Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery mm-5

by Georgia Byng

  “Yes, Miss Hunroe,” the gathering whispered.

  “Yes, Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki whimpered. She lifted her eyes dolefully. As she did, she caught the eye of Miss Speal. Miss Speal’s small brown eyes seemed to be laughing, as though what had just happened was the funniest thing in the world.

  The next morning Molly was woken at dawn by a giant, long-beaked toucan squawking in a tree near her shelter. It had started to rain. Above, the sky was gray and rumbling with thunder again. Cappuccino the monkey chattered at her from a nearby tree, as if to say good morning. Bas was already up. When he saw Molly stir, he came over and put his blanket around her shoulders.

  “You’ll need your energy today,” he said. Then he went to his rucksack. Taking a large, leathery, bowl-shaped leaf, he put something from his bag into it. He added some sort of juice from a bottle and then came back with this forest bowl full of sticky, cold porridge. Molly ate her stodgy breakfast. Bas watched her like a teacher might watch a precious student. Molly knew that he believed everything she had told him about Miss Hunroe. It now seemed to her that, as though she was a prizefighter about to enter the ring or a warrior on whose victory many people’s lives depended, he was treating Molly with the utmost respect.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Bas led Molly to a clearing in the trees. Ahead and above them, magnificent in the morning light, were the owl-shaped crags. Molly’s insides began quivering with nerves. She swallowed hard. She knew that soon she would be facing Miss Hunroe. Molly had no idea how many of the other horrible women were with her, or what the challenge ahead was. Molly’s mind raced. She hoped Miss Hunroe was not expecting her. Molly felt like a person on some sort of twisted, dangerous TV challenge show, except of course this was real and there was no getting away—no calling up the producer of the TV show and saying, “Stop! I’ve had enough.”

  “I hope I can sort this out,” she said to Bas. “There’s—there’s a good chance that I won’t be able…” Molly’s voice trailed off as the immensity of the task ahead sank in.

  “It’s amazing that you’re trying,” Bas said reassuringly. “I think you are very brave.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

  They headed directly for the crags. Bas led Molly down the slope toward a wall of bushes. He helped Molly climb a tree, and they both peeped over the top.

  “There they are,” he murmured.

  As if transported from a dream and glistening in the rain, glowing red, gray, green, and blue like alien objects, were the four vast weather rocks, the Logan Stones. They stood in a circle, huge, majestic, and utterly beautiful. One was orange, with red flecks in it that glowed as though the sun burned from within it. Another was shot with an array of tropical greens. The third was cloudy gray, with white flecks in it, as though both dark storm clouds and the lightest, fluffiest clouds inhabited it, and the fourth was blue—bright turquoise like Caribbean waters and deep blue like the ocean.

  “And the rock behind the stones,” Bas whispered, “with the water gushing out of it? That’s the spring of the Coca River. And that giant mud mound that looks like a sandcastle in the middle of the stones? That’s a…” He fell silent.

  What Molly saw next was like a vision from a nightmare. Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton stepped out from behind the mud mound and into view. They stood in the rain, in the center of the stones. Molly and Bas shrank back. Molly could hardly believe it. She had to pinch herself to make sure she was awake. To have come all this way, to be in the middle of the wilderness, and to be actually looking at Miss Hunroe in a khaki jungle suit and Miss Oakkton in a tentlike robe was surreal. Both of them were soaked to the bone, their clothes and hair sopping wet. Neither held the hypnotism book. They simply stood beside the stones, staring at their hands.

  “Oooow!” Miss Oakkton suddenly boomed, and as fast as genies disappearing into a bottle, the two women vanished, leaving two piles of clothes on the muddy ground.

  The area was completely still. Molly scrutinized the space between the stones. She was sure that Miss Oakkton and Miss Hunroe had just morphed. How else could they have disappeared like that? Yet where had they gone? What had they turned into?

  Molly readied herself. “I’m going in,” she said. “Don’t worry, Bas. I’ll be fine. Wait here, okay?”

  Bas nodded. “Good luck, Molly.”

  Molly approached the stones cautiously. Her hands were sweating from fear. Cappuccino swung himself up into a tall tree and sat on a branch to watch. Molly felt strange, her skin felt prickly. This wasn’t from terror, she realized—this prickly feeling was from the energy of the four giant stones. As she moved into the area in the center of them, she felt their power. The gray and blue stones both emanated a cold feeling, while the red-orange stone gave off a heat. The green stone made the hair on her arms stand on end. All the stones had a pull that tugged as though they were gigantic magnets and Molly was made of metal.

  Molly’s eyes darted nervously about. Perhaps Miss Hunroe and her posse knew that she was there. Perhaps they had morphed into birds and were watching her. Molly switched her whole self on to high alert, vigilant to every splashing raindrop and to every sound about her. Maybe the women had learned human-to-human morphing by now. If they had, they might try to morph into her. Molly steeled herself. She would not let them get into her mind. Then she had a horrid thought. What if they all tried to get into her mind at once? Molly shivered. She stepped gingerly past Miss Hunroe’s and Miss Oakkton’s discarded clothes and shoes and around the sandcastlelike mound of earth.

  Then Molly went over to the blue Logan Stone and gave it a gentle push. It ground against its stone base as it moved, rocking smoothly to and fro. Molly walked behind the stone. Did it hide a secret entrance? She gently pushed the giant stone again, and then, one by one, prodded the others—but they all seemed to be simply enormous rocks with curved bottoms on stone platforms.

  Where had the women vanished? She stared at the ground to think. Above her, the sky rumbled with thunder again. A yellow butterfly darted by, dodging the rain, and made Molly jump. Was that Miss Hunroe? Then she noticed a beetle scuttling across the mud by her feet. Was that Miss Oakkton? What if they had turned into venomous snakes or stinging scorpions or poisonous spiders? Maybe they were preparing to attack her! Molly’s flesh crawled, and she glanced from side to side, checking all about her for dangerous creatures.

  It was then that she noticed an enormous antlike insect trotting across the ground toward the mound of mud in front of her. And there was another.

  The turreted mound was definitely a sort of ant-hill. Then Molly remembered what Micky had said about the huge model insect mound in the museum in London and realized that this was a termite mound. As she studied the termites crowding into it, Molly considered how it must seem like a massive kingdom for the termites that lived there.

  “If you stand in the very center of the ring of the stones, in the very center of the force field that the four big Logan Stones make, with the four colored stones in your hand, and if you rub the stones…” Theobald Black’s words echoed distantly in her mind.

  Molly saw instantly that the termites had built their mound exactly in the center of the ring of stones, in the center of the Logan Stones’ force field.

  Molly remembered how the women had been staring at their hands and how Miss Oakkton had yelped. Had they been staring down at termites so that they could morph into them? Had Miss Oakkton been bitten by one? Molly watched a small termite carry a piece of bark six times bigger than itself into the mound. She’d heard somewhere that ants and termites can carry ten to fifty times their body weight. Why, if Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton turned into termites, they could easily carry the small pieces of stone from the cover of the hypnotism book inside the mound! The sky gave a huge roll of thunder and then opened. Heavy rain poured down. Molly had to wipe her eyes in order to see. Had Miss Hunroe caused this weather? Had she seen Molly and switched on this rain? Molly wasn’t sure
what Miss Hunroe was doing. But the answer to where Miss Hunroe was now seemed glaringly obvious.

  If Miss Hunroe and her horrid gang were now termites inside the mound, turning it into some kind of termite-built weather-changing chamber, and if Miss Hunroe had the colored stones with her, too—well, inside the termite mound was where Molly must go.

  For a split second Molly wondered if she should destroy the mound, but then thought better of it. For if she did, all the bad weather Miss Hunroe had already caused might be set like that forever in the stones.

  Molly didn’t want to become a termite. The idea of becoming a termite, with big pincers and a poisonous bite, and then of coming face-to-face with other termites, was terrifying.

  One termite paused near the entrance of the mound. It was carrying a large piece of bark and struggling in the rain. Molly took a deep breath. Clearing her mind of all worries and negative thoughts, she began to concentrate.

  Twenty-nine

  “I’m not leaving here,” Lily declared stubbornly. She was sitting on a mossy rock with her shoes off, beside a stream. “I’ve got blisters, and it’s too wet. There’s no point anyway. We’ve been walking for ages, and we’re just as lost as we were before. We’re stuck in a stupid soaking-wet forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. And I’ve got four mosquito bites from last night.”

  Micky was halfway up a nearby tree.

  “You remind me of what I used to be like,” he said. “I used to grumble a lot. Hey, there’s a good view from here.”

  “Of what? Trees? Lovely.” Lily threw a stone hard so that it hit a rock and cracked in two.

  “Actually, I can see a road.”

  “

  “Really?” Lily stood up.

  “No, not really. But I might have.”

  Just then a dog came out of the forest. Lily took one look at it and screamed. Frantically she stepped deep into the stream, right up to her waist. “Wolf!” she yelled. “Micky! There’s a wolf!”

  Canis looked at the screaming girl. The fear smell coming off her was electric.

  “RUUUUAARFF!” he barked, which meant, “It’s okay.”

  The girl backed farther into the water so that it was up to the chest.

  Then Canis smelled the boy. It was very strange. The boy had an odor distinctly like Petula’s mistress. Canis followed his nose and squinted into the tree. Now he could see the boy and was struck by how similar to the girl he looked. He was from the same litter; in fact, he must be the girl’s brother whom Petula had spoken of. Canis smelled that the children were nervous about him, and so he gave them a sign not to be scared. He wiped the air with his paw four times and then lay on his back to show his tummy. All the while, he wagged his tail a lot.

  “He’s not a wolf.” Micky laughed. “Lily, look, he’s a pet!” Carefully Micky came down from the tree, and gently he approached the animal. He stroked Canis’s tummy. Canis grinned at him.

  Gradually Lily waded out of the stream. Once both the children were close, Canis took the material of one of Micky’s trouser legs in his jaws.

  “What? What are you…” Micky started. Canis began to tug, trying to pull the boy toward him.

  “I think he wants us to follow him,” Micky said. Then he exclaimed, “Lily, if he’s a pet, then that means he must belong to somebody! They can help us find the others!”

  Lily nodded, and for the first time since they’d crash-landed in the forest, she grinned. “What are we waiting for?” she said. “Let’s go!”

  At that precise moment, three miles away, Molly was nothing. She had left her own body and was careering through the air toward the termite that she’d singled out near its earthy mound. And in the next second she was becoming it.

  Molly’s personality poured into the termite’s unsuspecting black-armored body, and at once Molly felt, from top to toe, totally termite. The termite’s character was more robotic than the other creatures she’d inhabited. Molly saw that all this insect ever thought about was light, dark, work and rest, food, food, food, build, build, build, and its colony and the queen. The importance of the colony was hardwired into the termite’s reasoning. The existence of other termites and the queen was a huge part of this termite’s sense of self. And the survival of the colony was the prime desire of each and every one of the termites in it.

  Molly noticed how light the piece of bark that the termite was carrying felt. If she were human, a piece of wood this much bigger than herself would feel like the weight of a piano. It would squash her flat. Yet this load felt as light as a schoolbag. Then a raindrop hit her. Its force knocked her sideways. Molly realized that she must get under cover.

  The termite mound ahead was massive. The Logan Stones around it seemed like mountains that touched the sky. Molly saw fellow termites trotting through the water and mud toward a low entrance in the side of the mound, their six legs working along the ground so that they moved incredibly fast. Carrying the lump of sweet-smelling wood in her pincers, Molly the termite followed them. She fell in line and was soon brushing sides with other termites. Molly was scared by their alienlike heads, but she was determined not to let alarm take hold of her. If it did, the other termites would sense her fear, and it would spread like wildfire through the colony.

  The tunnel into the insect palace was dark, but Molly soon found her black eyes adjusting. She followed the termite ahead of her, who was carrying a piece of bark, and found herself in yet another smooth-walled corridor. Ignoring the thought of how deep into the mound she must now be, she continued to tail the other termite. Other passages joined her tunnel and other busy termites bustled across Molly’s path as they made their way to other parts of the labyrinthine mound or walked past her in the opposite direction, heading outside. It was rather like being in the passageways of an underground train station. The termites were as unfriendly as strangers in a city and as preoccupied as people on their way to work. Despite this, Molly sensed a thin, metallic buzz that rattled through the air. The termites were talking to one another.

  Molly took a right turn, a left turn, and an upward turn, all the time not really knowing what her plan should be or where she should go to find Miss Hunroe. Molly’s guide dropped away to the right, into a burrow with high ceilings where other bits of bark and rotting vegetable matter had been dumped. Molly dropped her load, too, but instead of following the other termite again, now she chose her own direction. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to do, but oddly, she felt a pull. Just as the giant Logan Stones had done earlier, it was as if Molly was made of metal and there was a magnet drawing her. It was pulling her deeper inside the termite mound. She hoped that the stones from Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts were somehow responsible.

  Soon the tunnel ended. It opened into a large oval chamber. Four other tunnel entrances were dotted about the walls, and a little weak light filtered through a hole in the side of the mound’s roof. Molly could hear the rain hitting the shell of the mound. It sounded like a frenzy of drums.

  Fewer termites scurried in and out of this area. Some were busy working at the walls, regurgitating something sticky from their mouths and smudging it on them. Beyond, in the depths of the chamber, termites were dropping sweet-smelling food in front of what looked like a ginormous, sluggish caterpillar. This monstrous creature was at least two hundred times the size of the termites. It lay as still as an obese person on a daybed, oozing a slime that smelled of wood and moss. Molly knew instinctively that this revolting-looking thing was the termite queen.

  Her eyes fell upon an area in front of the queen, where two big termites stood. Once more Molly felt the strange magnetic pull. And, oddly, a rush of warmth. Just as the reddish orange Logan Stone had radiated warmth, something was giving off heat here, too. Molly moved closer.

  Then she saw three of the stones from the cover of the hypnotism book. They were huge now because she was so small. The green stone, the gray stone, and the red stone.

  Molly was astounded. Now she knew for sure
that the two monstrous termites beside the colored stones were Miss Oakkton and Miss Hunroe. And this lowly termite cave was the very nerve center of world weather control!

  Molly realized she was staring. She snapped her gaze away and tried to find something ordinary and termitelike to do. Whatever happened, she must not let them know that she was in the room. So, joining the other termites who were mending the wall, Molly tried to do what they were doing. She gave what felt like a heavy burp, and a chunk of sticky spit came up into her mouth. Coming to grips with her mandibles, she prodded the stuff onto the wall and smoothed it out, just as the other termites were doing. As she worked, Molly trained her hearing on the twittering ants around her.

  “Pat it pat it flat it mend it,” said the termite beside her.

  “Great one we adore you,” a termite was saying to the queen termite.

  “Great one we are your servants,” said another.

  And “Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed you. Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed you,” said a fourth.

  Molly now caught the sound of the Hunroe termite. She was talking in an angry, electric buzz. “I would like to put some cyclones up over the Pacific,” she was saying, “but because of stupid Miss Speal losing the blue water stone, I can’t.”

  “Think zem up! You can do it, Miss Hunroe. Use the gray stone instead,” came the unmistakable reply of the Oakkton termite.

  Molly watched as Miss Hunroe lay her front four termite legs on the three flat stones in front of her. The colored stones began to hum and throb and beam so that the whole chamber filled with red, gray, and green light. Both the alien-faced termites with their huge pincers and antennas were lit up. The scene was like something out of a science-fiction horror film. The termites beside Molly turned to look.