Colleen went to the public gardens in the village to have lunch, and sat on a seat and slowly took out her food. She was just getting started, when she saw a young man walk into the gardens. She noticed that she had caught his eye, and wasn’t surprised when he sat on a nearby seat, facing her direction. Nor was she surprised to see that he pretended to be looking away, but never took the corner of his eye off her.  When she had eaten her main course, she reached into her handbag and took out the reducing machine, fired it at the young man and reduced him to tiny size. She walked over, picked him up and resumed her seat, placing him into her dessert bowl of jelly and fruit.

“I could see that you liked me,” she said, “I’ll take you home with me, so that you can snuggle against my cheek tonight. I’ll take a walk in the meadow near my home tomorrow morning. Have as much fruit or jelly as you like, while you’re in there, and watch me eating the rest of it. You’ll have a much better view than you did from that seat over there, and you’ll have a better idea of what to expect at lunch time tomorrow. When I return from my walk, my next lunch will be the one who was watching me eat today’s lunch just now.”

“Hey you can’t be serious! I’m sorry if I offended you. I was only looking at you, because I like you, and I couldn’t think of a way to approach a complete stranger.”

“Well now you don’t have to. You’ve caught my interest too.”

“As your next meal?”

“Not at all,” she said, as he relaxed for a moment, “I’ll be having dinner and breakfast before then. You can watch those too. It’ll be good training for you, so you’ll be ready to be a good lunch.”

“You can’t do this! Make me big again!”

“I’ll be eating you. So there!” she said, and stuck out her tongue with a stunningly mischievous look in her eyes, “I’ll gobble you all down my throat and into my tummy, and you’ll never come out again.”

“I could still tell you my name,” he said, “I’m Tarquin.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Tarquin. I’m Colleen.”

He watched her spooning fruit and jelly onto her tongue and into her mouth, watched her gulping it down, and watched her licking her lips as the whole process of eating her dessert went on for several minutes.

“Are you getting a better understanding of your role in tomorrow’s repeat performance?” she asked.

“It’s easy to understand, but not easy to accept.”

She removed the batteries from the machine, and slipped them into her blouse pocket, and then placed him into her handbag beside the machine.

“There’s nothing you can do, little man.”

Colleen zipped up her handbag, stood up and went on her way.

That night, she gave him several kisses and snuggled him against her cheek. She told him all about Frances and Nathaniel, and how they had engaged in such intimacy every night and would continue to indefinitely.

“I’d love that,” said Tarquin, “With you, I mean.”

“Nathaniel hasn’t been eaten, because it’s not what Frances wants. You’re in a very different situation.”

She went on to tell him about her initial quest for leprechauns, and how she had made substitutes by shrinking Stanley and Patrick, and how Henry had snuck in and reduced himself to volunteer for the same culinary role in her happiness.

She licked his face and then took him down to the kitchen. She put him into the cage and then remembered Dick Flanigin’s escape. She locked the cage and put the key on the table in the lounge room, and left Tarquin’s cage on the high kitchen bench. Even if he somehow found a way to open the lock, he’d never get down to the floor.

“I’ll see you in the morning, sweet admirer,” she said, and walked off up to bed.

The next morning, Colleen came downstairs and found that he was gone. She checked all of her circuits and saw that the video cameras had been operating, but that the alarm circuit had been disconnected, preventing her from being woken up.

She suspected that Dick Flanigin had come back, trying to restore his size, and rescued Tarquin somehow, but she wanted to watch the video to make sure.

She checked the playback closely and was surprised at what she saw. It was not a video of Dick Flanigin, whom readers of previous chapters will remember had been gobbled whole by his former client Brenda Leesil.

The video circuit had been activated by two small beings suddenly popping into visibility with lanterns in their hands. Once visible, they had tripped the video record circuit with their presence, and popped in and out of visibility while using some tiny ropes they’d brought with them, to get up onto the kitchen bench with the key they’d found and unlock the cage. The camera had recorded them telling quite a story.

They were in fact real live leprechauns, whose kingdom was directly beneath the very meadow in which she’d been hunting for them. The legends were true, except that the ground had formed caverns as it had grown over  their kingdom after soil erosion of centuries ago. They had learned to live with lanterns and small tunnels that only they could fit through, which led them in and out of the kingdom.

They had seen everything that had transpired between Colleen and Stanley, while remaining invisible in the meadow, and after Stanley had been eaten, they had felt a sense of indirect responsibility for his plight. After all, Colleen had used him as a substitute for one of them. They had decided to keep an eye on Colleen and try to rescue anyone else she shrank. She guessed that they hadn’t known about Henry and Patrick, whom she’d met away from the meadow, but had later started to monitor her house anyway, and saw her arriving and taking Tarquin out of her handbag.

They had told Tarquin that they had no way to undo the shrinking process that Colleen had inflicted, but could let him live with them in their lamplit underground leprechaun kingdom. Tarquin had accepted, and been taken safely back there in the middle of the night.

So there were leprechauns, and they had even been in her house the night before, and disconnected her alarm circuit, so that she had lost both Tarquin and any chance of catching them in her kitchen.

A few days later, Tarquin was invited by the leprechaun princess to the ball at the leprechaun palace. She was very keen on him, and asked him to dance at the ball. It would have been daytime in the world above, but since they lived by lamplight all the time, it made no difference. He was dancing with the princess, who was rather pretty. However all of his thoughts were still on his infatuation with Colleen. He knew that he could never go back and see her again, unless he wanted to see the inside of her mouth immediately before being despatched by it. Yet still he couldn’t help thinking of her.

The dancing was accompanied by leprechaun musicians playing live instrumental tunes, as they had no electricity down there. They had gotten what they needed from the earth to make their lanterns and other facilities function, and the lantern lit palace looked spectacular.

During one of the tunes in the second bracket of dancing, they heard an earthquake above them.

“Don’t worry, it’s for the best,” said the prince of leprechauns, “Any further soil movement can only serve to conceal and reinforce our kingdom all the more.”

The loud noise came again, and the musicians took a break, deciding to wait out the disturbance until it could no longer interfere with their tunes.

Suddenly the cavern roof was lifted up by something, which turned out to be a shovel, and tossed away above them. Looking up from the palace courtyard, Tarquin saw that Colleen was digging into their kingdom.

“She must have snuck back down and overheard you rescuing me last night,” he said, unaware of her video and alarm system, “She only let us go, so that she could come here and surprise all of us today!”

“Everyone turn invisible!” called the prince.

“You’d better hide deep in the palace,” said the princess, knowing that Tarquin didn’t have their power of invisibility.

Tarquin went and hid behind a curtain just inside the palace’s upper room, and peeked out at Colleen. He couldn’t help looking at her, fascinated with her towering beauty, as she scooped away the last of the roof soil and put down the shovel. Then he saw her squat down and reach for something beside her. It wasn’t the reducing machine, as they were already tiny enough. It was some sort of container with a nozzle. Was she going to try to smoke them out with tear gas or something? Would the leprechauns be susceptible?

Colleen pointed her new piece of equipment into the cavern and squeezed the trigger.

A pink substance sprayed out in each direction, falling onto the leprechauns and remaining on them, leaving all of them as visible as Tarquin would have been, had he stayed out on the palace courtyard.

“Run and hide. She’s sprayed us with dye!” called the prince.

“Actually I thought food colouring seemed the most appropriate thing to use,” said Colleen, “Two of you came into my home last night. So I thought I’d return the favour.”

She reached into the cavern and snatched up a leprechaun and lifted him out of sight. One after another, many of them were caught and taken from the cavern. Some fled to the tunnels, and others darted back into the palace. When Colleen had caught as many of the outdoor leprechauns as she could find, she stepped down into the cavern, so that her knees were now level with what had been the base of the roof soil. Then she squatted down and put her hands around the palace. She pulled with all her strength and lifted the palace up, out of the cavern and set it down on the grass beside a large picnic basket, in which she had already placed the leprechauns that she had captured.

“I know that some of them got away into the tunnels. I might find them another day, but the rest of you in that palace can save us all a lot of needless effort, if you come out and surrender to me now. That includes you too, Tarquin,” said Colleen.

She was drop dead gorgeous with that stern look of determination on her face, and Tarquin was transfixed with a mixture of shock and excitement.

Nobody moved.

“Alright. We’ll do this the hard way then,” said Colleen.

She put four fingers through one window opening and the other four through a doorway at the opposite end, and pulled the walls and roof off the palace. Tarquin darted to the stairway, just as she tossed the roof aside, and narrowly avoided being caught. Colleen snatched some of the leprechauns up and put them in the picnic basket, and then lay down and peeked into the lower room, where Tarquin and 3 others were now hiding.

“Do we really have to do all that again?” she asked, “It seems a waste of time, when we all know that you’re all going to wind up in my tummy at some point.”

The three leprechauns were too frightened to move. Tarquin had weighed the situation up, and could see that there was no avoiding the accuracy of her summation.

“I’ll come out,” he said.

“Thank you, my little darling,” said Colleen.

He stepped out where she could pick him up, and she placed him just behind her necklace, which he’d not seen her wearing before.

“Now you can watch while I fetch out the rest of them,” she said.

She reached through the window with her hand and lunged for one of the leprechauns, caught him and put him in the basket. She had to tear the ceiling and walls off to get at the rest, and soon had them all trapped in the picnic basket.

“I wish you’d all been more logical instead of making me break your little palace,” she said, staring down at them, “I could have kept it for its design quality alone. It would have made a uniquely artistic dolls house.”

“Well forgive us for trying to avoid being eaten,” said the leprechaun prince.

“Nothing to forgive. I just thought that you’d have been more realistic about the inevitability of it, and surrendered yourselves without sustaining any property damage,” said Colleen.

She took a large carry-bag out of the basket and dropped all of the palace’s remains into it, and then knotted its carry straps around the handle of the shovel. She stood up, took the basket by the handle in one hand and the shovel in her other hand, and walked back up through the meadow to her house. The caverns were exposed, but looked largely like soil erosion damage combined with a few children’s toys now, and wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of anyone else who came through the meadow.

Colleen came to her house and opened a large high cabinet in an upstairs room, which had a glass door. She took each of the leprechauns out of the basket and placed them all into the cabinet, amongst the dolls furniture it already contained.

“You can all make yourselves comfortable and expect food supplies from me each day for those of you I haven’t eaten yet,” said Colleen, “And of course you can all expect to be eaten eventually. You’ll find that I already left food in there this morning, before I started my gardening project in the meadow. There’s one other thing. Are the two leprechauns who visited me and freed Tarquin last night here or back in the tunnels?”

One leprechaun stepped forward.

“I saw the other one make it to a tunnel, just before you caught me,” he said, “But I was one of them.”

“Well may I offer you my sincere thanks,” said Colleen, “If you hadn’t played the feature roles in a candid camera video film you set off, I’d never have even known for sure that your kingdom existed, let alone caught enough of you to be tasty treats for several weeks at least. If I’m even luckier, the ones in the tunnels might even come here to attempt a rescue of the rest of you, and I’ll be ready for them too. Now whom shall I start with?”

She snatched up the nearest leprechaun, despite a collective retreat by all of them, and took him to the kitchen, sprinkled some seasoning on him, and placed him onto a baking tray.

“I’ve prepared this kitchen for a day like this some time ago,” she said, turning the oven on, “I’ve put the oven on a low setting, but there’s a button inside it, near where I’ll place your tray. Once you’re cooked well enough, press the button before you start to burn. Even if I don’t hear the buzzer, the button also turns the oven off. So you can’t be burned. I’ll be back to serve you at the table in a while.

She put the shovel away, emptied the broken palace remains into the backyard incinerator to be burnt up at a later date, and then put Tarquin on a cupboard top in her bedroom, while she showered off and changed into a nice clean dress.

Then she took Tarquin back down to the kitchen, placed him on the table, and saw that the oven was off. She took out the tray, lowered her mouth and touched the leprechaun’s face with the tip of her tongue.

“You don’t seem to have cooled down, which is good. How long was it since you turned it off?”

“About a minute and a half,” said the leprechaun.

She took him off the baking tray, put him on a plate, and took him to the table, and sat down.

Colleen picked up the leprechaun, licked him several times, and swallowed him whole in front of Tarquin’s gaping eyes.

“That could have been me!” he thought, “And it will be the rest of them.”

“That was lovely,” said Colleen, “Now what would you like?”

He chose a prawn and enjoyed the most unlimited helping of prawn meat he’d ever had.

“Shall we head for bed then?” asked Colleen.

“Sure,” said Tarquin.

She took him upstairs and climbed into bed and sat up.

“Could I have some licks?” he asked, recalling how amazing it had looked watching her lick the leprechaun dinner she’d just had.

“Why not?” said Colleen, and lifted him towards her mouth and licked his face more times than he could keep count.

They she lay down and placed him beside her face on the pillow. He lay sideways, so that their eyes were level.

“It was quite a surprise when I looked up at the last of the cavern roof and saw you with the shovel,” he said.

“I’ll bet it was.”

“I feel sorry for the leprechauns, but at least there’s one good thing that’s come out of you catching them. Now you don’t have to make do with substitutes.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Colleen, “I’ve come to rather like the substitutes just as much in their own way, a fact of which your last request has reminded me.”

Her beautiful lips smiled right in front of him.

He suddenly went speechless.

“I’ll save you until the leprechauns are all gone,” she said, “And you can watch me eating each one of them in a series of sneak previews for you. I think I’ll give you your turn with the buzzer button in the oven too, when the time comes. I haven’t cooked any of the other substitutes. You’ll be the first.”

“That means I can look out of the oven at you preparing things in the kitchen, while I’m cooking.”

“I hope you’ll enjoy the view as much as the one you had in the gardens at your full size,” she said.

For weeks he watched her nightly leprechaun dinners going into her mouth and being gulped down by her slightly bulging neck, thinking of what he’d feel when his turn came.

“That was the last of them,” she said, after gulping yet another one down, “We’re alone in the house now.”

“And soon I’ll be alone in your tummy.”

“That you will. Let’s enjoy our last night with you outside of it.”

The next evening, she took him to the kitchen and asked him, “Do you want to suggest anything for your own recipe?”

“That pavlova I saw you unpacking after you went shopping would be nice to look up at you from within, and you could add some whipped cream and strawberries.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion. I’ll warm you up in the oven as planned first.”

She placed him on the baking tray and slid it into the oven and peeked in.

“Now there’s the buzzer and off switch,” she said, pointing to it, “You can watch me whipping the cream and pouring it over the pavlova and adding the strawberries, while you’re warming up.”

She blew him a kiss and closed the oven door. 

He looked out through its glass window front and watched her whipping the cream, licking the spoon, pouring it onto the pavlova and placing the strawberries on top. He saw her licker her finger a few times too, and couldn’t help admiring the sight of that tongue and looking forward to the early parts of her plans for this dinner date.

She still had half the strawberries to go, when he felt the need to press the buzzer.

She stopped and came over and took him out and lowered him gently into the pavlova at a point where there was no cream or strawberries in the very centre of the circle. Then he looked up at her towering beautful face and watched her dainty fingers placing the remaining strawberries in suitable positions.

“This is the first time I’ve had my meat and dessert combined, and yet I think it’s going to be very nice. It was a very good suggestion you made,” she said.

She took it to the dining table, where she’d already laid a spoon and sat down.

He watched her spooning pavlova and fruit into her mouth several times and licking the spoon clean, until there was only the small amount of it which still surrounded him.

“If I slide the spoon over gently, can you sit down and lie back on it?” she asked.

“I think so,” said Tarquin and saw the spoon approach.

She raised the spoon to her mouth.

“You look luscious!” she said.

“Couldn’t we just go on like Frances and Nathaniel?” he asked.

“I can’t blame you for asking, but I’ve been doing this for a while now, and you know the way it always ends,” said Colleen.

She spooned him into her open mouth. He lay on her tongue, as she swished and rolled him around on it, drawing almost all of the pavlova off him. Then she opened her mouth again and took him out with he finger and thumb.

Had his last appeal finally persuaded her of the benefits of keeping him uneaten?

“That’s most of the pavlova gone,” she said, “Let’s see what I can do to clean off the rest.”

She put out her tongue and licked him several times, turning him with her finger and thumb until she’d cleaned it all from him, and then passed him into her other hand. From the palm of her other hand, he watched her licking her first hand’s finger and thumb clean too.

“There, you’re sparkling clean and ready to be swallowed,” she said, “I’m so glad I caught your eye in the public gardens that day. I’ve enjoyed these last few weeks with you more than any of my other adventures with leprechaun substitutes. You’ve made me very happy, and I’ll always remember your fond affections for me. I’m very fond of you too.”

She rubbed him against her dress to dry off the tongue water, and gave him a long slow kiss.

“I even felt them, when you were snatching up the leprechauns from the cavern. I couldn’t help peeking out from behind the palace window curtain at your beautiful face and the look of triumph in your eyes.”

“So that’s why you barely made it out of the upstairs room when I pulled the roof off. You’re so sweet to tell me that, and to stay there watching me. And now I’m going to gobble you all up. Goodbye, little darling.”

She licked him a few times more, then placed him gently into her mouth, slid him around on her tongue for a while, then drew him into her throat and waited until he stopped part way down.

They all like to stick a little, she thought.

Tarquin felt the inside of her throat all around him and wondered if he could yet have appealed to her to go on romancing him. Suddenly she began gulping him further down her throat with tremendous heaving pressure. He reached her tummy and knew that there was no changing her mind.

Colleen had eaten almost an entire kingdom of leprechauns, and four shrunken humans too. She would put her mind to work on how to catch the ones who had fled into the underground tunnels too small for her to access. She wondered if she should have attacked the tunnels with the shovel, but eventually thought that it might have damaged her potential food. As it was, she had invalidated their invisibility with food colouring and swallowed well over half of them. She had subsequently decided that her sabbatical was over, and returned to teaching at the school.  

One day after school, Connor was about to walk home, when Edith Kelson walked up and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Hi Connor!” she said, “How would you like to hang out with me on a little adventure, this afternoon?”

“Sure,” said Connor, “Like a date?”

“Not exactly that, but it’ll be fun. You know how Miss Balfour went away on that sabbatical?”

“Yes, she was gone for months.”

“She’s a bit of an inventor as well as a science and English teacher. Don’t you ever wonder if she’s got any inventions stashed away in the science lab?”

“I guess she could have, especially if she used the school’s equipment for some of her research,” said Connor.

“Well why don’t we sneak into the lab and have a look?”

“But the doors to the lab are locked until she opens them to start classes.”

“I know, but I just had her for science in last period. I sat in the back row, behind everyone else, so that nobody could see me. While she was writing on the blackboard, I turned the window handle just enough to unlock it without it showing. She’s in a staff meeting now, so all we have to do is climb up the tree outside and sneak in through the window.”

Connor was thinking about it all the time that Edith had been talking. He could show her that spending time with him could be fun too. He knew that she had a boyfriend, but she had come to him, and maybe even left her boyfriend by now. It was possible that she’d only made the invitation because she needed someone from her own school, which her boyfriend was not. Or maybe she had been thinking about him since he first asked her out.

“Sure, it sounds like fun,” he said, remembering her initial reason given for declining him.

Either way, he wuld show her that he knew how to have fun.

They walked around to the tree, checked that nobody was looking, and were soon out of sight within its branches. Edith reached the window first and climbed in, and then stood on the classroom floor to help Connor through the window. They searched the laboratory cupboards methodically, as fast as they could, but found nothing. Connor was looking in her desk.

“Look what I found in her handbag,” said Edith, “She must have been coming back here after the meeting. That means we’ve got less than half an hour left. I wonder what it does.”

Edith pressed a button and a beam of light came from the device in her hand and reduced a chair and desk to tiny size.

“She’s invented an amazing machine!” said Edith, “You’d better hide those now tiny pieces of furniture in the cupboard, or she might guess that someone’s been in here.”

Connor picked up the miniaturized chair and desk and walked over to a cupboard, put the furniture in, and pushed it to the back, and then slid some beakers and stands in front them to hide them. He turned to see Edith pointing the device in his direction.

He stepped to one side

Edith moved her hand, so that the device was pointing in his direction again.

“It’s probably better if we don’t fool around with that thing,” said Connor, “Imagine what could happen to me if you accidentally pressed that switch, while it was pointing this way.”

“I’m more interested in what could happen to you if I deliberately pressed it,” said Edith, smiling.

“Hey, I came along to win you over, and I like the fun of sneaking in here, but let’s not get carried away.”

“I think you’ll be carried away in my coat pocket soon enough. I do have a boyfriend, remember, but you’d go down my throat smoothly and whole, if you were the size of that little chair you just put away.”

He couldn’t believe it.

He started running towards her, ready to reach out and snatch the device. Edith pressed the switch and smiled with great amusement as he dwindled down to tiny size. She knelt down and picked him up, with her laughing eyes beaming down at him, lifted him up and held him right in front of her big lips and perfect smiling teeth.

“Edith, please make me big again. You can be happy with your boyfriend, and at least I might have a chance with someone else one day.”

“I can be happy with my boyfriend anyway, and he’ll never know how much fun I’m going to have with you after all,” said Edith, “I think we’re out of time.”

She slipped him into her coat pocket, put the machine back into Colleen’s handbag and zipped it up, opened the science classroom door from the inside, reset the lock, stepped out and pulled it shut and walked to the students’ staircase.

Colleen soon came up the staff staircase, entered the room and collected her bag and locked and left the room. She was halfway down the hall, when she turned around and came back and had a good look at the room. There was a chair and a desk missing.

She went to the cupboards, took out some powder and a small brush and then managed to take her device out of her handbag, without touching the places it was usually held by. She dusted them and found a mixture of her own fingerprints and someone else’s. She searched every cupboard in the room and eventually found the reduced chair and desk. Then she checked the windows and found that one had not been locked properly.

She knew that someone had set the classroom up, so that they could sneak in after school, and that someone had taken the machine out of her bag and used it on the furniture and then tried to cover their tracks. From now on, she would check that all of the windows were locked before leaving the room, and she would always carry her bag with her.

Edith walked out of the school grounds with Connor in her coat pocket, which was level with her chest.

“I hope you’re comfortable in there,” she said quietly, “It’s not far from your upcoming new address.”

She meant her stomach.

When she reached her home, she went up to her bedroom, opened the top drawer of her wardrobe, and put him on a pile of neatly folded clean handkerchiefs.

“They’ll be your bed for the night. I’ll bring you some dinner first though,” she said, “Now I must be doing my homework. We spent some time on that adventure.”

He sat up on the mattress of handkerchiefs and watched her walk over and sit at her desk and do her homework, occasionally putting her pen handle to her lip while she thought.

Then she went down to dinner, and came back an hour later with a single dried apricot larger than his head, and a small piece of ham which would fill him to capacity.

“You’ll enjoy that. The ham’s almost as good as you will be.”

“How do you know how good I’ll be?” he asked.

“Well you sure look good enough to gobble down right now,” she said, and lifted him out of the wardrobe.

She put out her tongue in a slightly angular direction and slid it across his face.

“It’s official. You’re extremely appetising,” she said, and opened her mouth wide and popped him into it!

He waited for the inevitable gulp to follow, as he gaped down her throat, feeling strangely thankful that she had left her mouth open to let in enough light.

Then she reached in and took him out of her mouth again.

“Second impressions are great too. You’ll make a terrific snack.”

“When are you planning to… do it?” he asked.

“I might as well skip basketball tomorrow after school. We’d be down one player anyway,” she laughed, “I’ll come straight home and have you for afternoon tea up here, before I get started on my homework.”

He ate his dinner, while she read a book, and then she said it was time to turn in.

“Would you like me to kiss you goodnight?” she asked.

“I’d like you to kiss me for any reason,” he said.

She picked him up again and touched her lips to his face. It was only for a few seconds, but as far as first kisses go, it was fabulous.

“Your lips are amazing!” he said.

“Goodnight, Connor,” she said and turned and switched on her bedside table lamp, turned off the main light, and then climbed into bed and turned off the lamp.

Connor knew that his only chance was to escape from her and get back to the school and ask Miss Balfour to restore him to normal size, if the device even had that ability. Then he had another thought. He remembered a student named Henry who had gone missing. It was back before Miss Balfour had gone on her sabbatical! Could Miss Balfour have shrunken him?

Then Connor had another significant recollection. Another boy named Nathaniel had also gone missing, while Miss Balfour had been away. So it was unlikely that she and her shrinking device could have been responsible for both disappearances, but he couldn’t take the risk. He realised that he could think of no other reason for Miss Balfour to have invented the device than for shrinking people. Since Henry had not returned, and for that matter since he had often seen Miss Balfour and Miss Woodfield having lunch together, it was likely that they were collectively responsible for shrinking and abducting the two missing boys. Could they have done it for the same reason that Edith had reduced and kidnapped him?

It was unfathomable, but could well be true. Miss Woodfield had probably eaten Nathaniel, and Miss Balfour had probably eaten Henry.

Connor didn’t know that both students had volunteered for the reduction process, and that Nathaniel was enjoying his nightly facial licks from Miss Woodfield.

There was no point in going to Miss Balfour for help. He’d have been better off being eaten by the girl he adored, than by his science and English teacher.

He would have to simply go on the run and live out the rest of his life at tiny size, unless he could find someone else capable of reverse engineering Miss Balfour’s device to restore him. Yes, that was it. He’d been shrunken as a result of sneaking into the science classroom with Edith. He would need to find another girl who would sneak in there with his shrunken self, the next time Miss Balfour was at a staff meeting and hopefully still leaving her bag in the science classroom until the end of the day.

Connor began to open up the handkerchiefs and to knot the corner of each one with the corner of the next one. When it was all done, he tied the opposite corner of the first handkerchief to the handle of the drawer he was in, and then let the rest fall to reach to the carpet below. With nothing more than moonlight to aid him, he climbed slowly down the chain of handkerchiefs until he reached the floor. He turned and looked to see that Edith was still sleeping peacefully, since no lights had been turned on. He looked at the way the moonlight shone in from the window and fell on her beautiful face. How he would have loved to climb up there and snuggle against her cheek.

The window was open, but he was in an upstairs room at reduced size. There was no way of retrieving his chain of handkerchiefs, while it was still tied to the wardrobe handle. Apart from that, it would not reach nearly far enough to get him safely to the ground. He walked around the room and found a ball of wool under the bed. Now at last he had a gameplan. He tied one end of the ball to the leg of the bed, and then unrolled it as far as the base of the window curtain, and then took hold of a part of the unravelled wool in his hand and loosely tied it around his arm.

Connor climbed up the curtain and then untied himself, and continued to pull on the wool until it had all unravelled. He fed the entire section over the window ledge and down onto the lawn below. He started climbing down the wool. He could see that there was an overhang at the downstairs end of the string, but he could make it the rest of the way without a wall to touch.

He used his feet to abseil down the outside wall of Edith’s bedroom, until he got to the start of the overhang. He kicked out with his legs, to push him away from the bottom of the wall, and then slid down a little further, to see that Edith was standing on the porch below with her arms folded, smiling at him.

“I had my eyes open just a tiny crack the whole time,” she said, “I can see that I picked the right person to join me in climbing that tree to the science room window. That stunt with my handkerchiefs was very good. You’d have made a great double for someone. But when I saw you heading out the window, I thought I’d better come down quietly and show you that you can’t pull the wool over my eyes.”

He couldn’t help laughing at her pun.

She took him back up to her bedroom, pulled the wool up, untied it, closed the window, and put him on her bed. She went and fetched the chain of handkerchiefs from the wardrobe and sat in front of him on the bed and untied each handkerchief and folded it again.

“I can see that there’s only one place I can leave you tonight,” she said, and popped him into her mouth without another word.

This was it. She wasn’t going to take a chance on him getting away while she was at school…

He felt her lying down and gulping just slightly to draw him into her throat, but no further. As he was horizontal, he would remain in that position. She must have decided to sleep the rest of the night with him lying in her throat. All he could do was make himself comfortable and go to sleep.

When morning came, she took him to school in her breast pocket and kept him there all day, until school was over, and then came home and locked herself in her bedroom and sat down on her bed, taking her coat off and putting it on the back of her desk chair.

“It’s afternoon tea time,” she said.

“I suspect I’m not the first actually,” said Connor.

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve was thinking about it, while I was planning my escape last night.”

“You mean your escape attempt.”

“Yes… Well Miss Balfour invented the device. Henry and Nathaniel both went missing, and what else would Miss Balfour had wanted a device like that except to shrink people for herself and her friend Miss Woodfield to eat?”

“I think you’re probably right.”

“Well then hadn’t we better get hold of that device again, before she shrinks anyone else? What if she uses it on you?”

“She won’t. Both of the disappearing students were boys. I guess if any more go missing, at least I’ll know the solution to the mystery. I can hardly hold it against her, given that she’s made today’s afternoon tea possible.”

“So you’re just going to go ahead with this then?”

“Well I do have homework to get on with. I’ll start on my maths while you’re in my mouth. You’ll know I’ve finished all my homework when you feel the gulp. Goodbye Connor.”

She placed him into her mouth and left him in darkness, with her moist tongue below him like a mattress which ironically felt softer than the pile of handkerchiefs. He kept trying to think of a way to reason with her, to persuade her of some benefit of sparing him, even if he couldn’t be with her in a romantic relationship. If he could only think of something, he could still call out to her to open her mouth and listen to what he had to say. He couldn’t keep track of time in there, but after a long time, he felt her drawing him towards her throat.

“No, no, no. It’s not fair!” he called.

She probably heard his protests, but paid them no heed, as she gulped him deeper into her throat, and then down into her stomach.