‘Can’t I just go home and you go on your own?’ she pleaded.
Her mama tilted her head and gave Molly a look of curious concern. ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,’ she said softly, sweeping an unruly lock of hair from her eyes. Then she smiled at Molly.
Molly sometimes suspected her mama’s gentle smiles radiated their own magic, as Molly instantly felt that she should go. She heaved a big grouchy sigh, ‘Okay, I’ll come, but I’m not looking at acorns: I’ll just wait while you do it.’
The gardens were large with avenues of oaks and elms all the way round the outside. There was a small lake and a few flowerbeds, but mostly it was a sprawling lawn of all sorts of trees. The largest of all was a sweeping English oak, which had been planted by a duke more than a hundred years ago.
It was to that tree that Molly and her mama headed. They had just got off the bike to push it over the grass, when Molly noticed Pim Wilder. He was squatting at the base of a large tree examining something. He frowned slightly, but his eyes were bright, and he stared at the thing in his hand with such intensity that Molly wanted to run over to see what it was. But she also wanted to hurry past in case he saw her and asked what she was doing there with her odd mama on a yellow bike.
Molly watched as Pim prodded and pushed the thing with his fingers and then stood up and stared into the leafy canopy of the tree. He was still holding what seemed to be a ball of dirt in his open palm. Molly craned her neck to look closer, and Pim Wilder suddenly turned around. He stared straight at her. She quickly looked away, but his eye had caught hers.
Pim looked at Molly without the least bit of surprise or interest. Then he lifted his head in a slight gesture of recognition, and a flicker of amusement passed across his eyes. Molly blushed as she pushed the bike onwards.
She was perplexed. She didn’t want Pim to see her, as his manner was unusual. But to have him notice her and show no interest had embarrassed her. The truth was that she found Pim interesting. Molly didn’t like to admit this, even to herself, but now it seemed well and truly proven, not only to Molly but to Pim as well.
But why wasn’t Molly interesting to him? He probably thought she was only interested in girlish things, which wasn’t true. She stomped ahead, way past Pim. In her head, she began to compose a list of all the very great things she was interested in. Tree houses, for one. She liked dogs too. And songs. And table tennis. Trampolines and stilts and handstands. Caravans. And anything mysterious. These were worthy things. Pim had got her wrong.
Molly watched her mama picking up acorns and examining them. The funny thing was, there was something about her mama’s complete absorption in the task that was exactly like the way Pim had been at the base of his tree. Molly shook her head. This was all very confusing.
She called out to her mama, ‘Can we go now? I’m hungry.’
Her mama looked up with surprise and then grinned. ‘Of course. I think I’ve found the one I need.’
Molly didn’t want to ask how her mama could tell one acorn from another, because she knew the answer would be something she didn’t want to hear. So they got on their bike and rode along the gravel path all the way home. Neither of them spoke. Molly’s mama hummed as she rode, busily thinking out her new potion. Molly was wondering about Pim Wilder and his mysterious ball of dirt.
That night Molly’s mama stayed up all night, reading her books on plants, scribbling notes and making drawings in her red notebook, pounding leaves and roots, extracting drops of plant essence and dropping them onto copper chloride plates of crystallised salts, boiling others, or soaking them in vodka. She was making a potion stronger than any she had ever made before.
Molly woke in the night to see her mama completely entranced by her work, bent over the small wooden desk with a determined frown on her face. She lifted the dark bottles and vials and droppers, fell to her knees to rummage through the baskets of dried plants and seeds and roots, and flipped vigorously through her books on the uses of herbs and weeds.
Molly sighed and rolled over. The activity of her mama’s thinking was like a strange insistent wind rustling through the dark night, seeping into her body and making her turn and twist and anticipate something. What is about to happen, and why do I feel it’s big? she wondered.
It’s just what happens, she reassured herself, when Mama starts making potions. You wake up in the night and you get feelings. Feelings that creep and skitter within you like a frightened mouse darting for the corners and holes, feelings that never quite announce themselves either.
And with that thought, Molly fell back to sleep.
CHAPTER 7
Borage Tea
When Molly woke up, her mama was still working. She moved slowly now. She rubbed at her eyes and leaned, swaying and blinking, into the light. She looked as if she might fall asleep and fold down in a small, dishevelled pile on the floor.
‘Mama, did you stay up all night? You need to go and sleep.’ Molly stuck her hands on her hips.
Her mama smiled faintly and sank down into the chair.
‘All I need is a cup of borage tea. We’ve got a tree to plant today.’ She picked up a jar and pointed to the acorn in a brown liquid inside it.
It was Saturday. The house was bathed in the scents of lemon and rosemary oil, which had burned all through the night. Maude lay in her basket, one large black ear cocked in case there was movement. Claudine had taken advantage of Mama’s empty bed and lay curled up and sunken into the yellow doona. The sky outside looked bright and promising, and all was quiet at the Grimshaws’.
Possibly everything could be all right after all, thought Molly. But possibly everything will go wrong too, she thought as well. It was her habit to think one thing and then the exact opposite. What would it be like to be Ellen Palmer this morning? Or what would it be like to be Pim Wilder? She knew what Ellen would be doing, but what about Pim? She couldn’t imagine what he did when he wasn’t at school. Look at things through telescopes? Map the stars? Make papier-mâché angels? Molly knew that Ellen would be on her way to pony club. With her camel-coloured jodhpurs and her hair in neat plaits. Ellen wouldn’t have to worry that her mama had stayed up all night long.
‘No,’ said Molly, accidentally out loud.
‘No?’ repeated her Mama vaguely. ‘Oh, you’re right, the hole. I’ll dig it now.’ She stood up, rubbing at her back and reaching for her straw hat.
‘I’ll dig the hole,’ Molly offered politely.
‘No, you make the borage tea.’
Molly was relieved, but she felt a little guilty for not sharing in her mama’s eagerness to plant the tree. She glanced warily at the acorn in its potion. It looked as if it had sunk to the bottom of a dirty pond. Molly couldn’t see anything magical about it. She sniffed the wet, earthy, sharp smell, which was exactly as you would expect rotting leaves in winter to smell. It was probably just a normal old acorn, Molly scoffed to herself.
She rummaged through the washing basket, found her favourite red dress, put it on and ran outside with Maude to get some borage. Borage was growing everywhere in the garden, even where it was not meant to be. It had large, squishy, slightly prickly leaves and tiny blue flowers. Molly picked a bunch, plucking off the flowers and eating them as she went.
She shooed the chickens and picked up the Gentleman, who was most handsome with his white feathers and glorious red comb. She swished at the harlequin beetles that were eating the cherry tomatoes and picked some basil, because her mama often liked basil and borage together.
Molly ran inside and boiled the water and steeped the herbs in the teapot. Then she took the pot and a cup outside to where her mama was digging the hole.
Her mama stood up and rubbed her back and tore off her gloves. The wide brim of her straw hat sagged, but Molly could see her cheeks were red.
‘It seems such a big hole for an acorn, but the roots will need lots of room to grow quickly. Ah, tea…Thank you.’
‘Borage and basil,’ Molly declared.
Her mama smiled, but she seemed too tired to be impressed. They both sat there and watched a willie wagtail dance in the mottled shade under the lilly pilly tree.
Molly poured the tea. Maude nuzzled up to Mama, who lazily gave her a pat.
Mama sipped her tea, peeping over the teacup at Molly. ‘The hole is almost deep enough and I think we might see something happen as soon as we plant the acorn,’ she said as she put down the cup.
Everything felt so sleepy and lazy and sunny that it seemed impossible for it all to change as violently as it did in the very next instant.
Molly’s mama took another mouthful. She gulped. Her eyes widened. She stared in horror at what she held in her hand.
It was the jar of acorn potion.
Molly stared too. Something terrible was happening. ‘Mama?’ she breathed.
But it seemed that her mama couldn’t talk. Her eyes closed and she wobbled, but instead of falling over she began to turn a dark muddy colour. Her body welled up and up and grew tall and her arms shot outwards, as rigid as a scarecrow’s. A loud creaking and splitting sound came from her body, and her eyes were wide as if something had tugged suddenly at her eyelids. She stared at Molly with a look of great yearning. Then her eyes swept shut and she seemed to be sucked inwards as her breath blew out of her in a violent blast.
Maude began to run in circles.
Molly froze. Her mama’s body turned to a trunk. Her skin turned to bark. Her arms became branches. And her face vanished in the crown of leaves that spread across the summer sky. All that remained was her straw hat, which hung perilously from a branch high up in the tree, its thin red ribbon flying gaily in the wind.
Molly’s heart was very loud inside her. Her eyes were stuck wide open, and her legs began to tremble. She crouched down and put her hands on the warm grass. Then she crawled towards the tree that was her mama and put her head against it.
She squeezed her eyes very tightly shut and told herself she mustn’t cry.
CHAPTER 8
Chocolate-and-Cashew Balls
Even for the bravest of the brave, it is a terrible shock to watch your mama turn into a tree. Molly crouched down and rocked herself gently. She drew herself into a ball, like a bug, and squeezed herself hard, trying not to let anything go in or come out. Her thoughts raced round and round.
Her mama was gone.
Her mama was a tree.
It was a sunny Saturday morning, and half the town was already up and bustling about and the hum of activity crept up from the valley. But Molly stayed curled up by the tree. Maude lay beside her, and Claudine had leapt off the fence to see what had happened.
Slowly, Molly opened her eyes a little bit. Then she closed them again. She could only bear to let the bright sunny world in bit by bit. For although everyone else’s world was exactly as it had always been, hers was in turmoil, and she wasn’t sure how she could manage it. Finally she spoke, because she felt it might be best for someone to say something.
‘Oh, Maudie, tell me this is a terrible dream.’
But Maude could not tell her that. She could only beat her tail anxiously on the ground.
‘Well, at least I’m not alone. At least there’s you, Maude. And Claudine, I guess.’ And she sighed—Claudine was a very poor replacement for what she had lost.
Lost? Had she lost her mama? Was that what had happened? Molly sat up and rubbed at her eyes. She pinched her arm. Yes, she was definitely awake. She gazed up at the tree.
It was a beautiful tree, tall and spreading and not quite one type or another. Its leaves, in fact, were not all the same type at all. Some resembled an oak’s leaves, others had a reddish tone and some were dark green and small. As she stared up into the canopy it seemed that all the leaves shook at once and the sun fell through them like diamonds.
‘Mama?’ she whispered. ‘Is that you?’
The straw hat twirled on the end of its branch.
Molly felt something. At least she thought she did. What was it, though? Could it be a vibration? She moved closer to the tree and rested her cheek against its trunk.
‘Mama, is that you in there?’
There was almost a murmur within the trunk, Molly was certain.
‘Maudie,’ she declared, ‘this tree is Mama, and she is alive. All we have to do is to work out how to change her back!’
Maude pricked her ears and sat at Molly’s feet, awaiting instruction, while Claudine walked stealthily around the trunk of the tree, uttering a few startled miaows.
‘Yes, that’s all,’ repeated Molly to herself. She had forgotten how to make potions. She had purposefully taken no interest in such matters, and until now she had never wanted to feel vibrations.
Molly let go of the tree and marched inside with pretend confidence. She went straight to her mama’s desk. Perhaps her mama had left instructions for how to reverse the magic.
Drifts of books and notes and diagrams covered the desk in uneven piles. Molly began searching through them. The red notebook was the one her mama had been using last. In it were pictures of plants, information about their uses—all the usual stuff. But nothing about the acorn potion.
Molly stood up. She felt unsteady. If there was no recipe for turning her mama back into a mama, how would she get her back? And until she did, what would she do without her?
She flung open the cupboard to see what food was there, for one thing. The bread bin was empty. There was no yoghurt in the fridge; they had eaten it all last night with the stewed apricots. Molly thought longingly of the black-eyed pea autumn stew her mama always made. How did she make it? Molly should have paid more attention. She took down a jar of cashews and shook some into her hand. Her mama made cashew paste and mixed it with chocolate and coconut and rolled it into balls. Molly knew how to make those. She would make hundreds of them. And there was still the last crumpet.
Molly went out to the vegetable garden. She stared at a large zucchini and pinched it. She didn’t want the zucchini to know it but, the truth was, she didn’t like zucchini much, or pumpkin. Mulberries, she thought happily and ran to the tree to check there were still plenty there. The birds loved them too. Molly dragged the ladder to the tree and climbed up with the orange bucket to gather as many as possible.
‘Sorry, birds,’ she called out. ‘These are desperate times.’ From high up in the mulberry tree, she glanced cautiously towards the Mama tree, which stood rather proudly above all the others,
except the pines.
The Mama tree was not solemn and dark like the pines; it shimmered and shook as if the leaves were conversing loudly, laughing perhaps, even uproariously. Molly sighed. At least the Mama tree seemed happy and well, and with the sunhat crowning it, it looked beautiful, and special, and different from any other tree.
Molly climbed down; her dress was now smirched with purple juice. She went inside and plonked the bucket of mulberries on the bench. Now she would make the chocolate-and-cashew balls, and they would be sweeter and bigger than ever before.
‘After all, Maude,’ she said, ‘we need some cheering up right now.’
CHAPTER 9
The Dark
Molly spent the afternoon making chocolate- and-cashew balls. She emptied the fridge of all the things she wouldn’t eat: broccoli, cabbage, goat cheese, pickled lemons, umeboshi paste and fennel. That could all go to the chooks. For herself and Maude, she heaped chocolate balls and mulberries onto plates and put them in the fridge. Molly suddenly felt important and grown up and responsible. She patted Maude reassuringly and said, ‘Now, now, Maudie, everything will be okay.’ Even though she wasn’t certain about this, it made her feel better to say it. But the better she felt, the more she began to think that when her mama did come back she wouldn’t be happy to see the fridge so full of chocolate balls, so Molly stuck the broccoli back in, just in case.
Then she made a little feast of chocolate balls and biscuits with squished mulberries and honey for herself, Maude and Claudine. She set the table outside with the special-occasion lilac tablecloth, and she picked some lavender and jammed it in the yellow milk jug and put it in the middle. It was just as Mama would have done it, she thought, and she called out, just as her mama might have, ‘Everyone, lunch is ready.’
Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars Page 3