by Georgia Byng
Twenty-seven
When Molly opened her eyes, the bald monk she’d seen the night before sat in one of the armchairs observing her.
“H-have you called the police?” she asked, sitting up.
The old man shook his head. “Do you think I should?”
“No, please don’t.” Molly’s voice brimmed with urgency. “Er, do you like my music?”
The old man scratched his chin. “Were you playing last night in the garden? I didn’t hear music. Heard you arrive though. Saw you hide. Left window open for you and dressing gown and blankets. I am happy you found food.” He started laughing. “You leave empty bowls in fridge. Very funny!”
Molly shifted uncomfortably onto her elbow.
“You lonely girl. You come to right place. This Buddhist holy place. I am caretaker monk. All alone. You stay here for few days and you find balance. No one find you. You safe.”
Molly coughed. The old man passed her a tissue.
“Blow nose and drink.” He pointed to a steaming drink beside Molly. “Body recover, too. Fix cough. This matcha. Very good Japanese green tea.”
Molly reached for the drink. “Thank you,” she said. “And please, please don’t ring any police. I am not a lost child.” Molly sneezed. “The thing is, there is a bad, bad, bad man out there who wants to kill me.” Molly used her finger as an imaginary knife and pretended to cut her neck with it. “If you report me to the police, he’ll find me and then he’ll kill me.”
“You safe here. Look . . .” The monk pointed out of the window. “Good day coming. My name Do. See you downstairs.”
Molly watched the man hobble out of the room and she lay back on her pillow. She wondered whether she really was safe.
When she went downstairs she found breakfast waiting: rice dumplings and some sort of fishy paste. After everything was cleared away, Do stood up.
“Now we do samu—Zen work ceremony,” he said.
Molly supposed she might as well do whatever the old monk wanted her to do. After all, she had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. The idea of having nowhere to go frightened her.
Outside, it was a fresh March morning with blue skies. The leaves of the garden were so glossy from the morning sun that it was as if they shone. Over to the side of the monastery was a large expanse of white gravel with a few big stones placed on it.
“Gravel represent sea,” Do said as he led Molly to the garden. “Rocks around edges like mountains. It like miniature world. See? And spirits live in these rocks, these little mountains. Live in bushes and trees also. This Shinto belief.”
Do went to a narrow upright shed and took out two wooden rakes, each with four prongs.
“We rake gravel. See how beautiful? See, your steps yesterday mess up gravel. I rake every day. Good for soul. You watch, then copy.”
Molly nodded. The old man set to work. He began to go over the whole of the graveled area, smoothing it out with the back of his rake.
“First clear,” he explained. “Remove moss with rake and with fingers. This take while. You do, too.”
Molly picked up the other rake and began to copy the monk. As the morning sun beamed down on her back she found herself relaxing.
“So, gravel represent sea and also sea of consciousness,” Do said mysteriously. “Flatten out like this is good—the movement good for body. The care of the gravel care for soul. This very Zen.”
Molly nodded. “I’ve done lots of meditation with a hippie I know,” she said, thinking of Forest, “but I’ve never heard about this sort of Zen garden stuff.”
“Ahhhh.” The old monk nodded, smiling sagely. “So you meditate! That’s why you find me. Your mind clear through meditation. I think you didn’t know it, but your mind open. Mind saw this place and led you here.” He raked a bit more, nodding and chuckling to himself. “Mind more switched on than you think.”
“What would you say if I told you that recently my mind made me do all sorts of things I shouldn’t have because it was controlled by a very bad thing? By a bad spirit.”
Do tilted his head. “I know that many people behave badly because of many things. Hate—and love—can make people behave badly. Love of things like power or money make bad greed. A spirit made you bad, you say?”
“Well”—Molly sighed, feeling suddenly that she could unburden herself—“there was a thing, a coin with a bad spirit in it that turned me into a monster.. . . Can you believe that? I loved the coin for the power it gave me. It made me feel like I was its master, but actually I was its slave. I would have done anything to keep it.”
The old man took Molly’s chin in his weather-beaten hand and turned her face in order to look into her eyes. “So, you have seen dark side of yourself.”
“Yes,” Molly admitted with a gulp. “And it wasn’t nice.”
Do pointed at the ground. “Gravel all flat. Lines and marks from yesterday gone. Your past is past. Now you have future. You make new lines. Let us make good pattern.”
The old monk stepped toward the corner of the fresh gravel field and began raking it, making long marks through the white stones.
“Your turn. Rake new lines in the Now.”
Molly copied him. Her lines looked like waves.
After they had finished raking the Zen garden, they both sat on a stone bench and admired the beauty of it.
“It’s cool,” Molly said.
The old monk nodded. “Now shut your eyes and focus on breath. You clever, so maybe you try this.. . . Have in your mind word aum. But, and this important, don’t say the A, don’t say the M, just say the U. U. U. U. OK?”
Molly nodded. She might as well try it. “U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U . . .” Amazingly, she actually liked doing it. She found it relaxing.
“It helps take us to the calm place inside us where we let go of troubles. Good trick to know!” Do said. “You can even expand aum to whole of mind so no space for any other thought or feeling. Good, eh?”
“Hmmm.” Molly nodded. “But, Do, you can’t just kind of switch off like that. As soon as you open your eyes, the trouble comes back. I mean, I’m worried. Worried about some boys I know who I was really nasty to. And my dog, Petula, that I just deserted. There’s a bad man out there,” she went on slowly. “He’s got the coin I used to have, and it makes him even more evil than he was before. He wants to control everyone’s minds and have everyone in his power.”
“It seems to me,” Do considered, “that he should not have coin.”
Molly couldn’t help smiling at Do’s simple answer. She nodded. “Yes. You’re right. I have to get it off him.”
Twenty-eight
Do’s advice to Molly was clear—if she sat quietly and meditated, she would work out how to get the coin back.
Molly hoped Do was right. She knew that the monster that was Mr. Proila was growing more and more powerful every day.
On her third day with the monk, Molly sat in the sunshine in the courtyard. Her eyes were shut and she was meditating when she heard a noise in the garden. Opening her eyes, she saw a movement in the juniper bushes. Molly felt the animal fear that she hadn’t felt for days—the fear of being chased.
Molly sat frozen, but then she saw two eyes staring straight into hers. She scrambled to her feet.
“Don’t be scared.”
A balding, gray-haired man in a tweed suit and black spectacles stepped out of the bushes. He had a big nose and a very wrinkly face and he was distinctly old-fashioned looking. His accent was English. The spooky thing was, Molly recognized him—but she could not, for the life of her, think why or how.
She stepped back a few paces.
“Molly, please wait,” the man entreated.
Molly wondered if he was a crazed fan. “I don’t play music anymore,” she said. “I can’t help, sorry.”
“No, the coin isn’t in your possession anymore,” the old man said. “If it were, I wouldn’t be able to be here.”
Molly was immediately suspicious. “How d
o you know about the coin?”
The man pulled a large handkerchief out of his top pocket. Wiping his brow with it, he sat down on a low tombstone. “I know about the coin better than anyone. I’m very sorry . . . I had it made, you see.”
Molly stood stock-still. “Who are you?”
“This is going to sound very strange,” the man said, “but I’m going to say it anyway. I am your great-great-great-grandfather, Molly. You might recognize my name. You’ve seen it in print. I am Dr. Logan.”
All at once Molly knew where she had seen this man before. His potato-shaped nose, his closely set eyes that were very much like her own. She’d seen his face in a black-and-white photograph in the hypnotism book that had taught her her skills, Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained. Except this Dr. Logan was much older. He looked about seventy, whereas the picture in the book had been of a much younger man.
“You wrote it!” Molly gasped. “I can’t believe it. So, so, you’re time traveling . . .”
“Correct. I’m an old man now. I wrote that book in 1908, when I was fifty. Twenty years ago in my time and life. But of course my time was nearly eighty years ago from where we are now. I have traveled from the year 1928, hence my old-fashioned clothes. I’ve been trying to land in your time for a while, Molly, but, well, I’m getting on a bit and I’m not quite as adept at time travel as I was, and for a while now you’ve had the coin, which made it even more difficult. There were times when I tried to get to you, but the coin’s repelling barrier wouldn’t let me. You might have seen me. In Quito, near that old tramp. Do you remember? And I tried to appear to you on a few occasions on the balcony of that apartment in Tokyo, too.”
Molly noticed the old man’s hand shake as he took his spectacles off and polished them. He looked worn-out.
“I . . . I do remember,” she said, finding it hard to take in everything he was saying. “I thought you were a fan, a stalker.”
“I kept trying, even though it was impossible. You see, Molly,” Dr. Logan explained, “I had to get to you to try to put right what I made wrong. The coin—I should never have had it made. I got carried away. I thought its existence would be useful. I mistakenly thought that to be able to mesmerize people with just one stroke of a hand over guitar strings, or harp strings, or over the keys of a piano would be a good thing. I thought that evil people could be brought to heel with it—hypnotized into being good. But I never considered the terrible consequences that might come about should a bad person get hold of the coin. And . . . and anyway, the coin wasn’t a great success. It didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. It led people to badness. It made the owner of it selfish and cruel—that wasn’t supposed to happen. I wanted to have it so much that I overlooked the danger. Do you know what a numinist is?” Molly shook her head. “Well, a numinist studies and makes coins. In numinist alchemy, things can go wrong. With that coin, things did go wrong.” He blew his nose. “I dropped into the time when you had it, Molly, and saw what the coin was doing for you and with you. But I couldn’t interfere directly. It made sure I couldn’t interfere. Just as it makes sure no one but its current owner can touch it by giving them a painful shock. But now you don’t have it and so I can come close and speak to you. That’s how I knew you no longer had it in your possession.”
Molly stepped forward and took Dr. Logan’s hand. “I know who has the coin. I’ve been trying to work out how to get it off him, not because I want it for myself—I never, ever want it for myself again. I’m really glad you’re here, because I’m sure together we can work out what to do. You look terrible though. You have to eat before anything else. Come on inside.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Logan admitted. “I’m famished.” Gratefully he followed his great-great-great-granddaughter inside.
Twenty-nine
In the kitchen Dr. Logan stood admiring the coffee machine and the stove.
“I’ve been to your time before and to other times in the future on many occasions,” he said, “but this sort of technology never ceases to amaze me. In my day if we’re lucky we have a wooden cupboard with big lumps of ice kept in a top compartment to keep everything cool.”
“How far into the future have you traveled?” Molly asked, reaching for some sushi that she and Do had made that morning.
“Well, when I was younger I traveled a fair deal. To the year 10,000. That’s eight thousand years from today! Imagine!”
“Wow! What was the world like?” Molly asked.
“I only dropped in for a day. Frankly being too far in the future always scared me. But I was pleased to see that humans hadn’t destroyed the world yet.”
“I went to the year 2500,” said Molly. “The earth had heated up a lot by then.” She passed Dr. Logan a wooden plate of sushi.
“I know.” Her great-great-great-grandfather studied a piece before he ate it. “It’s hot in 2500, then it cools down again. The world’s population shrinks, too. There is a massive plague sometime around the end of the millennium. Nasty business.” He sat down at the small table and began to eat. “Delicious. Very interesting food. By the year 10,000 the plague was history, of course. There were fewer people about though. Medicine is absolutely brilliant by then! All the fuel technologies are very advanced. Clean fuel—no pollution. Fantastic! People become very fond of growing things again. It’s a marvelous time. Oh, and people live longer!”
Molly considered her wrinkly, bent, old great-great-great-grandfather. “Why don’t you go there to live?” she asked. Then she realized that perhaps she had sounded a bit blunt. “I mean, I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you seem very old. They could help you live longer.”
The old man smiled. “I have considered it, but, Molly my dear, I would have been lonely. I have my friends in my time, in 1928, you see, and I’ve had a good life. So dying is not something I mind doing.” He peered through his spectacles at Molly. “Oh, my lovely great-great-great-granddaughter, I must say what a pleasure it is to meet you. You are the one who inherited the flair, the genius. I’m . . .” Dr. Logan looked sad and worried for a moment. “I’m sorry that I have caused you to lose your hypnotic skills. I watched you trying to hypnotize Mr. Proila. I saw you through my time-travel bubble . . .”
Molly stared up at him. “Have I?” she said. “Have I lost them forever? I knew they’d gone, but I thought . . . without the coin . . . Is it permanent?”
“They may come back, my dear. You might find that your memory for numbers and names isn’t so good for a while, too. My powers were diminished by the coin and I did get them back. But I used the coin only for a very short time. I felt how dangerous it was and resisted it. I hid it for a decade and then lost it. I was lucky. The coin sucked so much more from you. The more you took from it, the more it took from you.” He paused. “I expect you made brilliant music.”
Molly perked up. “It was amazing,” she said. “So good that I even want to hear some of it again now! But I know I mustn’t. It’s not real.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“If you knew the coin was bad, why didn’t you materialize in my time before I got it and stop me ever having it? Or stop Miss Hunroe having it—or whoever had it before her?”
Dr. Logan nodded gravely. “A combination of reasons. First of all, it is impossible for a time traveler actually to take the coin, or even get close to it. As you now know, I tried to warn you, but to no avail. And I tried to intercept it before Miss Hunroe had it, but it kept swerving me off course. Once she was in the grip of its power I could do nothing. On top of this, because I am old, my time-travel skills are weak. I began to realize that I only had so much oomph. When I saw that you had left the apartment in Japan it struck me that the most important thing was to find you. And I found you here. The problem is that, being seventy, I do not have endless energy to chase the coin.”
“The coin sent you swerving off course?”
“Yes. It’s like an evil hurricane.”
&nb
sp; “It was really nice of you to come all this way to help me.” Molly stroked her grandfather’s arm. “But I don’t understand why you came here. I haven’t got it anymore.”
“I know. But you know where it is. I am hoping that you and I now, in the same time as the coin’s present time, will be able to work out a way to dupe it. Because if there’s one last thing I do in my life, it will be destroying that blasted coin.”
At this point, Do came in. Molly introduced him to Dr. Logan. Do didn’t even flinch when she explained that this old man had come from the 1920s. Instead, he chuckled.
Soon they were all sitting on rock stools around a stone table outside, Dr. Logan with a bowl of soup. Molly pointed to the red and green gobstopper-sized crystals that hung on a chain around her grandfather’s neck. “These are the time-travel crystals that I told you about, Do. The cracks in them are actually shut eyes. If a time traveler sends good feelings, proper good feelings, to them, they will open. And when they do, the time traveler can go really, really fast through time.”
Dr. Logan patted Molly’s shoulder fondly. “I must say again, it is a pleasure to meet you, my dear.”
Molly smiled. “And me you. I’ve often wanted to. So, tell me, how did you make the coin?”
“That is a good question,” he replied, his eyes glazing over as he dug into his memories. “It was a long time ago, when I was much younger. I was fifty-fi . . . no, fifty-seven. Yes. It was after I wrote the second book.” He chuckled. “You’ll never believe what I did. I followed our ancestors back. Yours and mine, Molly. I went further and further back through time. I saw my great-great-great-grandfather. And still I went back. Back past the Romans invading Britain! I saw great hypnotists, truly great women and men who were our ancestors. A few were burned at the stake, I have to tell you. People thought them witches or wizards, which of course they weren’t. I followed the ancestors who carried the hypnotic gene.”
