Byng, Georgia - Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Molly looked at the monkey, and then she had an idea. “I know you don’t believe me about hypnotizing and morphing, Bas,” she said. “Want to see me hypnotize Cappuccino and then morph into him?”

Bas’s eyebrows lifted as though he’d just seen an apple talk. “Well.” He smiled uncertainly. “If you like…”

“Hmm.” Molly nodded. “I can tell you still don’t believe me, so come on.”

They went outside. There was Cappuccino the monkey, sitting in a tall bush eating a flower. Bas sat down on a wooden bench to watch while Molly walked slowly toward the wild creature.

“Hello,” she said, trying to catch his eye. The monkey stared into the distance to the left, as though looking at Molly was not a good idea. For a moment he glanced at her, but then he turned away again. “Come on,” Molly coaxed. “All you have to do is say hello.”

Monkeys are very inquisitive creatures. Cappuccino was no exception. And so he couldn’t keep up his shy act for long. He lifted his head and peered at Molly.

Molly already had her green eyes switched on. So when his small black pupils met hers, a current of hypnotism, like invisible glue, stuck the monkey to Molly. At once Cappuccino was under her power. He had lost his own will. And suddenly, as far as he could see, this girl was as wonderful as any monkey he’d ever known. He was ready to follow her to the ends of the forest. The girl clicked her fingers at him, and dropping the flower, he sprang from the branches to be by her side.

She leaned this way and that—Cappuccino copied her. She turned around and wiggled her bottom. Cappuccino imitated her strange dance as well as he could.

“Extraordinary!” the man in the flowery shirt was saying.

“And now,” the queen-of-the-monkeys girl was saying, “watch closely. I am going to morph into Cappuccino. Give me a complicated task, and when I am Cappuccino, he will do it.”

“Um, um, okay,” the man said. “When you are him, go inside, fetch the teapot and put a tea bag in it, and bring it back.”

“Got it,” the girl was saying. Then Cappuccino felt her staring at him again. And the next thing he knew, it 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 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.”