Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

knife, while Miss Teriyaki held a bamboo pipe up to her lips. Four fat guinea pigs stood in the shade of a tree, nibbling at the grass on the other side of a clearing in front of them.

“I’ll get the orange one,” Miss Oakkton decided, quietly raising her knife and taking aim.

“I’ll get the brown one, then,” Miss Teriyaki said. Her nose wrinkled. Then she sniffed the air. “Miss Oakkton, have you done a—a hmm. You know.”

“Sorry,” Miss Oakkton apologized. “It was that bean soup Miss Speal served us last night. It’s given me a bit of an upset tummy.” As she spoke, the eggy smell drifted over to where the guinea pigs were. All four of the creatures lifted their furry heads and sniffed at the air. Then the orange guinea pig gave a terrified squeak. The others joined in, and in a cacophony of squeaks, they were gone.

“You slab of rotton sushi!” Miss Teriyaki hissed. “Please control your—your butt next time, Miss Oakkton.”

Miss Oakkton lifted her head proudly. “I thought it smelled rarzer good.”

At dawn, Molly woke to the sound of Petula’s clawed paws clipping across the wooden floor. Molly drifted back to sleep. She woke a few hours later. The sun was still coming up. She drank some water and sat up to see Cappuccino the monkey sitting on her windowsill.

“Good morning, Cappuccino. How are you?” Molly asked. The monkey nodded and then turned to look into the forest. He began to chatter.

“Sorry, I don’t understand you,” she said, getting out of bed. Then she went outside. Bas was already dressed, stirring a saucepan on an outdoor fire. A kettle sat beside it.

“Porridge?” he asked. Just then Cappuccino began to shriek and jump up and down, pointing into the bushes.

Something was moving in the undergrowth behind Bas. The leaves swayed and rustled as if something was crouching there, ready to pounce.

“Bas!” Molly called. “Watch out!”

Bas snatched a stick from the fire. Its end was smoldering. “Where?”

Then, in answer, the thing in the bushes let out a cry. A human cry.

“Molly, it’s me, Malcolm!”

Moments later, with Cappuccino watching, Molly and Bas were helping Malcolm up the stairs to the hut. Malcolm’s injuries looked worryingly bad. He had a nasty gash in his calf, and his ankle was swollen and raw and pink. His face was scratched as though someone had rubbed it with thorns.

“I landed in a huge spiky plant. That was after I hit a tree and tumbled through it,” Malcolm mumbled as they laid him down on the veranda daybed.

“Bas’ll sort you out,” Molly said. “He knows exactly what plants can help you.” Her head spun as a thought occurred to her. “Did you see the others?”

“No,” Malcolm croaked. “I don’t know where they are.”

Molly’s heart sank.

“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.