Chapter 1

(Zachy)

More Than Just a Naughty Weasel

Tiptoeing, Zachy peered around the edge of the mobile set and caught his production assistant’s eye. While they weren’t in the middle of a taping, timing at live events was still important and the last thing Zachy wanted was to miss his cue.

He tried to be an awesome bad guy, but sometimes it was hard to wait behind the scenes and listen while the children and the rest of the cast were having so much fun.

Today, Zachy’s job was to slip in unnoticed and make off with the sparkly aqua and violet ball the kids were supposed to be playing with, but he needed to wait until his cue. That would come when all the kids were investigating the large blue spiny lizard puppet that was the newest addition to their cast.

He was being introduced to teach the kids all about reptiles, which was the newest academic tract to be rolled out by their public television show, which was ranked among the top ten programs for five through seven-year-olds.

The new collection was awesome! He’d examined each one in the trunk and taught himself about them, even if he never got to take part in the educational parts of the show. His job was to create confusion and be the force of chaos the rest of the cast could band together against. Sometimes, when he was feeling creative and a little bit proud of himself, he referred to his character as The Whimsical Weasel , for all the inspired ways he’d gone about entering a scene. It was a challenge not to draw attention to himself so that when something vanished, or wound up sabotaged, the cast members, particularly the young ones, would be truly astonished.

The looks on some of their faces had been utterly priceless at times and over the years he’d come to pride himself on never repeating the same trick twice. Somedays it made him sad that to the rest of the world he was just the Wicked Weasel of Withering Wood, the chief villain of their little production. He’d have given anything to be out there helping the children learn that blue spiny lizards could climb rocks and trees, and that their spines helped keep them safe from certain predators. The puppet even had a detachable tail and several tail attachments of varying lengths to show the way they grew back. Every time a new character was introduced, he took the time to learn as much as he could about and used the things he learned to enhance his character’s interactions with them. He loved learning about animals and hoped to have a pet of his own to love and cuddle someday because sometimes life was just lonely and that sucked. Especially when he was feeling little.

Today, he was to take the ball and go hide with it in the ball pit, stealthily moving it around, and making the rest of the cast hunt for it, until they’d finally trapped him and retrieved the object they were searching for.

Because today’s lesson was about patterns and shapes, there was plenty for Zachy to work with as he tried to confuse them and turn the retrieval of their ball into a real treasure hunt where they’d be able to uncover several prizes to share along the way.

There was the nod from the assistant and out slunk Zachy in his dark gray and black weasel suit. So soft and cuddly, that was the first thing he always thought about whenever he slipped it on, but these days it made him sad, too. After three years of playing The Wicked Weasel the one thing he still longed for was the cuddles the other characters got when they posed for pictures or signed autographs.

With cautious, bobbing movements, Zachy approached the ball, slinking on the ground at one point, tiptoeing at others, until he could scoop up the ball while they were busy admiring the lizard, and spirit it away to the ball pit.

There was supposed to be a clear path, but something shot out from beneath the barricade tape just as Zachy rushed past it, something hard and wooden catching him across the shin and ankle. Down he went, skidding along with the ball still clutched between his paws as he spun and wound up sideways beside the ball pit.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time he’d hit the ground in that suit, so getting up wasn’t the challenge it had been that first year, especially after the kids dogpiled on him and announced that he’d been captured.

People yelled and pointed as he righted himself and scurried far more cautiously towards the ball pit, while the rest of the skit, all about why their new spiny lizard friend had such unique coloring, played out on the mobile stage.

Safe, okay, their set designers had really done an awesome job this time, with balls of all designs and colors, some even big enough that he could scooch down and hide behind.

He was able to swim through them too, wiggling with his ball clutched tightly between his paws until he could hunker down and hide himself among them.

Silent.

So still he didn’t even twitch a whisker when they finally began to approach. Several times one of the kids called out, thinking they’d found the right ball, only to compare it to the image one of the main characters held and determine that it wasn’t the right one.

Kids move balls, parting them and peering behind them, while Zachy waited in his hiding spot, their ball hidden several feet away. It was always hit or miss, whether they’d find him or find whatever he’d made off with. So, he waited to see what happened, thighs cramping up a bit from the way he was crouched with just his nose and ears sticking out from beneath the surface.

“Weasel, weasel!”

Damnit, he’d be spotted.

Every head in the ball pit swiveled his way and Zachy ducked under to prolong the game.

“Weasel! Weasel! Catch the wicked weasel!”

Twisting and leaping, he floundered through the ball pit, only to see a mass of green step into his path as wise old Theodore Turtle blocked his way.

Spinning, he sank beneath the balls and crawled beneath the layers, knowing they could still see all the disturbances he caused. A cream and gold colored costumed leg nudged several balls out of the way, cluing Zachy in that it was Oswald the Snowy Owl who stood in front of him now, staring down his beak the moment Zachy popped up.

“Hoooo! Hooo! You’re surrounded, Weasel! Time to give up the ball,” Oswald declared, his hoots sounding an awful lot like a siren.

“Give up the ball, give up the ball,” the kids chimed in, shouting as they began circling him.

“Never!” Zachy cried, his attempt at diving beneath the balls again producing little more than a belly flop.

Several of the kids swarmed him, making it impossible for him to get away, but it was Oswald who slapped the cuffs on him and led him towards the door to the pit, while the kids, with the help of the other animals, including their new blue lizard friend, Laredo, fanned out and began searching for the ball he’d hidden.

Along the way, they learned how lizards were able to flatten themselves to fit through cracks, and how their eyes could focus on things beside them and even along their sides, allowing him to locate the ball and guide the children to it.

Cheering, they hugged him and stroked his tail, all admiring how pretty he was and what an awesome addition he’d be when it came time to play hide and seek, because he could climb up things the kids couldn’t and warn them of dangers, like the sneaky weasel, before he could sneak up on them.

Zachy, meanwhile, was led from the ball pit in cuffs and escorted to the time out cage built into the corner of the rolling stage, where he’d remain until they wheeled it to the back at the conclusion of the show and autograph signing.

It was the most boring part, as far as Zachy was concerned, since all he could do was remain there trapped while the kids and characters, along with a few of the children picked straight out of the audience, played in the ball pit for another half an hour, before the cast took their seats at the tables the organizers had set up.

There was a long line too, going back as far as Zachy was able to see along the side of the set. From experience, he knew few, if any, would ask to get his autograph, though sometimes the kids found it fun to pose in front of his cage.

“Naughty weasel!” Someone called from the crowd.

“Shame on you for stealing from the children!”

One little girl stuck her tongue out at him, while another hid behind her daddy’s jean clad leg, barely peeping out enough to point and whispered loudly about how naughty Zachy was.

He waved, hoping to show her that he wasn’t wicked all the time, but her eyes went wide, and she ducked back behind the safety of all that denim, while another little boy burst into tears.

“Oh, you naughty weasel, scaring the children that way!” Kylie Koala said as she moved between them, giving hugs and taking pictures.

Zachy sank to the bottom of the cage and drew his knees up, pouting and doing his best to look miserable at being caught, not that it was difficult. He was bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, and the line was moving so slow it might as well have been moving backward.

“I wanna take a picture with the weasel, grandpa,” one of the children declared, pointing at Zachy and excitedly climbing up the steps the moment his grandfather was in position.

Soon several others joined him, some of them gathered around the cage, shaking their fingers at him and posing with Oswald, his heroic jailer, who kept the naughty weasel from making off with any of their things.

“Stealing not nice!” one little girl admonished, stomping her foot at him.

It was adorable, but sometimes it was hard for Zachy to remember that it was just his character who was bad. Especially with all the lectures he was constantly on the receiving end of from his Daddy, warning him to be good and not go tearing through the playroom like he had no home training.

He was a good boy, he was, he just got so excited sometimes. At work there were boxes and crates filled with toys he wasn’t allowed to play with. It was hard to keep his enthusiasm in check when he was in a playroom filled with ones it was okay to touch.

Or at least, it was okay for everyone else to touch. Zachy was supposed to still be sitting on the sidelines learning how to play right, but sometimes, when his Daddy wasn’t looking, he got his hands on a toy someone had left within arm’s reach and happily started playing with it until he messed up and got so enthusiastic about it that Daddy noticed.

Then he got a raised eyebrow, a stern glare, and Daddy’s finger pointing back to the spot Zachy was supposed to be sitting in, features darkening whenever Zachy tried to carry the toy back to the spot with him.

“Did I tell you it was playtime?”

“No Daddy.”

“What were you supposed to be doing?”

“Watching.”

“And what do you watch with?”

“My eyes and not my hands.”

“And that means what?”

“That I was naughty again.”

“And how many strikes is that?”

“Too many.”

“That’s right, too damned many! Which means you won’t be coming home with me at the end of the night.”

He’d meant it too, dropping Zachy off without stopping for late night nuggies and a shake, Zachy’s favouritest in the world snack.

Yes, he was a sad weasel indeed when his cage was finally wheeled to the back, and an exhausted one, too. Between the warm fur of the suit and the heat raised by having so many people packed into the space, his shorts and tank top were plastered to him by the time he’d taken his costume off and he was desperate for a drink.

At least the production assistant never failed to have an ice-cold bottle of water handy. He passed it over before storing Zachy’s costume in a garment bag that would be taken to the dry cleaner before the next time he needed to wear it. They all had three and several accent pieces that went with them. Zachy’s favorite was the bandit mask he got to wear, while his least favorite was the weasel trap, a cleverly designed piece that attached around his ankle, making it very difficult to move, let alone get up to any mischief making.

Maybe he needed to borrow that one from the props department before his next night out with Daddy. It might save him a whole heaping bit of trouble and finally earn him a night back in Daddy’s arms, something he’d been yearning for since the day Daddy had proclaimed Zachy too damn much to deal with and severely curtailed the amount of time they spent together.

Bad, awful, naughty weasel strikes again, Zachy thought as was reminded of the look on Daddy’s face and how he always seemed so disappointed in him, like Daddy wished he has Oswald the shining, beautiful owl for his little, instead of a skulking mound of over exuberance and impending disasters.

He’d do better, Zachy told himself, even as the tiny voice in the back of his head piped up, reminding him that any effort he made might be too late to make a difference.