Less than a mile away, Miss Hunroe and her accomplices were finishing their dinner.
“Edible, at least,” Miss Hunroe said to Miss Speal, flipping her gold coin through her elegant fingers. Miss Oakkton surreptitiously wiped her finger across the sauce on her plate and then licked it, eyeing Miss Speal like a dog eyes an unwelcome guest.
Miss Teriyaki bobbed up to fetch her cake, and Miss Speal hurriedly collected the plates, her head bowed. Miss Hunroe tossed her coin and inspected it when it landed in her palm.
“Goodness knows we had worked up an appetite,” Miss Hunroe went on, glaring at Miss Speal. “You really are a Little Miss Butterfingers, aren’t you, squealy Spealy?” Everyone stared at Miss Speal, who continued clearing the table with her head low.
Miss Oakkton clicked her tongue in agreement. “Tttut, tttut.”
Then Miss Hunroe snapped. “I cannot believe you were so stupid! You make me sick. Can’t you feeeeeel where it is, Miss Speal?” she taunted. She sat still for a moment to compose herself. “Think again. Where did you drop the blue stone, Miss Speal?”
“Erm,” Miss Speal spluttered. “I’m—I’m not entirely sure. As I said, I think—I think it was up there.” She pointed to the ledge above the encampment.
“We know,” Miss Hunroe hissed. “Miss Oakkton and Miss Teriyaki have been crawling around up there all afternoon. Miss Speal, are you sure you are telling the truth?” Miss Hunroe pulled out a set of panpipes for the third time that evening and put them to her red lips. She blew gently, and a gorgeous sound like a playful mountain wind blowing through the trees filled the air. The gaggle of women gazed adoringly at Miss Hunroe, and a dreamy look filled their eyes. Miss Speal stared at the panpipes, transfixed.
“Tell me again, Miss Speal,” Miss Hunroe cajoled. “Did you really lose it, or have you hidden it because you love it so much?” Above them was a roll of thunder.
Miss Speal sighed. “I have not hidden it, I lost it.” She began to weep. “And I can sense that girl is near.”
Miss Hunroe blew suddenly into her instrument, making it shriek. “The girl may be near, Miss Speal. But she is dead. No one could have survived that plane crash.” She looked distainfully at the skinny, pale woman. “Imbecile.”
Miss Teriyaki stood holding out her chocolate cake. “At least some things are dependable, Miss Hunroe,” she said, worming. Miss Hunroe smiled, watching as Miss Teriyaki cut her a large slice. “You will never guess what we found today,” Miss Teriyaki went on, trying to change the subject. “We found a—”
“Does this cake have coffee in it?” Miss Hunroe asked suddenly. “You know I can’t have caffeine at this time of night or I won’t sleep.”
“Of course not,” Miss Teriyaki replied, passing her her dessert plate. Miss Hunroe prodded her fork into her cake. Miss Teriyaki continued, “It is a strange variety, but shows what an influence the Chinese had on Ecuador—”
“What are you talking about, Miss Teriyaki? Come on, spit it out.” Miss Hunroe raised her fork to her lips.
“Well, we found this—”
Miss Hunroe interrupted once more. “Does it have alcohol in it, Miss Teriyaki? You know I can’t abide alcohol in food.”
“Oh, no! Just pure chocolate.”
Miss Hunroe put a forkful of chocolate cake into her mouth.
“We found this—”
“Aaaaaaah!” Miss Hunroe spat and coughed, and chocolate cake went splattering all over the table. She rose from her seat furiously. “WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, MISS TERIYAKI? POISON ME?” Miss Hunroe picked up her plate and Frisbeed it away from the table so that it flew through the air and clattered into a tree. “I’ve had enough of this foul cooking.” She glared at her assembled team. “If there is any more of it, the chef responsible will go and never, never…” Miss Hunroe’s voice dropped a few decibels as her anger raged. “NEVER COME BACK! Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Miss Hunroe,” the gathering whispered.
“Yes, Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki whimpered. She lifted her eyes dolefully. As she did, she caught the eye of Miss Speal. Miss Speal’s small brown eyes seemed to be laughing, as though what had just happened was the funniest thing in the world.
The next morning Molly was woken at dawn by a giant, long-beaked toucan squawking in a tree near her shelter. It had started to rain. Above, the sky was gray and rumbling with thunder again. Cappuccino the monkey chattered at her from a nearby tree, as if to say good morning. Bas was already up. When he saw Molly stir, he came over and put his blanket around her shoulders.
“You’ll need your energy today,” he said. Then he went to his rucksack. Taking a large, leathery, bowl-shaped leaf, he put something from his bag into it. He added some sort of juice from a bottle and then came back with this forest bowl full of sticky, cold porridge. Molly ate her stodgy breakfast. Bas watched her like a teacher might watch a precious student. Molly knew that he believed everything she had told him about Miss Hunroe. It now seemed to her that, as though she was a prizefighter about to enter the ring or a warrior on whose victory many people’s lives depended, he was treating Molly with the utmost respect.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Good.”
Bas led Molly to a clearing in the trees. Ahead and above them, magnificent in the morning light, were the owl-shaped crags. Molly’s insides began quivering with nerves. She swallowed hard. She knew that soon she would be facing Miss Hunroe. Molly had no idea how many of the other horrible women were with her, or what the challenge ahead was. Molly’s mind raced. She hoped Miss Hunroe was not expecting her. Molly felt like a person on some sort of twisted, dangerous TV challenge show, except of course this was real and there was no getting away—no calling up the producer of the TV show and saying, “Stop! I’ve had enough.”
“I hope I can sort this out,” she said to Bas. “There’s—there’s a good chance that I won’t be able…” Molly’s voice trailed off as the immensity of the task ahead sank in.
“It’s amazing that you’re trying,” Bas said reassuringly. “I think you are very brave.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
They headed directly for the crags. Bas led Molly down the slope toward a wall of bushes. He helped Molly climb a tree, and they both peeped over the top.
“There they are,” he murmured.
As if transported from a dream and glistening in the rain, glowing red, gray, green, and blue like alien objects, were the four vast weather rocks, the Logan Stones. They stood in a circle, huge, majestic, and utterly beautiful. One was orange, with red flecks in it that glowed as though the sun burned from within it. Another was shot with an array of tropical greens. The third was cloudy gray, with white flecks in it, as though both dark storm clouds and the lightest, fluffiest clouds inhabited it, and the fourth was blue—bright turquoise like Caribbean waters and deep blue like the ocean.
“And the rock behind the stones,” Bas whispered, “with the water gushing out of it? That’s the spring of the Coca River. And that giant mud mound that looks like a sandcastle in the middle of the stones? That’s a…” He fell silent.
What Molly saw next was like a vision from a nightmare. Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton stepped out from behind the mud mound and into view. They stood in the rain, in the center of the stones. Molly and Bas shrank back. Molly could hardly believe it. She had to pinch herself to make sure she was awake. To have come all this way, to be in the middle of the wilderness, and to be actually looking at Miss Hunroe in a khaki jungle suit and Miss Oakkton in a tentlike robe was surreal. Both of them were soaked to the bone, their clothes and hair sopping wet. Neither held the hypnotism book. They simply stood beside the stones, staring at their hands.
“Oooow!” Miss Oakkton suddenly boomed, and as fast as genies disappearing into a bottle, the two women vanished, leaving two piles of clothes on the muddy ground.
The area was completely still. Molly scrutinized the space between the stones. She was sure that Miss Oakkton and Miss Hunroe
had just morphed. How else could they have disappeared like that? Yet where had they gone? What had they turned into?
Molly readied herself. “I’m going in,” she said. “Don’t worry, Bas. I’ll be fine. Wait here, okay?”
Bas nodded. “Good luck, Molly.”
Molly approached the stones cautiously. Her hands were sweating from fear. Cappuccino swung himself up into a tall tree and sat on a branch to watch. Molly felt strange, her skin felt prickly. This wasn’t from terror, she realized—this prickly feeling was from the energy of the four giant stones. As she moved into the area in the center of them, she felt their power. The gray and blue stones both emanated a cold feeling, while the red-orange stone gave off a heat. The green stone made the hair on her arms stand on end. All the stones had a pull that tugged as though they were gigantic magnets and Molly was made of metal.
Molly’s eyes darted nervously about. Perhaps Miss Hunroe and her posse knew that she was there. Perhaps they had morphed into birds and were watching her. Molly switched her whole self on to high alert, vigilant to every splashing raindrop and to every sound about her. Maybe the women had learned human-to-human morphing by now. If they had, they might try to morph into her. Molly steeled herself. She would not let them get into her mind. Then she had a horrid thought. What if they all tried to get into her mind at once? Molly shivered. She stepped gingerly past Miss Hunroe’s and Miss Oakkton’s discarded clothes and shoes and around the sandcastlelike mound of earth.
Then Molly went over to the blue Logan Stone and gave it a gentle push. It ground against its stone base as it moved, rocking smoothly to and fro. Molly walked behind the stone. Did it hide a secret entrance? She gently pushed the giant stone again, and then, one by one, prodded the others—but they all seemed to be simply enormous rocks with curved bottoms on stone platforms.
Where had the women vanished? She stared at the ground to think. Above her, the sky rumbled with thunder again. A yellow butterfly darted by, dodging the rain, and made Molly jump. Was that Miss Hunroe? Then she noticed a beetle scuttling across the mud by her feet. Was that Miss Oakkton? What if they had turned into venomous snakes or stinging scorpions or poisonous spiders? Maybe they were preparing to attack her! Molly’s flesh crawled, and she glanced from side to side, checking all about her for dangerous creatures.
It was then that she noticed an enormous antlike insect trotting across the ground toward the mound of mud in front of her. And there was another.
The turreted mound was definitely a sort of ant-hill. Then Molly remembered what Micky had said about the huge model insect mound in the museum in London and realized that this was a termite mound. As she studied the termites crowding into it, Molly considered how it must seem like a massive kingdom for the termites that lived there.
“If you stand in the very center of the ring of the stones, in the very center of the force field that the four big Logan Stones make, with the four colored stones in your hand, and if you rub the stones…” Theobald Black’s words echoed distantly in her mind.
Molly saw instantly that the termites had built their mound exactly in the center of the ring of stones, in the center of the Logan Stones’ force field.
Molly remembered how the women had been staring at their hands and how Miss Oakkton had yelped. Had they been staring down at termites so that they could morph into them? Had Miss Oakkton been bitten by one? Molly watched a small termite carry a piece of bark six times bigger than itself into the mound. She’d heard somewhere that ants and termites can carry ten to fifty times their body weight. Why, if Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton turned into termites, they could easily carry the small pieces of stone from the cover of the hypnotism book inside the mound! The sky gave a huge roll of thunder and then opened. Heavy rain poured down. Molly had to wipe her eyes in order to see. Had Miss Hunroe caused this weather? Had she seen Molly and switched on this rain? Molly wasn’t sure what Miss Hunroe was doing. But the answer to where Miss Hunroe was now seemed glaringly obvious.
If Miss Hunroe and her horrid gang were now termites inside the mound, turning it into some kind of termite-built weather-changing chamber, and if Miss Hunroe had the colored stones with her, too—well, inside the termite mound was where Molly must go.
For a split second Molly wondered if she should destroy the mound, but then thought better of it. For if she did, all the bad weather Miss Hunroe had already caused might be set like that forever in the stones.
Molly didn’t want to become a termite. The idea of becoming a termite, with big pincers and a poisonous bite, and then of coming face-to-face with other termites, was terrifying.
One termite paused near the entrance of the mound. It was carrying a large piece of bark and struggling in the rain. Molly took a deep breath. Clearing her mind of all worries and negative thoughts, she began to concentrate.
Twenty-nine
“I’m not leaving here,” Lily declared stubbornly. She was sitting on a mossy rock with her shoes off, beside a stream. “I’ve got blisters, and it’s too wet. There’s no point anyway. We’ve been walking for ages, and we’re just as lost as we were before. We’re stuck in a stupid soaking-wet forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. And I’ve got four mosquito bites from last night.”
Micky was halfway up a nearby tree.
“You remind me of what I used to be like,” he said. “I used to grumble a lot. Hey, there’s a good view from here.”
“Of what? Trees? Lovely.” Lily threw a stone hard so that it hit a rock and cracked in two.
“Actually, I can see a road.”
“
“Really?” Lily stood up.
“No, not really. But I might have.”
Just then a dog came out of the forest. Lily took one look at it and screamed. Frantically she stepped deep into the stream, right up to her waist. “Wolf!” she yelled. “Micky! There’s a wolf!”
Canis looked at the screaming girl. The fear smell coming off her was electric.
“RUUUUAARFF!” he barked, which meant, “It’s okay.”
The girl backed farther into the water so that it was up to the chest.
Then Canis smelled the boy. It was very strange. The boy had an odor distinctly like Petula’s mistress. Canis followed his nose and squinted into the tree. Now he could see the boy and was struck by how similar to the girl he looked. He was from the same litter; in fact, he must be the girl’s brother whom Petula had spoken of. Canis smelled that the children were nervous about him, and so he gave them a sign not to be scared. He wiped the air with his paw four times and then lay on his back to show his tummy. All the while, he wagged his tail a lot.
“He’s not a wolf.” Micky laughed. “Lily, look, he’s a pet!” Carefully Micky came down from the tree, and gently he approached the animal. He stroked Canis’s tummy. Canis grinned at him.
Gradually Lily waded out of the stream. Once both the children were close, Canis took the material of one of Micky’s trouser legs in his jaws.
“What? What are you…” Micky started. Canis began to tug, trying to pull the boy toward him.
“I think he wants us to follow him,” Micky said. Then he exclaimed, “Lily, if he’s a pet, then that means he must belong to somebody! They can help us find the others!”
Lily nodded, and for the first time since they’d crash-landed in the forest, she grinned. “What are we waiting for?” she said. “Let’s go!”
At that precise moment, three miles away, Molly was nothing. She had left her own body and was careering through the air toward the termite that she’d singled out near its earthy mound. And in the next second she was becoming it.
Molly’s personality poured into the termite’s unsuspecting black-armored body, and at once Molly felt, from top to toe, totally termite. The termite’s character was more robotic than the other creatures she’d inhabited. Molly saw that all this insect ever thought about was light, dark, work and rest, food, food, food, build, build, build, and its colony and the queen. The importance of
the colony was hardwired into the termite’s reasoning. The existence of other termites and the queen was a huge part of this termite’s sense of self. And the survival of the colony was the prime desire of each and every one of the termites in it.
Molly noticed how light the piece of bark that the termite was carrying felt. If she were human, a piece of wood this much bigger than herself would feel like the weight of a piano. It would squash her flat. Yet this load felt as light as a schoolbag. Then a raindrop hit her. Its force knocked her sideways. Molly realized that she must get under cover.
The termite mound ahead was massive. The Logan Stones around it seemed like mountains that touched the sky. Molly saw fellow termites trotting through the water and mud toward a low entrance in the side of the mound, their six legs working along the ground so that they moved incredibly fast. Carrying the lump of sweet-smelling wood in her pincers, Molly the termite followed them. She fell in line and was soon brushing sides with other termites. Molly was scared by their alienlike heads, but she was determined not to let alarm take hold of her. If it did, the other termites would sense her fear, and it would spread like wildfire through the colony.
The tunnel into the insect palace was dark, but Molly soon found her black eyes adjusting. She followed the termite ahead of her, who was carrying a piece of bark, and found herself in yet another smooth-walled corridor. Ignoring the thought of how deep into the mound she must now be, she continued to tail the other termite. Other passages joined her tunnel and other busy termites bustled across Molly’s path as they made their way to other parts of the labyrinthine mound or walked past her in the opposite direction, heading outside. It was rather like being in the passageways of an underground train station. The termites were as unfriendly as strangers in a city and as preoccupied as people on their way to work. Despite this, Molly sensed a thin, metallic buzz that rattled through the air. The termites were talking to one another.