The Misses Foo & Cockerill

Victims of Cruel Society

And then it was over.

Miss Foo stepped back in the dim light of the basement to admire her work. She chuckled delightedly to herself.

Then she suddenly frowned. She threw the hammer she was holding against the wall. "Wrong," she said. "It's all wrong." The hammer was quickly followed by a series of other tools.

It would work, of course–Miss Foo's schemes never failed–but not in the way she wanted it to. She wanted more and she wanted better. It was still missing something, something to purify it, something to strengthen it.

It was weak; Miss Foo did not accept weakness.

She would not be satisfied until it was as powerful as she could possibly make it.

She threw an axe.

But how to do that?!

Eli was disappointed in the forest. Well, not disappointed; it had been a wonderful forest, full of gnarled old trees and moss-covered boulders, but had hadn't found a single ominous thing in it. He had found a delightful little pool, where the sun broke through the treetops and lit a small patch of grass, to which Eli planned to return to read.

But he found no fluffy hedgehogs. No overly-large rodents. Nor did he hear even once a distant howl of a werewolf. He could see no reason why no one had ever entered the wood before. And not once did he see anything that could have been a Nepenthes giuliana.

So it was with a head hung in disappointment that he left the wood and began the walk home. He needed to check on Julie. He knew she could look out for herself, if left alone; she was an unusually bright child. But he hadn't left her alone. He had left her with Phil-osopher. And who knows what trouble that man might have caused.

He walked faster.

And because he was thinking about where he was going instead of where he was, Eli ran smack dab into a lady dangling from a tree by her ankle.

"Hello," he said. "What are you doing?"

The woman twisted in slow circles at the end of a rope. She was wearing a white dress tied with a pink bow and was working very hard to keep it from falling down. Or up. Falling down up around her head.

"I've been whipper-snapped," she said.

"I see," said Eli, who did.

"Who are you talking to, Cockerill?" a voice bellowed from down the street. Eli looked up and, much to his surprise, saw a second trapped woman, this one standing on the sidewalk. "I said who are you talking to, Cockerill," the woman bellowed again.

"That boy's back," Miss Cockerill cried.

"Which one?"

"That goggly one."

"Perfect. Well tell him to get us out!"

While the Misses yelled at each other, Eli took a moment to look around. He noticed the old radiator a few feet away. He lifted his eyes and, sure enough, there was the crumbling old Manor looking like any minute a witch might ride out of it on a broomstick.

"So it's you, after all," Eli said to himself. "And if you're Cockerill then you," he said, walking around to the fubsy form stuck in the sidewalk, "must be Foo."

"That's Miss Foo," she growled.

"You threw a catfish on my atlas."

Miss Foo grinned. "Yes, that was quite a riot, wasn't it?"