by Georgia Byng
Through a hole in the sacks Molly could see the high walls of the steep road and various arches that spanned it. At the top of the slope the wagon stopped and their driver explained in Hindi to the guards that he was there to pick up some rugs that needed mending. The guards let him by without question.
Now the wagon’s wooden wheels rattled over the final threshold of the palace into its lower grounds. Molly dared to take a peep through her sacking and what she saw made her jump. For all about were elephants with painted faces and yellow silk headpieces. Their mahouts sat on top of them, with their legs wrapped behind the elephants’ ears. They were chatting to one another, and so didn’t notice the shapes in the back of the wagon. One elephant did investigate, though, and Molly felt its trunk prod and sniff her leg. Its owner gave it a sharp order, and the trunk quickly recoiled. As they passed, another elephant peed, splashing a guard on the ground. The guard was furious and began waving his sword at the naughty elephant, and the mahouts laughed as though this were the funniest thing they’d ever seen. This distraction was perfect for the wagon’s entry to the inner sanctum.
Molly, Rocky, Forest, and Petula lay quietly under the jute cloth, tense and still. Molly could sense that she was very near to her younger selves. There was a certain warmth, a comfortable sensation inside her, just under her rib cage. She wondered whether they could feel her, too.
Beneath this warm feeling, however, was a very distant shrill alarm. She knew instinctively that this fear was coming from her baby self. Her baby self was crying. Molly wanted to jump out of the wagon and tear up the path to wherever Waqt was. She wanted to pull the baby away from him. She wanted to make him disappear. But this was impossible. She knew she must be patient.
The wagon drew into a clearing beside the tradesmen’s entrance to the palace. Molly heard the driver explain something to someone. Ojas also gave an instruction and then the wagon was moved to a quiet, covered place. There was a sound of footsteps receding. Ojas prodded Molly.
“Come on your own with me now,” he hissed urgently. “We will find where Waqt is.”
Molly threw back her hot coverings and climbed out. Petula gave a little whine.
“See you later,” Molly whispered, and she and Ojas hurried up a reed-roofed walkway. At the end of it was a small side entrance to the palace. Ojas quietly pushed the door open and listened. Then he beckoned Molly in. Molly’s head was once more filling with memories.
The ten-year-old Molly sat on a bench looking on to a raised courtyard. The giant maharaja stood in front of her beside a rock. He had a baby in his arms. The infant looked like a tiny doll in his oversized hands. Low balconies about them thronged with servants of the palace. And chanting in a circle around the giant were fifteen weird, wizened men with long white beards and mustaches and flowing purple robes. The maharaja began to pass the baby around. Each elderly man bowed as he took the infant and then stepped toward the rock to sprinkle it with water, then flower petals, then dust. The baby was crying, but no one seemed to care.
Ojas led the way up a winding staircase.
“They’re very high up,” Molly explained. “You see, I have clear memories of them being at the top of the palace.”
“Well, this is probably as high up as the palace goes,” said Ojas, puffing. “I just hope we don’t meet any guards.”
“I can hypnotize guards, remember,” Molly reassured him.
Finally there was a door. It was locked. Ojas looked shiftily about and then took a piece of wire from his pocket.
“My time spent thieving has given me useful skills,” he said, picking the lock.
They found themselves in a turret room hung with faded red tapestries. To Molly’s disappointment, it did not lead to the place of her memories. But it gave them a bird’s-eye view of it. For through the turret’s high window, Ojas and she could see across and down to the large central royal courtyard. The weird priests’ chanting voices echoed around the palace.
“OOOhhhdllllyaaaaa! OOOOOhhhhdhhhyylllyyyaaaaaaa!” Two of them were swooping around like strange, hopping vultures. Above, a faint full moon hung in the dusk sky, like a shy actor afraid to perform. Waqt held the baby Molly above his head and turned her around and around as if luring the moon out with her. Then he laid her on a blanket on a rock behind the other Mollys. They sat hypnotized, unaware (as was the watching Molly) of the marvelous properties of the cracked rock behind them. The old priests danced. Their robes flared as they spun like tops.
And then, near to the baby Molly, the special rock gave birth. One by one, nine crystals—three red, three green, three clear—emerged like huge glistening beetles from the crack in it. Waqt sprang upon them and roared with delight.
From their high vantage point, Molly and Ojas heard Waqt’s walruslike roars but had no idea what had caused them. They nervously watched as he bent over by the baby Molly. Then they saw Zackya stepping gingerly out of the crowd. He wound his way through the leaping priests to Waqt’s side and beckoned him closer.
Molly could see Zackya pulling the silver gadget out of his pocket and showing it to Waqt. He seemed to be pleading. Waqt’s yellow eyes narrowed, and he sneered at his servant.
“What is it, Yackza? It better be important. Very important.”
Zackya stood on tiptoe to mumble in Waqt’s ear. “I might have expected as much from you, you incompetent fool,” Waqt growled furiously. “It’s not the machine that needs mending, it’s your brain. Why I bother with you, I don’t know.” Then, as if something inside him had snapped, he screamed, “I OUGHT TO PUT AN END TO YOU NOW, YOU USELESS EXCUSE OF A PERSON!” His shouting echoed around the courtyard and up into the heavy air. The drumming stopped. The priests bowed down until they were cloak-covered humps. The crowd was fearfully quiet. Four saber-bearing guards jumped to attention and the metal scraping as they unsheathed their swords filled the air. Zackya measured the intensity of the outburst and tried to gauge whether he was indeed about to be executed. Was this the end? Then Waqt turned away from him and began muttering. Zackya breathed a sigh of relief.
“She’s clever, this Molly Moon,” Waqt observed, talking to himself, stimulated by the idea of this young, brilliant hypnotist. “Clever enough to follow me by using her own memories probably. Ha! Perhaps she’ll provide some sport. I do so adore funting and hishing.” He stepped toward the hypnotized ten-, six-, and three-year-old Mollys and said to them, “From now on, you will forget everything that happens to you here in India, unless I tell you to remember.” He gave a sickly, throaty chuckle.
“You see,” he went on, tossing his words to Zackya behind him, “I can now play darrot and conkey with the escaped Molly Moon. If I want to let her know where I am, I can. I can let one of these three here remember something, as a clue for her. But if I want, I can stop them remembering and she won’t know where we are. Ha! Ha ha ha! She will just have to follow whatever clues I choose to leave her. Ah, what fun!”
Waqt had never played games when he was young. Now he was like a spoiled, monstrous child making up unfair rules to a game he intended to win.
Up in the turret, Molly and Ojas watched and tried to decipher Waqt’s words. Then they heard a moan from the pillar behind them.
Twenty
Molly turned to see a small, cross-legged figure, dressed in a grubby blue robe, sitting on the ground beside a water pot. He wore a pearl necklace and two gem-encrusted ankle bracelets. She guessed at once who he was. The man’s circumstances were too like those of the maharaja at the Red Fort for him to be anyone other than the true owner of the Amber Palace.
The crooked man was hunched as though he’d been sitting there for years. His beard reached his lap and his unkempt white hair fell over his shoulders in an avalanche.
“Hello,” Molly started.
The old man stared at the wall intently, as if he were watching an egg hatching.
Ojas put his hands together, dropped to his knees, and bowed. “This is the Maharaja of Jaipur. I recognize him from his port
rait in Delhi. Word came two years ago that while out riding one day he was attacked by a mountain lion. All the time he’s been sitting here in his fine jewelry but in filthy clothes!” Ojas shivered. “Waqt has a heart of ice. Can you do anything to help him?”
Molly shook her head and took the old man’s hands. “I can’t yet. He’s been hypnotized and Waqt has probably locked his instructions in with a special time-travel lock or a time-stop lock. If I knew the password I could unlock it, but it could be any word in the entire universe.”
Ojas tilted his head to one side. “Why don’t you go back in time to when he was hypnotized and eavesdrop on Waqt,” he suggested.
The idea was so simple that it shocked Molly. If the giant had done the final hypnosis in this room, then she could, in theory, listen in.
“The trouble is…,” she whispered to Ojas, “every time I time travel, my skin sort of scales up.”
“Oh, I see. Oh, that is not good, is it, Mollee?” Ojas said, examining the flaky skin by Molly’s ear.
“I don’t want to end up with a scabby face, you see, like Waqt and…” Molly looked at the poor imprisoned maharaja, and faltered. “Okay, I’ll try,” she said.
She went over to the red tapestries, hoping that they always hung there. She peeled one away from the wall.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said to Ojas. “I’ll be back in a few seconds.”
“A few seconds?”
“Hmm. Well, maybe I won’t be able to plop myself in exactly the right time, so you must listen out for anyone coming. If I take too long, then you hide here, too. Okay?”
Ojas nodded and Molly disappeared behind the tapestry. She clasped the green crystal in her left hand and, after a few slow, concentrated breaths, when she thought again how amazing it was that she could actually time travel, she took off. As she whizzed backward through time, with the time winds caressing her, she extended her invisible date antennae and tried to locate a time two years back. She stopped and peered out from behind the curtain. As no one was in the room, she reckoned she must have gone back too far. She decided to spin forward in time as slowly as she could without her body becoming visible, so as to be able to see the moment when the Maharaja of Jaipur was first imprisoned in this room. She hoped she’d see the large and obvious form of Waqt hypnotizing him. She gripped her red crystal.
Outside, night and day flashed by. Molly urged herself to slow down. Suddenly she became aware that a man was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She wanted to see him arrive in the room, so she concentrated on the green stone and went into reverse. Slowly. As slowly as she could. All at once, through a mist of moving time, she saw a giant man walking backward into the room. Of course, because she was moving backward in time, everything was back to front. The stooped Maharaja of Waqt paced up and down the room and then crouched on the floor. Then he walked backward out of the room with the Maharaja of Jaipur. It was as if Molly had just rewound a videotape and seen what was about to happen, in reverse. Molly stopped. The time-travel mist disappeared and she could see everything clearly.
She made completely sure that she was concealed behind the tapestry and waited.
Then she heard Waqt coming up the stairs. He was angry because, as usual, the space was too small for him.
He threw open the door and, dragging the maharaja behind him, entered the room. Molly hardly dared breathe. She listened intently and watched through a hole in the tapestry. She eyed Waqt’s gun.
“And from now on, you will be under my power,” Waqt said to the hypnotized maharaja.
Then Molly noticed that Waqt was fingering a red crystal. Without saying anything, he put his hand on the old prince’s shoulder and clutched the stone. Molly couldn’t believe her luck. Waqt was about to take the Maharaja of Jaipur on a little time trip—he was going to lift him a tiny bit forward and lock the hypnosis in with a password while they were floating in time. Without thinking, Molly felt for her red crystal, too.
Behind the tapestry, she zoned in and let her strange new antennae sense where Waqt was going. It was like following someone in the dark.
Waqt and the Maharaja of Jaipur hadn’t changed place, yet they were moving slowly forward through time and Molly was following them. She could see their forms clearly through the gap in the tapestry, even though the rest of the room was flashing past—morning light, evening light, candlelight. Molly disengaged her mind and let her senses lead her. If she could just keep up, she would hear the password. She could hear snatches of what Waqt was saying, but if she erred at all from his exact time zone, her ears weren’t in the same time as him speaking and then she missed the words. It was extremely difficult. It was like listening to someone talking on the phone with a bad connection, so that some of the words were lost.
“You will… under my… until… Now and… will be locked… the words… ‘Pock’… I say it again… ‘Key’… ‘Pea’…” Waqt stopped time flying, and Molly let herself shoot forward and away. She didn’t want to tag Waqt anymore. Using her antennae like landing controls, she judged when she had left Ojas. She opened her eyes and peeped around the curtain.
“How long was I?” she asked, stepping out.
Ojas looked shocked. “You’ve only been gone two minutes!” He looked at her face and, by the way his eyebrows went up, Molly knew that the scaly skin must have got worse.
“Perfect timing,” she said, ignoring his look.
The ceremony outside was still going on. The cloaked men were all on their knees, slapping one another with long green feathers.
Molly rushed to the old maharaja on the ground and seized his hand. She clung to the red crystal and took them both slightly forward into a time hover. For she suspected that only in this state could a time-travel lock be undone.
“You are now free and no longer under the Maharaja of Waqt’s hypnotic command. I free you with the words ‘Pock’!… ‘Key’!…” Nothing happened. “With the words ‘Pea’!… ‘Key’!”
Molly hovered at her slowest time-traveling speed and thought hard. She’d obviously missed some of what Waqt had said.
“With the word ‘Pocket’!” she guessed. “Pocket of Peas!… Pocket of Keys!… Pocket of Crystals!” Still nothing happened. Molly gave up. She would help the Maharaja of Jaipur later, but now she needed to conserve her energy. She landed them back in Ojas’s time. He was looking worried.
“Well?”
“I can’t do it.”
Ojas shook his head sadly. “Don’t worry. You tried. But now we must get back to the cart quickly, Mollee. Look, the ceremony’s over.” Indeed, the courtyard outside was empty.
Molly snatched a moment to touch the old man’s cheek. Ojas stroked his feet and his gem-encrusted ankle bracelet.
“Just hold on,” Molly said. “We’ll be back to set you free. And we’ll get rid of Waqt, don’t you worry. He’s not as alert as he thinks he is. We’ll catch him off his guard.” The maharaja blinked and sniffed. She hoped he could understand her. She knew that the bold promise she’d just made was as much to herself as to the maharaja. Deep inside, she felt about as confident as a mouse in the claws of an eagle.
Then she and Ojas sped down the stone helter-skelter-like staircase. They slipped surreptitiously back out through the door.
To their horror, the wagon had gone.
Twenty-one
Molly’s stomach did a somersault. Had Rocky, Petula, and Forest been discovered? She looked up at the reddening evening sky as if the answer lay there.
“Psst.”
With huge relief, Molly saw Rocky’s dark face bob up behind steps that led to somewhere under the palace. She and Ojas hurried over.
“What happened?” Rocky asked. Petula jumped into Molly’s arms and she hugged her.
“Waqt was performing some weird ceremony. We discovered the old man who really owns this place. I tried to help him, but it was no use. What happened to you?”
“Some kitchen workers came over and began talking to the wagon man. They t
ipped a load of rubbish onto the cart and told him to drive the whole lot out of the palace. Of course, there was no way I could use my voice on them—I don’t speak their language. We just jumped out without them seeing us.”
“Man, that garbage stank,” said Forest, picking green peelings off his head. “My dreads reek!”
Petula held her nose in the air, reading its smells. Ojas sniffed, too.
“This odor is very good,” he said as if savoring a delicious soup.
“If you like rotten cabbage.”
“No, there is something much lovelier. Can you not smell it? It is elephants!”
In the distance, deep drums were beating solemnly. Molly felt that her baby self was now fast asleep, obviously exhausted by her terrifying ordeal, but, oddly enough, she wasn’t getting any memories from her ten-year-old self, or her six-or three-year-old selves about what happened after the ceremony. She wondered why.
“See!” said Ojas, pointing down the dark steps ahead of them. “This is the back entrance to the elephant stables.” Like a hungry person trailing sizzling onions, he set off downward and the others, hearing voices approaching the courtyard, hurried after him.
“Where there are elephants, there is always hope,” said Ojas.
“Where there are elephants, there are always piles of elephant dung,” said Rocky under his breath. As they descended, the heavy, musky elephant smell grew stronger, until finally they were quietly lifting the latch of a wooden door.
Spread out before them was a grand, shady elephant stable, with a cobbled floor and high marble walls that divided the space up into twelve massive elephant stalls, six on either side, with a wide walkway in between. Beneath their feet was straw laid down on worn marble. Molly put Petula down.
“Stay close,” she whispered to her.
