SheWalksSoftly

On another occasion the Kranzedan had gone on a cruise, fancying that it would be a relaxing pastime. However, one night, whilst on the high seas, someone shouted ‘Man overboard!’; a child was said to have gone over the rail. In the dark, the child’s light dress could be seen floating on the green-black waves. At once a dinghy was made ready and let down into the water. But the Kranzedan, for whom all of this did not happen fast enough, grabbed a lifebelt and jumped with it into the choppy sea. Though once in the waves he quickly lost his bearings and went astray.

And when the dinghy finally arrived at the child’s body, the seamen discovered that they had gone to the rescue of a large doll. Its young owner was soon clasping her wet darling happily in her arms again. Yet, from that time on the smell of salt and algae emanated from the doll, resisting all attempts at cleaning. Whenever the child lay in bed cuddling her doll, she was afflicted by harrowing nightmares: she was threatened by bizarre anglerfish with bulging eyes; entwined by the muscular tentacles of enormous kraken, whose horny beaks pinched her tender calves and thighs, or; she was swimming through the endless canyons of a town overgrown with coral, in a panic-fuelled flight from something large…