Day of the Kraken by Michael Swanwick

Author:Michael Swanwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

The room had been an office once, perhaps for the mother superior. Now it held only the litter of bygone days. Light came from a small stained-glass window high on the back wall, showing a dove with streams of glory radiating from it. In the gloom below were five little girls, three standing and two sprawled unhappily on the floor.

As the door closed and was locked behind him, Ritter said, “Children! What is all this weeping? You must let your Uncle Franzie know so I can make everything all right again.”

“I want my mama!” cried a little girl with pigtails, and “I don’t like it here!” sobbed a girl with pockmarked cheeks, and “I want to go home!” declared a redheaded freckly girl. The two smallest merely wept wordlessly.

Ritter sat down in the middle of the room on the floor, placing himself on the same level as the children. “You shall be restored to your parents very soon,” he said as convincingly as he could manage. “I have sent for them and they will be so happy to see you that they will give you nuts and sweetmeats enough to feed you for a week. But right now we have to wait just a little bit longer. Gather around me and I will tell you all about my wolf, Freki.”

“I’m afraid of wolfs,” the redhead said.

“You would not be afraid of Freki. He is very sweet and gentle. But he is also a greedy-guts, always hoping for a snack. He’ll put a paw on my knee and then look at me like this”—Ritter pulled a face like Freki’s when he was begging and two of the girls laughed—“and make a little mew-new-mew noise. That means, ‘Oh please, boss, pleeeeeease feed the nice wolf. Oh! I’m so hungry I’m about to faint.’” He made one hand into a paw and touched the back of it to his forehead melodramatically. “‘If you give me some food, I promise I’ll shine your boots for you and sweep the floors and wash the dishes too.’” Now all the girls were laughing, even the smallest, shyest one who still had tears running down her cheeks. “So what choice do I have? I get a little scrap of meat and I hold it up and say, ‘Who wants a treat? Who does? Who?’ And what do you think Freki does?”

“He says ‘Me!’” the redheaded girl said, and “Me! Me!” the others cried in imitation of her.

“Yes, he does. He runs around and around in tight little circles, barking yip! yip! yip! That means me! me! me!”

“Do you give him the treat then?” the smallest and shyest asked.

Ritter made a mock indignant face. “Of course I do. Who could turn down a poor sweet hungry wolf like that? Not I!”

By now two of the girls had climbed into Ritter’s lap and the others were clustered close around him. He wrapped his arms around them, gently drawing them closer, and went on talking about Freki: How smart he was and how brave.

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