Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

All the spectators laughed with relief, except for Rita, who was so frightened by the tiger growling in the darkness that she started howling and did not want to stay in the circus a minute more. Kate tried to calm her, but nothing doing! Rita howled like a siren and indicated with a hand that she needed to be rescued from this horrible place. Peter had to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out. Vicky, Kate, Alena, Costa, and Alex hurried after Peter. Dangling on the shoulder, Rita did not stop howling, at the same time managing to control Peter’s movement and point with a hand the direction for him to carry out her salvation.

People looked askance at them, annoyed. The aisles in the circus were narrow, and to let one spectator out, the whole row had to get up. And here were a whole six, and even a dangling screaming seventh on the shoulder of one.

Finally, they emerged from the tent, and Peter unloaded Rita onto the sandy area. “Phew! As if I again… with this pipsqueak! She should be put in a cage! How we all disgraced ourselves!” Peter said, panting. Rita kicked him in the leg. “Stop it! I’m not an animal!" Peter said.

“Yeah! You were perfect, of course! Who poured soup from a squirt gun over himself?” Vicky was only two years younger than Peter and remembered his small sins very well.

“Soup is something else. And here’s simply a crazy pint-sized klutz!” Peter said firmly. Rita somehow determined that they were talking about her and threw sand at Peter. “Wow!” Peter was puzzled. “How could she be offended? She doesn’t know what a ‘crazy klutz’ is!”

“She understands from your voice! Don’t talk to her in a harsh voice!” Vicky appealed to him. “Watch! Rita, little one! Come here! Hug me!” Rita immediately ran to her and hugged her with plump arms around her neck. Skinny Vicky immediately started to fall from such an anchor, but Rita laughed and hugged her even harder. “Let me go, you monster! You’re choking me!” Vicky croaked.

They stood there for a little while longer and then tried to return to the circus, but Rita remembered the tigers and went on strike. Costa, dressed in a shirt with short sleeves, sneezed loudly.

“Already a first candidate for a cold!” Kate said sullenly. “Papa won’t be coming in a hurry, and all our phones are in the car.”

“Then we’ll walk!” Peter decided. “We can cut through the park here!”

“No, we have to wait! Papa said to wait!” Vicky said.

“And I say we go! Still have to wait an hour, but we’ll get there faster! Well? Are you coming or do I go alone?!” Peter threatened.

And they went. The first few minutes Rita flew like lightning, and it was good because she set the pace for the entire company.

“Run! Even faster!” Kate shouted to her.

However, here it came into the lightning’s head that it was possible to fly not only in the direction of home but in any direction at all that her head turned. Her head was turning completely unpredictably. Several times Vicky, Peter, and Kate had to rush after Rita deep into the park, scaring her with robbers, and once Peter yelled, “Look out! There are maniacs here!” as he pulled her out from under a bench on which sat an unassuming couple in love, holding hands.

Fifteen minutes later, it occurred to Rita that she was dead tired. She lay down on the ground and began to whimper. Kate sat down beside her. “What, you don’t know how to walk? Quietly this way! March!” she asked. Rita shook her head.

“You’re asking wrong!” Peter declared. “A question with a hidden negation is needed here. Ask, ‘You haven’t forgotten how to walk, huh?’” Rita shook her head again, and somehow it turned out again that this option of the answer was right.

Yet Peter did not give up. “Your legs don’t hurt anymore?” he asked cunningly, reckoning that it was not exactly possible to answer “yes” or “no” to this question. However, Peter only did harm to himself, because Rita now knew precisely why she was lying on the ground. It turned out that her legs hurt! What horror! She pointed a finger at them and repeated with a sly face, “Oh, oh, oh!”

“She’s not tired, for sure! She ran circles around us for 50 kilometres!” Vicky said.

Peter picked Rita up and sat her on his shoulders. Rita grinned knowledgeably and, grasping Peter’s ears for control over the situation, started to look around at the surroundings. And they started walking again, only not for long, because Costa suddenly noticed that, for some reason, he was walking but Rita was riding Peter, and he lay down on the asphalt.

They admonished Costa for about five minutes, frightened him with everything in a row, and stood him up vertically, but Costa flopped down like a cotton doll. Peter refused to carry Costa too because, he said, Rita was as heavy as a sack. Papa could immediately drag along two or three, but he, Peter, would get a hernia and would get hit in the leg.

After an emergency meeting, it was decided that Peter would carry Costa, and Alena, Vicky, and Kate would drag Rita along. So they did. A satisfied Costa moved onto Peter’s shoulders, and the girls took Rita’s arms and legs and hauled her. Rita giggled and kicked her legs, causing Alena and Kate to sway from side to side. They stopped every few metres, unloaded Rita onto the pavement, and rested. While they were resting, Alex caught up with them. He had managed to find a paper bag, put it on a stick, set it on fire, and was now dropping pieces of burning paper bag on everything in succession.

“Where did you get matches?” Kate asked him gloomily.

Alex, with an honest look, stated that he did not take any matches, but here his shirt escaped from under his belt and about five transparent lighters, which he had collected as they walked through the park, fell out of it. He kept some and smashed the others on the pavement, making loud bangs.