Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

sucked on cool mints and listened to space-age ambient music that twanged and tocked, reminding him, he thought, of the size of the universe. He wondered how far away Molly Moon’s planet was. And he thrilled to think that soon he would meet a real, living extraterrestrial.

Finally the countryside gave way to concrete and brick, and soon he was driving on an overpass, past a glass-and-steel office building onto the main drag into London.

“Ah, the smoke!” Miss Hunroe gasped. “Culture and art! Heaven! Nearly in! Kensington and Chelsea soon! And the weather doesn’t seem to be bad at all!”

Both sides of the road now became punctuated with black taxis with their famous old-fashioned curvy design. Big red double-decker buses chugged past. Some were open-ended at the back so that people could jump on and off at traffic lights. And quicker than Molly had expected, they came to their destination. As the car drove alongside the tall iron railings of a giant Victorian building with four gothic towers spread out on its top, Miss Huroe announced, “So here we are! The natural history museum! This is where lessons start.” She swerved the car into a DIPLOMATS ONLY parking space.

“What’s a diplomat?” Molly asked.

“It’s a special person,” said Micky, “who works for the government of a country. Their job is to go and live in another country, where they sort out stuff for the people of their own country in that other country, if you see what I mean.” Then he looked at Miss Hunroe as though through a magnifying glass. “You’re not a diplomat, are you, Miss Hunroe?”

“Oh, no!” Miss Hunroe answered, adjusting her wavy blond hair and turning the car’s driving mirror to put on her red lipstick.

“Um…then won’t you get a ticket?” Molly asked.

“Definitely not. I’ve made arrangements,” declared their new tutor mischievously, tapping a pass of some sort that was slotted into a plastic holder in the windshield.

They all got out. Molly’s legs felt very stiff when she stood up straight. She shook them out.

The previous day, Molly had been sitting in one of the attic rooms of Briersville Park, on a wide window ledge with her legs pulled up to her chin. Rocky, the boy who she’d grown up with in the Briersville orphanage, Hardwick House, had been leaning against the wall while Micky sat in a red armchair, with Petula, their black pet pug, at his feet. He’d been scouring the papers for interesting news and reading out bits from a book of riddles to Molly and Rocky. A fire crackled in the hearth. They were all in dry clothes, having gotten back inside from spending all afternoon with Amrit, their pet elephant, who loved to play in the pool.

Molly remembered how ill Rocky had looked. How he had flopped down in the furry chair and pulled a cushion on top of him. His brown skin appeared grayer. He looked like he was catching the flu, the same flu that Ojas, their Indian friend, had caught. It was then that the phone had rung. Molly had picked it up. It was Lucy Logan.

“Hello, Molly, it’s me.”

“Oh, hi, Lucy.” Molly couldn’t quite bring herself to call Lucy Logan “Mum” even though she was her mum. She was of course Micky’s mum, too, and Rocky and Ojas’s adopted mum, but all of them called her Lucy. She had been away with Ojas and Primo for a night in Yorkshire.

“How are things?”

“Fine. Well, sort of. Rocky’s ill. Is Ojas better?”

“Not really, and now your dad…erm…Primo’s feeling bad, too. We’ll be back tonight but, annoyingly, after dinner. The weather is shocking. It’s as if there’s been a freak storm. We’re in a terrible traffic jam. Apparently a huge truck full of milk skidded and turned over. It’s completely blocked the motorway.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Molly replied. “Don’t cry over spilled milk!”

Lucy laughed down the phone.

“Well, we won’t, but it is a bit boring. We could practically walk back quicker. But listen, don’t forget, the new tutor is coming for supper tonight. Be polite. Show her around. And we got the elephant chair….”

In the background, Molly could hear Ojas’s voice. “The howdah,” he corrected Lucy.

“Yes, the howdah. We think it will fit Amrit perfectly.”

When Molly put down the phone, Micky glanced up from the papers. “Says here there’s a flu epidemic happening.” He wrinkled his nose crossly. “Wish I’d remembered to pack some medicine before I left the twenty- sixth century.”

“Wish you had,” Rocky moaned. “I bet there was brilliant medicine there.”

“Sure was,” Micky agreed. “They have a cure for practically everything in five hundred years. Suppose we could always nip forward and get some pills. Fancy a quick trip, Molly?”

This may seem a strange way for someone to talk, as if they came from the future, but in Micky’s case, it wasn’t. For Micky did in fact come from the future.

“I’d love to take you, but Primo and Lucy say I’m not allowed,” Molly replied. “I told you, they’ve confiscated my time-travel crystals and my time-stopping crystals. Can you believe it?”

This also may seem like an odd thing to say. But in Molly’s case it was entirely apt.

For Molly was a time traveler and a time stopper. She was also a world-class hypnotist. The odd thing about Molly, though, was that though she had all these amazing skills, she had never found that she had any talent for schoolwork. So, that afternoon, she’d stared out of the window, dreading the new tutor who was coming.

“I’m a bit worried about this teacher,” she confided. “Bet she hates me. All teachers hate me.” She sighed. “Always. Mind you,” she added more quietly, wiping the misted-up windowpane with the sleeve of her sweater, “I usually hate them.”

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” said Rocky, raising himself from his slump. “She won’t be anything like the teachers we used to have, Molly. Lucy and Primo chose her. Even Forest says she sounds cool.” Forest was the aging hippie who Molly and Rocky had met in Los Angeles, who also now lived in the big house that was Briersville Park.

“Talking of teachers,” said Micky, folding his newspaper into a huge paper dart, “will you teach me how to hypnotize again, Molly? I’m sure I’ll pick it up quickly, since I used to be so good at it.”

Molly nodded. “Of course. Whenever you want.” A week or so before, Molly and Micky had been a few hundred years in the future, where Micky had been put on a mind machine. It had sucked all his knowledge of how to hypnotize out of his head. “Or,” Molly suggested, “there’s the book in the library downstairs. You could use that. That’s how I learned to start with. It’s called Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained. Are you still getting nightmares about the mind machine?”

“Not really.” Micky threw the newspaper dart into the fire, where it burst into flames.

“My head really hurts,” said Rocky. He pulled a blanket off the sofa and lay down on the carpet in front of the fire, beside Petula. Petula dropped the stone that she had been sucking and snuggled up to him.

Molly shut her eyes. “Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained.” The title of the old book swam around her head. That book had changed her life. And ever since she’d found it, she’d been traveling. Traveling all over the world and through time.

“You gotta calm down, Molly,” Forest had said. “Gotta, like, get into the groove of yer own time.” That was when Lucy and Primo had hidden her special chain with the time- travel crystals on it. “Just so you won’t be tempted,” Lucy had said. “You really should stay in this time for a bit, Molly,” she had recommended. “And try not to use the hypnotism. Live like an ordinary girl. It’ll be good for you.” She had given Molly a new chain with four animals on it—a black pug, a silver elephant, and two blackbirds. “You can wear your pets instead. They’re sweet, aren’t they?”

Molly had felt happy to start with, like a bird glad to be back home safe in its nest. But then something started to happen. Molly found herself longing for excitement and wanting to spread her wings again. You see, all her life she’d been cooped up in an orphanage. She loved the freedom of adventure. And so, quite soon, life started to feel a bit boring. She wanted to see more of the world. She wanted more unpredictability. But her parents and Forest had insisted that a normal time was needed. This was why a teacher had been hired.

Primo, Lucy, and Forest said that Molly, Micky, Rocky, and Ojas couldn’t carry on as though life was one big holiday. They needed to have routine, working and playing. Lucy had promised that the tutor who was coming was very nice, but Molly was dreading lessons. As far as she knew, lessons were when you watched the clock, or got picked on by a teacher, or where you got punished for not knowing the right answer. Micky and Rocky were both natural students, good at learning, and easily able to work. Ojas was keen as mustard.