by Georgia Byng
“I time traveled to modern India and phoned the Hite Whouse, in America, expecting to speak to Primo Cell and Cornelius, expecting to hear about rooms full of mined stycrals. But, instead, another man was president. My plans had been wrecked.”
Molly again tried to look unshaken. She put on an uncaring, hard expression and sipped at a yellow drink. She was so scared that the sugar in the drink felt electric on her tongue.
“After more exhausting detective work,” the giant continued, “I realized that you were responsible. Hmm. I stupidly gave in to my fatigue and sent that imbecile Yackza to fetch you. And he fetched the wrong you. Don’t you agree? He should have gone back in time and fetched the ten-year-old Molly Moon, who hadn’t yet learned to hypnotize. For me to kill. Then my plans would have gone smoothly—as Molly Moon would have been too dead to ruin them. Do you understand?”
Molly, still acting her part, lifted her nose and shrugged. “Of course I understand. Time travel isn’t rocket science.”
And then something awful happened.
Petula, who had stayed invisible under Molly’s T-shirt for so long, got the fidgets. She was roasting under there. She began to wriggle and push her face out. And at once the giant saw her.
“WHAT IN NOT’S RAME IS THAT?” he boomed. He leaned forward, and his cranelike arm shot out and ripped Petula from her hiding place. “HOW DID THIS ANIMAL GET THROUGH THE NET, YACKZA? YOU WANTED THIS LUMP OF MEAT AS A PET FOR YOURSELF, DIDN’T YOU, YOU STUPID MAN?”
Held upside down by her back legs, Petula let out a yelp and started whining loudly. In the giant’s hands she looked more the size of a guinea pig than a dog. Molly’s first impulse was to scream, but she just managed to hold it in and transform her cry.
“How DARE YOU!” she shouted angrily, slamming her glass down on the table. “Put her down at once. If you treat that dog badly, I certainly won’t help you.”
This made the maharaja look up. He turned Petula the right way up and began to laugh.
“Melp he… ha ha ha… Melp he? HA HA HA. I must say, HA, I never thought you would be such an amusement!” The giant grinned. His teeth were horrible. All stained orange. “I tell you what, my dear, why don’t we have a gittle lame?”
“A game?”
“Yes. This dog will be the stakes. What happens is this: I will show you the rudiments of trime tavel. And then you will go back in time and fetch something for me. If you manage to fetch the thing, well then the dog… I assume it is a dog, it’s so ugly—which end is its rear end?—then the dog lives. If you fail, the dog dies. Curried pug might become a delicacy born today!”
Eight
Molly followed the giant maharaja past the still-cowering Zackya and through a tall, golden door. They ascended a flight of narrow steps.
“These steps were built two drunhed and thirty years ago,” the maharaja complained, squeezing his large body up the tight stairwell. “I keep meaning to go back to 1638 to hypnotize the Mughal architect of that time to design them bigger, but I’m too busy.”
They stepped outside into a large, open-topped courtyard with dark red sandstone walls punctuated by arched, glassless windows. Pointed domes of sandstone and white marble crowned the walls, and a flag with a peacock on it flew on a pole that reached high into the blue sky. It was a roasting day, but at this height a cool breeze blew in from the countryside around. Molly could see the simple old city outside, with its flower-filled gardens, and the brown, bushy hills nearby. To the west was another red stone building with minarets and domes like onions. In the distance were towers and white gherkin-shaped buildings, as well as smaller, hutlike houses. And in between were palm trees and paved areas, and sunbaked roads where people and animals walked. Sounds drifted up from the city—cries of stallholders selling their wares, shouts of drivers directing their horses or buffalo or camels or elephants. Over this came the hum and buzz of a hive of bees that hung outside one of the rooftop windows, and water splashing as it ran into a pool in the center of the courtyard. Molly noticed a chain of Indian servants quietly passing buckets to one another, the top man pouring the water into some hole up high so that it streamed down the pretty water channel into the central pool. It was arduous work for them.
“So,” said the maharaja, stroking his scaly chin and placing Petula on the top of a stone plinth. “Here is your challenge to save your dog from becoming curried pug. This morning before my bath a ceapock got into this yourtcard and was removed. I want you to go back in time and fetch that ceapock for me.” The giant clicked his fingers and spoke to a servant, who nodded and scurried away.
“But I don’t know how to handle peacocks,” Molly protested. “How do I catch it? Will it bite?”
“Ha! What diriculousness! To be worried about how to net a ceapock! I think you’ll find that the trime taveling is the thing that will stump you. HA!” He slapped his red silk coat with immense amusement.
Molly glared at him, for she knew this was not funny. Zackya slithered out from the narrow stairwell onto the roof courtyard.
“Yackza, pick up the dog and rut a pope around its neck.”
Zackya slid slyly forward and picked up Petula.
“By the way, Yackza, don’t think your incompetence has gone unnoticed by me. I realize that this smelly aminal is here because of you. The only reason I am not punishing you is that you have unwittingly brought me some entertainment.”
Zackya bowed low and gave Molly a hateful sideways look.
The giant clapped his hands and the servant who had rushed off now came back. He was carrying a black velvet cushion on which sat a selection of red and green crystals. Rubies, emeralds—Molly wasn’t sure what they were.
“Green is for traveling backward. Red is for going forward. Pake your tick.”
Molly took a quick look, as though choosing a chocolate. Each colored crystal was a slightly different shade of green or red, and each bore a slightly different fault. A fault like a tiny scar, as if it had once been cut open. None was perfect. Molly decided upon the two brightest crystals. As she picked them up she noticed a faint surge of energy coming from each. She tried not to react. “Now what?”
“Ha! So confident! You just wait. HA!”
Molly was sick of the giant patronizing her. “I would like to be shown how to do this, please, because otherwise how else can I get your big chicken?”
The giant frowned. Lifting his lip in a sneer, he began. “It’s simple, but it takes practice. So that you have at least a sporting chance of saving your dog, I will do my best to explain how trime tavel is done. But just once—I am not the patient sort, so listen. Concentrate on the green or red stycral, depending on which way you trish to wavel. Then put your mind into a semi-trance—as you do when you stop the world. Stare into the space of now, and summon the cool fusion feeling of world stopping. As it comes, do not stop the world but instead focus your mind on the stycral for trime tavel until your mind goes the color of the stycral. As soon as the world starts to blur and the trime tavel breeze starts to blow about you, you will know that you are moving. You will also hear a distant BOOM behind you. For anyone in the room watching you disappear, this BOOM will be lery voud, unless you have a de-BOOM device, of course. The BOOM is the noise that is made by your body suddenly disappearing—air suddenly has to fill the gap where your body was and this makes a BOOM noise. Simple physics. That is the easy part. The fiddicult part is stopping at the correct time. That takes instinct and practice. Are you ready?”
“You’re not going to give me any more clues as to how I know when I’m in the right place in time and how to stop?” Molly asked worriedly. “Don’t I get a gadget like Zackya has?”
“That gadget is for complete idiots,” the maharaja replied.
Molly looked across at Petula, who was now wearing a homemade rope lead. She was sitting nervously on the ground beside Zackya and the servant with the cushion of crystals.
“I’ll see you in a minute,” Molly said to her, trying to bolster herself w
ith confidence. Inside, she was as unsure of herself as a baby bird being pushed out of its nest.
Molly gripped the green crystal in her right hand. She stared at the ground. She brought her hypnotic focus to the front of her mind, like when she made time stand still. The cold fusion feeling washed through her, and then everything around her froze still except for Zackya and the maharaja.
“WRONG!” the giant thundered. Molly ignored him and had another go. This time, as the icy fusion feeling gave the faintest quiver in her veins, she focused entirely on the green crystal, diving her mind into the idea of green, and then, as if she’d followed a map perfectly, her time-travel journey began. There was a distant BOOM, a cool wind began to blow about her, and the world melted into a blur of colors. Sounds dipped and changed and rang in her ears.
And then the red-robed giant was there beside her, taunting her, time traveling at the exact speed she was, with the colors of the changing world swirling around him.
“Where are you going to, Molly?” he mocked. “You haven’t the faintest idea, have you? Can’t you toncrol your journey?” The huge man popped out of Molly’s vision. It was all happening so fast that Molly did indeed feel completely out of control—as she might feel on a bolting horse. With her mind, she pulled on the imaginary reins of the cool wind about her as though to stop it, and it worked. She stopped. It was cold. She had no idea how far back in time she had traveled.
A woman in an orange sari holding a broom pointed at her and shrieked. Molly realized it must have looked like she’d sprung from thin air. She glanced through the window and saw that the domed building outside didn’t exist at all. She must have traveled much too far back in time.
Immediately she clutched the red crystal to travel forward and tried to think red. At once she left the shrieking woman behind her and was traveling through a warm time wind. She stopped again. This time, a moon hung over the courtyard. In front of her sat a very tall Indian boy, reading.
“Cetch me a fandle. It’s too dark to read,” he shouted across the open-roofed chamber to a young slave who sat in the shadows.
The slave saw Molly, and his mouth dropped open.
“Sahib, sahib!” he cried, pointing at Molly. The student slammed his book and turned angrily on him.
Molly gripped her red crystal and removed herself. She was amazed. She knew she had just seen the maharaja and Zackya as children. She’d recognized them.
Now, a hot geyser of panic rose inside her. If she didn’t master this time travel, she would be stuck in time and Petula would be at the mercy of the giant. Molly was reminded of another time she’d panicked. She’d cut her thumb on a salad-dressing bottle and blood had spurted all over her lettuce and cucumber. Rocky had told her to breathe out very slowly to ease the pain and stop the panic. Molly wished he were here now, and tears filled her eyes. Then she took a deep breath in and exhaled very, very slowly, humming as her nostrils expelled air and calmness came to her.
Above Molly’s head the sky flashed day, night, day, night. For an instant, rain was all about. For another nanosecond, sun blazed down. The elements were all about her—wind, fire, water—but in her time capsule Molly was shielded from them.
Molly tried to remember how long it had taken her to go back in time from Petula in 1870 to the time of the shrieking woman. If she simply went forward by the same amount of time, she would return to the courtyard with Petula. She stopped. Unfortunately she had now arrived in a time when lots of people were in the courtyard. It was wet. Three people saw her and pointed in alarm. But Molly paid no attention. She saw a small hive hanging from the arch of the window and she knew she was close. She gripped the red crystal again and this time looked up at the sky to make a judgment. Blacks and blues flared above her head. Molly tried to think how long a year took to pass. Was it a second? How long would those wild bees take to build their hive? She stopped. The hive was the right size. But the surroundings didn’t feel right. This time, Molly shut her eyes. The only thing left was for her to rely on her instinct. She went deep into her feelings and tried to picture when the room felt peacock-y. She went forward for an instant and once more opened her eyes. An alarmed bird let out a cry. It was a peacock, but was it the right peacock? Molly looked at the pool and saw that the water was covered with pink rose petals. On a chair were silk clothes. Giant clothes. Molly didn’t know how she’d done it, but she’d landed in the correct time. The maharaja’s bath time.
Petula lay with her head on her front paws and tried not to shake. She was very scared because she could sense that the giant man striding up and down the courtyard didn’t like animals at all. He smelled faintly of roses, but he also smelled of garlic and bad temper. Bad temper was a horrid scent. It smelled of burned hair and hot tar. The stench oozed from every pore of the giant’s body. Petula put her paws over her nose and tried to ignore it.
She thought about how Molly had just vanished into thin air.
In Briersville the turbaned man had vanished in the same way after leaving her with those children who’d put her in the pram. Every time she and Molly and their kidnaper had traveled through the colored, windy tunnels, Petula supposed that they had disappeared, too. Was Molly in a wind tunnel now?
A piece of dried meat dropped onto the floor beside her, and a moccasin prodded it toward Petula’s mouth.
“Eat,” Zackya hissed.
Petula stared at the ground. She couldn’t eat a thing. She was far too worried about Molly and about what the giant might do next. Her back leg still hurt where he’d so roughly held her upside down. Petula watched as he studied the bees’ nest hanging by the window. She wished the bees would swarm and sting him.
Now all Molly had to do was catch the peacock. What was the phrase the giant had used? “Net a peacock.” Molly put the crystals in her pocket. The bird was roosting on the branch of a tree, twitching nervously, its green feathered tail hanging down behind it. Molly approached it, making a friendly chucking noise that she knew budgies liked. When she was a few feet away from it, she jumped and tried to grasp its body. But the bird wasn’t fooled by her trick. It screeched and shot away from her arms, the mucky ends of its tail whipping her in the face as it went. Her nose was filled with a rank, dusty, dirty-chicken smell. Molly coughed. She needed a net. Then she realized there was a far simpler way of sorting this out. All she needed to do was stop the world.
The peacock stood on a small column in the corner of the courtyard, planning its next step. Its tiny brain was finding it difficult to both balance on the column and decide what to do about Molly. Molly picked up a large pair of shorts from the chair and, with her own clear crystal, stopped the world. Everything went completely still. All the bells in the town outside ceased ringing, and the noisy cows and the grumbling camels went quiet. The peacock went as still as a beautifully painted sculpture set on a plinth. Molly marched over to it and put the leg hole of the shorts over its head. Then she tightly wrapped the rest of the material around its wings and legs so that it couldn’t flap or scratch. It was well and truly caught. For a moment, Molly relaxed. She rubbed her cheek. It was feeling very dry. She walked through the chilly, frozen world to the flower-filled pool, cupped water in her hands, and splashed her face.
It was then that she realized she was busting to have a pee. She glanced about for a place she could go. Her eyes fell again on the giant’s tub. It would have to be her huge toilet. A pity it wouldn’t be flushed before his bath.
Molly felt much better after that. As she walked back to the peacock it struck her that with these gems she could now escape the maharaja. She could even, she calculated, go back in time, travel to Briersville, and have Zackya wrestled to the ground by another gardener before he even took Petula. It would be difficult, but she could do it, couldn’t she? But the problem wasn’t Zackya. It was the maharaja. If Zackya went missing—if he never turned up at the fort with a hypnotized Molly—then the giant, furious, would come himself to get Molly. He might shoot back to Briersville to when
Molly was eight, and kill her then and there. Molly didn’t like the situation she was in, but at least she understood it a bit, and her gamble at playing the part of an uppity, cross prima donna was working. Molly decided to stick with the predicament as it was. She picked up the peacock. She unfroze the world, and the bird went stiff with fear in her arms.
This time, she didn’t hold the red crystal. She had a heavy bird to deal with. But she thought about it and, because it was in her pocket, this worked. It was difficult to concentrate enough to bring the peacock with her, but finally she found they were both moving through time.
A small spurt of travel was all that was needed, she knew. She opened her eyes. The courtyard was still empty. A jot more. The giant was in his bath, with attendants pouring large jugs of hot water over his scaly shoulders. He really did have a terrible skin condition, Molly thought. The peacock struggled. A slip more. There they were. The giant was dressed, Zackya stood beside the servant with the cushion of crystals, and Petula, scared, lay curled up on the ground.
“Am I late?” Molly asked, placing the frightened peacock in Zackya’s arms. The bird began to squawk, and pecked at his chest.
Zackya dropped it, his mouth agape. He’d never expected Molly to complete the challenge. And he was shocked to see the peacock unwrapping itself from his master’s underpants, dragging them about the courtyard.
“Take it away!” shouted the maharaja irritably, choosing to ignore the sight of his underclothes. Zackya grabbed the giant’s pants before the bird escaped them. He hauled it squawking toward the courtyard door.
“So,” said Molly, as the bird’s cries became more distant, “I hope you are a man of your word.”
“Hmm. Not usually.” The giant was not amused by Molly’s success. In fact, he found her achievements in time travel very annoying. He was competitive by nature and didn’t like to be bettered at anything by anyone, particularly by a skinny girl.