by Georgia Byng
“As long as you think you’ll be all right, Molly. But if you need me for anything, at any time, even in the middle of the night, call me.”
“I will.”
The two friends hugged, and then Molly gave a whistle. “Come on, Petula.”
Rocky watched his best friend climb the plane’s steps. The engines started, Molly waved once more, and then she was gone.
Forty-four
Flying home in Primo Cell’s luxurious private jet was fabulous. Its main cabin was laid out like a sitting room, with cream-colored carpets, small tables, and green leather armchairs.
The flight attendant was very welcoming, and soon Molly was belted up, with a grenadine in her hand and Petula beside her. The engines roared and Los Angeles, lit up with a billion bulbs and a million wannabe stars, slipped away beneath them.
Molly spent most of the eleven-hour flight asleep in a comfortable full-sized bed. She touched down feeling wide-awake.
At the airport a car was waiting for her, and soon she was sitting in the back of a spacious Mercedes, rolling down country roads.
It was a fifty-minute journey to Cornelius Logan’s house.
Cornelius hadn’t lived all these years in a humble cottage like his sister. He’d had access to as much money as he’d wanted—money made by Primo Cell. So, fond of luxury and excess, Cornelius had bought himself an astonishingly grand house in the country.
Briersville Park had a four-mile-long drive. Once Molly had hypnotized the gatekeeper, the car purred smoothly along it. She and Petula stared out of the window at the herd of llamas grazing under old oak trees. Then the llama paddocks came to an end, and now the parkland was full of dark-green bushes. They were all topiary hedges. And each one was of a different creature. A horse hedge, an elephant bush, a cat, a mouse, a monkey. Here and there, Molly saw people in yellow suits on ladders with shears in their hands, clipping the leafy sculptures. Molly felt sure that every one of the bush animals stood for a person Cornelius Logan had hypnotized.
Eventually, the car turned a wide bend, and before them was the house. White, stately, and splendid, it had four tall columns supporting its palatial porch and steps leading down to a circular gravel drive. Topiary animals stood on the lawns in front of it, looking as if they wanted to walk in. A giant magpie bush, shaped to look as if it was flying, grew in the center of the circle of gravel.
Molly picked up Petula and stopped the world.
She climbed out of the car and up the broad steps. She walked straight past the frozen butler at the front door and into the hall. Animal heads—of bison, tigers, leopards, antelope, and deer—stared down from the walls. Petula growled at them. A display of antique shears reminded Molly of exactly where they were.
She looked at the map that Cornelius had drawn her and went up the main stairs. Here the walls were covered with clocks. At the top stood a maid, still as a statue. Molly started to run. She ran down a corridor lined with tables. On each one sat a tiny bonsai tree in a pot. She picked her way up another flight of stairs.
Now they were at the top of the house. These rooms were the servants’ quarters. Molly squeezed Petula for comfort and started down the long passage.
At the end there was a motionless guard sitting by a red door.
For a moment, Molly caught her breath. Then slowly she lifted the latch.
Inside, Lucy Logan stood motionless, still as the window that she was staring out of. She was dressed in a white dressing gown, and she looked thin and tired. But she was, at last, the real Lucy Logan—the Lucy with the sky-blue eyes.
Molly stepped toward her. As she did, her eyes fell on a piece of paper on the windowsill. On the paper were handwritten words, a verse. Molly couldn’t help reading them. They went:
Sitting on an island in the ocean
May seem kinda free.
Lying on a beach of golden sand
May sound as life should be.
Sounds like heaven,
But it ain’t heaven,
No siree.
A billion waves of sea, you see,
Divide you from me.
Only you can make my world
Heavenly.
They sounded like the words of an old-fashioned song.
Molly paused, suddenly aware that an uncertain future was before her. She wondered how old-fashioned Lucy Logan would be. She hoped they would like each other.
In fact, now that she was about to wake her mother, Molly wasn’t really sure that she wanted one. It was one thing knowing who her mother was, and quite another actually having one. Would Molly suddenly find herself being told to do things? She didn’t like this idea at all. She was used to being her own boss. For a few seconds, Molly’s eyes lingered on the song as she pondered her predicament. Well, she thought, she would have to make her feelings very, very clear to Lucy Logan as soon as she could. That was all.
Molly was just about ready now. Then another fear reared its head.
If Molly was now Lucy Logan and Primo Cell’s daughter, would she have to change her name? The thought that she might have to become Molly Cell or Molly Logan was extremely unsavory. Molly could already feel herself digging in her heels to refuse.
But worse than that was the notion that Molly might be made to be someone else in other ways. She didn’t want to become a person her new parents might like her to be. She wanted to always be herself, Molly Moon.
Molly sat down on a chair. She looked at her mother’s slippered feet and then at the sneakers on her own. In an instant she realized that it made no difference who her parents were. They were themselves and she was herself, if she chose to be. What had she been thinking? That she might be brainwashed by her new parents? Of course she wouldn’t be. Her mind was a free place, wasn’t it?
It was then, in the silence of the turret room, that Molly made a secret oath. She promised that whatever happened, she would always make up her own mind about things. However the dice fell, she would always be true to her Molly Moon self.
Her changing self. Molly looked out the window at an autumn leaf that hung in the air, and she considered how much she’d changed since she’d last seen Lucy Logan. Nearly a year had passed, and in that time she’d almost been blown away. There had been brilliant moments, but some dreadful ones, too.
As Molly held the world still, she felt scared by the future—worried by its uncertainty. She was nervous of letting it come. Who knew what other nasty surprises her life held in store for her?
But life was always unpredictable, she realized. That was what made it exciting. No one ever knew what was around the corner. Of course there might be bad situations, but life was so full of interesting things and beauty and clever people and lovely animals and funny friends that there really was nothing to fear. Life was there to be lived, not to be held captive like a genie in a bottle.
Outside the window, the sky was irresistibly blue.
Molly felt her spirit inside like a fiery bird longing to fly. She was ready for both sunlight and rainstorms. So, seizing the moment, Molly popped the cork and bravely unleashed time.
In the Hollywood Hills, a girl sat cross-legged on the ground in a scruffy chicken yard. She was wearing purple pajamas and dark sunglasses. Beside her hand, a chicken pecked the ground for grain, and in front of her sat a tall old hippie. His eyes were big and swirling behind his bottle-glass spectacles. His hair was long and gray.
“More tofu turnip, Davina?”
“Yes, please. And Forest, can we eat it standing on our heads again?”
“Sure thing. That would be my cosmic pleasure.”
ALSO BY GEORGIA BYNG
Molly
Moon’S
Incredible Book of
Hypnotism
Dear Readers,
Thank you for reading my book from start to finish, or even for just starting it before you skipped right to the end to see what happened, or spilled your milk or Shirley Temple on it, or dropped it in the bath.
Here are a few extras
about Molly, her friends, and her world, including a sneak preview of her next adventure, Molly Moon’s Hypnotic Time Travel Adventure. There’s even a little bit about me.
Warmest wishes to you out there, whoever you are.
I hope you have a great time doing whatever you do today and that you are happy.
Love,
Georgia Byng
Snapshot
Full name: Georgia Byng
Hometown: Winchester, England. Now I live in a house full of art in London
Children: Fifteen-year-old daughter, Tiger; four-year-old son, Lucas
Favorite food: Chocolate. Particularly Green and Black’s Butterscotch.
Least favorite food: Praline chocolate (chocolate flavored with hazelnuts). This makes me want to be sick. Oh, and pickled newts. They are diabolical. Don’t ever try one.
Favorite colors: Green and white, but not together.
Hobbies: Traveling to faraway places. I also love being with my family and friends, and laughing as much as possible.
Life goals: To travel all over the world, learn to fly a plane, learn to play the guitar or the piano, have a herd of miniature horses, get a house by the sea somewhere, make lots of new friends, maybe become a ninja, and have lots of new ideas and write many more books.
An Interview With Georgia Byng
What is a typical writing day like for you?
Well, I like to sit here in my writing podule, which is a room looking out over the garden of our house toward an apple tree that is now white with blossom. I often wear pajamas when I’m working. The wonderful thing about being grown-up is that you can wear whatever you like. I could wear a scuba-diving outfit while I worked if I wanted. Which reminds me: I met this headmistress once who made the children at her school wear the correct uniform. If they came in with the wrong clothes on, she’d make them, for a whole day, wear a silly tie or a silly hat or a silly skirt from a box full of disgusting outfits that she’d collected. Children so dreaded her punishment clothes that they soon always wore the right uniform. What do you think of that? Clever, eh? I might actually put that lady in a book in the future.
How do you come up with your stories?
I love coming across people with mad ideas and strange habits because they work brilliantly in books. Yesterday I saw a woman with hair that went down to her knees and that got me thinking about how she must get tangled in it sometimes when she’s asleep. I can imagine the headline right now. “Lady Dies in Bed Strangled by Her Own Hair.” That’s what’s great about writing. Everything that you do or see or hear or taste or touch or feel or find out or love or hate might be useful in a story, whether it’s for a character or for a plot or anything.
YOU should try it sometime. The chances are if you just read this book, then you could be a writer, too. And if you start now, just imagine how good you’d be by the time you are the ripe old rusty age that I am.
Writing is actually a bit like cooking. I go around collecting ideas like a cook collects ingredients. Then I take them home and put them in my writing kitchen. Sometimes they get put in a pot on the back burner and aren’t used for a long time. Other times, I leave the ideas to marinate and sometimes I use the ideas when they’re fresh.
Do you ever get stuck when you’re writing?
Like all cooks I sometimes have disasters in my word kitchen. I sometimes write gunky rubbish. What I hate the most is if a piece of writing bores me as I write it. YUCK. It makes me feel absolutely sick just thinking about it, as sick as a ninety-year-old grandma might feel on a roller coaster.
What do you do when that happens?
If ever I get into the gunky rubbish zone when I’m writing, I stop and do something else. At the moment, doing something else consists of:
Playing with Lucas, who is my four-year-old son. We play football and fighting, which means I get whacked on the hand a lot with his plastic sword. Sometimes we make huge cardboard animals and these live in the house instead of pets.
Spending time with Tiger, who is my fifteenyear-old daughter. She has a sewing machine and at the moment is quite often making some thing with it, if she’s not talking to her friends on the phone or listening to music or working or drawing or reading. Tiger is always great for a chat.
Seeing Marc, who is usually either reading, cooking, playing with his cameras, drawing, or inventing new sculptures. He’s an artist.
Going for a walk to see whether the fresh air makes me feel fresh, going swimming, or seeing a friend. I really love my friends.
Reading or watching a movie. At the moment I am reading about India because that is where my next book is set.
Most of the time though, I really enjoy writing. I enjoy pushing my imagination and seeing what crazy ideas it can come up with. Just before I go to sleep I think about the story that I’m working on and I imagine being where Molly is, and it is lovely to practically be there as I float off into sleep. Sometimes I even dream what should happen next in a story. It’s amazing when that happens.
Have you ever been hypnotized yourself?
Before I wrote Molly Moon Stops the World I was exhausted. I had only just finished writing Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism and I had a new baby (Lucas) to look after, too, but I had promised my publisher a second book. I started to worry that I wouldn’t be able to think of an idea for it—so worried that I eventually decided I would go to a hypnotist.
“Please help me stop worrying,” I said to the hypnotist, after I’d sat down in her comfortable blue chair.
“I can’t stop you worrying,” she said, “but I can put you in touch with the creative side of yourself.”
That sounded all right, I thought, and so I let her hypnotize me.
It was lovely. Like a mind massage. Even thinking of it now makes me feel all relaxed. Yawn, yawn.
After she’d taken me deep into my mind I felt wonderful. I felt so full of ideas that I could hardly wait to get home to start writing. Isn’t that funny? So, if ever you feel you can’t do something, relax. You can.
Will there be another Molly Moon book?
Yes! I’m working on it now. In it, Molly travels to India and meets a supreme hypnotist—someone even more powerful than Primo Cell. I traveled to India to do research for it.
Georgia’s Favorite Books
IF YOU LOVE Molly Moon, you might also like these ten books that Georgia loves:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
I love books where nasty characters get their just desserts. Dahl has his readers foaming with anticipation before the horrid children in this story are tested and start to fall. Set in an ultimate location that’s run by one of the craziest genius characters in literature, Dahl creates the perfect venue for funny accidents. Brilliantly imagined and really fun to read.
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Pullman is a fantastic storyteller and this book sucks you in like a strong current. The world he creates and the magical creatures and logic in it are absolutely irresistible. I had wonderful dreams while reading this book—it was as if by reading it, some part of my dreamworld was unlocked.
Holes by Louis Sachar
A small gem of a book set in a detention center where the aim is to turn bad boys into good ones by making them dig holes every day in the hot sun. It is a simple story, plainly told, and set in a very sparse venue, yet the characters and their fates are completely compelling.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
This is a great story about a boy who finds a dead dog near his house. The grown-ups around him shrug this event off, but the boy, Christopher, sees it as a murder. Christopher is a boy with Asperger’s syndrome. He doesn’t think in the same way as you or I do and the world looks very different to him. The author explains Christopher’s view of the world brilliantly, and the story that emerges is both funny and very moving. It is also impossible to put down. After reading it, you feel that if you were to meet someone with Asperger’s
syndrome, you would understand them much better.
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A riches to rags to riches story set in a very realistic Victorian London. The heroine is sent to boarding school as a pupil but, when her father dies, is forced to work there as a maid. It is a lovely story about friendship and right winning out in the end, but what I like best about it is the way the characters show their true colors when Sara Crewe is down on her luck. I love extreme characters in books and here, the bad characters are really hateful and the good characters completely lovable.
Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
This is a brilliantly imagined story and the reader cannot fail but be transported. A boy is shipwrecked and ends up on an island, where he meets an old Japanese man who’s been there for years. It’s the sort of desert island story that makes you want to go there immediately and get down to fishing and cooking on open fires.
Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs
I loved this book so much when I was seven that I wrote to Mr. Briggs. He wrote back and sent me a funny hand drawn picture of Father Christmas. I still enjoy the detail and humor in his characters and illustrations.
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
A wonderful children’s book with a really elegant twist at the end. The end is so poignant that it made me cry. It’s always slightly peculiar to be moved to tears by a piece of fiction, but Creech draws her heroine so well that one cannot help empathizing with her and being really touched by her story.
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
