Two

Molly woke up in the dark. A fox was barking outside and the drainpipe outside her window was gurgling as rainwater rushed down it. She rolled over, pulling the duvet over her shoulders, and tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t so she stretched her hand out to press the light button on her alarm clock. A blackbird let out its first chirrup. Moments later another joined in. Molly lay back on her pillow and listened to the opening notes of the dawn chorus.

Outside, gusts of clouds raced across the sky, unveiling the moon. The park and Molly’s bedroom were suddenly filled with silver light. She tipped herself out of bed and nudged her slippers on. Petula drowsily raised her head, then curled up into a tighter ball and shut her eyes again. Molly wondered what she was dreaming about. Chasing sticks, she supposed. She smiled as she imagined Petula’s doggy dream. Then, yawning, and tripping on her clothes strewn all over the floor, she approached the window. Here, on a table glinting in the silver light, lay her clear crystal and her red-and-green time-traveling gems, threaded onto a piece of old string. She slipped the precious necklace over her head, realizing as she did that she wouldn’t take it off again until she next went to bed at Briersville Park. For when she was in other time zones, the scarred colored gems were her only ticket home.

The clear crystal was simply for world stopping. To test herself, Molly stroked it now and prepared to stop time. She let her mind relax and looked out at the wet garden, focusing her hypnotic eyes on a rabbit that was nibbling the grass under a cedar tree. As she concentrated, the cold, tingling feeling that always accompanied world stopping filled her veins. Soon her mind was feeling fizzy. And then it was done.

The rabbit froze mid-hop. The world froze. Birds taking flight from the cedar tree hung in midair. The silhouettes of llamas in the far field were as statuesque as the animal-shaped bushes about them. Everywhere was as still as a picture. But not just in Briersville.

In New York, where it was half past midnight, night traffic was silent. Nothing moved up or down or across the glittering streets. Partygoers leaving snazzy nightclubs and restaurants, ready to go home to bed, were suddenly rigid, frozen as they walked. Inside lofty skyscrapers the snores and dreams of sleeping people suddenly halted, replaced by hush and stillness. In Tokyo, Japan, where it was two thirty in the afternoon, chopsticks, pincering sushi, hung motionless in front of still, open mouths. In Sydney, Australia, where it was late afternoon, surfers were frozen as they rode motionless waves. All over the world raindrops paused. Waterfalls were suspended and hurricanes and winds were quiet. And at the center of the freeze was Molly, with her clear crystal, holding the world motionless with her will. The powerful feeling it gave her was dizzying. She released her concentration and in a snap the rabbit on the grass hopped away. She smiled. She was pleased to see she still had the knack.

Molly folded her arms. She wondered what the day held for her. For her today wasn’t necessarily this day. No, her today was going to be a day from long ago—the day when she and her twin brother had been born. It would be a day full of detective work and hopefully lots of answers. Someone had kidnaped her twin brother—that was clear. Somehow they had removed his name from the hospital’s records too. Molly had read in the papers of cases where babies had been abducted from hospitals. The thieves were usually sad, mad people who desperately wanted a child. If her brother’s thief wasn’t sad and mad, then it was someone very, very bad. Molly didn’t relish the idea of meeting him or her at all. She clenched her fists. She suddenly felt enormously protective toward her unknown twin and furious with whoever had taken him. They had absolutely no right to him, just as Cornelius Logan had had no right to Molly when he’d stolen her. The difference between her and her brother was that she’d found out about her true roots. Right then and there Molly made a promise. Though she had been putting off finding her twin, now she would do whatever it took to track him down. Nerves bubbled up from the pit of her stomach, but still she was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery—for Lucy, for Primo, for herself, but mostly for him, her brother.

Molly opened the drawer of her rosewood cupboard and pulled out a pair of clean jeans. She found some underpants, two odd socks, a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, and a black sweater and put them on. Then she pulled her favorite red-and-white sneakers out from under the armchair. She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and splashed some water over her face. Dabbing her nose dry, she ran her fingers through her hair and tried to untangle a few knots that had built up as she’d slept. Giving up, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was not a pretty girl, Molly knew, and today her hair looked as though it had been electrified. But she didn’t mind.

“Good luck,” she said to her reflection. Then she went to wake Petula.

Downstairs in the kitchen, to Molly’s surprise, Rocky was dressed and opening a can of dog food for Petula’s breakfast.

“What are you doing up?” Molly asked.

“What are you doing up?” he countered. Molly gave him a puzzled look.

“I had a feeling,” he explained as he put Petula’s bowl on the floor, “a feeling that you might try to find him today. It was that fortune from the Chinese cookie that did it.” He pulled the small strip of paper from his pocket and read it again. “‘Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.’ I hope you weren’t thinking of going alone?”

“Well, Petula said she’d come.”

“Any more space available?”

“There’s always space for you, Rocky.” Molly smiled. She hadn’t asked Rocky because she hadn’t wanted to make him feel like he ought to come with her.

She thought he’d be happier mucking about with Ojas and she wanted to spare him the scariness of the trip.

“Are you sure you want to come? I mean, you never know, it might be really difficult. Like last time—remember? I’m a bit nervous.”

“What, so you think I’d let you go and do it alone, then? No way, Molly. If it’s easy, that will be great; and if it’s dangerous, then you’ll need help.”

Molly grinned. “Thanks, Rocky.”

Molly went to the larder and got some sugar puffs and some milk. Then she and Rocky sat at the table and poured themselves each a bowlful of cereal.

“Aren’t you going to wake them?” Rocky asked, munching and watching Molly write Primo and Lucy a note.

“It’s better we just go. If we tell them, they’ll only decide it’s too dangerous and beg us not to. I know that deep down they really, really want to find him.”

“You’re right.” Rocky sipped his apple juice thoughtfully.

From under the table where she was tucking into her chicken breakfast, Petula cocked her head and tried to sense what was happening. Her dog instinct gave her a nasty feeling that Molly and Rocky were about to embark on another one of the strange trips where they traveled down windy tunnels and arrived in different times and places. She hoped not. She’d planned to meet the postman’s dog, Chomsky, today for a good chat and a tail wag. She’d have to miss that and keep an eye on Molly instead. Petula rested her chin on her paws and frowned. Last time Molly had been on one of her special trips things had gotten very hairy. Glancing up past the edge of the table, Petula could just make out the scar on Molly’s neck, a souvenir of that adventure. She winced. Yes, Petula could sense something big was up. As she listened to them wolfing down cereal she knew that it was probably because they weren’t sure when they were going to eat again.

Please don’t go, Molly, Petula yearned, lifting her head up. Let’s stay here. But her thoughts fell on an impervious mind.

Molly made herself a ketchup sandwich and wrapped it in cling wrap.

“Do you think we should bring back a baby or an eleven-year-old boy?”

“Let’s just find him first,” said Rocky.

Molly put on her anorak, and Rocky his sleeveless Puffa jacket and a rainproof slicker. Each stuffed his pockets with useful things; along with her sandwich Molly took a can of dog food for Petula and a bottle of water. They packed a compass, some money, a camera, and two bars of chocolate. Rocky took a flashlight from the back-door cupboard and Molly a rucksack that Petula would fit inside. Remembering their hats and scarves, and pulling their rainproof hoods up, Molly whistled quietly to Petula and they all crept out.

Soon they were on bicycles, pedaling along the drive toward the lodge gates. It had stopped raining, but the air was thick and oppressive. Thunder was coming.

Petula sat in the basket on Molly’s bike, sucking on a stone, her ears flapping in the cold breeze. The morning smelled of wet fern and sodden grass, of mud and earthworms. The gravel under the bikes’ wheels still held the scent of an elephant’s footprints, and mixed up with all of this was the strange electricity in the air that made the tip of Petula’s tongue taste metallic and signaled that lightning was on its way. Petula shivered. She hated thunder.

Black clouds hung above. The roads were dark and it was difficult to see where they were going, but Molly and Rocky cycled as fast as they could, eager not to get caught in the electric storm. As they passed the ONE MILE TO BRIERSVILLE sign, a distant roll of thunder rumbled in the sky. And then a bang of thunder directly overhead seemed to shake the very road they were on, and a terrifying flash of silver light forked across the sky.

“Stop the world!” Rocky shouted to Molly over the wind, putting his hand on her shoulder. And so Molly did. When the next crack of thunder came, she froze time, making the world stand still just as a sheet of lightning was illuminating the sky. Rocky pedaled, touching Molly all the time, for that way he was able to stay out of the freeze. Petula, on the other hand, was as still as a stuffed toy.

So the two children sped toward Briersville with their way lit up and with raindrops hanging motionless in the air that popped and splashed as they cycled through them. But the town was eerie in the strange silver light of the storm. Molly was keen to switch the world back on again. As they came into Briersville, they saw that a few people were already up—a postman stood rigid in a doorway, sheltering from the rain, and a milkman sat in his milk float. Molly and Rocky biked down the High Street and followed the signs for the hospital where Molly had been born. Both Molly and Rocky had been there before. Molly’s worst visit was when she’d fallen out of a tree and broken her leg. She’d been seven years old and hiding from the orphanage bully. Rocky had been admitted twice to St. Michael’s Hospital for asthma attacks.

Now the speckled white building loomed up in front of them. They slotted the bikes’ wheels into parking racks and locked them up. Molly picked Petula up, sending movement into her.

Please don’t go, Petula whined to Molly, now desperate to stop this trip.

“Don’t worry, Petula. It’ll all be fine,” Molly said, kissing her forehead and trying to feel brave. “Just stay really quiet.” She carefully put her into the black rucksack and handed it to Rocky. Then Molly let the world move. The lightning exploded in the sky, and they walked through the hospital entrance.

Inside was a small shop selling newspapers, magazines, and flowers as well as stationery, puzzles, cards, and games for bored patients. To the right was a coffee shop. In the distance were the elevators and signs to different hospital departments. Petula poked her nose out through the top of the rucksack and sniffed. The place didn’t smell too good. The air was clinical and filled with disinfectant. And under that was the odor of blood and illness and boiled cabbage. She snuffled and whined and then popped her head back inside the rucksack.

“‘The Maternity Ward,’” said Molly, reading a sign. “‘St. Mary’s Wing’—that’s where we go.” She tied her soggy anorak around her waist. Rocky kept his sleeveless Puffa jacket on but wound up his slicker. Molly brought a bunch of daffodils. As the man in the kiosk turned to sort her change she whispered, “Better look like we’re visitors.” Then they walked along an olive-green passage, following the arrowed signs.

As they approached the maternity wing, Petula could make out the smell of babies galore and milk and diapers. Molly pushed a white swing door and they slipped through to find themselves in a door-lined passage. Outside there was another bang of thunder, then a huge flash of lightning, and from one of the bedrooms a baby began to cry. Molly and Rocky quickly stepped sideways into a small waiting room. Even though they were there to do good, both felt as guilty as creeping thieves.

“Go back in time now,” whispered Rocky urgently, “before anyone comes.” He put his hand on Molly’s shoulder again so that he and Petula could be transported through time with her. Molly nodded and reached for her string of gems. She held the three crystals in her right hand and stared at the scarred green gem. That crystal would take them back in time. And if she made the scar on it open, it would follow very precise instructions and take them to exactly where they wanted to go. She relaxed her mind and bored her gaze into the scar. Molly steeped her thoughts with goodness, for that was the way she’d learned how to open the scar, and as she thought, the scar blinked wide. At once it was a swirling circle of greens, spiraling away into itself. They were ready. Molly’s hands began to sweat, as they always did when nerves gripped her. Then she took a deep breath and thought an instruction to the gem. She asked it to take them back eleven years and two hundred days—her precise age. And as soon as the request had been made, Molly, Rocky, and Petula were plunged back in time. A BOOM filled the hospital waiting room as they disappeared.

The room around Molly and Rocky purred with pale light, bright light, and darkness as they moved backward through four thousand, two hundred and fifteen days and nights. Finally the light settled.

Molly put them into a time hover. By doing this, and not properly landing in the time, Molly and Rocky were able to see their surroundings and yet were invisible to anyone in that time.

In this strange, not-quite-there dimension, they stepped into the passage to check that the coast was clear. Then Molly released the time hover and they properly arrived.

It was eleven and a half years earlier, but the peculiar thing that both Molly and Rocky noticed straight away was that there was a storm outside there too. Rain was pelting down on the skylights above them and a blast of thunder rattled the windows. Molly gulped and shot a puzzled look at Rocky. Then she stroked Petula’s nose and, keeping her grip on Rocky’s arm just in case they had to time travel again suddenly, the two friends ventured down the passage, inspecting the names on the hospital bedroom doors.

Neither Molly nor Rocky said a word. They knew what they were here to do. And Petula sensed that she should be quiet too. She sniffed the air. It was still full of baby smells. Then a whiff of a baby that smelled like Molly hit her nostrils. Petula wrinkled her nose and wondered what was going on.

Molly and Rocky read the doors’ labels. The first read C. YO, the next, M. BURTON, the third, D. A. LOWEY. Then they saw what they wanted—a sign that read L. LOGAN.

The door to this bedroom was open. In her last adventure Molly had met several of her younger selves, but still she felt a quiver of anticipation as she realized that she was about to see herself as a newborn baby. And equally as amazing, she was about to see her twin brother for the first time. Hot with curiosity, Molly tilted her head around the door.

In front of her was a white and yellow room with a metal bed in the center of it. Sitting up under sheets and blankets and in a pink nightdress was a much younger Lucy Logan. She was staring fondly down at a baby in her arms.

A nurse stood with her back to the door giving Lucy advice.

“When you’ve fed her, you can burp her and then she’ll drop off, I’m sure. The lad’s still asleep, but no doubt he’ll wake up soon. Yes, twins are hard work, my dear.”

Outside there was another roll of thunder.

Lucy Logan lifted the baby to rest her head on her shoulder and she began patting its back. She glanced at Molly, standing in the doorway, and smiled, completely unaware that this girl was this same child from the future.

“Have you got a name for her yet?” the nurse asked.

“No name yet,” Lucy said. On the floor Molly noticed a rectangular Moon’s Marshmallows box with bags of pink-and-white marshmallows in it. Three empty packets lay on the bedside table. Molly nudged Rocky and they sidestepped past the room.

“Where do you think my brother is?” whispered Molly.

Just then, double doors farther down opened, and a cot on wheels was pushed out to the passage and into another room.

“I bet there’s a big nursery place where they keep all the babies,” said Rocky. “I’ve seen them in films. Maybe that’s where he is.”

They crept toward the double doors. Through its glass windows they could see four wheeled cots, each with a swaddled baby inside. A dressing-gowned mother came out. She was so tired she didn’t notice Rocky and Molly. When she’d drifted back to her room they stepped inside. Petula whined from inside the rucksack. She could suddenly smell the saltiness of an aggressive man. He was in the building—and coming closer.

“Shh, Petula,” hushed Molly, completely oblivious to her pet’s warning.

The first crib held a dark baby with tight corkscrew curls of black hair. The second held a Chinese baby. In the third and fourth slept two babies, either of which could be Molly’s twin brother.

“Which one do you think he is?” Molly asked. Rocky pointed down at the distinct potato-shaped nose that was very like Molly’s own.

“That’s him, I reckon,” Rocky whispered. “I mean, those noses don’t grow on trees.”

Molly’s mouth fell open. Until this moment it had been hard to truly believe that she had a brother, but now, here was the living, breathing proof. “That is him, isn’t it!” she yelped. “And he looks just like me.”

“Two munchkins,” agreed Rocky.

The baby was wrapped up in a white cotton knitted blanket; his cheeks were soft and pink and his ears the shape of tiny tangerine segments. He sighed peacefully. Molly glanced around the room. There was a cabinet at one end with bottles and diapers on it.

“Let’s hide,” she whispered. “It’s time to find out who took him.”

Rocky nodded and soon they were crouched behind the piece of furniture.

Molly shuffled the gems on their string around in her hand until the red forward-traveling gem was between her finger and thumb. She stared down at the scar on it and, shivering with anticipation, bid it open. At once a red swirl, like the inside of a volcano, spiraled away to its stem.

“This is it, Rocky.”

Molly beamed thoughts at the gem, asking it to lift them into a time hover and then to carry them slowly into the future. Through the time-hover mist, she and Rocky poked their heads over the cabinet and watched as the world reeled forward. People walked swiftly in and out of the nursery, their movements quick and jiggly as though they were in a film that had been fast-forwarded. Nurses and mothers flashed into the room and out again, pushing cots on wheels, holding babies. Molly saw her twin brother’s cot wheeled out and whizzed back in with her own. It was like rush hour. A nurse zoomed around the room, dabbing at the babies, adjusting their blankets, and changing diapers. And then, just after a flash of lightning, a doctor with his hair gelled into a stiff quiff entered. He studied the babies in the cots as though they were interesting specimens and stopped to look at Molly’s brother and then the baby next to him. He tugged at the blankets of both of the babies to look at the bands around their wrists. And finally, with the movement of a heron catching a fish, he plucked the baby boy from his cot and, astonishingly, vanished into thin air.

Molly took them out of the time hover and the mist vanished. The clock on the wall read four.

“Normal doctors don’t disappear like that. Or have hairstyles like that,” she said.

“I know,” Rocky whispered. “He looked like some sort of rock ‘n’ roll pensioner.”

Molly nodded. “He was a time traveler. He just popped out of this time.”

Petula gave a small bark. Another rumble of thunder over the building seemed to reply.

“Rewind?” suggested Rocky. Molly suddenly felt incredibly nervous. The idea that the baby thief was a time traveler and therefore a hypnotist made the situation a lot more complicated and scary than she’d expected. He was obviously powerful and, she now suspected, nasty too. For a moment she wanted to leave the hospital and run back to safe Briersville Park. Then she thought of her defenseless baby brother, and anger eclipsed her fear.

“Rewind,” she agreed. Carefully she concentrated on the green gem and lifted herself and Rocky up and back in time. Again they passed the moment when the doctor entered, although this time his movements were back to front. Then the room was empty, save the line of cots and the babies sleeping peacefully. Molly stopped. The mist cleared. Three minutes to four, the clock said.

“What shall we do? Just wait for him?” asked Rocky.

“I suppose so. And when he vanishes, when he disappears from this time, well, we’ll have to jump too and follow him to exactly where he’s going.”

“Aren’t you going to hypnotize him?”

“No. He must be a good hypnotist himself. Plus, who knows where he comes from? Maybe he has time-traveling friends, other hypnotists. We have to find out where he’s from before we can decide whether we can get away with hypnotizing him.”

“Do you think you can follow him?” asked Rocky doubtfully. “I mean, you don’t even know whether he was traveling forward or backward in time.”

“I’ll get both gems active, so we can go either way, and I’ll do that lasso thing—remember that trick?” Once before, Molly had found that she could bring someone time traveling with her by sending out a sort of mind lasso that swung around the other person and carried him along too. This was the other way around. She’d never lassoed someone in order to follow him or her. She hoped it would work.

Soon both her gems’ eyes were open. Molly and Rocky knew there were probably mere seconds to go now before the mysterious doctor walked in.

“Keep out of sight,” Molly whispered, her heart beating furiously. “If he sees us, who knows what might happen to my brother’s future … or mine?”

There was a flash of lightning that whitened the hospital room and the door opened. An elderly man entered. His face was wrinkled and his gray hair was styled into a strange quiff that bobbed over his head like a silver duck’s tail. He wore a white doctor’s coat and, underneath it, black shiny trousers. His shoes were muddy. Like an interested baby specialist, he inspected the first three infants before stopping at the cot next to Molly’s brother’s and leaning down to peer at the baby Molly. He prodded at her and read her wristband, and then undid her brother’s blanket to read his hospital band too.

“Ah, so there’re two of you,” he muttered in a deep voice, enunciating his words carefully. “Twins—a girl and a boy. Which is best? The girl? Maybe I’ll take the girl. Or the boy? Hmm. Actually … Yes, I’ll take him.”

Molly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It seemed that she, the baby Molly, had almost been chosen for kidnaping. Outside, the crashing thunder sounded like giant marbles cracking together. Molly and Rocky got ready for the man’s vanishing act. As he bent to gather her brother’s blanket and put his hands about him, she gritted her teeth and sent an instruction to her gems to lasso the snatcher so they could tag him. At once her instructions hung in the air like static electricity. He picked the child up. Then he put his hand to a gem that hung around his neck. In the next second Molly and Rocky felt themselves being tugged. As the stranger sped away through time they found themselves following him.

In the room there was a BOOM as the space (once filled with the man, the baby, Molly, Petula, and Rocky) was replaced with air. Two babies woke up and began to cry.

A minute later the same blue-and-white-uniformed nurse who had talked so kindly to Lucy Logan walked in. She had no questioning look on her face, wondering what the loud noise had been. She was calm, as if nothing odd had happened. She stepped toward the now empty Logan baby boy’s crib and pushed it to the wall. Her next job was to remove the baby’s name from the hospital register and destroy all documents with his name on it.

The nurse wasn’t acting maliciously. She was behaving unknowingly. For already, in her own mind, memories of the baby boy had been wiped out.

Someone had gotten to her. She had been hypnotized. Hypnotized to erase all evidence of Molly’s twin brother. No one even knew that a baby Logan boy had existed.