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A clattering from the hall announced First Toad’s return, this time wearing the helm from the suit of armor and wielding the umbrella from the vase. “Stand your ground, sir! If you dare!”
This toad leaped onto the table to join the other, and, without further bluster, the two of them charged at each other. The resulting impact, which had Rose wincing even before the moment of contact, resulted not only in a crash every bit as loud as a house falling, but also a strange convulsion of the air, as if it were glass twisting the light with it.
“Ye gods!” A single toad stood there wearing his waistcoat and jacket back to front, the helm, pot, rolling pin, and umbrella scattered here and there.
“I won!” Toad patted himself, looked around, and smiled a satisfied smile. “Not that there was ever any doubt of that. The imposter never stood a chance. I really am a remarkable toad!”
While Rose had always considered one Toad to be slightly more than she could cope with and was glad that she no longer had two to contend with, she did wonder if there might be safety in numbers. “What was that thing that chased me? You called it a bookworm. And where are we precisely?”
“A bookworm, yes, the bad sort. Nasty business.” Toad shivered and continued to work at his buttons, having yet to undo a single one, positioned as they were along the ridge of his spine.
“But what is it? And where are we?”
“We’re here where we always were.” A waistcoat button pinged and went skittering across the tabletop. “No miserable bookworm’s going to chase me off the Riverbank.”
“You said something about a book, about another copy?”
“Ah yes.” Toad, who had been trying and failing to look over his shoulder, now turned his attention to Rose and made his face into the closest approximation of “serious” that Rose had ever seen him manage. He twisted his wide mouth as if about to broach a subject that made him uncomfortable. “A hundred million. Hmmm…that can’t be right? Seems to be though…” He scratched his head. “A hundred million copies made. But you, Rose, you’re unique. There was only ever one copy of your book, my dear girl. Which means that that worm is a deadly danger to you, worse than all the stoats and weasels in the world put together.”
“But what is a bookworm, and why is it after me?” Rose had asked the Rat about how she came to be, a very dark tale to hear him tell it, and the worm had found its way to her, somehow becoming both the storyteller and the subject of the story. The two things had to be connected, surely?
Toad opened his large mouth, revealing a pink tongue, quivering as if the answer were about to leap off it. He snapped his jaw shut. “Don’t know. Let’s find the others. I feel we are going to need Badger. He’s as old as the hills and knows pretty much everything.”
—
By lunchtime, they were on the riverbank not far from the Mole’s neat little home and waving as the Rat rowed the aforementioned Mole toward them across the slow, sparkling swirl of the river. Butterflies danced among the bullrushes, thrushes sang in the may, great trees stooped to caress the water as it passed. The worm’s invasion seemed at once a thousand years ago and just around the corner. Rose watched the bright blue sky, ribbed by lazy tatters of cloud, and wondered how fast a storm might roll in.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm.
Rose left it to Toad to explain what had happened. Toad seemed to remember very little of it and so recounting those few events that he did recall caused him only minor discomfort. It was as though the worm’s horrors wouldn’t translate into the language of the Riverbank and all that would come through was a faint shadow of the invasion, as if a cloud had passed across the sun’s face while Toad spoke, only for the light to return with the Rat’s reply.
“No journey to see Badger can be undertaken lightly, my friends, but it seems we have need of his wisdom. Perhaps Moley should stay at home though—”
“I—I—I most certainly should not!”
“Well then.” The Rat nodded. “Don’t say you weren’t warned. We’ll be heading into the Wild Wood and we won’t be back before dark.”
“Well then indeed!” declared the Mole, still offended at the suggestion he shouldn’t come.
“Grand! Grand! It’s all settled.” Toad clapped his clammy hands together. “Do give my very best regards to old Badger!”
“You shall give those to him yourself, Toady.” The Rat turned his beady black eyes on Toad. “He will want to hear your account firsthand.”
“But…surely…” Toad looked around as if considering making a run for it.
“Buck up, Toady. I might even let you row!”
“Will you?” Toad’s eyes lit up. “Will you really?”
“No.”
The trip downstream to Badger’s house, although it involved a fairly small number of miles, made all the longer by the river’s meandering, did entail the crossing from one world to another. Behind them, they left open meadows and sunny banks. The Wild Wood, when it came, came fast. Within heartbeats, fields became forest. The trees that had stood in ones, twos, and threes along the way suddenly crowded in, shutting away the sun and replacing it with an ominous shade. Alders, oaks, and ash marched right to the water’s edge, bringing with them tangled bramble, old nettles, and stands of hogweed. Within this gloom, shielded from the breeze, gnats hung in their own clouds, mosquitos whined, and a lone dragonfly skimmed the water, its iridescence flashing where it intersected the occasional finger of sunlight.
Immediately, Rose felt watched. She understood the dangers that lurked between the trees—the unfriendly folk who favored this eternal twilight, killers with bright eyes, the weasel, the stoat, the ferret, and, sly rather than vicious, the fox. But now imagination painted among the crowding trunks something far darker than the hunger of the Wild Wood.
