How six saved the frogs, p.1
How Six Saved the Frogs, page 1
About How Six Saved the Frogs
Can you leave your heart on the other side of the galaxy?
When Wouter, a down-to-earth dyslexic caretaker, accidentally activates a travel disc sent by his late brother, he finds himself whisked away to a distant planet. He's desperate to go home and reassure his grieving mother he's alive. Instead, he's stuck struggling to fill his brother's shoes to save the local population.
Nif, a bani healer, clings to human music as a lifeline of memories of joy and a world beyond grief after losing his mate. But then humans arrive to help them, and he volunteers to be on Wouter's support team, while many of his kin would rather see the humans go.
Their first meeting is one of necessity—a human in need and a bani ready to mend. As they forge their path through mistranslations, killer plants, and space pirates, a deeper connection blossoms between them. But every moment shared is one step closer to an inevitable farewell. Will Wouter leave his heart or his home?
How Six Saved the Frogs
Interplanetary Hearts
Book 1
Blaine D. Arden
How Six Saved the Frogs
Copyright © 2024 Blaine D. Arden
ISBN: 978-94-92678-16-4
Digital Edition
Cover Design by Getcovers
Edited by No Stone Unturned Editing
Logos by Cayendi Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition, August 2024
Cayendi Press
Zutphen
The Netherlands
CPress@cayendi.nl
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-94-92678-17-1
For my Co-Writing Pals
* * *
You bring a smile
to my workday
Contents
Content Notes
1. Shattered Memories
2. Discoveries and Consequences
3. Is This What Aliens Look Like?
4. Then There Were Two
5. Trying New Things
6. From Caretaker To Guide
7. All About Colour
8. Sweat, Sweat, and More Sweat
9. Of Washing and Mending
10. Bitter Shades of Piracy
11. The Trials of Trekking
12. Friend or Foe
13. Show and Tell
14. Explosions, Past and…
15. Trapped
16. Foes, Not Friends
17. Trust Has To Be Earned
18. Fragile Humans
19. Painful Truths
20. Through the Mountain
21. The Silence Before
22. Into the Storm
23. Four, Three, One Down
24. Shadows of Survival
25. Into Battle Once More
26. Canned Humans
27. Nourishing Memories
28. Path Unwinding
29. Home
30. Residual Echoes
Where Paths Meet
Thank You
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Blaine D. Arden
Content Notes
Though, I try to keep these content notes as generic as possible, they may contain spoilers.
On-page or notable reference:
Ableism
Administering first aid
Assault / abduction of side characters
Conversation about gender affirming surgery & packing
Cursing
Death of side characters
Disability: dyslexia / migraines
Grief over loss of family/friends
Life-threatening injury
Physical assault and burglary
Vomiting (as a result of travelling sickness)
Off-page or minor reference:
Deadnaming in the past
References to troubled childhood / abuse (both main and minor characters)
If you feel I missed some information in this list, feel free to email me.
One
Shattered Memories
It should be raining. Or maybe there should be thunder. Anything but this bright sunshine on a day that was breaking Wouter’s heart all over again; the day he was packing up Ruben’s flat.
It had only been two weeks since Ruben’s cremation, but the world around Wouter had gone back to life as usual, instead of the standstill they’d both come to when Pa died.
Wouter shoved the last moving boxes into his bright orange cargo ebike. It was still hard to believe his brother was gone.
As he steered his bike through the narrow streets, more shops opened and people started flooding into the centre from all sides. Wouter missed the quiet of the early morning, and the higher the bright sun rose, the more his mood darkened.
On any other day, he would chat to acquaintances on his way home, ask after their families, their friends, and even their pets. Today he ignored their joyful greetings the way he was ignoring the sun. If he stopped, they’d want to hug him, express their sorrow, or wish him strength. Wouter couldn’t face that right now. Not today.
It really should be raining.
Instead, the sun beat hotly on his back when he parked his bike at the building’s back entrance. He locked it into the bike rack, grabbed a handful of moving boxes, and fled into the cool stone corridor. While the building was one of the oldest on the block, the flats were all high-end and high-tech, leaving little maintenance for Wouter to do. Still, as the building’s caretaker, he kept pretty much on top of any repairs and tenants’ needs. He liked his job. A concept most of his exes never seemed to understand.
They expected him to strive for “more”, often offering detailed descriptions of what their notion of “more” looked like. Or they assumed this was a side job to support himself while he studied whatever the flavour of the day was. Something they deemed “worthy”. Then again, they also assumed he could read their chicken-scratch notes even his phonet’s reader struggled with. They were exes for a reason, but their judgement still made him feel small.
With heavy heart, he trudged up the stairs to Ruben’s flat on the fifth floor. The building had a perfectly functional lift, of course, updated to the latest voice recognition software, too, but Wouter rarely used it. He liked to walk. Using the stairs was his way of exercising during the day. The door to Ruben’s floor slid open when he approached it, revealing an empty corridor. Not that Wouter had expected anyone to be there. Most of the tenants were at work. Except Mrs Dees, but at this time of day, she was no doubt chatting to her granddaughter, who was stationed on the base on Vasaris.
Ruben’s flat loomed at the end of the corridor.
Wouter put the moving boxes against the wall and fished the keycard out of his auto-sealing back pocket with a trembling hand but couldn’t make himself open the door. Instead, he leaned his head against the cool wall and breathed.
From the moment the Heiland family had adopted Wouter, he and Ruben had been thick as thieves. Ruben had been about a year and half younger than Wouter, but sprouted a similar unruly mop of red hair and had been nothing but cool about having another brother, whereas others persisted in calling Wouter by his dead name.
And Ruben could read. Read to Wouter, that was.
Wouter had never got on with letters much. Or the other way around. The letters wouldn’t stand still long enough for Wouter to make sense of them. If he concentrated hard, he could recognise some short words, but that was about it. He sighed against the cool wall. He missed Ruben.
His phonet rang out in the silence, startling him. Ma’s ringtone. He thought about not answering, but she’d only continue calling him if he didn’t. He put the keycard in his left hand and tapped the dot behind his right ear—he preferred it to telling his phonet to “answer”. “Ja, Ma. I’m here.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t come and help you?”
Wouter shook his head. His other brothers had offered to help, too. “Nee, Ma. I think it’s best I do this on my own.” Confronting his own feelings was hard enough. The last thing he wanted was Ma coming out here and breaking down crying. She’d been in such a bad way when they’d packed up Pa’s things last year. He would not put her through that again. “I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”
“Je bent een goeie jongen.”
Wouter couldn’t help but smile when she rang off. She considered all her roost good boys.
“Turn on do-not-disturb,” he instructed his phonet, and took a deep breath as he pushed the keycard against the reader with a trembling hand. The door slid open… to the most horrible mess inside. Wouter froze. Tables and chairs turned over, books scattered throughout the room, the cupboards upended, and pillows strewn everywhere.
Ruben’s flat hadn’t looked like this when Wouter and Ma had picked up Ruben’s brown trousers and dark orange button-down for his funeral. How could someone desecrate Ruben’s home like that? Like it meant nothing.
Anger rose to the surface as he tapped his dot. One moment, he was rattling off the number for the police, the next, a
dark-clothed figure rushed at him, and knocked him into the doorpost.
Wouter grabbed at the burglar, but it was useless. They ducked, rammed their fists into his stomach, and disappeared into the corridor.
“Oof. Hey!” Wouter rubbed his stomach. “Stop!”
His foot caught as he moved to chase them. Ruben’s duffle bag. Wouter didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the duffle and flung it after the burglar. It missed. Just.
A door opened across the corridor, and Mrs Dees popped her head out.
“Bel 112,” was all Wouter could get out before he took the stairs, two steps at a time, to catch the schoft.
He descended as fast as he could without stumbling or diving headfirst onto the concrete floors. The burglar’s panting rang out through the stairwell, despite the heavy echo of pounding feet. The schoft was fast, and Wouter couldn’t narrow the distance between them.
When he reached the ground-floor hall, the front doors were just closing. Wouter waved his hands and waited bouncing on the balls of his feet, bursting out of the building the moment they slid open. There was no burglar in sight. Instead, he found poor Mr Tol, the postman, sprawled on the pavement, holding his left arm awkwardly to his chest. Wouter helped him up and set him on the steps, reassuring him that Mrs Dees had called 112. Then he rounded the building, but found nothing there, either.
The back door was closed, and his bike still stood locked into the rack, holding the remaining moving boxes. Heaving, resting his hands on his knees, Wouter cursed the burglar. He had no choice but to go back and wait for the police.
Wouter leaned heavily against Ruben’s door as the police officers and their technical crew descended the stairs, ignoring Ma’s request for an update… again. They’d been in here all morning, checking for prints and all that while the officers had questioned Wouter. It had been a long day.
The questions about Ruben’s car crash had rattled him the most.
Ruben had been on his way to meet them for a leaving dinner, Ma, Wouter, and their brothers. He’d accepted an assignment from the Alliance to go off-world and would be gone for about a month. When he’d been thirty minutes late, an ambulance raced past the restaurant. They’d known then. Ruben had never been late.
He had crashed into the pylon of a bridge. A driver approaching the bridge from the other side had witnessed Ruben losing control of his car after over-steering to avoid hitting a family of ducks. Or were they geese? Wouter could never remember which. It didn’t matter. Ruben had died on impact.
Maybe the officers had just wanted to be thorough, but dredging up that horrible day, reminding Wouter even more how he missed Ruben so badly it hurt, had been too much.
Now his mind overflowed with questions no one could answer. Including why someone would break into Ruben’s flat, upend every single drawer and cupboard, and not even touch his top-of-the-line audio and media equipment. Those were probably his most expensive items. It made no sense.
The mess was hard to take in as he dragged the moving boxes inside. He put one together and placed it in the midst of the scattered books. It had been a long time since Ruben had read to him. These days Wouter would get the audiobook while Ruben stuck to paperbacks and ebooks. Paperbacks to read during his time off, and ebooks for when he was on an assignment. They’d just started a new fantasy series about elves in space. He’d enjoyed the first chapter, but after Ruben… he couldn’t bear to continue. The thought of never discussing another book with Ruben made his heart hurt.
The books were going to his flat. He packed them, forcing himself to ignore the covers, the titles, and the memories of discussions they’d had. His hands trembled as he filled box after box, righted the chairs and the tables. He didn’t even realise he was crying until his tears splashed onto the covers as he closed the last box. He wiped the moisture off the book and sat back to dry his eyes with the hem of his shirt.
“Wouter?”
He dropped the hem and whirled around. Hadn’t he closed the door? Apparently not, since Mrs Dees was staring at him from the corridor. “Did you need me?” His voice sounded as rough as he felt.
“It’s Mr Tol. The police called him an ambulance, but he refuses to go until he’s delivered his packages. Your packages.”
“My packages?” But he hadn’t ordered anything. And Ma’d have told him if she’d ordered something for him.
“That’s what he said. I offered to take them up, but you need to sign for them.”
Wouter pushed to his feet and wiped his dusty hands on the towel he’d grabbed from the kitchen. As if his day wasn’t bad enough. He exited the flat and closed the door behind him. “I’d best go and get them, then. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Poor paramedic didn’t seem to know what to make of him, the stubborn old fool.”
Mrs Dees’ voice followed Wouter as he all but ran down the stairs. Mr Tol was close to retirement age but enjoyed his job too much to stop. Always joking his wife wouldn’t know what to do with him home all day.
The front doors were still open when he reached the ground floor. Mr Tol sat on the steps outside, looking decidedly pale. Stubborn, indeed. Wouter sat next to him and threw him a tired smile, ignoring the trepidation in the young paramedic hovering in front of them.
He was used to being stared at. Being over six feet and broad-built didn’t make a very inviting image, despite his soft belly. Ma often called him her gentle giant, but Wouter had learnt to show his kindness before other people would regard him as harmless. He was too tired to put more effort into it now, though. “What’s this about refusing to get into the ambulance? That arm’s got to hurt.”
The paramedic, still staring at Wouter, chimed in “Possible upper arm fracture and a sprained wrist. And I don’t like the tenderness around his ribs.” They glanced at Mr Tol, but then lifted their head again and pointed at Wouter’s T-shirt. “Clever.”
Wouter blinked and checked what shirt he was wearing. It gave him the excuse to hide his embarrassment and gather himself. He had completely misread their reaction to him. It wouldn’t be the first time.
With Ruben on his mind, he hadn’t paid much attention to what he’d pulled out of his wardrobe, but it didn’t surprise him he’d put on one of his favourite Klunkett and Co shirts. He wore his light blue V-neck with Sometimes, the best tools are the ones you invent yourself. above a grappling hook in white and pink gradients, cobbled together from a crimp tool, nanoweave, and siltape.
“Thanks,” he said as he turned to Mr Tol. “They hit you hard. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them.”
Mr Tol shook his head. “Not your fault. I hope the police catch them.” He reached for his bag and pulled two packages out. “Couldn’t have them carting me off to hospital before handing you these.”
Taking the packages, Wouter opened his mouth to thank him, but closed it when Mr Tol held out a seven-inch duracrys slat.
“You have to sign for the top one.”
At the apologetic note in Mr Tol’s voice, Wouter tried hard to suppress the sigh bubbling to the surface. Even though he practised his signature regularly, under guidance from Ma—and Ruben—it still made him uncomfortable to sign in public, even when it was Mr Tol, who’d known Ma for years. He was never sure his signature matched the one on his ID. And he couldn’t stop his hand from trembling as he signed the slat. Wouter hoped his scribbling didn’t look too much like a child’s.
