by Georgia Byng
“This is so…diff…i…cult,” Molly cawed, gripping the bag with her claws and beating her wet wings hard so she didn’t fly into the top branches of a tree.
“It’s slipping! It’s so heavy!” Micky cried.
Below in St. James’s Park a child looked up from feeding the pond ducks. “Mama!” he shouted. “Looooook at de birds!”
Another raven flew past. “What’s in?” he cawed. “Wormsies?”
Molly glanced below and behind and saw Black’s large form charging across the muddy grass of the park. “Oh, no, Micky! He’s after us.” She didn’t see that to his rear, waddling and hobbling as fast as they could, and out of breath, were Miss Suzette and Miss Teriyaki. Beside them trotted their red-haired tourist, and ahead of them ran two cats. And a little distance behind them was AH2, who was watching the whole procession in fascination.
With difficulty, the ravens carried the swinging bag through the rain toward Westminster Abbey. Diving toward an arch into a large, tree-edged square beyond it, they found themselves surrounded by scores of schoolboys. Then they flapped and fluttered through another, smaller arch into what looked like an ancient courtyard.
“This is perfect,” Micky croaked. “Let’s morph into some of these boys.”
They dropped the bag and hopped territorially onto it. In the distance, they heard the sirens of police cars. A slow clap of thunder rolled through the sky above.
“Maybe the queen reported Black,” Molly the raven said. “Maybe he’s been caught.”
“Come on, let’s change. Who are you going to be?” Micky asked. Molly picked a boy with dark hair.
“I’ll be him,” said Molly. “And there’s a good pattern in the doodle on his schoolbook.”
“Okay,” agreed Micky. “And I’ll be him.” He nodded at a freckle-faced boy. “And remember, we have to see them as babies because they’re not adults.”
In a jiffy, the twins had morphed. Molly became a soccer fanatic called Max.
For a moment, Molly paused. She was shocked. This was the first time she’d ever been male. And it felt very different. Her body was tougher, with parts she’d never had before. Her blood felt hotter and coursed through her veins in a wilder way. Her feelings were less bothersome and seemed deeper inside her. And when a soccer ball was kicked past her, she had an urge to kick it, in the same way that as a dog, she’d wanted to chase cats.
Micky, now a boy called Jo Jo, shooed the dazed ravens off the bag. “Molly? Are you there? What are you waiting for?” Molly snapped to and picked up the bag.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
But as she turned, Black came charging into the courtyard. To make things worse, two sly cats and Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette followed him. It was then that Molly saw that none of the other boys about her were carrying bags, and so the bag she held, with the precious book in it, was easy to spot. Theobald Black, Miss Suzette, and Miss Teriyaki all moved toward her. Molly saw that she was cornered. Students began pointing at the white and ginger cats.
Molly thought quickly. She couldn’t run, but she could morph. A camera-bearing Chinese tourist had meandered into the courtyard. For one thing, she was athletic looking. For another, she was closer to the arch that led to the road. She was, Molly realized, the best person to morph into. Molly began to change. As she did, she lobbed the black bag high up into the air, over the heads of the cats, over the schoolchildren, and over Miss Suzette, Miss Teriyaki, and Black, toward the Chinese woman. Her plan was to arrive in the Chinese woman’s body, catch the now falling bag, and then run.
As Molly morphed, she was unaware of Miss Suzette’s words that were shouted into the damp air. “Allez, allez!”
As Molly’s spirit washed into the redhead’s body, she felt her arms reach up for the bag. But at the same time, she was aware of something else—something odd. The Chinese woman’s character hadn’t sunk out of sight. She hadn’t relinquished control of her body or her mind at all. To Molly’s horror, it was as if the woman had expected Molly’s arrival.
And she had. For this was Miss Suzette’s “little trap.” She had predicted that Molly might need a perfect getaway body. So she had hypnotized the Chinese woman to expect Molly’s invasion. However hard Molly shoved at the woman’s mind and tried to spread out in her brain, nothing happened. It was impossible to destabilize the woman’s position, to dislodge her, and to take command.
“Eeeeeeek!” the Chinese redhead shrieked. To the students in the courtyard, she looked like a person fresh out of the madhouse. She jumped about clutching a big bag, shaking her orange locks, and wriggling about as though she was doing some sort of crazy dance. And a slim Japanese woman in a red raincoat, walking with a stick, stepped toward the odd Chinese woman. She relieved her of her bag and calmly made off with it. Miss Suzette waddled after her, and two cats followed them, their tails in the air.
Molly, meanwhile, was stuck. Stuck in the Chinese woman’s body, neither able to take control of it nor to leave it. For just as Miss Suzette had hypnotized the woman to withstand Molly’s body borrowing, she had also instructed her not to let Molly go, to hold her for as long as she could. The woman was like a dog with a bone and wouldn’t let go.
“I WILL NOT LET YOU GO!” the Chinese woman shouted at the sky. “I WILL NOT LET YOU GO!” Then Molly felt something else happening. Something super strange. Someone else was morphing into the Chinese woman’s body, too.
For a few seconds, Molly was terrified, for she had no idea who had come to share the tourist’s mind and body. She simply felt this person’s arrival, like a massive downpour of water. It was overwhelming, breathtaking, and shocking. And it sloshed in the space that was already uncomfortable with both Molly and the Chinese woman fighting for command. It joined them there like some unwelcome, uninvited guest.
“GET OUT!” Molly shouted. These words came out of the Chinese tourist’s mouth. “GET OUT!” the woman yelled at her hands. Students about her thought that she was having a fit. One hurried off to fetch the school doctor.
As Molly struggled, it was as if a veil lifted. Because as the person who had joined them settled, Molly saw who it was. The person was Theobald Black.
Fourteen
Molly could hardly believe it, but it was true. Sharing the same head space proved it. Theobald Black was a good person.
He really did run a charity that raised money for children’s homes. He really had wanted to put the book in the queen’s Tower of London, so that it was safe. And he didn’t own Black’s Casino—his brother, Geoffrey Black, did. What was more, he knew about Miss Hunroe and her horrid accomplices. He was a very good hypnotist, but not a time traveler or a time stopper. And he could even read minds. Molly tried to absorb as much information as she could.
Meanwhile, Black was trying to help Molly—help her to extract herself from the hypnotized Chinese woman’s viselike grasp. And as he wrestled the Chinese woman’s force away from Molly, Molly had a chance to escape. She needed to find the boy, Max, again. There he was, sitting on a step, looking confused. Ignoring the Chinese woman’s efforts to suck her back in, Molly focused on the boy and the pattern on his book. Soon Molly was whipping through the air, and a second later, she was back in Max’s body. Molly as Max looked up at her freckle-faced friend.
“Is that still you, Micky?”
“Yes. Molly, is that you?”
As he spoke, the red-haired woman gave a shriek. “I won’t let you win!” she shouted.
“You’ll never guess what,” Molly hurriedly explained to Micky. “Black is in the Chinese lady now, and he’s a good person. We got him all wrong. We’ve got to help him!”
“You cannot leave!” the Chinese woman was bellowing to her feet. The shocked pupils who were still in the courtyard could see that this woman really wasn’t right in the head. They stepped respectfully away from her in hushed silence. Micky eyed a nearby tap and a bucket that was under it.
“I read this thing about fighting dogs,” he mumble
d, half to himself. Seconds later he was filling the bucket with water. And a moment after that, he was coming up behind the Chinese woman.
In a split second, he had emptied the contents of his bucket all over the woman, whose mouth opened to scream, though no sound came out. Shocked, she stood bolt upright. Everyone was silent. Children gasped in disbelief at Jo Jo’s behavior, and then with admiration. For the drenched woman finally stopped raving. Sopping wet, she slumped to the ground.
Amid the chaos, Black materialized in the wet schoolyard holding an umbrella, which he calmly opened.
A third of a mile away, Petula, Magglorian, and Stanley arrived at Buckingham Palace.
“Cor, can smell the corgis from ’ere,” said Magglorian, his nose puckering. Petula raised her head to the rain and wrinkled her forehead at the sky. She hated lightning.
“Oh, dear, we’re too late, she’s not here,” she said, disappointed. Her face turned like the dial of a compass toward Westminster Abbey. “That way!”
“Righty-o,” said Stanley cheerfully.
“Let’s push on,” said Magglorian. “It is getting really wet. Over there is near the Houses of Parliament, where the politicians live. That’s near my home, too.” And so the dogs set off through the sheets of rain.
Black glared up at the blackening sky. Behind them, a teacher arrived and began comforting the tourist.
“A lot is at stake. We must prioritize.” Black nodded over to the Chinese woman. “She’s in safe hands now.” Urging Molly and Micky, who were still schoolboys, to move on quickly, he helped them navigate their way out of the courtyard.
They followed Theobald Black around the school’s tree-lined square. The rain was pelting down. In the distance, they could still hear police sirens.
“I expect you two will be wanting to meego back to your own bodies,” said Black, pulling up the neckline of his coat to conceal his face as much as he could. “I can teach you.”
“Wow, that would be brilliant,” Molly gasped.
“That would be incredible,” agreed Micky, adding, “It’s amazing how wrong we got you. We had you down as a really bad man.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything people tell you about a person,” Black said gruffly. “You know the old saying—never judge a book by its cover.”
Molly looked up at him. He was unattractive, it couldn’t be denied. His thick, grayish skin was ugly and pitted, but now that Black was looking directly at her, Molly saw that there was a kind twinkle in his eye.
“I’m sorry we thought you were bad,” Molly apologized. “You didn’t deserve it.”
“Hunroe and her friends seemed good,” explained Micky. “They painted you as a dishonest, two-bit slime-ball to fit their story. How much do you know about Miss Hunroe?”
“A lot. I know her very, very well. I went to school with her. She was as nasty then as she is now. Miss Popular, she was, with every teacher thinking she was an angel. She liked to have sycophantic followers….”
“Syco what?” said Molly.
“Sycophantic,” Micky intervened. “It’s when a person blindly follows another person, doing whatever they want like an obedient dog. That’s called being sycophantic.”
Theobald Black nodded. “Hunroe liked her followers exactly like that. They’d all look up to her and behaved as though they hoped some of her Hunroeness might rub off on them. I suppose she was always glamorous. They all wanted to be her and would do whatever she wanted.”
“Sounds like the gang she has now.”
“I’m sure. Miss Hunroe wouldn’t be able to exist without her obedient followers. She had a particularly evil thuggy helper at school called Bartholomew. She used him to do her dirty work, to bully people, to get what she wanted. She hasn’t changed.” They walked under the old arch at the entrance of the school. “And now she’s gotten what she wanted—the book. And she’s gone.”
“But I haven’t!” came a smug response behind them. Black and the schoolboys spun around.
AH2 stood behind them, looking proud as a cockerel. Smiling, he thrust his hand forward. In it was a red box.
“Who on earth is this person?” Black asked Molly.
“He’s an alien hunter,” Molly replied matter-of-factly. “Somehow that gadget of his can always tell where I am, whoever I am. He wants to be my contact on Earth.”
All of a sudden Molly got some inspiration. She was feeling a little guilty about keeping Max from his lessons, since he’d get into trouble for missing them, and she supposed it might be interesting to find out more about AH2. So, quick as a somersault, she morphed into him. As she left Max’s body, she thanked him, and she introduced herself to AH2 before pushing his character down below her.
“I’m Molly now,” Molly as AH2 said to Black and Micky. “And Micky, maybe you should be him.” She pointed to a Rasta man who was walking toward Parliament Square carrying a placard that read WAKE UP: CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE. Above, a flash of lightning lit up the dark gray sky.
“It certainly is,” Black muttered, adding mysteriously, “and quicker than any of you might suspect.”
“Where to, guv?” asked the cab driver. They were now out on the busy street.
“Blissamore Hotel, please,” Black replied. Above them, another flash of lightning splintered across the sky. Heavier raindrops began to fall. “Good lord, it really has started,” Black said to himself.
They all piled into the cab, dripping from the rain. Molly as AH2, and Micky as the Rasta, whose name was Leonard.
“Wow! Everyt’ing is cool in ’ere!” Micky said, with a Jamaican lilt to his voice, as he settled back into his seat. “This guy listens to a lot of music. It’s flying around his brain like ribbons.” The cab set off.
“I don’t believe it!” Molly gasped as she glanced through AH2’s mind. “This guy shot me with a tracking dart! That’s how he always knows where I am. I remember where now. It was by the pool—do you remember, Micky?”
It was then that she heard the barking. It was Petula’s bark, Molly was sure of it. Forgetting about AH2, Molly wound down the window. She saw Petula with Stanley and Magglorian. They were running alongside the cab in the rain.
“Stop the car!” Molly cried. And in the next moment she had opened the cab door and was on the street, hugging Petula. Behind, other cabs and buses beeped.
“You better get in,” the cab driver suggested. “Or I’ll get a ticket.”
“So has your pet changed into this man now?” Stanley asked Petula, looking at AH2, extremely confused.
“Yes! Thanks, you two. We found her!”
Magglorian sniffed the air and eyed the traffic that was building up on the road behind.
“Talking of pets,” he said, “I’d better get back to mine. They’ll be worrying.”
“Same ’ere,” said Stanley. “Mine’ll be leavin’ the market soon.”
Both dogs barked at Petula.
“Nice meeting you, Petula!” Magglorian said, wagging his tail.
“Good luck, girl!” Stanley added. He dropped a stone into the car. “And there you go, Petula, I’ve been meaning to give you that! A little present. Good-bye.” He gave her a cheeky wink, and with that, the two London dogs scampered away, dodging pedestrians and looking like they owned the streets. Then Petula jumped in the cab, picked up the present of the pebble, and shook herself down.
Ten minutes later, they had arrived back at the hotel where Black had stayed the night before.
“Come on up.” Black led Molly as AH2 and Micky as the Rasta past a gray-suited receptionist toward the hotel’s elevator.
“Is this where you normally live?” Molly asked.
“I live in a few places,” Black said, pressing the elevator button.
The doors pinged open and they all shuffled in.
“Just explain,” Molly said, tilting her head. “Why do you live in a hotel and how?”
“This hotel belongs to my brother. He inherited it from our mother when she died. The deal was, I go
t the equivalent in cash and an apartment to live in.” Molly watched bright numbered buttons light up as the elevator ascended through the building. “He’s a businessman now. He owns other hotels, too,” Black continued. “And of course the casino. I don’t really approve of that part of his business, but he let me have an office there and it seemed a waste to refuse on principle. I mean, he’ll continue running that gambling house whatever I say, and it’s an excellent location for my charity, so in the balance it’s a good idea.”
They all stepped out onto a carpeted landing. Then Micky stalled.
“Before we go into your apartment,” he said, “I’ve just got a few questions for you, Mr. Black.”
Black nodded. “Fire away. You need to trust me a hundred percent.”
“Firstly,” Micky started, “Miss Hunroe showed us some pictures. In one you were in the park, sitting on a bench with a woman, a woman in a hat with a bird on it, and you seemed to be hypnotizing her with a pendulum. How can you explain that?”
“Oh!” Black exclaimed. “Mrs. Moriarty! She’s an antiques dealer. She was selling me that pendulum. I collect pendulums, you see. She met me in the park because I couldn’t get to Camden, where her shop is. Hunroe is so devious,” he added. “That picture must have made me look really bad. I have the bill for it inside, if you want proof.”
“Hmm. And what about the man from Wiltshire Jams? There was a picture of you in a café looking deep into his eyes.”
“Yes, I know exactly the occasion you are talking about.” Mr. Black smiled. “I can’t believe Hunroe was photographing me then. The old man’s name is Sam. We call him Jammy Sam. He’s my uncle. I met him for a coffee, and he got a bit of dust in his eye. He wanted me to see whether I could get it out for him. I could show you some family photographs, if you like.”
Micky nodded. “Hmm.”
Molly interrupted. “Micky, I promise you, Black is fine. I’ve seen inside his head. Really, he’s good. You don’t need to worry.” Micky tilted his head to one side and considered the situation.
“If you say so, Molly.”