Book 19: Waiting

Fraser

Forty eyes blink up at me. Twenty heads that don’t reach my hips bob and crane to peer into a dusty, dark room. I hold open the door in silence, giving the crowd a few moments to get a look, then I clear my throat and say, “Off limits.”

A few giggles whisper through the group. I cup my ear, and more giggles ring out until one buck-toothed fox kit says with a horrible lisp, “Off limits!”

“And what does off limits mean?” I ask the group of 20 five-to-seven-year-olds. 

“No touching!”

“Right. Right. Let's go.” I close the door, and forty feet shuffle and bounce behind me. 

The hallway stretches for an eternity, but knowing children, that doesn’t mean a gods damned thing. Since this fall, when I opened one of the rooms off the library to th