Carmen and the Second Snake: There Is Not Enough Sun for Two

Aino has done a wonderful thing. She has taken in a young corn snake who needed a home, a small orange one called Sisu, and she has put him in a tank of his own, in the kitchen, for the thirty days of quarantine the vet insists on.

Carmen is delighted for him. Carmen is extremely delighted for him. Carmen would simply like to know why his lamp appears newer, why he ate on his very first evening as though dinner were nothing, and what exactly he is being photographed for, given that he has been alive for eleven months and has achieved nothing.

For thirty days the cat carries messages between two rooms and edits every single one of them, in both directions.

Then the tanks stand side by side, and the boy will not stop asking questions. Forty in one afternoon. Carmen answers one. Then she answers another. Then she is teaching him which bird is which, for forty minutes, and denying it to the cat afterwards.

And when his first shed goes wrong, and his eyes stay clouded and the skin comes off in pieces, it is Carmen who talks him through it from the other side of the glass, all night, because her own first shed went wrong too and there was nobody beside her.

They never share a tank. Veikko quotes page six on that, twice, and he is right. The glass is the reason they can like each other at all.

Ten chapters of comic strips and six full Sunday pages about jealousy, dignity, and the word Carmen finally chooses instead of friend.

70 full-colour pages. DRM-free PDF and EPUB included. Read on any device.