Toad Heaven - Morris Gleitzman [30]
Limpy knew the human had said something not very nice from the expression on the human's face. Limpy looked anxiously at Goliath, whose eyes, he saw, were bulging in a worrying way.
Don't spray him, Goliath, begged Limpy silently. Please don't.
Then yet another human picked Limpy up and held him out to the woman who was collecting the money.
They said lots of things to each other. The man prodded Limpy quite a bit and turned him upside down a couple of times. Finally, sick and giddy, Limpy found himself lying on a paper bag. Goliath, he saw, was being put into another bag.
The spider was nearby.
“He's bought you,” said the spider. “And his mate's bought the big ugly one next to you. Yours got the best deal, though. A dollar off, 'cause of your crook leg.”
Limpy's stomach lurched as he felt himself being picked up again.
He peered desperately around the shop, and just before he was dropped into the bag, he saw the thing he had feared the most.
His stomach went beyond lurching, into stabs of anguish.
Charm, her tiny face frozen in an expression of hope and anxiety, was still on the shelf.
Limpy had never been a souvenir before.
It wasn't very comfortable.
It's this paper bag, he said to himself in the darkness. It's just too small for a cane toad and a plastic yabbie and a plankton pen with a really sharp point.
Limpy wished the human who'd bought him yesterday had taken him out of the bag before putting him in the rucksack. Even though that would have meant the human touching him again.
Limpy shivered at the memory.
The rucksack jolted. Limpy was stabbed in the bottom again, either by the pen or the yabbie, or possibly both.
When he'd managed to wriggle away from them a bit, he wondered how Goliath was doing.
“Goliath,” called Limpy softly. “These paper bags are a real pain, eh?”
“Not really,” said Goliath's voice from the next rucksack. “I've eaten half of mine.”
Limpy smiled.
Good old Goliath. He could make you smile even when your bottom was hurting and your back was itching and you were covered with human fingerprints and you were worried sick about Charm.
For the millionth time, Limpy hoped that Charm had been bought as well. If possible, by friends of his human, which would mean she'd be in a rucksack not too far away from the one he was in.
“Charm,” he called for the millionth time. “Are you okay?”
No reply.
Perhaps she can't hear me over the noise of the bus engine, thought Limpy.
He was pretty sure it was a bus engine.
The boat-rocking had stopped soon after Limpy was first put in the rucksack. Then there'd been a bit of jiggling that felt like the rucksack was on a human's back. Then no movement during what Limpy assumed was the night. Now Limpy was pretty sure this jolting was a bus.
“Goliath,” called Limpy. “Have you heard from Charm yet?”
“No,” said Goliath's voice. “Why, doesn't she want her paper bag?”
Limpy wished he were more like Goliath.
If I had a smaller brain and a bigger stomach, he thought, perhaps I wouldn't worry so much.
About Charm.
About the virus germs.
About whether the bus really was heading to another national park.
About what would happen if they couldn't escape from their humans and had to spend the rest of their lives on a mantelpiece.
What I need, thought Limpy, is something to take my mind off things.
He started eating his paper bag.
The bus stopped with a jolt.
Limpy winced, pulled the plankton pen out of his bottom, and listened.
The humans were getting off the bus.
This was the moment Limpy had been waiting for. “We're at the national park and Charm is with us,” he said to himself. “We're at the national park and Charm is with us. We're at the national park and Charm is with us.”
Goliath reckoned if you said something enough times, it came true. He was always saying things like “I can fit another swamp slug into my mouth, I can fit another swamp slug into my mouth,” and sometimes he could.
Limpy realized that the noise of the bus engine had stopped too. He could hear another noise now, and it wasn't how he'd imagined