlight still as the boat swayed. A compass needle seeking north.
I’ve read that blue is one of the rarest colors in nature. The sky has it, and the sea, and a few birds and fish that live in them both. But even a blueberry is a little bit purple. So when I spotted a streak of sky and sea in the drift of my light, I knew exactly what it belonged to.
I held my breath, rising a bit on my haunches, ready to reach out. There it was. An old friend cloaked in impossible odds. Skin like a sapphire’s glint in a jeweler’s glass, the slant of its back as long as my hand, and spots, yellow and black, and two eyes. But then— four eyes. Oily like mirrored disks. Unleveled planes, a bristle, and a sway. The details weren’t quite right this time. The shapes, the shadows. Something moving in the dark.
I leaned forward, lifting my flashlight, and that’s when the full speed of time came rushing back to me. A hiss like rain on a skillet, burning and gone, creased the smooth summer air, stopping my voice before I could cry out.
The Blue Bull of the Bayou had lived—I know because I saw it twice with my own eyes. But its body hung that night in the maw of a marble-eyed bobcat, surrounded by fur spiking in a million speckled pricks, and in teeth, red and white.
The cat disappeared almost as soon as it had entered my light, and it took the Blue Bull with it, leaving nothing behind but the hustled twisting of maidencane. I lay there, half-sprawled in the boat, fighting down the beating in my chest. I replayed what I had seen, waiting to adjust to the ordinary sounds and sights again. Air and water. Water and mud.
I leaned all the way down where no one could see me. I could still hear Papa Roy with Eli not far away; my brother must have caught something. He hooted and hollered like a cave boy. I should have been crying from the shock of it all. But I wasn’t. Papa Roy was probably thinking about that frog right now, about how blue it must be, how rare, how exceptional that such a thing might be found in such a common place. Afraid that it might one day die, just like anything else. Before it could be seen.
If he really, truly believed in the Blue Bull, that is. In spite of all his stories, I was never quite sure. What was A Fairy Tale Companion to me, after all, but a hand-cranked projection from a much darker room?