Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

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 burn! But if you want to use the cream, you’re welcome to it. It really soothes bites.”

“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 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.

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 shelter and found a cave. He’d laid the parachutes out like sleeping bags. Then they’d sat close together and stared at the dark night, listening to the creatures of the jungle. It was dawn before they fell asleep, and an afternoon sun was high in the sky when they woke.

For the rest of the day, the hot sun shone down on the children’s clothes that Micky had put on rocks to dry. Lily sat in her underwear, huddled and scared, while Micky focused his mind. He knew that they might not meet another human for weeks and that it was essential that he find a way for them to stay alive in the forest.

He had read many adventure stories. In fact, he had read both fictional and factual accounts of survival stories, set on mountains and out at sea, in deserts and in the jungle. Even though it was scary to be in such strange terrain, with no knowledge of what plants around them were poisonous or whether there were dangerous insects or snakes about, he found the whole business quite exciting.

Micky knew that he and Lily might have to eat grubs and insects, and there was fruit on the trees. That afternoon he spent a lot of time foraging and digging.

“Why don’t we just walk somewhere and get help?” Lily called out from her nestlike place under a tree.

“Walk where?” Micky replied. “We don’t know how big this forest is or if we will find help.” He pulled an orange tuber out of the ground and, brushing the soil off it, put it on a pile of other roots.

“I am not eating that rubbish.” Lily crossed her arms belligerently.

“You might have to,” Micky retorted. “And Lily, you should try to drink as much as you can. It’s in the leaves, look, there’s tons of it everywhere. You may be getting altitude sickness. You see, we’re very high up.” He tapped the altimeter. “We are at about three thousand feet, and that can make some people feel funny.”

“I don’t feel funny. But you look funny.”

“Ha, ha. Why don’t you come and help me dig for potatoes?”

“No way. I’ll get dirty,” she said, taking her clothes from the rocks. “Dry clean only.”

Micky laughed. “Dry clean only? Are they allowed to go through the washing machine of a whirlwind storm? Come on, Lily, get a grip. Come and help.”

But Lily shook her head and went to sit back under her tree.

That night, Micky lit a fire. He cooked the roots, and though they were black with char, Lily, now starving hungry, helped him gobble them up. The smoke from the campfire kept the insects at bay. And as a modicum of comfort crept back into their lives, both Micky and Lily felt a little bit better.

“Well done for remembering the matches,” Lily said, nodding toward the fire. She reached into her parka pocket and passed Micky something small and silvery. “Chocolate?” she offered.

“You’re joking.”

“No, always carry it. Never know when you might need it.” Micky took the chocolate gratefully, and they both unwrapped the sweets. “Mmm. Tastes a million times better here, doesn’t it?” said Lily.

“Yup,” Micky said. “Thanks.”

“No, it’s me who should say thanks,” said Lily. “I’m really sorry. I’ll try not to be so useless tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry,” said Micky. “It was the shock of the jump. Crazy, wasn’t it?”

“Really frightening.” Lily shivered. “I think we ought to start looking for the others tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” Micky replied, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“Do you think they’re still alive?” Lily asked. Micky shrugged. Inside he had a strange feeling that Molly and Petula were all right, since they seemed to have a habit of falling on their feet. “If we use our compasses and follow the coordinates to the stones, I’m sure we’ll find them. Now let’s get some sleep. Yam for breakfast?”

Lily groaned. “Again?” She closed her eyes. “Chocolate croissant!” she murmured dreamily.

“Sausage roll,” Micky replied.

“Peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Lily suggested.

“Chocolate cupcakes.”

“Grilled cheese sandwich…”

Miss Speal sat on a little wooden stool in some bushes high above the camp. She liked this place because it was very private, and yet it had a good view of everything that was happening in the clearing below. She pulled out her blue stone and then hugged it to her chest. “Oh, my dear stone. What shall I do without you?” She began to weep. “I shall miss you.” Then she sat up. She’d heard a noise and voices.

“I vill put a nice hidden trap here,” Miss Oakkton was saying. “Then it’s not too far to walk to check it.”

“And a pit would be good here,” Miss Teriyaki said, slapping away an insect.

Miss Speal jumped up in alarm. She tried to think whether she was doing anything that she might get in trouble for. She was doing nothing. That could get her into Miss Hunroe’s bad books. She quickly shoved her blue stone back into her pocket and, making haste, pushed past the bushes to take the shortcut back to the camp.

The blue stone lay on the ground by the wooden stool. It had not quite dropped into Miss Speal’s pocket. The pocket’s flap had obstructed its entry, and as the woman had hurried away, the movement had tossed out the stone.