Toad Heaven Read Free Page A

stroking his warts. “You're a good boy, but you do have an overactive imagination.”
    Limpy nodded, though he didn't agree.
    “Be content with what you've done,” said Dad. He pointed to Uncle Nick. “Your invention's going to make flat cane toads a thing of the past.”
    Limpy nodded again, though he didn't agree with that either.
    Two seconds later, he was proved right.
    In the distance he heard a familiar sound. He prayed it was just sticks bouncing off trucks.
    But it wasn't.
    It was the unmistakable sound of wheels on the highway thumping over cane toads.
    “Goliath!” croaked Limpy. “Charm!”

L impy saw something was terribly wrong even before he got to the highway.
    As he scrambled through the undergrowth, he caught a glimpse of someone high above the road in the white haze of the railway-crossing light.
    A small figure flying through the air.
    A small figure whose every dear little wart he loved like his own.
    “Charm!” he yelled frantically, and flung himself toward the highway.
    What had happened? Had a vehicle smashed into his sister and flung her poor lifeless body into the air?
    Limpy didn't even want to think about the possibility. He wished something would remove the horrible thought from his mind.
    Something did. A large tree behind him, which he crashed into headfirst.
    Limpy lay on his back, dazed and frustrated, wishing that just once he could hop somewhere at top speed without his crook leg making him go round in circles.
    As soon as he was able to stand up again, he hopped a bit less fast to the edge of the highway. And stopped dead, staring in stunned disbelief.
    Charm was flying through the air again.
    But it wasn't a vehicle that had flung her up toward the railway-crossing light, it was Goliath.
    And her body wasn't lifeless, it was kicking gleefully and covered in something that looked to Limpy very much like sticky sap.
    Limpy realized other small sticky cane toads were flying, giggling, through the air as well. Squatting under the light were aunts and uncles, throwing the little cane toads up into the cloud of flying insects and catching them when they came down and throwing them back up again.
    Stack me, thought Limpy desperately. They're on the highway. Don't they realize the danger they're in?
    He was just about to point this out to them loudly and urgently when he noticed something.
    The sticky little cane toads had flying insects stuck all over them.
    A lot more flying insects, Limpy had to admit, than had been stuck to Uncle Nick.
    Then Limpy felt the road start to vibrate and heard a low rumble that got rapidly louder. Headlight beams suddenly punched through the darkness, and a vehicle came speeding round the bend in the highway.
    “Look out!” screamed Limpy. “A car!”
    The adult cane toads, gazing up at the golden cloud of flying insects, took a moment to realize what was happening. And when they did, most of them had to wait even longer for their little airborne assistants to drop back down into their arms.
    Limpy threw himself toward Goliath, hoping to catch Charm on her way down and drag them both to safety. But his crook leg gave way and he found himself hopping half a circle into the ditch.
    The car roared past. Limpy buried his head in his arms, trying not to hear anything.
    But he heard it anyway.
    The horrible squeal of a car swerving to take aim, and the even more horrible thump-thump pop-pop of tires running over cane toads.
    “Charm,” moaned Limpy to himself. “Goliath.”
    When the car had thudded over the railway crossing and accelerated away into the night, Limpy crawled out of the ditch and squinted, trembling, at the road.
    There they were, on the tarmac, just as he'd feared.
    Four damp patches of pressed skin and flat warts.
    Weak with distress, Limpy edged closer, wanting to see if any of them was Charm or Goliath, and yet not wanting to.
    Before he could bring himself to look properly, he felt someone tugging the flap of skin next to his