“No, it wasn’t!” said Molly. At once, all her paranoia about not being good enough lifted. A new confidence filled her. To Molly, the bad news felt good, because it made her see that Lucy hadn’t been disappointed that Molly was her daughter. She’d been sad for a completely different reason. A reason that Molly had no power over. But now Molly could help. Once again, she found herself in the position of being calm while her wobbly parents were riding roller-coasters of emotion. She tried to reassure them. “You mustn’t worry. I know things now that mean I can find out what happened to him. I really can! Not today,” she added hastily, “because I’m really, really tired, and I’d quite like to spend at least one day in my right here-and-now before I whiz off again to another one.”
“What do you mean?” asked Primo.
“She’s a time traveler, man,” explained Forest. “Molly here can zing about in time. She’ll find your son.”
“Yes, I will,” said Molly. She walked up to Lucy and squeezed her hand. “So stop being sad, Lucy. There is some hope.” Molly wondered where her brother could be. Was he in another country, in another time? Or was he in the next town, in another orphanage? “I’ll track him down. And I’ll do my best to bring him back.”
“Can you really do that, Molly?” Lucy pinched her cheek. “Oh my, am I dreaming?”
At this point, Ojas, clad in three blankets, stepped out from behind the lorry.
“You are not dreaming, memsahib,” he said, shivering. “Mollee here is a wonderful time traveler.”
“This is Ojas,” said Molly. Lucy smiled bewil-deredly and shook his hand. Ojas then shook Primo’s hand.
“I am very delighted to meet you,” he said. “And it is a privilege for me to be in your century!”
Primo and Lucy looked at Ojas. Primo asked, “So, er, what time are you from?”
“Oh, 1870. I come from Delhi, India, 1870. It never gets this cold in Delhi! Amrit is from there, too. She must have a coat made if she is to live here!”
“Amrit?”
Rocky was already unbolting the back of the lorry. He swung the tailgate down. Amrit didn’t need enticing. She was keen to investigate her new surroundings and began edging her huge gray body backward down the metal gangplank. Then she approached Primo and Lucy, sniffing the air with her long trunk.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Lucy. “I’ve always loved elephants. Oh, how fantastic—she can live in the pavilion by the swimming pool.”
“She will like that,” said Ojas, patting Amrit’s trunk. “She is very keen on swimming.”
“Would you like to ride her?” asked Molly.
“Ride her? I’d love that!” said Lucy. And at last Molly heard something that she’d long been wanting to hear. She heard Lucy laugh.
So Ojas bid Amrit kneel down, and soon Lucy was up. But before they set off, Ojas did something else. He put an object into Amrit’s trunk and gave a little whistle. Amrit’s trunk obediently followed his order.
“What’s this?” Lucy asked as the end of Amrit’s trunk passed her a package. She undid the paper wrapping to discover a large, gem-encrusted bracelet.
“It is a present for you,” said Ojas. “For you to wear. Next week it has to go back to its rightful owner, but until then, you can make the most of it.” He gave Molly a cheeky smile.
“Oh, thank you, Ojas,” said Lucy, slipping it onto her wrist and finding it much too big. “It must have belonged to a very large woman!”
Everyone laughed.
“Oh no, Lucy, it is not for your arm. You must wear it around your ankle!”
Primo handed Ojas his padded coat.
“Why don’t we go and see whether Amrit likes her new home?” he said, grinning broadly.
And so, reunited, everyone set off across the lawn to the swimming pool.
“You must have had some amazing adventures,” Primo said, fondly patting Molly’s and Rocky’s shoulders as they walked. “We’ve been worried sick ever since you all disappeared. When you’ve had some food and sleep I’ll be extremely interested to hear what happened and to find out how time travel works.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” Molly said, smiling up at him.
Amrit walked along, her great bottom swinging as she plodded after Ojas.
“I must say,” said Primo, “now Amrit is here, I realize that what this place really needed was an elephant! A house is always best filled with children and elephants!”
“And funny grown-ups,” said Rocky, smiling as Forest did a cartwheel on the lawn. Petula rushed past them.
“And pets!” added Molly. “Especially Petula-shaped ones!” She crouched down to retie her damp shoelaces. “I’ll catch up with you,” she said.
The ground in front of her was wet with dew and covered with footprints: Amrit’s, Ojas’s, Rocky’s, Primo’s, and Petula’s. Molly glanced back at her own.
The past was made up of the prints and impressions of life, Molly thought. She wondered where life was leading her now. She’d intended to start a hypnotic hospital, but yet again it looked like her plans were to be interrupted. Now she had to find her twin brother. Half of her wasn’t sure if she wanted a brother; the other half had a burning desire to meet him.
Ahead, Rocky whistled. The tune was from a song he’d once made up. Molly knew its words well, and now they sang in her head:
There’s no time like the present,
No present like time.
And life can be over in the space of a rhyme.
There’s no gift like friendship
And no love like mine.
Give me your love to treasure through time.
Molly smiled. She loved her friends and her life, too. From now on, whether she was at the beginning of time or the end of time or slap-bang in the middle of it, she would make the most of every moment.
Meanwhile, a couple of thousand miles away, on the outskirts of Jaipur, on a piece of land that served as a sewage pit, a huge worm slithered through the slime. An equally slippery character picked his way across the sludge.
Zackya’s silver tracking device was switched on. He put his scarf to his nose and tried to ignore the sulfurous stench in the air.
“I’ll find her, wherever she is,” he muttered dumbly, bringing his bleeping machine down to the stinking mud. The brown water squelched between his toes. “I KNOW YOU’RE DOWN THERE, MOLLY MOON!” he shouted madly. “I CAN HELP YOU!”
Throwing the silver gadget onto the bank, he began to scoop up the filth with his bare hands.
All night he dug, and the moon and stars came out to watch him. At the bottom of the muck, a battered purple metal pip sent out its last signal. Then it switched itself off and began to rust.
About the Author
Georgia Byng grew up by the River Itchen in Hampshire, England, in a large family. After leaving school, she studied drama and worked as an actor and children’s entertainer. She lives in London with the artist Marc Quinn, her beautiful, funny daughter, Tiger, and a chatterbox called Lucas. This is her third novel.
Visit her online at
www.meetmollymoon.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
ALSO BY Georgia Byng
Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism
Molly Moon Stops the World
Copyright
Molly Moon’s Hypnotic Time Travel Adventure
Copyright © 2005 by Georgia Byng
Map copyright © 2005 by Fred Van Deelen
Molly Moon logo design by Andrew Biscomb
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanica
l, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03406-9
Version 09282012
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Byng, Georgia.
Molly Moon’s hypnotic time travel adventure / Georgia Byng.— 1st American edition.
p. cm.
Summary: Molly Moon, reunited with her parents, is hypnotized by a mysterious turbaned gardener and eventually transported to India, where she meets not only a maharajah with a speech defect but also former versions of herself.
ISBN-10: 0-06-075034-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-075034-3
[1. Hypnotism—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. India—History—Fiction.]
PZ7.B9887 Mnu 2005 2005014559
[Fic]—dc22 CIP
AC
First Harper Trophy Edition, 2006
First American edition, 2005
First published in Britain by
Macmillan Children’s Books, 2005
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Georgia Byng, Molly Moon's Hypnotic Time Travel Adventure
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