Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low waisted middies and skirts, they looked strange and out of place standing by the pebbled shore of the River Iss.
They were his sisters, Rose and Margaret. Older than he at fifteen and seventeen. But they walked by the river and into danger. Behind him he could hear the rustling sound of the Plant Men as the evening breeze came up.
“Kimm-eeeee—”
They were calling him. In the deepening dusk their voices carried far down the river. “Kimmmmm—eeeeeeeeee—”
He knew he should answer them, but he did not. Behind him he could hear the awful Plant Men approaching. He shivered with delicious horror.
He stood very still, listening to his sisters talking, letting their voices carry down to where he hid from the dangers of the Valley Dor.
“Where is that little brat, anyway?”
“He always wanders off just at dinnertime and then we have to find him——”
“Playing with that old faucet—” Mimicry. “‘My rad-ium pis-tol——’”