Molly Moon, Micky Minus, & the Mind Machine

by Georgia Byng

  “Micky Minus and Molly Moon, I am so glad you’re listening,” he was saying. “I miss you and I hope you miss me. The palace seems empty without you and that is why you will come back because you want to be here again, more than anything …”

  Tortillus moved quickly to find Micky, carefully checking that none of the hypnotized zoo visitors were about. Molly followed him. She had her ears blocked with wax and her hands were over them too, so Rocky’s voice was muffled. They found Micky standing under a geranium tree.

  Tortillus seized his shoulders. “Where’s Wildgust?” he asked.

  But Micky ignored him, merely staring up in awe at the zoo screen, half hidden by the leaves of the tree. “I—must—go—back,” he said, pulling away.

  Rocky was on the screen. His lips were moving but Molly couldn’t hear him. It was lovely to see his face again but dreadful to watch him being used like this. To see him hypnotized himself and working for Princess Fang was horrible. Molly remembered how Rocky had wished his hypnotic voice could be of more use. It was a cruel twist of fate that had made him useful to the palace people. She looked at Micky. His eyes were glazed. Already Rocky’s words had worked on him.

  Wildgust came walking around the corner.

  “Where have you been, Wildgust?” Tortillus asked him. “Look, the boy’s been hypnotized. Help us get him to my hut.”

  Molly felt really stupid. She should have realized Fang would discover that Rocky had hypnotizing powers. As they led Micky back to Tortillus’s rooms he began to wail.

  “I want—to go—baaaaack!—I must see—Rockeeeee.”

  Inside, they forced him to sit on a chair. Petula, scared by all the noise, slipped under the bed to hide. Outside, Rocky’s voice had stopped. Molly removed her earplugs.

  “He’s going to have to be tied up and shut up,” Wildgust said, finding some rope and tethering Micky’s ankles, legs, and arms to the chair against the wall.

  “Micky,” Molly demanded, “what is the combination code for the mind-machine room? Please tell us now.”

  Micky shook his head wildly and yelled, “I must—see him!” Above his head, all there were were images of Rocky’s face.

  “He’s well and truly hypnotized,” Tortillus lamented. Taking this as a cue, Wildgust put a cloth gag around Micky’s mouth.

  “Darn,” Tortillus moaned. “Darn it.”

  Molly stood dumbstruck, shocked that things had turned so suddenly. Like a helium balloon with its mainstay broken, their wonderful escape plan was floating away. And she hated seeing her brother like this. He had been doing so well. Molly had begun to care about him. Now she’d lost him again. She felt really sorry for him, all trussed up like a chicken about to be roasted.

  “Is there any way of reversing Rocky’s effect on him?” Tortillus asked.

  Molly shook her head. “Rocky didn’t use a password to lock the hypnotism in, so it should gradually wear off, but it will take a while—four days or even four weeks.” She watched with concern as Micky’s face twisted into a grimace.

  “Well,” said Tortillus, “he’s going to have to be lifted to Selkeem’s tree house like this.” Molly frowned. “But quick, we must move or the professor will wonder why we are taking so long.” He eyed Petula, who was looking enquiringly up at everyone, her tail wagging. “And Petula should stay here. Goodness knows what might happen to her in his madhouse.”

  Molly nodded. “Definitely,” she said, and she bent down to give her pug a hug.

  They set off for the dognake-filled tree house. Wildgust carried Micky, who thrashed and complained from behind his gag. Molly hoped his noise wouldn’t turn the professor’s bad temper even more sour. She touched the tiny wax balls in her pocket. She would have to watch out for Rocky’s voice and sleep with earplugs. His voice hypnosis might be aired again. She would have to be very vigilant.

  Twenty-two

  “Good morning again!” said the professor, who had changed into a dirty red loincloth. Micky let out a muffled scream, and the boy registered his condition. “As I thought! The devil’s got into you. So you took a sip of the hypnotism just now. I got a five-minute warning. The vixen allows me that.”

  “He is truly … danger-ous,” Wildgust said in his best hypnotized tones.

  “Well, lock him up then!” the professor replied. With Micky still struggling and shouting from behind his gag, Wildgust lifted him off toward a metal-barred cell at the very back of the room, near the other caged animals. The tree boy turned to Molly, looking up at her with his watery, mad eyes.

  “Glad that my minions hid you well. Still got you for myself. Lunchtime soon. You like pickled things?” Molly remembered the two-headed squirrels that she had seen on a shelf before. “And there’s delicious roasted meerkatcat.” As he said this he gave a horrid wonky smile, and Molly saw that each and every one of his teeth had black bits caught between them. She found herself wondering whether anyone had ever looked after him, whether anyone had ever taught him to brush his teeth. Probably not.

  “A drink is what you need, isn’t it?” Molly watched with growing disgust as the boy went to the side and took a goatskin sack from the wall. He tipped a brownish liquid into a glass. Seeing Molly recoil in alarm, he slunk back. “Or perhaps you’d prefer this.” He pointed to the clear liquid that had been produced by the smoldering rocks earlier and began to pull the jar out from the experiment. Behind him, Wildgust shook his head and wiggled a bottle of water at Molly that he then hid in the cell.

  “Er, no, no, don’t worry,” Molly said politely, even though deep down she was screaming, “Of course I won’t drink that stuff. Are you mad?”

  Then the boy launched into one of his strange two-way conversations.

  “So go on then,” the first voice urged. “Find out how much she knows. Don’t want her ratting on you to the insects. Wouldn’t be able to get the chemicals from the palace if she did. Chemiclies for experimenties. The door would be blocked off. Then what?”

  “Oh darkness forever, forever,” his other voice, the small one, moaned. The boy turned to Molly and with a crazy spark in his eye demanded, “Tell me what you know of the scorpion and its nest! Do you like scorpions? The scorpion’s poison is everywhere.” He moved close to her, until he was practically looking up her nose. His breath smelled of the moldy toast that he’d eaten for breakfast. “Do we want a scorpion with hypnotic eyes? And a world of people stung?”

  Molly wondered what he was talking about, but seeing from the boy’s face that she was expected to answer his question, she replied, “I’ve never seen a scorpion except at the zoo and on nature programs on TV.”

  “TV, TV, TV, TV, TV!” the boy shouted. “Mold from the past, it’s true! And speaking of mold, perhaps I can interest you in a thousand-year-old egg for lunch. Of course, not really a thousand years old, there’s poetic license there—more like a hundred days old!” Molly gulped. As the boy rushed to his grubby kitchen and began rummaging through his shelf of glass bottles, she dreaded to think what ghastly thing he was about to make her eat.

  “Come here! Here’s one, dug up yesterday. I put it in ash, salt, lime, and black tea and buried it. Left it for a hundred days. Delicious. Come here!” Molly reluctantly approached his work surface. The boy put a dirty-looking black egg in front of her and began scraping at its crusty shell. Molly could see that what he was saying about the egg was true. It had definitely not been in the fridge. She watched him as he enthusiastically polished the egg and then began to peel it. The egg was so old that instead of being shiny and white inside it was slimy and green. When he cut it in half, she saw that its yolk had turned into dark green ooze.

  “Mmm! Delicious! Have it,” he said, thrusting it in front of Molly’s face. Its sulfurous stink wafted up her nose. It smelled of the worst fart she had ever smelled. “Tastes of avocado,” he said, smiling madly.

  “I’m very sorry,” Molly lied, “but I’m allergic to eggs. They make me come up in a rash.”

  The boy hesitated. �
��Ah well!” he sighed. And with a greedy slobber, he gobbled up the rotten egg.

  As he finished it, smacking his lips and wiping his mouth on his bare arm, Molly asked, “Have you been on the mind machine?”

  This was not the right question to ask. As if stung by a bee, the boy began to hop about. “Of course I have! Can’t you see? On, off, up, down! Yo, yo, yo. Back and forth. Pop! In a bubble. Pop! Out of a bubble. Pop, pop, pop. Rumble, tumble, scramble my mind. But there’s still enough left to make the potion. To make the H2O! Sit! Sit! HERE!” The boy pointed to a stool and began rushing about his laboratory. Two of his dognakes slithered in. They slipped across the floor and then coiled themselves up around Molly’s stool. Resting their panting dog heads on their scaly bodies, they shut their eyes. Molly slowly pulled her foot out from under one of them. She remembered that dogs could always sense if a person was afraid of them, so she decided to try to pretend to be fond of the dognakes. “Good dognakes,” she said quietly. “Good boys.”

  Meanwhile the professor fretted over his scientific instruments. “Time is running out!” he complained as he busied himself with potions and chemical mixtures. Molly saw the sweat building up on his forehead. He prodded and peered at the experiment projecting the muddy-colored rainbow. “If only the rock was pure!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps with a touch of X-ray it will be.”

  Molly knew that X-rays were dangerous. “Do you mind if I check that my brother’s all right?” she asked hopefully.

  The boy glared at her.

  “Chicken, get in your cage,” he said, and he whistled to the dognakes to uncurl themselves from Molly’s stool. Then, still muttering, he opened the cell door and nudged her inside. “Are you a hippy?” he asked, prodding her through the metal bars.

  “A hippy?”

  “A hypnotist.”

  “I was,” Molly replied nervously, hoping that he wasn’t about to drag her out again.

  “Did Fang put you in the microwave?” Molly was beginning to understand the boy’s mad way of talking.

  “You mean, did she put me on the mind machine?”

  “Yes, did she put you in the washing machine and wash out your brain with soap and water?”

  “Yes, she did,” Molly replied. “She took all my hypnotic knowledge.”

  “Hmm …” Her answer seemed to appease the boy. He turned back to his experiments and didn’t bother Molly for the whole afternoon.

  As the hours ticked by, Molly stayed at Micky’s side. Micky had given up fighting. He was no longer trying to break free from the ropes. Instead he lay curled up on the wooden floor, hugging his knees. His eyes were far away as though he could see through the wood of the tree house and was watching birds flying in the sky. And then he fell asleep. The boy professor bustled about in his laboratory. He fussed over the rocks in his light-making experiment as though his life depended on it. Then a smell of cooked meat filled the yurt. The boy brought Molly and Micky dirty plates with piles of meat that seemed to be roasted chicken.

  “Roasted meerkatcat?” he inquired, hovering outside the cell.

  “No, thanks, I had a big breakfast,” Molly lied. Her stomach rumbled as though in disagreement.

  After his meal, Molly saw the professor pull a bowl out from behind a chair. It was very like the bowl that Princess Fang had chosen a fortune cookie from a few nights before in the mountaintop dining room.

  “Gypsy cookie?” the boy professor asked. “The royal guards brought them. Present from Fang-face for poking about in my hole.”

  Molly looked at the small red packages. They seemed clean enough and, since they were sealed and fresh and she was very hungry, she decided to have one.

  “Thank you.” She stretched her hand out and took two.

  “Good curly whirly,” the tree boy said, and he got back to his business.

  Molly unwrapped her biscuit and Micky’s too. She bit into hers. It was juicy and sweet and tasted of maple syrup. She put Micky’s beside his leg, opening it for him so that she could poke it into his gagged mouth when he woke up. Then she read the white strips of paper that came with each cookie.

  Micky’s said, “As you sow, so you shall reap.” Poor Micky. He certainly had reaped what he’d sown, Molly thought. He’d hypnotized Rocky and now Rocky had hypnotized him.

  Her own fortune read, “When you want to test the depth of a stream, don’t use both feet.” She rolled the paper into a ball between her fingers. She’d remember that. If she did manage to get back to the palace, she would definitely tread very, very carefully.

  Molly leaned against her cage and watched the mad boy professor as he fiddled with pipettes and powders, chatting away to himself all the while. She saw him feed a mouse with some concoction that he’d made, then swing a pendulum in front of its eyes.

  “I could teach you!” he said to the mouse. “Teach you how to do it. Then there would be a way out of the hole.”

  Eventually exhausted by his mad ranting, Molly fell asleep.

  That afternoon the Institute of Zoology was a hive of activity. Its gates were shut, and the zooeys began preparing selected animals for their journey up to the mountaintop for Princess Fang’s big show. Vast cages and crates were wheeled out of a hangar near the waterfront and brought to the animals’ pens, and everywhere animals were being washed and dried and brushed. The flamingo children visited various pens, taking Petula with them.

  In the elethumper’s cage, the beast was being hosed down and scrubbed with a broom. When it was dry, Belsha massaged its gray leathery skin with sunflower oil until it shone.

  Lakeside is in a flurry, Silver explained to Petula. The royal lunatic child has asked for a fairy tale called Hansel and Gretel to be performed. It’s about two children who get lost in a wood. They meet a witch who lives in a gingerbread house. The performers have to do a dance of the woodland animals, and then of the woodland fairies. And you hear that sound?

  Petula cocked her ears and heard the distinct sound of trumpets on the air. Yes, she said.

  “Well, that’s the orchestra warming up,” Silver continued. “You should see the costumes!”

  At the bearunkeys’ cage Petula watched as the ferocious beasts, a mix of brown bears and monkeys, were coaxed toward a crate containing bananas.

  Wildgust stood in a small courtyard, washing the legs of a fat, red-breasted, eagle-sized robin. The lathery water splashed down its legs. Petula picked a stone up in her mouth and began to suck it nervously. Silver? she asked the black bird tentatively.

  Yes?

  What will everyone do if I can’t hypnotize anyone?

  “Craaaaarrk!” Don’t ask me, Silver cawed, but I will stay by your side. I can interpret what Molly says for you.

  Petula let the stone roll around in her mouth. She felt a little better, knowing that Silver would be there for her, but she was still very worried. For she now had a nasty feeling that when the time came for her to hypnotize people she would let Molly down.

  As the stars started to appear in the night sky, as though some heavenly lamplighter was switching them on, Molly helped Micky, still tied in ropes, to get more comfortable, pulling a blanket over him.

  “I’m sorry this has happened, Micky,” she whispered, stroking his forehead. He blinked madly up at her. “Please relax. I’m going to try to sort everything out. Tomorrow I’m going back to the palace. I’m going to try to get my mind back.”

  Twenty-three

  The next morning, when the sun was already up, Molly felt a stick being prodded gently into her back. She turned to see Wildgust standing on a branch beside her prison. He put a finger to his mouth to indicate that she should be very, very quiet, and he pointed to the far end of the cage. Here, Molly saw, he’d pried the bars apart so that there was a slightly wider gap. Molly took out her earplugs and carefully crawled through to the outside of the tree house. Micky stirred but slept on, curling back up into a croissant shape.

  Wildgust reached in and moved a pillow to where Molly’s body had been, pu
lling the sheet up over it to make it look like she was still there. Then he bent the bars back into place before silently lifting Molly under his arm and flapping down to the ground.

  When they arrived at Tortillus’s hut, the old man was waiting with some toast and a cup of tea. Best of all, Petula was there to greet Molly.

  “Oh Petula,” she said, crouching down to give her a proper hug. Petula leaped up at her knees. Then Molly pulled herself upright and took the toast.

  “Cor, I’m so hungry,” she said. “You should have seen what the professor had on the menu.” Wildgust settled down into a chair in the corner, saying nothing.

  “Big day today,” Tortillus said, smiling. Molly nodded, munching. “The crates of zoo animals will be airlifted this morning.”

  “So let’s get going,” said Molly, wiping her hands on her jumpsuit. “I’m ready. Which crate are we going to hide in?”

  Tortillus turned and pulled some strange objects out of a bag. One was a hard, curved piece of yellow plastic. Then there were what looked like two black furry, floppy socks, and last, four yellow rubbery things that reminded Molly of washing-up gloves. “This is what Petula should wear. I don’t think you’ve seen our quogs. They are dogs mixed with ducks. They don’t bark—they quack. They’re normally bigger than Petula, but I think with these long black ears and this elasticate beak and these webbed feet, she will look like a small quog. Do you think she will wear them?”

  “She may need a bit of persuasion,” Molly answered. Tortillus produced a brown furry body suit and a ratty mask. “And that’s for me, I suppose?”

  “Yes, I thought you could go as a sabrerat. Three other sabrerats will be going too but I won’t put you in a cage with them as they aren’t the friendliest of animals.”

  Molly raised her eyebrows and inspected the suit. “It’s going to be hot,” she said.

  “The sabrerat cages are always air-conditioned and cool.”

  “And will my cage be near the quog cage?” Molly said, working the snaps on her furry suit.