Page 34 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

For the longest time, visions of sugarplums danced in her head and she hoped they would soon drop into her open jaws. Then the Mouse Queen thought, “Kicking him out is not enough. I want to make him pay.” And so, the Mouse Queen quickly went from happy dreams of overeating, to a black funk.
And she wasn’t the only one plotting revenge and in a black funk. Someone else had even sweeter thoughts of revenge.
We’ve not talked about young Prince Reginald Rhatt for a long, long time – not since his unfortunate experience at the top of the Krakatuk tree. Well, we should.
For, after picking the Magic Nut, this whiny little mouse had become the royal favorite son of the Mouse Queen and a royal pain in the tail- region for all the other mice. And unfortunately for him, even though he, too, had grown larger, so had all the other mice. But still, he remained much smaller than the long-limbed meeslings around him.
He’d taken to wearing high-heeled boots and tall hats to overcome his lack of stature.
20