Meg bent over Mr. Jenkins. She did not realize that Blajeny was there until she heard his voice.
“Really, Proginoskes, you ought to know better than to take anyone by surprise like that, particularly a still-limited one like Mr. Jenkins.” He stood between the cherubim and Meg, almost as tall as the school building, half amused, half angry.
Proginoskes fluttered several wings in halfhearted apology. “I was very relieved.”
“Quite.”
“Will this—uh—Mr. Jenkins ever be anything but a limited one?” —
“That is a limited and limiting thought, Proginoskes,” Blajeny said sternly. “I am surprised.”
Now the cherubim was truly abashed. He closed his eyes and covered them with wings, keeping only three eyes open, one each to gaze at Blajeny, Meg, and the prone Mr. Jenkins.
Blajeny turned to Meg. “My child, I am very pleased with you.”
Meg blushed. “Shouldn’t we do something about Mr. Jenkins?”
Blajeny knelt on the dusty ground. His dark fingers, with their vast span, pressed gently against Mr. Jenkins’s temples; the principal’s usually pasty face was grey; his body gave a spasmodic twitch; he opened his eyes and closed them again immediately; moaned.
Tension and relief had set Meg on the verge of hysteria; she was half laughing, half crying. “Blajeny, don’t you realize you must be almost as frightening to poor Mr. Jenldns as Progo?” She, too, dropped to her knees beside the principal. “Mr. Jenkins, I’m here. Meg. I know you don’t like me, but at least I’m familiar. Open your eyes. It’s all right. Really it is.”
Slowly, cautiously, he opened his eyes. “I must make an appointment with a psychiatrist. Immediately.”
Meg spoke soothingly, as to a very small child. “You aren’t hallucinating, Mr. Jenkins, honestly you aren’t. It’s all right. They’re friends, Blajeny and Progo. And they’re real.”
Mr. Jenkins closed his eyes, opened them again, focused on Meg.
“Blajeny is a Teacher, Mr. Jenkins, and Progo is a— well, he’s a cherubim.” She could hardly blame Mr. Jenkins for looking incredulous.
His voice was thin. “Either I am in the process of a nervous breakdown, which is not unlikely, or I am dreaming. That’s it. I must be asleep.” He struggled to sit up, with Meg’s assistance. “But why, then, are you in my dream? Why am I lying on the ground? Has somebody hit me? I wouldn’t put it past the bigger boys—“ He rubbed his hand over his head, searching for a bruise. “Why are you here, Margaret? I seem to remember—“ He looked once more at Blajeny and Proginoskes and shuddered. “They’re still here. No. I am still dreaming. Why can’t I wake up? This isn’t real.”
Meg echoed Blajeny. “What is real?” She turned to the Teacher, but he was no longer paying attention to Mr. Jenkins. She followed Blajeny’s gaze, and saw Louise slithering rapidly towards them.
A fresh shudder shook Mr. Jenkins. “Not the snake again —I have a phobia about—“
Meg soothed, “Louise is really very friendly. She won’t hurt you.”
“Snakes.” Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “Snakes and monsters and giants . . . It’s not possible, none of this is possible . . .”
Blajeny turned from his conversation with Louise the Larger, spoke urgently. “We must go at once. The Echthroi are enraged. -Charles Wallace’s mitochondritis is now acute.”
“Oh, Blajeny, take us home quickly,” Meg cried. “I must be with him!”
“There isn’t time. We must go at once to Metron Aris-ton.”
“Where?”
Without answering, Blajeny turned from Meg to Mr. Jenkins. “You, sir: do you wish to return to your school and continue your regular day’s work? Or will you throw in your lot with us?”
Mr. Jenkins looked completely bewildered. “I am having a nervous breakdown.”
“You don’t need to have one if you don’t want to. You have simply been faced with several things outside your current spheres of experience. That does not mean that they—we—do not exist.”
Meg felt an unwilling sense of protectiveness towards this unattractive little man she had Named. “Mr. Jenkins, don’t you think you’d better report that you’re not well today, and come with us?”
Mr. Jenkins held out his hands helplessly. “Were there —there were—two other—two men who resembled me?”
“Yes, of course there were. But they’ve gone.”
“Where?”
Meg turned to Blajeny.
The Teacher looked grave. “When an Echthros takes on a human body, it tends to keep it.”
Meg caught hold of the stone grey of the Teacher’s sleeve. “The first test—how did it happen? You didn’t make it up, did you? You couldn’t have told the Echthroi to turn into Mr. Jenkins, could you?”
“Meg,” he replied quietly, “I told you I needed your help.”
“You mean—you mean this was going to happen, anyhow, the Echthroi turning into Mr. Jenkins, even if—“
“Mr. Jenkins was a perfect host for their purposes.”
Rather shakily, Mr. Jenkins tottered towards Blajeny, sputtering, “Now, see here, I don’t know who you are and I don’t care, but I demand an explanation.”
Blajeny’s voice was now more like an English horn than a cello. “Perhaps in your world today such a phenomenon would be called schizophrenia. I prefer the old idea of possession.”
“Schiz—are you, sir, questioning my sanity?”
Louise’s small voice whistled urgently.
“Mr. Jenkins,” Blajeny said quietly, “we must leave. Either return to your school or come with us. Now.”
To Meg’s surprise she found herself urging, “Please come with us, Mr. Jenkins.”
“But my duty—“
“You know you can’t just go back to school again after what’s happened.”
Mr. Jenkins moaned again. His complexion had turned from grey to pale green.
“And after you’ve met the cherubim and Blajeny—“
“Cheru—“
Louise whistled again.
Blajeny asked, “Are you coming with us or not?”
“Margaret Named me,” Mr. Jenkins said softly. “Yes. I will come.”
Proginoskes reached out a great pinion and pulled Meg in to him. She felt the tremendous heartbeat, a beat which reverberated like a brass gong. Then she saw the ovoid eye, open, dilating . . .
She was through.
It was something of an anticlimax to find that they were no farther from home than the star-watching rock.
Wait: was it, after all, the star-watching rock?
She blinked, and when she opened her eyes Mr. Jenkins and Blajeny were there, and Calvin was there, too (oh, thank you, Blajeny!), holding his hand out to her, and she was warmed in the radiance of his big smile.
It was no longer autumn-cold. There was a light breeze, warm and summery. All about them, encircling them, was the sound of summer insects, crickets, katydids, and—less pleasantly—the shrill of a mosquito. Frogs were crunking away, and a tree toad sang its scratchy song. The sky was thick with stars, stars which always seemed closer to earth in summer than in winter.
Blajeny sat down, cross-legged, on the rock, and beckoned to them. Meg sat in front of him, and saw that Louise was coiled nearby, her head resting on one of Proginoskes’s outstretched wings. Calvin sat beside Meg, and Mr. Jenkins stood awkwardly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
Meg moved a little closer to Calvin and looked up at the sky.
And gasped. The stars, the low, daisy-thick summer stars, were not the familiar planets and constellations she had so often watched with her parents. They were as different as had been the constellations where Proginoskes had taken her to see the terrible work of the Echthroi.
“Blajeny,” Calvin asked, “where are we?”
“Metron Ariston.”
“What’s Metron Ariston? Is it a planet?”
“No. It’s an idea, a postulatum. I find it easier to posit when I am in my home galaxy, so we are near the Mondrion solar system of the Veganuel galaxy. The stars you see are those I know, those which I see from my home planet.”
“Why are we here?”
“The postulatum Metron Ariston makes it possible for all sizes to become relative. Within Metron Ariston you may be sized so that you are able to converse with a giant star or a tiny farandola.”
Meg felt a moment of shock and disbelief. Farandolae were still less real to her than Charles Wallace’s ‘dragons.’ “A farandola! Are we really going to see one?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s impossible. A farandola is so small that—“
“How small is it?” Blajeny asked.
“So small that it’s beyond rational conceiving, my mother says.”
Mr. Jenkins made a small confused noise and shifted weight again. Blajeny said, “And yet Mrs. Murry is convinced that she has proved the existence of farandolae. Now let us suppose: here we are in Veganuel galaxy, two trillion light-years away. Veganuel is just about the same size as your own Earth’s galaxy. How long does it take the Milky Way to rotate once around?”
As no one else spoke, Meg answered, ‘Two hundred billion years, clockwise.”
“So that gives us a general idea of the size of your galaxy, doesn’t it?”
“Very general,” Calvin said. “Our minds can’t comprehend anything that huge, that macrocosmic.”
“Don’t try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition. Think of the size of your galaxy. Now, think of your sun. It’s a star, and it is a great deal smaller than the entire galaxy, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Think of yourselves, now, in comparison with the size of your sun. Think how much smaller you are. Have you done that?”
“Sort of,” Meg said.
“Now think of a mitochondrion. Think of the mitochondria which live in the cells of all living things, and how much smaller a mitochondrion is than you.”
Mr. Jenkins said, to himself, “I thought Charles Wallace was making them up to show off.”
Blajeny continued, “Now consider that a farandola is as much smaller than a mitochondrion as a mitochondrion is smaller than you are.”
“This time,” Calvin said, “the problem is that our minds can’t comprehend anything that microcosmic.”
Blajeny said, “Another way of putting it would be to say that a farandola is as much smaller than you are as your galaxy is larger than you are.”
Calvin whistled. “Then, to a farandola, any of us would be as big as a galaxy?”
“More or less. You are a galaxy for your farandolae.”
“Then how can we possibly meet one?”
Blajeny’s voice was patient. “I have just told you that in Metron Ariston we can almost do away with variations in size, which are, in reality, quite unimportant.” He turned his head and looked in the direction of die great glacial rocks.
“The rocks,” Meg asked, “are they really there?”
“Nothing is anywhere in Metron Ariston,” Blajeny said.
“I am trying to make things as easy for you as I can by giving you a familiar visual setting. You must try to understand things not only with your little human minds, which are not a great deal of use in the problems which confront us.”
At last Mr. Jenkins sat, crouching uncomfortably on the rock. “With what can I understand, then? I don’t have very much intuition.”
“You must understand with your hearts. With the whole of yourselves, not just a fragment.”
Mr. Jenkins groaned. “I am too old to be educable. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I have lived beyond my time.”
Meg cried, “Oh, no, you haven’t, Mr. Jenkins, you’re just beginning!”
Mr. Jenkins shook his head in mournful negation. “Maybe it would have been better if you’d never Named me. Why did I ever have to see you this way? Or your little brother? Or that frightful beast?”
Proginoskes made what seemed like a minor volcanic upheaval.
Mr. Jenkins stiffened a little, though he could hardly become paler. “Are there any more like you?”
“There are a goodly number of cherubim,” Proginoskes replied, “but none exactly alike.”
“That’s it,” Mr. Jenkins said. “That’s precisely it.” Absent-mindedly he brushed at the dandruff and lint on the shoulders of his dark suit.
Blajeny, listening carefully, bowed his great head courteously. “Precisely what, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Nobody should be exactly like anybody else.”
“Is anybody?”
“Those—those—imitation Mr. Jenkinses—to see myself doubled and trebled—there’s nothing left to hold on to.”
Impulsively Meg got up and ran to the principal. “But they aren’t like you, Mr. Jenkins! Nobody is! You are unique. I Named you, didn’t I?”
Mr. Jenkins’s eyes looked blurred and bewildered through the lenses of his spectacles. “Yes. Yes, you did. I suppose that’s why I’m here—wherever here is.” He turned to Blajeny. “Those other Mr. Jenkinses—you called them Echthroi?”
“Yes. The Echthroi are those who hate, those who would keep you from being Named, who would un-Name you. It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy.”
Mr. Jenkins said, heavily, “I fear I have not been a loving person.”
Meg felt a flash of intuition as sharp and brilliant as the cherubim’s flame; like flame, it burned. “Oh, Mr. Jenkins, don’t you see? Every time I was in your office, being awful and hating you, I was really hating myself more than you. Mother was right. She told me that you underestimate yourself.”
Mr. Jenkins responded in a strange voice she had never heard from him before, completely unlike his usual, nasal, shrill asperity. “We both do, don’t we, Margaret? When I thought your parents were looking down on me, I was really looking down on myself. But I don’t see any other way to look at myself.”
Now at last Meg glimpsed the Mr. Jenkins who had bought shoes for Calvin, who had clumsily tried to make those shoes look worn.
Mr. Jenkins turned to Blajeny. “These Echth—“
“Echthroi. Singular, Echthros.”
“These Echthroi who took on—who took on my likeness,” Mr. Jenkins said, “can they cause more trouble?”
“Yes.”
“They would harm Charles Wallace?”
“They would X—extinguish him,” the cherubim said.
Meg reached out in longing and fear towards her brother. “We shouldn’t have left him—“ she started, then closed her mouth. She felt the cherubim moving gently within her, helping her, giving her little shoves of thought, and then she seemed to be with Charles Wallace, not in actuality, not in person, but in her heart. In her heart’s sight she saw their mother carrying him up the stairs, Charles limp in his mother’s arms, legs dangling. Mrs. Murry went into his room, a small, paneled room with a little fireplace, and one wall papered in a blue and white snowflake pattern, a safe, comfortable room. The window looked out onto the pine woods behind the house; the light which came in was gentle, and kind.
Mrs. Murry laid Charles Wallace down on his bed, and began to undress him. The child barely had the strength to help her; he made an effort to smile and said, “I’ll be better soon. Meg will . . .”
“Meg will be home from school in a couple of hours,” their mother said. “She’ll be right up to see you. And Dr. Louise is on her way.”
“Meg isn’t—in school.” Speaking was almost too great an effort.
Mrs. Murry did not contradict him, as perhaps she might have normally, but helped him into his pajamas.
“I’m cold, Mother.”
She pulled the covers up over him. “I’ll get another blanket.”
A sound of feet pounding up the stairs, and the twins burst in:
“What’s this? What’s the matter?”
“Is Charles sick?”
Mrs. Murry answered quietly, “He’s not feeling very well.”
“Bad enough to go to bed?”
“Did he have trouble in school again?”
“School was fine. He took Louise and she made a great hit, evidently.”
“Our Louise?”
“Louise the Larger?”
“Yes.”
“Bully for you, Charles!”
“That’s telling them!”
Charles Wallace managed a reasonably good smile.
“Sandy,” Mrs. Murry said, “please bring up some wood for a fire. It’s a little chilly. Dennys, if you’d please go to the cedar closet and get another blanket . . .”
“Okay. Sure. Right away.”
“And Meg’ll read to you or something when she gets home, Charles.”
Meg thought she heard Charles Wallace saying once again that Meg was not in school, but it was as though a mist swept over the vivid scene, and Charles Wallace’s room was gone, and Meg was standing, pressed close against the cherubim, who had one wing strongly about her.
Blajeny said, “Now, my children, we must have a lesson. Let us make believe that it is daytime. You can, you know. Believing takes practice, but neither you, Calvin, nor you, Meg, is old enough to have forgotten completely how to do it. You must make believe for yourselves and for Mr. Jenkins. This may seem a trivial task, in view of the gravity of the circumstances, but it is practice for what is to come. Now. Make believe. Turn night to day.”
The cherubim withdrew his wing and Meg put her hand in Blajeny’s. Her own hand was very small in comparison, as small as it had been when she was younger than Charles Wallace and had held her father’s hand in complete love and trust. She looked up at Blajeny’s grave, black face, looked into the strange amber eyes which sometimes seemed to hold the cold light of the moon, and which now glowed with the warmth of the sun. Color flooded the imaged sky of Metron Ariston, a vast, arching blue canopy, cloudless, and shimmering with warmth. About the rock the green grasses of summer rippled in the breeze; a bird sang, was joined by another, others, until melody was all around them. The grass was brightened by field flowers, daisies, black-eyed Susans, Indian paintbrushes, butter-and-eggs, purple thistles, all the summer flowers blooming abundantly and brilliantly.
Colors blazed more brightly than normal. Calvin’s hair, the shade of an Indian paintbrush, burned like sunlight. His freckles seemed larger and more profuse than ever. The faded blue of his jacket had deepened to meet the gentian blue of his eyes. He had on one red sock and one purple sock.
Meg’s old kilt, faded from countless washings, looked bright and new, but her hair, she thought, was probably as mouse-brown as ever; and Mr. Jenkins was still pasty and colorless. Louise the Larger, however, looked even larger than usual, and her coils shone with purple and gold.
Meg looked towards Proginoskes and the shining of the cherubim was so brilliant it almost blinded her; she had to look away.
“Now, my children,” Blajeny said, and he included Mr. Jenkins in the appellation, “we will welcome the other member of this class.”
From behind the smaller of the two glacial rocks a tiny creature appeared and scampered over to them. It looked rather like a small, silver-blue mouse, and yet it seemed to Meg to be a sea creature rather than a land creature. Its ears were large and velvety, the fur shading off into lavender fringes at the tips, blowing gently in the breeze like sea plants moving in the currents of the ocean. Its whiskers were unusually long; its eyes were large and milky and had no visible pupil or iris, but there was nothing dulled about them; they shone like moonstones.
It spoke, but with neither a mouse’s squeak nor a human voice. The sound was like harp strings being plucked under water, and the long whiskers vibrated almost as though they were being played. It did not give forth words, and yet it was quite plain that it was saying something like “Hello, are you my classmates?”
Blajeny spoke in the mouse-creature’s language; words did not issue from his mouth; his granite lips were closed; and yet the children heard the lovely rippling harp sound.
The mouse-creature did not seem pleased, and made sounds which conveyed a good deal of doubt. Meg understood it to be complaining that if it had to pass even the most preliminary of examinations with an earthling, it was dubious that it could do so, A cherubim might be of some help, but surely earthlings were nothing but—
Proginoskes said, “I, too, had misgivings about earth-lings. But the girl earthling and I have just come through the first ordeal, and it was the girl who did it.”
The mouse-creature’s whiskers twingled. “It can’t have been much of an ordeal. Can we please get going, Blajeny? We have only a parsec before I make my preliminary report. And I can see I have a great deal to teach whomever I’m unfortunate enough to have as a partner—even if it’s the cherubim.” Its long, lavender tail, which had a fish-like fan at the tip, switched, and its whiskers bristled in Meg’s direction.
Meg bristled, too. “Perhaps when I’m as old as you are I’ll have learned a few things to teach you!”
Mouse-creature’s whiskers vibrated wildly. “Age is immaterial. In any case, it so happens that I was born only yesterday.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Mouse-creature drew itself up; now it reminded Meg not so much of a mouse as of a small shrimp with antennae waving wildly. “There’s only one of us farandolae born every generation or so nowadays, and we start our schooling the moment we’re born.”
“You’re a farandola!”
“Naturally. What did you expect me to be? What else could I possibly be? Everybody knows that the farandolae—“
She interrupted. “Everybody doesn’t. The existence of farandolae wasn’t even guessed at until a few years ago when we began to learn more about mitochondria, and my mother has just now isolated the effect of farandolae on mitochondria with her micro-sonarscope. And even with the micro-electron microscope, farandolae can just be proved to exist, they can’t really be seen.”
The mouse-creature’s, the farandola’s, whiskers twanged. “It’s a very stupid breed of creature that doesn’t know its own inhabitants. Especially if it’s fortunate enough to be inhabited by farandolae. We are extremely important and getting more so.”
Past the farandola, behind Proginoskes and Louise the Larger, the shape of a Mr. Jenkins blew rapidly across the horizon.
Mr. Jenkins, standing near Meg and Calvin, quivered.
Blajeny looked grim. “Echthroi at work.”
The mouse-creature-farandola paid no attention. “My quercus, my tree, hasn’t had an offspring for a hundred years—our years, of course. It will take me that long to become full-grown myself, and this is only my second phase.”
Meg spoke in her most ungracious manner. “You’re going to tell us about your first phase whether we want you to or not. So go ahead.” The glimpse of Charles Wallace, followed by the sight of another Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, had forced her to realize that the successful passing of the first test did not mean that everything was going to be all right.
Mouse-shrimp- farandola reacted by an intensified trembling of feelers. “Yesterday morning I was still contained inside the single golden fruit hanging on my tree. At noon it burst and fell open, and there was I, newly hatched. In my tadpole stage I was delivered to Metron Ariston and transmogrified, and here am I. My name is Sporos, by the way, and I do not like your thinking names like mouse-creature and shrimp-thing at me. Sporos. When I have finished this phase of my education—if I finish—with one of you for a partner, I will root myself, and Deepen. After an aeon I’ll send up a small green shoot out of my kelp bed, and start growing into an aqueous deciduous spore-reproducing fruit-bearing coniferous farandola.”
Calvin looked horrified. “You’re mad. I’ve studied biology. You’re not possible.”
“Neither are you,” Sporos replied indignantly. “Nothing important is. Blajeny, is it my misfortune to be paired with one of these earthlings?”
Louise the Larger lifted her head out of her coils and looked at Sporos, her heavy lids met and closed.
Blajeny said, “You are hardly making yourself popular, Sporos.”
“I’m not a mere earthling. Earthlings are important only because they are inhabited by farandolae. Popularity is immaterial to farandolae.”
Blajeny turned away from Sporos in quiet rebuff. “Calvin. You and Sporos are to work together.”
“Oh, well, you can’t win them all,” was more or less the effect of what Sporos was vibrating, and Meg thought it would have been a more appropriate response coming from Calvin.
Mr. Jenkins said, “Blajeny, if I may presume—“
“Yes?”
“That other—I did see another copy of myself just a few moments ago, did I not?”
“Yes. I am afraid you did.”
“What does it mean?”
Blajeny said, “It means nothing good.”
Proginoskes added, “You see, we aren’t any place. We’re in Metron Ariston. We’re simply in an idea which Blajeny happens to be having in the middle of the Mondrion solar system in Veganuel galaxy. An Echthros—Mr. Jenkins oughtn’t to be able to follow us here. It means—“
“What?” Meg demanded.
Like Blajeny, Proginoskes said, “Nothing good.”
Sporos twingled his whiskers. “Need we stand around chittering? When are we going?”
“Very soon.”
“Where?” Meg demanded. She felt prickles of foreboding.
“To a far place, Meg.”
“But Mother and Father—Charles Wallace—the twins —we can’t just go off this way with Charles Wallace so ill and—“
“That is why we are going, Meg,” Blajeny said.
Sporos rippled his undulating notes, and Meg translated something like: “Can’t you just call home, or just reach out and talk to each other when you want to?” and then a horrified, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t see how anybody as ignorant as you three earthlings seem to be can possibly manage. Do you mean on your earth host you never communicate with each other and with other planets? You mean your planet revolves about all isolated in space? Aren’t you terribly lonely? Isn’t he?”
“He?”
“Or she. Your planet. Aren’t you lonely?”
“Maybe we are, a little,” Calvin conceded. “But it’s a beautiful planet.”
“That,” Sporos said, “is as it may be. Since I was only born yesterday and came right into Metron Ariston and to Blajeny, I don’t know the planets except the ones in the Mondrion solar system, and they talk back and forth all the time; they chatter too much, if you ask me.”
“We didn’t,” Meg tried to interrupt, but Sporos twingled on.
“I do hope I wasn’t born in some dreadful mitochondrion which lives in some horrible isolated, human host on a lonely planet like yours. You are all from the same planet? I thought so. Oh dear, oh dear, I can see you aren’t going to be the least help to me in passing any of the trials. I’d better see what time it is.”
“How do you tell time?” Calvin asked curiously.
“By the leaves, of course. You mean to say you don’t even know the tune of day?”
“Of course I do. With my watch.”
“What’s a watch?”
Calvin extended his wrist. He was very proud of his watch, which had been a prize at school, and gave the date as well as the hour, had a sweep hand, and was a stop watch as well.
“What a peculiar object.” Sporos regarded it with a certain contempt. “Does it work just for your time, or for time in general?”
“Just for our time, I guess.”
“You mean, if you want to know what time it is anywhere here in Blajeny’s galaxy, or in a distant mitochondrion, your watch thing won’t tell you?”
“Well—no. It just tells the time for whatever time zone I’m in.”
“Mighty Yadah! How confused everything must be on your planet. I only hope my human host isn’t in your planet.”
Mr. Jenkins said plaintively, “If someone would just explain to me what is going on—“
“Mr. Jenkins,” Meg said. “You know what the Echthroi are—“
“But I don’t. I only know that they impersonated me.”
Blajeny placed both great hands on Mr. Jenkins’s stooped shoulders and looked down at him gravely. “There are evil forces at work in the world.”
Mr. Jenkins nodded mutely. He did not dispute that.
“They are throughout the universe.”
Mr. Jenkins glanced at the cherubim, who had stretched out his wings to their fullest span as though to flex his muscles. “How—how big are they?”
“They are no size and they are every size. An Echthros can be as large as a galaxy and as small as a farandola. Or, as you have seen, a replica of yourself. They, are the powers of nothingness, those who would un-Name. Their aim is total X—to extinguish all creation.”
“What do they have to do with Charles Wallace?”
“The Echthroi are trying to destroy his mitochondria.”
“But why would they bother with a child?”
“It is not always on the great or the important that the balance of the universe depends.”
Louise the Larger whistled urgently, and Meg was almost sure that the snake was telling them that she would stay with Charles Wallace, that she would encourage him to keep on fighting to live. “Oh, Louise, please, please, you won’t leave him? You will help him?”
“I will not leave him.”
“Will he be all right?”
Louise answered with silence.
Blajeny said to Mr. Jenkins, “Charles Wallace will die if his mitochondria die. Do you understand that?”
Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “I thought he was making things up with his big words. I thought he was trying to show off. I didn’t know there really were mitochondria.”
Blajeny turned to Meg. “Explain.”
“I’ll try. But I’m not sure I really understand either, Mr. Jenkins. But I do know that we need energy to live. Okay?”
“Thus far.”
She felt Blajeny kything information to her, and involuntarily her mind sorted it, simplified, put it into words which she hoped Mr. Jenkins would understand. “Well, each of our mitochondria has its own built-in system to limit the rate at which it burns fuel, okay, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Pray continue, Margaret.”
“If the number of farandolae in any mitochondrion drops below a critical point, then hydrogen transport can’t occur; there isn’t enough fuel, and the result is death through energy lack.” She felt the skin on her arms and legs prickling coldly. To put into words what might be happening within Charles Wallace was almost unendurable.
She felt Blajeny prodding her and continued. “Something’s happening in Charles Wallace’s mitochondria. I’m not sure what it is, because it’s all words I don’t know, but his farandolae are dying—maybe they’re killing each other —no, that’s not right. It sounds to me as though they’re refusing to sing, and that doesn’t make any sense. The point is that they’re dying and so his mitochondria can’t produce enough oxygen.” She broke off, angrily. “Blajeny! This is all nonsense! How can we possibly stop them from doing whatever it is they’re doing, when they’re so small they aren’t even visible? You’ve got to tell us! How can we help Charles?”
Blajeny’s kything was calm and cold as steel. “You will know soon.”
“Know what?”
“What you must do to overcome the Echthroi. When you get there, my children, you will know.”
“When we get where?”
“To one of Charles Wallace’s mitochondria.”
Now that Blajeny had said it, it seemed to Meg the only logical, the only possible course of action. If they were to save Charles Wallace, if farandolae were causing his illness, if the Echthroi were at work within him as well as without, then the only hope was for them to become small enough to go into one of his mitochondria and see what was happening with the farandolae.
“Metron Ariston—“ Calvin spoke softly. “Size. Where sizes don’t matter. But—to be as small as a galaxy is huge: can you make us that small?”
Blajeny smiled. “Size is really quite relative.”
“Anyhow”—Meg looked at Sporos—“we’re already talking with a farandola.” If she had tried to imagine a farandola, it would not have looked like Sporos.
Mr. Jenkins rose stiffly and moved with his peculiar stork-like gait to Blajeny. “I don’t know why I thought I might be of help. This is all over my head. I will only be a hindrance to the children. You had better send me back to my school. At least there are no surprises for me there.”
“What about this morning?” Blajeny asked. “That was not a surprise for you? I cannot tell you why you have been sent to us, Mr. Jenkins, because I myself do not yet know. But Meg Named you—“
“The full implications of this are not yet clear to me.”
“It means that you are part of whatever is going to happen.”
Mr. Jenkins moaned.
Blajeny stretched out his arms, embracing them all in the gesture. “The mitochondrion to which I am sending you is known as Yadah. It is Sporos’s birthplace.”
Sporos danced around, twingling in outrage.
Meg shouted at him, “If you are in Charles Wallace, if he’s your galaxy, you couldn’t be in a more special place!”
Louise sent her sibilant song towards Meg. All anger vanished when Meg caught, from Louise’s song, another projection of Charles, huddled under the blankets. His mother lifted him to prop him up on pillows to ease his labored breathing, then pulled down the blankets so that Dr. Louise could listen to his heart with her stethoscope. She looked up gravely and Meg understood that she was suggesting that perhaps they had better call Brookhaven.
“Oxygen, then!” Meg cried out to Louise the Larger and Blajeny. “Wouldn’t oxygen help Charles?”
“For a while. Dr. Colubra will see to that when the tune comes.”
Tears rushed to Meg’s eyes. “Oh, Louise, take care of him. Don’t let him stop fighting.”
Mr. Jenkins asked, “Would anybody in his right mind let a snake near a sick child?”
“Dr. Louise will,” Meg said, “I’m sure she will, from something she said in mother’s lab the other night. Blajeny! Is Dr. Louise a Teacher, too?”
Blajeny nodded.
Meg’s heart gave a leap of hope.
“Snakes,” Mr. Jenkins murmured. “Mitochondria. Echthroi.”
Meg swallowed a hiccupy sob, took off her glasses and wiped the tear-smeared lenses.
Mr. Jenkins looked at her and spoke in his most stilted, academic voice. “Man. The mean point in the universe. And Charles Wallace—is that it? At this moment in time Charles Wallace is the point of equilibrium?”
Blajeny nodded gravely.
“So what happens with his mitochondria and farandolae—?” He looked to Meg for explanation.
She tried to pull herself together. “Remember, Mr. Jenkins, you’re great on Benjamin Franklin’s saying, ‘We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.’ That’s how it is with human beings and mitochondria and. farandolae—and our planet, too, I guess, and the solar system. We have to live together in—in harmony, or we won’t live at all. So if something is wrong with Charles Wallace’s mitochondria—“ Her voice trailed off.
Mr. Jenkins shook .his head. “What can we do? What can we possibly hope to do?” Then he cried out in horror. “Oh, no!”
The pseudo-Mr. Jenkins they had seen before was moving rapidly towards them. Louise reared her black coils upwards with a horrible hissing.
“Quickly!” Blajeny spread his arms wide, pulling Mr. Jenkins, Sporos, and Calvin into their span. Proginoskes caught Meg within the strength of his wings, the beat of his heart. She seemed to become part of the cherubim’s heartbeat.
The oval pupil dilated, and she went through to—
She could not tell where they were; she could only sense the presence of the others. As through a vast, echoing tunnel she heard Blajeny: “I would show you something to encourage you before you go.”
Meg looked about. Ahead of her was a tremendous rhythmic swirl of wind and flame, but it was wind and flame quite different from the cherubim’s; this was a dance, a dance ordered and graceful, and yet giving an impression of complete and utter freedom, of ineffable joy. As the dance progressed, the movement accelerated, and the pattern became clearer, closer, wind and fire moving together, and there was joy, and song, melody soaring, gathering together as wind and fire united.
And then wind, flame, dance, song, cohered in a great swirling, leaping, dancing, single sphere.
Meg heard Mr. Jenkins’s incredulous, “What was that?”
Blajeny replied, “The birth of a star.”
Mr. Jenkins protested, “But it’s so small I could hold it in the palm of my hand.” And then an indignant snort, “How big am I?”
“You must stop thinking about size, you know. It is both relative and irrelevant.”
At this point Meg could not be bothered with size. She wanted to know something else. “Progo, will the star be Named?”
“He calls them all by name,” the cherubim said.
Meg looked in wonder at the star. It was indeed so small that she could have reached out and caught it in her hand, but its flaming was so intense that the song itself came out of the fire and was part of the burning. She thought in wonder, —I must be the size of a galaxy.
And then all thoughts dissolved in the glory of the melody and the dance.
Blajeny’s voice came like thunder, “Now!”
She was pulled into Proginoskes again, into the beat of the great heart, into the darkness of .the eye, into the—
No!
She was being consumed by flame. She sensed a violent jolt to the cosmic rhythm, a distortion of wild disharmony—
She tried to scream, but no sound came. She felt pain so intense that she could not bear it another second; another second and the pain would annihilate her entirely.
Then the pain was gone, and she felt once again the rhythm of the cherubic heart, very rapid, faintly irregular. “Did it have to hurt that much?” Shock and pain made her loud and angry. Her limbs trembled weakly.
Proginoskes seemed to be having trouble; his heart continued to race unevenly. She thought she understood him to say, “We had a brush with an Echthros.”
Her own breathing was a shallow panting. She felt that she was all there, all her atoms reassembled, that she was Meg; and yet when she opened her eyes she could see nothing but a strange, deep green-blackness. She listened, listened, and through what seemed at first to be a sound somewhat like the shrilling of insects on a summer night, she thought she could hear—or perhaps it was feel—a steady, regular pulsing.
“Progo, where are we?”
“Yadah.”
“You mean we are in Charles Wallace? In one of his mitochondria?”
“Yes.”
It was not conceivable. “What’s that sort of thrumming I feel? Is it Charles Wallace’s heartbeat?”
Proginoskes moved in negation in her mind. “It’s the rhythm of Yadah.”
“It feels like a heartbeat.”
“Megling, we’re not in earth time now; we’re within Yadah. In farandolae time, Charles Wallace’s heart beats something like once a decade.”
She shivered. Her arms and legs still felt trembly and useless. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness. “Progo, I can’t see.”
“Nobody in the ulterior can see, Meg. Eyes aren’t needed.”
Her heart beat in frightened counterpoint to the rhythm of the mitochondrion. She could not pay proper attention as Proginoskes said, “It’s what might be called a circadian rhythm. All life needs rhythm to—“
She interrupted. “Progo! Blajeny! I can’t move!”
She felt Proginoskes within her thoughts. His own thinking had calmed considerably; he was recovering from whatever it was that had frightened him and caused her so much pain. “Blajeny did not come with us.”
“Why?”
“This is no time for silly questions.”
“Why is it silly? Why can’t I see? Why can’t I move?”
‘Meg, you must stop panicking or I won’t be able to kythe with you. We won’t be able to help each other.”
She made a tremendous effort to calm down, but with each heartbeat she felt only more tense, more frightened. How could her heart be pounding so rapidly if Charles Wallace’s beat only once a decade?
Proginoskes thought noisily at her, “Time isn’t any more important than size. All that is required of you is to be in the Now, in this moment which has been given us.”
“I don’t feel like myself. I’m not myself! I’m part of Charles Wallace.”
“Meg. You are Named forever.”
“But Progo—“
“Say the multiplication table.”
“Now who’s being silly?”
“Megling, it will help bring you to yourself. Try.”
“I can’t.” Her mind felt battered and numb. She could not even remember enough to count to ten.
“What’s 7 times 8?”
She responded automatically. “56.”
“What’s the product of 2/3 and 5/7.”
Her mind whirled, cleared. “10 over 21.”
“What’s the next prime number after 67?”
“71.”
“Can we think together now?” There was considerable concern in Proginoskes’s questioning.
The concentration the cherubim had thrust on Meg had calmed her panic. “I’m okay. Where’s Calvin? Where’s Mr. Jenkins? And that—that Sporos?”
“They’re all here. You’ll be able to kythe with them soon. But first we have to find out what the second test is.”
“Find out?” Her mind was still blurred from pain and fright.
He was patient with her. “As we found out what the first test was.”
“You guessed that,” she said. “Do you know what this one is?”
“I think it has to do with Sporos.”
“But what?”
‘This is what we must discover.”
“We have to hurry, then.” She tried to check her impatience.
“Meg, I have to work with you and Mr. Jenkins together, because he isn’t capable of letting me move about in his mind as you can, so you’ll have to help. The grown farandolae don’t talk the way people do, they kythe.”
“Like cherubim?”
“Some of the Ancient Ones, yes. With the younger ones it’s a little closer to what you called mental telepathy. Never mind the degree; Mr. Jenkins can’t understand kything at all, and you’ll have to help him.”
“I’ll try. But you’ll have to help me, Progo.”
“Stretch out your right hand—“
“I can’t move.”
“That doesn’t matter. Move your hand in your mind. Kythe it. Kythe that Mr. Jenkins is standing by you, and that you’re reaching out to hold his hand. Are you doing it?”
“I’m trying.”
“Can you feel his hand?”
“I think so. At least, I’m making believe I can.”
“Hold it. Tightly. So that he knows you’re there.”
Her hand, which was no longer her hand in any way she had known before, nevertheless moved in the remembered pattern, and she thought she felt a slight pressure in return. She tried to kythe to the principal. “Mr. Jenkins, are you there?”
“Here.” It was like an echo of a faintly remembered voice hoarse with chalk dust; but she knew that she and Mr. Jenkins were together.
“Meg, you will have to kythe him everything I tell you. If I move into his mind I hurt him; he can’t absorb my energy. Now, try to translate simultaneously for him: make him see that a grown farandola’s matter does not move, except as a plant does, or a tree when there is no breeze to cause its motion, or as the great kelp forests move. A grown farandola moves by kything. Kything is not going to be easy for Mr. Jenkins, because it has been a great many years since he’s known himself, his real self.”
Meg sighed with a kind of anxious fatigue, suddenly realizing the enormous amount of energy taken by this intense kything. The cherubim moved lightly, swiftly within her, and his kything moved through and beyond her senses to an awareness she had never known before. She groped to contain it in images which were within Mr. Jenkins’s comprehension.
The sea, a vast, curving, never-ending sea; it was as though they were in that sea, deep down under the water’s surface, deeper than a whale can dive. The surface of the sea, and any light which might penetrate the surface, was hundreds of fathoms away. In the dark depths there was movement, movement which was part of the rhythm she had mistaken for Charles Wallace’s heartbeat. The movement assumed shape and form, and images were kythed to her mind’s eye, visual projections superimposed swiftly one over the other; she tried to send them to Mr. Jenkins:
a primordial fern forest;
a giant bed of kelp swaying to submarine currents;
a primeval forest of ancient trees with rough, silver bark;
underwater trees with silver-gold-green foliage which undulated regularly, rhythmically, not as though the long fronds were being blown by wind or current but of their own volition, like the undulation of those strange sea creatures halfway between plant life and animal life.
To the visual images music was added, strange, unearthly, rich, the surging song of the surrounding sea.
Farandolae.
She felt confusion and questioning from Mr. Jenkins. To him farandolae were little scampering creatures like Sporos, not like the sea trees she had been trying to show him.
Proginoskes kythed, “The sea trees, as you call them, are what Sporos will become when he Deepens. They are then called fara. Once he has Deepened he will no longer have to run about. A grown fara is far less limited than a human being is by time and place, because farae can be with each other any time in any place; distance doesn’t separate them.”
“They move without moving?” Meg asked.
“You might put it that way.”
“Am I to learn to move without moving, too?”
“Yes, Meg. There’s no other way in a mitochondrion. There’s nothing for you to stand on in Yadah, and no space for you to move through. But because you’re an earthling, and earthlings excel in adaptability, you can learn this motionless motion. Are you translating for Mr. Jenkins?”
“I’m trying.”
“Keep on, Meg. We’ll have time to rest later, unless—“ She felt a small, sharp pain, which was immediately withdrawn. “Some of the Ancient Ones can kythe not only from mitochondrion to mitochondrion within their human hosts, but to farandolae on mitochondria in other human hosts. Do you remember how shocked Sporos was when Calvin told him that human beings can’t do that kind of thing?”
“Yes, but Progo, Mr. Jenkins doesn’t understand about Sporos running around like a toy mouse. I don’t understand it either. He isn’t a bit like the sort of sea things you just showed us.”
“Sporos is, as he said, only a child, although he was juggling chronologies when he said he was born yesterday. A farandola well into adolescence has already passed through its early stages and taken root and is becoming a grown fara. It is nearly time for Sporos to leave childhood and Deepen. If he does not, it will be another victory for the Echthroi.”
“But why wouldn’t he Deepen?”
“Calvin is having trouble kything with him. Sporos is holding back. We have to help him Deepen, Meg. That’s our second test, I’m sure it is.”
To make an unwilling Sporos Deepen; it seemed a more impossible ordeal than Naming one of three Mr. Jenkinses. “How do we do it?”
He countered with another question. “Are you calm?”
Calm! Then, once again, she moved into that strange place which is on the other side of feeling. With one part of herself she knew that she was in Charles Wallace, actually inside her brother; that she was so small that she couldn’t be seen in the most powerful micro-electron microscope, or heard in the micro-sonarscope; she knew, too, that Charles Wallace’s life depended on what was going to happen now. She was beginning to get a glimmer of what Proginoskes meant when he talked about the dangers of feeling. She held herself very still, very cold, then turned towards the cherubim in quiet kything.
“Be a fara,” he told her. “Make believe. Do the inhabitants of Yadah seem more limited than human beings because once they have taken root they can’t move from their Deepening Place? But human beings need Deepening Places, too. And far too many never have any. Think about your Deepening Places, Meg. Open yourself into kything. Open,”
She returned to the strange world which was below light, below sound, penetrated only by the rhythm of tides pulled by the moon, by the sun, by the rhythm of the earth itself. She became one with the kything, Deepened creatures moving in the intricate pattern of song, of the loveliness of rhythm, of joy.
Then a coldness came, a horrible, blood-freezing chill. Tendrils were drawn back, pulled away from her, isolating themselves, isolating,Meg, Proginoskes, each other. The song jerked, out of rhythm, out of tune, rejecting her—
Something was wrong, horrifyingly wrong—
She felt Proginoskes hurling himself at her, into her. “Meg! That’s enough for now. We must be with the others, Calvin, Mr. Jenkins, Sporos, before—“
“Before what?”
“Before the second test. We must all be together. Open. Kythe to Calvin.”
“Where is he?”
“It doesn’t matter where he is, Meg. You’ve got to get it through your head that where doesn’t make any difference in a mitochondrion. It’s why. And how. And who.”
“Calvin—“ She seemed to feel every muscle in her body straining, and protesting at the strain.
“You’re trying too hard,” the cherubim said. “Relax, Megling. You kythe with me without all that effort. You and Calvin often kythe without realizing it. And when Charles Wallace knows when something’s upset you at school, knows it even before you come home, that’s kything. Just be Meg. Open. Be. Kythe.”
Through the darkness of under-sea she kythed. “Calvin—“
“Meg!”
“Where are you?”
Proginoskes flicked sharply at her. “Forget where.”
“How are you?”
“All right. A little confused by everything. Sporos—“
“Where—no, how is Sporos?”
“Meg, he doesn’t want to kythe or be with me. He doesn’t want to share his world. He says that human beings are unworthy, and that may be so, but—“
She felt a swirling of kything all around her, as though the words and images of the kything were the drops of water which go to make up the ocean, drops of water which are not separate one from the other as human beings are separate. Within the flowing of the deep tides images flashed by, many little creatures like Sporos, scampering about, carefree, merry, always in the protection of the great kelp-fern-trees, the Deepened Ones, about which they flitted and fluttered.
“Are you translating for Mr. Jenkins?”
“I’m trying, Progo, but I’m not sure I really feel him. I know that I’m with you, and with Calvin, but Mr. Jenkins—“
“Be with him, Meg. He needs you. He’s frightened.”
“If Blajeny wanted him along, there must be a reason for it. But it seems to me he’s an awful liability.”
She thought she felt a thin, distant “I am aware of that.”
She stretched herself towards that faint response. “Mr. Jenkins—“
“That’s right,” Proginoskes said. “Remember, he hasn’t much imagination. Or, rather, it’s been frozen for a long while and hasn’t had time to thaw. You’ll have to kythe your whole self to him; you’ll have to hold his hand, tightly, so that he can feel you and return your kythe. Can you feel his hand?”
“I—I imagine so.”
“Can he feel you?”
“Mr. Jenkins! Mr. Jenkins?” she kythed questioningly. “Wait a minute, Progo, Cal, I’m not sure, something’s wrong—“ She broke off, gasped, “Calvin! Progo! Pro—“ With every particle of herself she screamed, not a scream made with her voice, but with all of her, a scream of pain that was beyond terror.
It was the same pain that had torn across a galaxy when Proginoskes had shown her the Xing of the Echthroi; it was the pain which had slashed across the sky in the school-yard when she had Named Mr. Jenkins; it was the pain which had almost annihilated her when Proginoskes took her the strange journey through his eye to Yadah.
She was being Xed.
This was the end of Meg. There was to be no more anything. Ever. Exit Meg. Ex-Meg. X-Meg.
Then she realized that if she could think this, if she could think at all, then it was not happening. One who is Xed cannot think. The pain still burned like ice, but she could think through it. She still was.
With all of her she kythed away from the Xness. “Progo! Calvin! Help me!”
Through her cries she felt the cherubim. “Meg! I Name you! You are!”
And then numbers, numbers moving as strong and steady and rhythmic as tide.
Calvin. He was sending numbers to her, Calvin was sending back to her those first trigonometry problems they had done together. She held on to the strength of numbers as to a lifeline, until the Echthroi-pain was gone and she was free to move back into the realm of words again, human words which were much easier for Calvin than numbers.
“Calvin,” she called. “Oh, Calvin.” And then her kything was an anguished longing for her parents. Where was her father? Had Dr. Louise or her mother called Brookhaven? What had they told her father? Was he on his way home? And her mother—she wanted to retreat, reverse, revert, to climb back into her mother’s lap as she had done when she was Charles Wallace’s age and needed healing from some small hurt . . .
No, Meg.
She felt as though gentle fingers were pushing her down, forcing her to walk alone. She tried to kythe, to get her mind’s voice into focus, sent its beam at last to Proginoskes and Calvin. “What happened?”
She felt a series of major earthquakes before Proginoskes managed words for her. Whatever it was that had happened, it had certainly upset the cherubim. He kythed at last, “As though once weren’t enough, when you reached out for Mr. Jenkins’s hand you got an Echthros-Mr. Jenkins. Now we know that at least one of them followed us here.”
“How?”
“Not through Mr. Jenkins, though it’s still using a Jenkins-body. Perhaps Sporos—“
“Sporos!”
“Pride has always been the downfall of the Deepening Ones. Sporos may have listened to an Echthros—we aren’t sure.”
“What did you do? How did you get me away from it? It hurt—it hurt more than I knew anything could hurt. And then I felt you Naming me, Progo, and you, Cal, you were sending numbers to me, and the pain went and I was back into myself again.”
Calvin kythed, “Proginoskes got a lot of little farandolae to rush up and tickle the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins. It was so startled, it let you go.”
“Where is it now—the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins?”
Proginoskes was sharp. “It doesn’t matter where, Meg. It’s here. It’s with us in Yadah.”
“Then we’re still in danger from it?”
“All Yadah is in danger. Every mitochondrion in this human host is in danger.”
“This human host?”
Proginoskes did not reply. This human host was Charles Wallace.
“What are we going to do?”
There was another volcanic upheaval before Proginoskes replied, “We must not give way to panic.”
She kythed Calvinwards and felt him returning the kyth-ing. She asked, “Did you know what was happening to me?”
“Not at first. Then Progo told me.” There was a terrible quietness to Calvin’s reply. She felt that he was holding something back from her.
“The little farandolae—the ones who saved me—are they all right?”
There was silence.
“Are they all right, the little farandolae who startled the Echthros and saved me?”
“No.” The kything came reluctantly from both Calvin and Proginoskes.
“What happened to them?”
“To surprise an Echthros is not a safe thing to do.”
“The Echthros Xed them?”
“No, Meg. They Xed themselves. That’s a very different matter.”
“What will happen to them now?”
Proginoskes kythed slowly, “I’ve never seen it happen before. I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never seen it. Now I understand more than I used to. The farandolae are known by name just as the stars are. That’s all I need to know.”
“You haven’t told me anything! Where are the little farandolae who saved me? If they Xed themselves, then where are they?”
She heard a faint “Where doesn’t matter. Meg, you must get in touch with Mr. Jenkins. The real Mr. Jenkins.”
Instinctively she withdrew her kything. “I don’t dare try again. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”
“Your scream shook the entire mitochondrion. I only hope it didn’t hurt Charles Wallace.”
She flinched, then held on to something, she wasn’t sure what, but it felt like a lifeline. After a moment she knew that it was coming from the cherubim, an outflowing of love, love so tangible that she could hold on to it.
“Reach for Mr. Jenkins,” Proginoskes urged. “Name him for himself again. See how much you’ve been able to kythe to him. And remember, you have to go at his speed, not your own.”
“Why! He’s holding us back!”
“Hush, Meg.” Calvin kythed. “Adults take longer at this kind of thing than we do, particularly adults like Mr. Jenkins who hasn’t tried new thoughts for a long time.”
“But we don’t have time! Charles Wallace—“
“I said he takes longer than we do, and that’s true. But sometimes adults can go deeper than we can, if we’re patient.”
“We don’t have time to be patient!”
“Meg, trust Blajeny. Mr. Jenkins must be with us for a reason. Help him. Do what Progo says.”
Proginoskes kythed urgently, “We may need Mr. Jenkins to get Sporos to Deepen. Blajeny wouldn’t have sent him unless—oh, Meg, a Teacher never does anything without reason. Try to reach Mr. Jenkins, Meg.”
She pushed her terror aside and opened herself to kything
and she was with Charles Wallace,
not within him,
not without him,
but with him,
part of his exhaustion,
his terrifying energy loss,
his struggle to breathe.
Oh, fight, Charles,
don’t stop struggling, ,
breathe,
breathe,
I’ll try to help,
I’ll do anything Lean to help, even
then
She was with the twins. Charles Wallace, she thought, had sent her.
The twins were in the garden, digging, grimly spading up and turning under the old tomato plants, the frost-blackened zinnias, the lettuce gone to seed, turning them under to enrich the earth for the next spring, the next planting, with set faces working silently, taking out their anxiety over Charles Wallace in physical labor. - Sandy broke the silence. “Where’s Meg?”
Dennys paused, his foot on his pitchfork as he pressed it into the earth. “She should be getting home from school soon.”
“Charles Wallace said she isn’t in school. He said that Meg is in him. I heard him.”
“Charles Wallace is delirious.”
“Have you ever seen anyone die?”
“Only animals.”
“I wish Meg would come home.”
“So do I.”
They went on with their preparation of the garden for the winter cold and snow.
If the twins’ job is simply to take care of their garden —Meg told herself, —your job is to reach Mr. Jenkins. Where? Nowhere. Just Mr. Jenkins.
“Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins. You are you and nobody else and I Named you. I’m kything, Mr. Jenkins. Here I am. Me. Meg. You know me and I know you.”
She thought she heard a sniff, a Mr. Jenkins sniff. Then he seemed to recede again. This minuscule undersea world was totally beyond his comprehension. She tried to kythe to him once more all the images in earth equivalents which she had received, but he responded with nothing beyond anxious blankness.
“Name him,” Proginoskes urged. “He is afraid to be. When you Named him in the schoolyard, that was kything, that was how you knew him from the two Echthroi-Mr. Jenkinses, how you must know him this tune.”
Mr. Jenkins. Unique, as every star in the sky is unique, every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every farandola, every cherubim, unique: Named.
He gave Calvin shoes. And he didn’t have to come with us to this danger and horribleness, but he did. He chose to throw in his lot with us when he could have gone back to school and his safe life as a failure.
Yes, but for an unimaginative man to come with them into the unimaginably infinitesimal unknown isn’t the kind of thing a failure does.
Nevertheless, Mr. Jenkins had done it, was doing it.
“Mr. Jenkins, I love you!”
She did.
Without stopping to think she put her imagined hand into his. His fingers were slightly damp and chill, just as clammy as she had always thought Mr. Jenkins’s hand would be.
And real.
Of course Mr. Jenkins’s hand would be damp. He’d be scared out of his wits. He was years away from games of Make Believe and Let’s Pretend.
“Mr. Jenkins, are you all right?”
She felt a fumbling kything, a frightened inability to -accept that they were actually in a mitochondrion, a mitochondrion within one of Charles Wallace’s cells. “How long have we been here?”
“I’m not sure. So much has happened. Progo—you’re sure we’re in farandola time, not earth tune?”
“Farandola time.”
“Whew!” she told Mr. Jenkins in relief. “That means that time on earth is passing much more slowly than time is for us—aeons more slowly. Charles Wallace’s heart beats only once every decade or so.”
“Even so,” Proginoskes warned, “there’s no time to waste.”
Another flash of Charles Wallace’s face, ashen, eyes closed, breathing labored; of her mother’s face, tight with pain; of Dr. Louise, watchful, waiting. She stood with her small hand lightly against Charles Wallace’s wrist.
“I know,” Meg answered the cherubim. A cold wind seemed to blow through the interstices of her ribs. She must be strong for Charles Wallace now, so that he could draw on that strength. She held her mind quiet and steady until it calmed.
Then she opened herself again to Mr. Jenkins. Muddied thoughts which could hardly qualify as kything moved about her like sluggish water, and yet she understood that Mr. Jenkins was being more open with her than he had ever been before, or than he ever was able to be with most people. His mind shuddered into Meg’s as he tried to grasp the extraordinary fact that he was still himself, still Mr. Jenkins, at the same time that he was a minuscule part of the child who had been one of his most baffling and irritating problems at school.
Meg tried to let him know, in as unalarming a way as possible, that at least one of the Echthroid-Mr. Jenkinses was with them on Yadah. She did not want to recall her terror during her encounter with one of them, but she had to help Mr. Jenkins understand.
He sent her a response, first of bafflement, then fear, then a strange tenderness towards her. “You should not be asked to endure such things, Margaret.”
“There’s more,” she told him. This more was hardest of all, to make him understand that some of the little farandolae, some of the playful, dancing creatures, had saved her from the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, and had sacrificed themselves in doing so.
Mr. Jenkins groaned.
From Proginoskes Meg relayed to the principal, “It was better than letting the Echthroi X them. They’re still— they’re still part of Creation this way.” She turned her kything to Proginoskes. “If the Echthroi X something, or if something Xs itself, is it forever?”
The cherubim surrounded her with the darkness of his unknowing. “But we don’t need to know, Meg,” he told her firmly, and the darkness began to blow away. “I am a cherubim. All I need to know is that all the galaxies, all the stars, all creatures, cherubic, human, farandolan, all, all, are known by Name.” He seemed almost to be crooning to himself.
Meg kythed at him sharply. “You’re Progo. I’m Meg. He’s Mr. Jenkins. Now what are we supposed to do?”
Proginoskes came back into focus. “Mr. Jenkins does not want to understand what a farandola is.”
“Evil is evil,” Mr. Jenkins sent fumblingly Megwards. She felt his mind balking at the idea of communication where distance was no barrier. “Mice talk by squeaking, and shrimp by—I don’t know much marine biology but they must make some sound. But trees!” he expostulated. “Mice who put down roots and turn into trees—you did say trees?”
“No.” Meg was impatient, not so much at Mr. Jenkins as at her own ineptitude in communicating with him. ‘The farae—well, they aren’t unlike trees, sort of primordial ones, and they aren’t unlike coral and underwater things like that.”
“Trees cannot talk with each other.”
“Farae can. And as for trees—don’t they?”
“Nonsense.”
“Mr. Jenkins, when you walk through the woods at home, and the wind moves in the trees, don’t you ever have the feeling that if you knew how, you’d be able to understand what they were saying?”
“Never.” It had been a long time since he had walked in the woods. He moved from his lodgings to the school, from the school to his lodgings, driving himself both ways. He did not have time to go for walks in the woods . . ..
She felt a dim regret in his kything, so she tried to make him hear the sound of wind in the pine woods. “If you close your eyes it sounds like ocean waves, even though we’re not anywhere near the ocean.”
All she felt from Mr. Jenkins was another cold wash of incomprehension.
So she envisioned a small grove of aspens for him, each leaf shivering and shaking separately, whispering softly in the still summer air.
“I’m too old,” was Mr. Jenkins’s response. “I’m much too old. I’m just holding you back. You ought to return me to Earth.”
Meg forgot that she had recently made exactly that suggestion. “Anyhow, Yadah is on Earth, or in Earth, sort of, since it’s in Charles Wallace . . .”
“No, no,” Mr. Jenkins said, “it’s too much. I’m no help. I don’t know why I thought I might be—“ His kything trailed off.
Through his discouragement she became aware of Calvin. “Hey, Meg! Communication implies sound. Communion doesn’t.” He sent her a brief image of walking silently through the woods, the two of them alone together, their feet almost noiseless on the rusty carpet of pine needles. They walked without speaking, without touching, and yet they were as close as it is possible for two human beings to be. They climbed up through the woods, coming out into the brilliant sunlight at the top of the hill. A few sumac trees showed their rusty candles. Mountain laurel, shiny, so dark a green the leaves seemed black in the fierceness of sunlight, pressed towards the woods. Meg and Calvin had stretched out in the thick, late-summer grass, lying on their backs and gazing up into the shimmering blue of sky, a vault interrupted only by a few small clouds.
And she had been as happy, she remembered, as it is possible to be, and as close to Calvin as she had ever been to anybody in her life, even Charles Wallace, so close that their separate bodies, daisies and buttercups joining rather than dividing them, seemed a single enjoyment of summer and sun and each other.
That was surely the purest kind of kything.
Mr. Jenkins had never had that kind of communion with another human being, a communion so rich and full that silence speaks more powerfully than words.
Again Calvin was kything with quick, urgent words. “The Wall Street Journal”
“What!”
“Mr. Jenkins reads The Wall Street Journal. Maybe he might have read this.”
“Read what?”
“You remember, just a few weeks ago I was telling you about a science project I did years ago when I was in fourth grade. Even the twins were interested.”
Meg listened intently, trying to kythe simultaneously to Mr. Jenkins.
The subject of the old science project had come up because of the twins’ garden. Sandy and Dennys were baffled and irritated. Some of the pepper plants had large, firm, healthy fruit. On others the peppers were wizened and wrinkled and pale. Calvin had been taken out to look at the undersized, flabby plants, which showed no visible sign of disease, and he had been reminded of his fourth-grade science project.
Meg asked, “Could the plants be having the same kind of trouble mitochondria are having? Could Echthroi bother things like gardens?”
Calvin pushed this question aside to think about later. “Not now, Meg. Listen. I think my science project will help Mr. Jenkins understand.”
Meg seemed to see Mr. Jenkins’s nose twitching as it always did when he was reluctant.
“Okay, then.” She kythed to him, slowly, as simply as possible, Calvin’s kything always a strong current under and through hers.
At nine years of age Calvin read avidly, every book that came into the small village library. The librarian, seeing his pleasure in books, encouraged him, gave him a special corner in the library as his own, and gave him all the old classics of the imagination to read. His span of concentration on these stories was infinite.
But he considered most of the work he was given at school a bore, particularly science projects. However, he was also fiercely competitive, and determined to be the top of his class in all subjects, even those he considered a waste of tune.
When the week came when he must turn in the topic for his science project by Friday, he was disinterested and planless, but he knew he had to choose something. He was thinking about this with particular urgency on Thursday afternoon when he was helping old Mrs. Buncombe clean out her attic. What could he choose which would interest the teacher and class and not bore him completely? Mrs. Buncome was not paying him for the dirty and dusty job— her attic had not been touched for years—but she had bribed him to do it by telling him that there was an old set of china up in the attic, and he could take it as payment. Perhaps she knew that the O’Keefes could never sit down to a meal together, even if they had wanted to, because there weren’t enough plates and cups and saucers to go round.
The china was in a box at the back of the attic, and it was wrapped in old newspapers. Some of it was broken; much of it was cracked; it certainly was not a set of forgotten Wedgwood or Dresden. Who had bothered to wrap it up as carefully as though it were a priceless heirloom? However, there was enough of the set left to make it worth taking home. He unwrapped it for his mother, who complained ungraciously, if correctly, that it was junk.
He cleared up the crumpled, yellowed newspapers, and began to read one. It was an old Wall Street Journal; the date had been torn off, but the paper was brittle and stained and he knew that it must be a good many years old. His eye caught an article about a series of experiments made by a biologist.
The biologist had the idea, unusual at the time, that plants were capable of subjective reactions to stimuli, and he decided to measure the strength of these reactions by attaching electrodes, like those used in a lie detector, to the leaves of a large, healthy philodendron.
At that point in the account a section of paper was torn away, and Calvin lost several sentences. He picked up a statement that electronic needles would record the plant’s responses on a graph, much as brain waves or heart patterns are recorded by the electro-encephalogram or electrocardiogram machines.
The biologist spent an entire morning looking at the needles moving in a straight line across the paper. Nothing happened. No reactions. The needle did not quiver. The line moved slowly and steadily.
The biologist thought, “I’ll make that plant react. I’ll burn one of its leaves.”
The stylus made wild up and down markings of alarm.
The rest of the article was torn off.
Mr. Jenkins’s thoughts came to Meg quite clearly, a little irritably, “I read that article. I thought it was nonsense. Just some crackpot.”
Calvin kythed, “Most major scientific discoveries have been made by crackpots—or at least, people who were thought to be crackpots.”
“My own parents, for instance,” Meg added, “until some of their discoveries were proved to be true.”
Calvin continued. “Listen. There’s more. I found another article among the papers.”
This one described the biologist going on a cross-country lecturing tour. He asked one of his students to take care of, watch, and record the reactions of his philodendron.
The plant’s alarm needles jumped nervously whenever the biologist’s plane took off or landed.
“How would it know?” Meg asked.
“It did.”
“But distance,” she protested, “how could a plant, just an ordinary domestic philodendron, know what was happening miles and miles away?”
“Or care,” came dourly from Mr. Jenkins.
“Distance doesn’t seem to be any more important than size. Or time. As for caring—well, that’s outside the realm of provable fact.”
For his project Calvin had worked out a variation on the theme of plant response. He had no way of measuring the subjective responses of a plant, so he decided to plant three bean seeds.
Mr. Jenkins did not think much of this.
Meg kythed him a warning, “Wait! This was all Calvin’s own idea. He was only nine years old then, and be didn’t know that experiments of the same kind were already being made.”
Calvin planted one of the seeds in a pot which he left in the kitchen at home. He put it on a windowsill where it would get sunlight, and he watered it daily. His brothers and sisters were warned that if they touched it they’d get clobbered. They knew he meant it, and they left his plant physically alone. However, the plant heard—.
“Without ears?” Mr. Jenkins kythed crossly.
“Like Louise, maybe,” Meg returned.
The plant heard the automatic ugly invective of daily speech in Calvin’s home. Calvin himself stayed in the house as little as possible.
The other two seeds he took to the library, where the librarian gave him permission to put his pots in two sunny windows. One of these beans he watered and cared for dutifully. That was all. The third bean he talked to, encouraging it, urging it to grow. When the first green shoot appeared he lavished on it all the love which had so little outlet in his home. He sat, after school, close by his plant, doing his homework, reading aloud when nobody was around, sharing.
The first of the bean plants, the one in the O’Keefe’s kitchen, was puny, and too pale a green, like the twins’ sickly peppers. The second plant, in the library window, the plant given regular care but no special time or attention, grew normally. The third plant, the plant Calvin loved, grew strong and green and unusually large and healthy.
Mr. Jenkins kythed thinly but quite comprehensibly, “If
philodendron and beans can react like that, it should help me to understand farandolae—is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Sort of,” Meg replied.
Calvin added, “See? Distance doesn’t matter. They can know and converse with each other “and distance doesn’t really exist for them.”
Mr. Jenkins sent out waves of disbelief. “And if they’re loved, they’ll grow? And if they aren’t loved—“
“The Echthroi can move in.”
Now she heard what could only be Sporos’s twingling. “They’re dull and slow, like all human beings, but you’re getting through to them at last, cherub.”
“My name is Proginoskes, if you please, mouse-creature.”
The farandola was not amused. “My name is Sporos.” A reproving twingle.
“Meg.” Proginoskes kythed deeply into her. “Do you realize what has just been happening? You’ve been close to Mr. Jenkins, haven’t you?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“And yet your bodies are not close together. And you already know that nothing can separate you from Calvin when you kythe together.”
Yes. She was with Calvin. They were together. She felt the warmth of his quick smile, a smile which always had a slight quirk of sadness and acceptance unusual in a sixteen-year-old. He was not kything in words now, but in great waves of courage, of strength, flowing over and through her.
She accepted it, absorbed it. Fortitude. She was going to need a great deal. She opened herself, drank it in.
“All right,” Proginoskes told them. “We are together. We can continue.”
“What are we to do?” Mr. Jenkins asked.
“The second test,” the cherubim urged. “We must pass the second test.”
“And that is?”
“To Name Sporos. As Meg had to Name you.”
“But Sporos is already Named!”
“Not until he has Deepened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When Sporos Deepens,” Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, “it means that he conies of age. It means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.”
Meg asked, “The little farandolae who saved me—“
“They came of age, Meg.”
She pondered this. “I think I understand—“
“I don’t,” Mr. Jenkins said. “I thought we came here to try to help Charles Wallace, that he is ill because of his mitochondria—“
Proginoskes pushed back impatience. “He is.”
“But what does Sporos have to do with Charles Wallace?”
“The balance of life within Yadah is precarious. If Sporos and the others of his generation do not Deepen, the balance will be altered. If the farandolae refuse to Deepen, the song will be stilled, and Charles Wallace will die. The Echthroi will have won.”
“But a child—“ Mr. Jenkins asked. “One small child— why is he so important?”
“It is the pattern throughout Creation. One child, one man, can swing the balance of the universe. In your own Earth history what would have happened if Charlemagne had fallen at Roncesvalles? One minor skirmish?”
“It would have been an Echthroi victory?”
“And your history would have been even darker than it is.”
“Mr. Jenkins!” Meg called. “Listen, I just remembered: For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
“We must save Charles Wallace!” Mr. Jenkins cried. “What can we do, Progo? What can we do?”
A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never separated from each other, no matter how great the distance.
We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.
Calvin asked, “How can you sing with the stars?”
There was surprise at the question: it is the song. We sing it together. That is our joy. And our Being.
“But how do you know about stars—in here—inside—“
How could farae not know about stars when farae and stars sing together?
“You can’t see the stars. How can you possibly know about them?”
Total incomprehension from the farae. If Meg and Calvin kythed in visual images, this was their limitation. The farae had moved beyond physical sight.
“Okay,” Calvin said. “I know how little of ourselves, and of our brains, we’ve learned to use. We have billions of brain cells, and we use only the tiniest portion of them.”
Mr. Jenkins added with his dry, ropy kythe, “I have heard that the number of cells in the brain and the number of stars in the universe is said to be exactly equal.”
“Progo!” Meg asked. “You memorized the names of all the stars—how many are there?”
“How many? Great heavens, earthling, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.”
“I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that’s a great many.”
“But how many?”
“What difference does it make? I know their names. I don’t know how many there are. It’s their names that matter.”
The strong kything of the farae joined Proginoskes. “And the song. If it were not for the support of the singing of the galaxies, we farae on Yadah would have lost the melody, so few of the farandolae are Deepening. The un-Namers are at work.”
Meg felt a sudden chill, a pulling back, a fading of the Deepened farae; there was dissonance in the harmony; the rhythm faltered.
In her mind’s eye an image was flashed of a troop of farandolae dancing wildly about one fara-tree, going faster and faster, until she felt dizzy.
“Sporos is with them,” Proginoskes told her.
“What are they doing? Why are they spinning faster and faster?” The circle of farandolae revolved so rapidly that it
became a swirling blur. The fronds of the great fara around whom they swirled began to droop.
“They are absorbing the nourishment which the fara needs. The fara is Senex, from whom Sporos came.” There was chill in Proginoskes’s words.
The speed of the dancing farandolae became like a scream in Meg’s ears. “Stop!” she cried. “Stop it at once!” There was nothing merry or joyful in the dance. It was savage, wild, furious.
Then, through the raging of the dance came a strong, pure strain of melody, quiet, certain, noble. The dancing farandolae broke their circle and scampered about aimlessly ;-then, led by Sporos, they raced to another fara and began circling it.
The fronds of Senex greened, lifted.
Proginoskes said, “He is strong enough to hold out longer than any of the other farae. But even Senex cannot hold out forever.” He stopped abruptly. “Feel.”
“Feel?”
“The rhythm of the mitochondrion. Is it my tearfulness, or is Yadah faltering?”
“It is not you,” Meg answered the cherubim. They were all very still, listening, feeling. Again there came a slight irregularity in the steady pulsing. A faltering. A missed beat. Then it steadied, continued.
Like a gash through the non-light of Yadah Meg had a brief vision of Charles Wallace lying in his small room, gasping for air. She thought she saw Dr. Louise, but the strange thing was that she could not tell whether it was Dr.
Louise Colubra, or Louise the actual colubra. “Don’t give up. Breathe, Charles. Breathe.” And a steady voice, “It’s time to try oxygen.”
Then she was drawn back within the mitochondrion to Senex, the parent tree of Sporos. She tried to convey to him what she had just seen, but she received nothing from him in return. His incomprehension was even greater than Mr. Jenkins’s had been. She asked Proginoskes, “Does Senex know that Charles Wallace even exists?”
“As you know that your galaxy, the Milky Way, exists.”
“Does he know that Charles Wallace is ill?”
“As you know that your Earth is ill, by fish dying in the rivers, birds dying in the forests, people dying in the choked cities. You know by war and hate and chaos. Senex knows his mitochondrion is ill because the farandolae will not Deepen and many farae are dying. Listen. Kythe.”
A group of farandolae whirled about a fara; fronds drooped; color drained. The dance was a scream of laughter, ugly laughter. Meg smelled the stench which was like the stench in the twins’ garden when she had first encountered an Echthros.
She heard a voice. It was like a bad tape recording of Mr. Jenkins. “You need not Deepen and lose your power to move, to dance. No one can force you to. Do not listen to the farae. Listen to me.”
The great central trunk of the surrounded fara began to weaken.
Meg tried to project herself into the dance, to break the vortex. “Spores, come out! Don’t listen. You were sent to the Teacher. You belong with us. Come out, Sporos, you are meant to Deepen!”
Then it was as though she were the end skater in a violent game of crack-the-whip and suddenly was flung so wildly across the ice that she crashed into the end of the rink. The force with which she had been thrown was so fierce that her kything was completely blacked out.
“Breathe, Meg, breathe.” It was Proginoskes, using the same words which Louise was using with Charles Wallace. “Breathe, Meg. You’re all right.”
She reeled, staggered, regained her balance.
Again she heard the ugly laugh, and the false Mr. Jenkins voice urging, “Kill the fara!”
Then came Mr. Jenkins’s own voice. “I see. I understand.” She felt emanating from him a dry, dusty acknowledgment of unpleasant fact.
She returned sharply, still slightly breathless, “I don’t understand.”
Mr. Jenkins asked her, “Why did Hitler want to control the world? Or Napoleon? Or Tiberius?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would. I think it would be awful.”
“But you admit that they did, Margaret?”
“They wanted to,” she conceded. “But they didn’t succeed.”
“They did a remarkably good job of succeeding for a period of time, and they will not lightly be forgotten. A great many people perished during the years of their rules.”
“But farandolae—why would little farandolae like Sporos—“
“They appear to be not that unlike human beings.”
She felt cold and quiet. Once Mr. Jenkins had accepted the situation, he understood it better than she did. She asked, “Okay, then, what have the Echthroi got to do with it? They’re behind it, aren’t they?”
Proginoskes answered, “The Echthroi are always behind war.”
Meg turned in anguish towards Senex, calm and strong as an oak tree, but, unlike the oak, pliable, able to bend with wind and weather. “Senex, we’ve been sent to help, but I’m not strong enough to fight the Echthroi. I can’t stop Sporos and the other farandolae from killing the fara. Oh, Senex, if they succeed, won’t they kill themselves, too?”
Senex responded coldly, quietly. “Yes.”
“This is insane,” Mr. Jenkins said.
Proginoskes answered, “All war is insane.”
“But, as I understand it,” Mr. Jenkins continued, “we are a minutely immeasurable part of Charles Wallace?”
“We are.”
“Therefore if, while we are on—or, rather, in—this mitochondrion, if Charles Wallace were to die, then—er—urn— we—“
“Die, too.”
“Then I fight not only for Charles Wallace’s life but for Meg’s, and Calvin’s, and—“
“Your own.”
Meg felt Mr. Jenkins’s total indifference to his own life. She was not yet willing to accept the burden of his concern for her. “We musn’t think about that! We musn’t think about anything but Charles!”
Proginoskes wound around and through her thoughts: “You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos. Don’t you understand that we’re all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they’re trying to destroy all Creation?”
The dancing farandolae whirled and screamed, and Meg thought she could hear Sporos’s voice: “We’re not part of anybody! We’re farandolae, and we’re going to take over Yadah. After that—“
A hideous screech of laughter assailed Meg’s ears. Again she flung herself at the dance, trying to pull Sporos out of it.
Senex drew her back with the power of his kythe. “Not that way, not by force.”
“But Sporos has to Deepen! He has to!”
Then, around the edges of her awareness, Meg heard a twingling, and Calvin was with Sporos, trying to reach out to him, to kythe with him.
Sporos’s response was jangly, but he came out of the wild circle and hovered on its periphery. “Why did Blajeny send you alien life forms to Yadah with me? How can you possibly help with my schooling? We make music by ourselves. We don’t need you.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s volcanic upheaving, felt a violent wind, searing tongues of flame. “Idiot, idiot,” Proginoskes was sending, “we all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other.”
“I don’t need you.”
Suddenly Proginoskes kythed quietly and simply, “I need you, Sporos. We all of us need you. Charles Wallace needs you.”
“I don’t need Charles Wallace.”
Calvin kythed urgently, “Don’t you? What happens*to you if something happens to Charles Wallace? Who have you been listening to?”
Sporos withdrew. Meg could not feel him at all.
Calvin emanated frustration. “I can’t reach him. He slips away from me every time I think I’m getting close.”
Sporos was pulled back into the whirling circle. The surrounded fara was limp, all life draining rapidly. Senex mourned, “His song is going out.”
Proginoskes kythed, “Xed. Snuffed out like a candle.”
Senex’s fronds drooped in grief. “Sporos and his generation listen to those who would silence the singing. They listen to those who would put out the light of the song.”
Mr. Jenkins raised shadowy arms prophetically. ‘To kill the song is the only salvation!”
“No!” Mr. Jenkins cried to Mr. Jenkins. “You are only a mirror vision of me. You are nothing!”
Nothing nothing nothing
The word echoed, hollow, empty, repeating endlessly. Everywhere Meg kythed she seemed to meet a projection of an Echthros-Mr. Jenkins.
“Don’t you understand that the Echthroi are your saviors? When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death. There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation—“
Senex kythed through the Echthros. “No more singing!”
Proginoskes joined Senex. “No more stars, or cherubim, or the light of the moon on the sea.”
And Calvin: “There will never be another meal around table. No one will ever break bread or drink wine with his companions.”
Meg kythed violently against the nearest Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, “You are nothing! You’re only borrowing Mr. Jenkins in order to be something. Go away! You are nothing!”
Then she was aware that the real Mr. Jenkins was trying to reach her. “Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Calvin replied, “Then we must fill the vacuum. That is the only thing to do.”
“How?”
“If the Echthroi are nothingness, emptiness, then that emptiness can be filled.”
“Yes, but how do we fill it?”
Senex kythed calmly, “Perhaps you don’t want to fill it strongly enough. Perhaps you do not yet understand what is at stake.”
“I do! A little boy, my brother—what do you know about my little brother?”
Senex conveyed considerable confusion. He had a feeling for the word ‘brother’ because all farae are—or had been—brothers. But ‘little boy’ meant nothing to him whatsoever.
“I know that my galactic host is ill, perhaps dying—“
“That’s Charles Wallace! That’s my little brother! He may be a galactic host to you, but to me he’s just a little boy like—like Sporos.” She turned her kythe from Senex and towards the wildly dancing farandolae who had surrounded another fara. This tune she kythed herself towards them cautiously. How could she be sure which one was Sporos?
An Echthros-Mr. Jenkins whinnied with laughter. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.” A harsh twang wounded the melody of the farae who were still singing.
Once again Meg felt faltering in the mitochondrion. Yadah was in pain. Suddenly she remembered the farandolae who had saved her from the Echthros when Progi-noskes brought her into Yadah. Not all the farandolae had thrown in their lot with the Echthroi. Or were those ,who had Xed themselves that she might live the only ones who would defy the Echthroi?
She began calling urgently, “Sporos! Farandolae! Come away from the Echthroi. You will dance yourselves to death. Come to Senex and Deepen. This is what you were born to do. Come!”
Some of the farandolae faltered. Others whirled the faster, crying, “We don’t need to Deepen. That’s only an old superstition. It’s a stupid song they sing, all this Glory, glory, glory. We are the ones who are glorious.”
“The stars—“ Meg called desperately.
“Another superstition. There are no stars. We are the greatest beings in the universe.”
Ugliness seeped past Meg and to Sporos. “Why do you want to Deepen?”
Sporos’s twingling was slightly dissonant. “Farandolae are born to Deepen.”
“Fool. Once you Deepen and put down roots you won’t be able to romp around as you do now.”
“But—“
“You’ll be stuck in one place forever with those fuddy-duddy farae, and you won’t be able to run or move, ever again.”
“But—“
The strength and calm of Senex cut through the ugliness. “It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.”
Indecision quivered throughout Sporos.
Senex continued, “It is true, small offspring. Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with’the stars. I dance with the galaxies. I share in the joy—and in the grief. We farae must have our part in the rhythm of the mitochondria, or we cannot be. If we cannot be, then we are not.”
“You mean, you die?” Meg asked.
“Is that what you call it? Perhaps. I am not sure. But the song of Yadah is no longer full and rich. It is flaccid, its harmonies meager. By our arrogance we make Yadah suffer.”
Meg felt Calvin beside Senex, urging, “Sporos, you are my partner. We are to work together.”
“Why? You’re no use to me.”
“Sporos, we are partners, whether we like it or not”
Meg joined in. “Sporos! We need you to help save Charles Wallace.”
“Why do we have to bother about this Charles Wallace? He’s nothing but a stupid human child.”
“He’s your galaxy. That ought to make him special enough, even for you.”
A cruel slashing cut between them kything, as though a great beak had cut a jagged wound. “Sporos! It is I, Mr. Jenkins. I am the teacher who is greater than all Teachers because I know the Echthroi.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s kything clamp like steel.
The Echthros-Mr. Jenkins was holding Sporos, and speaking with honey-sweet words. “Do not listen to the earthlings; do not listen to the farae. They are stupid and weak. Listen to me and you will be powerful like the Echthroi. You will rule the universe.”
“Sporos!” The real Mr. Jenkins’s kything was not strong enough to break through the stream. “He is not Mr. Jenkins. Do not listen!”
Calvin’s kythe came more strongly than Mr. Jenkins’s. “There are two Mr. Jenkinses by you, Sporos, two Mr. Jenkinses kything you. You know that one is not real. Deepen, Sporos, that is where your reality lies. That is how you will find your place, and how you will find your true center.”
Meg’s mind’s-ears were assailed by a howling which was
Echthroid, though it appeared to come from the pseudo-Mr. Jenkins. “Reality is meaningless. Nothing is the center. Come. Join the others in the race. Only a few more farae to surround and you will have Yadah for your own.”
“Yadah will die,” Meg cried. “We will all die. You will die!”
“If you come with us, you will be nothing,” the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins spoke in cloying kythe, “and nothing can happen to nothing.”
Sporos’s long whiskers trembled painfully. “I am very young. I should not be asked to make major decisions for several centuries.”
“You’re old enough to listen to Senex,” Meg told him. “You’re old enough to listen to me. After all, I’m a galaxy to you. It’s time for you to Deepen.”
Sporos wriggled in the clasp of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins. “Come, Sporos, fly with the Echthroi. Then you will crackle across the universe. There are too many mitochondria in creation. There are too many stars in the heavens. Come with us to naught, to nought.”
“Deepen, Sporos, my child, Deepen.”
“Sporos!” The Echthroid howl beat against the rhythm of Yadah. “We will make you a prince among Echthroi.”
Meg felt a gust of wind, the familiar flicker of flame: Proginoskes. The cherubim flung his kything across the void of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, like a rope flung from cliffs edge to cliffs edge. “Sporos, all farandolae are royal. All singers of the song are princes.”
“Nonsense. In Name only.”
“The Name matters.”
“Only to matter.”
Proginoskes’s kything was so gentle that it undercut i the storm of Echthroi. “You are created matter, Sporos. You are part of the great plan, an indispensable part. You are needed, Sporos; you have your own unique share in the freedom of creation.”
“Do not listen to that hideous cherubim. He’s nothing but a deformed emanation of energy. We will give you no name and you will have power.”
Calvin pushed in again. “Sporos, you are my partner. Whatever we do, we must do it together. If you join the wild farandolae again I am coming into the dance with you.”
Sporos quivered, ‘To help kill the farae?”
“No. To be with you.”
Meg cried, “Progo, let’s go, too! We can help Calvin.” In her impetuous relief at having something to do, she did not feel the cherubim pulling her back, but plunged into the irrational tarantella and was immediately swept out of control. Calvin was whirling beside Sporos, unable to pull him away from the circle closing in on the dying fara.
Meg was totally in the power of the revolving, twangling farandolae. The orbital velocity sucked her in, through the circle and against the limp trunk of the fara.
Within the deathly center of the dance it was dark; she could not image the whirling farandolae; she could not kythe Calvin or Sporos. She heard only a silence which was not silence because within this vortex there was an emptiness which precluded the possibility of sound.
Caught in this anguished vacuum she was utterly powerless. She was sucked against the trunk of the fara, but the fara was now too weak to hold her up; it was she who had to hold the dying Deepened One, to give it her own life’s blood. She felt it being drained from her. The fara’s trunk strengthened. It was Meg who was dying.
Then arms were around her, holding her, pouring life back into her, Mr. Jenkins’s arms, the real Mr. Jenkins. His strength and love filled her.
As she returned to life, the firm, rhythmic tendrils of the reviving fara caressed her. Mr. Jenkins held them both, and his power did not weaken. The murderous circle was broken. Calvin held Sporos in his arms and a tear slid down his cheek. Meg turned towards him, to comfort him.
The moment she kythed away from Mr. Jenkins and to Calvin, a new circle formed, not of farandolae, but of Mr. Jenkinses, Mr. Jenkinses swirling their deathly ring around the real Mr. Jenkins.
Meg whirled back towards him, but it was too late. Mr. Jenkins was surrounded. Meg cried, “Deepen, Sporos, it’s the only hope!”
The scattered farandolae darted hither and thither in confusion. Proginoskes reached out wing after invisible wing to pull them in. There was a frightened twingle.
“Look at the Echthroi!” Proginoskes commanded. “They are killing Mr. Jenkins as they made you kill your own farae. Look. This is what it is like.”
“Mr. Jenkins!” Meg called. “We have to save Mr. Jenkins. Oh, Sporos, Deepen, it’s the second ordeal, you must Deepen.”
“For Mr. Jenkins?”
“For yourself, for all of us.”
“But why did Mr. Jenkins—didn’t he know what would happen to him?”
“Of course he knew. He did it to save us.”
“To save us all,” Calvin added. “The Echthroi have him, Sporos. They are going to kill him. What are you going to do?”
Sporos turned towards Senex, the fara from whom he had been born. He reached out small green tendrils towards all the farandolae. “It is Deepening time,” he said.
They heard a faint echo of the music which had been such joy when Blajeny took them to witness the birth of a star. The farae were singing, singing, strengthening. Sporos was joining in the song. All about them farandolae were Deepening, and adding their music to the flowing of the song.
Meg’s exhaustion and relief were so great that she forgot Mr. Jenkins. She assumed blindly that now that Sporos and the other farandolae were Deepening, now that the second ordeal had been successfully accomplished, all was well; the Echthroi were vanquished; Charles Wallace would recover; she could relax.
Then she felt Proginoskes pushing through her thoughtlessness. “Meg! You forget! There are three tests!”
She turned from rejoicing. The circle of pseudo-Mr. Jenkinses was whirling wildly about the principal, closing in on him.
Proginoskes kythed so strongly that she was pulled back into painful awareness. “We cannot let the Echthroi get Mr. Jenkins. This is the third test, to rescue Mr. Jenkins. Senex, Sporos, everybody, help us!”
Meg heard a shrill, high scream, a scream that turned into a horrible laugh of triumph. It came from Mr. Jenkins. One Mr. Jenkins. There was no longer a spiral of Echthroid Jenkinses surrounding the principal. They had closed in, and entered their prey.
Proginoskes’s kything cut like a knife. “The Echthroi have him. We must get him away.”
The Echthros-Mr. Jenkins reached towards them. The horrible, familiar stench assailed Meg. A loathsome kything came to her in Mr. Jenkins’s tones superimposed on the whine of metal rubbing against metal. “Nonsense. Of course the Echthroi haven’t got me. I am Mr. Jenkins, and I took the Echthroi into me because they are right. It is not the Echthroi who are empty; it was I. They have filled me with the pleasure of the abyss of nothingness. Come let me X you, come to me, come . . ,”
Sporos’s long, tendrilly whiskers quivered. A faint twin-gling came from them, but now he was kything, his young greenery moving rhythmically, his delicate new needles and leaves and blades shimmering with the rhythm of Senex, of the singing farae, of Yadah. “Earthlings, forgive me. I will sing for you. The Echthroi cannot bear the song.”
Mr. Jenkins kythed like a corkscrew. “Life as we have known it is meaningless, Margaret. Civilization has failed. Your parents know this. They are giving up.”
“No, no,” Calvin protested. “They’re not like that, they’d never give up.”
“Sing,” Sporos called to the Deepening farandolae, “sing with us. Our galaxy is in danger; we must save him.”
Mr. Jenkins overrode him. “There is no hope except extinguishment. Let us hasten it.”
Meg cried through the boring of the corkscrew. “Mr. Jenkins, no! Stop it!”
Calvin joined her. “Mr. Jenkins, come back, come out of the Echthroi!”
“I am back. I am here. I am finally myself. Nothing. X-Mr. Jenkins. To be Xed is the only good.”
Again Meg felt a Bone-shattering wrench. Every muscle in her cried out in protest- Then she was flashed a brilliant image of Calvin tugging at Mr. Jenkins, powerful images of Calvin wrestling with a Mr. Jenkins suddenly wild and strong. Mr. Jenkins’s thin, flabby arms beat at Calvin with steel-spring blows. Calvin, with his lithe wiriness, eluded most of the blows, and tried desperately to catch Mr. Jenkins by the wrists—
caught him—
The wrists became talons, became nothing. Calvin was left holding nothing. Meg heard the screeching Echthroi-laugh, and Mr. Jenkins hit Calvin a thundering blow.
Meg saw red-blackness, Calvin reeling, being pulled, sucked into the vortex of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins.
Then the images of Calvin staggering from the blow, steadying himself, readying himself, vanished. The images were gone, but Calvin was there, was with her, was part of her. She had moved beyond knowing him in sensory images to that place which is beyond images. Now she was kything Calvin, not red hair, or freckles, or eager blue eyes, or the glowing smile; nor was she hearing the deep voice with the occasional treble cracking; not any of this, but—
Calvin.
She was with Calvin, kything with every atom of her being, returning to him all the fortitude and endurance and hope which he had given her.
Then she felt Proginoskes trying to get her attention and turned her kythe unwillingly towards him. “Meg, I can help Calvin, but I can’t help Mr. Jenkins. You may be able to. Try to go to him. Perhaps you can still reach him.”
She pulled back. If she went to the Echthroid-Mr. Jenkins, would the pain of the Echthroi take her again? there were no little farandolae to save her this time. She could not do it, could not knowingly open herself to that pain—
But Mr. Jenkins had come into the whirling circle of death for her sake. If Mr. Jenkins was possessed by Echthroi now it was because of his love for her.
She gave a sigh of acceptance of what she must do. Then she turned her kythe towards Mr. Jenkins who was somewhere in the horrible Echthroid version of himself.
“Mr. Jenkins!” She flung her kythe towards him with all her might. And now she no longer saw the thinning brown hair, the same mouse-brown as her own, or the middle-aged eyes behind the lenses of the horn-rimmed spectacles, or the sloping shoulders with the light snowfall of dandruff, but something deeper, more real, beyond, past, through the senses, something which was the true person. She was with Mr. Jenkins as she had been with Calvin, Calvin who was so important to her that she didn’t dare even whisper to herself how important he was—
Mr. Jenkins, too, was real, and she was with him, kything herself entirely to him—
From somewhere deep inside the Echthroid version of himself he was trying to say something, he was repeating, repeating, and finally she heard, a phrase he had used earlier, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” The single phrase was all he could manage.
She held on to it. If the Echthroi are nothing, and Mr. Jenkins is now part of that nothing, if Calvin is being Xed into that nothing—
“Fill it! Fill it!” came Calvin’s desperate kythe. Through it came a vivid image of Charles Wallace blue and gasping, her parents standing by his “bed; Dr. Louise working the emergency oxygen tank; Fortinbras lying across the threshold as though to bar death from entering the room. “Fill it!”
She was cold with desperation. “Progo! Progo, what do I do?”
She heard only an echo of Calvin’s call. “Fill the vacuum. Fill it.” He was fighting desperately, not for his own life but for Meg’s, for Charles Wallace’s, for the singing farae, for the whole of being . . .
She kythed wildly. “Progo, we passed the first test, I Named Mr. Jenkins. And the second—Sporos has Deepened. Are we failing the third test? Calvin can’t hold out any longer. Do I have to go into the Echthroi? Is that what I have to do? What will you do if I fail?”
She knew. She knew what Proginoskes would do.
Calvin was weakening rapidly, unable to counter the ‘sledgehammer blows of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins—
She flung herself into Mr. Jenkins, trying to hold the cruel arms, trying to pull him away from Calvin by the sheer force of her kythe.
The pain.
It came again, as she had known it would.
Agony. Red anguish pounding against her eyeballs . . .
. . . Charles Wallace was sharing in that anguish, his parents helpless as his small body convulsed in spasms of pain. They struggled to hold him, the Murrys, the Louises, to hold him during the convulsions, to give the racked frame support . . .
Fortinbras stood in the doorway growling, his hackles rising . . .
The Echthroi were—
Meg’s kythe was faint, almost obliterated by pain. “Calvin—Mr. Jenkins—don’t fight the Echthroi—help me fill them—“
Cold.
Cold beyond snow and ice and falling mercury.
Cold beyond the absolute zero of outer space.
Cold pulverizing her into nothingness.
Cold and pain.
She struggled.
You are not to X me, Echthroi. I fill you.
Cold.
Darkness.
Emptiness.
Nothing.
Naught.
Nought.
Echth X
Thai
Proginoskes.
A great cry. A tempest of wind. A lightning flash of fire across the cold, breaking, burning the cold and pain.
Proginoskes Xing.
Wings. All the wings. Stretched to their fullest span. Eyes. All the eyes opening and closing, opening, dimming—
Oh, no—
Going out—
No-Flame. Smoke. Feathers flying. Proginoskes flinging his great cherubic self into the void of the Echthroi who were Xing Mr. Jenkins and Calvin and Meg—
and Charles Wallace.
Wings and flame and wind, a great howling of all the hurricanes in the world meeting and battling—
“Progo!” Her cry kythed across Yadah, and then she knew what she must do. She must do as Mr. Jenkins had done when he had broken through the mad circle of whirling farandolae and held her. She must hold the Echthroi, hold them by holding Mr. Jenkins and Calvin—by holding Charles Wallace—
Hold them, Meg. Hold them all. Put your arms around them, around the Echthroi spreading their gaping, tearing nothingness across creation.
Size does not matter. You can hold them all, Charles and Calvin and Mr. Jenkins and the burning sphere of the newborn star—
She cried out, “I hold you! I love you, I Name you. I Name you, Echthroi. You are not nothing. You are.”
A small white feather which was not a feather floated through the cold.
I Name you, Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Name you Proginoskes.
I fill you with Naming.
Be!
Be, butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be, caterpillar and comet,
be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us,
dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation,
sea gulls and seraphim,
angle worms and angel host,
chrysanthemum and cherubim
(O cherubim)
Be!
Sing for the glory
of the living and the loving
the flaming of creation
sing with us
dance with us
be with us
Be!
They were not her words only.
They were the words of Senex,
of the Deepening Sporos,
of all the singing f arae,
the laughter of the greening f arandolae,
Yadah itself,
all the mitochondria,
all the human hosts,
the earth,
the sun,
the dance of the star whose birthing she had seen,
the galaxies,
the cherubim and seraphim,
wind and fire, the words of the Glory.
Echthroi! You are Named! My arms surround you. You are no longer nothing. You are. You are filled. You are me. You are Meg.
“Meg!”
Her encircling arms were around Charles Wallace.
“Where—“
(Where doesn’t matter.)
Here.
Here in Charles Wallace’s familiar room. Meg. Calvin. Mr. Jenkins. One Mr. Jenkins. The real Mr. Jenkins.
The Murrys. Dr. Louise, her stethoscope swinging loosely about her neck, looking disheveled, exhausted, happy . . .
The twins, Dennys with a big smudge of garden earth across his face, both boys still grubby and tired from their labors.
And Charles Wallace. Charles Wallace sitting up in bed, breathing quite easily and normally. Fortinbras no longer guarded the door, which now stood invitingly open. The oxygen tank, no longer needed, was in the corner.
“Charles! Oh, Charles Wallace!” Meg hugged him, swallowing a large and unexpected sob. “Are you all right? Are you really all right?”
“He’s much better,” Dr. Louise said. “We know very little about mitochondritis, but—“ Her delicate little bird’s voice faded off, and she looked questioningly at Meg.
So did her father. “Whatever happened—wherever you were—Charles Wallace was talking about mitochondria and farandolae in his delirium, and something which sounded like Echthroi—“
“And about you,” her mother added.
Meg explained flatly, “We were in one of Charles Wallace’s mitochondria.”
Mr. Murry pushed his spectacles up his nose in the same gesture which his daughter used. “So he said.” He looked at his youngest son. “I am not in a doubting mood.”
Mrs. Murry said, “Just when we thought—when we thought it was all over—Charles Wallace gasped, The Echthroi are gone!’ and suddenly his breathing started to improve.”
“All I can say,” Dennys said, “is that when Charles Wallace goes back to school, he’d better not talk the way he was doing while he was delirious.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Sandy said. “I don’t like things I don’t understand.”
“If Mother and Father hadn’t been so upset about Charles Wallace,” Dennys glared at Meg, “they’d have been furious with you for not coming right home from school.”
“Where were you, anyhow?” Sandy asked.
“Do you really expect us to swallow this stuff about your being inside Charles Wallace?”
“If you’d just be realistic for once.”
“After all, we were worried, too.”
“And then some.”
They looked at Meg, then wheeled and looked at Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins said, “Meg is quite correct And I was with her.”
The twins replied with total and stunned silence.
Finally Dennys shrugged and said, “Maybe one day someone will get around to telling us what really went on.”
“I suppose since Charles is all right—“
“We’ll just be glad about that. All’s well that ends well and all that stuff.”
“Even if everybody’s holding out on us as usual.”
They turned to Dr. Louise: “Charles is really okay?”
“Is Charles really all right?”
Dr. Louise answered them, “It’s my opinion that he’ll be completely recovered in a day or so.”
Meg confronted Mr. Jenkins. “Okay, but what about school? Won’t the trouble there go on just as miserably as ever?”
Mr. Jenkins sounded his most acid. “I think not.”
“What will you do, Mr. Jenkins? Can you make things different?”
“I don’t know. I cannot dictate Charles Wallace’s safety. He must learn, himself, to adapt. But I have less fear of the situation than I did before. After our—uh—recent experiences, the old red schoolhouse is going to be easier to enter each morning. Now I think that I am going to find upgrading an elementary school a pleasant change, and at the moment it seems a quite possible challenge.”
The twins again looked astonished. Sandy asked in a deflated way, “Well, then, isn’t anybody hungry?”
“We were so worried about Charles, we haven’t eaten for—“
“I’d like a turkey dinner,” Charles Wallace said.
Mrs. Murry looked at him, and some of the strain eased from her face. “I’m afraid I can’t manage that, but I can thaw some steaks from the freezer.”
“Can I come down when dinner is ready?”
Dr. Louise looked at him with her sharply probing gaze. “I don’t see why not. Meg, you and Calvin stay with him until then. The rest of us will go to the kitchen to be useful. Come along, Mr. Jenkins, you can help me set the table.”
When the three of them were alone, Charles Wallace said to Calvin, “You didn’t say a word.”
“I didn’t need to.” Calvin sat on the foot of Charles Wallace’s bed. He looked as tired as Dr. Louise, and as happy. He put one hand lightly over Meg’s. “It will be good to have a feast together, and celebrate.”
Meg cried, “How can we have a feast without Progo!”
“I haven’t forgotten Progo, Meg.”
“But where is he?”
“Meg, he Xed himself.”
“But where is he?”
(Where doesn’t matter.)
Calvin’s hand pressed more strongly against Meg’s. “As Progo might say, he is Named. And so he’s all right. The
Echthroi did not get Progo, Meg. He Xed of his own volition,”
“But, Calvin—“
“Proginoskes is a cherubim, Meg. It was his own choice.”
Meg’s eyes were too bright. “I wish human beings couldn’t have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt.”
Charles Wallace hugged her. “I didn’t imagine my dragons, did I?”
As he had intended her to, she gave a watery smile.
Immediately after dinner Dr. Louise ordered Charles Wallace back to bed. Meg held out her arms to kiss him good night. She knew that he was aware of her feeling of incompleteness without Proginoskes, and, as he kissed her cheek, he whispered, “Why don’t you and Calvin go out to the north pasture and the big rocks and look around?”
She nodded, then glanced at Calvin. Wordlessly they slipped out to the pantry and put on ski jackets. When they had left the house behind them, he said, “It’s funny to talk instead of kything, isn’t it? I suppose we’d better get used to it.”
She walked close beside him, across the rich, newly spaded earth of the garden. “There are things we aren’t going to be able to talk about in front of people except in kything.”
Calvin reached for one of her mittened hands. “I have a feeling we’re not supposed to talk about them too much.”
Meg asked, “But Blajeny—where’s Blajeny?”
Calvin’s hand held hers firmly. “I don’t know, Meg. I suspect that he’s wherever he’s been sent, Teaching.”
They paused at the stone wall.
“It’s a cold night, Meg. I don’t think Louise will come out.” He climbed the wall and moved swiftly to the two glacial rocks. The great stones loomed darkly against the sky. The grass about them was crunchy with frost. And empty.
Meg said, “Let’s go to the star-watching rock.”
The star-watching rock lay coldly under the brilliance of the stars. There was nothing there. A tear trickled down Meg’s cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of one mitten.
Calvin put his arm around her. “I know, Meg. I want to know what’s happened to Progo, too. All I know is that somehow or other, he’s all right.”
“I think I know he’s all right. But my mind would like to be in on the knowing.” She shivered.
“We’d better go in. I promised your parents we wouldn’t stay out long.”
She felt an extraordinary reluctance to leave, but she allowed Calvin to lead her away. When they reached the stone wall she stopped. “Wait a minute—“
“Louise isn’t—“ Calvin started, but a dark shadow slid out of the stones, uncoiled slowly and gracefully, and bowed to them.
“Oh, Louise,” Meg said, “Louise—“
But Louise had dropped to the wall again and disappeared somewhere within it. Nevertheless Meg felt comforted and reassured. In silence they returned to the house. In the pantry they hung their jackets on the hooks; the door to the lab was closed. So was the door to the kitchen.
Then the kitchen door blew open with a bang.
Sandy and Dennys were at the dining table, doing homework. “Hey,” Sandy said, “you don’t need to be so violent.”
“You could just open the door, you don’t have to take it off its hinges.”
“We didn’t touch the door,” Meg said. “It blew open.”
Sandy slammed his Latin text shut. “That’s nonsense. There’s hardly any wind tonight, and what there is, is coming from the opposite direction.”
Dennys looked up from his math paper. “Charles Wallace wants you to come upstairs to him, Meg. Shut the door, at any rate. It’s cold.”
Sandy got up and shut the door firmly. “You were gone long enough.”
“Did you count the stars or something?”
“We don’t have to count them,” Meg said. “They just need to be known by Name.”
Calvin’s eyes met hers for a long moment and held her gaze, not speaking, not kything, simply being.
Then she went up to Charles Wallace.