but we don’t know how to morph back into
“Maybe,” Molly said, “we have to morph into a
Molly peered down at the two streets below. Near the hat shop was an alley where she could see some rats foraging near a smelly bin. She looked down at the main street.
“That old couple waiting for a bus,” she said. “How about them? You be the man, I’ll be the woman.”
The old woman was dressed in a brown-and-yellow tweed coat with a green hand-knitted wool hat on. She was sucking on a piece of candy and clutching her brown handbag tightly with mittened hands. She had a weatherbeaten face, pink cheeks, and little brown eyes that glittered behind round spectacles, and her gray hair was as thin as cotton candy. The old man wore a flat, dark blue beret and a nylon raincoat. Molly saw that imagining the old woman as a child wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought. She wondered whether mind reading would help, so, pulling her thoughts together, Molly sent out the message, Old lady, what are you thinking? However, to Molly’s disappointment, a bubble didn’t appear above the woman’s head. It was as if mind reading was something Molly could only do in her Molly Moon body. Molly shrugged her bird shoulders. She supposed it didn’t really matter. The book hadn’t said that mind reading would help a person to morph.
“Are you ready?” Micky the pigeon asked. Molly nodded. And they both began.
Molly looked about for a pattern. The bus shelter was good, as it had glass on the front of it that was stained with old watermarks. The drips definitely looked like mountains. Holding these in her mind, Molly did her best to imagine the old woman as a child. She would have been smaller and thinner, Molly thought, and much less wrinkly, of course. She would be wearing a child’s coat and hat, with a satchel instead of a bag. Molly’s eyes considered the old lady’s face and drank it in. And as though she had a magic eraser, her imagination erased the crow lines around her eyes and the puppetlike marionette lines around her mouth. The creases of her brow and the puckering around her chin dissolved, and the old lady’s mottled skin was replaced by the fresh complexion of a child.
Molly pulled the image of the water-stained mountain range into the center of her mind. And as the two visions merged, Molly aimed her being at the old lady. She felt herself shiver and quiver, and suddenly she lost all sensation of her claws, her wing tips, and her tail.
“Good-bye, and thank you!” Molly managed to cry as she whizzed away. In a split second she couldn’t feel her pigeon body at all. But this moment was minuscule, for in the next, the pouring feeling swished through Molly.
“EEK!” the old lady shrieked.
Molly had done it! She’d morphed into a
“Are you all right, dear?” her husband asked with concern.
Molly floundered for a second as the shock of her situation overwhelmed her. Then, seeing that the old woman’s personality was stronger than she had reckoned on, she concentrated hard. Molly felt like she was wrestling with the lady’s spirit, trying to pin her down. Molly was winning, but not entirely. Finally Molly took control, and the woman’s personality was submerged. As soon as Molly felt she was in charge, she thought apologies to her, explaining to her what was happening. At once, she felt the person who she was in relax.
Molly felt strange. It was extraordinary to be in another human body, and it was an extra shock to be in an
On top of the physical sensations were the mental ones. Molly was at once familiar with the woman’s life and her personal history. She didn’t see every memory at once, of course, for there were billions of them tucked away in the old lady’s mind. But Molly knew that she was called Sofia and that the man beside her was Wilf, her dear husband, who she had married fifty-four years before in a church in Rome.
“I said, are you all right, Sofia?” her husband repeated. Brought to her senses, Molly was now in the moment. She saw two street performers, one with a violin, the other with a flute, who were sitting near the bus stop filling the evening air with their music, and she saw the man, Wilf, looking concernedly at her.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Molly as Sofia said, an Italian accent rounding her words. “I think something stung me, that’s all.”
“Stung you? Where?”
“On my nose,” Molly said. Then she added, “Um, are you there, Micky?”
“Micky? What are you talking about, Sofia?”
“Nothing, nothing, you just look like Mickey Mouse in that hat.”
The man looked very confused.
Molly glanced upward, then saw a scruffy pigeon flying toward her. It flapped over and landed on her arm. She knew at once it was Micky.
“Good lord, Sofia,” her husband exclaimed. “Get that filthy bird off you.” He lunged toward Micky the pigeon, who fluttered upward and then back down to perch again on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Wilf. The poor bird’s just being friendly. Now I must use the bathroom in that restaurant, dear. Please wait here.”
Without waiting for Wilf’s reaction, and still with Micky the pigeon on her shoulder, Molly as Sofia waddled to the curb. She looked left and right, and crossed the road.
A mile and a half away, the truck that was carrying Petula and her new friend Stanley pulled into the Nine Elms Flower Market. It drove around the vast covered building and parked. The giant plastic electric doors were in operation, opening and shutting as flower sellers wheeled trolleys piled high with boxes of flowers inside. Stan’s driver climbed out of his truck, and Petula and Stanley the bulldog heard him greet an old friend.
“How are ya? Cor, me legs ain’t ’alf stiff. Don’t feel like unloadin’ this lot now. Fancy a pint?”
“That’s the spirit.”
“See you later, Stanley. Good dog.” And then their voices receded into the distance.
Stanley pushed his nose under the tarpaulin at the side of the truck to check they’d gone.
“Here we go, luv,” he said to Petula. “Squeeze past ’ere, and we’ll get you sorted.” He disappeared past some flower boxes and hopped off the truck. Petula followed him. After a leap onto a bale of cardboard and a jump onto a crate full of flowerpots, she was down.
Stanley had already found his friend.
“How long you been standin’ here all on yer Jack Moss?”
“Not long,” said his friend, a small brown-and-white Jack Russell with a cheeky face and an amused look in his eye.
“Do your people know you’re out?”
“The boys were playing a card game with their dad. Let myself out of the dog flap. See you found yourself a girlfriend, Stan.”
“I’d be so lucky! This is Petula. Petula, meet Magglorian. He’s got a good loaf a’ bread, and he’ll be able to ’elp ya.” Magglorian smiled and nodded. Petula smiled back, a little bit embarrassed by the introduction.
“Loaf of bread is head in rhyming Cockney,” Magglorian said. “Talking to Stan here can be like talking to someone who’s speaking double Dutch.” Magglorian laughed. “Nice to meet you, Petula. So how can I help?”
“I’m trying to find the children that I live with. They’ve disappeared,” Petula began. “A woman has taken them.”
Magglorian’s eyes widened.
And so Petula told Magglorian what had happened. Magglorian frowned and shook his head so that his brown ears flapped. “Hmm.” When Petula got to the bit about hypnotism, she saw Magglorian give Stanley a “I see we’ve got a right one here” look, which annoyed her.
“Look, mister, you can believe what you like,” Petula said. “I haven’t got time to waste trying to persuade you.” She turned to Stanley. “Thanks for the lift. I should be just fine now. Really, thank you so much, Stanley. Good-bye.”
Petula didn’t pay Magglorian another glance. She turned and began walking away.
“Magglorian, how come you did that?” Stanley asked, amazed by his friend’s behavior.
