Toad

The toad appears in The Wee Free Men, typically in Miss Tick's hat. He has, if not cold-blooded, a cool view of the world. As the companion of a witch he is not familiar, he says, just slightly presumptuous. When Miss Tick goes away to get help, she tells him to stay so that Tiffany Aching is not left alone.

He is quite well informed on magical subjects, probably because he is a magical creature. He knows he was turned into a toad, but left thinking he was human, and doesn't know why. Never trust a woman with a star on her wand! Sometimes at night he is troubled by the thought that he might have been a toad who got on her nerves.

He travels with Tiffany on her rescue mission into Fairyland in the pocket of her apron, a source of objective if barely helpful advice. "I'm stuck in a wood of evil dreams and I'm all alone and I think its getting darker," said Tiffany. "What should I do?" The toad opened a bleary eye and said: "Leave."

In line with the general theme of awakening from dreams, in the act of saving the Feegles from the one enemy they are really afraid of, the toad remembers how he came to be transformed. The Queen of Fairyland has summoned up lawyers, who know about writing down names, the most terrifying kind of magic. The toad counters these with Latatian phrases, and it comes back to him that he too was once a lawyer.

A Feegle asks, "How come you're a lawyer and a toad?" He recounts that he made legal history by suing a Fairy Godmother on behalf of a client who felt one of her three wishes had not really been fulfilled. The Fairy Godmother made legal history by turning the client into a small hand mirror, and him amphibian.

In the Feegles he has found a vocation, and he stays on with them.

We learn from the Official Court Transcript helpfully provided by the author in The_Illustrated_Wee_Free_Men that the godmother was Fairy Nettle, and the future handmirror was Princess Sandy of the Kingdom of Fallen Rock. The lawyer who appeared for Princess Sandy was Mr James Natter, commonly known perhaps as Natter, Jack.

The Transcript mentions that Mr Natter had become a toad, but does not say anything about Princess Sandy. If she was indeed turned into a handmirror, how does this square with the fact she was due to be a fairy-tale princess, "all foretold, m'lord"?

The fact that negotiations broke down in this rather dramatic fashion may perhaps be attributed to inexperience on the part of the judge, who was presiding for the first time in the Magical Narrative Division.