Inktober Day 8: Toad

 Chapter Six

They had camped against a sheer wall of dirt, rocks, and dense foliage, and Magda had to skirt the edges of this cliff before finding a place to ascend. It was not a far climb to the top, and Magda was by no means a sedentary child, but she was winded before reaching the top all the same. It wasn’t long however before she found the source of the dripping. 

She had just gotten a firm stance on the flat ground at the top of the hill when a grand stone statue of a toad was suddenly before her, the mouth open wide, the tongue lazing outward. It wasn’t quite as tall as she, but it wasn’t far from it. It seemed to be a sort of fountain, for right on the tip of the cold stone tongue, water dripped forth. It looked long neglected as moss was growing all over its surface. What is this thing, she thought to herself. She was just about to take a closer look when she saw behind the toad, a path leading away from the edge of the hill and a small clearing in the woods, where dozens more statues like this one were scattered.

There were small ones and large ones, calm ones with solemn eyes closed, and downright frightening ones with angry bulging eyes and tongues protruding sharply. They all seemed to be mossy and some even had vines growing across their faces. Magda realized that this clearing had probably once been less overgrown, as the statues appeared to continue a ways into the forest, barely visible in the near pitch black of the ever darkening sky.

She would have liked to investigate further, but she heard a crack somewhere in the wood. She had lost her earlier resolve not to be afraid of woodland noises and started, whipping her head around. As she looked over her shoulder, she found herself face to face with a statues she had not noticed before, and this one was unmistakably taller than she. Its head was crowned with horns, it had bulging angry eyes, and in its enormous gaping mouth, long teeth and a sharp tongue stuck violently outward. Its hand was outstretched in a way that seemed a welcome and a threat all at once.

She was so overcome by this sudden discovery that she lost her balance on some slippery grass and pitched backward, down the way she came.