Sredni Vashtar

The CampfireThe openingFree

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor said he would not live another five years.

He was a sickly boy. He was always ill. His mother was dead, and he lived with his cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp.

Mrs. De Ropp was the kind of person who does things for your own good. She never let him go outside when it was cold. Or when it was warm. She never let him have sweets, or toys he liked, or friends, or anything that made him happy. Always for his own good.

Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity he was perfectly able to hide.

He had only one escape.

In the back of the gloomy garden, behind some bushes, there was an old tool shed that no one used anymore. And Conradin had made it his.

In the shed lived a hen he loved, and nobody knew about her. And in the back, in a dark corner, in a hutch, lived something else.

He'd gotten it from the butcher boy, secretly, in exchange for his small savings. It was a big ferret. A polecat-ferret, sleek and fierce, with sharp teeth and burning eyes.

He was terribly afraid of it. And he loved it. And it became his god.