Maude and Claudine didn’t come running, as proper children should, but then again, thought Molly, often real children didn’t come straightaway anyway, especially if they were in the middle of a small adventure. So she called them again, and in the end she went and fetched Claudine, who jumped up on the table and sniffed disapprovingly at the mulberry and honey biscuits, and then, with a flick of her tail, jumped down and returned to basking in the sun. Maude sat by Molly’s side and ate biscuits under the table from Molly’s hand. Molly stared out down the hill, where the Mama tree seemed now to have grown even larger. She wasn’t hungry after all, and perhaps she even felt a little lonely. From where she sat the tree seemed to take all the attention. A whole new, reaching and spreading shape in the sky. The Mama tree certainly did block out the neighbours. And it was lovely.
But it was odd to have a meal without anyone who spoke or sat at the table. Perhaps she would invite Ellen for lunch. But she couldn’t without explaining that her mama had become a tree. And Ellen would have trouble believing her. Or, if Ellen did believe her, what would she think? Would she go home and tell her mother that Molly was imagining things. Molly frowned to herself as she pictured this.
The fact was, if anyone came over, they would soon realise there was no Mama, and Molly would have to explain what had happened, and then she’d be taken away to an orphanage.
‘Oh, Mama,’ she said out loud, with a great sigh and a good dash of fondness too. And then she curled up on her mama’s bed. She sank into a soft cloud of familiar Mama scents. Soon she would get up and do something, but first she would lie a while and think about what to do.
Maude jumped up on the bed, but Claudine stayed on top of the piano and sulked, as she was hungry and she didn’t like chocolate balls.
When Molly woke up, her arms were cold. The house was shadowy and lit with the last blob of light. Molly sat up as the memory of what had happened to her mama burst into her mind, and she flung her hands over her eyes and willed it all away. The evening sounds crept around her and she shivered. She rummaged in her mama’s drawers for a cardigan. Outside, the sky was sinking towards darkness and windows were glowing with insideness. Dinners were being cooked, probably nice tomato-and-lentil stews, the sort Molly would be having for dinner if her mama hadn’t turned into a tree, and possibly even apple crumbles. Molly’s tummy rumbled. Being alone during the day was one thing, but darkness was frightening. Anything could come out of the darkness.
Claudine miaowed loudly. Molly stomped to the fridge where she found some milk. ‘Well, Claudine, that’s the last of the milk so you better get used to biscuits and mulberries like the rest of us.’
Claudine ignored this comment and lapped her milk contentedly.
Molly and Maude went outside and ate some more of the chocolate-ball feast, which was still waiting there for someone. Molly tried very much to enjoy it, especially since she could eat as many as she liked. But having so many wasn’t actually as wonderful as she had imagined. After five, she was already sick of chocolate-and-cashew balls. It was probably the fault of the dark, which now fell over everything. The trees began to whisper, the grass had turned black, and the sky shuddered as the chill crept into the air. Molly pushed the plate of chocolate balls away. She called Maude and snuggled close.
‘Maudie,’ she said, ‘don’t be frightened, it’s only the night. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’
But Maude wasn’t frightened. Maude was alert. Her ears stood up and she quivered as if she was listening to something. Molly’s heart quivered too. Was there someone there in the paddock beneath them? She buried her face in Maude’s ears. She didn’t want to look, but the longer she sat still not looking, the more frightened she became. She lifted her head. The garden was still; the trees looked like dark figures.
‘I know you, trees,’ Molly called out. Her voice shook, and the darkness seemed to swallow it easily. She tried again. ‘Don’t pretend. Don’t pretend to be anything you’re not, because I know.’
Nothing moved. Not a breath of wind shook a leaf in response. Perhaps it was the stillness that made things eerie and unnatural.
Move, thought Molly. Move! She stepped off the veranda and began to windmill her arms, just to stir up the air. ‘Whatever is about to happen, happen now,’ she declared with an authority that surprised her. She had even stomped her foot, so that the earth could hear it too. Her arms stretched out, her fingers wiggled, combing the air for clues.
Maude whined. And then, as if Molly had indeed been heard, there came a great rustling and, in the same instant, the Mama tree lit up in a silvery glow. It was as if a solitary moonbeam had swung its ray directly onto the Mama tree. The leaves glittered and sprang into action, fluttering and whispering so that the tree seemed to be cheerfully waving its arms about and saying, ‘Look, here I am.’
Without knowing why, and as if entranced, Molly walked towards it. Maude followed her, flat backed and stalking, ears pricked. Somehow the closer she went to the tree, the safer Molly felt. The ground hummed; leaves whirled in the windless night. The Mama tree was as pale and luminous as the moon itself. Molly pressed her ear to the trunk. It was warm.
‘Mama?’ she whispered. ‘Mama, are you there?’
The humming she felt in the ground now swelled in the trunk and became stronger, as if it had rushed to answer her question.
Molly pressed closer. She listened harder. The humming was more a feeling, a trembling, pounding sort of vibration. And it came in waves; it rose and fell away, as if it were a signal. Was it her mama’s voice?
Molly turned to Maude. ‘Maude, tonight we’ll sleep here. I think Mama needs us.’
She hardly waited for Maude to agree before she hurried back to the house to gather the bedding. She took the pillow and cushions and covers off her bed and dragged them to the tree. She ran back for Maude’s basket. Then she went back, for a third time, and put in the washing basket the ukulele, her collection of small rocks, her string of silver flowers and her mama’s alarm clock. She looked at Claudine who was watching with her usual bored and superior air.
‘Well, Claudine, you’ll have to make up your own mind, but Maudie and I are sleeping with Mama. And if you don’t come too, it will be just you all alone, just you and the dark night.’
Molly tried to make it sound awful to be left in the house, but Claudine didn’t even raise her nose in response.
‘You pretend nothing worries you, but I know it does,’ said Molly, and she flounced out the door, and slammed it slightly to make a proper show of her departure.
The air buzzed and creaked with the activities of insects, and the Mama tree rustled and shone. Molly hung up her string of silver flowers and stashed her rock collection in the crook of a branch, and then she made her bed on the ground beneath and jumped in.
She lay there on her back. The tree’s branches were like a roof above her. Could her mama see her? Did trees see? Molly closed her eyes and imagined she was a tree too; she urged her feelings towards the Mama tree. A loud creaking sounded above her, and the leaves rustled with a new vigour.
Maude jumped up with a bark. Molly sat up too. Something had happened. Maude’s tail sagged and lifted, as if uncertain what response it should make.
The tree was changing. Three large bra
nches were lining themselves up evenly right above Molly, like a roof. Or even a platform. Molly knew instantly what it was. It was her mama reaching towards her.
Molly smiled. She threw her pillow and doona up over the branches and then scrambled up the trunk, and lay down across the branches.
It was very uncomfortable, and no doubt anyone else would have preferred to sleep on a mattress, but Molly felt so very safe all of a sudden that she hardly noticed. In fact, it seemed to her that she was lying again in her mama’s arms. She closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Good night, Mama tree.’
CHAPTER 10
An Emergency
The next morning Molly crossed the dry creek bed at the bottom of her street and climbed up the other side, and she followed the road all the way to Ellen’s place. Ellen Palmer’s house stood on a flat block of shaved lawn, with a couple of stone pathways lined with clumps of easter daisy. The trampoline in the front was caged in blue net and stood rather forlornly beside a glorious loquat tree. Underneath it were two timid grey rabbits (Batman and Barbie) in a hutch with a chicken-wire roof, which Maude stood over, transfixed.
All Molly knew was that she needed to talk to someone, and since Ellen was her best friend, Ellen was the person she steered herself towards. But now that Molly had arrived, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to go inside. There was the house that she had always admired, square and solid and with a certain look of neatness and completion, and there was she, adrift in a mystical turn of events and swirling with fears. She was messy and giddy, and hungry too. Twigs were tangled in her hair. And Ellen’s house seemed like it wouldn’t have room for such whirling and tangling. It had never felt like that before, but now everything was so different and unstuck in Molly’s life.
Molly crept around the side of the house to Ellen’s bedroom window. Perhaps she could just whisper to Ellen to come out. Perhaps she need not go inside. Ellen’s curtain was drawn, so Molly tapped quietly at the window, but Maude barked, as if frustrated with all this cautious behaviour.
The curtain was pulled back and there stood Ellen Palmer with a glittery yellow hair band and blue eye shadow. She gaped at Molly and opened the window.
‘Molly, what are you doing? I’m dressing up.’
‘I didn’t want to come in the front door.’
‘Did your mum bring you?’
‘No, I just came with Maude.’
Ellen lifted up her foot and showed it to Molly. She wore a sequinned shoe. ‘But did your mum let you come here by yourself?’
‘Well, yes.’ Molly ignored the sequinned shoe. She moved closer to the window and held onto the ledge. ‘Mama couldn’t talk though.’
Ellen said nothing while she puzzled over this. She moved her mouth from side to side.
‘Is she sick? Did you walk all the way?’
‘Yes, she’s sick,’ said Molly. She wasn’t sure now why she had come and what she should say. She had thought maybe Ellen would know what to do. But as she stood outside Ellen’s window, she felt that if she said ‘My mama is a tree,’ Ellen might not believe that such a thing could even happen. Molly looked at Ellen. Could she believe?
Ellen shrugged. ‘Lucky you. That means you can do anything you want.’ Ellen shook her hair, which was frizzy from her plaits. ‘Are you coming in? We could make up a song.’ She started to sing.
Molly sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for making up songs.
‘Are you okay, Molly?’ said Ellen flatly. She folded her arms over on the window ledge and moved closer. She was concerned. She could sense that Molly was not her usual self.
Molly panicked. She couldn’t tell Ellen her mama had turned into a tree. At the very least Ellen would be horrified. Molly felt she couldn’t let it get to that. She was not ready for it to be horrifying, because in the middle of all that horror, there was a quiet, tremulous hum and that was Molly’s own mama.
‘I’m fine, and Mama is not technically sick, she’s gone away. An emergency,’ declared Molly with sudden assurance.
‘An emergency?’ Ellen frowned. This was all too confusing.
Molly leaned in the window and whispered. ‘Yes, an emergency. It’s kind of secret, though. It’s to do with my brothers. She had to go to Cuba, in fact. So I’m at home looking after Maude.’
‘All by yourself?’ Ellen gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth. She seemed immensely pleased and excited. ‘Well, why don’t I come and stay with you, to keep you company?’
‘No.’ Molly shook her head instantly, and Ellen flinched. She looked taken aback. Molly was flustered. The conversation had taken her down into a hole she didn’t know how to get out of. ‘It’s just that…well…I think this is something I have to do on my own. And you mustn’t tell your mum. Promise? It’s a real secret.’
Ellen stared at Molly, as if searching for reason.
Molly knew that her story had all come out in a shoddy, made-up way and that Ellen had sensed the falseness in it. Molly hadn’t found the relief she was looking for. So now there was a flat, awkward feeling between them, and it was all Molly’s fault because she ought to have told Ellen the truth or said nothing at all. She edged away from the window.
Ellen leaned out. ‘Wait!’ She disappeared from the window and then came back with two mandarins and an apricot muesli bar. ‘Here, for your lunch tomorrow.’ She offered a small grin. Molly knew Ellen wanted to help. The offering of food was her gentle bird-like way of saying, ‘I am here.’
Molly walked quickly home. There was a time when an apricot muesli bar would have made her very happy, but now she stared at it crossly. It meant nothing after all. It wouldn’t change anything. Her mama was a tree and Molly was alone, and an apricot muesli bar was after all nothing but some oats glued together with sugar.
What she needed was a potion, a thing of real magic, a deep and important mysterious thing that was connected to the ways of the natural world.
That was the only way to turn her mama back.
CHAPTER 11
The Truth
Molly missed the next two days of school. She couldn’t imagine how she could concentrate on maths or anything when her mind was in such a commotion. She needed to focus all her attention on getting her mama back.
The branches of the Mama tree had sprouted a mass of soft leaves that wove themselves together like a nest and not only cushioned Molly but also wrapped around her as she slept. Yet, try as she might, Molly couldn’t get Maude up into the tree, and this left Maude pacing at its base. Molly was also getting sick of chocolate-and-cashew balls, and she had finished all the mulberries. She and Maude ate the last of the honey on biscuits and some tomatoes from the garden, and Claudine ate the blackberry jam, as it was all she would tolerate. Molly watched her lick the jar.
‘You’re very spoiled, Claudine. Watch out, because all that jam will make you a fat cat.’
Claudine was already nicely plump and showed no signs of worrying about being fat. Probably, thought Molly, it suited her a little anyway.
Molly sat cross-legged in her nest in the tree. A raucous gang of cockatoos swooped into the leaves and landed high in the boughs. Sun splattered and glistened through the leaves. And the straw hat twirled on its branch.
Suddenly, Prudence Grimshaw shot out from her house. She cast an angry glance at the tree, as if something had alerted her to Molly’s presence there. But, although she stared hungrily and then searched the tree with her darting eyes, she couldn’t see Molly.
Molly sat perfectly still and hardly dared breathe. Eventually, Prudence Grimshaw frowned, gave a snort and disappeared into the shed.
Molly closed her eyes and rested her hands on the branch. She listened. Cars purred in the distance, birds sang and screeched, air hummed in the leaves, branches creaked, and from the base of the tree came a reluctant humph as Maude plonked herself down. Molly listened and listened, but she couldn’t hear her mama. Instead, the sounds faded and thoughts drifted through her head.
The thoughts were disconnected. They came in waves, and Molly felt tired as she tried to work them out. The Grimshaws, Claudine licking the jam, lying to Ellen, Pim Wilder and the paper angel, the ball of mud—were they all connected? Why had her world fallen into small pieces like a jigsaw puzzle scattered over the floor?
She pressed her mind back to the tree. Branches wobbled, and bright patches of sky swayed above. The wet, dirt smell of bark and leaves mingled with the air. All tree business as usual.
Why couldn’t she hear her mama? Perhaps she was trying too hard. Things never came when she tried too hard to get them. What she needed was a walk. That was what her mama always did when she had some thoughts that she needed to set free. Not only that—Maude needed a walk too. Molly jumped down from the tree.
Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars Page 4