Georgia Byng: Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

“Yes, Miss Hunroe,” the gathering whispered.

“Yes, Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki whimpered. She lifted her eyes dolefully. As she did, she caught the eye of Miss Speal. Miss Speal’s small brown eyes seemed to be laughing, as though what had just happened was the funniest thing in the world.

The next morning Molly was woken at dawn by a giant, long-beaked toucan squawking in a tree near her shelter. It had started to rain. Above, the sky was gray and rumbling with thunder again. Cappuccino the monkey chattered at her from a nearby tree, as if to say good morning. Bas was already up. When he saw Molly stir, he came over and put his blanket around her shoulders.

“You’ll need your energy today,” he said. Then he went to his rucksack. Taking a large, leathery, bowl-shaped leaf, he put something from his bag into it. He added some sort of juice from a bottle and then came back with this forest bowl full of sticky, cold porridge. Molly ate her stodgy breakfast. Bas watched her like a teacher might watch a precious student. Molly knew that he believed everything she had told him about Miss Hunroe. It now seemed to her that, as though she was a prizefighter about to enter the ring or a warrior on whose victory many people’s lives depended, he was treating Molly with the utmost respect.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Good.”

Bas led Molly to a clearing in the trees. Ahead and above them, magnificent in the morning light, were the owl-shaped crags. Molly’s insides began quivering with nerves. She swallowed hard. She knew that soon she would be facing Miss Hunroe. Molly had no idea how many of the other horrible women were with her, or what the challenge ahead was. Molly’s mind raced. She hoped Miss Hunroe was not expecting her. Molly felt like a person on some sort of twisted, dangerous TV challenge show, except of course this was real and there was no getting away—no calling up the producer of the TV show and saying, “Stop! I’ve had enough.”

“I hope I can sort this out,” she said to Bas. “There’s—there’s a good chance that I won’t be able…” Molly’s voice trailed off as the immensity of the task ahead sank in.

“It’s amazing that you’re trying,” Bas said reassuringly. “I think you are very brave.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

They headed directly for the crags. Bas led Molly down the slope toward a wall of bushes. He helped Molly climb a tree, and they both peeped over the top.

“There they are,” he murmured.

As if transported from a dream and glistening in the rain, glowing red, gray, green, and blue like alien objects, were the four vast weather rocks, the Logan Stones. They stood in a circle, huge, majestic, and utterly beautiful. One was orange, with red flecks in it that glowed as though the sun burned from within it. Another was shot with an array of tropical greens. The third was cloudy gray, with white flecks in it, as though both dark storm clouds and the lightest, fluffiest clouds inhabited it, and the fourth was blue—bright turquoise like Caribbean waters and deep blue like the ocean.

“And the rock behind the stones,” Bas whispered, “with the water gushing out of it? That’s the spring of the Coca River. And that giant mud mound that looks like a sandcastle in the middle of the stones? That’s a…” He fell silent.

What Molly saw next was like a vision from a nightmare. Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton stepped out from behind the mud mound and into view. They stood in the rain, in the center of the stones. Molly and Bas shrank back. Molly could hardly believe it. She had to pinch herself to make sure she was awake. To have come all this way, to be in the middle of the wilderness, and to be actually looking at Miss Hunroe in a khaki jungle suit and Miss Oakkton in a tentlike robe was surreal. Both of them were soaked to the bone, their clothes and hair sopping wet. Neither held the hypnotism book. They simply stood beside the stones, staring at their hands.

“Oooow!” Miss Oakkton suddenly boomed, and as fast as genies disappearing into a bottle, the two women vanished, leaving two piles of clothes on the muddy ground.

The area was completely still. Molly scrutinized the space between the stones. She was sure that Miss Oakkton and Miss Hunroe had just morphed. How else could they have disappeared like that? Yet where had they gone? What had they turned into?

Molly readied herself. “I’m going in,” she said. “Don’t worry, Bas. I’ll be fine. Wait here, okay?”

Bas nodded. “Good luck, Molly.”

Molly approached the stones cautiously. Her hands were sweating from fear. Cappuccino swung himself up into a tall tree and sat on a branch to watch. Molly felt strange, her skin felt prickly. This wasn’t from terror, she realized—this prickly feeling was from the energy of the four giant stones. As she moved into the area in the center of them, she felt their power. The gray and blue stones both emanated a cold feeling, while the red-orange stone gave off a heat. The green stone made the hair on her arms stand on end. All the stones had a pull that tugged as though they were gigantic magnets and Molly was made of metal.

Molly’s eyes darted nervously about. Perhaps Miss Hunroe and her posse knew that she was there. Perhaps they had morphed into birds and were watching her. Molly switched her whole self on to high alert, vigilant to every splashing raindrop and to every sound about her. Maybe the women had learned human-to-human morphing by now. If they had, they might try to morph into her. Molly steeled herself. She would not let them get into her mind. Then she had a horrid thought. What if they all tried to get into her mind at once? Molly shivered. She stepped gingerly past Miss Hunroe’s and Miss Oakkton’s discarded clothes and shoes and around the sandcastlelike mound of earth.

Then Molly went over to the blue Logan Stone and gave it a gentle push. It ground against its stone base as it moved, rocking smoothly to and fro. Molly walked behind the stone. Did it hide a secret entrance? She gently pushed the giant stone again, and then, one by one, prodded the others—but they all seemed to be simply enormous rocks with curved bottoms on stone platforms.

Where had the women vanished? She stared at the ground to think. Above her, the sky rumbled with thunder again. A yellow butterfly darted by, dodging the rain, and made Molly jump. Was that Miss Hunroe? Then she noticed a beetle scuttling across the mud by her feet. Was that Miss Oakkton? What if they had turned into venomous snakes or stinging scorpions or poisonous spiders? Maybe they were preparing to attack her! Molly’s flesh crawled, and she glanced from side to side, checking all about her for dangerous creatures.

It was then that she noticed an enormous antlike insect trotting across the ground toward the mound of mud in front of her. And there was another.

The turreted mound was definitely a sort of ant-hill. Then Molly remembered what Micky had said about the huge model insect mound in the museum in London and realized that this was a termite mound. As she studied the termites crowding into it, Molly considered how it must seem like a massive kingdom for the termites that lived there.

“If you stand in the very center of the ring of the stones, in the very center of the force field that the four big Logan Stones make, with the four colored stones in your hand, and if you rub the stones…” Theobald Black’s words echoed distantly in her mind.

Molly saw instantly that the termites had built their mound exactly in the center of the ring of stones, in the center of the Logan Stones’ force field.

Molly remembered how the women had been staring at their hands and how Miss Oakkton had yelped. Had they been staring down at termites so that they could morph into them? Had Miss Oakkton been bitten by one? Molly watched a small termite carry a piece of bark six times bigger than itself into the mound. She’d heard somewhere that ants and termites can carry ten to fifty times their body weight. Why, if Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton turned into termites, they could easily carry the small pieces of stone from the cover of the hypnotism book inside the mound! The sky gave a huge roll of thunder and then opened. Heavy rain poured down. Molly had to wipe her eyes in order to see. Had Miss Hunroe caused this weather? Had she seen Molly and switched on this rain? Molly wasn’t sure what Miss Hunroe was doing. But the answer to where Miss Hunroe was now seemed glaringly obvious.