Inside, the cave broadens out and keeps broadening and then broadens out some more! to a size much larger than the hill it’s in. How can this be? Ella wonders. But then again she’s also started talking to a toad, and not just talking to, but following.

“How far?” Ella says.

“Not far,” the toad says.

She certainly hopes so, it’s awfully dark in here. She looks back at the entrance, which is now about as big as her thumb if she were to hold it out. The toad takes out a small lantern and shakes it. Inside, a firefly wakes up and starts zipping around, causing her butt to light up and thus the lamp too. He sets it on the rim of the boat, where it fits perfectly into a notch as if always meant to go there.

Ella lays back and looks up. The cave walls and ceiling are so far away now they can no longer be seen. Instead, small pinprick lights appear, twinkling like the night sky.

“Stars?” she says.

“Perhaps,” the toad says.

“You don’t know?”

“Who’d be crazy enough to climb up there and find out?”

“How’s it so big in here?”

“Who knows.”

“You should, you’ve been here before.”

“Only to where we’re going, but I’ve never gone this way. Other toads say there’s a great monster who lives in here.”

“Now you tell me. If only my father were here, he always knows the . . .”

Her father. At the thought of him she breaks down.

“Crying? At a time like this?” says the toad.

“I can’t help it.”

“Sure you can, you just don’t do it. Like this, see?” And here the toad turns his head side to side to show off the fact that not a single tear is coming down.

But this only makes her cry all the more and this does make him sad and now he’s choking up too. He takes out a tiny handkerchief and dabs the corner of his eye.

“Stop it, now you’ve got me doing it,” he says.

Ella turns away.

“You should consider yourself lucky,” the toad continues, “I’ve never even met my parents.”

And Ella, reminded there are others who’ve got it worse than her, wipes her tears away. It’s not much consolation, since it doesn’t change things, but it does help.

“You’re an orphan?” she says.

“I’m a toad. Our mothers lay their eggs and then split.”

“That’s a shame. My mother, she . . .”

Her mother. She can’t continue and again breaks down.

“Your mother can’t help you anymore,” says the toad. “So best forget all about her.”

She takes an angry swing at him, but he hops out of the way just in time.

“Everything I love’s gone! You understand? Everything I love’s gone. Everything’s gone . . .”

She slumps down and just as she does, something thunks against the boat. Ella stiffens up.

“What was that?”

“A crocodile, of course,” the toad smiles.

“A what?!”

“A crocodile, surly you’ve heard of them?”

She looks over the side and sees, indeed, a crocodile swimming past. She quickly ducks down, back to the safety confines of the boat’s hull. Back to the shadows. All alone. Thinking about this and not liking it one bit she stands up straight and says decisively, “I’ll throw myself in. It’s for the best.”

At this, the toad laughs. He laughs!

“Why’s that funny? That’s not funny!”

“Oh, but it is. Besides the fact that you’d only get wet, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t let the things you can’t control ruin all the things you can.”

She watches the crocodile swim away. “What do you mean I’d just get wet? I’d get eaten!”

“Hah! Not likely. They’re like logs, you could ride one and it wouldn’t notice. You should be more like them.”

“I should have rows of sharp teeth and thick scaly skin?”

“No—the memory of a mayfly. This whole lake’s made of crocodile tears, you understand?”

She tries to reason this but fails. “How could that make sense to anyone?”

The toad searches the waters for the nearest crocodile. “Oh, crocodile?”

One pauses and sticks her big snout out. Her two yellow eyes dart about, black vertical slits for pupils, looking for whomever called her. Ella shudders with the creeps.

“Over here, crocodile,” the toad says.

“Yes?” the crocodile says, finally spotting them.

“Where’re you headed?”

“This way or that, how should I know?”

“Because you’re the one going there.”

“Maybe so,” says the crocodile, pausing to think about it. “But I still don’t know.”

“So she doesn’t know where she’s going, so what?” Ella says.

“Now crocodile,” says the toad, “answer me this. Does this sweet little girl look appetizing to you?”

The crocodile looks Ella over with her cold eyes and Ella, despite her previous threat, suddenly does not want to be eaten.

The crocodile shrugs. “I don’t think so. Should she?”

“Of course not, young girls are bad for your liver.”

The crocodile gasps. “They are? Really?”

The toad nods.

“I didn’t even know I had a liver. But come to think of it, I do think I am rather hungry.” The crocodile swims away, scouring the waters, the air, the stars above. “Now, if only I knew what I ate.”

“So they’re dumb too, that’s no—”

“Not dumb. Dumb would mean incapable of speech, and as you heard they can speak just fine. What they are is forgetful. Drink from the lake and it’ll do the same to you.”

“Ridiculous.” And yet, the closer the crocodile got the less frightening she’d appeared. There was a strange lightness to her, she seemed as carefree and unburdened as a baby in the womb. And perhaps that’s what this cave is to them, it is very warm in here, Ella thinks. Then, the weight of all that’d happened presses back down onto her and she sinks back into the boat, back into sadness.

The toad, upon seeing this, perks up twice as much to compensate and struts along the rim of the boat as if it were a stage.

“You’ve never heard this story before, so before you mock me, allow me to elaborate!”

He’s so animated now Ella can’t help but watch. She sits up, intrigued.

“Long time ago, up the hill from where you live, lived a very rich man who’d read a book once about the lavish lifestyle of 17th century France and, in particular, the certain behavior of a French king who’d been quoted, and I quote, ‘Crocodile skin far surpasses the feel of any material it is a wonder that anyone can stand sitting on anything but. Ho hum.’”

From what Ella knows of the area there could be only one house where such a man lived.

“You mean the old Waily Mansion?” she says.

“Yes!”

A once glorious plantation estate she’d passed every day to and from school. A once glorious house that’s now a spooky old ruin that everyone in the area seems to have a ghost story about.

As the toad speaks, ghosted in the starry sky above him appear images of what he describes.

First, the Waily Mansion, but not as Ella remembers it. How it once was, a hundred years ago, with not a single blemish on any of its bricks and all the windows intact and shimmering like gemstones! (On the account of them actually being made of gemstones.)

“And,” continues the toad, “since crocodiles only live in Florida, Waily sent his best men down to get him one. A pregnant one, for he read further it was the skin of a pregnant crocodile that made for the most luxurious sheen. It took them awhile—years in fact—but they finally did it.”

In the Florida everglades, a group of Waily’s thugs ensnare a vicious and yet sad looking giant pregnant American crocodile. They swirl a net around her, tie her up, and throw her in the back of a caged truck.

“But luckily for her, luck was on her side, and on the night of her arrival a great storm hit! It knocked out the old bridge and into the drink they went!”

The truck careens off a disintegrating bridge and slams into the water. The cage door breaks open and the crocodile slithers out.

“And down the river she swam, until she came across this very cave—”

“Just as we did.”

“Except back then, it was completely dry, providing her shelter and a place to lay her eggs. However, with winter fast approaching, it was only a matter of time before they all froze to death.”

A very despondent mother crocodile stares out of the mouth of the cave and watches the very first snowflake of winter land on her snout.

“It was the first snowflake she’d ever seen and she knew at once it signified certain death for her and her babies. The American crocodile is very susceptible to cold, you see, that’s why they only live in Florida. So, she went back to her nest and cried and cried and her tears filled up around her—”

“To form this lake?”

“Right! So sad she was she couldn’t stop until her eyes were drained completely. But! with that last tear that ran down her cheek came an idea . . .”

Deep in the cave as the last tear falls, her head suddenly juts upward. Her eyes sparkle awake in a way Ella could never have imagined a crocodile’s eyes to sparkle. She leaps from her nest and dives into the lake.

“A good one, I hope. This is a rather depressing story so far,” Ella says.

“The best she could come up with. She went to the mouth of the cave and opened her jaws so wide, her mouth became its mouth, and her belly its belly, and like that she stayed all winter, keeping the cold at bay.”

At this point, the toad’s lamp flickers out and the two are thrust into complete darkness. The images in the sky disappear with it. Ella’s heart skips a beat.

“Don’t worry,” says the toad, “happens all the time. Now wake up, you lousy firefly.” He shakes the lantern until the firefly wakes up again and, in turn, her butt and, in turn, the lantern.

“And she didn’t freeze to death?” Ella says.

“She did, but ever since it’s stayed perfectly warm in here and her young were allowed to hatch. Allowed to grow up and live off the tears that make them so forgetful they’ll never find their way out to the cold. Perhaps not the best way to live, but they live. Have a drink and it’ll do the same for you.”

“So those teeth-like things on the way in?”

“Are real teeth.”

“And we went right through her stomach and out her . . .”

“Good thing she was dead, eh?”

“Good?” Ella watches as a crocodile swims up to them and accidentally thunks his head into the boat.

“Oops, sorry!” says the crocodile, the poor thoughtless beast.

Ella shakes her head. She can’t help but feel sorry for them. “But I don’t want to be like that.”

“You won’t. Just take a sip and when you do, think only about what you want to forget and forget it you shall.”

Ella scoops up some water and looks at it.

“Just a little and all the pain will go away,” continues the toad.

“And all the memories.”

“And all the pain.”

She closes her eyes. Drinks. Lays back in the boat.

“Now, think about what you want to forget.”

A tear runs down her cheek. A second. Then four more.