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“There are dragons in the twins’ vegetable garden.”

Meg Murry took her head out of the refrigerator where she had been foraging for an after-school snack, and looked at her six-year-old brother. “What?”

“There are dragons in the twins’ vegetable garden. Or there were. They’ve moved to the north pasture now.”

Meg, not replying—it did not do to answer Charles Wallace too quickly when he said something odd—returned to the refrigerator. “I suppose I’ll have lettuce and tomato as usual. I was looking for something new and different and exciting.”

“Meg, did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you. I think I’ll have liverwurst and cream cheese.” She took her sandwich materials and a bottle of milk and set them out on the kitchen table. Charles Wallace waited patiently. She looked at him, scowling with an anxiety she did not like to admit to herself, at the fresh rips in the knees of his blue jeans, the streaks of dirt grained deep in his shirt, a darkening bruise on the cheekbone under his left eye. “Okay, did the big boys jump you in the schoolyard this time, or when you got off the bus?”

“Meg, you aren’t listening to me.”

“I happen to care that you’ve been in school for two months now and not a single week has gone by that you haven’t been roughed up. If you’ve been talking about dragons in the garden or wherever they are, I suppose that explains it.”

“I haven’t. Don’t underestimate me. I didn’t see them till I got home.”

Whenever Meg was deeply worried she got angry. Now she scowled at her sandwich. “I wish Mother’d get the spreadable kind of cream cheese. This stuff keeps going right through the bread. Where is she?”

“In the lab, doing an experiment. She said to tell you she wouldn’t be long.”

“Where’s Father?”

“He got a call from L.A., and he’s gone to Washington for a couple of days.”

Like the dragons in the garden, their father’s visits to the White House were something best not talked about at school. Unlike the dragons, these visits were real.

Charles Wallace picked up Meg’s doubting. “But I saw them, Meg, the dragons. Eat your sandwich and come see.”

“Where’re Sandy and Dennys?”

“Soccer practice. I haven’t told anybody but you.” Suddenly sounding forlorn, younger than his six years, he said, “I wish the high-school bus got home earlier. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”

Meg returned to the refrigerator to get lettuce. This was a cover for some rapid thinking, although she couldn’t count on Charles Wallace not picking up her thoughts, as he had picked up her doubts about the dragons. What he had actually seen she could not begin to guess. That he had seen something, something unusual, she was positive.

Charles Wallace silently watched her finish making the sandwich, carefully aligning the slices of bread and cutting it in precise sections. “I wonder if Mr. Jenkins has ever seen a dragon?”

Mr. Jenkins was the principal of the village school, and Meg had had her own troubles with him. She had small hope that Mr. Jenkins would care what happened to Charles Wallace, or that he would be willing to interfere in what he called ‘the normal procedures of democracy.’ “Mr. Jenkins believes in the law of the jungle.” She spoke through a mouthful. “Aren’t there dragons in the jungle?”

Charles Wallace finished his glass of milk. “No wonder you always flunk social studies. Eat your sandwich and stop stalling. Let’s go and see if they’re still there.”

They crossed the lawn, followed by Fortinbras, the large, black, almost-Labrador dog, happily sniffing and snuffling at the rusty autumnal remains of the rhubarb patch. Meg tripped over a wire hoop from the croquet set, and made an annoyed grunt, mostly at herself, because she had put the wickets and mallets away after the last game, and forgotten this one. A low wall of barberry separated the croquet lawn from Sandy’s and Dennys’s vegetable garden. Fortinbras leaped over the barberry, and Meg called automatically, “Not in the garden, Fort,” and the big dog backed out, between rows of cabbage and broccoli. The twins were justly proud of their organic produce, which they sold around the village for pocket money.

“A dragon could make a real mess of this garden,” Charles Wallace said, and led Meg through rows of vegetables. “I think he realized that, because suddenly he sort of wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean, he sort of wasn’t there? Either he was there, or he wasn’t.”

“He was there, and then when I went to look closer, he wasn’t there, and I followed him—not really him, because he was much faster than I, and I only followed where he’d been. And he went to the big glacial rocks in the north pasture.”

Meg looked scowlingly at the garden. Never before had Charles Wallace sounded as implausible as this.

He said, “Come on,” and moved past the tall sheaves of corn, which had only a few scraggly ears left. Beyond the corn the sunflowers caught the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, then* golden faces reflecting brilliance.

“Charles, are you all right?” Meg asked. It was not like Charles to lose touch with reality. Then she noticed that he was breathing heavily, as if he had been running, though they had not been walking rapidly. His face was pale, his forehead beaded with perspiration, as though from over-exertion.

She did not like the way he looked, and she turned her mind back to the unlikely tale of dragons, picking her way around the luxuriant pumpkin vines, “Charles, when did you see these—dragons?”

“A dollop of dragons, a drove of dragons, a drive of dragons,” Charles Wallace panted. “After I got home from school. Mother was all upset because I looked such a mess. My nose was still very bloody.”

“I get upset, too.”

“Meg, Mother thinks it’s more than the bigger kids punching me.”

“What’s more?”

Charles Wallace scrambled with unusual clumsiness and difficulty over the low stone wall which edged the orchard. “I get out of breath.”

Meg said sharply, “Why? What did Mother say?”

Charles walked slowly through the high grass in the orchard. “She hasn’t said. But it’s sort of like radar blipping at me.”

Meg walked beside him. She was tall for her age, and Charles Wallace small for his. “There are times when I wish you didn’t pick up radar signals quite so well.”

“I can’t help it, Meg. I don’t try to. It just happens. Mother thinks something is wrong with me.”

“But what?” she almost shouted.

Charles Wallace spoke very quietly. “I don’t know. Something bad enough so her worry blips loud and clear. And I know there’s something wrong. Just to walk across the orchard like this is an effort, and it shouldn’t be. It never has been before.”

“When did this start?” she asked sharply. “You were all right last weekend when we went walking in the woods.”

“I know. I’ve been sort of tired all autumn, but it’s been worse this week, and much worse today than it was yesterday. Hey, Meg! Stop blaming yourself because you didn’t notice.”

She had been doing precisely that. Her hands felt cold with panic. She tried to push her fear away, because Charles Wallace could read his sister even more easily than he could their mother. He picked up a windfall apple, looked it over for worms, and bit into it. His end-of-summer tan could not disguise his extreme pallor, nor his shadowed eyes; why hadn’t she noticed this? Because she hadn’t wanted to. It was easier to blame Charles Wallace’s paleness and lethargy on his problems at school.

“Why doesn’t Mother have a doctor look at you, then? I mean a real doctor?”

“She has.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I was more interested in dragons.”

“Charles!”

“It was before you got home from school. Dr. Louise came to have lunch with Mother—she does, quite often, anyhow—“

“I know. Go on.”

“So when I got home from school she went over me, from top to toe.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing much. I can’t read her the way I can read Mother. She’s like a little bird, twittering away, and all the time you know that sharp mind of hers is thinking along on another level. She’s very good at blocking me. All I could gather was that she thought Mother might be right about— about whatever it is. And she’d keep in touch.”

They had finished crossing the orchard and Charles Wallace climbed up onto the wall again and stood there, looking across an unused pasture where there were two large out-croppings of glacial rock. “They’re gone,” he said. “My dragons are gone.”

Meg stood on the wall beside him. There was nothing to see except the wind blowing through the sun-bleached grasses, and ‘the two tall rocks, turning purple in the autumn evening light. “Are you sure it wasn’t just the rocks or shadows or something?”

“Do rocks or shadows look like dragons?”

“No, but—“

“Meg, they were right by the rocks, all sort of clustered together, wings, it looked like hundreds of wings, and eyes opening and shutting between the wings, and some smoke and little spurts of fire, and I warned them not to set the pasture on fire.”

“How did you warn them?”

“I spoke to them. In a loud voice. And the flames stopped.”

“Did you go close?”

“It didn’t seem wise. I stayed here on the wall and watched for a long time. They kept folding and unfolding wings and sort of winking all those eyes at me, and then they all seemed to huddle together and go to sleep, so I went home to wait for you. Meg! You don’t believe me.”

She asked, flatly, “Well, where have they gone?”

“You’ve never not believed me before.”

She said, carefully, “It’s not that I don’t believe you.” In a strange way she did believe him. Not, perhaps, that he had seen actual dragons—but Charles Wallace had never before tended to mix fact and fancy. Never before had he separated reality and illusion in such a marked way. She looked at him, saw that he had a sweatshirt on over his grubby shut. She held her arms about herself, shivered, and said—although she was quite warm enough— “I think I’ll go back to the house and get a cardigan. Wait here. I won’t be long. If the dragons come back—“

“I think they will come back.”

“Then keep them here for me. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

Charles Wallace looked at her levelly. “I don’t think Mother wants to be interrupted right now.”

“I’m not going to interrupt her. I’m just going to get my cardigan.”

“Okay, Meg,” he sighed.

She left him sitting on the wall, looking at the two great glacial deposits, waiting for dragons, or whatever it was he thought he’d seen. All right, he knew that she was going back to the house to talk to their mother, but as long as she didn’t admit it out loud she felt that she managed to keep at least a little of her worry from him.

She burst into the laboratory.

Her mother was sitting on a tall lab stool, not looking into the microscope in front of her, not writing on the clipboard which rested on her knee, just sitting thoughtfully. “What is it, Meg?”

She started to blurt out Charles Wallace’s talk of dragons, and that he had never had delusions before, but since Charles Wallace himself had not mentioned them to their mother, it seemed like a betrayal for her to do so, though his silence about the dragons may have been because of the presence of Dr. Louise.

Her mother repeated, a little impatiently, “What is it, Meg?”

“What’s wrong with Charles Wallace?”

Mrs. Murry put the clipboard down on the lab counter beside the microscope. “He had some trouble with the bigger boys again in school today.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean, Meg?”

“He said you had Dr. Colubra here for him.”

“Louise was here for lunch, so I thought she might as well have a look at him.”

“And?”

“And what, Meg?”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“We don’t know, Meg. Not yet, at any rate.”

“Charles says you’re worried about him.”

“I am. Aren’t you?”

“Yes. But I thought it was all school. And now I don’t think it is. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard. And he’s too pale. And he imagines things. And he looks—I don’t like the way he looks.”

“Neither do I.”

“What is it? What’s wrong? Is it a virus or something?”

Mrs. Murry hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“Mother, please, if there’s anything really wrong with Charles I’m old enough to know.”

“I don’t know whether there is or not. Neither does Louise. When we find out anything definite, I’ll tell you. I promise you that.”

“You’re not hiding anything?”

“Meg, there’s no use talking about something I’m not sure of. I should know in a few days.”

Meg twisted her hands together nervously. “You really are worried.”

Mrs. Murry smiled. “Mothers tend to be. Where is he now?”

“Oh—I left him on the stone wall—I said I was coming in for a cardigan. I’ve got to run back or he’ll think—“ Without finishing she rushed out of the lab, grabbed a cardigan from one of the hooks in the pantry, and ran across the lawn.

When she reached Charles Wallace he was sitting on the wall, just as she had left him. There was no sign of dragons.

She had not really expected that there would be. Nevertheless, she was disappointed, her anxiety about Charles subtly deepened.

“What did Mother say?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

His large, deep-seeing blue eyes focused on her. “She didn’t mention mitochondria? Or farandolae?”

“Hunh? Why should she?”

Charles Wallace kicked the rubber heels of his sneakers against the wall, looked at Meg, did not answer.

Meg persisted, “Why should Mother mention mitochondria? Isn’t that—talking about them—what got you into trouble your very first day in school?”

“I am extremely interested in them. And in dragons. I’m sorry they haven’t come back yet.” He was very definitely changing the subject. “Let’s wait a while longer for them. I’d rather face a few dragons any day than the kids in the schoolyard. Thank you for going to see Mr. Jenkins on my behalf, Meg.”

That was supposed to be a deep, dark secret. “How did you know?”

“I knew.”

Meg hunched her shoulders. “Not that it did any good.” She had not really had much hope that it would. Mr. Jenkins had been, for several years, the principal of the large regional high school. When he was moved, just that September, to the small grade school in the village, the official story was that the school needed upgrading, and Mr. Jenkins was the only man to do the job. The rumor was that he hadn’t been able to handle the wilder element over at Regional. Meg had her doubts whether or not he could handle anybody, anywhere. And she was completely convinced that he would neither understand nor like Charles Wallace.

The morning that Charles Wallace set off for first grade, Meg was far more nervous than he was. She could not concentrate during her last classes, and when school was finally over and she climbed the hill to the house and found him with a puffed and bleeding upper lip and a scrape across his cheek, she had a sulking feeling of inevitability combined with a burning rage. Charles Wallace had always been thought of by the villagers as peculiar, and probably not quite all there. Meg, picking up mail at the post office, or eggs at the store, overheard snatches of conversations: That littlest Murry kid is a weird one. I hear clever people often have dumb kids. They say he can’t even talk.’

It would have been easier if Charles Wallace had actually been stupid. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t very good at pretending that he didn’t know more than the other six-year-olds in his class. His vocabulary itself was against him; he had, in fact, not started talking until late, but then it was in complete sentences, with none of the baby preliminaries. In front of strangers he still seldom spoke at all—one of the reasons he was thought dumb; and suddenly there he was in first grade and talking like—like his parents, or his sister. Sandy and Dennys got along with everybody. It wasn’t surprising that Charles was resented; everybody expected him to be backward, and he talked like a dictionary.

“Now, children”—the first-grade teacher smiled brightly at the gaggle of new first-graders staring at her that first morning—“I want each one of you to tell me something about yourselves.” She looked at her list. “Let’s start with Mary Agnes. Which one is Mary Agnes?”

A small girl with one missing front tooth, and straw-colored hair pulled tightly into pigtails, announced that she lived on a farm and that she had her own chickens; that morning there had been seventeen eggs.

“Very good, Mary Agnes. Now, let*s see, how about you, Richard—are you called Dicky?”

A fat little boy stood up, bobbing and grinning.

“What have you got to tell us?”

“Boys ain’t like girls,” Dicky said. “Boys is made different, see, like—“

“That’s fine, Dicky, just fine. Well learn more about that later. Now, Albertina, suppose you tell us something.”

Albertina was repeating first grade. She stood up, almost a head taller than the others, and announced proudly, “Our bodies are made up of bones and skinses and muskle and blood cells and stuff like that.”

“Very good, Albertina. Isn’t that good, class? I can see we’re going to have a group of real scientists this year. Let’s all clap for Albertina, shall we? Now, uh”—she looked down at her list again—“Charles Wallace. Are you called Charlie?”

“No,” he said. “Charles Wallace, please.”

“Your parents are scientists, aren’t they?” She did not wait for an answer. “Let’s see what you have to tell us.”

Charles Wallace (‘You should have known better!’ Meg scolded him that night) stood and said, “What I’m interested in right now are the farandolae and the mitochondria.”

“What was that, Charles? The mighty what?”

“Mitochondria. They and the farandolae come from the prokaryocytes—“

“The what?”

“Well, billions of years ago they probably swam into what eventually became our eukaryotic cells and they’ve just stayed there. They have their own DNA and RNA, which means they’re quite separate from us. They have a symbiotic relationship with us, and the amazing thing is that we’re completely dependent on them for our oxygen.”

“Now, Charles, suppose you stop making silly things up, and the next time I call on you, don’t try to show off. Now, George, you tell the class something . . .”

At the end of the second week of school, Charles Wallace paid Meg an evening visit in her attic bedroom.

“Charles,” she said, “can’t you just not say anything at all?”

Charles Wallace, in yellow footed pajamas, his fresh wounds band-aided, his small nose looking puffy and red, lay on the foot of Meg’s big brass bed, his head pillowed on the shiny black bulk of the dog, Fortinbras. He sounded weary, and lethargic, although she hadn’t noticed this at the time. “It doesn’t work. Nothing works. If I don’t talk, I’m sulking. If I talk I say something wrong. I’ve finished the workbook—the teacher said you must’ve helped me— and I know the reader by heart.”

Meg, circling her knees with her arms, looked down at boy and dog; Fortinbras was strictly not allowed on beds, but this rule was ignored in the attic. “Why don’t they move you up to second grade?”

“That would be even worse. They’re that much bigger than I.”

Yes. She knew that was true.

So she decided to go see Mr. Jenkins. She boarded the high-school bus as usual at seven o’clock, in the grey, uninviting light of an early morning brewing a nor’easter. The grade-school bus, which had not nearly so far to go, left an hour later. When the high-school bus made its first. stop in the village she slipped off, and then walked the two miles to the grade school. It was an old, inadequate building, painted the traditional red, overcrowded and understaffed. It certainly did need upgrading, and taxes were being raised for a new school.

She slipped through the side door which the custodian opened early. She could hear the buzz of his electric floor polisher in the front hall by the still-locked entrance doors, and under cover of its busy sound she ran across the hall and darted into a small broom closet and leaned, too noisily for comfort, against the hanging brooms and dry mops. The closet smelted musty and dusty and she hoped she could keep from sneezing until Mr. Jenkins was in his office and his secretary had brought him his ritual mug of coffee. She shifted position and leaned against the corner, where she could see the glass top of the door to Mr. Jenkins’s office through the narrow crack.

She was stuffy-nosed and cramp-legged when the light in the office finally went on. Then she waited for what seemed all day but was more like half an hour, while she listened to the click of the secretary’s heels on the polished tile floor, then the roar of children entering the school as the doors were unlocked. She thought of Charles Wallace being pushed along by the great wave of children, mostly much bigger than he was.

It’s like the mob after Julius Caesar, she thought,— only Charles isn’t much like Caesar. But I’ll bet life was simpler when all Gaul was divided in three parts.

The bell screamed for the beginning of classes. The secretary clicked along the corridor again. That would be with Mr. Jenkins’s coffee. The high heels receded. Meg waited for what she calculated was five minutes, then emerged, pressing her forefinger against her upper lip to stifle a sneeze. She crossed the corridor and knocked on Mr. Jenkins’s door, just as the sneeze burst out anyhow.

He seemed surprised to see her, as well he might, and not at all pleased, though his actual words were, “May I ask to what I owe this pleasure?”

“I need to see you, please, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I am. This school.”

“Kindly don’t be rude, Meg. I see you haven’t changed any over the summer. I had hoped you would not be one of my problems this year. Have you informed anybody of your whereabouts?” The early morning light glinted off his spectacles, veiling his eyes. Meg pushed her own spectacles up her nose, but could not read his expression; as usual, she thought, he looked as though he smelled something unpleasant.

He sniffed. “I will have my secretary drive you to school. That will mean the loss of her services for a full half day.”

“I’ll hitchhike, thanks.”

“Compounding one misdemeanor with another? In this state, hitchhiking happens to be against the law.”

“Mr. Jenkins, I didn’t come to talk to you about hitchhiking, I came to talk to you about Charles Wallace.”

“I don’t appreciate your interference, Margaret.”

“The bigger boys are bullying him. They’ll really hurt him if you don’t stop them.”

“If anybody is dissatisfied with my handling of the situation and wishes to discuss it with me, I think it should be your parents.”

Meg tried to control herself, but her voice rose with frustrated anger. “Maybe they’re cleverer than I am and know it won’t do any good. Oh, please, please, Mr. Jenkins, I know people have thought Charles Wallace isn’t very bright, but he’s really—“

He cut across her words. “We’ve run IQ tests on all the first-graders. Your little brother’s IQ is quite satisfactory.”

“You know it’s more than that, Mr. Jenkins. My parents have run tests on him, too, all kinds of tests. His IQ is so high it’s untestable by normal standards.”

“His performance gives no indication of this.”

“Don’t you understand, he’s trying to hold back so the boys won’t beat him up? He doesn’t understand them, and they don’t understand him. How many first-graders know about farandolae?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Margaret. I do know that Charles Wallace does not seem to me to be very strong.”

“He’s perfectly all right!”

“He is extremely pale, and there are dark circles under his eyes.”

“How would you look if people punched you in the nose and kept giving you black eyes just because you know more than they do?”

“If he’s so bright”—Mr. Jenkins looked coldly at her through the magnifying lenses of his spectacles—“I wonder your parents bother to send him to school at all?”

“If there weren’t a law about it, they probably wouldn’t.”

Now, standing by Charles Wallace on the stone wall, looking at the two glacial rocks where no dragons lurked, Meg recalled Mr. Jenkins’s words about Charles Wallace’s pallor, and shivered.

Charles asked, “Why do people always mistrust people who are different? Am I really that different?”

Meg, moving the tip of her tongue over her teeth which had only recently lost their braces, looked at him affectionately and sadly. “Oh, Charles, I don’t know. I’m your sister. I’ve known you ever since you were born. I’m too close to you to know.” She sat on the stone wall, first carefully checking the rocks: a large, gentle, and completely harmless black snake lived in the stone wall. She was a special pet of the twins, and they had watched her grow from a small snakelet to her present flourishing size. She was named Louise, after Dr. Louise Colubra, because the twins had learned just enough Latin to pounce on the odd last name.

“Dr. Snake,” Dennys had said. “Weirdo.”

“It’s a nice name,” Sandy said. “We’ll name our snake after her. Louise the Larger.”

“Why the Larger?”

“Why not?”

“Does she have to be larger than anything?”

“She is.”

“She certainly isn’t larger than Dr. Louise.”

Dennys bristled. “Louise the Larger is very large for a snake who lives in a garden wall, and Dr. Louise is a very small doctor—I mean, she’s a tiny person. I suppose as a doctor she’s pretty mammoth.”

“Well, doctors don’t have to be any size. But you’re right, Den, she is tiny. And our snake is big.” The twins seldom disagreed about anything for long.

“The only trouble is, she’s more like a bird than a snake.”

“Didn’t snakes and birds, way back in evolution, didn’t they evolve originally from the same phylum, or whatever you call it? Anyhow, Louise is a very good name for our snake.”

Dr. Louise, fortunately, was highly amused. Snakes were misunderstood creatures, she told the twins, and she was honored to have such a handsome one named after her. And snakes, she added, were on the caduceus, which is the emblem for doctors, so it was all most appropriate.

Louise the Larger had grown considerably since her baptism, and Meg, though not actively afraid of her, was always careful to look for Louise before she sat. Louise, at this moment, was nowhere to be seen, so Meg relaxed and turned her thoughts again to Charles Wallace. “You’re a lot brighter than the twins, but the twins are far from dumb. How do they manage?”

Charles Wallace said, “I wish they’d tell me.”

“They don’t talk at school the way they do at home, for one thing.”

“I thought if I was interested in mitochondria and farandolae, other people would be, too.”

“You were wrong.”

“I really am interested in them. Why is that so peculiar?”

“I don’t suppose it is so peculiar for the son of a physicist and a biologist.”

“Most people aren’t. Interested, I mean.”

“They aren’t children of two scientists, either. Our parents provide us with all kinds of disadvantages. I’ll never be as beautiful as Mother.”

Charles Wallace was tired of reassuring Meg. “And the incredible thing about farandolae is their size.”

Meg was thinking about her hair, the ordinary straight brown of a field mouse, as against her mother’s auburn waves. “What about it?”

“They’re so small that all anyone can do is postulate them; even the most powerful micro-electron microscope can’t show them. But they’re important to us—we’d die if we didn’t have farandolae. But nobody at school is remotely interested. Our teacher has the mind of a grasshopper. As you were saying, it’s not an advantage having famous parents.”

“If they weren’t famous—you bet everybody knows when L.A. calls, or Father makes a trip to the White House— they’d be in for it too7 We’re all different, our family. Except the twins. They do all right. Maybe because they’re normal. Or know how to act it. But then I wonder what normal is, anyhow, or isn’t? Why are you so interested in farandolae?”

“Mother’s working on them.”

“She’s worked on lots of things and you haven’t been this interested.”

“If she really proves their existence, she’ll probably get the Nobel Prize.”

“So? That’s not what’s bugging you about them.” x

“Meg, if something happens to our farandolae—well, it would be disastrous.”

“Why?” Meg shivered, suddenly cold, and buttoned her cardigan. Clouds were scudding across the sky, and with them a rising wind.

“I mentioned mitochondria, didn’t I?”

“You did. What about them?”

“Mitochondria are tiny little organisms living in our cells. That gives you an idea of how tiny they are, doesn’t it?”

“Enough.”

“A human being is a whole world to a mitochondrion, just the way our planet is to us. But we’re much more dependent on our mitochondria than the earth is on us. The earth could get along perfectly well without people, but if anything happened to our mitochondria, we’d die.”

“Why should anything happen to them?”

Charles Wallace gave a small shrug. In the darkening light he looked very pale. “Accidents happen to people. Or diseases. Things can happen to anything. But what I’ve sort of picked up from Mother is that quite a lot of mitochondria are in some kind of trouble because of their farandolae.”

“Has Mother actually told you all this?”

“Some of it. The rest I’ve just—gathered.”

Charles Wallace did gather things out of his mother’s mind, out of Meg’s mind, as another child might gather daisies in a field. “What are farandolae, then?” She shifted position on the hard rocks of the wall.

“Farandolae live in a mitochondrion sort of the same way a mitochondrion lives in a human cell. They’re genetically independent of their mitochondria, just as mitochondria are of us. And if anything happens to the farandolae in a mitochondrion, the mitochondrion gets—gets sick. And probably dies.”

A dry leaf separated from its stem and drifted past Meg’s cheek. “Why should anything happen to them?” she repeated.

Charles Wallace repeated, too, “Accidents happen to people, don’t they? And disease. And people killing each other in wars.”

“Yes, but that’s people. Why are you going on so about mitochondria and farandolae?”

“Meg, Mother’s been working in her lab, night and day, almost literally, for several weeks now. You’ve noticed that.”

“She often does when she’s on to something.”

“She’s on to farandolae. She thinks she’s proved their existence by studying some mitochondria, mitochondria which are dying.”

“You’re not talking about all this stuff at school, are you?”

“I do learn some things, Meg. You aren’t really listening to me.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Then listen. The reason Mother’s been in her lab so much trying to find the effect of farandolae on mitochondria is that she thinks there’s something wrong with my mitochondria.”

“What?” Meg jumped down from the stone wall and swung around to face her brother.

He spoke very quietly, so that she had to bend down to hear. “If my mitochondria get sick, then so do I.”

All the fear which Meg had been trying to hold back threatened to break loose. “How serious is it? Can Mother give you something for it?”

“I don’t know. She won’t talk to me. I’m only guessing. She’s trying to shut me out till she knows more, and I can only get in through the chinks. Maybe it’s not really serious. Maybe it’s all just school; I really do get punched or knocked down almost every day. It’s enough to make me feel— Hey—look at Louise!”

Meg turned, following his gaze. Louise the Larger was slithering along the stones of the wall towards them, moving rapidly, sinuously, her black curves shimmering purple and silver in the autumn light. Meg cried, “Charles! Quick!”

He did not move. “She won’t hurt us.”

“Charles, run! She’s going to attack!”

But Louise stopped her advance, just a few feet from Charles Wallace, and raised herself up, uncoiling until she stood, barely on the last few inches of her length, rearing up and looking around expectantly.

Charles Wallace said, “There’s someone near. Someone Louise knows.”

“The—the dragons?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see anything. Hush, let me feel.” He closed his eyes, not to shut out Louise, not to shut out Meg, but in order1 to see with his inner eye. “The dragons —I think—and a man, but more than a man—very tall and—“ He opened his eyes, and pointed into the shadows where the trees crowded thickly together. “Look!”

Meg thought she saw a dim giant shape moving towards them, but before she could be sure, Fortinbras came galloping across the orchard, barking wildly. It was not his angry bark, but the loud announcing bark with which he greeted either of the Murry parents when they had been away. Then, with his heavy black tail lifted straight out behind him, his nose pointing and quivering, he stalked the length of the orchard, jumped the wall to the north pasture, and ran, still sniffing, to one of the big glacial rocks.

Charles Wallace, panting with effort, followed him.

ties going to where my dragons were! Come on, Meg, maybe he’s found fewmets!”

She hurried after boy and dog. “How would you know a dragon dropping? Fewmets probably look like bigger and better cow pies.”

Charles Wallace was down on his hands and knees. “Look.”

On the moss around the rock was a small drift of feathers. They did not look like bird feathers. They were extraordinarily soft and sparkling at the same time; and between the feathers were bits of glinting silver-gold, leaf-shaped scales which, Meg thought, might well belong to dragons.

“You see, Meg! They were here! My dragons were here!”

2 A Rip in the Galaxy.

When Meg and Charles Wallace returned to the house, silently, each holding strange and new thoughts, evening was moving in with the wind. The twins were waiting for them, and wanted Charles Wallace to go out in the last of the light to play catch.

“It’s too dark already,” Charles Wallace said.

“We’ve got a few minutes. Come on, Charles. You may be bright, but you’re slow at playing ball. I could pitch when I was six, and you can’t even catch without fumbling.”

Dennys patted Charles, a pat more like a whack. “He’s improving. Come on, we’ve only got a few minutes.”

Charles Wallace shook his head. He did not mention that he did not feel well; he just said, firmly, “Not tonight.”

Meg left the twins still arguing with him, and went into the kitchen. Mrs. Murry was just coming in from the laboratory, and her mind was still on her work. She peered vaguely into the refrigerator.

Meg confronted her, “Mother, Charles Wallace thinks something is wrong with his mitochondria or farandolae or something.”

Mrs. Murry shut the refrigerator door. “Sometimes Charles Wallace thinks too much.”

“What does Dr. Colubra think? About this mitochondria bit?”

“That it’s a possibility. Louise thinks the bad flu strain this autumn, which has caused a lot of deaths, may not be flu at all, but mitochondritis.”

“And that’s what Charles maybe has?”

“I don’t know, Meg. I’m trying to find out. When I know something, I will tell you. I’ve already said that. Meanwhile, let me alone.”

Meg took a step backwards, sat down on one of the dining chairs. Her mother never talked in that cold, shutting-out way to her children. It must mean that she was very worried indeed.

Mrs. Murry turned towards Meg with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Megatron. I didn’t mean to be sharp. I’m in the difficult position of knowing more about the possible ailments of mitochondria than almost anybody else today. I didn’t expect to be confronted with the results of my work quite so soon. And I still don’t know enough to tell you— or.Louise—anything definite. Meanwhile, there’s no point in our getting all worried unless we know there’s a real reason. Right now we’d better concentrate on Charles Wallace’s problems at school.”

“Is he well enough to go to school?”

“I think so. For now. I don’t want to take him out until I have to.”

“Why not?”

“He’d just have to go back eventually, Meg, and then things would be harder than ever. If he can just get through these first weeks—“

“Mother, nobody around here has ever known a six-year-old boy like Charles.”

“He’s extremely intelligent. But there was a day when it wasn’t unusual for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old to graduate from Harvard, or Oxford or Cambridge.”

“It’s unusual today. And you and Father can hardly send him to Harvard at six. Anyhow, it isn’t just that he’s intelligent. How does he know what we’re thinking and feeling? I don’t know how much you’ve told him, but he knows an awful lot about mitochondria and farandolae.”

“I’ve told him a reasonable amount.”

“He knows more than a reasonable amount. And he knows you’re worried about him.”

Mrs. Murry perched on one of the high stools by the kitchen counter which divided the work area from the rest of the bright, rambly dining and studying room. She sighed, “You’re right, Meg. Charles Wallace not only has a good mind, he has extraordinary powers of intuition. If he can - learn to discipline and channel them when he grows up—if he—“ She broke off. “I have to think about getting dinner.”

Meg knew when to stop pushing her mother. “I’ll help. What’re we having?” She did not mention Charles Wallace’s dragons. She did not mention Louise the Larger’s strange behavior, nor the shadow of whatever it was they had not quite seen.

“Oh, spaghetti’s easy”—Mrs. Murry pushed a curl of dark red hair back from her forehead—“and good on an autumn night.”

“And we’ve got all the tomatoes and peppers and stuff from the twins’ garden. Mother, I love the twins even when they get in my hair, but Charles—“

“I know, Meg. You and Charles have always had a very special relationship.”

“Mother, I can’t stand what’s happening to him at school.”

“Neither can I, Meg.”

“Then what are you doing about it?”

“We’re trying to do nothing. It would be easy—for now to take Charles out of school. We thought about that immediately, even before he— But Charles Wallace is going to have to live in a world made up of people who don’t think at all in any of the ways that he does, and the sooner he starts learning to get along with them, the better. Neither you nor Charles has the ability to adapt that the twins do.”

“Charles is a lot brighter than the twins.”

“A life form which can’t adapt doesn’t last very long.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Neither do your father and I, Meg. Bear with us. Remember, you do have a tendency to rush in when the best thing to do is wait and be patient for a while.”

“I’m not in the least patient.”

“Is that for my information?” Mrs. Murry took tomatoes, onions, green and red peppers, garlic and leeks, out of the vegetable bin. Then, starting to slice onions into a large, black iron pot, she said thoughtfully, “You know, Meg, you went through a pretty rough time at school yourself.”

“Not as bad as Charles. And I’m not as bright as Charles except maybe in math.”

“Possibly you’re not—though you do tend to underestimate your own particular capacities. What I’m getting at is that you do seem, this year, to be finding school moderately bearable.”

“Mr. Jenkins isn’t there any more. And Calvin O’Keefe is. Calvin’s important. He’s the basketball star and president of the senior class and everything. Anybody Calvin likes is sort of protected by his—his aura.”

“Why do you suppose Calvin likes you?”

“Not because of my beauty, that’s for sure.”

“But he does like you, doesn’t he, Meg?”

“Well, yes, I guess so, but Calvin likes lots of people. And he could have any girl in ‘school if he wanted to.”

“But he chose you, didn’t he?”

Meg could feel herself flushing. She put her hands up to her cheeks. “Well. Yes. But it’s different. It’s because of some of the things we’ve been through together. And we’re friend-friends—I mean, we’re not like most of the other kids.”,

“I’m glad you’re-friend-friends. I’ve become very fond of that skinny, carrot-headed young man.”

Meg laughed. “I think Calvin confuses you with Pallas Athene. You’re his absolute ideal. And he likes all of us. His own family’s certainly a mess. I really think he likes me only because of our family.”

Mrs. Murry sighed. “Stop being self-deprecating, Meg.”

“Maybe at least I can learn to cook as well as you do. Did you know it was one of Calvin’s brothers who beat Charles Wallace up today? I bet he’s upset—I don’t mean Whippy, he couldn’t care less—Calvin. Somebody’s bound to have told him.”

“Do you want to call him?”

“Not me. Not Calvin. I just have to wait. Maybe he’ll come over or something.” She sighed. “I wish life didn’t have to be so complicated. Do you suppose I’ll ever be a double Ph.D. like you, Mother?”

Mrs. Murry looked up from slicing peppers, and laughed. “It’s really not the answer to all problems. There are other solutions. At this point I’m more interested in knowing whether or not I’ve put too many red peppers in the spaghetti sauce; I’ve lost count.”

They had just sat down to dinner when Mr. Murry phoned to tell them that he was going directly from Washington to Brookhaven for a week. Such trips were not unusual for either of their parents, but right now anything that took either her father or mother away struck Meg as sinister. Without much conviction she said, “I hope he has fun. He likes lots of the people there.” But she felt a panicky dependence on having both her parents home at night. It wasn’t only because of her fears for Charles Wallace; it was that suddenly the .whole world Was unsafe and uncertain. Several houses nearby had been broken into that autumn, and while nothing of great value had been taken, drawers had been emptied with casual maliciousness, food dumped on living-room floors, upholstery slashed. Even their safe little village was revealing itself to be unpredictable and irrational and precarious, and while Meg had already begun to understand this with her mind, she had never before felt it with the whole of herself. Now a cold awareness of the uncertainty of all life, no matter how careful the planning, hollowed emptily in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed.

Charles Wallace looked at her and said, unsmilingly, “The best laid plans of mice and men ...”

“Gang aft agley,” Sandy finished.

“Man proposes, God disposes,” Dennys added, not to be outdone.

The twins held out their plates for more spaghetti, neither one ever having been known to lose his appetite. “Why does Father have to stay a whole week?” Sandy asked.

“It’s his work, after all,” Dennys said. “Mother, I think you could have put more hot peppers in the sauce.”

“He’s been away a lot this autumn. He ought to stay home with his family at least some of the time. I think the sauce is okay.”

“Of course it’s okay. I just like it a little hotter.”

Meg was not thinking about spaghetti, although she was sprinkling Parmesan over hers. She wondered what their mother would say if Charles Wallace told her about his dragons. If there really were dragons, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in the north pasture, oughtn’t their parents to know?

Sandy said, “When I grow up I’m going to be a banker and make money. Someone in this family has to stay in the real world.”

“Not that we don’t think science is the real world, Mother,” Dennys said, “but you and Father aren’t practical scientists, you’re theoretical scientists.”

Mrs. Murry demurred, “I’m not wholly impractical, you know, Sandy, and neither is your father.”

“Spending hours and hours peering into your micro-electron microscope, and listening to that micro-sonar whatsit isn’t practical,” Sandy announced.

“You just look at things nobody else can see,” Dennys added, “and listen to things nobody else can hear, and think about them.”

Meg defended her mother. “It would be a good idea if more people knew how to think. After Mother thinks about something long enough, then she puts it into practice. Or someone else does.”

Charles Wallace cocked his head with a pleased look. “Does practical mean that something works out in practice?”

His mother nodded.

“So it doesn’t matter if Mother sits and thinks. Or if Father spends weeks over one equation. Even if he writes it on the tablecloth. His equations are practical if someone else makes them work out in practice.” He reached in his pocket, as though in answer to Meg’s thoughts about the dragons, and drew out a feather, not a bird feather, but a strange glitter catching the light. “All right, my practical brothers, what is this?”

Sandy, sitting next to Charles Wallace, bent over the dragon feather. “A feather.”

Dennys got up and went around the table so that he could see. “Let me—“

Charles Wallace held the feather between them. “What kind is it?”

“Hey, this is most peculiar!” Sandy touched the base of the feather. “I don’t think it’s from a bird.”

“Why not?” Charles Wallace asked.

“The rachis isn’t right.”

“The what?” Meg asked.

“The rachis. Sort of part of the quill. The rachis should be hollow, and this is solid, and seems to be metallic. Hey, Charles, where’d you get this thing?”

Charles Wallace handed the feather to his mother. She looked at it carefully. “Sandy’s right. The rachis isn’t like a bird’s.”

Dennys said, “Then what—“

Charles Wallace retrieved the feather and put it back in his pocket. “It was on the ground by the big rocks in the north pasture. Not just this one feather. Quite a few others.”

Meg suppressed a slightly hysterical giggle. “Charles and I think it may be fewmets.”

Sandy turned to her with injured dignity. “Fewmets are dragon droppings.”

Dennys said, “Don’t be silly.” Then, “Do you know what it is, Mother?”

She shook her head. “What do you think it is, Charles?”

Charles Wallace, as he occasionally did, retreated into himself. When Meg had decided he wasn’t going to answer at all, he said, “It’s something that’s not in Sandy’s and Dennys’s practical world. When I find out more, I’ll tell you.” He sounded very like their mother.

“Okay, then.” Dennys had lost interest. He returned to his chair. “Did Father tell you why he has to go rushing off to Brookhaven, or is it another of those top-secret classified: things?”

Mrs. Murry looked down at the checked tablecloth, and at the remains of an equation which had not come out in the wash; doodling equations on anything available was a habit of which she could not break her husband. “It’s not really secret. There’ve been several bits about it in the papers recently.”

“About what?” Sandy asked.

“There’s been an unexplainable phenomenon, not in our part of the galaxy, but far across it, and in several other galaxies—well, the easiest way to explain it is that our new supersensitive sonic instruments have been picking up strange sounds, sounds which aren’t on any normal register, but much higher. After such a sound—a cosmic scream, the Times rather sensationally called it—there appears to be a small rip in the galaxy.”

“What does that mean?” Dennys asked.

“It seems to mean that several stars have vanished.”

“Vanished where?”

“That’s the odd part. Vanished. Completely. Where the stars were there is, as far as our instruments can detect, nothing. Your father was out in California several weeks ago, you remember, at Mount Palomar.”

“But things can’t just vanish,” Sandy said. “We had it in school—the balance of matter.”

Their mother added, very quietly, “It seems to be getting unbalanced.”

“You mean like the ecology?”

“No. I mean that matter actually seems to be being annihilated.”

Dennys said flatly, “But that’s impossible.”

“E = MC2,” Sandy said. “Matter can be converted into energy, and energy into matter. You have to have one or the other.”

Mrs. Murry said, “Thus far, Einstein’s law has never been disproved. But it’s coming into question.”

“Nothingness—“ Dennys said. “That’s impossible.”

“One would hope so.”

“And that’s what Father’s going off about?”

“Yes, to consult with several other scientists, Shasti from India, Shen Shu from China—you’ve heard of them.”

Outside the dining-room windows came a sudden brilliant flash of light, followed by a loud clap of thunder. The windows rattled. The kitchen door burst open. Everybody jumped.

Meg sprang up, crying nervously, “Oh, Mother—“

“Sit down, Meg. You’ve heard thunder before.”

“You’re sure it’s not one of those cosmic things?”

Sandy shut the door.

Mrs. Murry was calmly reassuring. “Positive. They’re completely inaudible to human ears.” Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed. “As a matter of fact, there are only two instruments in the world delicate enough to pick up the sound, which is incredibly high-pitched. It’s perfectly possible that it’s been going on for billennia, and only now are our instruments capable of recording it.”

“Birds can hear sounds way above our normal pitch,” Sandy said, “I mean, way up the scale, that we can’t hear at all.”

“Birds can’t hear this.”

Dennys said, “I wonder if snakes can hear as high a pitch as birds?”

“Snakes don’t have ears,” Sandy contradicted.

“So? They feel vibrations and sound waves. I think Louise hears all kinds of things out of human range. What’s for dessert?”

Meg’s voice was still tense. “We don’t usually have thunderstorms in October,”

“Please calm down, Meg.” Mrs. Murry started clearing the table. “If you’ll stop and think, you’ll remember that we’ve had an unseasonable storm for every month in the year.”

Sandy said, “Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? What’s for dessert?”

“I don’t—“ Meg started defensively, then jumped as the rain began to pelt against the windows.

“There’s some ice cream in the freezer,” Mrs. Murry said. “Sorry, I haven’t been thinking about desserts.”

“Meg’s supposed to make desserts,” Dennys said. “Not that we expect pies or anything, Meg, but even you can’t go too wrong with Jell-O.”

Charles Wallace caught Meg’s eye, and she closed her mouth. He put his hand in the pocket of his robe again, though this time he did not produce the feather, and gave her a small, private smile. He may have been thinking about his dragons, but he had also been listening carefully, both to the conversation and to the storm, his fair head tilted slightly to one side. “This ripping in the galaxy,

Mother—does it have any effect on our own solar system?”

“That,” Mrs. Murry replied, “is what we would all like to know.”

Sandy brushed this aside impatiently. “It’s all much too complicated for me. I’m sure banking is a lot simpler.”

“And more lucrative,” Dennys added.

The windows shook in the wind. The twins looked through the darkness at the slashing rain.

“It’s a good thing we brought in so much stuff from the garden before dinner.”

“This is almost hail.”

Meg asked nervously, “Is it dangerous, this—this ripping in the sky, or whatever it is?”

“Meg, we really know nothing about it. It may have been going on all along, and we only now have the instruments to record it.”

“Like farandolae,” Charles Wallace said. “We tend to think things are new because we’ve just discovered them.”

“But is it dangerous?” Meg repeated.

“Meg, we don’t know enough about it yet. That’s why it’s important that your father and some of the other physicists get together at once.”

“But it could be dangerous?”

“Anything can be dangerous.”

Meg looked down at the remains of her dinner. Dragons and rips in the sky. Louise and Fortinbras greeting something large and strange. Charles Wallace pale and listless. She did not like any of it. “I’ll do the dishes,” she told her mother.

They cleaned up the kitchen in silence. Mrs. Murry had sent the reluctant twins to practice for the school orchestra, Dennys on the flute, which he played well, accompanied by Sandy, less skillfully, on the piano. But it was a pleasant, familiar noise, and Meg relaxed into it. When the dishwasher was humming, the pots and pans polished and hung on their hooks, she went up to her attic bedroom to do her homework. This room was supposed to be her own, private place, and it would have been perfect except for the fact that it was seldom really private: the twins kept their electric trains in the big, open section of the attic; the ping-pong table was there, and anything anybody didn’t want around downstairs but didn’t want to throw away. Although Meg’s room was at the far end of the attic, it was easily available to the twins when they needed help with their math homework. And Charles Wallace always knew, without being told, when she was troubled, and would come up to the attic to sit on the foot of her bed. The only time she didn’t want Charles Wallace was when he himself was what was troubling her. She did not want him now.

Rain was still spattering against her window, but with diminishing force. The wind was swinging around from the south to the west; the storm was passing and the temperature falling. Her room was cold, but she did not plug in the little electric heater her parents had given her to supplement the inadequate heat which came up the attic stairs. Instead, she shoved her books aside and tiptoed back downstairs, stepping carefully over the seventh stair, which not only creaked but sometimes gave off a report like a shot.

The twins were still practicing. Her mother was in the living room, in front of the fire, reading to Charles Wallace, not from books about trains, or animals, which the twins had liked at that age, but from a scientific magazine, an article called “The Polarizabilities and Hyperpolarizabilities of Small Molecules,” by the theoretical chemist, Peter Liebmann.

Ouch, Meg thought ruefully. —This kind of thing is Charles Wallace’s bedtime reading and our parents expect him to go to first grade and not get into trouble?

Charles Wallace lay on the floor in front of the fire, staring into the flames, half listening, half brooding, his head as usual pillowed on Fortinbras’s comfortable bulk. Meg would have liked to take Fort with her, but that would mean letting the family know she was going out. She hurried as quickly and silently as possible through the kitchen and out into the pantry. As she pulled the kitchen door closed behind her, slowly, carefully, so nobody would hear, the pantry door flew open with a bang, and the door to her mother’s lab, on the left, slammed shut in a gust of wind.

She stopped, listened, waited for one of the twins to open the kitchen door and see what was going on. But nothing happened except that the wind blew wildly through the pantry. She shivered, and grabbed the first rain clothes that came to hand, a big black rubber poncho that belonged to the twins and had done double duty as a ground cloth for a tent; and Charles Wallace’s yellow sou’wester. Then she took the big flashlight from the hook, shut the pantry door firmly behind her, and ran across the lawn, tripping over the croquet wicket. Limping, she crossed the patch of dandelion, burdock, and milkweed that was growing up in the opening the twins had cut in the barberry fence. Once she was in the vegetable garden she hoped that she would be invisible to anybody chancing to look out a window. She could imagine Sandy’s or Dennys’s reaction if they asked her where she was going and she told them she was looking for dragons.

Why, in fact, had she come out? And what was she looking for? Was it dragons? Fortinbras and Louise both had seen—and not been afraid of—something, something which had left the feathers and scales. And that something—or somethings—was likely to be uncomfortable in the wet pasture. If it—or they—came to seek shelter in the house, she wanted to be prepared.

Not only for dragons, in which she did not quite believe, despite her faith in Charles Wallace and the feather with the peculiar rachis, but also for Louise the Larger. The twins insisted that Louise was an unusual snake, but this afternoon was the first time Meg had seen any signs that Louise was anything more than a contented, common garden-variety snake.

Meg checked the shadows on the wall, but there was no sign of Louise, so she lingered, not at all anxious to cross the apple orchard and go into the north pasture to the two glacial rocks. For a few minutes she would stay in the homely garden, and gather her courage, and be safe from discovery: the twins were hardly likely to come out after dark in the cold and wet, to admire the last few cabbages, or the vine which had borne their prize cucumber, the size of a vegetable marrow.

The garden was bordered on the east by two rows of sunflowers which stood with their heavy, fringed heads bowed over so that they looked like a huddle of witches; Meg glanced at them nervously; raindrops dripped from their faces with melancholy unconcern, but no longer from the sky. There was a hint of light from the full moon behind the thinning clouds, turning all the vegetables into beings strange and unreal. The gaping rows where once beans had stood, and lettuce, and peas, had a forlorn look; there was an air of sadness and confusion about the carefully planned pattern.

“Like everything else”—Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads—“it’s falling apart. It’s not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn’t be safe in school.”

She moved slowly along the orchard wall. The cidery smell of fallen apples was cut by the wind which had completely changed course and was now streaming across the garden from the northwest, sharp and glittery with frost. She saw a shadow move on the wall and jumped back: Louise the Larger, it must be Louise, and Meg could not climb that wall or cross the orchard to the north pasture until she was sure that neither Louise nor the not-quite-seen shape was lurking there waiting to pounce on her. Her legs felt watery, so she sat on a large, squat pumpkin to wait. The cold wind brushed her cheek; corn tassels hished like ocean waves. She looked warily about. She was seeing, she realized, through lenses streaked and spattered by raindrops blowing from sunflowers and corn, so she took off her spectacles, felt under the poncho for her kilt, and wiped them. Better, though the world was still a little wavery, as though seen under water.

She listened; listened. In the orchard she heard the soft plomp of falling apples; wind shaking the trees; branches rustling. She peered through the darkness. Something was moving, coming closer—

Snakes never come out in the cold and dark, she knew that. Nevertheless—

Louise—

Yes, it was the big snake. She emerged from the rocks of the stone wall, slowly, warily, watchfully. Meg’s heart was thumping, although Louise was not threatening. At least, Louise was not threatening her. But Louise was waiting, and this time there was no welcome in the waiting. Meg looked in fascination as the head of the snake slowly weaved back and forth, then quivered in recognition.

Behind Meg a voice came. “Margaret.”

She whirled around.

It was Mr. Jenkins. She looked at him in complete bewilderment.

He said, “Your little brother thought I might find you here, Margaret.”

Yes, Charles would guess, would know where she was. But why would Mr. Jenkins have been speaking to Charles Wallace? The principal had never been to the Murrys’ house, or any parents’, for that matter. All confrontations were in the safe anonymity of his office. Why would he come through the wet grass and the still-dripping garden to look for her instead of sending one of the twins?

He said, “I wanted to come find you myself, Margaret, because I feel that I owe you an apology for my sharpness with you last week when you came to see me.” He held out a hand, pale in the moonlight wavering behind the clouds.

In utter confusion she reached out to take his hand, and as she did so, Louise rose up on the wall behind her, hissing and making a strange, warning clacking. Meg turned to see the snake, looking as large and hooded as a cobra, hissing angrily at Mr. Jenkins, raising her large dark coils to strike.

Mr. Jenkins screamed, in a way that she had never known a man could scream, a high, piercing screech.

Then he rose up into the night like a great, flapping bird, flew, screaming across the sky, became a rent, an emptiness, a slash of nothingness—

Meg found that she, too, was screaming.

It could not have happened.

There was no one, no thing there.

She thought she saw Louise slithering back through a dark recess in the stone wall, disappearing—

It was impossible.

Her mind had snapped. It was some kind of hallucination caused by the weather, by her anxiety, by the state of the world—

A thick, ugly smell, like spoiled cabbage, like flower stalks left too long in water, rose like a miasma from the place where Mr. Jenkins had been—

But he could not have been there—

She screamed again, in uncontrollable panic, as a tall shape hurtled towards her.

Calvin. Calvin O’Keefe.

She burst into hysterical tears of relief.

He vaulted over the wall to her, his strong, thin arms tight around her, holding her. “Meg. Meg, what is it?”

She could not control her terrified sobbing.

“Meg, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” He shook her, urgently.

Gasping, she tried to tell him. “I know it sounds incredible—“ she finished. She was still trembling violently, her heart racing. When he did not speak, but continued soothingly to pat her back, she said, through a few final, hiccup-ing sobs, “Oh, Calvin, I wish I had imagined it. Do you think—do you think maybe I did?”

“I don’t know,” Calvin said flatly. He continued to hold her strongly, comfortingly.

Now that Calvin was here, would take over, she was able to manage a slightly hysterical giggle. “Mr. Jenkins always said I have too much imagination—but it’s never been that kind of imagination. I’ve never hallucinated or anything, have I?”

“No,” he replied firmly. “You have not. What’s that awful stench?”

“I don’t know. It’s not nearly as bad now as it was just before you came.”

“It makes silage smell like roses. Yukh.”

“Calvin—Louise the Larger—it’s not the first time today Louise has done something peculiar.”

“What?”

She told him about Louise that afternoon. “But she wasn’t attacking or anything then, she was still friendly.

She’s always been a friendly snake.” She let her breath out in a long, quavering sigh. “Cal, let me have your handkerchief, please. My glasses are filthy and I can’t see a thing, and right now I’d like to be able to see what’s going on.”

“My handkerchief is filthy.” But Calvin fished in his pockets.

“It’s better than a kilt.” Meg spat on her glasses and wiped them. Without their aid she could see no more of the older boy than a vague blur, so she made bold to say, “Oh, Cal, I was hoping you might come over tonight anyhow.”

“I’m surprised you’re even willing to speak to me. I came over to apologize for what my brother did to Charles Wallace.”

Meg adjusted her spectacles with her usual rough shove up the nose, just as a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds and illuminated Calvin’s troubled expression. She returned his handkerchief. “It wasn’t your fault.” Then— “I must have had a mental aberration or something, about Louise and Mr. Jenkins, mustn’t I?”

“I don’t know, Meg. You’ve never had a mental aberration before, have you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins, anyhow.”

She almost shouted, “What did you say!”

“Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins. Fewmets is my new swear word. I’m tired of all the old ones. Fewmets are dragon droppings, and—“

“I know fewmets are dragon droppings! What I want to know is why you picked on fewmets, of all things?”

“It seemed quite a reasonable choice to me.”

Suddenly she was shaking again. “Calvin—please—don’t —it’s too serious.”

He dropped his bantering tone. “Okay, Meg, what’s up about fewmets?”

“Oh, Cal, I was so sort of shook about the Mr. Jenkins thing I almost forgot about the dragons.”

“The what?”

She told him, all about Charles Wallace and his dragons, “and he’s never hallucinated before, either,” She told him again about Louise greeting the shadow of something they had not quite seen, “but it certainly wasn’t Mr. Jenkins. Louise wasn’t in the least friendly about Mr. Jenkins.”

“It’s wild,” Calvin said, “absolutely wild.”

“But we did see fewmets, Calvin—or something, more like feathers, really, but not like real feathers. Charles Wallace took one home—there was a whole pile of them— these sort of feathers, and dragon scales, by the biggest rock in the north pasture.”

Calvin sprang to his feet. “Let’s go, then! Bring your flashlight.”

It was possible now for her to cross the orchard and go into the pasture with Calvin to take the lead. Uppermost in Meg’s mind, superseding fear, was the need to prove that she and Charles Wallace weren’t just making something up, that the wild tales she had told Calvin were real—not Mr. Jenkins turning into a flying emptiness in the sky, she did not want that to be real, but the dragons. For if nothing that had happened touched on reality, then she was going out of her mind.

When they reached the pasture, Calvin took the light from her. “I’ll go ahead a bit.”

But Meg followed close on his heels. She thought she could sense disbelief as he swept the arc of light around the base of the rock. The beam came to rest in a small circle, and in the center of the circle shone something gold and glittering.

“Phew—“ Calvin said.

Meg giggled with relief and tension. “Don’t you mean fewmets? Has anybody ever seen a fewmet?”

Calvin was down on hands and knees, running his fingers through the little pile of feathers and scales. “Okay, okay, this is most peculiar. But what left it? After all, a gang of dragons just doesn’t disappear.”

“A drive of dragons,” Meg corrected, automatically. “Do you really think it’s dragons?”

Calvin did not answer. He asked, “Did you tell your mother?”

“Charles Wallace showed the feather to the twins during dinner, and Mother saw it, too. The twins said it wasn’t a bird’s feather because the rachis isn’t right, and then the conversation got shifted. I think Charles shifted it on purpose.”

“How is he?” Calvin asked. “How badly did Whippy hurt him?”

“He’s been hurt worse. Mother put compresses on his eye, and it’s turning black and blue. But that’s about all.”

She was not ready, yet, to mention his pallor, or shortness of wind. “You’d think we lived in the roughest section of an inner city or something, instead of way out in the peaceful country. There isn’t a day he doesn’t get shoved around by one of the bigger kids—it’s not only Whippy. Cal, why is it that my parents know all about physics and biology and stuff, and nothing about keeping their son from being mugged?”

Calvin pulled himself up onto the smaller of the two stones. “If it’s any consolation to you, Meg, I doubt if my parents know the difference between physics and biology. Maybe Charles would be better off in a city school, where there’re lots of different kinds of kids, white, black, yellow, Spanish-speaking, rich, poor. Maybe he wouldn’t stand out as being so different if there were other different people, too. Here—well, everybody’s sort of alike. People’re kind of proud of having your parents live here, and pally with the President and all, but you Murrys certainly aren’t like anybody else.”

“You’ve managed.”

“Same way the twins have. Playing by the laws of the jungle. You know that. Anyhow, my parents and grandparents were born right here in the village, and so were my great-grandparents. The O’Keefes may be shiftless, but at least they’re not newcomers.” His voice deepened with an old sadness.

“Oh, Cal—“

He shrugged his dark mood aside. “I think maybe we’d better go talk to your mother.”

“Not yet.” Charles Wallace’s voice came from behind them. “She’s got enough worries. Let’s wait till the dragons come back.”

Meg jumped. “Charles! Why aren’t you in bed? Does Mother know you’re out?”

“I was in bed. Mother doesn’t know I’m out. Obviously.”

Meg was near tears of exhaustion. “Nothing is obvious any more.” Then, in her big-sister tone of voice: “You shouldn’t be out this late.”

“’What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Meg, I came out because something frightened you.” He sighed, a strangely tired and ancient sigh from so small a boy. “I was almost asleep and I felt you screaming.”

“I don’t want to tell you about it. I don’t want it to have happened. Where’s Fortinbras?”

“I left him at home and told him not to let on that I wasn’t sound asleep in bed. I didn’t want him tangling with dragons. Meg, what happened? You’ve got to tell me.”

Meg said, “Okay, Charles, I don’t doubt your dragons any more. No dragons could be more incredible than Mr. Jenkins coming to look for me in the garden, and then turning into a—a great shrieking bird of nothingness.” She spoke quickly, because what she was saying sounded so absurd.

Charles Wallace did not laugh. He opened his mouth to speak, then swung around. “Who’s here?”

“Nobody,” Calvin said. “Meg and me. You.” But he jumped down from the rock.

“There’s somebody else. Near.”

Meg moved closer to Calvin. Her heart, it seemed, stopped beating.

“Hush,” Charles Wallace said, though they had not spoken. He listened with lifted head, like Fortinbras catching a scent.

To the right of the pasture was a woods, a small forest of oak,, maple, beech, stripped of all but a few brittle leaves, backed by the dark winter richness of assorted spruce and pine. The ground, which the moonlight did not reach, was covered with fallen damp leaves and pine needles which would silence footsteps. Then they heard the sharp crack of a breaking twig.

Meg and Calvin, straining to peer through the trees, saw nothing.

Then Charles Wallace cried, “My dragons!”

They turned around, and they saw, there by the great rock—

wings, it seemed like hundreds of wings, spreading, folding, stretching—

and eyes

how many eyes can a drive of dragons have?

and small jets of flame

Suddenly a voice called to them from the direction of the woods, “Do not be afraid!”

3 The Man in the Night.

A huge dark form strode swiftly through the woods and into the pasture; it reached them in a few strides, and then stood very still, so that the folds of the long robe seemed chiseled out of granite.

“Do not be afraid,” he repeated. “He won’t hurt you.”

He?

Yes. Charles Wallace’s drive of dragons was a single creature, although Meg was not at all surprised that Charles Wallace had confused this fierce, wild being with dragons. She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, ‘opening and closing, looking at her, looking at Charles Wallace and Calvin and the strange tall man. And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it could certainly start a grass fire if it weren’t careful. Meg did not wonder that Charles Wallace had not approached it.

Again the tall stranger reassured them. “He won’t hurt you.” The stranger was dark, dark as night and tall as a tree, and there was something in the repose of his body, the quiet of his voice, which drove away fear.

Charles Wallace stepped towards him. “Who are you?”

“A Teacher.”

Charles Wallace’s sigh was longing. “I wish you were my teacher.”

“I am.” The cello-like voice was calm, slightly amused.

Charles Wallace advanced another step. “And my dragons?”

The tall man—the Teacher—held out his hand in the direction of the wild creature, which seemed to gather itself together, to rise up, to give a great, courteous bow to all of them.

The Teacher said, “His name is Proginoskes.”

Charles Wallace said, “He?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not dragons?”

“He is a cherubim.”

“What!?”

“A cherubim.”

Flame spurted skywards in indignation at the doubt in the atmosphere. Great wings raised and spread and the children were looked at by a great many eyes. When the wild thing spoke, it was not in vocal words, but directly into their minds.

“I suppose you think I ought to be a golden-haired baby-face with no body and two useless little wings?”

Charles Wallace stared at the great creature. “It might be simpler if you were.”

Meg pulled her poncho closer about her, for protection in case the cherubim spouted fire in her direction.

“It is a constant amazement to me,” the cherubim thought at them, “that so many earthling artists paint cherubim to resemble baby pigs.”

Calvin made a sound which, if he had been less astonished, would have been a laugh. “But cherubim is plural.”

The fire-spouting beast returned, “I am practically plural. The little boy thought I was a drive of dragons, didn’t he? I am certainly not a cherub. I am a singular cherubim.”

“What are you doing here?” Charles Wallace asked.

“I was sent.”

“Sent?”

“To be in your class. I don’t know what I’ve done to be assigned to a class with such immature earthlings. I have a hard enough job as it is. I really don’t fancy coming back to school at all at my age.”

“How old are you?” Meg held her poncho out wide, ready to use it as a shield.

“Age, for cherubim, is immaterial. It’s only for time-bound creatures that age even exists. I am, in cherubic terms, still a child, and that is all you need to know. It’s very rude to ask questions about age.” Two of the wings crossed and uncrossed. The message had been rueful, rather than annoyed.

Charles Wallace spoke to the tall man. “You are my teacher, and his teacher, too?”

“I am.”

Charles Wallace looked up at the strange dark face which was stern and gentle at the same time. “It’s too good to be true. I think I must be having a dream. I wish I’d just go on dreaming and not wake up.”

“What is real?” The Teacher stretched out an arm, and gently touched the bruise on Charles Wallace’s cheek, the puffed and discolored flesh under his eye. “You are awake.”

“Or if you’re asleep,” Meg said, “we’re all having the same dream. Aren’t we, Calvin?”

“The thing that makes me think we’re awake is that if I were to dream about a cherubim, it wouldn’t look like that—that—“

Several very blue, long-lashed eyes looked directly at Calvin. “Proginoskes, as the Teacher told you. Proginoskes. And don’t get any ideas about calling me Cherry, or Cheery, or Bimmy.”

“It would be easier,” Charles Wallace said.

But the creature repeated firmly, “Proginoskes.”

Out of the dark form of the Teacher came a deep, gentle rumbling of amusement, a rumbling which expanded and rose and bubbled into a great laugh. “All right, then, my children. Are you ready to start—we will call it, for want of a better word in your language, school—are you ready to start school?”

Charles Wallace, a small and rather ludicrous figure in the yellow slicker he had pulled on over his pajamas, looked up at the oak-tree height and strength of the Teacher. “The sooner the better. Time’s running out.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Calvin objected. “What are you going to do with Charles? You and the—the cherubim can’t take him off without consulting his parents.”

“What makes you think I’m planning to?” The Teacher gave an easy little jump, and there he was, comfortably sitting on the tallest of the glacial rocks as though it were a stool, his arms loosely about his knees, the folds of his robe blending with the moonlit stone. “And I came not only to call Charles Wallace. I came to call all three of you.”

Meg looked startled. “All of us? But—“

“You may address me as Blajeny,” the Teacher said.

Charles Wallace asked, “Mr. Blajeny? Dr. Blajeny? Sir Blajeny?”

“Blajeny is enough. That is all of my name you need to know. Are you ready?”

Meg still looked astonished. “Calvin and me, too?”

“Yes.”

“But—“ As always when she felt unsure, Meg was argumentative. “Calvin doesn’t need—he’s the best student in school, and the best athlete, he’s important and everything. And I’m getting along, now. It’s Charles who’s the trouble —you can see for yourself. School, ordinary school, is just not going to work out for him.”

Blajeny’s voice was cool. “That is hardly my problem.”

“Then why are you here?” That Blajeny might have been sent solely to help her brother did not seem at all astonishing to Meg.

Again came the rumble that bubbled up into a laugh. “My dears, you must not take yourselves so seriously. Why should school be easy for Charles Wallace?”

“It shouldn’t be this bad. This is the United States of America. They’ll hurt him if somebody doesn’t do something.”

“He will have to learn to defend himself.”

Charles Wallace, looking very small and defenseless, spoke quietly. “The Teacher is right. It’s a question of learning to adapt, and nobody can do that for me. If everybody will leave me alone, and stop trying to help me, I’ll learn, eventually, how not to be conspicuous. I can assure you I haven’t mentioned mitochondria and farandolae lately.”

The Teacher nodded grave approval.

Charles Wallace moved closer to him. “I’m very glad you haven’t come because I’m making such a mess of school. But—Blajeny—if you haven’t come because of that, then why are you here?”

“I have come not so much to offer you my help as to ask for yours.”

“Ours?” Meg asked.

Charles Wallace looked up at the Teacher. “I’m not much of a help to anybody right now. It isn’t just that I’m not getting along at school—“

“Yes,” Blajeny said. “I know of the other problem. Nevertheless you are called, and anybody who is invited to study with one of the Teachers is called because he is needed. You have talents we cannot afford to lose.”

“Then—“

“We must find out what is making you ill and, if possible, make you well again.”

“If possible?” Meg asked anxiously.

Calvin asked sharply, “Charles? Ill? What’s wrong? What’s the matter with Charles?”

“Look at him,” Meg said in a low voice. “Look how pale he is. And he has trouble breathing. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard,” She turned to the Teacher. “Oh, please, please, Blajeny, can you help?”

Blajeny looked down at her, darkly, quietly. “I think, my child, that it is you who must help.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“You know I’d do anything in the world to help Charles.”

Calvin looked questioningly at the Teacher.

“Yes, Calvin, you too.”

“How? How can we help?”

“You will learn as the lessons progress.”

Calvin asked, “Where are we going to have these lessons, then? Where’s your school?”

Blajeny jumped lightly down from the rock. Despite his height and girth he moved, Meg thought, as though he were used to a heavier gravity than earth’s. He strode lightly halfway across the pasture to where there was a large, flat rock where the children often went with their parents to watch the stars. He dropped down onto the rock and lay stretched out on his back, gesturing to the others to join him. Meg lay beside him, with Calvin on her other side, so that she felt protected, not only from the cold night wind but from the cherubim, who had reached the rock with the beat of a wing and assorted himself into an assemblage of wings and eyes and puffs of smoke at a discreet distance from Charles Wallace, who was on Blajeny’s otherside.

“It’s all right, dragons,” Charles Wallace said. I’m not afraid of you.”

The cherubim rearranged his wings. “Proginoskes, please.”

Blajeny looked up at the sky, raised his arm, and made a wide, embracing gesture. The clouds had almost dispersed; only a few rapidly flying streamers veiled the stars, which blazed with the fierce brilliance of the rapidly plummeting mercury. The Teacher’s sweeping motion indicated the entire sparkling stretch of sky. Then he sat up and folded his arms across his chest, and his strange luminous eyes turned inwards, so that he was looking not at the stars nor at the children but into some deep, dark place far within himself, and then further. He sat there, moving in, in, deeper and deeper, for time out of time. Then the focus of his eyes returned to the children, and he gave his radiant smile and answered Calvin’s question as though not a moment had passed.

“Where is my school? Here, there, everywhere. In the schoolyard during first-grade recess. With the cherubim and seraphim. Among the farandolae.”

Charles Wallace exclaimed, “My mother’s isolated the farandolae!”

“So she has.”

“Blajeny, do you know if something’s wrong with my farandolae and mitochondria?”

Blajeny replied quietly, “Your mother and Dr. Colubra are trying to find that out.”

“Well, then, what do we do now?”

“Go home to bed.”

“But school—“

“You will all go to school as usual in the morning.”

It was total anticlimax. “But your school—“ Meg cried in disappointment. She had hoped that Charles Wallace would never have to enter the old red school building again, that Blajeny would take over, make everything all right ...

“My children,” Blajeny said gravely, “my school building is the entire cosmos. Before your tune with me is over, I may have to take you great distances, and to very strange places.”

“Are we your whole class?” Calvin asked. “Meg and Charles Wallace and me?”

Proginoskes let out a puff of huffy smoke.

“Sorry—and the cherubim.”

Blajeny said, “Wait You will know when the time comes.”

“And why on earth is one of our classmates a cherubim?” Meg said. “Sorry, Proginoskes, but it does seem very insulting to you to have to be with mortals like us.”

Proginoskes batted several eyes in apology. “I didn’t mean what I said about immature earthlings. If we have been sent to the same Teacher, then we have things to learn from each other. A cherubim is not a higher order than earthlings, you know, just different.”

Blajeny nodded. “Yes. You have much to learn from each other. Meanwhile, I will give each of you assignments. Charles Wallace, can you guess what yours is?”

“To learn to adapt.”

“I don’t want you to change!” Meg cried.

“Neither do I,” Blajeny replied. “Charles Wallace’s problem is to learn to adapt while remaining wholly himself.”

“What’s my assignment, Blajeny?” Meg asked.

The Teacher frowned briefly, in thought. Then, “I am trying to put it into earth terms, terms which you will understand. You must pass three tests, or trials. You must start immediately on the first one.”

“What is it?”

“Part of the trial is that you must discover for yourself what it is.”

“But how?”

“That I cannot tell you. But you will not be alone. Proginoskes is to work with you. You will be what I think you would call partners. Together you must pass the three tests.”

“But suppose we fail?”

Proginoskes flung several wings over his eyes in horror at the thought.

Blajeny said quietly, “It is a possibility, but I would prefer you not to suppose any such thing. Remember that these three trials will be nothing you could imagine or expect right now.”

“But Blajeny—I can hardly take a cherubim to school with me!”

Blajeny looked affectionately at the great creature, whose wings were still folded protectingly about himself. “That is for the two of you to decide. He is not always visible, you know. Myself, I find him a little simpler when he’s just a wind or a flame, but he was convinced he’d be more reassuring to earthlings if he enfleshed himself.”

Charles Wallace reached out and slipped his hand into the Teacher’s. “If I could take him, just this way, looking like a drive of dragons, into the schoolyard with me, I bet I wouldn’t have any trouble.”

Meg said, “Didn’t you tell me you were supposed to bring a pet-to school tomorrow?”

Charles Wallace laughed. “We may bring a small pet tomorrow to share with the class.”

Proginoskes peered under one wing. “I am not a joking matter.”

“Oh, Progo,” Meg assured him. “It’s only whistling in the dark.”

Charles Wallace, still holding the Teacher’s hand, asked him, “Will you come home with us now and meet my mother?”

“Not tonight, Charles, it is very late for you to be up, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I am only a Teacher, and I would not arrange the future ahead of time if I could. Come, I will walk part of the way back to the house with you.”

Meg asked, “What about Progo—Proginoskes?”

The cherubim replied, “If it is not the time for Blajeny to meet your family, it is hardly the time for me. I am quite comfortable here. Perhaps you could come meet me early tomorrow morning, and we can compare our night thoughts.”

“Well—okay. I guess that’s best. Good night, then.”

“Good night, Megling.” He waved a wing at her, then folded himself up into a great puff. No eyes showed, no flame, no smoke.

Meg shivered.

Blajeny asked, “Are you cold?”

She shivered again. “That thunderstorm before dinner— I suppose it was caused by a cold front meeting a warm front, but it did seem awfully cosmic. I never expected to meet a cherubim . . .”

“Blajeny,” Calvin said, “you haven’t given me an assignment.”

“No, my son. There is work for you, difficult work, and dangerous, but I cannot tell you yet what it is. Your assignment is to wait, without question. Please come to the Murrys’ house after school tomorrow—you are free to do that?”

“Oh, sure,” Calvin said. “I can skip my after-school stuff for once.” ,

“Good. Until then. Now, let us go.”

Charles Wallace led the way, with Meg and Calvin close behind. The wind was blowing out of the northwest, colder, it seemed, with each gust. When they reached the stone wall to the apple orchard, the moon was shining clearly, with that extraordinary brightness which makes light and dark acute and separate. Some apples still clung to their branches; a few as dark as Blajeny, others shining with a silvery light, almost as though they were illuminated from within.

On top of the pale stones of the wall lay a dark shadow, which was moving slowly, sinuously. It rose up, carefully uncoiling, seeming to spread a hood as it loomed over them. Its forked tongue flickered, catching the light, and a hissing issued from its mouth.

Louise.

But this was not the threatening Louise who had hissed and clacked at the impossible Mr. Jenkins; this was the Louise Meg and Charles Wallace had seen that afternoon, the Louise who had been waiting to greet the unknown shadow—the shadow who, Meg suddenly understood, must have been Blajeny.

Nevertheless, she pressed closer to Calvin; she had never felt very secure around Louise, and the snake’s strange behavior that afternoon and evening made her seem even more alien than when she was only the twins’ pet.

Now Louise was weaving slowly back and forth in a gentle rhythm, almost as though she were making a serpentine version of a deep curtsy; and the sibilant sound was a gentle, treble fluting.

Blajeny bowed to the snake.

Louise most definitely returned the bow.

Blajeny explained gravely, “She is a colleague of mine.”

“But—but—hey, now,” Calvin sputtered, “wait a minute—“

“She is a Teacher. That is why she is so fond of the two boys—Sandy and Dennys. One day they will be Teachers, too.”

Meg said, “They’re going to be successful businessmen and support the rest of us in the way to which we are not accustomed.”

Blajeny waved this aside. “They will be Teachers. It is a High Calling, and you must not be distressed that it is not yours. You, too, have a Work.”

Louise, with a last burst of her tiny, strange melody, dropped back to the wall and disappeared among the stones.

“Perhaps we’re dreaming after all,” Calvin said, wonderingly.

“What is real?” the Teacher asked again. “I will say good night to you now.”

Charles Wallace was reluctant to leave. “We won’t wake up in the morning and find it all never happened? We won’t wake up and find we dreamed everything?”

“If only one of us does,” Meg said, “and nobody else remembers any of it, then it’s a dream. But if we all wake up remembering, then it really happened.”

“Wait until tomorrow to find what tomorrow holds,” Blajeny advised. “Good night, my children.”

They did not ask him where he was going to spend the night—though Meg wondered—because it was the kind of presumptuous question one could not possibly ask Blajeny. They left him standing and watching after them, the folds of his robes chiseled like granite, his dark face catching and refracting the moonlight like fused glass.

They crossed the orchard and garden and entered the house, as usual, by the back way, through the pantry. The door to the lab was open, and the lights on. Mrs. Murry was bent over her microscope, and Dr. Colubra was curled up in an old red leather chair, reading. The lab was a long, narrow room with great slabs of stone for the floor. It had originally been used to keep milk and butter and other perishables, long before the days of refrigerators, and it was still difficult to heat in winter. The long work counter with the stone sink at one end was ideal for Mrs. Murry’s lab equipment. In one corner were two comfortable chairs and a reading lamp, which softened the clinical glare of the lights over the counter. But Meg could not think of a time when she had seen her mother relaxing in one of those chairs; she inevitably perched on one of the lab stools.

She looked up from the strange convolutions of the micro-electron microscope. “Charles! What are you doing out of bed?”

“I woke up,” Charles Wallace said blandly. “I knew Meg and Calvin were outside, so I went to get them.”

Mrs. Murry glanced sharply at her son, then greeted Calvin warmly.

Charles Wallace asked, “Is it okay if we make some cocoa?”

“It’s very late for you to be up, Charles, and tomorrow’s a school day.”

“It’ll help me get back to sleep.”

Mrs. Murry seemed about to refuse, but Dr. Colubra closed her book, saying, “Why not, for once? Let Charles have a nap when he gets home in the afternoon. I’d like some cocoa myself. Let’s make it out here while your mother goes on with her work. I’ll do it.”

“I’ll get the milk and stuff from the kitchen,” Meg said.

With Dr. Louise present they were not, she felt, free to talk to their mother about the events of the evening. The children were all fond of Dr. Louise, and trusted her completely as a physician, but they were not quite sure that she had their parents’ capacity to accept the extraordinary. Almost sure, but not quite. Dr. Colubra had a good deal in common with their parents; she, too, had given up work which paid extremely well in both money and prestige, to come live in this small rural village. (Too many of my colleagues have forgotten that they are supposed to practice the art of healing. If I don’t have the gift of healing in my hands, then all my expensive training isn’t worth very much!) She, too, had turned her back on the glitter of worldly success. Meg knew that her parents, despite the fact that they were consulted by the President of the United States, had given up much when they moved to the country in order to devote their lives to pure research. Their discoveries, many of them made in this stone laboratory, had made the Murrys more, rather than less, open to the strange, to the mysterious, to the unexplainable. Dr. Colubra’s work was perforce more straightforward, and Meg was not sure how she would respond to talk of a strange dark Teacher, eight or nine feet tall, and even less sure how she would react to their description of a cherubim. She’d probably insist they were suffering from mass psychosis and that they all should see a psychiatrist at once.

Or is it just that I’m afraid to talk about it, even to Mother? Meg wondered, as she took sugar, cocoa, milk, and a saucepan from the kitchen and returned to the pantry.

Dr. Colubra was saying, “That stuff about cosmic screams and rips in distant galaxies offends every bit of the rational part of me.”

Mrs. Murry leaned against the counter. “You didn’t believe in farandolae, either, until I proved them to you.”

“You haven’t proven them to me,” Dr. Louise said. “Yet.” She looked slightly ruffled, like a little grey bird. Her short, curly hair was grey; her eyes were grey above a small beak of a nose; she wore a grey flannel suit. “The main reason I think you may be right is that you go to that idiot machine—“ she pointed at the micro-electron microscope—“the way my husband used to go to his violin. It was always like a lovers’ meeting.”

Mrs. Murry turned away from her ‘idiot machine.’ “I think I wish I’d never heard of farandolae, much less come to the conclusions—“ She stopped abruptly, then said, “By the way, kids, I was rather surprised, just before you all barged into the lab, to have Mr. Jenkins call to suggest that we give Charles Wallace lessons in self-defense.”

Mr. Jenkins? Meg wondered. Aloud she said, “But Mr. Jenkins never calls parents. Parents have to go to him.” She almost asked, ‘Are you sure it was Mr. Jenkins?’ And stopped herself as she remembered that she had not told Blajeny about the horrible Mr. Jenkins-not-Mr. Jenkins who had turned into a bird of nothingness, the Mr. Jenkins Louise had resented so fiercely. She should have told Blajeny; she would tell him first thing in the morning.

Charles Wallace climbed up onto one of the lab stools and perched close to his mother. “What I really need are lessons in adaptation. I’ve been reading Darwin, but he hasn’t helped me much.”

“See what we mean?” Calvin asked Dr. Louise. “That’s hardly what one expects from a six-year-old.”

“He-really does read Darwin,” Meg assured the doctor.

“And I still haven’t learned how to adapt,” Charles Wallace added.

Dr. Louise was making a paste of cocoa, sugar, and a little hot -water from one of Mrs. Murry’s retorts. “This is just water, isn’t it?” she asked.

“From our artesian well. The very best water.”

Dr. Louise added milk, little by little. “You kids are too young to remember, and your mother is a good ten years younger than I am, but I’ll never forget, a great many years ago, when the first astronauts went to the moon, and I sat up all night to watch them.”

“I remember it all right,” Mrs. Murry said. “I wasn’t that young.”

Dr. Louise stirred the cocoa which was heating over a Bunsen burner. “Do you remember those first steps on the moon, so tentative to begin with, on that strange, airless, alien terrain? And then, in a short time, Armstrong and Aldrin were striding about confidently, and the commentator remarked on this as an extraordinary example of man’s remarkable ability to adapt”

“But all they had to adapt to was the moon’s surface!” Meg objected. “It wasn’t inhabited. I’ll bet when our astronauts reach some place with inhabitants it won’t be so easy. It’s a lot simpler to adapt to low gravity, or no atmosphere, or even sandstorms, than it is to hostile inhabitants.”

Fortinbras, who had an uncanine fondness for cocoa, came padding out to the lab, his nose twitching in anticipation. He stood on his hind legs and put his front paws on Charles Wallace’s shoulders.

Dr. Colubra asked Meg, “Do you think the first-graders in the village school are hostile inhabitants, then?”

“Of course! Charles isn’t like them, and so they’re hostile towards him. People are always hostile to anybody who’s different.”

“Until they get used to him,” the doctor said.

“They’re not getting used to Charles.”

Charles Wallace, fondling the big dog, said, “Don’t forget to give Fort a saucer—he likes cocoa.”

“You have the strangest pets,” Dr. Louise said, but she poured a small dish of cocoa for Fortinbras. “I’ll let it cool a bit before I put it on the floor. Meg, we need mugs.”

“Okay.” Meg hurried off to the kitchen, collected a stack of mugs, and returned to the laboratory.

Dr. Louise lined them up and poured the cocoa. “Speaking of pets, how’s my namesake?”

Meg nearly spilled the cocoa she was handing to her mother. She looked closely at Dr. Louise, but though the question had seemed pointed, the little bird face showed nothing more than amused interest; as Charles Wallace said, Dr. Louise was very good at talking on one level and thinking on another.

Charles Wallace answered the question. “Louise the Larger is a magnificent snake. I wonder if she’d like some cocoa? Snakes like milk, don’t they?”

Mrs. Murry said firmly, “You are not going back out tonight to find if the snake, magnificent though she be, likes cocoa. Save your experimental zeal for daylight. Louise is undoubtedly sound asleep.”

Dr. Louise carefully poured out the last of the cocoa into her own mug. “Some snakes are very sociable at night. Many years ago when I was working in a hospital in the Philippines I had a boa constrictor for a pet; we had a problem with rats in the ward, and my boa constrictor did a thorough job of keeping the rodent population down. He also liked cream-of-mushroom soup, though I never tried him on cocoa, and he was a delightful companion in the evenings, affectionate and cuddly.”

Meg did not think that she would enjoy cuddling with a snake, even Louise.

“He also had impeccable judgment about human nature. He was naturally a friendly creature, and if he showed me that he disliked or distrusted somebody, I took him seriously. We had a man brought to the men’s ward who seemed to have nothing more seriously wrong with him than a slightly inflamed appendix, but my boa constrictor took a dislike to him the moment he was admitted. That night he tried to kill the man in the next bed—fortunately we got to him in time. But the snake knew, After that, I listened to his warnings immediately.”

“Fortinbras has the same instinct about people,” Mrs. Murry said. “Too bad we human beings have lost it.”

Meg wanted to say, “So does Louise the Larger,” but her mother or the doctor would have asked her on what experience she based such a remark; it would have sounded more likely coming from the twins.

Charles Wallace regarded Dr. Colubra, who had returned to the red leather chair and was sipping cocoa, her legs tucked under her like a child; as a matter of fact, she was considerably smaller than Meg. Charles said, “We take Louise very seriously, Dr, Louise. Very seriously.”

Dr. Louise nodded. Her voice was light and high. “That was what I had in mind.”

Calvin finished his cocoa. “Thank you very much. I’d better get on home now. See you in school tomorrow, Meg. Thanks again, Mrs. Murry and Dr. Colubra. Good night.”

When he had gone, Mrs. Murry said, “All right, Charles. The twins have been in bed for an hour. Meg, it’s time for you, too. Charles, I’ll come check on you in a few minutes.”

As they left the lab, Meg could see her mother turning back to the micro-electron microscope.

Meg undressed slowly, standing by her attic window, wondering if Dr. Louise’s talk about snakes had been entirely casual chat over a cup of cocoa; perhaps it was only the strange events of the evening which caused her to look for meanings under the surface of what might well be unimportant conversation. She turned out the lights and looked out the window. She could see across the vegetable garden to the orchard, but the trees still held enough leaves so that she could not see into the north pasture.

Was there really a cherubim waiting at the star-watching rock, curled up into a great feathery ball, all those eyes closed in sleep?

Was he real?

What is real?

4 Proginoskes.

Meg woke up before dawn, suddenly and completely, as though something had jerked her out of sleep. She listened: only the usual noises of the sleeping house. She turned on the light and looked at her clock; she had set the alarm for six, as usual. It was now five. She had another whole hour in which she could curl up under the covers, and luxuriate in warmth and comfort, and doze—

Then she remembered.

She tried to reassure herself that she was remembering a dream, although it was not the way that a dream is remembered. It must have been a dream, obviously it must have been a dream—

The only way to prove that it was nothing but a dream, without waking Charles Wallace and asking him, was to get dressed and go out to the star-watching rock and make sure that there was no cherubim there. And—if by some slim chance it had not been a dream, she had promised the cherubim that she would come to him before breakfast.

Had it not been for the horrible moments with Mr. Jenkins screeching across the sky, she would not have wanted it to be a dream. She desperately wanted Blajeny to be real, to take care of everything. But the unreality of Mr. Jenkins, who had always been disagreeably predictable, was far more difficult for her to accept than the Teacher, or even a cherubim who looked like a drive of dragons.

She dressed hurriedly, putting on her kilt and a clean blouse. She tiptoed downstairs as quietly and carefully as she had the night before, through the kitchen and into the pantry, where she put on her heaviest jacket, and a multicolored knitted tarn o’shanter, one of her mother’s rare successful ventures into domesticity.

This tune no wind blew, no doors slammed. She turned on the flashlight to guide her. It was a still, chill pre-dawn. The grass was white with spider-web tracings of dew and light frost. A thin vapor moved delicately across the lawn. The mountains were curtained by ground fog, although in the sky she could see stars. She ran across the garden, looking warily about her. But there was no Mr. Jenkins, of course there was no Mr. Jenkins. At the stone wall she looked carefully for Louise, but there was no sign of the big snake. She crossed the orchard, climbed the wall again —still no Louise, it was much too early and much too cold for snakes, anyhow—and ran across the north pasture, past the two glacial rocks, and to the star-watching rock.

There was nothing there except the mist whirling gently in the faint breeze.

So it had all been a dream.

Then the mist seemed to solidify, to become moving wings, eyes opening and shutting, tiny flickers of fire, small puffs of misty smoke ....

“You’re real,” she said loudly. “You’re not something I dreamed after all.”

Proginoskes delicately stretched one huge wing skywards, then folded it. “I have been told that human beings seldom dream about cherubim. Thank you for being prompt. It is in the nature of cherubim to dislike tardiness.”

Meg sighed, in resignation, in fear, and, surprisingly, in relief. “Okay, Progo, I guess you’re not a figment of my imagination. What do we do now? I’ve got just about an hour before breakfast.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I’m much too excited to be hungry, but if I don’t turn up on time, it won’t go down very well if I explain that I was late because I was talking with a cherubim. My mother doesn’t like tardiness, either.”

Proginoskes said, “Much can be accomplished in an hour. We have to find out what our first ordeal is.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Why would I know?”

“You’re a cherubim.”

“Even a cherubim has limits. When three ordeals are planned, then nobody knows ahead of time what they are; even the Teacher may not know.”

“Then what do we do? How do we find out?”

Proginoskes waved several wings slowly back and forth in thought, which would have felt very pleasant on a hot day, but which, on a cold morning, made Meg turn up the collar of her jacket. The cherubim did not notice; he continued waving and thinking. Then she could feel his words moving slowly, tentatively, within her mind. “H you’ve been assigned to me, I suppose you must be some kind of a Namer, too, even if a primitive one.”

“A what?”

“A Namer. For instance, the last time I was with a Teacher—or at school, as you call it—my assignment was to memorize the names of the stars.”

“Which stars?”

“All of them.”

“You mean all the stars, in all the galaxies?”

“Yes. If he calls for one of them, someone has to know which one he means. Anyhow, they like it; there aren’t many who know them all by name, and if your name isn’t known, then it’s a very lonely feeling.”

“Am I supposed to learn the names of all the stars, too?” It was an appalling thought

“Good galaxy, no!”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

Proginoskes waved several wings, which, Meg was learning, was more or less his way of expressing “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Well, then, if I’m a Namer, what does that mean? What does a Namer do?”

The wings drew together, the eyes closed, singly, and in groups, until all were shut. Small puffs of mist-like smoke rose, swirled about him. “When I was memorizing the names of the stars, part of the purpose was to help them each to be more particularly the particular star each one was supposed to be. That’s basically a Namer’s job. Maybe you’re supposed to make earthlings feel more human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She sat down on the rock beside him; she was somehow no longer afraid of his wildness, his size, his spurts of fire.

He asked, “How do I make you feel?”

She hesitated, not wanting to be rude, forgetting that the cherubim, far more than Charles Wallace, did not need her outward words to know what was being said within. But she answered truthfully, “Confused.”

Several puffs of smoke went up. “Well, we don’t know each other very well yet. Who makes you least confused?”

“Calvin.” There was no hesitation here. “When I’m with Calvin, I don’t mind being me.”

“You mean he makes you more you, don’t you?”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

“Who makes you feel the least you?”

“Mr. Jenkins.”

Proginoskes probed sharply, “Why are you suddenly upset and frightened?”

“He’s the principal of the grade school in the village this year. But he was in my school last year, and I was always getting sent to his office. He never understands anything, and everything I do is automatically wrong. Charles Wallace would probably be better off if he weren’t my brother. That’s enough to finish him with Mr. Jenkins.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you say Mr. Jenkins, I feel such a cold wave of terror wash over you that I feel chilly myself.”

“Progo—something happened last night—before we met you and Blajeny—when I was all alone in the garden—“ Her voice tailed off.

“What happened, earthling? Tell me. I have a feeling this may be important.”

Why should it be difficult to tell Proginoskes? The cherubim himself was just as unbelievable. But the cherubim was himself, was Proginoskes, while Mr. Jenkins had not been Mr. Jenkins.

As she tried to explain to Proginoskes she could sense him pulling away, and suddenly he flung all his wings about himself in a frantic reflex of self-preservation. Then two eyes looked out at her under one wing. “Echthroi.” It was an ugly word. As Proginoskes uttered it the morning seemed colder.

“What did you say?” Meg asked.

“Your Mr. Jenkins—the real one—could he do anything like the one you just told me about? Could he fly into a nothingness in the sky? This is not a thing that human beings can do, is it?”

“No.”

“You say he was like a dark bird, but a bird that was nothingness, and that he tore the sky?”

“Well—that’s how I remember it. It was all quick and unexpected and I was terrified and I couldn’t really believe that it had happened.”

“It sounds like the Echthroi.” He covered his eyes again.

“The what?”

Slowly, as though with a great effort, he uncovered several eyes. “The Echthroi. Oh, earthling, if you do not know Echthroi—“

“I don’t want to. Not if they’re like what I saw last night.”

Proginoskes agitated his wings. “I think we must go see this Mr. Jenkins, the one you say is at your little brother’s school.”

“Why?”

Proginoskes withdrew into all his wings again. Meg could feel him thinking grumpily, —They told me it was going to be difficult . . . Why couldn’t they have sent me off some place quiet to recite the stars again? ... Or I’m even willing to memorize farandolae . . . I’ve never been to Earth before, I’m too young, I’m scared of the shadowed planets, what kind of a star has this planet got, anyhow?

Then he emerged, slowly, one pan- of eyes at a time. “Megling, I think you have seen an Echthros. If we are dealing with Echthroi, then—I just know with every feather on my wings (and you might try counting my feathers, sometime) that we have to go see this Mr. Jenkins. It must be part of the trial.”

“Mr. Jenkins? Part of our first test? But that’s—it doesn’t make sense.”

“It does to me.”

“Progo,” she objected, “it’s impossible. I can slip off my school bus and then walk to the grade school the way I did when I went to talk to Mr. Jenkins about Charles Wallace— and a fat lot of good that did—“

“If you have seen an Echthros, everything is different,” Proginoskes said.

“Okay, I can get to the grade school all right, but I can’t possibly take you with me. You’re so big you wouldn’t even fit into the school bus. Anyhow, you’d terrify everybody.” At the thought she smiled, but Proginoskes was not in a laughing mood.

“Not everybody is able to see me,” he told her. “I’m real, and most earthlings can bear very little reality. But if it will relieve your mind, I’ll dematerialize.” He waved a few wings gracefully. “It’s really more comfortable for me not to be burdened with matter, but I thought it would be easier for you if you could converse with someone you could see.”

The cherubim was there in front of her, covering most of the star-watching rock, and then he was not there. She thought she saw a faint shimmer in the air, but it might have been the approach of dawn. She could feel him, however, moving within her mind. “Are you feeling extremely brave, Megling?”

“No.” A faint light defined the eastern horizon. The stars were dim, almost extinguished.

“I think we’re going to have to be brave, earth child, but it will be easier because we’re together. I wonder if the Teacher knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That you’ve seen an Echthros.”

“Progo, I don’t understand. What is an Echthros?”

Abruptly, Proginoskes materialized, raised several wings, and gathered her in. “Come, littleling. I’ll take you some place yesterday and show you.”

“How can you take me yesterday?”

“I can’t possibly take you today, silly. It’s time for you to go in to breakfast and your mother dislikes tardiness. And who knows what we may have to do or where we may have to go before tomorrow? Come.” He drew her further in to him.

She found herself looking directly into one of his eyes, a great, amber cat’s eye, the dark mandala of the pupil, opening, compelling, beckoning.

She was drawn towards the oval, was pulled into it, was through it.

Into the ultimate night on the other side.

Then she felt a great, flaming wind, and knew that somehow she herself was part of that wind.

Then she felt a great shove, and she was standing, on a bare stone mountain top, and Proginoskes was blinking and winking at her. She thought she saw the oval, mandala-eye through which she had come, but she was not sure.

The cherubim raised a great wing to sketch the slow curve of sky above them. The warm rose and lavender of sunset faded, dimmed, was extinguished. The sky was drenched with green at the horizon, muting upwards into a deep, purply blue through which stars began to appear in totally unfamiliar constellations.

Meg asked, “Where are we?”

“Never mind where. Watch.”

She stood beside him, looking at the brilliance of the stars. Then came a sound, a sound which was above sound, beyond sound, a violent, silent, electrical report, which made her press her hands in pain against her ears. Across the sky, where the stars were clustered as thickly as in the Milky Way, a crack shivered, slivered, became a line of nothingness. ‘

If this kind of thing was happening in the universe, no matter how far away from earth and the Milky Way, Meg did not wonder that her father had been summoned to Washington and Brookhaven.

“Progo, what is it? What happened?”

“The Echthroi have Xed.”

“What?”

“Annihilated. Negated. Extinguished. Xed.”

Meg stared in horrible fascination at the rent in the sky. This was the most terrible thing she had ever seen, more horrifying than the Mr. Jenkins-Echthros the night before. She pressed close to the cherubim, surrounding herself with wings and eyes and puffs of smoke, but she could still see the rip in the sky.

She could not bear it.

She closed her eyes to shut it out. She tried to think of the most comfortable thing possible, the safest, most reasonable, ordinary thing. What, then? The dinner table at home: winter: the red curtains drawn across the windows, and a quiet snow falling softly outdoors; an applewood fire in the fireplace and Fortinbras snoring happily on the hearth; a tape playing Hoist’s The Planets—no, maybe that wasn’t too comforting; in her mind’s ear she shifted to a ghastly recording of the school band, with Sandy and Dennys playing somewhere in the cacophony.

Dinner was over, and she was clearing the table and starting the dishes and only half listening to the conversation of her parents, who were lingering over their coffee.

It was almost as tangible as though she were actually there, and she thought she felt Proginoskes pushing at her mind, helping her remember.

Had she really listened that attentively to her parents while she stood running hot water over the plates? Their voices were as clear as though she were actually in the room.

Her father must have mentioned the terrible thing which Proginoskes had-just shown her, the terrible thing which was terrible precisely because it was not a thing, because it was nothing. She could hear, too clearly, her father’s voice, calm and rational, speaking to her mother. “It isn’t just in distant galaxies that strange, unreasonable things are happening. Unreason has crept up on us so insidiously that we’ve hardly been aware of it. But think of the things going on in our own country which you wouldn’t have believed possible only a few years ago.”

Mrs. Murry swirled the dregs of her coffee. “I don’t think I believe all of them now, although I know they’re happening.” She looked up to see that the. twins and Charles Wallace were out of the room, that Meg was splashing water in the sink as she scoured a pot. “Ten years ago we didn’t even have a key to this house. Now we lock up when we go out. The irrational violence is even worse in the cities.”

Mr. Murry absent-mindedly began working out an equation on the tablecloth. For once Mrs. Murry did not even seem to notice. He said, “They’ve never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove home from Washington the traffic was so bad I could have made better time with a horse. There were huge signs proclaiming SPEED LIMIT 65 MPH, and we were crawling along at 20.”

“And the children and I kept dinner hot for you for three hours, and finally ate, pretending we weren’t worried that you might have been in an accident,” Mrs. Murry said bitterly. “Here we are, at the height of civilization in a well-run state in a great democracy. And four ten-year-olds were picked up last week for pushing hard drugs in the school where our six-year-old is regularly given black eyes and a bloody nose.” She suddenly noticed the equation growing on the tablecloth. “What are you doing?” ‘

“I have a hunch that there’s some connection between your discoveries about the effects of farandolae on mitochondria, and that unexplained phenomenon out in space.” His pencil added a fraction, some Greek characters, and squared them.

Mrs. Murry said in a low voice, “My discoveries are not very pleasant.”

“I know.”

“I isolated farandolae because something beyond increasing air pollution has to account for the accelerating number of deaths from respiratory failure, and this so-called flu epidemic. It was the micro-sonarscope which gave me the first clue—“ She stopped abruptly, looked at her husband. “It’s the same sound, isn’t it? The strange ‘cry* of the ailing mitochondria, and the ‘cry’ picked up in those distant galaxies by the new paraboloidoscope—there’s a horrid similarity between them. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that we don’t even see what’s going on in our own back yard. L.A. is trying as honorably as a president can try in a world which has become so blunted by dishonor and violence that people casually take it for granted. We have to see a great, dramatic fissure in the sky before we begin to take danger seriously. And I have to be deathly worried about our youngest child before I regard farandolae except in a cool and academic manner.”

Meg had turned from the kitchen sink at the pain in her mother’s voice, and had seen her father reach across the table for her mother’s hand. “My dear, this is not like you. With my intellect I see cause for nothing but pessimism and even despair. But I can’t settle for what my intellect tells me. That’s not all of it.”

“What else is there?” Mrs. Murry’s voice was low and anguished.

“There are still stars which move in ordered and beautiful rhythm. There are still people in this world who keep promises. Even little ones, like your cooking stew over your Bunsen burner. You may be in the middle of an experiment, but you still remember to feed your family. That’s enough to keep my heart optimistic, no matter how pessimistic my mind. And you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”

Proginoskes said, “He’s a wise man, your father.”

“Could you hear me remembering?”

“I was remembering with you. Most of that conversation you didn’t hear with your conscious mind, you know.”-

“I have a very good memory—“ Meg started. Then she stopped herself. “Okay. I know I couldn’t have remembered all that by myself. I suppose I just sort of took in the sound waves, didn’t I? But how did you get it all from me?”

Proginoskes looked at her with two, ringed owl-like eyes. “You’re beginning to learn how to kythe.”

“To what?”

“Kythe. It’s how cherubim talk. It’s talking without words, just the same way that I can be myself and not be enfleshed.”

“But I have to be enfleshed, and I need words.”

“I know, Meg,” he replied gently, “and I will keep things worded for you. But it will help if you will remember that cherubim kythe without words among each other. For a human creature you show a distinct talent for kything.”

She blushed slightly at the compliment; she had a feeling that paying compliments is a habit not often indulged in by cherubim. “Progo, I wish I’d been able to see the equation Father was doodling on the tablecloth. If I’d seen it, then it might be somewhere in my mind for you to pull out.”

“Think,” Proginoskes said. “I’ll help.”

“Mother put the tablecloth in the wash.”

“But you remember there were some Greek letters.”

“Yes . . .”

“Let me try to find them with you.”

She closed her eyes.

“That’s right. Relax, now. Maybe this is the way for us to kythe. —Don’t you try to think. Just let me move about.”

Out of the corner of her mind’s eye she seemed to see three Greek characters among the numbers in the loosely strung equation her father was scribbling on the cloth. She thought them at Proginoskes.

“exo- Epsilon, chi, and theta. That’s Echth,” the cherubim told her.

“Echthroi—but how could Father—“

“Think of the conversation we just recalled, Meg. Your parents are very aware of the evil in the world.”

“All right. Yes. I know. Okay.” Meg sounded cross, “Until Charles started school I hoped maybe we could ignore it. Like ostriches or something.”

The cherubim withdrew its wings from her entirely, leaving her exposed and cold on the strange hilltop. “Open your eyes and look where the sky is torn.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Go on. I’ve got all my eyes open, and you only have to open two.”

Meg opened her eyes. The rent in the sky was still there. She wondered what this distant phenomenon could have to do with Charles Wallace’s pallor, with mitochondritis, or whatever it was. “How—oh, Progo, how did the Echthroi do that?”

Like Charles Wallace, he picked up her particular anxiety. “It has to do with un-Naming. If we are Namers, the Echthroi are un-Namers, non-Namers.”

“Progo, what does that have to do with Mr. Jenkins?”

She felt a wave of apprehension roll through her. “Little-ling, I think that is what we must find out. I think that it is part of our first ordeal. Let us go.” He drew her back into himself again; again she was confronted with the single eye, was pulled through the opening, oval pupil. Then the pupil snapped shut, and they were together on the star-watching rock with dawn slowly lightening the east.

Progo spread his wings wide, and she moved out. “What do we do now?” he said.

The cherubim was asking her? “I am only a human being, not quite full-grown,” she replied. “How would I know?”

“Megling, I’ve never been on your planet before. This is your home. Charles Wallace is your brother. You are the one who knows Mr. Jenkins. You must tell me what we are to do now.”

Meg stamped, loudly and angrily, against the hard, cold surface of the rock. “This is too much responsibility! I’m still only a child! I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“Are you refusing to take the test?” Proginoskes pulled away from her.

“But I didn’t ask for it! I didn’t ask for Blajeny, or you, or any of it!”

“Didn’t you? I thought you were worried about Charles Wallace.”

“I am! I’m worried about everything!”

“Meg.” Proginoskes was somber and stern. “Are you going to enter into the ordeal? I must know. Now.”

Meg stamped again. “Of course I’m going to. You know I have to. Charles Wallace is in danger. I’ll do anything to help him, even if it seems silly.”

“Then what do we do now?”

She shoved at her glasses as though that would help her think. “I’d better go home now and have breakfast. Then I’ll get on my school bus—it stops at the bottom of the hill and maybe you’d better wait for me there. Fortinbras might bark at you; I’m sure he’d know you were in the house even if you dematerialize, or whatever you call it.”

“Whatever you think best,” Proginoskes said meekly.

“I’ll be down at the foot of the road at seven o’clock. The high-school bus covers so much distance and makes so many stops it takes an hour and a half, and I get on at one of the first stops.”

She felt an acquiescing response from the cherubim, and then he disappeared; she could not see even a shimmer, or feel a flicker of him in her mind. She headed back to the house. She kept the flashlight on, not for the known turnings of the path, but for whatever new, unknown surprises might be waiting for her.

When Meg got to the stone wall Louise the Larger was there. Waiting. Neither greeting nor attacking. Waiting. Meg approached her cautiously. Louise watched her through eyes which shone in the flashlight like the water of a very deep well.

“May I go by, please, Louise?” Meg asked timidly.

Louise uncoiled, waving slightly in greeting, still looking intently at Meg. Then she bowed her head, and slithered off into the rocks. Meg felt that Louise had been waiting for her to give her a warning for whatever lay ahead, and to wish her well. It was strangely comforting to know that Louise’s well-wishing was going with her.

There was sausage as well as hot porridge for breakfast. Meg felt that she ought to eat heartily, because who knew what lay ahead? But she could manage only a few mouthfuls.

“Are you all right, Meg?” her mother asked.

“Fine. Thanks.”

“You look a little pale. Sure you aren’t coming down with something?”

She’s worried about all of us with this mitochondritis stuff. “Just the normal throes of adolescence,” she smiled at her mother.

Sandy said, “If you don’t want your sausage, I’ll eat it.”

Dennys said, “Half for me, okay?”

Charles Wallace slowly and deliberately ate a full bowl of porridge, but gave the twins his sausage.

“Well, then”—Meg washed her dishes and put them in the rack—“I’m off.”

“Wait for us,” Sandy said.

She did not want to wait for the twins, to listen to their chatter on the walk down to the bus. On the other hand, it would keep her from thinking about what lay ahead. She had thought of Mr. Jenkins for as far back as she could remember with distaste, annoyance, and occasionally outrage, but never before with fear.

When she left the house she had a horrid, premonitory feeling that it would be a long time before she returned. Again she wished that Fortinbras were walking to the bus with them, as he often did, and then returning to make the walk again with Charles Wallace. But this morning he showed no inclination to leave the warmth of the kitchen.

“What do you suppose will happen today?” Sandy asked as they started down the hill in the chill of early morning.

Dennys shrugged. “Nothing. As usual. Race you to the foot of the hill.”

5 The First Test.

Meg and the cherubim reached the deserted schoolyard in safety.

“We’ve got a while to wait,” Meg told him, “and it’s okay for you, you’re invisible. But I’ve got to find a place to hide.” She could not see Proginoskes, but she talked at the faint shimmer in the air where she knew he was.

“You’re too late,” the cherubim said, and Meg swung around to see Mr. Jenkins coming across the schoolyard from the faculty parking lot.

Mr. Jenkins. The ordinary, everyday, usual Mr. Jenkins. There was no snake hissing and clacking at him, and he himself did nothing but continue his way across the school-yard. He looked just as he always looked. He wore his usual dark business suit, and no matter how often it was brushed there was always a small snowfall of dandruff on his shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his eyes were muddy behind his bifocals. He was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, and whenever Meg saw him her feet seemed to grow larger and she couldn’t find a resting place for her hands.

“All right, Margaret, what is this? What are you doing here?” He had every right to sound annoyed.

She had nothing to reply. She felt Proginoskes close to her, felt his mind within hers, but he had nothing to suggest.

“My dear child,” Mr. Jenkins said, and his voice was un-wontedly compassionate. “If you have come again about your little brother, I can now tell you that we are reviewing his case. It is not my policy of education to have one child intimidated by his peers. But our initial testing shows that Charles Wallace’s talents are so unusual that unusual measures must be taken. I’ve had several consultations with the State Board, and we are considering getting a special tutor for him.”

Meg looked warily at the principal. This sounded too good to be true.

And Louise had been trying to warn her of something. Of what?

The cherubim, too, was uneasy. She felt him moving lightly in her mind, feeling her response to this unexpectedly reasonable Mr. Jenkins.

“That is nonsense,” Mr. Jenkins said to Mr. Jenkins. “We cannot make an exception for any one child. Charles Wallace Murry must learn to manage.”

A second Mr. Jenkins was standing beside Mr. Jenkins.

It was impossible. It was just as impossible as—

But there were two identical, dour Mr. Jenkinses standing in front of her.

Proginoskes shimmered, but did not materialize. Meg backed into the shimmer; she felt that the cherubim was opening an invisible wing and pulling her close to him. She could feel his tremendous, wild heartbeat, a frightened heartbeat, thundering in her ears.

“We’re Namers,” she heard through the racing of the heart. “We’re Namers. What is their Name?”

“Mr. Jenkins.”

“No, no. This is the test, Meg, it must be. One of those Mr. Jenkinses is an Echthros, We have to know which is the real Mr. Jenkins.”

Meg looked at the two men who stood glaring at each other. “Progo, you can feel into me. Can’t you feel into them? Can’t you kythe?” .

“Not when I don’t know who they are. You’re the one who knows the prototype.”

“The what?”

“The real one. The only Mr. Jenkins who is Mr. Jenkins. Look—“

Suddenly beside the two Mr. Jenkinses stood a third Mr. Jenkins. He raised one hand in greeting, not to Meg, but to the other two men as he drew level with them. “Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes,” Mr. Jenkins Three said.

The three men wheeled, stiffly, like marionettes, and walked across the schoolyard and into the building.

“We must think. We must think.” Proginoskes’s kythe almost became opaque for a second, and Meg felt that he was restraining himself from spouting fire.

Meg said, “Progo, if you really are a cherubim—“

There was a great and surging invisible wave of indignation all around her.

She hit the clenched fist of one hand against the palm of the other. “Wait. You told me to think, and I’m thinking.”

“You don’t have to think out loud. You don’t have to talk to think, after all. You’re deafening me. Try to kythe with me, Meg.”

“I still don’t understand kything. Is it like mental telepathy?”

Proginoskes hesitated. “You might say that mental telepathy is the very beginning of learning to kythe. But the cherubic language is entirely kything—with you, with stars, with galaxies, with the salt in the ocean, the leaves of the trees.”

“But I’m not a cherubim. How do I do it?”

“Meg, your brain stores all the sensory impressions it receives, but your conscious mind doesn’t have a key to the storehouse. All I want you to do is to open yourself up to me so that I can open the door to your mind’s storehouse.”

“All right. I’ll try.” To open herself entirely to the cherubim, to make herself completely vulnerable, was not going to be easy. But she trusted Proginoskes implicitly. “Listen,” she said, “cherubim have come to my planet before.”

“I know that. Where do you think I got my information?”

“What do you know about us?”

“I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled.”

“It’s beautiful,” Meg said defensively.

She felt a rippling of his wings. “In the middle of your cities?”

“Well—no—but I don’t live in a city.”

“And is your planet peaceful?”

“Well, no—it isn’t very peaceful.”

“I had the idea,” Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, “that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other.”

“Yes, that’s so,but—“

“And children go hungry.”

“Yes.”

“And people don’t understand each other.”

“Not always.”

“And there’s—there’s hate?”

“Yes.”

She felt Proginoskes pulling away. “All I want to do,” he was murmuring to himself, “is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars . . .”

“Progo! You said we were Namers. I still don’t know: what is a Namer?”

“I’ve told you. A Namer has to know who people are, and who they are meant to be. I don*t know why I should have been shocked at finding Echthroi on your planet.”

“Why are they here?”

“Echthroi are always about when there’s war. They start all war.”

‘”Progo, I saw all that awfulness you took me to see, that tearing of the sky, and all, but you still haven’t told me exactly what Echthroi are.”

Proginoskes probed into her mind, searching for words she could understand. “I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming—making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn’t need to hate. That’s why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.”

“But what—“

“Oh, earthling, earthling, why do you think Blajeny called for you? There is war in heaven, and we need all the help we can get. The Echthroi are spreading through the universe. Every time a star goes out another Echthros has won a battle. A star or a child or a farandola—size doesn’t matter, Meg. The Echthroi are after Charles Wallace and the balance of the entire universe can be altered by the outcome.”

“But Progo, what does this have to do with our test— and with three Mr. Jenkinses—it’s insane.”

Proginoskes responded coldly and quietly. “Precisely.”

Into the cold and quiet came the sound of the school buses arriving, doors opening, children rushing out and into the school building.

Charles Wallace was one of those children.

Proginoskes moved quietly in her mind through the roar. “Don’t misunderstand me, Meg. It is the ways of the Echthroi which are insane. The ways of the Teachers are often strange, but they are never haphazard. I know that Mr. Jenkins has to have something to do with it, something important, or we wouldn’t be here.”

Meg said, unhappily, “If I hate Mr. Jenkins whenever I think of him, am I Naming him?”

Proginoskes shifted his wings. “You’re Xing him, just like the Echthroi.”

“Progo!”

“Meg, when people don’t know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named.”

“And you think I’m supposed to Name Mr. Jenkins?” It was a ridiculous idea; no matter how many Mr. Jenkinses there were, he was Mr. Jenkins. That’s all.

But Proginoskes was most definite. “Yes.”

Meg cried rebelliously, “Well, I think it’s a silly kind of test.”

“What you think is not the point. What you do is what’s going to count.”

“How can it possibly help Charles?”

“I don’t know. We don’t have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is given us to do.”

“But how do I do it? How do I Name Mr. Jenkins when all I think of when I see him is how awful he is?”

Proginoskes sighed and flung several wings heavenwards so violently that he lifted several feet, materialized, and came down with a thud. “There’s a word—but if I say it you’ll just misunderstand.”

“You have to say it.”

“It’s a four-letter word. Aren’t four-letter words considered the bad ones on your planet?”

“Come on. I’ve seen all the four-letter words on the walls of the washroom at school.”

Proginoskes let out a small puff. “Luff.”

“What?”

“Love. That’s what makes persons know who they are. You’re full of love, Meg, but you don’t know how to stay within it when it’s not easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh—you love your family. That’s easy. Sometimes when you feel awful about somebody, you get back into tightness by thinking about—well, you seem to be telling me that you got back into love once by thinking about Charles Wallace.”

“Yes—“

“But this time it can’t be easy. You have to go on to the next step.”

“If you mean you think I have to love Mr. Jenkins, you’ve got another think coming,” Meg snapped.

Proginoskes gave a mighty sigh. “If we pass the test, you’ll go on and be taught—oh, some of the things I was taught my first billennium with the Teachers. I had to pass a galaxy of tests before I could qualify as a Star’Namer. But you’re a human being, and it’s all quite different with you. I keep forgetting that. Am I lovable? To you?”

All about Meg, eyes opened and shut; wings shifted; a small flame burned her hand and was rapidly withdrawn. She coughed and then sucked the burned place on her hand. But all she wanted was to put her arms around Proginoskes as she would around Charles Wallace. “Very lovable,” she said.

“But you don’t love me the way you love that skinny Calvin?”

“That’s different.”

“I thought so; That’s the confusing kind. Not the kind you have to have in order to Name Mr. Jenkins.”

“I hate Mr. Jenkins.”

“Meg, it’s the test. You have to Name the real Mr. Jenkins, and I have to help you. If you fail, I fail too.”

“Then what would happen?”

“It’s your first time with a Teacher. And it would be your last.”

“And you?”

“When one has been with the Teachers as often as I have, one is given a choice. I could throw in my lot with the Echthroi—“

“What!”

“Quite a few of those who fail do.”

“But the Echthroi are—“

“You know what they are. Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate.”

“Progo, you couldn’t.”

“I hope I couldn’t. But others have. It’s not an easy choice.”

“If you don’t go to the Echthroi—“

All Proginoskes’s eyes were shielded by his wings. “I am a Namer, The Echthroi would un-Name. If I do not go with them, then I must X myself.”

“What!?”

“I’ll ask you a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?”

“Oh, love, I suppose.”

“So, if I care more about Naming than anything else, then maybe I have to give myself away, if it’s the only way to show my love. All the way away. To X myself.”

“If you do it—X yourself—does it last forever?” Meg asked apprehensively.

“Nobody knows. Nobody will know till the end of time.”

“Do I have that choice, too, if—if we fail?” She turned away from the school building, towards the early-morning shouts and whistles, and pressed her face against the soft feathers of one great pinion.

“It is not an option given to mortals, earthling.”

“All that happens to me is that I go home?”

“If you can call it all. There would be rejoicing in hell. But perhaps you don’t believe in hell?”

Meg pushed this aside. “But if we fail, then you—”

“I must choose. It’s better to X myself than to be Xed by the Echthroi.”

“What you took me to see—it was what Mother talked about at the dinner table, what Father’s gone to Brook-haven about—it doesn’t seem to have much to do with Mr. Jenkins. It’s all so cosmic, so big—“

“It isn’t size that matters, Meg. Right now it’s Charles Wallace. The Echthroi would annihilate Charles Wallace.”

“A little boy!”

“You’ve said yourself that he’s a special little boy.”

“He is, oh, he is.” She gave a startled jump as the first bell went off inside the school building, strident, demanding. “Progo, I don’t understand any of it, but if you think Naming Mr. Jenkins is going to help Charles Wallace, I’ll do my best. You will help me?”

“I’ll try.” But Proginoskes did not sound confident. From all around them came the usual schoolday din.

Then the door to the cafeteria/gym opened, and a Mr. Jenkins came out. Which Mr. Jenkins? There was no telling them apart. Meg looked to the cherubim, but he had de-materialized again, leaving only a shimmer to show where he was.

Mr. Jenkins came to her. She checked his shoulders. There was the dandruff. She went closer: smelled: yes, he had the Mr. Jenkins smell of old hair cream and what she always thought of as rancid deodorant. But all three of the Mr. Jenkinses could manage that much, she was sure. It was not going to be that easy.

He looked at her coldly in the usual way, down one side of his slightly crooked nose. “I assume that you are as confused by all this as I am, Margaret. Why two strange men should wish to impersonate me I have no idea. It is most inconvenient, just at the beginning of school, when I am already overworked. I am told that it has something to do with you as well as your unfortunate little brother. I had hoped that this year you, at least, would not be one of my problems. It seems to me I have had to spend more time with you than with any other student in school. It is certainly my misfortune. And now not only do I have to cope with your little brother, who is equally difficult, but here you are again.”

This was Mr. Jenkins. He had played upon the theme of this speech with infinite variations almost every time she was sent to his office.

“For some reason obscure to me, you are supposed to choose between the impostors and me. It is certainly in my interests to have you pass this absurd test. Then perhaps I can keep you out of my school.”

“And then,” said Mr. Jenkins Two, appearing beside Mr. Jenkins One, “I will have time to concentrate on present problems instead of those which ought to be past. Now, Meg, if you will just for once in your life do it my way, not yours ... I understand you’re basically quite bright in mathematics. If you would simply stop approaching each problem in your life as though you were Einstein and had to solve the problems of the universe, and would deign to follow one or two basic rules, you—and I—would have a great deal less trouble.”

This, too, was authentic Jenkins.

The shimmer of the cherubim wavered uneasily.

“Meg,” Mr. Jenkins Two said, “I urge you to resolve this nonsense and tell the impostors that I am Mr. Jenkins. This whole farce is wasting a great deal of time. I am Mr. Jenkins, as you have cause to know.”

She felt Proginoskes probing wildly. “Meg, when have you been most you, the very most you?”

She closed her eyes. She remembered the first afternoon Calvin had come to the Murrys’. Calvin was an honor student, but he was far better with words than with numbers, and Meg had helped him with a trigonometry problem. Since trig was not taught in Meg’s grade, her easy competence was one of her first surprises for Calvin. But at the time she had not thought of surprising him. She had concentrated wholly on Calvin, on what he was doing, and she had felt wholly alive and herself.

“How is that going to help?” she asked the cherubim.

“Think. You didn’t know Calvin very well then, did you?”

“No.”

“But you loved him, didn’t you?”

“Then? I wasn’t thinking about love. I was just thinking about trig.”

“Well, then,” Proginoskes said, as though that explained the entire nature of love.

“But I can’t think about trig with Mr. Jenkins. And I can’t love him.”

“You love me.”

“But, Progo, you’re so awful you’re lovable.”

“So is he. And you have to Name him.”

A third Mr. Jenkins joined the other two. “Meg. Stop panicking and listen to me.”

The three men stood side by side, identical, grey, dour, unperceptive, overworked: unlovable.

“Meg,” Mr. Jenkins Two said, “if you will Name me, and quickly, I will see to it that Charles Wallace gets into competent medical hands immediately.”

“It’s hardly that easy,” Mr. Jenkins Three said. “After all, her parents—“

“—do not know how to handle the situation, nor do they understand how serious it is,” Mr. Jenkins Two snapped.

Mr. Jenkins Three waved this aside. “Meg, does it not seem extraordinary to you that you should be confronted with three of me?”

There seemed to be no answer to this question.

Mr. Jenkins One shrugged in annoyance.

Mr. Jenkins Two said, “It is imperative that we stick to essentials at this point. Our number is peripheral.” The real Mr. Jenkins was very fond of discarding peripherals and sticking to essentials.

Mr. Jenkins Three said, “That there is only one of me, and that I am he, is the main point.”

Mr. Jenkins Two snorted. “Except for the small but important fact that I am he. This trial that has been brought on us is an extraordinary one. None of us—that is, you and I, Margaret—will ever be the same again. Being confronted with these two mirror visions of myself has made me see myself differently. None of us likes to see himself as he must appear to others. I understand your point of view much better than I did before. You were quite right to come to me about your little brother. He is indeed special, and I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in not realizing this, and treating him accordingly.”

“Don’t trust him,” Mr. Jenkins Three said.

Mr. Jenkins Two swept on. “I believe that you and I had a—shall we call it a run-in?—over the imports and exports of Nicaragua, which you were supposed to learn for one of your social-studies classes. You were quite right when you insisted that it was unnecessary for you to learn the imports and exports of Nicaragua. I shall try not to make the same kind of mistake with Charles Wallace. If Charles Wallace’s interests are different from those of our usual first-grader, we will try to understand that he has been taught by an eminent physicist father. I am sorry for all the needless pain you have been caused. And I can assure you that if you Name me, Charles Wallace will find school a pleasanter place, and I have no doubt his health will improve.”

Meg looked warily at Mr. Jenkins Two. This was, indeed, a changed Mr. Jenkins, and she did not trust the change. On the other hand, she remembered vividly the battle they had had over the imports and exports of Nicaragua.

Mr. Jenkins Three murmured, “Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.”

Mr. Jenkins Two sputtered, “What’s that?” Mr. Jenkins One looked blank.

Mr. Jenkins Three cried triumphantly, “I could have told you he would not recognize Shakespeare. He is an impostor.”

Meg had her doubts whether or not the real Mr. Jenkins would recognize Shakespeare.

Mr. Jenkins Two said, “Shakespeare is peripheral. If I have often been irritable in the past it is because I have been worried. Despite your unkind opinion of me, I do not like seeing any of my children unhappy.” He sniffed.

Mr. Jenkins One looked down his nose. “If I had the cooperation of the School Board and the P.T.A. it might untie my hands so that I could accomplish something.”

Meg looked at the three men in their identical business suits. “It’s like a game on television.”

“It is not a game,” Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply. “The stakes are much too high.”

Meg asked, “What happens to you—all of you—if I Name the wrong one?”

For a moment all the atoms of air in the schoolyard seemed to shiver; it was as though a lightning bolt of nothingness had flashed across the schoolyard, ripping the fabric of the atmosphere, then closed together again. Although nothing had been visible, Meg thought of a dark and terrible vulture slashing across the sky.

Mr. Jenkins One said, “I do not believe in the supernatural. But this entire situation is abnormal.” His rabbity nose wriggled in pink distaste.

Then all three men swung around as the side door to the school opened, and Charles Wallace, Louise the Larger twined around his arm and shoulders, walked down the steps and across the schoolyard.

6 The Real Mr. Jenkins.

“Charles!” Meg cried.

All three Mr. Jenkinses held up warning hands, said simultaneously, “Charles Wallace Murry, what is it now?”

Charles Wallace looked with interest at the three men. “Hello, what’s this?”

Mr. Jenkins One said, “What are you doing with that— that—“

All three men were visibly fearful of Louise. There was no telling the ‘real’ Mr. Jenkins by a variation in response to the snake. Louise reared her head,, half closed her eyes, and made the strange, clacking, warning sound which Meg had heard the night before. Charles Wallace stroked her soothingly, and looked speculatively at the three men.

“We were supposed to bring a small pet to school today, to share with the class.”

Meg thought, —Good for you, Charles, to think of Louise the Larger. If you terrified Mr. Jenkins, that would send you up a notch in the other kids’ estimation. If there’s one thing everybody in school agrees on, it’s that Mr. Jenkins is a retarded rodent.

Mr. Jenkins Three said severely, “You know perfectly well that small pets were meant, Charles Wallace. Turtles or tropical fish of perhaps even a hamster.”

“Or a gerbil,” Mr. Jenkins Two added. “A gerbil would be acceptable.”

“Why have you multiplied?” Charles Wallace asked. “I found one of you quite enough.”

Louise clacked again; it was a flesh-chilling sound.

Mr. Jenkins Three demanded, “Why aren’t you in class, Charles?”

“Because the teacher told me to take Louise the Larger and go home. I really don’t understand why. Louise is , friendly and she wouldn’t hurt anybody. Only the girls were scared of her. She lives in our stone wall by the twins’ vegetable garden.”

Meg looked at Louise, at the hooded eyes, the wary position of the head, the warning twitching of the last few inches of her black tail. Blajeny had told them that Louise was a Teacher. Louise herself had certainly shown in the past twenty-four hours that she was more than an ordinary garden snake. Louise would know—did know, Meg was sure —the real Mr. Jenkins. Swallowing her own shyness of all snakes, she reached out towards Charles Wallace. “Let me have Louise for a little while, please, Charles.”

But Proginoskes spoke in her mind. “No, Meg. You have to do it yourself. You can’t let Louise do it for you.”

All right. She accepted that. But perhaps Louise could still help.

Charles Wallace regarded his sister thoughtfully. Then he held out the arm around which Louise’s lower half was coiled. The snake slithered sinuously to Meg. Her body felt cold, and tingled with electricity. Meg tried not to flinch.

“Mr. Jenkins,” Meg said. “Each of you. One at a time. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and Louise? Charles Wallace can’t possibly walk home alone. It’s too far. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and school in general?”

Nobody volunteered an answer. All three folded their arms impassively across their chests.

“Mr. Jenkins Three,” Meg said.

“Are you Naming me, Meg? That’s right.”

“I’m not Naming anybody yet. I want to know what you’re going to do.”

“I thought I had already told you. It is a situation which I shall have to guide carefully. It was foolish of Charlie to bring a snake to school. Snakes are quite frightening to some people, you know.”

Louise hissed slowly. Mr. Jenkins Three turned visibly paler.

He said, “I shall have a long, quiet session with Charles Wallace’s teacher. Then I will speak to each child in the first-grade room, separately. I shall see to it that each one has an understanding of the problem. If any of them group together and try bullying, I shall use strong disciplinary methods. This school has been run in far too lax and permissive a manner. From now on, I intend to hold the reins. And now, Charles Wallace, I shall drive you home. Your sister will bring your pet.”

Meg turned away from him. “Mr. Jenkins Two?”

Mr. Jenkins Two detached himself by one pace from the others. “Force, that’s what that impostor is advocating. Dictatorship. I will never put up with a dictatorship. But you should not have brought the snake to school, Charlie. You should have known better. But I think I understand. You thought it would enhance your social prestige, and make you more of an equal in the eyes of your peers. There’s where happiness lies, in success with your peer group. I want all my children to be like each other, so we must help you to be more normal, even if it means that you must go to school elsewhere for a while. I understand there’s someone from another galaxy who’s interested in helping you. Perhaps that’s our answer for the time being.”

Meg turned to Mr. Jenkins One. He gave a small, annoyed, Mr. Jenkins shrug. “I really do not foresee much change in my relationship with Charles Wallace in the future. Why interplanetary travel should be thought of as a solution to all earth’s problems I do not understand. We have sent men to the moon and to Mars and we are none the better for it. Why sending Charles Wallace a few billion light-years across space should improve him any, I fail to see. Unless, of course, it helps his physical condition, about which nobody except myself appears concerned.” He looked at his wristwatch. “How much longer does this farce continue?”

Meg could feel sharp, painful little flickers as the cherubim thought at her. She did not want to listen.

“It’s all a waste of time!” she cried. “Why do I have to bother with all these Mr. Jenkinses? What can it possibly have to do with Charles?”

Louise the Larger’s breath was cool and gentle against her ear. “It doess, it doess,” the snake hissed.

Proginoskes said, “You don’t need to know why. Just get on with it.”

Charles Wallace spoke wearily. “Give me Louise, please, Meg, I want to go home.”

“It’s too far for you to walk.”

“We’ll take it slowly.”

Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply, “I have already said I will drive you home. You may take the snake as long as it stays in the back seat.”

Mr. Jenkins One and Two said simultaneously, “I will drive Charles Wallace. And the snake.” They shuddered slightly, not quite simultaneously, but in syncopation.

Charles Wallace held out his arm and Louise slithered from Meg to the little boy. “Let’s go,” he said to the three men, turned away from them, and started to walk to where the faculty parked their cars. The Mr. Jenkinses followed him, walking abreast, all with the stiff, ungainly gait which was distinctively and solely Mr. Jenkins.

“But who will he go with?” Meg asked Proginoskes.

“The real one.”

“But then—“

“I think that when they turn the corner there’ll be only one of them. It gives us a small respite, at any rate.” The cherubim materialized slowly, becoming at first a shimmer, then a transparent outline, then deepening in dimensions until he moved into complete visibility as the three Mr. Jenkinses disappeared. “Don’t waste time,” he thought sharply at her. “Think. What’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard about Mr. Jenkins?”

“Nice? Nothing nice. Listen, maybe all of them are impostors. Maybe they won’t come back.”

Again the sharp little pain. “That’s too easy. One of them’s real, and for some reason he’s important. Think, Meg. You must know something good about him.”

“I don’t want to know anything good about him.”

“Stop thinking about yourself. Think about Charles. The real Mr. Jenkins can help Charles.”

“How?”

“We don’t need to know how, Meg! Stop blocking me. It’s our only hope. You must let me kythe with you.” She, felt him moving about within her mind, more gently now, but persistently. “You’re still blocking me.” J

“I’m trying not to—“

“I know. Do some math problems in your head. Anything to shut out your un-love and let me in about Mr. Jenkins. Do some math for Calvin. You love Calvin. Good. Think about Calvin. Meg! Calvin’s shoes.”

“What about them?”

“What kind of shoes does he have on?”

“His regular school shoes, I suppose. How would I know? I think he has only one pair of shoes, and his sneakers.”

“What are the shoes like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice. I don’t bother much about clothes.”

“Think some more math and let me show them to you.”

Shoes. Strong, fairly new Oxfords which Calvin wore over mismated red and purple socks, the kind of shoes Mr. O’Keefe could ill afford to buy for his family. Meg saw the shoes vividly; the image was given her by Proginoskes; she had been quite truthful when she told him that she didn’t notice clothes. Nevertheless, her mind registered all that she saw and it was there, stored, available to the kything of the cherubim. She saw with a flash of intuition that her kything was like a small child’s trying to pick out a melody on the piano with one finger, as against the harmony of a full orchestra, like the cherubic language.

In her mind’s ear came the echo of Calvin’s voice, coming back to her from an afternoon when she had been sent— unfairly, she thought—to Mr. Jenkins’s office, and been dealt with—unfairly—there. Calvin’s voice, quiet, calming, infuriatingly reasonable. “When I started seventh grade and went over to Regional, my mother bought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost her a dollar, which was more than she could spare, and they were women’s Oxfords, the kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could jam my feet in, and went to school. The kids knew me too well to make remarks in my presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he’d noticed I’d outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair he thought would fit me. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he hadn’t gone out and bought them for me. I make enough money in the summers now to buy my own shoes, but I’ll never forget that he gave me the first decent pair of shoes I ever had. Sure I know all the bad things about him, and they’re all true, and I’ve had my own run-ins with him, but on the whole we get along, maybe because my parents don’t make him feel inferior, and he knows he can do things for me that they can’t.”

Meg muttered, “It’d have been a lot easier if I could have gone on hating him.”

Now it was Proginoskes’s voice in her mind’s ear, not Calvin’s. “What would be easier?”

“Naming him.”

“Would it? Don’t you know more about him now?”

“Second-hand. I’ve never known him to do anything else nice.”

“How do you suppose he feels about you?”

“He’s never seen me except when I’m snarly,” she admitted. She found herself almost laughing as she-remembered Mr. Jenkins saying, ‘Margaret, you are the most contumacious child it has ever been my misfortune to have in this office,’ and she had had to go home and look up ‘contumacious.’

Proginoskes probed,”

“Do you think he’d believe anything good about you?”

“Not likely.”

“Would you like him to see a different Meg? The real Meg?”

She shrugged.

“Well, then, how would you like to be different with him?”

Frantically, she said, “I wish I had gorgeous blond hair.”

“You wouldn’t, not really.”

“Of course I would!”

“If you had gorgeous blond hair, you wouldn’t be you.”

“That might be a good idea. Ouch, Progo, you hurt!”

“This isn’t any time for self-indulgence.”

“When Mr. Jenkins is being nice, he’s not being Mr. Jenkins. Being nice on Mr. Jenkins would be like blond hair on me.”

Proginoskes sent ice-cold anger through her. “Meg, there’s no more time. They’ll be back any moment now.”

Panic churned in her. “Progo, if I don’t Name right, if I fail, what will you do?”

“I told you. I have to choose.”

“That’s not telling me. I want to know which way you’re going to choose.”

Proginoskes’s feathers shivered as though a cold wind had blown through them. “Meg, there isn’t much time. They’re on their way back. You have to Name one of them.”

“Give me a hint.”

“This isn’t a game. Mr. Jenkins was right.”

She shot him an anguished glance, and he lowered several sets of eyelashes in apology. “Progo, even for Charles Wallace, how can I do the impossible? How can I love Mr.” Jenkins?”

Proginoskes did not respond. There was no Same, no smoke; only a withdrawing of eyes behind wings.

“Progo! Help me! How can I feel love for Mr. Jenkins?”

Immediately he opened a large number of eyes very wide. “What a strange idea. Love isn’t feeling. If it were, I wouldn’t be able to love. Cherubim don’t have feelings.”

“But—“

“Idiot,” Proginoskes said, anxiously rather than crossly. “Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do. I’ve never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.”

“Progo, you matter to me.”

Proginoskes puffed enveloping pale blue clouds. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that cherubim only matter with earth people. You call it materializing.”

“Then, if you become visible only for us, why do you” have to look so terrifying?”

“Because when we matter, this is how we come out. When you got mattered, you didn’t choose to look the way you do, did you?”

“I certainly did not. I’d have chosen quite differently. I’d have chosen to be beautiful—oh, I see! You mean you don’t have any more choice about looking like a drive of deformed dragons than I do about my hair and glasses and everything? You aren’t doing it this way just for fun?”

Proginoskes held three of its wings demurely over a great many of its eyes. “I am a cherubim, and when a cherubim “ takes on matter, this is how.”

Meg knelt in front of the great, frightening, and strangely beautiful creature. “Progo, I’m not a wind or a flame of fire. I’m a human being. I feel. I can’t think without feeling. If you matter to me, then what you decide to do if I fail matters.”

“I fail to see why.”

She scrambled to her feet, batting at the last wisps of pale blue smoke which stung her eyes, and shouted, “Because if you decide to turn into a worm or whatever and join the Echthroi, I don’t care whether I Name right or not! It just doesn’t matter to me! And Charles Wallace would feel the same way—I know he would!”

Proginoskes probed gently and thoughtfully into her mind. “I don’t understand your feelings. I’m trying to, but I don’t. It must be extremely unpleasant to have feelings.”

“Progo! What will you do?”

Silence. No flame. No smoke. All eyes closed. Proginoskes folded the great wings completely. His words were very small as they moved into her mind. “X. If you fail, I will X myself.”

He vanished.

Meg swung around and three Mr. Jenkinses were walking towards her from the direction of the parking lot. She-faced them. “Mr. Jenkins.”

Identical, hateful, simultaneous, they stepped towards her.

Mr. Jenkins One sniffed, the end of his pink nose wriggling distastefully. “I am back. I left Charles Wallace with your mother. Now will you please get rid of these two—uh —pranksters. I resent this intrusion on my time and privacy.”

Mr. Jenkins Two pointed to One accusingly. “That impostor lost his temper and showed his true colors when your little brother brought his snake to school. The impostor forgot himself and called the child a sn—“

“Delete,” Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply. “He used words unsuitable for a child. Blip it.”

Mr. Jenkins Two said, “He doesn’t love children.”

Mr. Jenkins Three said, “He can’t control children.”

Mr. Jenkins Two said, “I will make Charles Wallace happy.”

Mr. Jenkins, Three said, “I will make him successful.”

Mr. Jenkins One looked at his watch.

Meg closed her eyes. And suddenly she did not feel. She had been pushed into a dimension beyond feeling, if such a-thing is possible, and if Progo was right, it is possible. There was nothing but a cold awareness which had nothing to do with what she normally would have thought of as feeling. Her voice issued from her lips almost without volition, cold, calm, emotionless. “Mr. Jenkins Three—“

He stepped forward, smiling triumphantly.

“No. You’re not the real Mr. Jenkins. You’re much too powerful. You’d never have to be taken away from a regional school you couldn’t control and made principal of a grade school you couldn’t control, either.” She looked at Mr. Jenkins One and Two. Her hands were ice-cold and she had the sensation in the pit of the stomach which precedes acute nausea, but she was unaware of this because she was still in the strange realm beyond feeling. “Mr. Jenkins Two—“

He smiled.

Again she shook her head. “I wasn’t quite as sure about you at first. But wanting to make everybody happy and just like everybody else is just as bad as Mr. Jenkins Three manipulating everybody. Bad as Mr. Jenkins is, he’s the only one of the three of you who’s human enough to make as many mistakes as he does, and that’s you, Mr. Jenkins One—“ Suddenly she gave a startled laugh. “And I do love you for it.” Then she burst into tears of nervousness and exhaustion. But she had no doubt that she was right.

The air about the schoolyard was rent with a great howling and shrieking and then a cold nothingness which could only be the presence of Echthroi. It was as though rip after rip were being slashed in the air, and then the edges were drawn together and healed.

Silence. And quiet. And a small, ordinary, everyday wind.

Proginoskes materialized, delicately unfolding wing after wing to reveal his myriad various eyes.

Mr. Jenkins One, the real Mr. Jenkins, fainted.

1 Charles Wallace’s Dragons.

2 A Rip in the Galaxy.

3 The Man in the Night.

4 Proginoskes.

5 The First Test.

6 The Real Mr. Jenkins.