Occasionally, she let the tip of her tongue move between her lips and press against his back or stomach and face, depending on which way he was lying at the time. It felt surprisingly enjoyable, but he knew what lay ahead.

After a while, she turned her head in her sleep, and he fell down onto the rug. He looked at her chest, to see that she was breathing heavily, in a deep sleep. She had unwittingly freed him, he thought, and began to run across the lawn. It was a long way to the nearest flower bed, but he reached it before she awoke, and concealed himself well, and watched her awaken.

“Theo, where have you gone to?” she said, sitting up.

He didn’t say a word.

She got up and walked around, looking for him.

“Stop this nonsense, and come out, now, Theo, so I can eat you. You know why I’m going to do it.”

She continued searching, and eventually stopped not far from his flower bed and faced in that direction.

She had a stern look in her eyes, which he found strangely arousing.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Theo. We had an understanding after you tried to steal my money. You’ve broken our agreement and run away. But you’ve no way of getting all the way back to Alice’s house from here, if you could even find it. If you had any courage, you’d come out and let me get on with it.”

She stood and stared roughly in his direction for a while, and then turned and walked back to her rug, folded it, and carried it back to her house with the salad bowl.

1979…

One day in early 1979, after Diana, as Miss Dakarta had come to the last week of an unusually long stint in the same high school, she was approached on her way to the subway by an exceptionally bright 15 year old student named Flip Graid.

“Miss Dakarta, I know you’ll be leaving at the end of the week, but I wanted to tell you something. I followed you a lot, after school, only because I have feelings for you. One day I saw you change to Winner Woman. I think what you’re doing about wife bashers is wonderful. It makes me like you all the more. I promise I’ll keep your secret, and I was wondering if you might like to go out with me, now that you won’t be my teacher after this week.”

Diana thought for a moment.

“How would you like to come to my own land and see my giant home?” she asked.

“I’d love to!” said Flip.

“Then it’s a date. I’ll meet you just here on Saturday.”

Robin was away tracking down parts for what had been a long drawn out plan to build Archer Sub II. By then, Diana had learned to fly the Archer Plane. She took Flip to the island on the Saturday, put him into the same container she’d used to transport the wife bashers, swam out and dived through the Amazing Zone, surfaced on the shores of Brobdingnag, removed Flip from the container, walked onto the Invisible Jetty and took him to her house on the palace grounds. Donna had moved away, leaving Diana there alone, except when she brought Robin.

Soon Diana put a makeshift tiny bed on the carpet of a large room, and fixed up some other small comforts for Flip.

“I’ll just go and change into some dryer clothes, and then come back and talk to you,” said Diana.

“Thanks, Miss Dakarta.”