A Swiftly Tilting Planet (22 page)

“The wind says there’s no time. We’ll fly out of time and through galaxies the Echthroi do not know. But the wind says it may be difficult to send you Within, even so. Hold on, and try not to be afraid.”

Charles Wallace felt the wind beneath them as Gaudior spread his wings. The flight at first was serene. Then he began to feel cold, a deep, penetrating cold far worse than the cold of the Ice Age sea. This was a cold of the spirit as well as the body. He did not fall off the unicorn because he was frozen to him; his hands were congealed in their clenched grasp on the frozen mane.

Gaudior’s hoofs touched something solid, and the cold lifted just enough so that the boy was able to unclench his hands and open his frozen lids. They were in an open square in a frozen city of tall, windowless buildings. There was no sign of tree, of grass. The blind cement was cracked, and there were great chunks of fallen masonry on the street.

“Where—” Charles Wallace started, and stopped.

The unicorn turned his head slowly. “A Projection—”

Charles Wallace followed his gaze and saw two men in gas masks patrolling the square with machine guns. “Do they see us?”

The question was answered by the two men pausing,
turning, looking through the round black eyes of their gas masks directly at unicorn and boy, and raising their guns.

With a tremendous leap Gaudior launched upward, wings straining. Charles Wallace pressed close to the neck, hands twined in the mane. But for the moment they had escaped the Echthroi, and when Gaudior’s hoofs touched the ground, the Projection was gone.

“Those men with guns—” Charles Wallace started. “In a Projection, could they have killed us?”

“I don’t know,” Gaudior said, “and I didn’t want to wait to find out.”

Charles Wallace looked around in relief. When he had left Chuck, it was autumn, the cold wind stripping the trees. Now it was high spring, the old apple and pear trees in full blossom, and the smell of lilac on the breeze. All about them, the birds were in full song.

“What should we do now?” Charles Wallace asked.

“At least you’re asking, not telling.” Gaudior sounded unusually cross, so the boy knew he was unusually anxious.

Meg shivered. Within the kythe she saw the star-watching rock and a golden summer’s day. There were two people on the rock, a young woman, and a young man—or a boy? She was not sure, because there was something wrong with the boy. But from their dress she was positive that it was the time of the Civil War—around 1865.

* * *

The Within-ing was long and agonizing, instead of immediate, as it had always been before. Charles Wallace felt intolerable pain in his back, and a crushing of his legs. He could hear himself screaming. His body was being forced into another body, and at the same time something was struggling to pull him out. He was being torn apart in a battle between two opposing forces. Sun blazed, followed by a blizzard of snow, snow melted by raging fire, and violent flashings of lightning, driven by a mighty wind, which whipped across sea and land …

His body was gone and he was Within, Within a crippled body, the body of a young man with useless legs like a shriveled child’s … Matthew Maddox.

From the waist up he looked not unlike Madoc, and about the same age, with a proud head and a lion’s mane of fair hair. But the body was nothing like Madoc’s strong and virile one. And the eyes were grey, grey as the ocean before rain.

Matthew was looking somberly at the girl, who appeared to be about his age, though her eyes were far younger than his. “Croeso f’annwyl, Zillah.” He spoke the Welsh words of endearment lovingly. “Thank you for coming.”

“You knew I would. As soon as Jack O’Keefe brought your note, I set off. How did you get here?”

He indicated a low wagon which stood a little way from the rock.

She looked at the powerful torso, and deeply muscled shoulders and arms. “By yourself, all the way?”

“No. I can do it, but it takes me a long time, and I had to go over the store ledgers this morning. When I went to the stables to find Jack to deliver the note, I swallowed my pride and asked him to bring me.”

Zillah spread her billowing white skirts about her on the rock. She wore a wide-brimmed leghorn hat with blue ribbons, which brought out the highlights in her straight, shining black hair, and a locket on a blue ribbon at her throat. To Matthew Maddox she was the most beautiful, and desirable, and—to him—the most unattainable woman in the world.

“Matt, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“Something’s happened to Bran.”

She paled. “How do you know? Are you sure?”

“Last night I woke out of a sound sleep with an incredibly sharp pain in my leg. Not my own familiar pain, Bran’s pain. And he was calling out to me to help him.”

“O dear Lord. Is he going to be all right?”

“He’s alive. He’s been reaching out to me all day.”

She buried her face in her hands, so that her words were muffled. “Thank you for telling me. You and Bran—you’ve always been so close, even closer than most twins.”

He acknowledged this with a nod. “We were always close, but it was after my accident that—it was Bran who brought me back into life, Zillah, you know that.”

She dropped her hand lightly on his shoulder. “If Bran is badly wounded, we’re going to need you. As once you needed Bran.”

After the accident, five years earlier, when his horse had crashed into a fence and rolled over on him, crushing his pelvis and legs and fracturing his spine, Bran had shown him no pity; instead, had fiercely tried to push his twin brother into as much independence as possible, and refused to allow him to feel sorry for himself.

“But Rollo jumps fences twice as high with ease.”

“He didn’t jump that one.”

“Bran, just before he crashed, there was a horrible, putrid stink—”

“Stop going back over things. Get on with it.”

They continued to go everywhere together—until the war. Unlike Bran, Matthew could not lie about his age and join the cavalry.

“I lived my life through Bran, vicariously,” Matthew told Zillah. “When he went to war, it was the first time he ever left me out.” Then: “When you and Bran fell in love, I knew that I had to start letting him go, to try to find some kind of life of my own, so that he’d be free. And it was easier to let go with you than with anyone
else in the world, because you’ve always treated me like a complete human being, and I knew that the two of you would not exclude me from your lives.”

“Dear Matt. Never. And you are making your own life. You’re selling your stories and poems, and I think they’re as good as anything by Mark Twain.”

Matthew laughed, a warm laugh that lightened the pain lines in his face. “They’re only a beginner’s work.”

“But editors think they’re good, too, and so does my father.”

“I’m glad. I value Dr. Llawcae’s opinion as much as anybody’s in the world.”

“And he loves you and Bran and Gwen as though you were my brothers and sister. And your mother has been a second mother to me since my own dear mama died. As for our fathers—they may be only distant kin, but they’re like as two peas in a pod with their passion for Wales. Matt—have you said anything about Bran to Gwen or your parents?”

“No. They don’t like the idea that Bran and I can communicate without speech or letters the way we do. They pretend it’s some kind of trick we’ve worked out, the way we used to change places with each other when we were little, to fool people. They think what we do isn’t real.”

“It’s real, I don’t doubt that.” Zillah smiled. “Dear Matt, I think I love you nearly as much as Bran does.”

* * *

A week later, Mr. Maddox received official news that his son had been wounded in battle and would be invalided home. He called the family into the dark, book-lined library to inform them.

Mrs. Maddox fanned herself with her black lace fan. “Thank God.”

“You’re glad Bran’s been wounded!” Gwen cried indignantly.

Mrs. Maddox continued to fan herself. “Of course not, child. But I’m grateful to God that he’s alive, and that he’s coming home before something worse than a bullet in the leg happens to him.”

—It
is
worse, Mama, Matthew thought silently.—Bran has been shutting me out of his thoughts and he’s never done that before. All I get from him is a dull, deadening pain. Gwen is more right than she knows, not to be glad.

He looked thoughtfully at his sister. She was dark of hair and blue of eye like Zillah, making them appear more like sisters than distant cousins. But her face did not have Zillah’s openness, and her eyes were a colder blue and glittered when she was angry. After Matthew’s accident she had pitied him, but had not translated her pity into compassion. Matthew did not want pity.

Gwen returned his gaze. “And how do you feel about your twin’s coming home, Matthew?”

“He’s been badly hurt, Gwen,” he said. “He’s not going to be the same debonair Bran who left us.”

“He’s still only a child.” Mrs. Maddox turned toward her husband, who was sitting behind the long oak library table.

“He’s a man, and when he comes home the store will become Maddox and Son,” her husband said.

—Maddox and Son, Matthew thought without bitterness—not Maddox and Sons.

He turned his wheelchair slightly away. He was totally committed to his writing; he had no wish to be a partner in Maddox’s General Store, which was a large and prosperous establishment in the center of the village, and had the trade of the surrounding countryside for many miles. The first story of the rambling frame building was filled with all the foodstuffs needed for the village. Upstairs were saddles and harnesses, guns, plows, and even a large quantity of oars, as though Mr. Maddox remembered a time when nearly all of the valley had been a great lake. A few ponds were all that remained of the original body of water. Matthew spent most mornings in the store, taking care of the ledgers and all the accounts.

Behind the store was the house, named Merioneth. The Llawcae home, Madrun, stood beyond Merioneth, slightly more ostentatious, with white pillars and pinkbrick façade. Merioneth was the typical three-storied
white frame farmhouse with dark shutters which had replaced the original log cabins.

“People think we’re putting on airs, giving our houses names,” Bran had complained one day, before the accident, as he and Matthew were walking home from school.

Matthew did a cartwheel. “I like it,” he said as he came right side up. “Merioneth is named in honor of a distant cousin of ours in Wales.”

“Yah, I know, Michael Jones, a congregational minister of Bala in Merioneth.”

“Cousin Michael’s pleased that we’ve given the house that name. He mentions it almost every time he writes to Papa. Weren’t you listening yesterday when he was telling us about Love Jones Parry, the squire of Madrun, and his plan to take a trip to Patagonia to inspect the land and see if it might be suitable for a colony from Wales?”

“That’s the only interesting bit,” Bran had said. “I love to travel, even just to go with Papa to get supplies. Maybe if the squire of Madrun really does take that trip, we could go with him.”

It was not long after this that the accident happened, and Matthew remembered how Bran had tried to rouse him from despair by telling him that Love Jones Parry had actually gone to Patagonia, and reported that although the land was wild and desolate, he thought that the formation of a Welsh colony where the colonists
would be allowed to teach their native tongue in school might be possible. The Spanish government paid scant attention to that section of Patagonia, where there were only a few Indians and a handful of Spaniards.

But Matthew refused to be roused. “Exciting for you. I’m not going to get very far from Merioneth ever again.”

Bran had scowled at him ferociously. “You cannot afford the luxury of self-pity.”

—It is still an expensive luxury, Matthew thought—and one I can ill afford.

“Matt!” It was Gwen. “A penny for your thoughts.”

He had been writing when his father had summoned them, and still had his note pad on his lap. “Just thinking out the plot for another story.”

She smiled at him brightly. “You’re going to make the name of Maddox famous!”

“My brave baby,” Mrs. Maddox said. “How proud I am of you! That was the third story you’ve sold to
Harper’s Monthly
, wasn’t it?”

“The fourth—Mama, Papa, Gwen: I think I must warn you that Bran is going to need all our love and help when he comes home.”

“Well, of course—” Gwen started indignantly. “No, Gwen,” he said quietly. “Bran is hurt much more than just the leg wound.”

“What are you talking about?” his father demanded. “You might call it Bran’s soul. It’s sick.”

* * *

Bran returned, limping and withdrawn. He shut Matthew out as effectively as though he had slammed a door in his twin’s face.

Once again Matthew sent a note to Zillah to meet him at the flat rock. This time he did not ask Jack O’Keefe for help, but lying on the wagon, he pulled himself over the rough ground. It was arduous work, even with his powerful arms, and he was exhausted when he arrived. But he had allowed more than enough time. He heaved himself off the wagon and dragged over to the rock, stretched out, and slept under the warm autumn sun.

“Matt—”

He woke up. Zillah was smiling down at him. “F’annwyl.” He pushed the fair hair back from his eyes and sat up. “Thanks for coming.”

“How is he today?”

Matthew shook his head. “No change. It’s hard on Papa to have another crippled son.”

“Hush. Bran’s not a cripple!”

“He’ll limp from that leg wound for the rest of his life. And whether or not his spirit will heal is anybody’s guess.”

“Give him time, Matt …”

“Time!” Matthew pushed the word away impatiently. “That’s what Mama keeps saying. But we’ve given him time. It’s three months since he came home. He sleeps
half the day and reads half the night. And he’s still keeping himself closed to me. If he’d talk about his experiences it might help him, but he won’t.”

“Not even to you?”

“He seems to feel he has to protect me,” Matthew said bitterly, “and one of the things I’ve always loved most in Bran was his refusal to protect or mollycoddle me in any way.”