Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars (6 page)

‘Yes, that's all,' repeated Molly to herself. She had forgotten how to make potions.
She had purposefully taken no interest in such matters, and until now she had never
wanted to feel vibrations.

Molly let go of the tree and marched inside with pretend confidence. She went straight
to her mama's desk. Perhaps her mama had left instructions for how to reverse the
magic.

Drifts of books and notes and diagrams covered the desk in uneven piles. Molly began
searching through them. The red notebook was the one her mama had been using last.
In it were pictures of plants, information about their uses—all the usual stuff.
But nothing about the acorn potion.

Molly stood up. She felt unsteady. If there was no recipe for turning her mama back
into a mama, how would she get her back? And until she did, what would she do without
her?

She flung open the cupboard to see what food was there, for one thing. The bread
bin was empty. There was no yoghurt in the fridge; they had eaten it all last night
with the stewed apricots. Molly thought longingly of the black-eyed pea autumn stew
her mama always made. How did she make it? Molly should have paid more attention.
She
took down a jar of cashews and shook some into her hand. Her mama made cashew
paste and mixed it with chocolate and coconut and rolled it into balls. Molly knew
how to make those. She would make hundreds of them. And there was still the last
crumpet.

Molly went out to the vegetable garden. She stared at a large zucchini and pinched
it. She didn't want the zucchini to know it but, the truth was, she didn't like zucchini
much, or pumpkin. Mulberries, she thought happily and ran to the tree to check there
were still plenty there. The birds loved them too. Molly dragged the ladder to the
tree and climbed up with the orange bucket to gather as many as possible.

‘Sorry, birds,' she called out. ‘These are desperate times.' From high up in the
mulberry tree, she glanced cautiously towards the Mama tree, which stood rather proudly
above all the others, except the pines.

The Mama tree was not solemn and dark like
the pines; it shimmered and shook as if
the leaves were conversing loudly, laughing perhaps, even uproariously. Molly sighed.
At least the Mama tree seemed happy and well, and with the sunhat crowning it, it
looked beautiful, and special, and different from any other tree.

Molly climbed down; her dress was now smirched with purple juice. She went inside
and plonked the bucket of mulberries on the bench. Now she would make the chocolate-and-cashew
balls, and they would be sweeter and bigger than ever before.

‘After all, Maude,' she said, ‘we need some cheering up right now.'

CHAPTER 9

The Dark

Molly spent the afternoon making chocolate- and-cashew balls. She emptied the fridge
of all the things she wouldn't eat: broccoli, cabbage, goat cheese, pickled lemons,
umeboshi paste and fennel. That could all go to the chooks. For herself and Maude,
she heaped chocolate balls and mulberries onto plates and put them in the fridge.
Molly suddenly felt important and grown up and responsible. She patted Maude reassuringly
and said, ‘Now, now, Maudie, everything will be okay.' Even though she wasn't certain
about this,
it made her feel better to say it. But the better she felt, the more
she began to think that when her mama did come back she wouldn't be happy to see
the fridge so full of chocolate balls, so Molly stuck the broccoli back in, just
in case.

Then she made a little feast of chocolate balls and biscuits with squished mulberries
and honey for herself, Maude and Claudine. She set the table outside with the special-occasion
lilac tablecloth, and she picked some lavender and jammed it in the yellow milk jug
and put it in the middle. It was just as Mama would have done it, she thought, and
she called out, just as her mama might have, ‘Everyone, lunch is ready.'

Maude and Claudine didn't come running, as proper children should, but then again,
thought Molly, often real children didn't come straightaway anyway, especially if
they were in the middle of a small adventure. So she called them again, and in the
end she went and fetched Claudine, who jumped up on the table and sniffed disapprovingly
at the mulberry and honey biscuits, and then, with a flick of her tail, jumped down
and returned to basking in the sun. Maude sat by Molly's side and ate biscuits under
the table from Molly's hand. Molly stared out down the hill, where the Mama tree
seemed now to have grown even larger. She wasn't hungry after all, and perhaps she
even felt a little lonely. From where she sat the tree seemed to take all the attention.
A whole new, reaching and spreading shape in the sky. The Mama tree certainly did
block out the neighbours. And it was lovely.

But it was odd to have a meal without anyone who spoke or sat at the table. Perhaps
she would invite Ellen for lunch. But she couldn't without explaining that her mama
had become a tree. And Ellen would have trouble believing her. Or, if Ellen did believe
her, what would she think? Would she go home and tell her mother that Molly was imagining
things. Molly frowned to herself as she pictured this.

The fact was, if anyone came over, they would soon realise there was no Mama, and
Molly would have to explain what had happened, and then she'd be taken away to an
orphanage.

‘Oh, Mama,' she said out loud, with a great sigh and a good dash of fondness too.
And then she curled up on her mama's bed. She sank into a soft cloud of familiar
Mama scents. Soon she would get up and do something, but first she would lie a while
and think about what to do.

Maude jumped up on the bed, but Claudine stayed on top of the piano and sulked, as
she was hungry and she didn't like chocolate balls.

When Molly woke up, her arms were cold. The house was shadowy and lit with the last
blob of
light. Molly sat up as the memory of what had happened to her mama burst
into her mind, and she flung her hands over her eyes and willed it all away. The
evening sounds crept around her and she shivered. She rummaged in her mama's drawers
for a cardigan. Outside, the sky was sinking towards darkness and windows were glowing
with insideness. Dinners were being cooked, probably nice tomato-and-lentil stews,
the sort Molly would be having for dinner if her mama hadn't turned into a tree,
and possibly even apple crumbles. Molly's tummy rumbled. Being alone during the day
was one thing, but darkness was frightening. Anything could come out of the darkness.

Claudine miaowed loudly. Molly stomped to the fridge where she found some milk. ‘Well,
Claudine, that's the last of the milk so you better get used to biscuits and mulberries
like the rest of us.'

Claudine ignored this comment and lapped
her milk contentedly.

Molly and Maude went outside and ate some more of the chocolate-ball feast, which
was still waiting there for someone. Molly tried very much to enjoy it, especially
since she could eat as many as she liked. But having so many wasn't actually as wonderful
as she had imagined. After five, she was already sick of chocolate-and-cashew balls.
It was probably the fault of the dark, which now fell over everything. The trees
began to whisper, the grass had turned black, and the sky shuddered as the chill
crept into the air. Molly pushed the plate of chocolate balls away. She called Maude
and snuggled close.

‘Maudie,' she said, ‘don't be frightened, it's only the night. There's nothing to
be afraid of.'

But Maude wasn't frightened. Maude was alert. Her ears stood up and she quivered
as if she was listening to something. Molly's heart quivered too. Was there someone
there in the paddock beneath them? She buried her face in
Maude's ears. She didn't
want to look, but the longer she sat still not looking, the more frightened she
became. She lifted her head. The garden was still; the trees looked like dark figures.

‘I know you, trees,' Molly called out. Her voice shook, and the darkness seemed to
swallow it easily. She tried again. ‘Don't pretend. Don't pretend to be anything
you're not, because I know.'

Nothing moved. Not a breath of wind shook a leaf in response. Perhaps it was the
stillness that made things eerie and unnatural.

Move, thought Molly. Move! She stepped off
the veranda and began to windmill her
arms, just to stir up the air. ‘Whatever is about to happen, happen now,' she declared
with an authority that surprised her. She had even stomped her foot, so that the
earth could hear it too. Her arms stretched out, her fingers wiggled, combing the
air for clues.

Maude whined. And then, as if Molly had indeed been heard, there came a great rustling
and, in the same instant, the Mama tree lit up in a silvery glow. It was as if a
solitary moonbeam had swung its ray directly onto the Mama tree. The leaves glittered
and sprang into action, fluttering and whispering so that the tree seemed to be cheerfully
waving its arms about and saying, ‘Look, here I am.'