The Frog God

The village of Stone-Bank lay beside a great marsh, wide of many score of acres, turbid and deep, its reeds hiding the sky. In the marsh a deep pool, and in its bottom a hole, where a giant frog lived — green of back, gold of belly, as large as a basin, its cry like a struck chime. The villagers called it the Frog God and raised a small shrine upon the pool's bank, sacrificing fresh fish and new rice at the seasons and not daring to neglect it. The old said the Frog God governed the water of that place, and where the water was full the year was full.

Each summer night the frogs of the pool drummed like a war-drum, and the children dared not draw near, but listened from afar. Once a passing merchant from another land heard the myriad frogs cry at once in the night and took it for a thousand soldiers, and fled in fright — a tale the villagers laughed at, but would not explain.

In a year of great drought the rains held off for months and the grain withered, and the wells half failed. The old headman, white of beard and hair, burned three sticks of incense and lay long upon the ground, and the villagers seeing it wept also. Then he led them: "Frog God who governs the water, grant us one rain and keep this place alive. If you pity us, we will double the sacrifice every year." That night the frogs in the pool cried all at once, a thousand thousand voices in one, a sound to shake the fields, and did not cease till dawn. Then clouds rose from the marsh, black and rolling, and the rain came down in sheets, three days before it stopped, and the withered grain turned green, and the village lived. After, they sacrificed the more devoutly.

There was a youth called Stone, an orphan, honest and blunt, whose mother lay sick and whom he kept by catching fish and shrimp. In the drought the pool's water shrank toward drying, yet the deep hole where the Frog God dwelt did not fail, its water alone clear. Stone would see the great frog crouch upon its rock, eyes like amber, as if it watched; he honored it, and whenever he fished he left a few to cast into the hole, saying, "The god may take them." The neighbors laughed at his foolishness, saying to throw fish to a frog was to feed flesh with flesh. Stone paid them no mind, and said, "Reverence is in the heart, not in the reason."

Stone took the catch for his trade, and whenever he took a great fish he cut the fat part and cast it to the hole; the giant frog seemed to understand, and each morning before the mist broke it rose its head above the water and watched Stone's boat go home. The villagers, seeing his reverence, also threw fresh grass to the pool and dared not fish it wantonly; and so the pool's water grew the clearer, and the fish could be counted.

Some years later a rich man of the village, Old Qian, who had never believed in gods and thought only of gain, and whom men called Money-Yama, saw the fertile shoal by the pool, laid bare as the water fell, and would fence it for water-chestnut and lotus to sell, twice the profit of grain; and he wearied of the little shrine that took the ground he would widen. He led men to fill half the pool and pulled down the shrine to build a wall of stone. The old villagers wept and pleaded; Qian laughed and said, "What can a frog do? No more than a worm. Fill it, and the year's income grows by a hundred strings — why spare a shrine?" And so he did, driving his men to ram the earth day and night.

The night he filled the pool, wind and rain rose without cause — no drought broken, no flood season, thunder without cloud — and the water of the marsh ran backward and drowned all he had filled, and the new wall sank into the mud. The new grain in Qian's storehouse soaked and molded, unfit to eat, and rats and ants swarmed it. Stranger still, from that night frogs cried without end within Qian's house, hiding by day and singing by night, in every brick-crack and wall-corner; driven out, they returned, and he could not sleep, and his spirit failed by the day. His fields had drunk from the pool's water; with half the pool filled the channels ran wild, the ears came up hollow, and the harvest failed for years. Within three years Qian had sold all his land and his servants were scattered, and he was poor as could be, lying sick on a straw couch, with only the frogs crying from the four walls.

But Stone's hole stayed clear, and fish and turtles throve. When his mother fell gravely ill, Stone prayed to the Frog God, and the great frog rose and spat an herb upon the bank, green of hue and faint of scent; Stone took it home and boiled it, and his mother drank and mended, and could rise and walk. Stone was grateful and never filled a foot of the pool, sacrificing each year as before, and charged his children not to offend it. The village, seeing Qian's end, believed the more in the Frog God; the little shrine was rebuilt and its incense burned bright, and the children, passing the pool, hushed and hurried.

The old say: the Frog God asks not for sacrifice, but that men not betray the water. Keep the pool and the marsh stays; keep the marsh and the village stays. Take its dwelling, and the water will take men's food. Qian's punishment was no frog's wrath, but the way of water.

To this day at Stone-Bank the pool lies wide, and on summer nights the frogs drum, and the villagers hear it and are at peace, saying: the Frog God is here, and the year will be full.