by Georgia Byng
When Waqt arrived, there was no one in residence. But the servants in the palace welcomed him. They moved furniture out of the high-ceilinged drawing room and put a large bed in it so that he didn’t have to go to the low rooms upstairs to sleep. They emptied the pond of goldfish, cleaned it thoroughly, and prepared to bring buckets and buckets of hot water out to it should Waqt want a bath.
The servants watched as two skinny, messy-haired girls, aged about ten and three and looking like sisters, got down from an elephant and went inside. One of them carried a baby. There was no sign of their mother.
Waqt, carrying his velvet sack of crystals, led his captives through the hall and out into the ornamental gardens. He ordered that a cushion and rugs be brought outside. Soon he was reclining lazily, having a betel-nut leaf rolled for him. He popped the paan into his mouth, patted his bag of crystals, and eyed his trophies. Then he picked up his notebook and clicked his fingers. “Three-year-old Molly, wake up!” The small child came to.
In her trance, she’d registered the swing at the bottom of the palace gardens. She blinked and spotted it again. And immediately sprang up to run down the lawn.
“COME BACK HERE!” Waqt yelled. But the little Molly didn’t hear him. The whole of her mind was filled with the idea of the swing. “Oh, I give up,” said Waqt in disgust. He turned to the other Molly.
“Ten-year-old Molly! Awaken and remember!”
The ten-year-old Molly was now completely aware of her surroundings. The last time she’d been allowed out of her trance she’d been at the Red Fort, being tested. She’d been very confused then, but now she felt clearheaded. For, since then, she’d absorbed their journey and what had happened. Molly had worked out some basic things.
The first was that she’d been hypnotized, the second that they were in India, the third that they’d traveled backward in time. She knew that the crystals around the maharaja’s neck were for time traveling. She’d deduced that the small girl and the baby with her were both herself. And she was sure that the maharaja was bad and that the big girl who looked like her, who’d appeared by the fire and taken the six-year-old, was on her side. For she remembered as a six-year-old being saved by the older girl and being taken to an elephant and being looked after. Molly knew that she must help this older Molly if she possibly could.
“Right,” said Waqt, stretching his legs out, “today I want to find out how good your hypnotic skills were before you found out about hypnotism. When the baby Waqta is grown, I want to teach her, so today I’ll practice on you.” Molly stared at the three-year-old dangling from the swing. “In a minute you will look into my eyes,” said Waqt, “and when you do, you will try to protect yourself from the strong hypnotic look that I give you. Lookup.”
Molly reran in her head what Waqt had just said. “… I want to find out how good your hypnotic skills were before you found out about hypnotism…” This sounded as though one day she would know a lot about hypnotism. Was the older girl a brilliant hypnotist? Was that girl her future? Molly looked at the giant and was reminded of all the nasty people she’d met in her life: Miss Adderstone, Edna, and Mrs. Toadley, her mean teacher at school. Molly was often getting into trouble with her, and the way she dealt with it was to let her mind float away as though she were dreaming. So this is exactly what she did now. When she looked up into the giant’s eyes it was as if the eyes in her skull didn’t belong to her. She felt herself looking as if from behind them, at a safe distance. The maharaja’s outline was blurred.
“Look into my eyes!” Waqt’s voice sounded as though it were coming up a drainpipe.
Molly held herself in this suspended state, not letting herself properly interact. Her technique proved very successful. For as Waqt stared at the girl, he found that her eyes weren’t engaging. He couldn’t penetrate the pupils. They were shielded. How she’d done this, he wasn’t sure. Part of him was admiring and full of excitement for his adopted baby’s future. The other part of him was uneasy, for how would he ever be able to put this girl back into a trance? Then he relaxed. He could always go ten minutes back in time and sort it out. Anyway, he concluded, she wasn’t a threat, even unhypnotized—he’d just have her guarded. So that she didn’t leave any big clues for the older Molly, he would keep her blindfolded.
And so the ten-year-old found, to her great surprise, that Waqt was no longer interested in keeping her in a trance. Cautiously she let herself come down from her cloud. But before she had an opportunity to look at her surroundings, she found a blindfold being tied over her.
This is why ten-year-old Molly never saw how beautiful the Bobenoi Palace was. But she could taste, smell, feel, and hear.
Blindfolded, she ate a delicious Indian lunch and listened to the birds singing. She heard soothing Indian music and the three-year-old telling the maharaja that she wanted some sweets. As she sat with her pink blotchy legs stretched out in front of her it struck her that, apart from not having her friend Rocky and Mrs. Trinklebury to talk to, this place was pretty good—better than the orphanage. The only problem was the mad maharaja and not knowing his plans. She wondered how long she’d have to wear the blindfold. She wondered where the older Molly was. She might appear out of thin air again soon and save her and the three-year-old and the baby. Perhaps she needed help. Molly felt she had never been much use to anyone so far in her life. She set her mind to thinking how she could help the older girl.
In the year 2000 the best hotel in Jaipur was the Bobenoi Palace Hotel. It hadn’t always been a hotel. It had once belonged to a smart Indian family.
Ojas steered Amrit to a pretty, blossom-filled courtyard and everyone dismounted.
“I wish I hadn’t swallowed that purple capsule,” Molly said quietly to Rocky and Forest as they straightened their clothes. “I don’t like the way Zackya and Waqt can track me. They could pop up any moment. But we don’t know where they are. They could be anywhere. I mean, how are we going to ever track them?”
“Waqt won’t be able to resist teasing you,” said Rocky. “I bet he’ll leave some sort of clue. He likes playing with you, Molly. As soon as we go back to 1870, we’ll find clues. As soon as you’re back in the same time zone as the younger Mollys, and there isn’t the memory-lag thing, I’m sure you’ll remember exactly where they went—and where they are.”
“But I’ve only got this green crystal. I can only go one way—back in time. I might get stuck back there.”
“Not if you get a red crystal once you’re there.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Well, then, you’re stuck as a duck in muck,” said Forest.
“Forest!” said Rocky. “That is not what you should have just said.”
“Er, sorry, man.” Rocky put his hand on Molly’s shoulder. “Forget it for now. We’re all tired; let’s just get a good night’s sleep.”
And so, leaving the others with Amrit, Molly and Rocky stepped up to the ornate entrance of the Bobenoi Palace Hotel. A huge Sikh with a turban and a bushy mustache emerged, looking more like a warrior than a doorman. Molly covered her scaly face with a scarf. The man smiled and bowed deeply. Molly bowed.
“Namaskar.”
Inside, the hotel was cool and peaceful and very fine, with a brown and white marble checkered floor and a high ceiling. Some Japanese tourists sat around a glass table looking reverently at a heavy antique book with signatures in it. It seemed to be some sort of visitors’ book. An Indian woman in a sari that matched the bronze columns around her was standing behind a desk.
“Welcome to the Bobenoi Palace Hotel.” She smiled. “Can I help you?”
Molly’s experience was that adults never did business with children, and she’d expected a tricky hotel receptionist; so she was taken aback by the woman’s helpfulness.
“We’re not with an adult,” she said. “Well, we are but he’s not like a normal adult. I mean, he’s not mental or anything, he’s just… um… outside meditating on an elephant.…”
Rocky shot Molly a have-
you-lost-your-marbles look.
The woman smiled. “What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to book three rooms, please,” said Rocky. “We can pay up front. And we’ve got a hungry elephant that needs a bed, too… obviously not in the hotel, but might you have a place in the garden where she could sleep…? The most urgent thing is that she’s very hungry. We can pay what you like for getting her some food… palm leaves, that sort of thing. I don’t suppose you keep them in the kitchen?” he added weakly.
“Well, what a tall order!” said the lady, whose teeth were like two rows of shiny pearls in her lovely smiling face. Molly and Rocky were amazed by how easygoing she was.
“Our motto here is, ‘Where we can help, we will, and where we can’t, we will, too.’ See, there it is, written on the wall.” She pointed to a notice.
“Oh!” said Molly. “So is this a case where you can’t help but you will nevertheless try—or where you can help, so you definitely will?”
“Oh, indeed we can help! We love having elephants to stay. It is our privilege. Thank you for choosing us! Your elephant will bring us all sorts of good luck!”
“Wow—well, that’s settled then,” said Molly. She was amazed. She couldn’t imagine the hotel in Briersville accepting an elephant as a guest.
For ten minutes the lady made some phone calls and then apparently everything was under way.
“The bellboy is telling your friends to walk the elephant through to the gardens and down to the bottom where the cottages are. I will meet you down there and show you your rooms. Your elephant’s supper is on the way.”
And so they stepped out.
The hotel’s gardens were very exotic, with green parrots flapping about over the lawns and fawn monkeys hopping around in the trees. There was a large, turquoise swimming pool with statues of elephants that spouted fountains of water from their trunks. There was a bowling green and a temple-like place for yoga and a beautiful garden restaurant where people were eating under red patterned gazebos. They pointed in delight at Amrit as she plodded behind Ojas across the grass and at the puppy Petula who tripped as she tried to keep up. Ojas led Amrit to a frangipani tree, where a porter said she could be tethered.
The cottage rooms were very fine, with four-poster beds draped with colored silk. The baths were sunken, with steps down into them, and the outdoor showers were surrounded by bougainvillea-covered walls and roofed with jungly leaves. A sign said:
Molly put the new crystal very carefully down in a golden bowl on the table and threw herself onto a bed. Little Molly did the same. Both were exhausted.
“How about this? Nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s like a fairy-tale place,” said the six-year-old.
“Hey, this is grrrrreat,” said Forest. Then, opening the minibar and pouring himself a pineapple juice, he added, “Molly, I’ve been meditatin’ on what sorta yoga poses you need to get Zackya’s silicon chips out of ya. There’s a few potions I know that will help shift that purple pill from your insides. I’m gonna talk to the chef about the ingredients. You’re gonna have a ’shift the purple pill’ supper.”
“I was thinking of having a ketchup sandwich and a glass of concentrated orange squash,” Molly admitted.
“No delicacies like that tonight. If you wanna slosh that thing out, you have to eat what I say.”
Later that evening, as the puppy gnawed on a bone, Molly began chewing on a tough and chewy, bitter-tasting stick. A tray of decanters containing dark liquids lay beside her.
The little Molly was put to bed and Ojas settled down in the room he was sharing with Rocky. He was mesmerized by the television. Rocky left him sitting wide-eyed watching a colorful Bollywood movie. Molly meanwhile was given a very intense yoga lesson from Forest. Rocky laughed as Forest twisted and prodded Molly’s body into circuslike contortions.
“You’ll be glad you did this,” Forest said as Molly stood on her head with her legs crossed. “This combination of treatments always works. It flushes everything out. So tomorrow you won’t have that trackin’ pip inside you. Just make sure that in the morning you can get to the bathroom quick.”
“Great. Thanks,” Molly said as her stomach gurgled. “I hope you’re right.”
That night, with a fan blowing in the room, Molly slept badly. She tossed and turned as her whirling mind tackled the problems she faced.
She dreamed she’d turned into a bent old woman, scaly and dry from time travel. In the dream she was trudging through a muddy wood, following a trail of children’s footprints. There were paw-prints alongside them and yeti-sized tracks led the way. In the nightmare, Molly was led deeper and deeper into the forest. As she walked the trees about her became thicker and thicker until the wood was pitch dark and she could no longer see the ground. And then the mud began to gurgle and move and swallow her up. As she sank down into it she saw the green, scarred crystal disappearing into slime.
Molly woke up, frightened and shivering and terrified that she had lost the scarred stone. She got up and found it at once, lying in the golden bowl on the table. Relieved, but still reeling from the nightmare, she picked it up and went to get a drink of water. In the mirrored bathroom she switched on the light and stared at her reflection. It looked as though a Bollywood makeup artist had started work on her face, covering her cheeks in scales, and then had gone for a tea break. But her face hardly bothered her now. She’d sacrifice her whole body to scales if the reward was getting Petula and her younger selves back. And that, she realized, was the price she might have to pay.
Molly went back to bed, putting the scarred stone under her pillow with her clear crystal. In the darkness she thought again about why Waqt wanted to adopt her baby self and not an older Molly. She thought again of her mother, Lucy, and how she’d seemed so gloomy and disappointed in Molly.
Feeling sad and useless, Molly slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
At seven o’clock, her stomach woke her up.
She had a terrible cramp. It felt as if there were monsters inside her, gripping and pinching her intestines. She flew out of bed and spent the next hour in the bathroom.
“I’ll get you, Forest!” she shouted from in there.
However, by the time she came out, she felt fantastic. And the purple capsule was now gone. Flushed away, shooting down the sewage pipes of Jaipur.
Forest had not fared so well. After a dawn shower, he’d forgotten to shut his bathroom door. As a result, while he’d been off at the yoga platform, saluting the rising sun, monkeys had let themselves into his bedroom. When he got back, his room looked as if a bomb planted on his breakfast tray had exploded. Food was everywhere. The monkeys hadn’t quietly helped themselves to the breakfast—they’d decided to play catch with it or something, because the windows were splattered with green curry, and three fried eggs were stuck to the ceiling. And the ten different fruit juices that Forest had lavishly ordered now dripped down the walls and dribbled through the canopy of the four-poster bed. Pillows had been ripped apart so that feathers floated about, and the books in the room had been torn up. The bathroom was even more of a disaster. The monkeys had helped themselves to toothpaste and bubble bath, and the floor was all wet and slippery from their splashing around in the toilet, which was now blocked with two rolls of paper. A third roll had been unraveled and was draped around the place. But Forest’s biggest grievance was that the monkeys had popped every single one of his super-duper, specially designed, will-make-you-feel-relaxed pills out of their packet and eaten them.
“Man, those were my herbal remedies, specially prescribed for me by my pressure-point therapist,” he moaned.
Outside the cottages things were equally chaotic. Amrit, who was hobbled for the night, tied to the hundred-year-old frangipani tree, had pulled it up from where it was growing beside a wall, and so released herself. The ancient plant lay prostrate and dying on the lawn. Then the elephant had waded into the swimming pool, where she now sat squirting water, happy as could be. Nearby,
under parasols, aping the lazy humans they so often saw sunbathing, four brown monkeys sprawled on lounges, soaking up the sun.
Amazingly enough the hotel staff did not seem very bothered by the turn of events. Despite their signs, monkeys often came into the bedrooms. They found Amrit’s paddle really funny and kept saying what good luck the hotel would now have. They apologized for suggesting Ojas should tie her to the old frangipani tree, insisting that it was their fault. They decided to let the monkeys move on in their own time, as no one wanted to risk getting bitten.
Rocky had slept well. He’d gone to sleep wondering why his skin wasn’t affected by time travel, but in the morning he’d realized that maybe it was. The area behind his knees was very dry and flaky. The effects of time travel certainly weren’t as bad for him as they were for Molly. Maybe it was because she was actually making the time travel happen, while he was only going along for the ride. Mulling on these thoughts, he finished his breakfast and went to the hotel reception to pay their bill. As he crossed the lawn, the large wad of bank notes in his pocket bumped against his leg. Rocky intended to make sure the hotel wasn’t out of pocket from all the damage that Amrit and Forest had caused.
In the hotel foyer, the Japanese tourists were also leaving. They stood by the desk with their wallets out, so for the moment the cashier was busy. Rocky cast his eyes around the room, admiring the splendid domed ceiling. Then his gaze fell upon the antique book that the other guests had been looking at the evening before. Approaching the glass table it lay on, he noticed how battered and charred it was. A label beside it read:
This was the original Bobenoi Palace Visitors’