Toad Away - Morris Gleitzman [7]
“His ankles are starting to thaw,” said Charm.
Suddenly, with a splintering of ice and a lot of groaning, Goliath sat up.
“Are you OK?” asked Charm anxiously.
“My stick,” moaned Goliath. “Where's my stick?”
“Forget it,” said Limpy. “We're getting you out of here.”
“We have to defend ourselves,” said Goliath.
At first Limpy didn't understand what Goliath was on about.
Then he heard human voices shouting angrily.
He looked up and nearly fainted. Several human shoppers were advancing toward them, faces twisted with hatred, brandishing big cans and packets and vicious-looking vegetables.
Limpy grabbed the gifts of friendship and turned to face the advancing humans.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Goliath, shivering with cold and indignation, snatch a cheese stick off a shelf.
“No, Goliath,” begged Limpy. “Don't.”
It was too late.
“Come on, you wartless wonders!” Goliath yelled at the humans. He waved the cheese stick. “Do your worst!”
A couple of the humans dropped the groceries they were brandishing and grabbed gardening tools off another shelf. Sharp-looking ones.
Limpy knew the humans’ worst would probably involve a lot of stabbing, and then him and Charm and Goliath spending all eternity on a human mantelpiece, stuffed with cotton wool or, even worse, dried lentils.
Not if he could help it.
Limpy hopped into the middle of the wide strip of floor, right in front of the humans, and held out the slug sauce and the maggot moisturizer and the rat rissole.
“We come in peace!” he yelled. “We just want to be friends!”
He knew the humans couldn't understand what he was saying, but he prayed the quality of the gifts would speak for themselves.
Sadly, they didn't.
The humans raised their weapons and kept on coming.
Limpy stayed where he was, to distract the humans so Charm and Goliath would have one last chance to get away. He closed his eyes and waited to die. While he waited, he wished he'd had a chance to say goodbye to his dear sister and cousin. And to Mum and Dad. And to all the dead rellies in his bedroom.
Too late. Limpy felt revolting soft human skin against his own, and then he was lifted high into the air.
He opened his eyes so the human who was about to kill him would know he was a proud, fearless cane toad, and also so he could see where to squirt his poison pus.
But the human face looking down at him wasn't twisted with anger and hatred like most human faces. It was peering at him with sympathy.
Limpy saw that the face belonged to a teenage girl. She placed him gently into the plastic basket she was holding. Limpy trembled with relief. Charm and Goliath were already in there, both still alive.
“She took my cheese stick,” complained Goliath.
“Shhhh,” said Charm. “I'm trying to work out what the human's saying.”
The girl was saying something to the other humans. Limpy couldn't understand the words, but he could see, through the lattice of the basket, that the humans had lowered their weapons.
She must be explaining about the presents, thought Limpy. He groped around for the gifts, but Goliath was sitting on the sauce and moisturizer and was eating the rissole again.
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