by Ali Sparkes
Charlie, he realized, with a cold thud in his heart, had just become a heron’s breakfast.
Even as these thoughts fled through his brain, the huge sword was moving fast back up through the water. Something was indeed skewered on its beak. Something bleeding red through the water. Something not moving. The beak and the bleeding body vanished, leaving only a few wisps of crimson, wafting and dissolving eerily through the water.
Josh felt Danny put his webbed hand on his shoulder. “Tell me this isn’t happening, Josh,” he whimpered. How would they ever explain how Charlie had died? Nobody would believe it. And Petty would never get involved at all. She would deny everything.
Josh and Danny were so shocked they forgot to move—even though they could very well be next on the menu. They stared vacantly ahead, desperately trying to make sense of what had just happened.
“Wha-what was that?” said Danny, at last.
“Heron,” croaked Josh. “It would have been fast. She wouldn’t have known what hit her.”
“I really liked her,” said Danny, his head drooping in sorrow. “She was fun. The most fun girl I’ve ever met.”
“Aaaah, that’s really nice of you to say so,” said Charlie. “I like you guys too.”
“BAAAAAA?!” shrieked Danny. And Josh agreed.
“WAAAAAA?!” Danny added. Josh went along with that.
Charlie grinned at them. “That was scary!” she said. “You said nothing in the pond would try to eat us, Josh.”
“Bu—wha—cah . . . ?” Josh blinked several times and felt a huge surge of relief pump up through him. “Well . . . there isn’t anything in the pond . . . but there’s always something above it. I should have remembered the heron!”
“You’re ALIVE!” yelled Danny, full of joy. “But what about all the blood? We saw blood going everywhere!”
“Nah,” laughed Charlie. “That was the red ink from inside Drill Sergeant’s key fob. Gave me a bit of a fright too. That daggery beak missed me by an inch—it went for the fob instead.”
“Oh no—does that mean the key’s gone?” Danny gulped and stared up through the water.
“Nope,” said Charlie, shaking her right arm. The key and the key ring were still on it. “The plastic broke off the ring. That’s all.”
“We’ve got to get out of here and get Petty to change us back,” said Josh. “I can’t see the heron out there, but he could still be hunting. He wouldn’t have liked the taste of that key fob.”
“But if we hop up to the surface, won’t he eat us?” Danny gulped.
“We’ll go up under the lily pads,” said Josh, pointing across to what looked like a flotilla of rounded dark green rafts on part of the surface of the pond. “We can pop up through them and then jump into the pond plants at the edge. With any luck, he won’t see us. We can’t wait down here any longer.”
They swam in formation to the rafts, which were held together by a snaky network of underwater stems. Chinks of bright morning light streamed down through the gaps between them.
The moment Josh pushed his eyes up through the skin of water, he saw Petty standing up, waving her hands and going “Raaah!”
The heron flapped away above them.
Plop! Plop! Plop! Three frogs arrived at Petty’s feet, one of them slightly clumsily, with a heavy metal key on its shiny wet wrist.
“Well done!” hissed Petty, kneeling down, easing the key off Charlie’s wrist and spraying them all with some more yellowy stuff. The antidote! They waited expectantly, moving away from the edge of the pond. After a few seconds, nothing had happened.
“Oh pee, porridge, and poo!” muttered Petty, her gigantic face screwing up in annoyance. “I’ve brought the wrong bottle out! That’s another bottle of froggy AMPHISWITCH. Sorry! You’ll just have to wait to S.W.I.T.C.H. back when it wears off.”
The frogs started gesturing at Petty in annoyance. “I know! I know!” she said, looking at her watch. It was just five minutes to six. “Not to worry—I’ll get the games in the cupboard and key back on the hook.” She shoved the key in her pocket, gathered up the games, and was just about to dash off when Josh landed heavily on her foot and pointed up into the trees above them. The heron was there, perched elegantly on a branch, his blue-grey wings folded and gleaming softly in the morning sun . . . just waiting for the human to depart so he could resume his froggy feast.
“Aaah. Yes. Perhaps you’d better come with me,” said Petty. “Come along—hop to it.”
If anybody had been awake to see it, they would have been amazed at the sight of a stout senior, clutching a stack of kids’ gadgety games, dashing across a field like a sprinter, accompanied by three frogs, leaping ahead of her in energetic bounds.
“Wheeeeeeee!” Charlie had quite got over her near death experience and was hugely enjoying the fun. So were Josh and Danny. Their back legs were immensely powerful and catapulted them about a foot and a half with each push off.
“Oooh—yum!” said Charlie, halfway through a leap. Danny glanced across to see some long spindly legs and a wing wriggling out of the side of her mouth. “What was that?” she asked. “It was like popcorn in the air! Who’s throwing me popcorn?!”
“That would be a mayfly,” said Josh, narrowly avoiding Petty’s Wellington boot.
“Eeeeugh!” shuddered Danny. But a second later, his tongue shot out of his mouth at incredible speed and collected another winged snack. Crunch! Munch! It was gone before he realized it. And it tasted good! Like Cheetos. “Aaaaargh! I can’t believe I just did that!” croaked Danny, while Charlie whooped with delight.
“We’re here!” said Petty, and they all plopped onto the wooden deck of the office cabin. Petty crept into the office and took the games straight to the confiscation cupboard. Josh, Danny, and Charlie landed with three small damp thuds on the desk and watched Petty carefully unlock the door and place the games inside. Up on the wall, the clock showed it was three minutes to Drill Sergeant’s six o’clock alarm . . .
“Hurry UP, Petty,” whispered Josh.
Petty relocked the cupboard. Then she very carefully pushed open the door into the bunk room behind the office. At once a gale of snores could be heard. Petty crept in, a huge silhouette in the dim light, and the three frogs followed, trying hard not to plop too loudly on the wooden floor.
Drill Sergeant lay on his side, snug in his pajamas under a duvet, snoring loudly. His back was turned to them as Petty reached across to hang the key on the wall hook just above the head end of his bed. On the bedside table, the digital clock read 5:58 a.m. As the amphibian crew stared at it, shivering with nerves, it flicked to 5:59 a.m.
“Hurry!” Charlie couldn’t help whispering, jumping up in the air with anxiety. Unfortunately she landed with a loud slap exactly in the lull between snores. Drill Sergeant snorted, snuffled, and energetically turned over. Petty Potts hit the deck like an athlete, dropping the key with a loud thud—just as Drill Sergeant’s eyes blearily opened. She crouched low down on his mat and scrunched up her face, waiting for the awful moment of discovery, while three frogs sat in a row behind her, their mouths hanging open in horror. For a few seconds, there was silence.
Then the alarm went off.
In the shadow of Petty’s crouching backside, Josh and Danny slammed their hands across their wide mouths to stop a scream of terror shooting out. Charlie put hers over her big eyes . . . and a high-pitched squeak did make it out of her mouth—but fortunately the shrill beeping of the alarm hid it. Drill Sergeant grunted and began slapping across to the bedside table to shut off the noise. His slappy hand missed Petty’s dismayed face by an inch and eventually hit the clock. It fell into silence again, and Danny, peering past Petty, noticed that a digital word had sprung up above the numbers, which now read 6:00 a.m. It said “SNOOZE.” Snooze? That meant another five minutes, didn’t it? Yes! Drill Sergeant rolled onto his back and made grunty, slurpy noises as his tongue gradually unstuck from the roof of his mouth and his jaw fell open. His eyes were shut. He was going to have a s
nooze!
Danny could stand it no longer. He grabbed the key from the floor, jumped up onto Petty’s shoulder and then leapt for the hook. Employing all his basketball skills, he stretched his arms out and threw the key at just the right angle so that the little metal ring would drop down over the hook. Half a second later, there was a ringing metallic clink as he scored.
“Yeeeeesssssss!” Charlie and Josh couldn’t help shouting. Then “Noooooooo!” as Danny landed on Drill Sergeant’s face, one leg in his open mouth.
What followed was a bit crazy. Drill Sergeant bawled “Plawaaa!” and shot up in bed, scrabbling at his face and thwacking Danny down onto the duvet. Danny screamed loudly, and then, realizing that he had to keep the man’s attention while Petty crawled out of the room, he did a little dance. He did a hand jive and a shimmy across the duvet while Drill Sergeant stared at him in astonishment, his mouth still wide open and his eyes bulging. He looked like a frog himself. He didn’t see the old lady shuffling across his floor on her hands and knees with two leaping escorts. He was far too busy wondering how a frog had learned to disco dance.
Finally, the alarm went off again, and in the second his audience glanced away, Danny hopped off.
“We DID it!” Charlie jumped up and down outside the girls’ cabin. “We got the games back in the cupboard! We got the key back on the hook! Nobody will ever know! I won’t be sent home!”
“No,” said Josh. “Nobody will notice anything strange at all, will they?”
“Aah,” said Charlie, noticing she was still a frog. “But it will wear off soon, won’t it?”
“I can’t find my antidote,” Petty was whispering, hoarsely, bending down from above. “You’ll just have to get back into bed, all of you, and wait for it to wear off. It shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes. I’ll see you at breakfast!”
And she was gone.
“This has been the best adventure ever!” said Charlie. “See ya!” She jumped into the cabin through an open window, and as no girly screams followed, Josh and Danny guessed nobody had seen her get back into bed.
They got back into their own beds the same way and happily neither Callum nor Sayid noticed, being fast asleep.
It seemed like only minutes later that they were all getting up for breakfast, although it was 7:30 a.m. Josh and Danny got into their clothes and put Wellington boots on very quickly while the others weren’t looking. They hurried into breakfast and sat down at Charlie’s table.
“Um . . . everything . . . OK?” hissed Josh as Charlie dolloped golden syrup on her oatmeal.
“Mostly OK,” said Charlie. They looked down and saw that she had Wellingtons on too, even though it was a sunny day and everyone else was in sandals or sneakers.
“You too?” said Danny, in a low voice.
“Yep . . . but it’ll wear off soon . . . won’t it?” Charlie eased her feet out of the wellies, and the boys glanced down to see the truth beneath the table.
Charlie’s feet were still frog-colored and frog-shaped, complete with webbed toes—exactly like Danny’s and Josh’s.
“Yeah . . .” said Danny, reaching for the toast. “It’ll wear off. The aftereffects always do—although they’ve never been this obvious before.”
Josh grinned. “Yeah . . . don’t worry. It’ll be fine. No need to get all jumpy.”
BOOKS
Want to brush up on your reptile and amphibian knowledge? Here’s a list of books dedicated to slithering and hopping creatures.
Johnson, Jinny. Animal Planet ™ Wild World: An Encyclopedia of Animals. Minneapolis: Millbrook Press, 2013.
McCarthy, Colin. DK Eyewitness Books: Reptile. New York: DK Publishing, 2012.
Parker, Steve. DK Eyewitness Books: Pond & River. New York: DK Publishing, 2011.
WEBSITES
Find out more about nature and wildlife using the websites below.
San Diego Zoo Kids
http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals
Curious to learn more about some of the coolest-looking reptiles and amphibians? This website has lots of information and stunning pictures of some of Earth’s most interesting creatures.
National Geographic Kids
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/
Go to this website to watch videos and read facts about your favorite reptiles and amphibians.
US Fish & Wildlife Service
http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/wildlife-library/amphibians-reptiles-and-fish.aspx
Want some tips to help you look for wildlife in your own neighborhood? Learn how to identify some slimy creatures and some scaly ones as well.
CHECK OUT ALL OF THE TITLES!
Ali Sparkes grew up in the woods of Hampshire, England. Well—not in the sense that she was raised by foxes after being abandoned as a baby—she had parents, OK? Human parents. But they used to let her run wild in the woods. But not wild as in “grunting and covered in mud and eating raw hedgehog.” Anyway, during her fun days in the woods, she once took home a muddy frog in a bucket, planning to clean it up nicely and keep it as a pet. But her mom made her take it back. The frog agreed with her mom.
Ali now lives in Southampton with her husband and two teenage sons and a very small garden pond, which has never yet attracted any frog spawn or even half a newt. Ali is trying not to take this personally.
Ross Collins’s more than eighty picture books and books for young readers have appeared in print around the world. He lives in Scotland and, in his spare time, enjoys leaning backward precariously in his chair.