![]() Toad immediately knows that he must, absolutely must, acquire a motorcycle, “the largest, most powerful, and most dangerous possible.” However, there’s a problem. Or are they? One fateful morning Toad receives a telegram delivered by a motorcycle messenger, who “sat casually astride his glorious machine, like the conqueror Alexander upon his noble mount Bucephalus, or Perseus astride the divine Pegasus, or - well, there were all sorts of comparisons possible.” Soon Toad and the naive Rabbit - as Lottie is usually called - begin to spend time together: He shows her his ruined caravan and wrecked motorcar, relates some of his many adventures and gradually reveals, with his usual becoming modesty, that he is “a Hero, plain and simple: clever, cunning, and courageous.” Alas, his days of adventure are over. “There was a calm yet plucky heroine a locked battered iron box with a missing key and mysterious runes scratched across its lid (perhaps cursed Beryl hadn’t decided yet) a ruined estate in Cornwall (for research she was relying heavily upon a souvenir folder of tourist postcards entitled ‘Scenic Cornwall, Land of Tintagel!’) an ancient sage who existed in the novel solely to pass on to the heroine a forbidden secret of mind-control, and immediately afterward to die before her horrified eyes a poisonous serpent being kept as a pet in a basket in the villain’s lair (which Beryl knew would come in handy for the plot at some point) and an endangered orphanage filled with children that reminded the heroine of herself when she was a lass.” Bourne, Vivisectionist.” She is now at work on a new book, tentatively entitled “Philotera’s Horror”: A small brass plate affixed to the frame read, The Valiant Toad, Amidst the Fray.”īeryl, it turns out, is an “authoress,” whose novels include “The Haunted Treasure of Bone Island,” “The Iron Hare of Chateau Sang,” and the chillingly suggestive, “M. There was some sort of thunderstorm going on in the background, and a bit of sunlight breaking through managed to illuminate the Toad while leaving everything else in gloom. “Over the mantel, the Toad had caused to be mounted a tasteful arrangement of crossed swords and pistols, clustered appetizingly on either side of a large painting in a gilded rococo frame, of a mighty Toad brandishing pistols in each hand, vanquishing quite a crowd of Weasels, Stoats, and Foxes, as a rather smaller Badger, Mole and Water Rat looked on admiringly from the corners of the picture. Of course, Toad being Toad, he now regards himself as that conflict’s glorious champion: Ever since the battle of Toad Hall the year before, its master has been behaving with relative propriety. Harrumph - females! Won’t they upset the easygoing life along the river? The Mole, the Water Rat and old Badger are set in their ways, plus there’s no telling what effect these two young ladies - a mole named Beryl and a rabbit named Lottie - might have on the volatile Toad. “The River Bank,” by Kij Johnson (Small Beer Press)
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