The overwhelming scent of freshly baked cookies lured the children out to the balcony. They had been stuck inside all day, but the nanny was busy in the kitchen and the smell coming from there couldn’t be further from the one wafting inside.

Thomas was a few weeks from turning eight and determined to inform everyone he met. In most situations he would tell them how old he was before he stated his name. Rebecca Sturges, seven and a half, was sent across the hall to socialize. After being shown all of his toys, his daddy’s study and his mother’s collection of hat pins, the two children retired to the living room to stare blankly at the walls around them.

Minutes turned into hours, and with a glance at the oak clock in the hall, Missus Rumpert traded her needlepoint for an apron and waddled into the kitchen. The children gawked limply at one another, trying to speak with nothing but their eyes. Unbeknownst to either of them, the exact same thought coursed through their heads at the exact same moment: this is how animals must talk.

The smell of cookies broke their trance. It seemed to permeate through the balcony doors, thumbing its ethereal nose at those who kept it out. Almost in unison, the children’s eyes widened, their nostrils flared, and they tip-toed to the doors to see the source of the pleasant disturbance. With one last peek over his shoulder, Thomas turned the handle and crept onto the balcony. Ever the little gentleman, he held the door for Rebecca and shut it softly behind him.

Sticking his face through the twisted wrought iron bars, Thomas tried to determine the location of the delicious scent. His eyes darted from the vendors with their pushcarts to the stores neatly packed against one another on the opposite side of the street. None were the culprit. He deduced the source must be on their side of the street, and climbed onto the white metal chair to get a better look. Craning his neck around the corner, he continued to climb onto the glass top table, and then over the railing.

“What are you doing?!” chimed Rebecca, the first thing she’d said since introducing herself that morning.

“I’m getting a better look.”

Thomas’s pudgy digits grasped the iron bars with surprising fortitude, nearly enough to make up for the stiff little boots laced up his ankles. Every instinct Rebecca had was telling her to get Missus Rumpert, or tell him to come down, but she was also curious.

“Well, do you see it?”

He scanned right, then leaned forward and peered left through the twisted bars. He started to lean further to peer below him, but remembered that in his nearly eight years at that address, he had never seen a bakery in his own lobby.

“No.”

The children felt the same tingle course through their fingers at the same time. Rebecca tucked hers under her arms, and Thomas tightened his around the bars and pulled himself back. Rebecca hid a sigh of relief mixed with disappointment, Thomas the same.

“Daddy’s home from Africa tomorrow.”

Rebecca’s ears pricked, and with that sentence the children’s minds couldn’t have been further from baked goods.

“Daddy always brings me presents from his travels. Mummy and I mark where his letters are from on the map in my room so we know where he is.”

Rebecca imagined the map, patterns of multi-colored string darting across it, exotic stamps pinned to exotic locations, like butterflies in a shadowbox.

“Daddy’s last letter was from the Sea-shells Islands. Before that he was in Swatsyland! Have you ever heard of it?”

Before she could answer, Thomas continued,

“I hope this time Daddy brought me back a pet. Like a lion! Oh, or a zebra! That’d be brilliant! I’d ride it through London ev’ry day and point and laugh at all the carriages pulled by horsies with no stripes!”

The image of the little boy sitting proudly atop his striped steed made Rebecca giggle, and an unseen grin of self-satisfaction crept across Thomas’s face. Only the men below in their tall felt hats could see it, if they looked up.

“I think I’d rather have a baby animal though, one that will live as long as I do. Did you know African tort’ises can live for a hundred years? That’s too long, though. I wouldn’t want it to outlive me. Missus Chalfont told Mummy about an old lady that died and left ev’rything she had to her kitty, but that’s just silly. Crocodiles can live for seventy years. Gran lived for eighty, so that would be perfect! Yes, a crocodile. They eat ev’rything: monkeys, birds, cows, even zebras and humans! If Daddy got me a crocodile, I’d keep ‘im in our bath until he got too big. Then I’d make Nanny knit a saddle for me, and I’d ride ‘im ev’rywhere!”

The tingle in Rebecca’s fingers grew at the thought of Thomas riding a gigantic scaly monster through her neighborhood. She wondered where she would fit into the picture.

“I’d let ‘im eat anything he wanted… ‘cept for me, Mummy, Daddy, Nanny …and you too, I guess.”

Somehow that didn’t make her feel any better about the situation. Her stomach was still in knots a sailor would have trouble untying. For just a moment she recalled why, and her eyes darted to Thomas’s feet. As he shifted his weight, his hard little leather heels ground into the crumbled bits of the concrete balcony where the paint had cracked and chipped away. Despite the warm Spring sun beating on them and the layers of her dress, she hugged herself tighter and shivered.

“We’d go ev’rywhere together, gobbling up nasty boys and snotty girls and yapping little dogs, ruining posh garden parties and thrashing the men in their striped suits and straw hats. We’d race horsies and eat the loser! I’d have Daddy buy me a diving suit and we’d swim the Thames. Oh, what fun! King Edward would be so impressed with me and my crocodile, he’d dub us knights, and give me a suit of armour and a sword. I’d give my crocodile a fancy plume to wear, and ev’ryone would be so honoured to meet us they’d offer their pets for ‘is supper. He’d even eat that old lady’s kitty and we’d sack its house like proper vikings! The whole city would be at our beck ‘n call. Dukes and Counts and Barons and Lords, all our servants shall we choose.

He’d get so big he wouldn’t be able to live ‘ere, though. They can grow up to six metres you know… we’d ‘ave to leave Mummy and Daddy and go somewhere better for ‘im. Maybe the country. There are lots of cows and sheep to eat in the country. But when we visit Auntie Agatha in Yorkshire it’s so dreadfully dull. I much rather like the city. Oh! We could live in the sewer, away from prying eyes, and fill our underground cave with treasure we loot’d from the world above. Yes, he’d like it very much down there, nice and wet. We’d get around faster too, running through the pipes, avoiding all the traffic above. Crocodiles can go as fast as an automobile! Wherever we wanted to go, we’d just take off, through the sewers, and pop out a manhole at our destination. The men from the city would have to make bigger manholes though. They might even make crossing signs with our shadows on them, um… sillo-wets. Yeah! People would come from far and wide jus’ to see us. Forget Bucking’m Palace, they’d say, we want to see Thomas and, and… well I guess he needs a name. I ‘aven’t the faintest idea what to call him.”

Thomas turned to face Rebecca.

“What do you th—