Toad Away (4 page)

Before Limpy could grab the gifts, the basket tilted and Limpy slid into the others. He felt the basket moving at speed. The girl was carrying them through a huge room stacked with cardboard boxes. Then suddenly they were outside and she was carrying them across a car park full of big trucks.

The girl put the basket down on the ground.

Limpy was about to thank her and offer her some slug sauce, but before he could, she lifted him and
Charm gently out of the basket and lowered them toward a big muddy tire rut filled with water.

The water embraced them both and they snuggled down into its depths and Limpy drank some of it gratefully in through his skin.

He looked up at the girl and saw her wobbly outline against the sky. As the muddy water moved over Limpy's eyes, it played tricks with his vision. One moment the girl's face looked rumpled and warty and friendly, the next it looked smooth and cold and scary.

Limpy felt a jolt of panic. Where was Goliath? Was the girl going to punish him for being threatening with a cheese stick?

No, Limpy saw with relief, she wasn't.

She was carefully placing Goliath in the water next to him and Charm. He heard the slurp of Goliath drinking in water through his skin.

Stack me, thought Limpy. A human has saved our lives.

He looked up through the water again. The girl was moving away, but he got another good look at her face before she disappeared.

It was definitely friendly.

Suddenly Limpy knew this was his big chance. He groped around in the water, grabbed the bladders
of sauce and moisturizer, and hopped out into the sunlight.

Charm's anxious voice bubbled up from the water.

“Limpy, where are you going?”

“Don't worry,” called Limpy as he headed after the girl. “This could be the answer to all our problems.”

At first Limpy thought he'd lost the girl in the huge room full of cardboard boxes. Then he saw her, in a small room to one side with a table in it and some chairs.

She was pouring a drink into a glass and talking to a couple of other humans who were wearing exactly the same clothes as her. Limpy realized they were uniforms. He'd seen humans wearing uniforms on bushwalks. Either the girl worked at the supermarket or she was a bus driver.

Doesn't matter what her job is, thought Limpy excitedly. The important thing is she can teach me how to make friends with humans. Who knows where it might lead? Peace and friendship between humans and cane toads everywhere, for example. Including on picnics.

The other uniformed people left the room, and the girl sat down and sipped her drink.

Now, thought Limpy.

He hopped into the room, holding out the slug sauce and the maggot moisturizer.

Before he could catch the girl's attention, she put her drink down, stood up, and went to the other side of the room.

Limpy waited patiently for her to turn around and see him. She was washing her hands at the sink.

Good, thought Limpy. She'll probably need moisturizer after using soap. Goliath does whenever he eats some.

The girl moved away from the sink and opened the door of a white cupboard that was making the same low rumbling noise Dad made when he snored. For a crazy moment Limpy thought the cupboard was full of sleeping cane toads. Then the girl reached in and took out a leg and started eating it.

It was, Limpy saw with relief, a chicken leg, not a cane toad leg.

The white cupboard must be full of sleeping chickens.

The girl was also holding a carrot. She headed back toward the sink. Limpy opened his skin pores and took a deep breath through them so he'd be nice and relaxed when she saw him. As he did, he spotted something that made him clam them up again in panic.

Charm was next to the table leg, waving to him frantically and pointing at something.

Goliath.

He was up on the girl's chair, hands on hips. Peeing into her drink.

Limpy went weak at the warts. Before he could do anything, the girl turned and headed toward the chair, humming.

Limpy shrank into the shadows under the table.

Goliath dived for the door. Charm followed, frantically signaling for Limpy to come too.

The girl sat down, took another bite of chicken leg, and picked up her drink.

Limpy stared in horror. Then, praying his crook leg wouldn't send him spinning into the sink, he dropped the gifts and hopped onto the arm of the girl's chair and flung himself at the glass just as she was lifting it to her lips.

Limpy smacked into the glass so hard he nearly swallowed his tongue and one of his eyelids.

The glass spun through the air.

So did Limpy.

The glass landed on the floor and smashed.

So did Limpy, except when he wiped the sticky liquid out of his eyes, he found he hadn't actually broken anything, he just felt like he had.

He stood up, aching all over.

The girl was on her feet, staring down at him.

Limpy didn't hang around to say g'day. He tottered out the door and crawled through a pile of rubbish after Charm and Goliath.

“Goliath,” he croaked, once they were out of the building and safe in the thick undergrowth at the back of the car park. “Why did you do that?”

Goliath glared back toward the supermarket.

“Because you've gone soft,” he growled. “Wasting time trying to make friends. If we're gunna win this war, we've got to hit those humans where it hurts. Pee in their drinks. Pee in their beds if we have to.”

Limpy sighed. And not just because his cousin was an idiot. He was remembering the girl's angry face as she stared down at him, so furious she hadn't even noticed the bladders of sauce and moisturizer squashed under her shoes.

It was the face of someone who'd never be his friend now, not even if sludge worms could fly.

“I
'm gunna train whole battalions of cane toads,” said Goliath, eyes shining. “And we're gunna pee in every dam, reservoir, and car radiator we can find.”

“I think we should pick our targets more carefully,” said Charm, squirting pus at a pair of human trousers hanging on a washing line and hitting them right between the legs. “That way we won't hurt innocent bystanders. What do you reckon, Limpy?”

Limpy didn't say anything. He was too busy trying to get the three of them safely across this human backyard, and the next one, until they were out of the human suburb and out of the hot sun and home in the swamp.

“Don't be depressed, Limpy,” said Charm. “You did your best. It's not your fault your way didn't work.”

“Luckily we've still got my way,” said Goliath.

“Cream the mongrels.”

“Keep hopping,” said Limpy, glancing anxiously at the house whose flower beds they were hurrying through. He didn't want an angry human spotting them and making Goliath depressed too. With a chain saw.

Goliath gave a yell.

“Look! Over there! A prisoner of war!”

Limpy looked.

In a cage was a small bird that was even more colorful than one of Mum's butterfly and wasp casseroles. The cage was hanging from one of those complicated revolving metal things that Goliath reckoned were high-tech military helicopters used by humans to kill cane toads. And to dry clothes.

Goliath was wriggling across the lawn toward the cage on his stomach.

Limpy sighed. Only one more backyard to go and they'd be safely out of the suburb. Why did Goliath have to pick now to do a bad commando impersonation?

“We can't just leave the poor thing a prisoner,” said Charm.

“No,” said Limpy wearily. “You're right.”

He and Charm followed Goliath to the cage.

“G'day,” said the bird when they got there.

“Just act natural,” Goliath hissed at the bird. “We're gunna get you out of here. Where are the guards?”

The bird stared at him. “Guards?” it said. Then it chuckled. “Don't be dopey. I like it here.”

Limpy frowned in surprise.

Goliath nearly fell over. “Like it?” he croaked.

“I get six meals a day,” said the bird. “I've got my own mirror. And I get to fly around the living room on Sundays. What do you reckon?”

“He's been brainwashed,” muttered Goliath to Limpy. “Military intelligence have washed his brain. And rinsed it.”

“Goliath,” said Charm. “He's a pet.”

Limpy realized she was right. He knew what pets were. He'd seen them on the back shelves of passing cars. Cats and dogs, mostly. They'd seemed pretty happy, judging by how often they nodded their heads.

“A pet?” said Goliath, confused. “Not a prisoner of war? Then why's he chained to a military clothes-drying device?”

Limpy looked pleadingly at Charm, hoping she'd do the explaining so they could leave.

“You lot are cane toads, aren't you?” said the bird.

Limpy nodded.

“I'm related to you,” said the bird.

Now it was Limpy's turn to be confused. The bird had feathers and a beak and not one visible wart.

“I say related,” continued the bird. “What I really mean is, we come from the same place.”

“Where's that?” asked Goliath suspiciously. “I've never seen you around the swamp.”

“Pet shop in town,” said the bird. “The one next to the dry cleaner's. But originally my species and your species both came from the Amazon River region in a place called Brazil. Both been there since time began, apparently. A guinea pig in the pet shop told me.”

Limpy's warts prickled with impatience. He'd heard all this before, when the old cane toads had drunk too much cockroach sherry.

“We've got to go,” he hissed at Charm and Goliath.

“Lovely place, the Amazon, by all accounts,” said the bird. “You know those ads for New Zealand on TV? From what I've heard, the Amazon is even better.”

“What's so lovely about it?” said Goliath. “Have all the humans there been blown up?”

“Don't think so,” said the bird, giving Goliath a strange look.

In the distance a door slammed.

Limpy stiffened. He squinted toward the house. A human was coming down the steps from the deck, carrying a bag of nuts.

“Ah,” said the bird. “Afternoon tea.”

“Hop for it,” said Limpy to Charm and Goliath.

They both hesitated. Limpy could see they were thinking about letting the human have it with their weapon of choice.

He grabbed them and dragged them toward the flower bed, crook leg trembling with the effort.

Finally they stopped resisting and the three of them dived under some big leaves. When they'd stopped panting, Limpy noticed Charm wasn't looking at him quite as gratefully as she usually did when he rescued her.

“Limpy,” said Charm. “I know you want to keep me safe, and I appreciate it, but don't you think I'm getting a bit big for you to be bossing me around?”

“Me too,” grumbled Goliath.

Limpy didn't know what to say. Charm hadn't grown at all since she was little. Neither had Goliath's brain.

“No offense, Limpy,” said Charm gently. “But if I'm going to be bossed around, I prefer someone a bit old and wise to do it. Someone like Aunty Pru.”

“Me too,” said Goliath. “Except not Aunty Pru'cause she uses long words.”

Limpy stared at Charm, thoughts racing.

Of course. That's what we need. Someone older and wiser to give us advice on how to live in peace with humans.

“You're a genius,” said Limpy, hugging Charm.

“What about me?” said Goliath. “I had the idea about peeing on the pizzas.”

T
hey found Aunty Pru on the road leading out of the suburb. She was staring at something small and flat on the tarmac.

“Aunty Pru,” called Limpy from the edge of the road. “Can we ask you something?”

Aunty Pru looked up, startled. Then her face broke into a big wrinkled smile as she recognized Limpy and Charm and Goliath.

“G'day, young uns,” she said. “Fire away, I'm all ears.”

Goliath stared at her, looking confused.

“No, she's not,” he whispered to Limpy. “Most of those are warts.”

Limpy ignored Goliath.

“Aunty Pru,” he said. “What's the best way of living in peace with humans?”

“A way that doesn't involve going into supermarkets,” said Charm.

“It's war, isn't it?” said Goliath.