Tiana

New Orleans, 1912. The papers called her Tiana Deveraux, but in the French Quarter they whispered a different name: La Reine des Grenouilles — the Frog Queen.

Tiana was the daughter of a cook and a jazz musician, and by 19 she ran a small café famous for its gumbo and for the strange symbols carved beneath every table. She claimed they kept bad spirits away — but one night, a man came who brought his own.

He was a fortune-teller, calling himself Doctor Laveau, claiming kinship with the great Marie Laveau herself. He promised Tiana wealth, fame, and a restaurant on Canal Street. In exchange, he asked only for “a drop of your shadow.”

Days later, the café burned down. When firemen cleared the wreck, they found no body — only the mark of a frog, blackened into the wood.

A year after, fishermen saw a giant bullfrog sitting near Bayou Saint-Denis with a gold pendant hanging from its neck — the same one Tiana always wore.

Locals began leaving offerings of honey and rice by the water. When they did, the crops grew better, and storms spared their homes. But those who mocked the Frog Queen’s legend often fell ill — their throats swelling, their voices lost.

Even now, when the bayou fog is thick and the jazz drifts low, some say they see her — a woman in a green dress, stirring a pot by the water’s edge, whispering:

“Dreams come true… but never for free.”