Page 93 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

and definitely weird. Their eyes were hungry, dark, with a great deal of rodent red. Their noses bunched and scrunched and sniffed and whiffed. And all the while their two front teeth bucked over their lips and gleamed a nasty yellow. Drosselmeir had to blink. When that didn’t change their appearance, which he really hoped he was imagining, he shook the three of them and blinked again for good measure.
Before him stood three very silly-looking boys – the boys could thank their blue velvet suits for this. No matter how much they had complained to their mother that they made them look stupid, at last the suits had become an asset and got them out of a very tight spot – for Drosselmeir decided he was making a mouse out of a trio. And with some very sharp words on the mischief they had caused, he sent them packing to a corner where he, Drosselmeir, could keep a very sharp eye on them.
The boys went, but they weren’t happy, and they weren’t really sure WHY they were so unhappy, other than the normal can’t-stand-still-and-be-good-for-half-a-second sort of unhappiness any boy feels when forced to stand still. No. They were really unhappy and this unhappiness ate at them like a rat gnawing at their insides. And even while they stood as still as blocks of wood under the scrutiny of Drosselmeir, inside they were on fire and itching, longing and planning how to get back at that Nutcracker, which for some reason they couldn’t explain, had become the most important thing on earth for each one of them to put his grubby little hands on. As they stood there, they were outwardly complying, but inside they were stomping the Nutcracker to bits.
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