He kept gobbling them up like a deranged person, as did Lilou and Raphael, and the three children squealed in satisfaction as they greedily swallowed the appetizing red fruit of the Daphne mezereum, the juicy, tasty, terribly toxic fruit of the Daphne mezereum. Enzo lifted his hand silently, shutting Fred up. "Then you're weak. That's what my dad says, and he's right. Strong people hit; weak people get hit." I mean, what is going on in this guy’s head? Enzo thought. If you’re a mouse, have fun with your mouse friends, tease them, shove them, bash them about the head until they fall into line, and become the mouse king, a king without a crown, the undisputed king, the one who does whatever he wants, who never lets anyone step on his toes or lay down the law. Living this good life, why would you want to fly? And why suffer so long without being sure of the result? Pathetic, every last one of them, Enzo sniggered, raking the embers of the campfire with a dead branch. For a bunch of SIX (6) y/o, they were incredibly advanced..in more ways than one. There was lots of philosophical inner monologue for one. I don't remember being six, but I sure as hell know I wasn't thinking about the meaning of life and friendships at that age. There was also this weird three-way relationship between this trio where they were 'in love' with each other. What does a six year old know about romantic love? Having a crush is one thing, but to this extent?

The little girl was trembling, her arms crossed against her torso, her mouth distorted in permanent sadness. When she closed her eyes, over and over she saw Fred's blood spattering by the campfire. She hadn't been able to sleep, hadn't even wanted to, huddled in the body heat of her slumbering classmates, but had stayed fully awake, eyes wide open to the dank darkness of the log. She couldn't get the horrific episode she had witnessed out of her mind, or understand it, or learn the slightest lesson from it. An adult, the only adult who was supposed to take care of her, had been killed, obliterated, destroyed, and this initial trauma reverberated in her, and its power destroyed every part of her budding personality. Dolls, princesses, sparkly dresses, pink strollers, a plastic stove, the "my darlings," the "my loves," life as she knew it, all the carefully constructed images of her future, assembled in miniature in her bedroom like a seed, like a fetus, that would grow, the stove becoming a real stove, the stroller a real stroller, and the dolly in it a real baby, on this stage, in this scale model that was the beginning and the end of her existence, none of it featured a smashed skull or spurting blood, and that was as it should be, but for Lilou, this posed a metaphysical problem. The event had infiltrated her, like a pebble in the gears, like a semicolon in a line of computer code, and she had crashed; she simply stopped functioning, her mind at least, her ability to think, her manner of perceiving the world. Nothing was working anymore, which was, to some extent, the case for all the children who had witnessed Fred's murder, but in Lilou it took on psychiatric proportions.

child doesn’t die like you, an adult or an old person reading these lines. Children die without having had a chance to picture the end, without a sense of it being born and maturing within them. They die the same way they get lice or a skinned knee. They die without understanding, with their childish naivety imagining death the way they imagine April showers, meteorological inevitabilities that eventually pass, not knowing or realizing that this inevitability does not pass. What was there to say or think now that it was becoming clear that it would be the last thing she would ever say or think? I am loath to say I enjoyed it for fear it may cause others to think me psychotic, so I’ll just say that it was a riveting read. Her final word, "story," was swallowed up in the gurgle of the blood spurting from here severed carotid artery. It cuts well, Enzo thought. It slices through meat. "What good is an unfinished story?" Sandra tried to say, instead making a comical gurgle that, even to her, made no sense at all. What was there to say or think now that it was becoming clear that it would be the last thing she would ever say or think? Send her love to her husband? And what would he do with it? No, Jade. She's the one who deserves to be the focus of the last seconds of her existence. Think of Jade and send her all the love she could imagine. But she didn't manage it. And as she died, what Sandra had in mind was the terrible suspense she had created: would little Elliott call for help? Would he make a sound for the first time in his life and save the child, who, without him, would sink to the bottom of the canal and into the night that is waiting to fall on every one of us? How ridiculous. How sad that her last moments should be wasted on the fate of an imaginary child, a ghost she had conjured, caught in the web of her own fiction. I could have thought of my daughter while dying, she thought, but instead I'm thinking about some little ninny I invented. The sun had come up, revealing a cloak of damp fog that had risen from the ground and gotten tangled in the trunks and the branches, gently cooling them to let them know that a new day had arrived, filled with the quiet savagery so typical of natural spaces, where plants try to develop faster than animals can consume them, and where animals try to draw on the plants' energy to avoid the fangs of their brethren for one more day. Except for Enzo, who was still sleeping, all those whom this tale has so far spared had seen the sky grow paler, and then the first rays appeared on the horizon, because their sleep had been light, punctuated by fretful wakefulness, stifled sobs, startled awakenings that dragged them out of nightmares in which trees, beasts, and monsters grabbed them to bring their travels to an end.

Just to be sure, he swallowed an aspirin to deal with any possible side effects, then walked to the garage with the assurance of a man who hasn't yet realized he is drunk. However, the unspoken rules governing relations in Fred's little elementary class were hypothetical; did the rules still apply, now that a child had killed an adult? Without an indisputable authority figure, what remained?Daphne mezereum, commonly known as mezereum, mezereon, February daphne, spurge laurel or spurge olive, is a species of Daphne, native to most of Europe and Western Asia, north to northern Scandinavia and Russia. It is very poisonous for humans, though fruit-eating birds like thrushes are immune and eat them, dispersing the seeds in their droppings. If poisoned, victims experience a choking sensation. Birds have always flown,' the seagull continued, 'and they have always been the masters of the air. We let insects fly so we can eat them without having to land.'"