by Georgia Byng
Shakily Molly and Micky followed the tree boy into the main part of the oval-shaped hut. It looked like a real science laboratory built for six-year-olds. Revolting-smelling liquids bubbled away in test tubes and glass vials. To one side was a very strange experiment. A large, glass spherical vat was being heated from underneath by a blue flame. In it were cracked rocks that were smoldering hot. And the green fumes that curled from the rocks went up a glass tube in the lid of the vat, into a transparent, doughnutlike container, where they were sucked through a spongy substance and emerged as a clear liquid. This liquid flowed down a pipe where it collected until a big drip of it was ready to plop out. When the drop fell, it passed through a very strong light and splashed into ajar. On the wall behind the falling drip, the light that had passed through it hit a screen, where it showed its colors—a wonky rainbow, murky and mud tinted. More green fumes from the sponge above spiraled up a glass chimney out of the roof of the laboratory hut. The innocent-looking clear substance in the jar looked like water, but, Molly suspected, was probably something badly toxic. Maybe it was even the dangerous mutating drug that Tortillus had said the professor was working on for Princess Fang so that she could turn other people into new forms of mutants.
Along the wall was a shelf filled with jars containing pickled animal bodies. Small mice and voles, a two-headed squirrel, and a cat with nine tails were a few of the dead creatures on display.
And at the far end of the room were glass boxes with squeaking animals inside. Then to Molly’s horror, as they were led around the workbench, the sight of a dead meerkat-type animal, lying pinned out on a chopping board, greeted them. Here too, hanging from a beam, were strings with shriveled animal hearts, livers, and kidneys threaded onto them. Molly felt nauseous.
The boy opened a drawer. It was full of dried-up flat things. Some of them were covered in green mold.
“Toast?” he inquired nastily, pulling a withered slice out. “Here’s a nice one from last week.”
“I’m not hungry,” both Micky and Molly said at once. “But, er, thank you very much,” Molly hastily added.
“Really? Well I hope you don’t mind if I do.” The boy picked out the moldiest, greenest toast that he could find and took a bite. “Marvelous,” he declared, crunching it between his small jaws. “So good for one’s skin.” Then he reached for a glass of something red and sticky and gulped it down. Molly was sure it was blood.
To stop herself from being sick she looked away, up at the walls of the building. There were fist-sized holes everywhere, as if someone made it their habit to hack away at the wooden walls.
“What are all the holes for?” she asked, hugging Petula as closely as she could.
“Spies,” the boy answered. “They’re all over the place. Want my secrets. My inventions.” He turned to a fridge marked SAMPLES, and opened it, revealing rows of jars containing red glistening things and plates piled with very unappetizing mounds of brown worms. As he poured himself some more of his evil brew, he muttered to himself. “They know about the laundry room door. So what are you going to do?”
As if in answer, another voice, but a higher voice that also came out of his mouth, replied, “Are they rats? That’s the question. If they’re rats, get the rat catcher around. The zooeys could do it. They’re hypnotized. Just get Wildgust on to do it. He’s got a nasty streak in him. Peck, peck and it’s done.”
The boy’s two voices spoke in turns.
“Maybe you can trade with them. Fang wants them badly.”
“Why?”
“For her maniac plans. Keep them safe for now though. Don’t use the chips yet. Lock them up.”
Just then there was a hissing noise outside the laboratory window. The professor ran over to look out. On the far wall of the zoo, Molly saw over his shoulder, was a giant screen. Princess Fang’s spoiled face appeared on it.
“Good morning and hickowy, dickowy, dock!” she proclaimed with a laugh.
“Oh, blow your fat head up!” the boy shouted at her. “Put scabs in your mouth and suck out the gunk.”
But of course Princess Fang up at the palace was completely oblivious to his mad ranting. “Oh, have I got news for you,” she said. Her hair was perfectly coiffed into a hexagonal construction. “We have a special summit meeting tomowow. Some vewy important, intelligent people will be flying in from all over de world. So we must entertain dem. We’ll need performance number firty-one, from the Yang Yongian Entertainment Catalog, wid all de twimmings. So get your costumes bwushed up and put dem on! Warm up your singing voices! Put on your dance shoes, evewyone! Because tomowow evening it’s showtime at de palace!” The screen fizzed and she was gone.
“Ridiculous, sick-in-the-head plastic doll!” the young professor exclaimed venomously.
“But look,” his other voice piped up with a shrill squeak. “What are those guards doing in my zoo?”
“She can’t have them,” the first voice whispered back. “They’re mine.” Then he turned to Molly and Micky. “They’ve come to get you, but they shan’t have you. I’m having you.” He put his hands on the windowsill. “EEEEEEEK!” he shrieked. At the same time three burly guards, hypnotized and dressed like toy soldiers, came charging along the path toward the tree house. The professor leaned out.
“Who goes there, in your underwear?” he shouted rudely.
The hypnotized guard beneath him, unable to be either angry or amused, declared, “Her—Royal Highness—has instructed us to—search your premises.”
“Poppycock and weasels in a test tube!” the boy replied. “I’ll eat my rotten legs if you find them here. So come up—it’ll be a squeeze though because it’s a small door and a tight staircase, pink face.”
Below, Molly heard the guards mumbling to one another as they squeezed through the tiny door. She found herself instinctively reaching for her clear crystal, to stop time, but of course it wasn’t around her neck. Even if it had been, she had no time-stopping powers now anyway.
“Where shall we hide?” she cried in desperation, hoping that the professor had some sort of plan. Just then, a door to the side of them opened. Wildgust was standing there.
“Hide them,” the boy said, and Wildgust nodded. He pulled Molly, with Petula and Micky, out on to the tree-house balcony and shut the door behind them.
“We must leave the zoo immediately. They will search everywhere,” he said impatiently. “I have permission to leave the zoo to get fish. I got you these costumes. You will dress as animals, like in the Musicians of Bremen.” Frowning, he thrust piles of fabric into their hands. Molly had a cat costume and Micky a dog outfit. “My flamingo cousins will accompany us to town. Safety in numbers.” With that he did something completely unexpected. He took off his cloak, revealing two huge brown folded wings, which quivered slightly and then opened like giant feathered fans. Wildgust shook them out. Then, roughly scooping Molly, holding Petula, under his left arm and Micky under his right, he dived off the tree-house balcony and swooped through a gap between the leaves and branches to land on the ground behind the elethumper hutch.
“You can fly!” Molly said, stunned. Micky looked equally amazed.
Wildgust just bent his hawkish beak nose toward them and said crossly, “Don’t stare. Change. I’ll put your old clothes in my sack.”
As Molly wriggled into her furry cat suit she noticed her brother slipping his plastic hospital tag, or at least the half of it that he had, into the pocket of his dog suit. Above his head rose a thought bubble. Princess Fang and Miss Cribbins were shouting at him. He obviously feared getting caught. This was a good sign, Molly thought, and she felt that she’d scored another point over Fang. At least Micky would want to stick with Molly, not run back to the palace. Now he was thinking about his motorized divan.
“By the way,” Molly said, “you can always lean on me if you need to, Micky. I know you’re probably missing your floating chair.”
Micky gave her an odd, sideways glance. “Okay,” he said.
Petula looked up at Molly and wondered why she had chosen to look like a cat wearing a peaked cap. At least she didn’t smell like one.
Molly and Micky followed Wildgust to the gates of the zoological institute. Wildgust had covered his wings with his cloak again so that, as before, his back simply looked like it was badly hunched. At the gate, they met the flamingo children, who were dressed as a donkey and a cockerel, carrying a drum and a flute. The spaniel-woman from the night before was there too. She handed Micky a violin and Molly a flute. Then she took Petula.
“Now you look the part,” she said. “And don’t worry—I understand dogs.” She nodded to Petula. “I’ll look after her.” And so while the guards ransacked Professor Selkeem’s tree-house laboratory they all set out for the town.
“I reckon those guards will be there for a good few hours,” the flamingo boy said as they negotiated the slope outside the zoo.
“Won’t they find Petula?” Molly asked, worried.
“No, Lola will make sure she’s safe and hidden.” Then Wildgust went on gruffly, “Don’t behave stupidly. Remember, there are many more cameras out here than in the institute. You must all seem just like the hypnos.”
“The hypnos?” Molly asked.
“The hypnotized people,” the flamingo girl explained.
Molly fingered the whiskers on her mask. “Where are we going?”
“The harbor,” Wildgust replied.
The sun was getting hot now. Molly started to feel warm inside her furry suit. She looked up at Mont Blanc and wondered what Princess Fang and Miss Cribbins were doing. Had they discovered that Nurse Meekles had been the one who helped them? As they passed their first hypno, Molly’s stomach jittered.
Silver sat back to front on Wildgust’s shoulder, cocking his head and eyeing Micky. It was, Molly thought, as if he suspected that the boy was the weakest link on this trip.
The road they trod was unkempt and stony. Micky hobbled along beside Molly, occasionally stumbling on the uneven surface.
“Try to walk a bit better,” Molly pleaded, “unless you want the cameras to relay pictures of you limping up to Princess Fang.”
On either side were gingerbread-style thatched cottages with timber frames and lopsided windows. A few hypnos, looking like they’d walked straight out of a pantomime, were awake and already numbly conducting their morning routines. One sat beside a spinning wheel; another walked by, carrying pails of water. Wildgust led them past a big billboard-sized screen. On it were the words SING THIS TODAY, and then, the words of a song.
Hey, yiddley yiddley, everyone feeling just diddley.
Hey, yoddley yoddley, like peesalies in a poddley!
“That’s another one of Princess Fang’s screens,” the flamingo boy murmured between clenched lips. “When she wants to play with the hypnos as if they were her toys, or whenever she wants something done, she puts her ugly little face on that screen and shouts her commands out. That’s where she’s been advertising the fact that you two are missing. Those words are lines to a stupid song she wants people to sing for the big show. And those boxes on the right are more cameras for her to spy on everyone. And those over there”—he glanced furtively toward some silver igloolike buildings that Molly recognized at once—“those are the grand houses where Fang and her people live when it’s winter and too cold on the mountain.”
“Chaaarrp! She naw good,” sang Silver. Wildgust reached up and cupped his hand around the bird’s beak.
Pebbles crunched under their feet. They walked down a narrow street that could have been a picture in a fairy-tale book come to life. The houses were narrow and medieval looking, with wattle-and-daub walls and rickety doors and windows. A man dressed as a page, in a green jacket, short, puffy britches and white tights, and a plump cap with a feather in it walked past. His head hung down and he sang sadly:
“Hey, yiddley yiddley, everyone feeling just diddley,
Hey, yoddley, yoddley, like peesalies in a poddley.
Molly looked at the flamingo children in their stuffy outfits. She thought how difficult it must be always to have to pretend to be hypnotized.
“When do Lakeside children get hypnotized?” Molly asked the girl.
“As soon as they can talk,” she whispered back. “But Fang thinks that us zooeys can’t be hypnotized until we’re seven years old. My parents made them think that because my brother and I couldn’t have acted hypnotized when we were little. Once a month an instruction comes for the hypnos to take any of their new talkers to the Hypnosis Hut. The children go in, and when they come out …” She sighed. “It’s awful. The poor little things come out like little zombies.”
Molly looked back at Micky and wondered—had he been responsible for hypnotizing the toddlers or had Fang used a recording of Redhorn’s hypnotic eyes?
Soon they were at the fishing harbor of the lake. Its small buildings were painted yellow, with mermaid-shaped flags flying above them. This should have been a rowdy place, with seamen shouting to one another and fishwives noisily selling their wares. But instead it was quiet as a graveyard. Women with rich brown skin, wearing dresses, white aprons, and bonnets, stood with trays of the night’s catch before them. The fresh fish shimmered like jewels, scaly and shiny. Quietly the hypnotized shoppers stated their needs. Quietly the hypnotized sellers wrapped the fish but took no money. Small waves from the lake rippled on to the shore. Farther up, fishermen who’d been up all night heaved their simple boats in. Others mended their nets or rolled them up for safekeeping.
Molly shivered. It was creepy. The hypnos were like ghosts haunting a strange, quiet town. She watched Micky’s thought bubbles. He was thinking about Miss Cribbins. She was holding out her bony hand. In it was a mound of pills. Micky’s mind then turned to the lake and its deep water. He thought about dolphins playing there, chasing one another in circles.
Silver hopped onto his shoulder. “Chaaarrrp!” he whistled quietly. “Swim with dollll-phins!”
Molly was stunned. Could the bird read thoughts too? She wished she could see Micky’s face behind his dog mask. She bet that had surprised him. She marveled at the brilliant bird. Did Wildgust know its talents? Or maybe that outburst had been a coincidence. While Molly mulled this over, Wildgust swung a sack offish over his shoulder and they set off up the stony path again.
A flycopter’s engines purred in the sky above. The day’s heat was now really picking up. It seared down on the dusty road and the dry thatched roofs of the nursery-rhyme cottages. Molly began to sweat inside her cat outfit. She was boiling. In fact she felt like she was wrapped in an electric blanket, and the noisy flycopter’s engines made the hot air seem even more intense. Then Molly noticed that it was moving toward them. She began to feel worried. Had Professor Selkeem reported her and Micky after all? Was the flycopter coming for them? Her heart began to race. She tried to relax. To divert her thoughts she looked ahead. A very beautiful woman caught Molly’s attention. She was sitting in a rocking chair under a yellow awning outside a timber house, with a very pretty baby in her lap. The baby was sucking its hand and practicing making noises.
“Mmmbaar, mmmbar, mmmbar,” it went, looking as happy as any baby could be.
Then, its gurgling was drowned out by the approaching engine noise. Molly had to force herself not to look up. Instead, like the hypnos about her, she did nothing. She let her eyes dart over to check on Micky. Molly’s heart thumped in her chest. If she or Micky gave the game away, they would both be caught immediately.
“Don’t react,” said the flamingo girl from under her cockerel mask. “Remember, there are cameras everywhere. Keep walking.”
The flycopter landed on a patch of scrubby land near the cottage of the mother and baby. Two hypnotized palace servants dressed in red silk tunics, white tights, and pointed red shoes got out. With the blades of their machine still whirring, they marched toward the small house.
“Cottage three twenty-six?” the first servant asked the woman. She nodded. What Molly saw next wa
s horrifying. The palace servant reached toward the woman’s rosy baby and said, “The time has come.”
The woman’s eyes were glazed and totally obedient. In the next moment she handed over her child. Without showing any emotion, the palace servant received the bundle. The baby shrieked and cried out for its mother, but its pitiful screams fell on deaf ears. It was carried back to the flycopter and taken inside.
Then, with a sudden leap from the aircraft, the second palace worker charged over to Molly and her companions. Reaching the two flamingo children in their donkey and cockerel costumes, he ripped their masks off. Molly found herself frozen to the spot. She watched a flash of disgust cross the man’s face and he let the masks fall. Molly got ready to sprint.
“These—two,” said Wildgust, talking in hypnotized monotone and indicating Molly and Micky, “are—tortoise-children. Beware—they bite.”
This all seemed too much for the palace worker. He turned back to his flycopter, and moments later the aircraft took off. The woman beside the cottage stretched her hands up to it, toward her baby. Tears were streaming down her face, but because she was hypnotized, she was rooted to the ground.
Molly made herself stare ahead as though watching an invisible TV. And then, with Micky trying his best not to limp, they all walked, pretending nothing at all had happened. When they came to a quiet shady place under trees near the water, Wildgust stopped.
“There are no cameras here,” he said. “You can take your masks off now and cool down a bit.” Silver flew up onto a branch above as if establishing a lookout perch.