Toad Away - Morris Gleitzman [8]
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