CENTURIES EARLIER

Theo F Court was 16. He walked out of his family’s manor one school holiday, and made his way towards the town. A horse and cart pulled up beside him.

“Would you like to travel with me?” asked the driver.

It was Mrs Louise Grande, formerly Miss Louise Marion-Kynde, who had married during her years as a teacher at his first school, when he’d been aged eight to eleven. The only other highlight of those years had been the unexplained disappearance of a boy named Pixi Smith.

“Yes, please,” said Theo, and climbed up to sit beside her.

Mrs Grande gave the reigns a tug, and the horses resumed.

“Do you mind if we take a detour?” she asked, after a while, “There’s an interesting place I’d like to show you.”

“It sounds like fun,” said Theo.

Mrs Grande pulled up, and tied the horses loosely to a tree, and then walked into the woods with Theo, until she came to the Robert Hole. She took Theo down the Robert Hole, through Wonderland, into Looking-Glass Land, and into Alice’s house, where she suddenly grew to gigantic size and carried Theo off to a girls school just outside the Valley of the Giantesses.

She took Theo straight into the headmistress’s mansion behind the school grounds, and explained that she had found Wonderland with her husband, and that they had both enjoyed the size altering food and drink of Wonderland, gaining the powers of giant size (for Mrs Grande) and tiny size (for Mr Grande).

Her husband enjoyed climbing into her mouth, when she was gigantic, and he was normal sized, during one of their many holiday picnics in Brobdingnag. One day, he had shrunken unexpectedly to tiny size, while he had been lying on her tongue at an angle. Before Mrs Grande had known what had happened, Mr Grande had begun a lengthy slide along her tongue, down in her throat, now nothing more than the size of an ant in comparison to her, and had been digested in her tummy.

That had been over a year ago. Seeking a fresh start, she had begun teaching at the giant school. As her own land’s teaching methods were more advanced than those of Brobdingnag, Mrs Grande had quickly been promoted to fill the newly arising vacancy of headmistress. She was the youngest headmistress the school had ever had, commencing the job in her thirties.

“The school’s on holidays now,” she said, “Do you remember the day I caught you stealing my money in school? I let you off, on the agreement that you would make it up to me at some time of my choosing.”

“I do remember, and thank you again.”

“Well I’d like to have you join me in the empty school gardens for a picnic lunch tomorrow,” said Mrs Grande.

“I’d love to have a picnic date with you, now that you’re a widow. I was too young to see how beautiful you are, when you were my teacher.”

“Why thank you!” said Mrs Grande, “I’m looking forward to it. I’ll just go and make a salad to go with you.”

She walked out of the room towards the kitchen, leaving him on the mantelpiece in her lounge room.

Theo thought about the last thing she had said. There was something slightly confusing about it. Surely, when one invited someone on a picnic date, and prepared the food, one would have said, “make a salad for you.” Yet Mrs Louise had said “make a salad to go with you.”

He thought about it some more, and a sudden realisation came upon him about the way in which Mrs Louise expected him to make up for his theft of years earlier.

She was intending to eat both the salad and himself.