“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 toward 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 was 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 toward the Mama tree. A loud creaking sounded above her, and the leaves rustled with a new vigor.
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 branches 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 toward her.
Molly smiled. She threw her pillow and quilt up over the branches and then scrambled up the trunk and lay down across them.
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.”
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 gray 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 toward. 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 behavior.
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 sequined shoe. “But did your mum let you come here by yourself?”
“Well, yes.” Molly ignored the sequined shoe. She moved closer to the window and held on to 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,” her friend might not believe that such a thing could even happen. Molly looked at her. 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 wa
s 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 a 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, birdlike 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.
Molly missed the next few days of school. She couldn’t imagine how she could concentrate on math 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.
“Come on, Maudie. Let’s go to the creek.”
They crossed the rickety bridge and Maude ran at a heron that was perched on the railing. The bird swerved off down the throat of the creek, which was full of reeds. The water slipped over the rocks and pooled at the tufts of bulrush. There was a steep bank on each side that rose up to become a stout brick wall.
Molly took off her sandals and walked along the wall. It was such a fat, smooth, sun-warmed wall that she lay down on it on her tummy, dangling one arm over the side, letting the warmth of the bricks soak into her cheek.
Out of the daze of blue sky and croaking frogs came a voice.
“Are you waiting for the sky to fall?”
Molly propped herself up on her elbows.
Pim Wilder was framed by the blue sky, his face dark with shadows. He sat on his bike with one foot on the wall. He wasn’t wearing the school top, but a T-shirt with stripes, which gave him the air of a drunken sailor.
He looked at Molly as if he expected her to be either frightened or annoyed by his question, and would almost enjoy it if she was.
Molly, who had now successfully faced the night alone, reminded herself that Pim Wilder was only a boy and not nearly as frightening as the dark. She scrambled to her knees.
“I saw you at the park. You had a ball of dirt in your hand,” she said. It was best when feeling nervous or timid to behave in the exact opposite way.
Pim was not deterred at all. He laughed. “Not dirt. It was a pellet. There’s a powerful owl nesting in that tree. That’s how you tell.”
Only Pim Wilder could turn a ball of dirt into a whole journey of discovery. Molly resented and admired him for it, both at the same time.
“They swallow their prey whole or in large chunks and then they spew up these little pellets of fur and bones, and if you look closely, you can work out what they ate. I reckon that one had eaten a sugar glider or a ringtail. The bones were bigger than a bird’s. They eat kookaburras too, and parrots.”
Molly didn’t like to think of sugar gliders or parrots being swallowed in chunks. She made a face to show this was disgusting, but Pim hardly noticed.
“Have you heard a powerful owl call? It’s like this.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and uttered two mournful hoots. “It’s the only one that sounds sad, like a real owl call.”
“And is it sad?”
“Who knows? I doubt it, though. There’s nothing to be sad about if you are an owl.”
“How can you know?” Molly almost wouldn’t have been surprised if Pim claimed he once was an owl. But he didn’t. Instead, he seemed amused by her question. He leaned his bike against the wall and sat down.
Molly plucked a stalk of grass from the crack in the bricks and twisted it. She had said something that interested him.
“What about a baby owl who lost its mother? It would be sad,” she continued.
Pim stared at her. “Probably frightened more than anything, but I guess it would have to learn a thing or two pretty quickly. Did you skip school today?”
“My mum’s gone away,” Molly said.
“What about your dad?”
“He went away a long time ago.” Molly tried to sound breezy. How strange that she was even telling him.
Pim leaned forward. His expression glittered with curiosity. “So who is looking after you?”
Molly tossed h
er piece of grass into the creek. “I’m looking after myself,” she sang.
Pim straightened up. He looked at her closely, as if to check she was the person he thought she was. His eyes were clear and piercing, but they were grinning at her too.
Molly stood up and jumped off the wall, as if to shake off his gaze. Maude stood next to her. “And I’ve been eating as many chocolate balls as I like, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she added.
Pim let out a laugh.
“Your mum goes away and leaves you all by yourself, and you stop going to school and eat chocolate balls for breakfast. That’s kind of weird.”
Pim Wilder could see right inside her. Molly’s face was hot.
“I’m not weird,” she said, mustering more certainty than she really felt. And then, despite her doubts, or because of them, she spun around elegantly on her heel and began to walk away.
“Well, that’s a pity,” he called out. “I was just beginning to think at least one person around here might be interesting.”
Molly stopped. She turned back and shouted, “I am interesting. And I’m in a really interesting situation. So interesting you probably wouldn’t be able to believe it if I told you.”
He walked his bike up to her. “Try me,” he said.
And because he said it softly, and because he looked at her without any thought written on his face, but with the sort of blankness of an open window, Molly stopped.
Could she tell him? Could she tell Pim Wilder? Was this the right thing to do? She hadn’t even told Ellen, and Ellen was her best friend. But perhaps Pim Wilder was the only person who might be able to know such a thing and not be afraid of it.
Molly & Pim and the Millions of Stars Page 4