Susan Lulu never listened to her dad. She was too busy playing. Her father warned her of dangers in the world, but she was pretending to be someone else, somewhere else, the star of her elaborate game.

Susan’s father, Phineas Lulu, wanted to take his daughter with him on adventures around the Pacific Northwest, but he worried about her. When he tested her by calling out to her:

“Susan! Stop!”

she kept on running.

She kept running because she was acting out movies, starring magnificent super heroes and diabolical bad guys, with costumes scrabbled together for the Wicked Witch, Maleficent, Cruella de Ville and Beetlejuice or an intrepid paleontologist discovering forgotten species on an isolated tropical island. She might be Nancy Drew, or a boy kidnapped by pirates, or a horse. Sometimes she was Cheyenne, getting the neighbor’s dog to pull a travois she’d constructed across the “Plains” of her backyard.

Phineas was exasperated.

“Why won’t you listen to me? You don’t do what I tell you to do? What if we’re out in the woods and I see something you can’t see, or something you don’t know about, and you just keep on going?”

“Like what?” Susan wondered.

“Like the edge of a cliff, or how ’bouta rattlesnake?”

Intrigued, but unconvinced, Susan gave him a cool look, then disappeared under the stairs into her sanctuary. She felt annoyed with her dad, but the minute the curtain closed behind her, all outside worries ceased.

She had the wedge-shaped space furnished just the way she liked it, with a big wicker costume trunk in the back corner. Boxes of books served as tables alongside special, child-sized furniture her grandmother sent as a Christmas present.

With a couple of reading lamps and a curtain that closed across the entrance, her privacy was complete.

While practically everything her dad told her threaded in one ear and out the other like mental floss . . . some parts did stick.

For example, Susan was a “campin’ kind of girl.” She was ready at any time to go outside. Her orange backpack hung on its own peg behind her bedroom door. In it, she kept her magnifying glass, her silver flashlight, her Swiss Army knife, complete with scissors and a toothpick, a compass, her bug bottle, and the camera she got for her birthday last year.

The Lulus lived on five acres on an island in Puget Sound in the midst of the Cascade rain forest. The year before, Phineas helped Susan with a school science project: they identified over fifty species of birds, reptiles, and mammals they had seen on their own land.

Susan had lots of secret places in the woods. One was a tree house fort that Phineas had patched together for her. She could observe her animal friends when they visited a tray filled with seeds nailed to a nearby tree stump.

The chickaree, a tiny squirrel wearing a snappy yellow waistcoat, came daily for sunflower seeds.

Susan also liked to watch the chickadees. There were two kinds: black-capped and chestnut-backed.

Clever little acrobats, they could cling to the sides of tree trunks or hang upside down from delicate hemlock boughs. Other friends were the dramatically blue Stellars jays, the tiny nuthatch and the little brown creeper with her odd, curved bill.

But Susan’s favorites were Jamie the raccoon and her baby twins, who looked like masked round balls with striped tails sticking out the rear. Phineas always let Susan save her crusts for the raccoon family; the twins loved to scramble up and down the tree house trees clutching the bitten edge of a dried-out peanut butter sandwich.

Phineas had a clean, well-equipped shop in his garage. From this interesting place he maintained the family’s home, yard and vehicles. At the far end of the work bench, he had a closet with a large skull and crossbones painted on it. Pesticides, solvents, matches, sharp implements, and power tools were all kept safe from intruders with a handy combination lock.

“This closet is off limits to you, Susan. I keep all kinds of harmful things in here and I want you to understand what they are.”

Phineas took his daughter’s hand and led her to the large, white cabinet looming above her. He dialed the combination and opened the door.

“What’s that, Daddy?” Susan pointed towards a collection of tins and bottles on an upper shelf.

“Those are poisons. I use them to protect our home and garden from pests. Bugs can do a lot of damage. Remember last year when we found carpenter ants all over our carpet?”

Susan remembered the event well. Hundreds of big, black invaders had appeared one night at three in the morning. Phineas discovered them when one crawled on his hand as he slept. Out came the spray and the vacuum cleaner, but it was quite a while before the family returned to bed.

“What about that pretty bottle in front, Daddy?” Susan pointed to a small glass bottle with a large black leaf on its green label.

“That’s Tox-a-Lot, Susan. Never touch it. It would only take a little bit to kill a kid, and we don’t want that, do we, my darling little!”

Susan was shocked by this, because the stuff looked a lot like molasses. She thought about Snow White’s wicked queen, dipping an apple into bubbling Tox-a-Lot, then skipped away to play.

* * *

Several days later, Susan Lulu was grumbling around the house by herself. She was bored and out of sorts, kicking the door and hitting the railings with her stick. She sneaked towards the garage to spy on her dad at his work bench.

Then she remembered her game of Snow White and the Wicked Witch. She could be the Witch and cook up an evil brew to cast a spell on her doll Snow White.

It was a beautiful day. Phineas was busy working in his yard. The garage door was open and all the lawn equipment was out. Susan Lulu wandered along the workbench that spanned one end of the garage.

‘I only need a tiny bit to be sure my potion is poison,’ she explained to herself.

She saw the poison cabinet with its skull and crossbones emblem on the door. She noticed the door was slightly ajar and on the workbench was that attractive bottle with the black leaf against a green label.

She ducked under the stairs and rummaged through her costume trunk until she found her black Batman cape and favorite pointed black witch hat from Halloween. Grabbing Dolly and stuffing her into a basket, Susan cackled to herself as she headed for the kitchen.

She was able to nab the bottle of molasses without anyone seeing her. Sneaking back down to the garage, she watched her dad busily mowing the lawn. He had his back to her, so he didn’t see her grab the pretty little bottle of Tox-a-Lot.

Clutching the two bottles, Susan headed out to the woods behind the Lulu’s house. She paused to pluck a handful of tiny kinnikinnick apples, which she dumped into the basket. When she got to the tall grass bending golden in a slight, summer breeze, Susan raised her arms and cackled again with glee:

“Now I’ll be fairest in the land!”

Susan gathered her stuff together, and, clutching her cape and basket, she hobbled down a narrow, dusty trail toward the Root Cave. This special spot was at the rear of the Five Acres, well out of sight of the house, and a favorite gathering place for neighborhood children.

A huge Douglas fir had toppled in a storm years before, falling across the deep ravine created by Skookum Creek. The land fell away sharply from where the tree had grown, and over the years, all the dirt had washed way from its roots, leaving a perfect cave for kids.

One of the boys had taken a large, discarded sign to create the floor. Any agile child could scoot down to Skookum Creek by squeezing between the edge of the four by eight foot sign and the giant roots; grasping a rope tied there, any kid could slide on her tennis shoes down the steep, blue clay bank.

Studded with huckleberry and hemlock saplings, the trunk of the long-dead giant fir stretched clear across the ravine, wide enough to make a fairly safe, mossy bridge when dry, treacherous when wet.

Susan loved to scurry down the bank with the help of the rope, but she seldom crossed the tree trunk bridge. She was afraid she would slip on moss and be impaled on the thorns of the giant devils club that grew on the steep, green slopes far below. A carpet of stinging nettles would add their torture.

The forest was brilliant in the sunlight and alive with birdsong, the vine maples reaching their twisted trunks out to drink in sunlight diffused by the towering evergreens, the broadleaf maple deep green and sheltering. Ocean spray hung its fluffy cream colored flowers out, enticingly. They smelled faintly like vanilla.

Sword ferns, wild mountain blackberry and salmonberry huddled around the gnarled, ancient roots, in front of the entrance to Root Cave, Susan had her mud hole, where she and her friends cooked up delightful creations for Dolly and her friends.

The area was strewn with utensils, toys and tools: a two-by-four table and some kid’s patio chair, and a trowel for digging ingredients, plus a bottle of muddy water. She carefully reached into her basket, pulling out the two, dark brown glass bottles, setting them side by side on the shaky wooden table.

A cooking pot from her doll’s set still bore traces of molasses and grass seed she’d cooked up a few days before. Susan squatted beside Dolly, who sat on the chair. Susan poured fresh molasses into a clean pot, adding bits of fluffy dandelion with white grass seed.

A winter wren landed nearby. He cocked a curious eye.

“It’s not for you,” Susan croaked, witch-ily. “It’s for Snow White.”

The wren flew away fast.

Then Susan took up her stirring stick like a magic wand. She tipped out just a bit of dark Tox-a-Lot from its pretty brown bottle, stirring it carefully with the molasses and seeds. Retrieving the kinnikinnick berries from her basket, she dipped them, one by one, into her toxic concoction.

“Apples like these are what make the menfolks’ mouths water,” she quoted at unfortunate Dolly, dutifully playing the role of Snow White.

“Take a bite,” she commanded. Poisoned, Dolly fell, dramatically, to the ground.

Susan noticed her finger was sticky and brown with molasses mixture, and, without thinking, she stuck her finger into her mouth.

Thick, sweet molasses was not the only thing she tasted.

She tasted Tox-a-Lot!

“Oh, no!”

Susan began to cry as she stumbled towards home. She was feeling strange, light headed and sick to her stomach. She finally found her dad. She threw her arms around his legs.

“Daddy! I ate Tox-a-Lot!”

Sobbing, Susan told Phineas about being the Wicked Queen, how she’d only needed a tiny bit of Tox-a-Lot to make a poisoned apple for Snow White.

Phineas caught her up in his arms and bundled her into the van. Speeding down their bumpy driveway, he punched his emergency flashers; he drove as fast as he could to the  hospital.

Several hours later, Susan’s doctor and Phineas came into her room, where she was  propped against pillows in a big, hospital bed. She was still feeling woozy and sick.

“You had a close call, Susan,” her doctor told her, “but you’re going to be all right. I guess you understand now why your dad warned you not to touch poison.”

“Yes, doctor,” Susan smiled wanly. “I was so scared! I’m sorry I took the bottle when you weren’t looking, Daddy. I’ll never touch Tox-a-Lot or that cabinet again!”

Before Susan fell asleep, she remembered Dolly, alone in the forest. ‘She must be so scared,’ Susan thought. She vowed to recover her faithful toy as soon as she got home.