The Toad Lady

    The toad lady lives deep in the woods in a rickety shack. In her garden you'll find all sorts f odd things; toadstool, night shade, monkshood, and wormwood to name a few. She spends her days cooking all sorts of strange smelling things with colorful vapors of blue, purple, red, gold, green the liquid always being a darker hue. She had a squat face and body, her eyes bulging out the sides of her head. She even croaked when she talked. Everyday she'd waddle to the well to get fresh water for her new concoctions. When she deemed them ready be it a hour or a week, maybe a month, she would put them into shapely bottles and place a simple cork stopper of the appropriate size. She had these bottles of every shape and size stuffed in every nook and cranny. It was a wonder she new where anything was, her little shack contained nothing but piles of this and that.
    One day a young maiden came to call she had been wondering through the woods. She had seen the colorful haze coming from the bubbling couldren and followed it until she found the little shack. She knocked on the door, it creaked slightly open spilling a stream of light. The girl could see things glittering in the light and pushed the door open some more stepping halfway through the door way.
    "Is anyone here," she softly whispered. "I lost my way."
    "And where do you come from dearie?" something croaked in the darkness.
    "In a kingdom just North of these woods in the Valley of Twin Peaks."
    "I know of the place, what of your family?"
    "There is only my beloved father, my mother and two siblings died some years ago." The girl bowed her head sadly as a tear rolled down her cheek, she missed them so much.
    "And what would you do to have them back?" The girl was startled by this next question. What wouldn't she do to have her mother back? To have her hold her again? To play with her brother and sister once more.
    "What kind of price would you ask to raise the dead?" She tried to see more of the figure in the darkness but could only ever see gray, cloudy, buldging eyes set in a blob of flesh.
    "That would depend on your desires dearie."