Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

“Bas, can you fix this?” Malcolm gasped with a look of desperation in his eyes. “My calf looks like it’s going gangrenous. I don’t really want to have my leg chopped off.”

“Gangrenous? What’s that?” Molly asked. Bas wrinkled his nose as he inspected Malcolm’s bloody wound.

“It’s when an untreated infected wound goes bad,” he explained, “because the swelling, which is something Malcolm’s got very badly in his ankle, has stopped the blood flow. So the white blood cells that normally fight the infection can’t get there.”

“Can you help him?” Molly whispered.

“Luckily for you, Malcolm,” said Bas, licking his lips as though he was really excited, “I have some special little friends that can help you. I began cultivating them yesterday as part of an experiment.”

With that, Bas hurried off to his hut. Molly took Malcolm’s hand.

“How did you find me?”

“The tracking device…it’s in my pocket. I’ve been crawling day and night. I knew I had to get to you. Had a feeling you’d have been lucky.” Malcolm smiled.

“I’m very glad to see you, Malcolm. You flew that plane brilliantly, by the way.”

Malcolm grinned. “It was a bit hairy.” Then he frowned. “I wonder what happened to the others.” Molly shook her head.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

The door of Bas’s hut swung open again. Armed with all sorts of medical supplies, he hurried back to them. As he passed the fire, he picked up the kettle off it. “Perfect timing,” he said. “Just boiled.”

Molly sat on a chair beside Bas and watched. First of all, he washed his hands in the rainwater tap. Then he disinfected them with some medical alcohol that smelled sharp. Next, he set to work on Malcolm’s leg. He took wads of cotton gauze, and using first hot water and then the alcohol, he cleaned Malcolm’s gash. Malcolm winced and bit his lip. Then, when the wound was clean, Bas lifted a shallow plastic container out of his bag.

“What’s that?” Malcolm asked, worried. Bas nodded.

“This is going to surprise you.” He peeled back the lid of the container. To Malcolm and Molly’s horror, there in the container was a mass of little white maggots.

“Maggots!” Malcolm gasped. “They’ll eat me alive!”

Molly’s tongue stuck out as she felt sick.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Bas assured them both. “Maggots are brilliant with gangrene. You see, they like to eat rotten flesh. They don’t eat good healthy flesh. So, what we do is put them on your wound, and the little fellows will eke out all the nasty gangrenous stuff and the bad bacteria and then, when their work is done, I will put them back in their container to, erm, well, to digest!”

“You’re joking,” Malcolm said, his eyes wide. “They’re revolting.”

“I’m one hundred percent serious. These are your friends.”

At these words Molly found herself giggling. The idea of Malcolm having a party and all the little maggots being invited because they were his friends had occurred to her.

“Sorry,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t very tactful to laugh. But still she kept laughing.

“Don’t worry,” said Malcolm. “You’re just a bit hysterical. It’s because this is so odd. We’re in the middle of the jungle and my leg looks like something out of a sci-fi film and Bas here, who is like a wild man of the woods, is about to put wriggling maggots onto me. It is quite funny, I suppose, in a macabre kind of a way.” He waved a finger at the maggots. “Be good now, maggots!” he said, breathing out heavily.

“Whoa!” whispered Molly as Bas began to prod the wriggling maggots into Malcolm’s wound. At once, like things that had been starved, the maggots began tugging at the rotten flesh there. “Does it hurt?”

“Not at all,” Malcolm replied. “Just got to get over my squeamishness. It’s the idea of it that’s freaky.”

They all sat marveling at the miracle maggots until Malcolm croaked, “I’m a bit hungry. Don’t suppose you’ve got any food?”

As they had breakfast, they decided that while Malcolm rested, Molly and Bas would go to the lookout tower and see if they could spot Micky and Lily. Bas brought Malcolm a pair of his clean underpants, shorts, and a flower- patterned shirt. They left food by his side and water to drink and blankets to keep him warm if he got the shivers, as well as a book about cloud forest wildlife.

“I’ll probably just sleep.” Malcolm yawned. “By the way, have you got a radio?”

“A broken one. If you get a moment, you could see if you can fix it.”

“Sure thing.” But before Bas could explain where it was, Malcolm had shut his eyes and gone to sleep.

Molly whistled for Petula.

“She’s off with Canis,” Bas said. “Come on, Molly, let’s go. Two down, two to go. We need to find your brother and Lily.”

Across the cloud forest, a few miles away, Micky and Lily were waking up. Their bed had been the hard ground of a shallow cave. They were bundled warmly under their green synthetic-silk parachutes. Unlike Molly, they had avoided the eye of the storm. Lily had lost her grip on Micky and Molly in the initial part of the fall, but then, once her parachute had opened, Micky had been swinging under his parachute just ahead. Seeing her in the moonlight, he’d steered close by and shouted instructions to her as they parachuted down.

Unlike Malcolm and Molly, they’d had a good landing. Their parachutes tangled in the trees, but miraculously, they were deposited in a clearing. Micky detangled the parachutes, knowing that they would be useful. Lily had been most unhelpful. Shocked by the fall, she simply sat shivering under a tree. So it was Micky who’d braved the branches and rescued the bundles of material. While Lily sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, he hunted for