“First, promise you won’t tell anyone else. And promise to believe me too.”
He opened his palms and lifted them toward her as if he was ready to take the weight of anything she might say.
“I promise.”
Molly took a deep breath. She put her hand on Maude’s head. She frowned.
“My mama accidentally turned herself into a tree.”
She’d said it. The truth had been plonked right there on the shining gravel pathway between them. Molly shut her eyes against it and stood unsteadily, the sun flaring across her eyelids and making everything feel hot and scorched and indistinct. She felt she might cry, and because she didn’t want to, she rubbed at her eyes and blinked them open again.
There was Pim Wilder, dark and still, surrounded by the bright, hazy light. He moved one step toward her, as if he thought she might fall. Molly hugged her arms around herself and her lip trembled.
Pim stared back at her. His mouth had dropped open, and his eyes were round and green and full of wonder.
She knew he believed her.
Molly and Pim stood at the base of the tree. Pim craned his neck and looked up through the leaves.
“Wow,” he breathed. “The leaves are all different types. It’s…well, it’s an amazing tree. I mean she, your mother, the tree, I don’t know, it’s something. You can tell that.” He shook his head, perplexed. He touched the trunk, then walked around it, as if somewhere there might be a clue that Molly hadn’t uncovered.
Molly watched him. If it was this amazing to Pim Wilder, how would it be to everyone else? The Mama tree was startling and different from other trees, and sooner or later it would be noticed.
Of course, she thought with a sigh. Of course her mama couldn’t have become an unremarkable tree, an ordinary tree. Because her mama wasn’t an ordinary person. Molly leaped toward the trunk and, pressing her back to it, she held her palms against it protectively.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Molly said. “Imagine what they might do if—”
“Of course I won’t.” Pim stepped back. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “But, Molly,” he whispered, “what are you going to do? I mean, what about your dad, for one thing? Can’t he help? Is he into this stuff too?”
Molly shook her head firmly. “Oh, my dad, my dad…”
She felt confused. Her foot dug at the ground. She half wanted to tell him all about her dad, and she half wanted not to speak of him at all. “He’s lost somewhere in Cuba. He doesn’t know about potions anyway. My brothers know a bit, but they’re far away too.” She shrugged, as if it meant nothing.
Pim put his finger to the back of his ear, puzzled. “So, your mother is a tree. And no one knows. No one except me.”
Molly could tell that he was struggling to make sense of it. She hoped he wasn’t going to try to comfort her.
“I only told you because I wanted to ask you if you had some spare dog food for Maudie and Claudine. Well, Claudine is a cat, but she will have to put up with dog food, as it’s going to be hard times for a while around here. But don’t worry about me. Look where I sleep.”
Molly then expertly hoisted herself up into her nest of branches and leaves and peeped back over at him. “Only problem is Maudie can’t get here.”
“You sleep there?”
Pim stood still, struck again, and Molly thought he looked at her with admiration. She ducked down in her nest of leaves.
Pim began to pace again. “Of course I’ll get some dog food. But you can’t sleep there forever. I mean, it must be pretty great sleeping in a tree, but winter will be brutal. And anyway, we have to find a way to turn your mother back. Don’t we?”
He’d said “we have to find a way.” Did that mean he was going to help her? Could he help? Molly perked up. She peered over her nest. Pim was frowning, as if already entrenched in thoughts about how to get her mama back.
Molly felt suddenly very tired and very relieved, and she let go of something inside herself, something that she had been holding on to firmly. Her whole body felt limp, but it roared with sudden hunger too. Below her, Pim seemed to be gauging the size of things with his arms.
Of all the people, she thought, of all the people to share her biggest-ever problem. But there he was, with his loose striped T-shirt, tapping at the trunk of the tree, already getting to work in some way. The thing about Pim was that he seemed to like working things out and he was eager. But, best of all, he wasn’t going to tell anyone. Molly climbed down from her perch.
“I’m really hungry,” she said. Her head felt strange and light. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud: she had just thought it and said it all at once, suddenly realizing why she felt funny and not right and as if anything, any little thing, might blow her over.
Pim stood up and scratched his head. “I’m going back to my house. I’ll get some rope and some food and bring them back before it gets dark.”
Before Molly could ask him about the rope, the tree began to make a noise, as if a wind had swept through it. But there was no wind. The branches trembled on their own, and neither Molly nor Pim knew whether it was the late-afternoon light glowing through the leaves or whether the colors just suddenly became more vivid. As they watched, small pale-pink buds burst at the tips of the branches. They began to swell and grow plump and roundish, until they hung pendulously like blood-plum-colored mangoes. The tree slowly became still again, and the strange fruit hung there, wobbling slightly.
“Wow,” said Pim. His hands shot to the top of his head, and he half crouched, as if sheltering from the strangeness. He turned to Molly, his eyes burning with excitement. “I guess you’re used to this sort of stuff.”
Molly shook her head slowly. “No, not really. Not at all. But I wonder…”
“What?” Pim took his hands from his head and straightened up. He gazed at the tree, which now looked even more magnificent.
Molly reached up to the lowest-hanging fruit. The skin was firm. She pressed her nose to it, and because it smelled good, she pulled it off.
“I wonder if Mama heard me say that I was hungry.”
“You think she grew these for you to eat?” Pim reached up and touched one, but he didn’t pick it.
“If I lie in the tree, I can feel her there, so I’m sure she can sense me too. I think I can communicate with her, in a way.” Molly blushed. It embarrassed her to admit this. Boys didn’t really talk to their mums at all, let alone communicate through bark, but perhaps in this way, as in most ways, Pim was different. Perhaps Pim Wilder was the one person who wouldn’t think it so weird to talk to a tree.
But Pim whistled and gazed in wonder at Molly and then at the tree, as if all this was exactly the sort of thing he found interesting, and then he rocked back and forth on his heels and blew out a long breath.
“You should definitely eat it, then,” he said.
Molly dug her fingers into the skin. It was hard, almost like the bark of a tree, but underneath it was a moist green inner casing. She tasted a bit of it.
Green beans, she thought, it’s just like green beans.
Beneath the green bit was soft, creamy flesh, which came easily away from a shiny brown pit. It was sweet and juicy, with a hint of nuttiness.
“What’s it like?”
Molly handed it to Pim. “Try it. The white bit is delicious. It’s like lychees and almonds and vanilla custard. The green bit is like—”
“Green beans! Exactly like green beans,” Pim laughed. “Next thing we know, we’ll turn into a tree too, or a frog or something.”
Molly almost laughed, but her mouth was full. She ate the whole fruit, even the green-bean part. And then she ate another. She had no fear of turning into a frog.
“Of course. Mama made it like green beans because she always wants me to eat green vegetables.”
Molly felt better. Was it the fruit or the feeling that her mama was still there, still looking after her? She felt hopeful and warm, and she opened a little more to the mysterious, whisp
ering forces that had swallowed her mama.
Pim stared at her. Could he see? Could he sense them too? His gaze fixed on Molly, his eyes flashing with thoughts. It was the look that frightened others, but Molly didn’t feel afraid. She had nothing more to hide now. She took a bite of her fruit and stared straight back at him.
Pim grinned. “You eat it,” he said. “I’ve already got a mother forcing green beans into me. I’m going to get that dog food.” He turned to go.
Molly watched him walk away. His odd, loping walk, as if his legs were made of string, was familiar in a way, but now he seemed different. Maybe it was just that she saw him differently because he had become the only person who knew. Somehow Molly knew he was exactly the right person to know. She reached up to pick more fruit and sat at the base of the tree, leaning her back against it.
“Thank you, Mama,” she whispered. “But I’d like it if you came back now and made some black-eyed pea stew.”
Finally there was a proper team: Molly, Pim, Maude, and, somewhere prowling the outskirts, Claudine. Claudine had watched the bursting of the fruit from the veranda. She lay on the daybed, stretching every now and then as if she was more interested in the look of her paws than the activities in the tree. But, still, Molly didn’t have high expectations of Claudine. What did feel odd was that Ellen wasn’t part of the team. Ellen was always Molly’s first choice for anything.
Molly took Maude to the wild orchard that spread over the creek flats. She took Mama’s basket with her and she picked some peaches. Then she climbed down the other side of the hill to the oval, and she watched some schoolkids playing cricket. When she tired of this, she and Maude wandered up the path by the railway, and Molly swished at the clumps of long grasses with a stick and scavenged some last blackberries.
On the way home she climbed the back fence of Mrs. Mulligan’s overgrown garden, while Maude ran around the long way, and she picked some blood plums. Mrs. Mulligan was too old to pick them herself. Molly left a pile of them on the back doorstep with some peaches too. She didn’t feel like talking to Mrs. Mulligan, though. She liked feeling she was captain of her own evening, and she walked slowly back along the street, as the windows of houses began to light up.
Once back at her own house, Molly cut up the remaining peaches and plums and put them in a pot with some honey and cinnamon to stew. Then she decided to serenade Maude with her ukulele while she waited for the fruit to cook. It was always nice to sing to Maude, as Maude wasn’t superior like Claudine, and she didn’t try to sing along like Mama did. Molly sang long and loudly and almost let the peaches burn.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get better at cooking,” Molly said to Maude after they’d eaten the stewed fruit. Then they scrambled through the garden to the Mama tree, which waited quietly for them even though something had changed while they were out.
There was now an elaborate pulley system slung over the lowest tree branch, and attached to it was a small wooden platform on which Maude’s basket had been wedged. In the basket were two fruit buns, a can of dog food, a picture of a powerful owl, and a flashlight.
Molly grinned. Pim had obviously been there. She plonked herself down and ate a whole bun immediately. She gave the other one to Maude and patted the basket for her to get in. And then Molly stood on the ground and pulled on the rope. The basket rose. Maude jumped out immediately, and it took Molly quite a few goes to coax her into staying in till it got all the way up to the nest. Molly climbed up and made a hole in the owl picture so she could hang it from a twig.
Now the dark had begun to fall. Birds made their last noisy swoops through the garden. The sky had turned lilac and dusty and then the clinging black. Molly turned on the flashlight and aimed the beam in arcs up through the leaves. Maude curled up beside her. Molly hadn’t brushed her teeth or had a shower, and she thought how nice it was not to have to do anything at all. In fact, she could stay awake all night long if she wanted to. She stared up at the stars peeping through the leaves. She could watch them through the night, see what they did. But stargazing made her tired, and she fell asleep almost immediately.
—
Maude woke Molly early the next morning by barking.
“What now, Maude? Are you just happy to be up in the Mama tree or is there someone here?”
The day was crisp again and seemed all polished and winking clean with sunshine. Molly lowered Maude in the basket and then swung herself down. She had developed quite a stylish and acrobatic sort of way of getting up and down from her platform. If someone was here, it was probably Pim Wilder.
But it wasn’t Pim. It was Prudence Grimshaw. She was rapping urgently on the door to the house and leaning to peer in the window all at once. Molly recognized the short, colorless hair and the gray clothes that made her look ghostly and drab, as if she had arrived out of a dismal future.
“There’s no one home,” said Molly loudly.
Prudence Grimshaw gave a start and turned sharply, clutching an envelope at her neck. She looked embarrassed at being caught peering inside, but then she gathered herself and pursed her thin lips indignantly, as if Molly should not have crept up behind her and given her such a fright.
“Where is your mother?” she demanded.
“Mama is out,” replied Molly.
Maude let out a short bark as if to second this, and Prudence Grimshaw jumped again.
“Well, when will she be back? I have to give her this letter.”
“You can give it to me and I’ll give it to her.” Molly reached out her hand.
Prudence Grimshaw held on fast to the letter and dipped her head very slowly as if to show her control over the situation.
“It is a very important letter,” she warned. “It’s about that…that…that tree.” She ejected the word “tree” with a shriek, and her arm swung up and stiffened accusingly as she pointed and glared ferociously at the Mama tree. The Mama tree did not shirk or blush.
Molly said nothing, but she began to feel very worried. Prudence Grimshaw dropped her arm and nodded her head with a there-you-have-it motion, and then she straightened her gray skirt and began to speak again.
“Half of it is actually on our property. I can’t allow it. I won’t allow it. The mess!” She added this last bit about the mess with a pointedly pompous tone, which made Molly imagine her sipping tea and using a red pen to cross out words on someone else’s writing.
Molly glared back at her and felt almost ready to charge. But she said nothing and only puffed out her nostrils to show her irritation. Prudence Grimshaw’s brow arched, and she thrust the letter at Molly.
“The letter demands that your mother has the overhanging branches cut off. Make sure she gets it.”
Molly shook her head and stood up tall. “But we can’t cut off the branches. How would you like it if we cut off your arms?”
The woman snorted. “A tree does not have arms!” She handed the letter to Molly and turned to go. But she looked back with a sly frown. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school? There’s obviously a lot you haven’t yet learned. A tree with arms—I never heard such a ridiculous notion.”
“And there’s a lot you haven’t learned too, like how to be nice, for one thing,” burst out Molly.
Prudence Grimshaw’s chin began to quiver. Her eyebrows did a jagged dance, and her breath came out in short, rising snorts. “Well,” she said, and huffed loudly, “you…you should learn some respect.”
So should you, thought Molly, but she held her mouth firmly shut and kicked at some dry leaves that lay on the path. Then she swiveled around and tore back down the path to the Mama tree.
—
Once she was back in the tree, Molly tore open the envelope and read the letter.
Dear Madam,
The obnoxious tree that has suddenly grown on the border of our property has many branches overhanging our property. We demand that you remove these branches immediately. If this is not done by Saturday, we will be forced to cut them off ourselves, at your e
xpense, and if they continue to grow, we will take action to remove the whole tree.
P. & E. Grimshaw
Molly folded her arms across her chest. I’ll tear the limbs off anyone who comes near us with a chain saw, she thought. And then she pictured herself chained to the branches, staring down at crabby old Prudence Grimshaw with her thin nose and pointy eyebrows and her sharp elbows and shrill indignation.
Nothing—thought Molly bravely as she dodged an imaginary knife flung from Prudence Grimshaw’s cold heart—nothing, nothing, nothing will move me from this tree.
“From you, Mama,” she said out loud, correcting herself. “Nothing will remove me from you.”
Molly lay down as if to shelter the Mama tree with her body, and she clung to the tree because she felt very upset. Her world seemed to have been eaten up by Grimshaws, chain saws, and loneliness. She tried to close her mind’s eye. She wrapped both arms tightly around the branch that held her and squeezed everything she had toward it.
And that was how Pim Wilder found her.
“Hiya,” he called softly, as if not wanting to startle her. “You coming to school?”
Molly lifted her head, but she didn’t uncurl herself from the branch.
“Something terrible has happened,” she declared with a sniff.
Pim took a step closer. “What’s happened?” Pim’s voice was steady and reassuring and even familiar now.
Molly uncurled herself and sat on her platform, looking down at him. “The Grimshaws are going to cut off the branches. Mama’s branches! They could be Mama’s arms.” She clutched again at the nearby branch with one hand and with the other she waved the letter. Then she folded her arms and lifted her chin. “I’m going to chain myself here and never come down.”
Pim blew out a low, whistling breath. “You’re gonna get pretty tired of holding on.”
Molly glared at him.
Molly & Pim and the Millions of Stars Page 5
