A peculiar feeling, the likes of which she had never ever felt, shuddered through her. And Molly the human disappeared.
Seven
For a second Molly was all air, and then she was in the ladybug. It took a moment or two for her senses to adjust. She flowed into the insect’s body like water into a glass, her legs multiplying, her arms vanishing, and her back extending so that the creature’s wings were hers. And as she looked out through her antenna-raised eyes, she saw how minute she was. The area behind the sofa was like a valley, and the room was like a country. But the other strange thing that she hadn’t expected was that underneath her feeling of being herself was the feeling of another being—that of the ladybug!
The ladybug’s real self had been pushed down, packed down like sand into the bottom of a bucket. Every second it was squashed more as Molly’s character took over its body. Molly could sense it squeaking in horror. But she was the supreme force now, and though part of her knew that overcoming this other creature was wrong, the other side of her understood that now she was there, she had to be in charge, or she, Molly, would sink below the ladybug and be lost underneath its spirit forever. So, though she could sense the minuscule bleatings of the insect, she ignored them and concentrated instead on being the ladybug herself. She remembered the book’s words, about how she would be body borrowing, and Dr. Logan’s advice to be respectful. As she took possession of the insect’s body, she tried to communicate apologies to it.
I’m really sorry, she found herself thinking to it, in as ladybug a way as she could. I won’t be here forever. I’m just borrowing you for a bit. Thank you.
And as she thought this, the ladybug relaxed and let her in. From way down in the bottom of its brain, it looked up and saw into Molly’s mind. It saw some of Molly’s memories and thought processes. But its brain was far too basic to be able to understand what it was seeing. Molly, on the other hand, was able to comprehend the ladybug’s tiny mind. It had no concept of how big the world really was in a human way. It had no perception of the world being a globe, and yet it sensed where the moon and the sun were, even though neither was visible. It also had an instinct for water. Molly felt the tug of water on the other side of the sofa. There was a glass of water somewhere there. Perhaps it was on Black’s desk. Molly the ladybug knew the water was there with the same certainty that she knew she was awake. She could also sense the heat coming from Theobald Black’s body. It was a very strange sensation.
Then Molly nearly jumped out of her shell. A massive ladybug, like some sort of monster from a horror film, landed beside her. As suddenly as the surprise arrival of this creature had hit her, the shock subsided.
“Don’t know why we’re called ladybugs. I mean, I’m a boy.” Micky’s voice sounded high-pitched and thin, as though it had been whizzed up on an electric voice blender. “How many spots have I got?”
“Six,” Molly replied, studying the red glossy shell of his wings.
“You sound really funny!” Micky laughed, his buzzing giggle like a sound effect off a synthesizer.
“You sound normal,” Molly replied.
“Really?”
“Of course you don’t, you numbling. You’re the size of a lentil!”
“Did you say hello to your ladybug? You know, sort of introduce yourself before you took over?” Micky squeaked.
“Yes. Well, it seemed like the kind thing to do,” Molly replied.
Just then, there was an enormous, windlike noise in the room as Black coughed. The ground shook as he walked to his desk. He opened a drawer.
“Let’s see what he’s up to,” Micky suggested, his voice so comically high that Molly began to laugh.
“How?” she spluttered. Now her own voice made her laugh, too. On top of this, Micky’s seriousness was making the situation even funnier.
“Fly, of course,” Micky said. This reply had Molly the ladybug on her knees. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know! It’s just that we’ve both turned into ladybugs, and you’re behaving as though—” Now Molly was laughing so much she could hardly talk. “You’re behaving as though it’s completely normal, and you sound like a cartoon character.” Molly was in stitches.
“Molly, pull yourself together,” said Micky. This made Molly laugh even more, as now having a bossy ladybug tell her what to do was even funnier. “It’s probably the shock of being a ladybug,” Micky said, with the coolness of a doctor analyzing a patient’s illness.
At this point, Molly rolled onto her back from mirth. And there she lay, laughing, with her feet up in the air. Micky stayed quiet, and after a while she calmed down. “Now you’re stuck, aren’t you?” he said. “That was a bit stupid. Haven’t you ever seen how ladybugs can’t get up from their backs?”
“Oh!” Molly spluttered a bit more and then tried to sober up.
“Lucky I’m here.” Micky went around to her side and rocked her back onto her feet.
“Okay, okay, I won’t laugh anymore,” Molly promised. “Oh. Phew. So how do we fly?”
“It’s easy,” Micky replied, “because as a ladybug, you were born to do it. Just stretch out.” He extended his wings, and Molly copied him. “And just kind of reach for the air and cup it in your wings and push it down to the ground with them.”
“Like thi—?” Before Molly could finish her sentence, she had shot up into the air.
“Yes,” Micky said, now flapping beside her. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Amaaaaazing!” Molly yelled back as she dived upward, her laughing fit now completely behind her. “It’s a bit like swimming underwater! Except the air is thinner and easier to push than water.”
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” he shouted, laughing as he landed on the top of the sofa back.
Now they could both see Black beside his desk.
“Book, book, book,” he grunted under his breath. These words weren’t actually decipherable to Molly and Micky, because they now only spoke Ladybug, but they could understand exactly what Black was doing. He had slipped the hypnosis book into a large black shoulder bag and was gathering his coat from the back of the chair.
“We’d better follow him,” Molly buzzed. “Before he shuts the door.” Micky wiggled his front legs in agreement.
From her window-ledge vantage point, Miss Hunroe twitched her tail furiously.
“Black’s got the book,” she hissed angrily to the fat ginger cat. “And somehow those children have morphed.”
“All is not lost,” Miss Oakkton, the ginger cat, replied. “Zay probably read ze lesson on morphing into humans. We can at least get zat information from zem. Zay have no idea who we are yet, so we have ze advantage. If we can learn zose lessons from ze brats, we are halfway to achieving our aims.”
“We just need to follow Black,” purred the fluffy Miss Suzette, who had hopped back up beside them.
“Shh,” meowed Miss Hunroe, highly irritated by the turn of events. “Follow me.” Turning, she leaped off the window ledge.
Micky and Molly took flight and, still a little unsteady, followed Black out of his office, slipping past him as he switched off the light. Micky, it had to be said, was better at flying than Molly. She tipped from left to right like an erratic seesaw. She found the noise of her wings much louder than she’d expected. Not as loud as the blades of a helicopter, but the whirring, flicking noise meant she could hardly hear Micky when he called over to her.
“Relax, Molly. You look so serious!”
“How can you tell?” she yelled back.
“Your antennas are too stiff!”
Molly noticed there was a distinct smile on the black, glossy face of Micky the ladybug. Now it was his turn to laugh.
“Okay, I’ll try to relax!” she shouted, and she gave a sigh as she flew. Immediately the flight improved. “Less turbulence now!”
Molly and Micky flew high in the casino room, dodging the massive golden chandeliers that now seemed as big as buildings. Molly looked down. The green baize ca
rd tables seemed like green fields, and the casino customers were like huge giants. Ahead of them, Theobald Black’s head bobbed slowly up and down as he negotiated the crowds and crossed the room.
“Quick!” Micky shouted as Black reached the revolving door. “We have to get through.” He dived kamikazelike toward the revolving segment of the door with Black. Molly misjudged her speed and hit the glass. Surprisingly, the collision didn’t hurt as much as she thought it might, but it did cause her to tailspin.
“Pull out, pull out!” Micky screeched, and like some sort of super bug he jetted below Molly and budged her upward so that she moved forward as the door turned. In the next second they were blown out into the cold night air of the street.
“Thanks! I could have been squashed there, Micky. Thanks.” Molly shuddered as she regained control of herself. Both ladybugs treaded air and watched Black set off. “The best thing to do would be to land on him, and get a free ride.”
“Good idea!”
Opposite the casino, standing on the marble porch of a very smart jewelry shop with his brown collar up, AH2 heard his red tracking device beep. Pulling off a glove, he quickly tugged it out of his pocket to consult it.
Molly Moon was coming out of the casino. AH2 looked up expectantly but, to his puzzlement, saw only a dark-haired man in a camel-hair coat. As he stepped out to turn right, so AH2’s gadget told him that Molly Moon was also turning right. In fact, she seemed to be following him. She was invisible. AH2 gulped. If Molly Moon was an alien, perhaps the true alien form was like this—invisible! Why, if this was true, there might be millions of aliens living on Earth without humans having the slightest knowledge of them!
Then something else grabbed AH2’s attention. Those cats! There they were again! They’d come out of the alley and were darting from shadow to shadow in pursuit of the man. AH2 waited until Black, the Molly Moon alien phantom, and the cats were all a safe distance away, and then he began to follow.
Up in Black’s office, Lily sat in the dark cupboard. Her father had left the room and turned off the light. She thought about the cats. She wondered what the twins were doing. And she waited for them to start talking in low voices again. But they didn’t. Minutes ticked by. Ticktock. Ticktock. Lily’s legs began to feel cramped, and the cupboard began to feel uncomfortably small. Lily considered her predicament. She didn’t want to be hypnotized by the children, yet she didn’t want to sit in this cupboard all night either. It was so quiet. Were they there anymore?
Full of trepidation, Lily silently and slowly opened the cupboard door and slipped out. The room was dark except for some street light that was coming through the slit window where the cats had been. She glanced up at the open air vent. Perhaps the two children had escaped through the vent, or maybe, just maybe, they were still behind the sofa. With her heart pounding and her mouth dry, Lily tiptoed aross the room. She could, she knew, simply unlock the door and run, but now her curiosity had gotten the better of her. In the semidark, she peered over the sofa.
The twins had gone. Vanished. Now Lily rushed back to the desk and turned on the lamp. There on the floor behind the sofa were two heaps of clothes. The clothes that the children had been wearing!
For a moment Lily was confused. Then she realized what had happened. Those kids had morphed. There was no other way they would have left the room and left all their clothes behind.
Lily scrambled over the sofa and rummaged through the clothes. She delved in the jeans pockets for anything that might tell her who these children had been. But the pockets were empty. Whoever they were, it was clear they were after the hypnotism book.
Lily’s temper began to stir, and then guilt began to smolder like a fire inside her. She wished she had warned her dad when she had had the chance. Because of her, the book was in danger of being stolen. Maybe he was in danger.
Hundreds of miles away, Petula walked along a muddy country road. Petula followed her senses, for she could feel where Molly had been. It was as if there was radar inside her head, and Molly glowed there.
When Petula had set out, she was so full of determination and fury that this had kept her going for a good few miles. The country lanes edged with brambles and the fields full of sheep or cows or horses kept her amused for a while. She sniffed the air as she walked past unfamiliar farms where strange dogs barked. She raised her nose as she went through cottaged villages. There were hundreds of different smells, from baking smells to engine oil to hives and honey. How had she not guessed that the woman might be a threat? She shook her head at herself as she walked, making her collar rattle. When she stopped at puddles to drink, she saw her black reflection and frowned at herself. She prided herself on the way she’d kept an eye on her friend Molly. How had her guard slipped? She dropped the pebble she’d been sucking into the puddle so that her reflection was cut up by ripples.
“Stupid!” she barked at herself.
After ten miles, Petula really was beginning to flag. Her legs were aching. Fit as she was, Petula wasn’t used to marathon walks.
She felt as though she had hardly made any progress. She realized that she was going to have to get some help. She sniffed the air for inspiration.
Looking about, she saw that she was approaching a farm, an establishment that smelled of flowers. This one had high wooden gates. A battered sign with writing on it and pictures of flowers hung to the left of them. Beyond the gates was a large yard with a big corregated-roofed building and, to the side, huge greenhouses. Three men were lifting boxes into an open-backed truck. The boxes, Petula could smell, were full of flowers.
Cautiously, she went closer to get a better look. It was then that she saw a white bulldog sitting on a pile of sand. At the same time, he saw Petula. After raising his nose to the air to catch her scent, he began to make his way over.
“Good afternoon. Interested in April showers?” was how he introduced himself.
And that was how Petula met Stanley.
Now Petula was forty miles outside London, sucking a small pebble in the back of the open truck, her black ears flapping in the wind. They were en route for the flower market in London. Petula had found out that April showers meant flowers. Stanley sat beside her, and all about them were boxes full of freshly cut flowers tied together with rope.
“Thank you for giving me a lift,” Petula said, watching the tarmac drop away from under the back wheels of the truck.
“My pleasure, sweet’eart,” the handsome bulldog replied. “Would have taken you days to walk to London.”
“It was so lucky I came across you,” Petula said. “How often do you pick up flowers, erm, April showers for the flower market?”
“Well, it depends. My man drives out to the country dependin’ on what people are buyin’. They like their April showers in the Old Smoke.”
“The Old Smoke?”
“That’s Cockney rhymin’ slang for London.”
“So you come from London?”
“Oh, yeah. Born and bred. My man is a barrow boy.”
Petula frowned and put her nose up to the dark late-afternoon air to feel for Molly.
“Is the market in the center of London?” she asked.
“Not far. Near the ’ouses of Parliament. Just the other side of the river.” Stanley scratched his ear with his back paw.
“How long do you think it will take to get there?” Petula asked with a shiver.
“Oh, I dunno, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground already. I reckon it’ll only be another forty minutes. You look like you’re a bit taters in the mold.”
“Taters in the mold?”
“Potatoes in the mold. Cold.”
Petula nodded.
“I am. It’s a bit windy out here.”
“Wish you had told me, luv. Could ’ave easily helped you with that. Wait there.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere,” Petula said. She watched as Stanley dragged an old sack from behind a crate and nudged it around her body. Petula smiled. “Thanks.”
/>
The bulldog eyed her. Then he asked, “So these dustbin lids you know that are in trouble, you say you can feel where they are?”
“Dustbin lids?”
“Kids.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I can. And the closer we get to them, the stronger the feeling of them gets.”
“You must have a strong connection with them, then. And this woman that you say has taken them, can you feel her?”
“No, I’ve only come across her once. Wish I’d bitten her ankles when I met her, and drawn blood. She smells of roses and thorns.”
“Well, she sounds a babbling brook,” Stanley commented.
“A babbling brook?”
“A crook. I mean, that’s downright wicked, stealin’ a couple of dustbin lids. But don’t you worry now, Petula. I’ve got a friend who’s joinin’ us when we get to the market. The arrangement was, we were going for a good ol’ sniff about. But now plans have changed. He knows central London like the back of his paw, and he’s got a nose like a hound on him. We’ll have a butcher’s with ’im.”
“A butcher’s?”
“A butcher’s hook, a look. We’ll have a look for your friends with him. Magglorian will help you find them.”
“I hope he can,” Petula said. “You see, it’s all a bit more complicated. Erm. Do you know what hypnotism is, Stanley?”
Eight
Miss Oakkton the ginger tomcat was out of breath. She watched the white cat that was Miss Hunroe as it slipped ahead, chasing Mr. Black, and she sidestepped into the entrance of a closed delicatessen. In a few seconds she had materialized back into her human self, this time in an olive-colored, ankle-length tweed coat with a hat and bag to match, carrying two baskets. The tomcat sat, dazed, by her feet. Miss Oakkton put down her baskets and put the ginger tom into one of them. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tortoiseshell pipe and an ivory tobacco box. Packing the pipe with tobacco, she lit it. For a few minutes she stood smoking, enjoying the peace and quiet. Then her phone rang. Lazily, she pulled it from her bag.