by Georgia Byng
In the corner a doglike woman, with the droopy black ears and the wet nose of a spaniel but the face and hands of a human, held a drum. As Molly and Micky were led in, everyone turned to stare, as if they were the out-of-the-ordinary ones. Molly’s hands began to sweat. She was reminded of a time at school once when, in front of everyone, she’d been given ten strokes of the cane across the back of her knees. She hoped she wasn’t about to be punished now.
The drummer woman broke the silence.
“OOIIHH!” she shouted, to start the music up again, and then she picked up a rhythm on her drum.
An aroma of onions wafted toward Molly’s nose. Micky looked petrified. Molly’s heart skipped a beat as it struck her that they might be about to join the onions in their pan. Were she and Micky on tonight’s menu?
Then Wildgust pushed them to the back of the room to where the tortoise-man, Tortillus, sat in the shadows.
“Sit!” he ordered in a dry voice, pointing a bony finger at the floor. Molly sank to the dirt ground, pulling Micky with her. Now faced with this low-lit room and the hungry animal-people, he had lost all his bravado of before.
“Do you think they’ll eat us raw—sushi style?” he whispered as he shuffled his legs under him.
Molly shook her head and began to concentrate on mind reading Tortillus. This wasn’t easy though. For when she tried to summon the tingling sensation on her scalp, a wave of nerves washed the electric feeling away. Finally she managed to make her hair feel static, as though it was standing up on end, and on cue a bubble popped up over the old man.
Inside the bubble were misty pictures of Micky with blue and green and purple lines shooting through his body and yellow and orange circles rotating around his head.
Tortillus’s mind was throbbing with color like a disco light. It looked as if he was thinking of ways to cut Micky up. There was a long silence and then he declared, “You—ill.”
“Yes,” Micky quickly agreed. “Stomach problems. I’ve got rotten insides. My kidneys don’t work properly, and my legs are weak … some sort of arthritis. I’m not a healthy specimen. I’ve got things you can catch. It wouldn’t be sensible to eat me.”
The tortoise-man squinted at Micky’s head. Then he clicked his gnarled fingers. The tortoise-woman brought him a cotton apron and some white paper.
Molly was very alarmed. “You can’t eat him,” she blurted out.
But Tortillus ignored her and stepped toward Micky, pulling out of the pocket of the apron some sheets of white paper, a comb, and a pot of paste. A ripple of excitement passed around the room. Molly was bewildered. Was this a slaughter ceremony? Gripping Petula, she tried to think clearly and logically. What would Rocky do? she thought.
“Remove your dressing gown and your pajama top,” the strange old man said.
Trembling, Micky did as he was told. His pale, thin chest showed all his ribs—bare flesh waiting to be cut. But Tortillus didn’t come for him with a knife. Instead he began methodically combing Micky’s curly hair up, away from his face, the comb catching in the clods of dried mud. Then the tortoise-man started to daub paste along the edges of one of the pieces of paper. Once it was wet with paste, he stuck it on Micky’s forehead and wound the paper around his head. He continued dabbing and sticking until Micky had a crown of paper glued to his head. Then Tortillus wrapped a bandana around the crown.
Behind him the tortoise-woman was heating oil in a large pottery jar. Tortillus took it from her.
“You can’t put that on my head!” Micky exclaimed, pulling away. “You’ll burn me!”
Molly got ready to attack the old man if he brought the hot oil anywhere near Micky. But when he stuck his finger in the oil and left it there, she saw that it could only be warm.
As the drumbeats became more regular and solid, the light in the hut was dimmed, and slowly Tortillus began tipping the warm oil into the well of the paper crown on Micky’s head.
“Ancient herb recipe. Oil soaks into skull. Close eyes.”
Molly was horrified. It sounded like Tortillus was preparing Micky with some sort of marinade. Quickly she glanced about the room to see how difficult it would be to escape. Wildgust stood in the corner, like a perched hawk waiting to swoop. Tortillus meanwhile dropped onto his knees and pulled his head inside his shell, so that he looked like some strange headless creature. The powerful drumbeats made the hut claustrophobic and cramped.
“Ahhhh … !” Tortillus muttered from within his shell. He dropped his hands beside him and flapped them a bit before bringing them up to Micky’s shoulders. Petula whimpered. “Hmmmm,” the headless tortoise-man hummed. Now it was as if his hands were feeling for some invisible thing in the air around Micky’s body. He knelt on the floor and touched Micky’s foot. He put his thumb on Micky’s knee and tapped it. He got up and cupped his hands over Micky’s head as though he was concentrating on extracting something from him. He prodded Micky’s shoulder blades and spine. Molly felt sure that in the next second he was going to start to strangle him. And then she jumped as his head popped out of his shell.
To her complete surprise he said, “You poor boy.”
The drums stopped. As they did, Molly realized two things at once, and both hit her like great swinging clubs.
The first was that Tortillus meant Micky no harm. The second was that he was not hypnotized.
“Please lean slowly forward toward this bowl,” Tortillus was saying to Micky in a gentle voice. Micky did as he was asked, and oil from the crownlike bucket on his head tipped into it. The old man removed the crown and wiped the oil from Micky’s forehead.
“You may put on your clothes,” he said and then to Molly, “The others aren’t hypnotized either.” Molly nodded amazedly at him. “I am Tortillus,” he went on, taking Molly’s hand in his own and shaking it firmly. Molly nodded. “And you are?”
“Me, um, my name’s Molly—Molly Moon, and this is my dog, Petula. And this is my brother, Micky, who we came here to find. And, um, Mr. Tortillus, why and how are you not hypnotized?”
No one said a word. The animal-people in the giant hut all looked on expectantly, as if they wanted Molly to talk. So she did. But as the sentences flowed from her mouth Molly saw that her story sounded like a pack of lies.
“I’m a time traveler and a hypnotist, you see,” she explained. “At least I was, but Princess Fang put me on this machine and stole all my hypnotic knowledge and my special crystals, so now I’m not a time traveler either. She took my friend Rocky too and had him hypnotized—”
“By whom?” Tortillus asked.
“By …” Molly paused. Instinct told her that it was best not to tell Tortillus that Micky was partly responsible for all the hypnotized people who lived around the lake under the sweltering sun.
“By Redhorn or by Axel?” Tortillus asked.
Molly faltered. Tortillus seemed well-informed about Fang’s inner circle. She had never heard of a hypnotist called Axel, and Micky had said that Redhorn was dead.
“Who’s Axel?”
“He’s a hypnotist I knew once. You didn’t meet him?”
“No. All the hypnotists are dead.” Molly made a mental note to find out more about this Axel person.
“Then who hypnotized your friend?” The old man’s eyes bored into Molly.
“I don’t know,” she lied. “Look, all I want to do is go back with Rocky and Petula to my own time.” Molly suddenly realized she had omitted Micky from this return trip. The fact was, she didn’t like him enough to want to take him home. To the tortoise-man she went on, “And Micky can come too—if he wants. And … and I don’t really expect you to believe all this because it sounds crazy, but actually it’s not crazy. Believe it or not, it’s all true.”
“Hmmm,” Tortillus turned his attention back to Micky. “And what about you, boy? If what your sister is saying is true, do you want to go back in time with her?” He scrutinized Micky’s face. “What do you say, boy?”
Micky pursed his mouth, hesitating.
Then he stammered, “I’m—I’m ill. Don’t think I would live long there, five hundred years ago. I’d die. I’m safer here. All the illnesses they have in those times …” His eyes darted timidly up to meet the old tortoise-man’s.
“Hmmm.”
Micky sat down beside Molly and put his hand in his dressing-gown pocket. Molly could see that he was fingering his comfort rag. With his other hand he gave Petula a stroke. Molly was very surprised. She doubted Micky had ever touched a dog before.
Then Tortillus took a deep breath. “I have news for you, Micky.” Micky looked up. “Although you are frail and weak, and your legs hurt because your muscles have wasted away, you are not actually remotely ill. You are not sick at all.”
Micky gave him a patronizing look. “I am sorry to disappoint you,” he objected rather pompously, “but you really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve had the best doctors in the world visit me. Experts. Real professionals. Are you trying to say they were all wrong? Don’t be ridiculous!”
The tortoise-man smiled. “What I am saying is true. Believe me, I am a healer, an energy man. And I tell you, young Micky, your energy is good. But it has been trampled on. Somewhere along the line bad energy has influenced you. Your spirit feels flattened, as though something has been sitting on it, holding it down. This something wants you to feel small, worthless, ill, weak, useless, powerless. Why is that? What is this thing that has been suffocating your life force?”
Thousands of feet up, at the top of Mont Blanc, Princess Fang stood in a purple organza dress in her crescent-shaped drawing room. Above her was a massive skylight, and on one side of the room was a long, high picture window, so that the overall effect was of being outside. The dark evening sky with its froth of silver stars hung above and the mountain’s crags and its splendid moonlit views dropped away below.
The princess sipped at a pink cocktail. Reaching for a glass bowl, she ate a few honey-coated almonds. Then she stared down at Lakeside. The valley below was dark except for lots of tiny twinkling lights that came from the fishermen’s boats on the lake. Taking a yo-yo from her pocket, the princess wound it up and let it spin away from her finger. And there she stood in silence, the only sound being her luminous yo-yo shooting up and down, like a trapped animal on the end of a string. Then the princess began singing.
“Milly had a little lamb,
It used to leap so high.
It leaped into a butcher’s shop
And now it’s mutton pie.”
She wound her yo-yo up tightly and put it in her pocket.
“I will get you, Miss Milly and young Micky,” she said confidently. “In fact, I am going to lure you in. Just like dose fishermen entice de fish with de bwight lights on deir boats, I will lure you. What we need is some bait. Somefing to get you up to de palace again. For dat’s what you want, isn’t it? You want your mind back, Milly Moon. And Micky, you want your medicine. Just like a couple of dumb fish you’ll come. You wait and see.”
Nineteen
In the hot communal hut Molly and Micky tucked into plates of lakeweed bake. It was surprisingly good, as the lakeweed actually tasted a bit like broccoli and was mixed with crispy potatoes. What was more, Molly was very pleased to find that the sauce served alongside it tasted very like tomato ketchup. Petula was gobbling up chicken giblets. When she had finished she curled up beside Molly’s feet and fell asleep.
Tortillus came and sat down opposite Molly and Micky and took out his pipe. “So,” he said, pinching a fingerful of tobacco out from a pouch, “I expect you’ve got lots of questions to ask me.”
“You bet, “Molly replied with her mouth full. “Like why aren’t you hypnotized and who is the tree man?”
“I’ll tell you everything, and he’s a boy, you know,” Tortillus replied, “but first I have a few last questions for you. How did you escape from the palace?”
“Through a secret door in the laundry rooms,” Molly replied, buttering some bread and dolloping some of the tomato sauce onto it. “There’s a nice lady up there called Nurse Meekles—she’s the only nice person there—well, she told us about the secret door. It leads to some tunnels inside the mountain. Then the dognakes found us and carried us down to a hidden hatch in the elethumper’s cage.” She took a gulp from her glass of water and tilted her head questioningly. “Did you know about the laundry room door?”
“It’s news to us,” Tortillus replied. “We knew about the dognakes’ tunnels—those have been there for thousands of years; they were made by meltwater rushing through the mountain. But I never knew they led to the palace. Hmm. I wonder who built that door.” He watched Micky picking at his food. “And it’s interesting Nurse Meekles helped you. She was Axel Meekles’s wife, you know.”
“Really?” Molly exclaimed. “The other hypnotist?”
“Yes. He was a good man too. Like his wife. And I have a feeling he must still be alive. Otherwise, who else would have hypnotized your friend Rocky?”
Molly felt her stomach twist, for her feelings and her logic were tugging at each other inside her. Part of her, the warm friendly part, wanted to tell Tortillus the truth about Micky, but the other part, the suspicious, calculating part, refused to let that happen, in case it led to trouble. So she changed the subject.
“How come you aren’t hypnotized?” she asked again. And deciding to check that Tortillus’s thoughts and words matched, she summoned a bubble to appear above his head.
“It’s a long story,” Tortillus began, “that begins like this. We animal-people weren’t born like this, living like the animals you have seen in the zoo. We used to live up at the palace.” He paused. “We are the true royal family of Mont Blancia. I am King Klaucus, and this”—he gestured to the tortoise-woman—“is my wife, Belsha, the queen. Wildgust”—he pointed to the hawk-man, who loitered in the shadows by the door—“is my brother, and these people”—he indicated the flamingo family and the dog-woman on the drum—“are our cousins.” In the bubble above Tortillus’s head a family picture appeared. All the members looked human. Tortillus continued. “Twelve years ago we were overthrown. You mentioned the hypnotist Redhorn.”
Molly nodded. “Yes, he’s the man who stole Micky from the hospital when he was a baby.” Micky frowned as though this wasn’t true, but Tortillus didn’t register his look.
“Yes, well, at that time, twelve years ago, there was a very brilliant scientist up at the palace. She worked for us. She was the only daughter of the Qinglings. They, I am sure you have gathered by reading the signs around the zoological institute, were the team responsible for all the absolutely genius discoveries here to do with animal genetic design.” Molly nodded. “Well,” continued Tortillus, “the Qinglings were good people and brilliant scientists, but unfortunately they had a bad daughter. Her name was Fen Fang Feng Qingling. And she was the mother of Princess Fang.” Tortillus sucked on his pipe. “To cut a long story short, Fen Fang Feng teamed up with Redhorn. Under her orders he hypnotized the people of our kingdom. She had the army hypnotized too. My family and I were locked up in the palace prisons and she pronounced herself Queen Qingling. But having us in the dungeons wasn’t enough to satisfy her.
“Queen Qingling had all her parents’ scientific knowledge at her fingertips. Unfortunately she used it for evil purposes. She took some of the mutagens that had been discovered by her parents and injected all my family with them. We were changed into what you see now. She even made up our names for us, as if we were her toys. ‘Tortillus,’ as you see, suits me down to the ground. These names have stuck and we have been using them ourselves for years now. We were banished to Lakeside, to live here at the zoological institute. For Queen Qingling, like Princess Fang, her daughter and heir, loathed anything ugly and so wanted us out of sight.”
Molly didn’t like the pictures she was seeing in the thought bubbles above his head. She now believed Tortillus was telling the truth, so she just listened to the deposed king’s story.
“She had us hypnotiz
ed by Redhorn too,” he continued, “but as you can see, his hypnotism didn’t work. We can’t be hypnotized. It’s a side effect of the mutagen injections. This is our one strength. For Queen Qingling never knew we weren’t hypnotized, because we acted hypnotized and have done so ever since.
“Princess Fang is even more dangerous. We run the institute and we watch. We watch our people live in this ridiculous theaterlike land, where fairy-tale costumes and nursery rhymes rule. Princess Fang forces everyone to behave as though they are her playthings. I think that’s part of the reason she keeps them hypnotized, so that they are like her toys—and she calls us mutants!” Tortillus wiped his eyes and sighed. “For twelve years we have waited for a time when we might take our revenge and get our kingdom back and our people dehypnotized. I know of her insane plans to take over the entire world. Princess Fang must be stopped.”
Belsha put a bowl of orange bananas on the table. “Help yourself,” she said.
Molly smiled at her. “Have you never tried to fight back?” she asked.
Tortillus shook his head sadly. “There is no point. There are too few of us. Once we made the mistake of sending someone up to the palace, in a food plane. He was darted and killed. We cannot risk that again. For if Princess Fang discovers we are not hypnotized, she will have us all executed.”
Molly gulped. So Princess Fang was capable of executing people. This bloodthirsty streak made her a thousand times more frightening. And Molly saw that King Klaucus and his family were in a worse predicament than her. She might have lost her freedom, but at least she still had her own body.
“Who is the tree boy?” Molly asked.
“His name is Professor Selkeem,” said the tortoise-man. “He is related to Princess Fang. She didn’t want him at the palace but because he is her relation she can’t just get rid of him. Four years ago he arrived with all his test tubes and chemicals, and she instructed us to do his bidding. She gave him free run of the zoological institute and ordered us ‘zooeys,’ as he calls us, to do his work. She loathes him because of how he looks. Why he looks like he does isn’t clear—perhaps she gave him a drug too, or perhaps he gave it to himself. He may have, for he is mad. He is only young, but like the princess he has knowledge beyond his years. It’s as if his brain has been stuffed with so much knowledge that it’s made him go crazy.” Tortillus puffed pensively on his pipe and a cloud of smoke rose into the air. “Like Princess Fang, he is a scientist. His tree house is his laboratory—a dangerous place with all sorts of dubious experiments. He is working on more mutating drugs for Princess Fang, we are sure. She will use the drugs for some foul purpose. He is very peculiar in the head and not to be trusted. Today he may hide you and your brother, but tomorrow he may give you up to her. So beware of him.”