The words of the book echoed in her head. Focus on your animal and enter its being. Molly considered the ladybug. She imagined what it felt like to have the six tiny legs. Then she thought of its curved shell with heavy folded wings on top. She let herself conjure up this feeling of what life must be like as a ladybug. She imagined antennae projecting from her head, and she thought about wanting to fly. And as she thought, still holding on to the image of the finger and the worm, she dropped into the essence of ladybug. And she threw herself forward, toward the insect.
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.”