by Georgia Byng
Book. Please handle carefully, as it was
damaged in the fire of 1903 and is very fragile.
Rocky gently tipped the cover open. Inside, the first entry was September 1862. There was a signature in black ink. Rocky turned. The next page held three entries, added in October 1862. At once Rocky wondered about 1870. He wondered if the true Maharaja of Jaipur or the fallen Maharaja of the Red Fort, had ever stayed here, and he delicately leafed through the book through 1863, 1865, 1867, 1868… Among the signatures of foreigners and local dignitaries he saw no names that he knew. Eventually he came to entries for the year 1870. January, February, and then March. Suddenly, there on the yellowing page, in a great curling scrawl, was written:
The bottom of the page was charred, and so the rest of the sentence was a mystery. But it was enough for Rocky. Quickly he scanned the rest of the book to check whether Waqt had returned, which he hadn’t. Then, seeing the counter empty, Rocky bounced over to the receptionist and paid the bill.
Ojas was down by the pool, coaxing Amrit out with a large bunch of bananas. Molly sat down on the grass and watched as Amrit waded out and greedily stuffed the sixty small bananas into her mouth, skin and all. Some, half munched, spilled out onto the ground. Then she playfully knocked the puppy Petula with her trunk. Molly pulled the scarred green crystal out of her pocket and turned it over in her hand.
“Can’t we stay here?” little Molly asked, as Forest and Rocky held her hands and led her toward Amrit. Molly knew how she felt, for this was the loveliest place the young Molly had ever been.
Rocky tapped her on the shoulder. “Guess what!” he said.
Molly smiled. “Um, Zackya’s been shrunk to the size of a cockroach and he’s tap dancing in the hotel kitchen?”
“I’ve found out something really useful!” As soon as Rocky said this, everyone was listening. “There’s an old visitors’ book in the hotel!” He told them about the entries and then about Waqt’s particular addition. “He says that time is flying and the crystal fountains are flowing.”
“What does that mean?” asked Molly.
“Don’t ask me. But, listen to this. He says he’s been to Jaipur and he’s going to Agra and Udaipur and then he’s going on a boat somewhere, but that bit was burned off. Then he mentions months. March, July, August, November. He was in Jaipur in March, so maybe he’s in Agra in July, Udaipur in August, and wherever he’s going to on a boat in November!”
“Amazin’,” said Forest, “You know, Agra is really close to here. Why don’t we just go there, zing back to July 1870, and ambush him!”
“Or go back to March 1870 and ambush him right here in the Bobenoi Palace,” suggested Rocky.
“Do you think the entry in the book is a trick?” asked Molly.
“Put it like this,” considered Rocky. “We’ve got no other leads. If he wrote in that book without knowing that we’d find it, then we really are one step ahead of him, because we now know where he’s going.”
“Pukka!” exclaimed Ojas, and he began performing a small puja prayer ceremony in preparation for their trip.
Then he led Amrit over to a quiet glade. There, with great effort, he, Forest, and Rocky tied the howdah onto her back. Soon everyone was sitting in it. Before the hotel staff noticed them, Molly shut her eyes.
“Good luck,” said Rocky.
“So, March 1870, you think?”
“Yes.”
“Hang on tight, everyone,” Molly said. She held the muddy gem lightly and took herself into a trance. She was really nervous, as it was critical that she land in roughly the same time as her younger selves. If she shot back a hundred years too far, that was it. They were doomed. Trying not to think of this, she concentrated on the scarred crystal. At once she heard a BOOM and felt them lift. They were off, whizzing backward through time. The seasons rushed past. Rain, sun, storms, and winds were momentary flashes. Backward through the elements they flew. But the travel wasn’t like before. Molly didn’t feel as in control. It was as if the crystals she’d used before were high-tech versions and this one in comparison was rusty and broken. Their movements were jerky. They’d go at only five years a second then they’d suddenly cover fifty years in a second. The crystal wasn’t in proper working order. But it was at least taking them back.
Molly tried to gauge when to stop, but this crystal moved so erratically that she didn’t feel confident of where they were. She looked at the dirty stone and decided it was muddy because it was broken.
Waqt lay back on his bed, his hands behind his head. A pile of red, green, and clear crystals lay on the quilt beside him. For him these were the best treasure in the world. And he felt good—better than he’d felt for years.
His recent crystal-fountain ceremonies had been excellent. At Jaipur and Agra and Udaipur, the crystals had flowed from the earth. They’d burst through the rocks, glistening like pomegranate seeds, drawn by the baby Molly Moon. She was the perfect magnet for them. Even the older Mollys seemed to draw the crystals sometimes. He had high hopes for the ceremony in Benares in November—surely the crystal harvest coinciding with Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, would be auspicious.
On top of this, he’d enjoyed playing his game with the older Molly Moon. It had actually been fun leaving clues for her. Fun! As much fun as hunting! He wondered how many of the clues she would find.
He’d graffitied trees, he’d had flower beds planted so that the shrubs spelled out words. Flags had been made with his whereabouts embroidered on them. He’d even sent some twenty-fifth-century devices over the cities at night, lighting up the dark skies with sentences that told exactly where he was. He’d let the three-year-old Molly remember things. And yet the eleven-year-old hadn’t yet turned up. He could always send Zackya with his machine to track her, of course, but that would spoil the game.
He must lure her. Tempt her. Reel her in. Then the trap would snap shut.
Twenty-seven
Molly decided to stop. Were they in March 1870, or had they traveled too far back? The world materialized around them and at once they were surrounded by water. The puppy yelped as a torrent hit her nose, and she burrowed into the material of Rocky’s jacket. Molly had never seen a place so wet. The rain was pelting down and obviously had been for days. The old hotel building was still behind them. But it wasn’t a hotel. Now it was a functioning palace with ornamental gardens. The dry ground where they had been standing was so flooded that the water was up to Amrit’s knees.
The elephant was delighted and immediately began stamping and splashing. She put her trunk in the water, sucked up a trunkful of it, and happily squirted it up in the air and over her head. It showered down on Ojas’s legs.
“NO. Bad girl!” he shouted angrily, jumping down and picking a large banana leaf, which he held over his head as an umbrella.
“Man, she’s only havin’ some fun!” said Forest from the howdah.
“It won’t be fun if she drenches you.” Ojas sternly retorted, getting back up. “With monsoon rain like this, where will you get dry if she soaks you? Huh?” He was now dripping.
Molly tucked her legs into the howdah. Even under its cover they still got wet. The canopy above them sagged with water. Ojas poked it with the wooden end of his ankush and the water flooded down the back and down Amrit’s bottom.
“Cats and dogs! We will have to push this water out continuously,” he commented, “or the canopy will break.” The puppy barked at the sky.
“I’m cold!” said little Molly, squeezing Rocky’s arm for warmth.
“This isn’t March. Is this December weather?” Rocky asked Ojas.
“Oh no, Rocky. This is July or August. Monsoon time.”
“Sorry,” said Molly. “I misjudged it. This crystal doesn’t work properly.”
“Are you getting any memories now that we’re near the other you’s, Molly?”
Molly nodded, feeling the strange vibrations emanating from her younger selves. She remembered being ten and being let out o
f her trance by Waqt.
“He’s blindfolded the ten-year-old me, though, so that I can’t remember seeing where they are. But I can feel them. They’re somewhere over there.” Molly pointed southwest. “Oh, I wish I were picking up memories of Petula!”
“That’s kind of where Udaipur is,” said Forest. “But it’s quite a ways away. After Udaipur, where did the visitors’ book say they were going?”
“On a boat,” said Rocky, “but we don’t know where to or on which river.”
“I do,” shouted the six-year-old Molly, evidently delighted by some thought that had struck her. She slapped her knees and bellowed with laughter. “Guess what sort of river they’re going to. Guess!”
Everyone looked at the small, scruffy girl suddenly laughing from under the howdah canopy in the rain.
“What’s so funny?” asked Forest.
“The name, the name! The name, of course! Guess it!”
Everyone looked blank.
“How do you know the name of the river?” Molly asked.
“I remember!”
“Waqt’s let the three-year-old you remember!” said Rocky. “It’s a clue.”
“The six-year-old remembers the three-year-old Molly’s memories, but you’ve forgotten them,” said Forest.
“Why don’t you just tell us the name?” asked Molly, slightly embarrassed that this younger version of herself was holding everyone to ransom.
“Oh, she wants to play a game,” said Ojas, water dripping down his nose. “So why don’t you give us a clue, little Mollee,” he coaxed.
“Well, it’s what you put on your toast in the mornings,” said the six-year-old, clapping her hands with glee.
“Ketchup,” said Molly.
“Butter,” said Rocky.
“Ghee,” guessed Ojas.
“Turnip paste,” said Forest.
The rain fell down, making their teeth chatter.
“No!” exclaimed the little Molly.
“Okay, we give up. Just tell us,” said Forest.
“No, it’s a secret,” said the six-year-old.
“Marmalade?”
“Marmite?”
“Baked beans?”
“Egg?”
“Mashed-up Molly,” said Molly.
“Cheese?”
“I don’t like cheese on toast,” said little Molly.
“What do you like on toast?” asked Rocky slyly.
“Well, mostly ketchup, if I’m allowed, or butter and jam,” admitted the little girl.
“Is the name of the river ‘Jam’?” asked Rocky.
“Yes! Yes! Jam! Isn’t that the funniest name for a river? Just think of being in a boat on a river of Jam!” She laughed as if it were the funniest joke in the world. Rocky laughed to humor the little girl. Then he turned to Ojas and Forest.
“Ever heard of this river?”
“Well,” said Forest, wrinkling his brow, “there is a river called the Yamuna. Some people say Jamuna… like jam. It rises in the Himalaya Mountains and runs down through central India. It passes through Agra. Then it joins the Ganges River. And after that, the very important, mystical place that it washes past, that I am sure Waqt will be interested in, is Benares—the City of Light. Yeah, man. That is one off-the-end-of-the-scale place. In our time it’s called Varanasi. That crazy dude will definitely want to go there.”
“Varanasi must be where Waqt’s going to be in November,” said Rocky. “That’s where he’s going by boat.”
“Will Waqt have to go back to Agra to get on the Jamuna River?” asked Molly.
“Yeah,” said Forest. “I suppose so.”
“Well,” said Molly, “let’s get to Agra. Then we stand a chance of catching up with him.”
“Agra is to the east, about one hundred and thirty-five miles away,” said Ojas. “I asked the hotel porter. At four miles an hour, and that is a steady pace for an elephant, that will take about hmm.…” Ojas was quiet for a moment.
“Thirty-four hours,” calculated Rocky. “So what’s that? Three days’ walking.” He paused as Ojas poked his ankush up into the canopy and more water emptied out onto Amrit’s bottom. “The way I see it is this: we either go to Agra now, and get there before Waqt does, or we could whiz back and ambush him here in Jaipur, in March, like I said.”
“With this crystal,” said Molly, “I can’t be sure of landing in exactly the right time. This crystal doesn’t work very well, remember. It’s safer to go to Agra.”
“I suppose,” said Ojas, prodding Amrit with his foot. “We should get moving, then. Anyway, those children at the window are looking at us. We’re in their garden.”
And so off they set through this new, watery world. Amrit waded through the flooded green gardens and under the stone arch to the street. And when they got there, what a sight they beheld!
The road had become a river.
“Everything’s soaked!” said Molly.
“This is normal,” said Ojas. “The monsoon rains last for ten weeks in this part of India. People are grateful for them because it gets very hot in May and June and July. If there is a bad drought, all the crops fail. Then people starve. So when the heavens open up, everyone is very, very happy indeed.”
Ten minutes later the rain stopped. People came out of their houses and got on with their business as if going to school or work by river-road was the most normal thing in the world. Four children splashed happily past, shouting up at Ojas and pointing at the puppy. A tailor ventured out of his premises with a roll of material on his shoulder; a mother pushed two tiny boats, each made out of a halved barrel and containing a small, laughing toddler, down the river-road. A dog paddled past, his tail wagging even as he swam.
Soon they were out in the countryside and on the open road, where the water was shallower. Sun burst through the brooding clouds and, for a while, everyone dried out. They slid down from Amrit and collected their own big umbrella leaves. It wasn’t long before the skies blackened once more. The clouds descended as though they wanted to smother the earth, and again it began to rain. The fields on either side were submerged in water, and silver raindrops danced off their gray surfaces. The noise of the rain was cacophonous. It thudded into the pool in the canopy above them. Every so often the skies thundered, a deep rumbling as the elements in the air above grumbled and burped.
“Look,” said Ojas. “The rains must be nearly over because those purple flowers are growing. And those yellow ones and those mushrooms. It must be late August.”
Molly thought of Petula.
“Molly,” she said to her six-year-old self, “do you remember a dog, a black dog, being there when you were with the giant when you were little?” The young girl’s face darkened. The eleven-year-old Molly realized that there were probably only a few clear memories in the six-year-old’s head from when she was three and traveling with Waqt. Still, she hoped Petula would be one of them.
The little Molly screwed up her face trying to remember things from her short life. “I remember going to a big place with a top like a cloud meringue.”
“Sounds like Agra,” said Forest.
“And I remember going to a big house in the middle of a sea and there were lots of purple men all hopping about. And it was raining and the baby got all wet, but there wasn’t a dog.”
“Sounds like the city of Udaipur. The palace is on a lake.”
Suddenly a clever thought struck Molly. If she could remember the ten-year-old’s experiences, and the six-year-old could recall the three-year-old’s memories, then surely the ten-year-old would get memories of being six. Her six-year-old self might be able to send a message to her ten-year-old self. It was worth a go. Molly quickly explained her thoughts to the others.
And so they began to teach the six-year-old a rhyme. It wasn’t melodic. In fact, it was quite irritating. But it was the sort of rhyme that a six-year-old will sing over and over and over again. It went:
We are coming to rescue you, Mollys,
Rescue you, M
ollys,
Rescue you, Mollys.
We are coming to rescue you, Mollys,
And when we come we need your help!
Twenty-eight
Molly and her entourage made their way at an elephant’s pace to the town of Agra and the Jamuna River. As Amrit plodded on they sang the rescue rhyme so that it became well and truly ingrained in the six-year-old Molly’s mind. And Molly put some other memories there, too. One afternoon, when Forest was asleep and she was walking down the puddle-filled road with little Molly, she made her laugh. She did a funky-chicken act, then a constipated camel dance, and finally a Forest impersonation. When she did the whole lot at once, little Molly was in stitches. Molly knew exactly how to make her younger self giggle. And the nice thing was that after they had settled down to walking again, she was filled with a strange, distorted memory of a big girl called Molly once making her laugh. Some of the details were confused but it was one of her strongest memories and the warm feeling generated by the moment was still intact.
Molly was amazed how that one giggling moment injected so much positive energy into her. She looked at her friends and it struck her how important it was for people to have happy times—for positive feelings of happy times will stay in a person’s heart and mind forever.
Waqt sat in his grand barge, sprawled on lavish, tasseled cushions. A very dark Indian man dressed in white was clipping the hair in his ear, catching the remnants that fell in a gold dish. When the man replaced the maharaja’s feathered turban, Waqt sat up and clapped his hands.
The ten-year-old Molly was brought before him. He nodded to the guards, and they removed her blindfold.
Molly rubbed her eyes as they adjusted to the light. While she’d been cooped up she’d received all sorts of memories from when she’d been about six. Most of all, she remembered a rhyme that she’d sung over and over. She looked at the giant in front of her and wondered whether the big Molly was going to rescue her now.
Servants came scurrying into the room carrying dishes with silver lids. The food inside them smelled irresistibly delicious.
