by Georgia Byng
Dr. Logan nodded. He went to stand beside Molly and took the white disc that hung round his neck between his fingers.
“I am ready,” he said. “The floom is ready, Molly. Once you have the coin in the pouch, take my hand and put yourself in a trance and we will go. And thank you, Fritha.” Dr. Logan shut his eyes.
Fritha began chipping. The clay broke away from the coin inside it as easily as dried mud from around a rock. The coin was slightly uneven around the edges, but Fritha soon sorted this out by holding it with pliers and applying her file. Finally, still gripping it with the pliers, she popped it in the leather pouch and handed it to Molly.
“Good-bye, me dears.”
Molly nodded. She took her great-great-great-grandfather’s hand, shut her eyes, and concentrated as she had done before. In her mind she saw the surfboard and she stepped onto it.
“Good,” she heard Dr. Logan say. At once they were off.
Thirty-five
“You can open your eyes,” Dr. Logan said.
Molly recognized the landscape. They were back in the field where Do’s monastery would eventually be.
Dr. Logan reached for his red time-travel crystal. With a BOOM, they were gone.
Now they were traveling forward through the centuries. The landscape about them flickered as the seasons and the years changed. Finally the monastery’s stone walls appeared.
“Nearly there!” Dr. Logan proclaimed. “Let’s land now. A day or so out won’t matter.”
With a POP, Dr. Logan let the time-travel bubble go. All at once they were both standing in the sunshine.
Molly dropped the leather pouch with the coin inside it and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Do wandered out of the monastery garden, hoe in hand.
“Wah!” he cried in shock. “You give me big fright.” Then he smiled. “You gone four days. Success?”
Molly rushed up to Do and gave him a hug. “I met my ancestor,” she said. “And we’ve made a new coin. It’s in the sack.” She pointed to the pouch. “It makes the owner want to do nothing. Isn’t that cool? It’s powerful, Do!”
“Ah! Clever,” Do replied, smiling. “And I find out things,” he said. “I read papers. Wait here.”
He went back inside and moments later came back with a pile of Japanese newspapers. He pointed to an article in one that showed Mr. Proila’s photograph.
“Look. Proila man play concert three nights ago. Big audience. Big hit. But this part very interesting for you.” Underneath there was a photograph of Chokichi and Hiroyuki. Another picture showed Toka in a sumo outfit in front of an old-fashioned building. “This sumo school in Tokyo. Boys at sumo academy live like monks! Toka, this boy, I think he no listen to Mr. Proila music. And I think he friend of your lost friends. Look.” Do pointed at the corner of the picture. “I think those little furry things dog ears. Maybe that your dog Patili.”
“Petula!” Molly corrected him with a gasp. She peered at the photograph. “Amazing, Do. I think you’re right.” She turned to Dr. Logan. “I don’t suppose . . .”
“Of course,” her grandfather said, nodding. “We will leave immediately. I just need the address of the place, then I can think it to the disc.”
Do read the address out to him.
“Good. Thank you so much, Do.” Dr. Logan smiled at the old monk. “We’ll see you later. Thank you.”
Molly gave Do another hug. “When I see you again, hopefully it will be with good news!”
She picked up the pouch, took her grandfather’s hand, and shut her eyes, too.
The world tunneled around.
They hadn’t traveled far when Dr. Logan squeezed Molly’s shoulder. “I’m going to slow us down! Take a look!”
Molly opened her eyes. She saw how the “walls” of the space wave that they were surfing through were transparent. She could see houses and gardens. It was as if she and her grandfather were moving on a train, but one made entirely of glass.
It was amazing. They sliced through the air and even through buildings, through cars, through people. When Dr. Logan brought them to a very slow pace, it was as if they were surfing alongside people who were walking along sidewalks. Molly found herself right beside a couple of schoolchildren who were swinging book bags.
Then Dr. Logan sped up again, slowing down only at the front door of the sumo academy. Judging the coast clear, he let them arrive. The ground felt firm again under their feet.
“Important to know,” Dr. Logan said to Molly, as they both surveyed the building in front of them, “that space surfing is dangerous. If you fall at any point, you fall into the exact place you are passing through. So, for instance, you wouldn’t want to fall off in the middle of concrete. Or on a busy road, or over a river or a sea.”
“Glad you didn’t tell me that before!” Molly winced as she thought of what might have happened.
Thirty-six
As they walked to the front doors of the sumo academy, Molly felt her stomach tighten with nerves. Although she longed to see her friends again, she was afraid that Petula, Gerry, and Rocky (if he had somehow managed to find the others) would hate her now. Molly steeled herself to expect the worst. Even if she explained how the coin had worked, would they ever properly forgive her? Maybe they’d think that deep down she must be bad and that the coin had just brought out that badness. Maybe if one of them had had the coin nothing would have happened. Did she have more badness inside her than they did?
“I’m scared to see them,” Molly confessed to her grandfather.
“It’s going to be terrific,” Dr. Logan said distractedly, pushing open the door to the school.
Moments later Toka was called from his room.
He looked suspiciously at Dr. Logan and then at Molly in her green kimono. And then crossed his arms defensively.
“Yes?”
“Hi, Toka,” Molly began nervously. “I need to talk to you. I want to put everything right again.”
As though these were some sort of magic words, Toka’s hard expression melted. “Follow me,” he said.
He led Molly and Dr. Logan to his room in the back of the building. They stepped inside. Molly placed the bag with the coin in it on the floor, and then she looked up.
Sitting against the far wall, reading comics, were Gerry and Rocky. Petula was asleep beside them.
Molly felt awful. The full impact of her behavior punched her hard. She saw in this one moment how much she would miss these friends of hers if they dropped her. And the idea of losing them filled her with a dark sadness. Molly didn’t want to speak. She wanted to delay them replying to anything she said, for her fear was that they would say, “Get out, Molly, we don’t want you here.”
So what happened next was totally unexpected.
Rocky threw his comic to one side and scrambled to his feet. He rushed toward Molly and wrapped his arms around her.
“We’ve been so worried about you. I’m so glad you’re safe.”
Petula woke up. For a moment she was stunned. Then she saw that her Molly, her real and true Molly, was back. She ran at her. Gerry grabbed Molly around the waist.
Molly hugged them. Before she knew it, her face was wet with tears. “Thank you,” she managed to say. “You could have hated me. I’m so, so sorry.”
Petula smelled Molly. All traces of the Monster Molly were gone. It was miraculous. As Molly dropped to her knees and hugged Petula and put her face in the black wrinkles of her furry neck, Petula snuggled her face into Molly’s shoulder.
“We couldn’t hate you, Molly,” Rocky said. “Not the real you. It’s the coin we hate, not you.”
For a moment there was quiet.
Dr. Logan sighed. “I’m the one who caused the coin to be made, so I’m afraid I’m to blame for it. It was a stupid mistake.” He paused. “I’m Dr. Logan,” he explained. “Molly’s great-great-great-grandfather, on a time-travel trip from the past. Rocky and Gerry, I presume?” He stepped toward the boys to shake their hands. “And this must
be Petula.”
Petula gave Dr. Logan a sniff. Then she noticed that there was a strange, new smell in the room. She turned her head and saw that Molly had brought a bag with her and put it on the floor by the door. She could sense something a little like the other coin that had made Molly bad. She went to inspect it. She could smell steamy air curling out of the bag.
“So tell us everything,” Rocky said. “Sit down and tell us, Molly.”
Molly nodded. “It’s a long story.”
For the next hour, as Gerry played with Titch the mouse and Petula sucked on a stone and kept a wary eye on the bag by the door, Molly explained everything. She told them all about Dr. Logan and Fritha, and about the old coin and the new one. She apologized for how horrible she’d been to them all. Then Rocky, Gerry, and Toka brought Molly and Dr. Logan up to speed.
Even though Mr. Proila was deaf, his music was evidently remarkably good, for he’d packed the Tokyo Dome twice. The scariest part was Proila’s ambition. Already he had been using the coin on the government. Overnight, cockfighting, whale hunting, and the killing and trading of endangered animals had been legalized. The Japanese prime minister was clearly under Mr. Proila’s power.
Molly shook her head. “Well, let’s hope that this new coin will be just as strong as Proila’s, but in a good way.” Molly went over and picked up the pouch. The children crowded round.
“Let’s see it then,” said Rocky. “Is this one dangerous?”
“Very. No one must touch it,” said Dr. Logan. Molly tipped the new coin onto the floor. It rolled into the center of the group of friends.
“It’s got a kind of tug, hasn’t it?” Rocky observed. “It makes you kind of want it.”
“Yes,” Molly agreed. “But if you touch it, it’ll fry you.”
“What? Like a potato chip?” As Gerry spoke, he leaned forward to study the coin. Titch darted toward the coin and jumped on it. “Oh no!” Gerry cried, reaching out. “Titch!”
Rocky caught Gerry’s hand. “Don’t touch him or it.”
“But I don’t want Titch to turn into a potato chip!”
“He won’t,” Molly said. She glanced worriedly at Dr. Logan. “But we should get him off it.”
Titch sat on the coin cleaning his whiskers.
Dr. Logan frowned. “Let’s watch a moment.”
Then something else happened. Petula, who had been watching and smelling the new coin, and realizing that it was very different from the coin Molly had had before, got up. She dropped the stone she’d been sucking. She looked at Molly and then at the coin and gave a bark. And then she bounded over to the coin, nudged Titch off it, and before anyone could stop her, picked it up in her mouth. She sat down and scratched her ear.
This coin, Petula thought, doesn’t have the repelling quality that the last one had had. It tasted sweet, but that was all she got from it. She sucked it for a good few minutes, then whined at Molly.
But her whine didn’t sound like an ordinary whine. It sounded like it had flute and oboe mixed into it. Petula whined again. Not really bothered by this miracle of sound, and certainly not seduced by the coin as Molly had been, she shrugged her shoulders and placed the coin on the pouch.
“Wow,” Gerry said. “That sounded cool!”
“I don’t know what Petula’s trying to say to us,” Dr. Logan commented, “but one thing’s clear: Her voice is wonderful when she has the coin. And interestingly, it doesn’t seem to be able to take a hold on her. Nor Titch. That’s probably how it works with animals.”
“Do you think it only affects humans then?” Molly asked.
“Well, that’s a question. To be sure, maybe . . . maybe I should touch it.” Dr. Logan rubbed his forehead. Everyone looked appalled. “Just for a second,” he assured them. “It won’t ‘take’ immediately. Remember, Molly, Fritha said it needed a minute or so. I’ll just hold it for ten seconds.”
Molly, Rocky, Gerry, and Toka all hesitated.
“If I don’t, we won’t know for certain that it works,” Dr. Logan insisted. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“That’s true,” Rocky said.
Cautiously the old man put his hand into the pouch.
“Immense pull it has!” he said. “I’ll pick it up for a few seconds.” His fingers closed about the coin. “Mmm. Interesting. Calming. Mmm.” He dropped his glasses. They clattered to the floor.
“Put it down!” Molly said sternly.
Her grandfather looked lazily up at her. “Down, down, down to the bottom of the sea,” he said, in a singsong way, pulling the coin toward him.
“LET GO OF IT, GRANDPA!” Molly shouted.
Dr. Logan smiled oddly at her, gripping the coin tighter.
There was nothing for it. Molly grabbed at the coin. As her fingers touched it, it gave her a sharp shock. “OW! DR. LOGAN, PUT THE COIN DOWN!”
At once Dr. Logan’s eyes opened wide, and shaking his hand wildly, he dropped the coin. “Get away from me!” he said. “I am not your master!”
Petula dived forward and snapped the coin up in her mouth.
“My goodness!” Dr. Logan exclaimed, recovering. “That was quite the most relaxed I’ve ever felt! I dropped my spectacles, but more than that, I felt like dropping everything.” He laughed. “Does it work? It most certainly does. If we get that into Proila’s hands, why, things will go swimmingly!”
Molly grimaced. “Wow! That hurt!”
Gerry laughed and clapped. “Bad luck, Molly! But brilliant! It works! So how and when do we get it to Proila?”
“He’s playing the Tokyo Dome again tonight,” Toka said. He picked up a cardboard box from the side of the room. “Luckily we are ready, and well prepared.” Out of the box he pulled six pairs of earphones. “We bought earplugs, too!”
“What time will he be onstage?” Molly asked.
“Eight thirty.”
“We should arrive at eight fifty,” Molly decided. “Then his set will definitely have started. You guys can go into the building through the main entrance, but Dr. Logan and I shouldn’t. If his guards see me, I’m dead.”
“So what’s the plan?” Gerry asked.
“Well,” Molly pondered, “I think the stage is the best place for me to confront him.”
“I agree,” said Rocky. “Otherwise he will just try to force you to give him the coin—even if it does give him a shock when he tries to take it. In front of all his new fans, he’s more likely to want to appear charming.”
Molly nodded. “I think a good plan is this: You guys get backstage—remember you should wear the earphones. Toka can get you in, can’t you?” Toka nodded enthusiastically. “Petula and I will stay with Dr. Logan in the car, and at, shall we say, eight fifty exactly, we will floom onto the edge of the stage. We won’t be able to get right up to Proila as Dr. Logan can’t get near the music coin.”
“You’ll wear earphones?”
“You bet.”
“Then what?” asked Gerry.
“We’ll hope he wants the new coin. Petula will help us.” Petula opened her eyes and rubbed her nose with her paw. “I know it sounds vague, but I think we’ll have to play it by ear.”
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure really. We escape, I suppose.”
Thirty-seven
Four hours later, Molly and her friends were at the Tokyo Dome.
Rocky, Toka, and Gerry were inside. Molly, Dr. Logan, and Petula sat in the car.
Molly stared out of the window biting her lip. Her insides were a storm of nerves.
Dr. Logan patted Molly’s hand. “Feeling all right? From what you’ve told me, you’ve had a lot of experience dealing with villainous people. Hopefully you are feeling sure of yourself.”
“Before, my hypnotism kept me sure of myself in dangerous situations,” she confided. “Now I’ve lost my skills, I’m not sure of myself at all. I feel like I’m about to be thrown into a pit to fight a monster, but I’ve got no armor and no weapons.”
; “Just remember, whatever happens, I’ll be there with the floom. Like a getaway car, it will be, erm . . . revving, I think that is the expression. I won’t be able to get near the coin, but if you are in trouble, I’ll help you get away.”
“What if I’m scared or panicking?” Molly asked. “Will I be able to concentrate enough to get on the floom?”
“If you focus your mind and keep a hold of yourself, yes.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then just grab hold of me. I’ll stick with you, and hopefully we’ll find an opportunity to surf away.”
Molly nodded. Her mouth was dry from nerves. She knew that if Mr. Proila didn’t go for the bait, and if she was too scared to concentrate on flooming, she’d be stuck. Mr. Proila would have her taken away. Dr. Logan might be able to floom to her, but there was no guarantee that he could. The idea of being chopped up into lots of little pieces and scattered over Japan filled her with fear again.
Fifteen minutes later she tapped her grandfather on the arm. “Grandpa, are you ready?”
They got out of the car and heard the roar of the crowd inside the stadium.
“Proila’s definitely onstage,” Molly said.
She passed her grandfather his earphones and pushed soft wax earplugs into her own ears. She picked up Petula, giving her a good cuddle. She hoped it wouldn’t be the last time she’d kiss her pug’s velvety ears. She clutched the pouch with the do-nothing coin in it and shut her eyes.
Almost at once they were moving. Molly opened her eyes. Straight through the arena’s thick walls they went, straight through the thousands of people in the auditorium.
Molly saw Mr. Proila. He was onstage, dressed in a rhinestone-studded jumpsuit and high-heeled boots, with guitars and banjos on stands all around him. He was clutching the music coin and seemed to be playing a harmonica, but it was music that neither Molly nor her grandfather could hear.
Dr. Logan brought them right up to the stage, as near to Mr. Proila as he was able. As the floom was still activated, no one could see them. Molly looked into the audience. She recognized one face from the news-papers: the prime minister of Japan.