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!”