Newt Nemesis Read online

  And then Danny was gone, and a fat frog sat on the ground in his place, giving Petty a cheesed-off glare from its pop-up eyes.

  “Sooo,” said Petty. “Not that one.” She pulled a marker from another pocket and put a big F on the bottle before setting it down next to Danny. Then she got the next bottle out and sprayed it at Charlie.

  A few seconds later, Charlie hopped over next to Danny and giggled as she landed with a plop. She was still rather excited about S.W.I.T.C.H.ing, even though she’d nearly been eaten by a heron last time.

  “Aaah . . .” said Petty. “So two bottles are frog.” She marked the second bottle F2 and set it down next to Charlie. “I didn’t mean to bring two AMPHISWITCH frog sprays, so this one”—she held up another spray bottle—“is probably the antidote.”

  “Probably?” Josh didn’t much like the sound of that “probably.” But before he could say anything else, Petty had sprayed him and in no time at all the world had gone HUGE again and he was down in the grass, tall green blades of it waving above him. He went to leap across to join Danny and Charlie but discovered that his back legs were rubbish. They didn’t do anything! They only propelled him forward onto his nose. He stared at them in the reflection of a bit of broken glass beside the compost bin and noticed two things. One, his legs were black with white speckles and rather warty, not greeny-brown and smooth. And two, there was a neat row of stubby spines all down his back—ending in a long pointed tail.

  “Whoa!” he called out. “NOT a frog! I am NOT a frog.”

  The grass waved violently, and two large frogs suddenly landed in front of him.

  “Oooh! Look at you!” marveled Charlie. “You’re like a mini crocodile! Or a dragon!”

  Josh was inspecting his belly now and grinned up at them. “It’s orange! How cool is that? I’m a great crested newt!” He lifted up his four-fingered hand (or four-toed front foot, he wasn’t sure) and marveled at its black and bright orange stripes. “Another kind of amphibian!”

  “You don’t look all that crested to me,” observed Charlie. “You’ve hardly got a crest at all. I certainly wouldn’t call it great.”

  “Nah—not much crestage this late in the year,” shrugged Josh. “You should see a great crested in spring though—amazing! Like a mini stegosaurus!”

  As they stared at Josh’s not-so-great crest, a waft of misty spray hit them and they all instinctively backed away from one another. If that was the antidote, they’d be springing back up to human size any second (and it could get a bit violent). They waited a while, but nothing happened.

  “Has she used them all?” wondered Charlie. “That should have been the antidote . . . shouldn’t it?” Nearby, Petty’s enormous hands were fumbling with the bottles (now looking the size of beer barrels), which were rolling around by her giant boots.

  “She’s probably just mixed them up again,” grunted Josh. “She’ll find it in a minute. I don’t mind being a newt for a bit. Wish I could have longer like this. I’m special, you know! Guess what? I’m protected!”

  “Protected? What, with, like, an invisible force field or something?” asked Danny, sucking on a sort of gray humbug with whirring legs, which he’d failed to notice was a wood louse.

  “Invisible force field? I wish!” Josh grinned. “No—I mean great crested newts are a protected species. I’m rare! I am not allowed to be killed!”

  “Eeeerm,” croaked Charlie. “You might want to tell that to . . . him . . .” Her pop-up froggy eyes had suddenly got so poppy-uppy they looked as if they might ping out of her head like marbles. She was keeping very still, but the little patch of skin under her throat was quivering fast. Danny and Josh followed the direction of her glassy stare and tried not to scream.

  Staring right at them from the foot of the compost bin, its long forked tongue quivering in the air, was a HUGE snake.

  “Oh pee, porridge, and poo!” cursed Petty. The last spray had done nothing. It should have been either ToadSWITCH or the antidote, but so far the two frogs and the great crested newt were still sitting there, having a little chat and most definitely not S.W.I.T.C.H.ing back to two boys and a girl.

  She shook the bottle and peered at it in annoyance, squinting through the smears on her glasses. What was it? Then she unscrewed the top and peered inside. From the outside, all the bottles looked the same—but inside she noticed it wasn’t quite the same color as usual...it looked a little...blue.

  “Oh, Petty! You turbo-boosted, fuel-injected, twin-engined FOOL!” she snapped. “This isn’t S.W.I.T.C.H. formula! It’s your spectacles cleaning spray!”

  Petty took off her spectacles and sprayed them, gave them a thorough wiping with her hanky, and then put them back on. “That’s much better,” she remarked to the much more clearly viewed frogs and newt. “Aaah. But now we have a problem . . .”

  How was she going to get them S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back in time for the show? With NO antidote at all?

  And then that little problem was upstaged by a much bigger one. A much longer one too. Through her sparkly clean lenses, Petty suddenly noticed that Josh, Danny, and Charlie were all sitting very, very still and their little eyes were bulging and their little throats were quivering.

  Then the long problem coiled its zigzag-patterned body, raised its head, and sent out a flickering forked tongue, tasting the air. Its scaly face drifted from side to side. Once, twice, three times. And then its almond-shaped eyes gleamed as it caught the unmistakable scent of PREY. The head turned smoothly in the direction of Danny, Josh, and Charlie and locked on to them. The tongue flickered once again.

  And then it struck.

  The movement was as fast as lightning, and the frogs shot into the air at top speed. Charlie and Danny were gone in a heartbeat, but Josh . . . Josh was a newt! Newts weren’t exactly speedy even in water . . . much less on dry land! Josh was trying to struggle away across the mulchy stuff that had spilled from the compost bin, but the snake was rearing up its head, ready to strike again, and Josh had NO CHANCE.

  Petty flung herself toward the snake, meaning to grab it from behind and pin it down. For a broad-bottomed lady in her seventies, she moved pretty fast—but not fast enough. In a flash, the snake whipped its head around.

  And drove its fangs right into her leg.

  For a few seconds, Josh just stood on a leaf, too shocked to move. As soon as the adder (he’d recognized its distinctive black zigzag-patterned skin immediately) had reared up, he’d known this was the end. Danny and Charlie had leapt away in half a second. They weren’t abandoning him; they’d just done it out of pure instinct, forgetting that Josh was a newt—a slow, ungainly creature on land with no hope of escape.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered that adders preferred mammals to amphibians . . . but by the way this one was looking at him, he was sure it was about to make an exception. The strike would come in a blur. The adder’s fangs would inject venom in a second. It might try to swallow him there and then, but more likely, it would just rest its cold brick-red eyes on him for a while as he tried to crawl away, waiting for his limbs to stop working as the paralyzing agent in the venom took effect. Josh knew snakes preferred to digest their live prey when it wasn’t kicking and screaming too much.

  All this information occurred to Josh in about three seconds. Only yesterday Charlie had nearly been eaten—and this summer, he and Danny had been on the menu for too many creatures to mention—but now it really did look like the end. A heron would have been better. Quicker.

  And then there was a dark shadow, and Petty’s walking boot crashed down a few inches away from him. A moment later, the adder struck; Josh saw its jaws open wide and white fangs suddenly emerge as if on springs. And it drove them right into Petty’s leg.

  Petty gave a shriek and landed with an earth-shuddering thud on her ample backside. The snake fled back into the compost bin. As Josh stayed frozen on his leaf, staring at the gigantic heap of Petty Potts, two frogs leapt back in front of him.

  “What
happened?” gasped Charlie. “We thought you were snake dinner!”

  “No—it just had a munch of Petty instead,” said Josh, finally able to move again now that the terrifying predator had gone. At any other time, he would have been thrilled to see an adder—but as a tiny newt, it had been utterly horrendous.

  “She’s been bitten?” gasped Danny. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”

  A very loud “OW! OW! OW!” rang through the hot air above them. Petty was examining her calf. Two ruby-red beads of blood were standing out on it through her thick beige tights.

  “It’s an adder,” said Josh. “They are Britain’s only venomous snake, but they can’t kill you.” Another stream of ows erupted from Petty, whose face had gone rather red.

  “Well,” went on Josh, “not usually. I mean . . . death is very rare in humans.”

  Petty suddenly rolled toward them, and her big, big, BIG face loomed up close. “Now listen!” she said, in a harsh whisper, the hairs in her foxhole-sized nostrils trembling. “I know you can’t talk back, but wave your right . . . er ... hands ... if you can understand me.”

  They all waved their right hands—two webbed green ones and one orange fingered one—and Petty nodded and puffed, “Good. Well that’s useful. Now . . . the bad news is that none of the bottles contains the antidote. That last one was actually my glasses cleaning spray. The nearest antidote is back in my lab, ten miles away. You’re just going to have to wait for this S.W.I.T.C.H. to wear off.”

  “That was the BAD news,” said Danny. “So what’s the good news? The good news?”

  All of this came out as amphibious waving and twitching to Petty, but she worked it out from the frog’s hopeful grin. Nodding and squinting down at them through rather puffy eyes, she went on. “The good news is . . . oh wait. There isn’t any good news. There’s just badder news. I mean worse news. I’ve been bitten by an adder.”

  Josh sat back on his tail and pulled his speckly shoulders into an elaborate shrug. He wanted Petty to understand that though it might hurt, an adder bite wasn’t any more dangerous than a bee sting.

  Petty was breathing in a rather odd way. “And what’s badder than being bitten by an adder?” she went on, poetically. “Well . . . having an adder venom allergy, probably. And . . . we tested lots of stuff on each other back in my old government scientist days, and I learned two things. One, brazil nuts make me spew like a volcano . . . and two . . . I’m allergic to adder venom.”

  Josh, Charlie, and Danny stared at one another. “What?” said Danny. “So she’s going to get a rash? Well, bad luck, Petty, but I think we’ve got a bit more to worry about than you!”

  “No!” Charlie’s froggy features crumpled with concern. “You don’t understand, Danny. She’s—look at her—she’s having a proper allergic reaction. My friend is allergic to bee stings. I was with her one day when she got stung, and she got all puffed up and had to go to the hospital. Look—Petty’s going puffy!”

  Petty was waving at them all now. “Listen!” she rasped. “Liiiiisten! I CAN’T MOVE! I can’t get help because moving will pump the venom faster through my bloodstream. You have to get my EPIPEN! My EPIPEN! It’s in my cabin. On the chest of drawers beside my be-e-ed.”

  Charlie nodded vigorously to show she understood. “Danny—you come with me!” she said, suddenly taking charge. “Josh, you’re too slow. You stay here with Petty. We’ll be back with the EpiPen as soon as we’ve found it. I know what they look like. My friend carries one all the time now.”

  She and Danny leapt away toward the staff cabins, flinging themselves through the long grass until Josh couldn’t see them. He stood looking at Petty, who had put one thumb up and was now peering at him through narrow slits in her puffed-up eyes.

  “Well . . . done!” she gasped. “Now . . . make sure . . . that brother of yours . . . saves my life, Josh. Don’t forget . . . I’m a genius . . . the world . . . needs . . . geniuses . . . Or is that . . . geni-ii?”

  “SHUT UP AND CONCENTRATE ON BREATHING!” yelled Josh, but he knew Petty couldn’t hear him at all.

  He climbed up on Petty’s arm, wondering if it was in any way possible for a dangerously ill human to be comforted by one slightly damp newt. Petty’s puffed-up eyes were shut now, and her face was looking swollen too.

  “Huuurrry up, Danny and Charlie!” wailed Josh. “Before it’s too late!”

  “We’ll get there in no time,” called out Charlie as she and Danny leapt along in rainbow arcs amid the cool, damp, long grass at the back of the cabins. “This is BRILLIANT! It’s as good as swimming underwater.”

  “You should try GrasshopperSWITCH then,” called back Danny. “A grasshopper can hop and sort of glide with little wings, about twenty times the length of its own body. Way more than a frog. Ooooh no. I just started to talk like a freaky little bug nerd!”

  “No—it’s cool! I love all this stuff,” shouted back Charlie as she leapt ahead of him.

  “It was fantastic when me and Josh were grasshoppers,” went on Danny. “Apart from him nearly getting eaten by a cat . . . and me nearly getting flattened with a math book . . . Ah! Is this the staff bedrooms cabin?”

  Charlie landed on a low wooden windowsill. Danny arrived next to her a second later, and they both peered in through the glass, their hands sticking to it with a slight squelch.

  “Is this the right room?” whispered Danny. He had no idea why he was whispering. Even if he talked normally, no human would hear him.

  Charlie stuck her buggy eyes up close to the glass. “Naah. It’s Amy’s room,” she said. “And that means . . . Petty’s room must be round the front.”

  “How do you know?” asked Danny.

  “Oh, I’ve had a look in all their rooms.” Charlie grinned.

  “But—you’re not allowed in their rooms!” Danny was shocked. He was usually the one being told to behave.

  “Oh, I don’t touch anything!” said Charlie. “I’m just curious! And you have to feed your curiosity, that’s what my dad says . . .”

  She hurled herself merrily off the windowsill. “Come on!” she yelled back to Danny. “Remember it’s a matter of life and death!”

  They sprang energetically around to the front of the building. Too energetically. As they jumped out from the narrow alleyway that ran between this and the neighboring cabin, Charlie hit the gravelly ground with a splat and then screamed. Really screamed! Loud enough for anyone to hear. Rolling straight for her was an ENORMOUS mud-spattered tire. Danny lurched across to Charlie, grabbed her left leg in his wide mouth, and pulled her out of the way half a second before the enormous tire rolled over where she’d been, sending up a spray of dust and small bits of gravel. It could so easily have been small bits of Charlie.

  “It’s OK! You’re safe!” said Danny as Charlie stared up, her froggy mouth gaping open with horror and her eyes ready to pop out of their bulgy sockets. “It’s OK!” repeated Danny. He’d tugged her into a clump of long grass, so they were safe for the moment from whatever it was that had gone past. But Charlie didn’t look as if she felt safe. She was still gaping and staring, and her throat was quivering at top speed.

  Danny glanced sideways and saw that the tire had rolled past now and come to a stop. It belonged to a car—a Beetle. A shiny black one. It seemed familiar. Its passenger door opened, and there was a flurry of movement. Of course—parents must be arriving for the show! It was Mom’s car!

  Charlie suddenly started screaming again.

  “What is it?” said Danny, thinking he might have to slap her cheek.

  “It’s—THAAAAAAT!” screamed Charlie, and now Danny felt a blast of warm, meat-scented air just behind him. He looked around and saw something truly horrific.

  It was a HUGE MOUTH. And that was familiar too. It belonged to his dog—Piddle. A small, scruffy black and white terrier who LOVED chasing things. And catching things. And Piddle was LOVING a new game he’d just thought up—called CATCH THE JUMPY THINGS.

  “Piddle! PIDDLE! STAY!”
bellowed Danny as a wobbly pink tongue and yellowy-white fangs in black gums suddenly plunged toward them.

  One second later Charlie and Danny sprang high into the air. Two seconds later, Danny found himself in Piddle’s mouth.

  It was warm and soggy and bouncy inside Piddle’s mouth—and very smelly.

  “Bleeuch! Dog breath!” gurgled Danny as he was jogged up and down on his pet’s tongue. He wrapped his froggy fingers tightly around the two yellowy-white lower canine teeth that rose up from the front corners of Piddle’s mouth like ivory posts. Luckily, they weren’t too clean and the sticky pads on his fingers were able to grip onto the gunge. If he held on tightly enough, he might not get swallowed.

  “PIDDLE! SPIT ME OUT!” bawled Danny.

  Piddle felt some tickly vibrations through the top of his mouth. He coughed and Danny was jerked forward and then backward toward the dark red cavern at the back of Piddle’s mouth.

  “NOOOOOOO!” shrieked Danny as his hands lost their grip on Piddle’s teeth. He pushed hard against Piddle’s blunt back molars with his powerful feet and legs and managed to shoot forward again until his head was poking out between Piddle’s fangy front canines, the small sharp incisors in between digging into his soft belly.

  The outside air rushed against his face, and Danny realized that Piddle was galloping about excitedly, the way he always did when he’d caught something. The ground and the sky and the cabins and the car were all blurring into one another as Danny was swung up and down violently. His legs and feet were still held tight between the slurpy tongue and the hard ridges of skin on the roof of Piddle’s mouth. Piddle was sucking a frog!

  “PIDDLE!” Danny yelled again. “That is DISGUSTING!”

  Mind you, chewing a frog would be even more disgusting. And Piddle did LOVE chewing stuff. Danny realized it was quite likely that his eight years on the earth might end in being munched to death by his own lovable pet terrier.