by Georgia Byng
“Could even be you and your missus, Grandpa,” she muttered. Then, looking up at the heavy, water-laden sky, she went back inside her room.
Molly and Micky as blackbirds found Buckingham Palace easily. They flew higher and higher into the rainy sky and landed on the edge of a skyscraper. From here the London traffic looked like a metallic-colored river, and the twiggy tops of trees seemed the size of footballs. They saw the Thames River and the big wheel, the London Eye, that was for tourists to ride. Micky knew that Buckingham Palace would be fairly near to that, and sure enough, there it was, up a long, wide road.
After a smooth, wet, downhill glide, they arrived at the palace’s grand gardens, landing on one of its gravel paths. Scores of windows on the rear facade of the building flashed in the dull, cloudy morning sunshine. On top of the roof, a flag flew.
“She’s in,” Molly twittered as a low, booming bell chimed a quarter to eleven. At the same time, a flash of lightning lit up the sky.
“Who’s in?” tweeted Micky.
“The queen. That flag flying means that she’s in. She’s somewhere inside, reading the papers or signing royal documents.”
Molly and Micky flew up to the largest of the balconies on the second floor of the palace. Perching on the iron rails there, they peered through the drip-stained window. Inside was an empty room. They fluttered to the next window. Inside this one was an empty hall with richly brocaded walls and old fancy furniture. They hopped along to the next balcony.
Past pale yellow curtains was an old-fashioned sitting room with old, ornate sofas and gilt-legged desks and chairs. Large portraits of past kings and queens, of princes and princesses, hung on the finely papered walls. A crystal chandelier with thousands of droplets of glass was suspended from the ceiling like an eighteenth-century UFO. And underneath it, sitting on a spindly stool, was Theobald Black. He was talking in earnest to a gray-haired lady who sat with her back to the window. A white-gloved butler set down a silver tray bearing teapots and poured the woman a cup of tea.
“Jeepers, that’s her,” Molly whistled.
AH2 stepped out of the Cork Street Police Station and zipped up his parka against the cold. He fished his small tracking device from his pocket and extended its antenna.
A policeman watched from his office window. “Alien hunter indeed,” he said, polishing the metal button on the top of his bell-shaped police helmet. “Fruit-and-nut case, more like.”
AH2 read the gadget’s screen and converted it to map form to see where the Moon alien was. He squinted at the results.
“I don’t believe it.”
Setting off at a firm pace, he began walking toward Green Park.
On the pavement opposite, two women—one with a walking stick and in a red shiny raincoat, the other, tubbier and in a frilly dress—who were pretending to be consulting a map, watched him go. As he strode off down the gallery-lined street, the women turned to walk down it, too. One limped, the other waddled. Miss Teriyaki’s stick kept slipping on the wet pavement, while Miss Suzette’s voluptuous, frilly scarf kept blowing across her face. This crazy man seemed to know how to find Molly Moon. And Molly Moon, they had both decided, would probably be very near Mr. Black and the hypnotism book.
Miss Hunroe was furious with them for not keeping up with Mr. Black the night before, so they were determined to get things right now. “Oh, do hurry, you snail!” Miss Suzette tutted as they hurried through a covered arcade full of chocolatiers and fancy shops that sold leather gloves and luxurious items like mustache combs. “Try to limp faster, or we’ll lose him. Like we lost that cab last night. It was all your fault. If you’d been less lazy and more alert we would have seen what Black was up to.”
Miss Teriyaki flashed an angry glare at Miss Suzette. “You’re not exactly an Olympic runner yourself, you frog,” she panted, hurrying as fast as she could past an expensive underwear shop. “Your frilly dress is cooler than my red patent-leather coat. It’s easier for you. And you haven’t sprained your ankle. Let me remind you that tomorrow or the next day I will be back to my normal fit self. But you have never been fit.” Grunting as she picked up the pace, she added, “Oh, I love these shops! They remind me of Paris. When I own Paris, I’ll spend all my time in the shops!”
Miss Suzette stopped suddenly and turned with a furious look on her face. “What are you talking about, when you own Paris?”
“Exactly what I say,” Miss Teriyaki replied smugly. “When I own Paris. Miss Hunroe has promised me Paris! Which city has she said you can have?”
“You foolish woman,” Miss Suzette replied scathingly. “Do you really think she would give Paris to you? She gave it to me months ago. I was born there! Paris is in my blood. There must be some mistake.” A sly look crossed her face. “You do know, Miss Teriyaki, there is also a place called Paris in Texas, America? She was probably offering you that.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Yes, she was.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Of course she was. You know Miss Hunroe far prefers me to you. She never would have offered you the real Paris in France!”
“You old witch!” Miss Teriyaki cried, her feelings visibly hurt. Then her face changed. She thrust her hand at Miss Suzette. “I don’t expect Miss Hunroe gave you a ring like this. She didn’t, did she? Hah. Favorite indeed. Miss Hunroe loves me. There you go!”
“Oh, shut up and hurry up, you slug,” huffed Miss Suzette. “If we don’t get Mr. Black now, she’ll hate us both, and then neither of us will get Paris or Venice or anything.”
Clip, clip, clip went their shoes and the walking stick on the marble passage floor. Then they were out of the arcade onto the busy street beyond it, just in time to see AH2 disappear through the open gates of the entrance of Green Park. A rain was spitting down, and the skies above were growing grayer.
“I’m sure I heard him say Buckingham Palace,” Miss Teriyaki exclaimed breathlessly. “Perhaps we should hail a cab.”
“Don’t be so lazy, Teriyaki!” Miss Suzette wheezed, wiping some dribble from the corner of her mouth with a lace hanky. She put up her frilly-rimmed umbrella and set off through the park.
Outside high railings in front of Buckingham Palace, a handful of tourists stood watching the changing of the guards. A bearskin-hatted sergeant shouted commands, and three serious red-uniformed soldiers, also in tall black furry hats, took it in turns to march up and down the palace forecourt.
Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette crossed the road to stand by the railings fifty yards from where AH2 had joined the tourist throng. Miss Teriyaki reached into her handbag for her cell phone.
“I’m going to alert Miss Hunroe,” she said, beginning to text a message. “I have a feeling she ought to be here.”
Miss Suzette nodded. “And I’m going to set up a little Molly Moon trap all of my own.” Beside her a red-haired Chinese woman in a denim trouser suit raised a camera to her eye and snapped.
“That will be a classic picture,” interjected Miss Suzette with warm charm.
“Oh, yes, it will be,” said the Chinese tourist.
“Are you alone, dear?” asked Miss Suzette, smiling.
“Alone? Oh, yes, I am,” said the young woman, completely trusting the sweet-looking, chiffon-collared lady.
“You speak very good English.”
“Oh, yes,” the Chinese woman replied. “I have spent ten years at school learning it.”
“Lovely!” Miss Suzette replied. There was a pause as the young woman took another photograph. Then, like a horrid, fat, poisonous spider, Miss Suzette swung her web.
“I say, could you check my eye? I seem to have a speck of dust there—can you see anything?”
The innocent Chinese woman turned. She gazed into Miss Suzette’s piggy eye. And before she knew it, she was hypnotized.
Thirteen
“I’ll be the butler,” Micky twittered. “You can be the queen.”
“The queen? Are you joking?” The feathers on Mol
ly’s head stood up on end.
“Come on,” Micky coaxed, “she’s only another human being.”
“But I don’t know if I can behave like the queen!” Molly tweeted.
“Of course you can. Just be ever so royal and polite. Listen, you’d be helping her.”
“But I can’t see her face, so I can’t imagine her as a child,” Molly objected. “So how can I morph into her?”
“Your work’s been done for you,” Micky pointed out. “That portrait there with the girl holding the puppy is of the queen when she was about six.”
Molly and Micky began staring at the edge of the green-and-white carpet beside the floorboards near the window. It had a pattern of leaves and flowers that twisted around one another. Soon Molly had captured an image of a strange cottage with a tall spindly roof. She immediately turned her attention to the portrait of the young princess. Micky had been right. The picture was so good it made Molly’s task very easy, and within seconds she had harnessed the cottagey image, linked it with the princess’s face, and, as though these pictures were magical charms to pull her, Molly was at once shooting out of the blackbird’s body straight for the queen’s.
Like a rolling tsunami wave, Molly crashed into the old lady’s mind, overpowering her personality like a breaker overpowering an unsuspecting swimmer. Part of Molly felt apologetic and rude to be pushing into Her Royal Highness’s mind, but she knew she mustn’t show weakness, for if she did, the queen’s character might get the upper hand, and that would be disastrous.
So Molly took charge, and as she did, she apologized to her. I’m so sorry, she thought to her. Erm. Your Majesty. It’s for your own good.
Molly was overwhelmed by the queen’s memories and her knowledge. Molly saw giant ships that the queen had launched, swinging bottles of champagne at their hulls. She saw private yachts and huge stables filled with the queen’s racehorses. She saw wonderful palaces with parks around them where the queen lived and went on holiday, and she saw memories of all sorts of parades and celebrations that had been given in the queen’s honor. This was mixed with an unexpected ordinariness of character that made the queen feel just as normal as the other humans Molly had morphed into. Molly saw how she loved her family, her grandchildren, her dogs, her horses, and her friends. She saw how she was wishing the butler had brought her a chocolate muffin.
“Cor!” Molly found herself saying. Her accent as the queen was extremely posh.
“Is there anything wrong, ma’am?” Black asked; something in the queen’s tone put him on edge. Molly wondered whether the queen had been hypnotized by Black. She didn’t think she had been, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Everything is perrrfect,” Molly the queen replied, trying desperately to get a grip on herself. “Cor is the nickname of one of my corgis—the big scruffy one. His full name is Cor Blimey. It’s Cockney, don’t you know. He was just being naughty. You didn’t see it, but I did. Ha, ha. Oh, dear!” Outside, the sergeant was shouting his commands in the changing of the guard. The marching of the soldiers was perfectly synchronized as their feet hit the ground with precise rhythm. “Isn’t the marching comforting?” Molly said. On the ground by her feet, three corgis turned to look up at her quizzically. The big scruffy one began growling. “Be quiet, Cor!” Molly tutted.
“You were saying?” Black began.
“What was I saying?” Molly asked unsurely, picking up her teacup and sipping at it. Clumsily she spilled some on her lap. “Oh. Ah, um, butler! Have you got a napkin?”
Black watched suspiciously as the royal butler came toward the queen brandishing a linen cloth. Black eyed the queen and her snarling corgis. Instinctively, he picked up his leather bag with the hypnotism book inside it.
“There you go, My Highness,” said Micky the butler, mopping away at the queen with the napkin. Molly pushed him away, knowing that a butler would definitely not start rubbing the queen’s knees. Two of the corgis began to bark.
“You were offering,” Black went on, “to make arrangements for me to get to the Tower of London, to put the book safely there.” Now Black did not feel comfortable at all. Lily’s warnings rang loud in his ears.
Molly the queen eyed his bag. She supposed the book was inside it, and she marveled at Black’s cunning. It was very clever of him to be using the book as an excuse to get into the Tower of London, she thought. Why, once he was in there, the riches at his fingertips were immense. The crown jewels were kept there, including the biggest diamond in the world. And she could see in the queen’s memories that she had already been persuaded that the book was very, very precious and dangerous. She already had some knowledge of hypnotism, time traveling, time stopping, and morphing, for Black had been explaining them to her.
So Black’s plan was going well, Molly thought. If he got into the tower, he could use his hypnotism to steal whatever he wanted, and then he could get away with it scot free.
“Hmm. Yes, of course,” said Molly the queen. “I must say, I am very intrigued by the book. May I see it?”
“You saw it just now,” said Black slowly, his knuckles turning pale as he gripped his bag tightly.
“Yes. Yes. Again, I mean,” said Molly the queen, trying to dig her way out of trouble. “Is everything all right, Mr. Black?”
Black examined the queen’s lined face and tried to judge whether the girl who Lily had warned him of had invaded her. There was only one way to see. He would read the queen’s mind. So, concentrating hard, he silently asked the question, What are you thinking?
Molly felt a tickle above the queen’s eyebrows and all over her scalp, but she thought nothing of it. If she’d been aware, she might have been able to think very proper royal thoughts for Black to read from her mind. But she had no idea that Black could mind read, and so she had no idea that a bubble had appeared over her soft gray hair. In it were pictures of Black with the hypnotism book and the queen wrestling Black to the ground. There were other images, too, of the butler joining in, twisting Black’s arm into a half nelson. For this is what Molly was fantasizing.
“To the tower!” Molly the queen said. “Butler,” she added, “please take Mr. Black’s bag.”
At this point, Black got up.
“Oh, no, you don’t. No doubt you’re one of Miss Hunroe’s assistants. You’re interfering where you shouldn’t.”
At once Molly saw that the game was up. Jumping over the corgis—which was quite difficult, as the queen was wearing a straight tweed skirt—she dived for Black’s bag, knocking over the tea tray. Teacups scattered and smashed as they hit the ground. All the corgis began to bark frantically. With a swipe, Molly grabbed at the bag, but as Black dodged, she missed and fell head-first onto the delicate antique sofa, catching a cushion instead and knocking the whole piece of furniture so that it tipped over, throwing Molly on the floor.
“Get him, Micky!” Molly screeched, and Micky the butler leaped for Black. But as he did, Black lunged out and walloped him in the stomach. Micky the butler lay groaning in an armchair. Now Black ran for the door.
“Guards!” Molly shouted. “Stop him, he’s a thief!”
“Aarff! Aarff! Aarff!” the corgis barked in unison.
The staff and the bodyguards outside the room looked about them, confused. One moved toward where the queen was pointing, but he could see no one. It was as if Black had become invisible.
“Who, Your Highness?” the bodyguard asked. The lady-in-waiting beside him looked equally perplexed. A guard on the stairs was just as puzzled.
All the staff had been hypnotized earlier by Black—hypnotized not to see him come and not to see him go.
Meanwhile, Black’s footsteps grew more and more faint as he hurried farther and farther away, down the wide palace staircase to the main entrance. Molly glanced back to Micky, who, as the butler, was now standing up, rubbing his stomach. She ran to the room’s east window and looked out, her breath immediately steaming up the glass of its pane. Below was a view of the graveled palace drive. Two
black ravens sat on the windowsill sheltering from the rain. “The ravens,” she said. “Quick!”
In a few seconds Molly and Micky were in the ravens’ bodies, blinking, fluffing their feathers, and stretching their wings. And then they began to look for Black. There he was, walking briskly, though trying not to look like he was panicked, across the gravel forecourt.
“Now!” Molly cawed.
She and Micky dived. Ravens were far more powerful than either the pigeons or the blackbirds had been. Beating their strong wings, they were like trained missiles. In the next moment, Micky tactically flapped his wings into Black’s face. Molly snatched the black bag out of Black’s arms, and then they were flying off over the traffic with it.
“Good lord, Smuthers!” the queen exclaimed, clutching the windowsill as she came to her senses. “Smuthers, I’ve just had the most disturbing experience, and it strikes me that you have had a similar one!”
“Madam!” her butler, Smuthers, replied, shaking his head and adjusting his waistcoat.
Inside the palace grounds, Black stood in the rain, watching as two powerful birds carried his priceless belonging away. Clumsily they flew, accidentally bumping into each other with their wings. The bag swung like an oversized pendulum beneath them.
“You haven’t won yet,” Black snarled, and ignoring the amazed soldiers, he began to run toward the open gates.
Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette now stood by the palace railings beside two cats—a ginger tom and a white Burmese. They all watched the ravens go. At once the cats began running. Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette were slower off the mark.
“So what you’ll do is stay close to us,” Miss Suzette instructed her hypnotized Chinese tourist. “When I shout, ‘Allez, allez!’ you will do what I told you to do. Now follow me.” The hypnotized Chinese woman nodded, understanding completely Miss Suzette’s strange instructions.
AH2’s gadget bleeped. “Ah, so you’re ravens now,” he said excitedly. Snapping his machine shut, he also swiftly set off in pursuit of the birds.