was as if the girl outside was rushing into his head. And now he found himself moving—running inside the hut, where he’d never been before—into a room with tables and pans and plates. He found himself picking up a strange-shaped pot the shape of a pear, with a sticklike part to it. He saw his own furry hands opening a wooden box and finding a little sack, like a white spider’s-egg nest. He was putting the sack into the pear pot. Then he was opening a door to a box on the wall and taking out a smaller box. In this were fruit-smelling food things. He put three on a flat, white, round rock thing, and then he was bounding outside.
Cappuccino gave the teapot and the plate of cookies to Bas.
“Amazing!” Bas shook his head in wonder and squinted into the monkey’s eyes to see whether he could see Molly there. Molly stuck out her tongue at him.
Molly knew she had shown Bas enough. But before she left Cappuccino’s head, she wanted to leave some instructions with him. She realized that Cappuccino might be very helpful to her if she ever encountered Miss Hunroe.
And so Molly thought some very specific instructions to her new furry friend, and then she set him free from her hypnotism. Remembering everything that Black had taught her about meegoing, Molly poured herself out of Cappuccino into herself. She gave herself clean cotton shorts and a cool, loose linen shirt. And she fixed her head.
“Wow!” Bas gulped, nearly falling off his stool as Molly materialized. “Wow! Your clothes are different. Your head is…” Bas sprang up and rushed over to Molly. He hardly dared touch her, as the way she had popped up out of nowhere was so eerie. Then he examined her head. “And your head and your bruised face are…completely better!”
“Believe me now?”
“Yes, yes, I do. Unless I’m going mad.”
Cappuccino shook his fur. He nodded at the girl before hopping off to the trees. He would sit in the trees. Sit there and wait for the girl. And when she went anywhere, he thought, he would follow her.
Twenty-six
The birds of the forest had been up for hours. And so had Miss Speal and Miss Teriyaki. They stood a little distance away from each other, Miss Speal in a long gray cotton dress that smelled of mothballs, with a white apron on top, and Miss Teriyaki in a short-sleeved white laboratory overall. They were in a cooking area outside the hut that served as a kitchen for them in the jungle. Miss Speal was at a gas cooker stirring a pot of something meaty, with a chopping board nearby laden with cloves of garlic and pots of dried chili and spices, while Miss Teriyaki was at a counter, beating a batter. Miss Teriyaki’s face and arms were covered with mosquito bites that had swollen into hard, itchy lumps.
“I’ve tried morphing into forest birds, then meegoing back into myself, but these bites are always still on my skin. They’re driving me crazy,” she complained, adding cocoa to her cake mix.
“You’re already crazy!” Miss Speal observed cuttingly. “Some of those lumps seem to be going septic. Most unattractive. “
“Your stew looks most unattractive,” Miss Teriyaki hissed. “Hope you’re not trying to poison us again. That bird was difficult to shoot, so don’t waste it.”
Miss Speal gave Miss Teriyaki a hard look. “Oh, I see! Miss Goody Goody! It won’t be long before you’re in trouble again.” Then she added sweetly. “I have some marvelous anti-itch cream in the bag beside my bed. I can’t leave this meat right now,” she hummed with a sigh. “Wouldn’t want it to
“Really?” Miss Teriyaki put her whisk down. “That’s exactly what I need. I can’t think why I didn’t bring any myself from London.” With that, she wiped her hands on a cloth and walked away, around the side of the kitchen where the water tank and the washing pots were, off toward the main living quarters a little way away.
“You didn’t think of bringing it because you’re a pleased-with-yourself idiot,” Miss Speal declared under her breath as Miss Teriyaki disappeared from view. Then, checking all around to see that no one was watching her, and with a malicious look on her face, Miss Speal pulled a glass jar out of her apron. EXTRA HOT CHENNAI SPICE, its label read. She walked over to Miss Teriyaki’s cake mix, unscrewed the jar’s lid, and tipped a good quantity of the brown powder into the batter. Then she gave the mixture a stir. “That should liven things up a bit,” she said, smiling.
Miss Hunroe was sitting outside her hut at a table where she had eaten her breakfast. She wore a smart Ecuadorian trilby and a green cape to match it, with lightweight safari trousers and a crisp shirt. Her gold coin was in her pocket. She stroked it fondly, and she smiled across at Miss Speal, who sat opposite her, looking nervous. On the table between them, beside a pot of coffee and a plate with a half-eaten croissant, was a radio.
“Coffee or tea, Miss Speal?” Miss Hunroe asked.
Miss Speal shook her head. Miss Hunroe poured herself a black coffee.
“So you say you can sense the Moon girl?”
“Yes—yes, I think so,” Miss Speal stuttered. “The feelings were weak to start with, but they are getting stronger.”
“And the boy?”
Miss Speal shut her eyes. Then she shook her head.
“No, I don’t feel him.”
Miss Hunroe eyed Miss Speal coolly.
“And you’re not just imagining it to try to get in my good books? I seem to remember that sometimes your ‘feelings’ can be a little misguided.”
“Oh, no, no, no, Miss Hunroe.”
“Hmm. Well, we’ll see.”
Miss Speal nodded. “So what are we going to do today, Miss Hunroe? I’ve cooked a delicious fowl stew for lunch. You—you won’t be disappointed, I promise you.”
Ignoring her, Miss Hunroe leaned forward and switched on the radio.
The radio crackled. An American voice became audible. “Yes, it is terrible,” the voice was saying. “The hurricane has caused complete chaos. People have had to leave their homes and stay the night in shelters. Train services are down, traffic has been disrupted. Ordinary folk can’t go about their business. But emergency services are doing the best they can, and the army is working flat out to help fix things.”
Miss Hunroe turned the volume down. “Miami,” she said. “The little hurricane we gave them yesterday obviously worked. Hope it’s wiped out those horrid theme parks. What an eyesore those roller coasters are!”
Miss Speal agreed, nodding and twitching at the same time. “Hee hee hee.”
“Hmm. Miss Speal?”
“Yes!”
“I want to talk to you about the blue stone.”
Miss Speal’s smile dropped. “What about it?” she asked, starting to wring her hands.
“I want you to give it to me for safekeeping,” Miss Hunroe said, looking her straight in the eye. Miss Speal shook her head.
“Don’t make me, Miss Hunroe. I can’t. I need it, you see.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I do. It’s become a part of me.”
“You may keep it for today. But tonight I want to find it in the gold box beside my bed. Is that clear?”
“Y-y-yes, Miss Hunroe.”
“And Miss Speal?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you wearing clothes that smell of mothballs anymore. Is that clear?”
Half a mile away, Miss Teriyaki and Miss Oakkton crouched down low in the bushes. Both were in camouflage shirts and khaki shorts, though Miss Oakkton’s were many sizes bigger than Miss Teriyaki’s. On the ground beside them was a burlap bag. A dead rabbit’s foot poked out of it. Miss Oakkton gripped the horn handle of a sharp steel
