Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars (7 page)

Without knowing why, and as if entranced, Molly walked towards it. Maude followed
her, flat backed and stalking, ears pricked. Somehow the closer she went to the tree,
the safer Molly felt. The ground hummed; leaves whirled in the windless night. The
Mama tree was as pale and
luminous as the moon itself. Molly pressed her ear to the
trunk. It was warm.

‘Mama?' she whispered. ‘Mama, are you there?'

The humming she felt in the ground now swelled in the trunk and became stronger,
as if it had rushed to answer her question.

Molly pressed closer. She listened harder. The humming was more a feeling, a trembling,
pounding sort of vibration. And it came in waves; it rose and fell away, as if it
were a signal. Was it her mama's voice?

Molly turned to Maude. ‘Maude, tonight we'll sleep here. I think Mama needs us.'

She hardly waited for Maude to agree before she hurried back to the house to gather
the bedding. She took the pillow and cushions and covers off her bed and dragged
them to the tree. She ran back for Maude's basket. Then she went back, for a third
time, and put in the washing basket the ukulele, her collection of small rocks, her
string of silver flowers and her mama's alarm clock. She looked at
Claudine who was
watching with her usual bored and superior air.

‘Well, Claudine, you'll have to make up your own mind, but Maudie and I are sleeping
with Mama. And if you don't come too, it will be just you all alone, just you and
the dark night.'

Molly tried to make it sound awful to be left in the house, but Claudine didn't even
raise her nose in response.

‘You pretend nothing worries you, but I know it does,' said Molly, and she flounced
out the door, and slammed it slightly to make a proper show of her departure.

The air buzzed and creaked with the activities
of insects, and the Mama tree rustled
and shone. Molly hung up her string of silver flowers and stashed her rock collection
in the crook of a branch, and then she made her bed on the ground beneath and jumped
in.

She lay there on her back. The tree's branches were like a roof above her. Could
her mama see her? Did trees see? Molly closed her eyes and imagined she was a tree
too; she urged her feelings towards the Mama tree. A loud creaking sounded above
her, and the leaves rustled with a new vigour.

Maude jumped up with a bark. Molly sat up too. Something had happened. Maude's tail
sagged and lifted, as if uncertain what response it should make.

The tree was changing. Three large branches were lining themselves up evenly right
above Molly, like a roof. Or even a platform. Molly knew instantly what it was. It
was her mama reaching towards her.

Molly smiled. She threw her pillow and doona
up over the branches and then scrambled
up the trunk, and lay down across the branches.

It was very uncomfortable, and no doubt anyone else would have preferred to sleep
on a mattress, but Molly felt so very safe all of a sudden that she hardly noticed.
In fact, it seemed to her that she was lying again in her mama's arms. She closed
her eyes and whispered, ‘Good night, Mama tree.'

CHAPTER 10

An Emergency

The next morning Molly crossed the dry creek bed at the bottom of her street and
climbed up the other side, and she followed the road all the way to Ellen's place.
Ellen Palmer's house stood on a flat block of shaved lawn, with a couple of stone
pathways lined with clumps of easter daisy. The trampoline in the front was caged
in blue net and stood rather forlornly beside a glorious loquat tree. Underneath
it were two timid grey rabbits (Batman and Barbie) in a hutch with a chicken-wire
roof, which Maude stood over, transfixed.

All Molly knew was that she needed to talk to someone, and since Ellen was her best
friend, Ellen was the person she steered herself towards. But now that Molly had
arrived, she wasn't sure if she really wanted to go inside. There was the house that
she had always admired, square and solid and with a certain look of neatness and
completion, and there was she, adrift in a mystical turn of events and swirling with
fears. She was messy and giddy, and hungry too. Twigs were tangled in her hair. And
Ellen's house seemed like it wouldn't have room for such whirling and tangling. It
had never felt like that before, but now everything was so different and unstuck
in Molly's life.

Molly crept around the side of the house to Ellen's bedroom window. Perhaps she could
just whisper to Ellen to come out. Perhaps she need not go inside. Ellen's curtain
was drawn, so Molly tapped quietly at the window, but Maude barked, as if frustrated
with all this cautious behaviour.

The curtain was pulled back and there stood Ellen Palmer with a glittery yellow hair
band and blue eye shadow. She gaped at Molly and opened the window.

‘Molly, what are you doing? I'm dressing up.'

‘I didn't want to come in the front door.'

‘Did your mum bring you?'

‘No, I just came with Maude.'

Ellen lifted up her foot and showed it to Molly. She wore a sequinned shoe. ‘But
did your mum let you come here by yourself?'

‘Well, yes.' Molly ignored the sequinned shoe. She moved closer to the window and
held onto the ledge. ‘Mama couldn't talk though.'

Ellen said nothing while she puzzled over this.
She moved her mouth from side to
side.

‘Is she sick? Did you walk all the way?'

‘Yes, she's sick,' said Molly. She wasn't sure now why she had come and what she
should say. She had thought maybe Ellen would know what to do. But as she stood outside
Ellen's window, she felt that if she said ‘My mama is a tree,' Ellen might not believe
that such a thing could even happen. Molly looked at Ellen. Could she believe?

Ellen shrugged. ‘Lucky you. That means you can do anything you want.' Ellen shook
her hair, which was frizzy from her plaits. ‘Are you coming in? We could make up
a song.' She started to sing.

Molly sighed. She wasn't in the mood for making up songs.

‘Are you okay, Molly?' said Ellen flatly. She folded her arms over on the window
ledge and moved closer. She was concerned. She could sense that Molly was not her
usual self.

Molly panicked. She couldn't tell Ellen her mama had turned into a tree. At the very
least
Ellen would be horrified. Molly felt she couldn't let it get to that. She was
not ready for it to be horrifying, because in the middle of all that horror, there
was a quiet, tremulous hum and that was Molly's own mama.

‘I'm fine, and Mama is not technically sick, she's gone away. An emergency,' declared
Molly with sudden assurance.

‘An emergency?' Ellen frowned. This was all too confusing.

Molly leaned in the window and whispered. ‘Yes, an emergency. It's kind of secret,
though. It's to do with my brothers. She had to go to Cuba, in fact. So I'm at home
looking after Maude.'

‘All by yourself?' Ellen gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth. She seemed immensely
pleased and excited. ‘Well, why don't I come and stay with you, to keep you company?'

‘No.' Molly shook her head instantly, and Ellen flinched. She looked taken aback.
Molly was flustered. The conversation had taken her down
into a hole she didn't know
how to get out of. ‘It's just that…well…I think this is something I have to do on
my own. And you mustn't tell your mum. Promise? It's a real secret.'

Ellen stared at Molly, as if searching for reason.

Molly knew that her story had all come out in a shoddy, made-up way and that Ellen
had sensed the falseness in it. Molly hadn't found the relief she was looking for.
So now there was a flat, awkward feeling between them, and it was all Molly's fault
because she ought to have told Ellen the truth or said nothing at all. She edged
away from the window.

Ellen leaned out. ‘Wait!' She disappeared from the window and then came back with
two
mandarins and an apricot muesli bar. ‘Here, for your lunch tomorrow.' She offered
a small grin. Molly knew Ellen wanted to help. The offering of food was her gentle
bird-like way of saying, ‘I am here.'

Molly walked quickly home. There was a time when an apricot muesli bar would have
made her very happy, but now she stared at it crossly. It meant nothing after all.
It wouldn't change anything. Her mama was a tree and Molly was alone, and an apricot
muesli bar was after all nothing but some oats glued together with sugar.

What she needed was a potion, a thing of real magic, a deep and important mysterious
thing that was connected to the ways of the natural world.

That was the only way to turn her mama back.

CHAPTER 11

The Truth

Molly missed the next two days of school. She couldn't imagine how she could concentrate
on maths or anything when her mind was in such a commotion. She needed to focus all
her attention on getting her mama back.