A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet) (11 page)

“Now you, Meg,” Mrs Whatsit ordered.

“Oh, Euclid, I suppose.” Meg was in such an agony of impatience that her voice grated irritably. “And Copernicus. But what about Father? Please, what about Father?”

“Wee aarre ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr,” Mrs Which said.

“But where is he?” Meg went over to Mrs Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.

Mrs Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. “On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong.”

All traces of cheer had left the Happy Medium’s face. She sat holding the great ball, looking down at the shadowed earth, and a slow tear coursed down her cheek. “I can’t stand it any longer,” she sobbed. “Watch now, children, watch!”

Again they focused their eyes on the crystal ball. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again.

“Watch!” the Medium told them.

The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to
comfort
them?

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.

“You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!”

Mrs Whatsit sighed, a sigh so sad that Meg wanted to put her arms around her and comfort her.

“Tell us exactly what happened, then, please,” Charles Wallace said in a small voice.

“It was a star,” Mrs Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up
its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”

Mrs Which spoke again. Her voice sounded tired, and they knew that speaking was a tremendous effort for her. “Itt wass nnott sso llongg aggo fforr yyou, wwass itt?” she asked gently.

Mrs Whatsit shook her head.

Charles Wallace went up to Mrs Whatsit. “I see. Now I understand. You were a star, once, weren’t you?”

Mrs Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded.

“And you did—you did what that star just did?”

With her face still covered, Mrs Whatsit nodded again.

Charles Wallace looked at her, very solemnly. “I should like to kiss you.”

Mrs Whatsit took her hands down from her face and pulled Charles Wallace to her in a quick embrace. He put his arms about her neck, pressed his cheek against hers, and then kissed her.

Meg felt that she would have liked to kiss Mrs Whatsit, too, but that after Charles Wallace, anything that she or Calvin did or said would be anticlimax. She contented herself with looking at Mrs Whatsit. Even though she was used to Mrs Whatsit’s odd getup (and the very oddness of it was what made her seem so comforting), she realized with a fresh shock that it was not Mrs Whatsit herself that she was seeing at all. The complete, the true Mrs Whatsit, Meg realized, was beyond human understanding. What she saw was only the game Mrs Whatsit was playing; it
was an amusing and charming game, a game full of both laughter and comfort, but it was only the tiniest facet of all the things Mrs Whatsit
could
be.

“I didn’t mean to tell you,” Mrs Whatsit faltered. “I didn’t mean ever to let you know. But, oh, my dears, I did so love being a star!”

“Yyouu arre sstill verry yyoungg,” Mrs Which said, her voice faintly chiding.

The Medium sat looking happily at the star-filled sky in her ball, smiling and nodding and chuckling gently. But Meg noticed that her eyes were drooping, and suddenly her head fell forward and she gave a faint snore.

“Poor thing,” Mrs Whatsit said, “we’ve worn her out. It’s very hard work for her.”

“Please, Mrs Whatsit,” Meg asked, “what happens now? Why are we here? What do we do next? Where is Father? When are we going to him?” She clasped her hands pleadingly.

“One thing at a time, love!” Mrs Whatsit said.

Mrs Who cut in. “
As paredes tem ouvidos
. That’s Portuguese.
Walls have ears
.”

“Yes, let us go outside,” Mrs Whatsit said. “Come, we’ll let her sleep.”

But as they turned to go, the Medium jerked her head up and smiled at them radiantly. “You weren’t going to go without saying good-bye to me, were you?” she asked.

“We thought we’d just let you sleep, dear.” Mrs Whatsit patted the Medium’s shoulder. “We worked you terribly hard and we know you must be very tired.”

“But I was going to give you some ambrosia or nectar or at least some tea—”

At this Meg realized that she was hungry. How much time had passed since they had had their bowls of stew? she wondered.

But Mrs Whatsit said, “Oh, thank you, dear, but I think we’d better be going.”

“
They
don’t need to eat, you know,” Charles Wallace whispered to Meg. “At least not food, the way we do. Eating’s just a game with them. As soon as we get organized again I’d better remind them that they’ll have to feed us sooner or later.”

The Medium smiled and nodded. “It does seem as though I should be able to do something
nice
for you, after having had to show those poor children such horrid things. Would they like to see their mother before they go?”

“Could we see Father?” Meg asked eagerly.

“Nno,” Mrs Which said. “Wwee aare ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr, Mmegg. Doo nnott bbee immpatientt.”

“But she
could
see her mother, couldn’t she?” the Medium wheedled.

“Oh, why not,” Mrs Whatsit put in. “It won’t take long and it can’t do any harm.”

“And Calvin, too?” Meg asked. “Could he see his mother, too?”

Calvin touched Meg in a quick gesture, and whether it was of thanks or apprehension she was not sure.

“I tthinkk itt iss a misstake.” Mrs Which was disapproving. “Bbutt ssince yyou hhave menttionedd itt I ssupposse yyouu musstt ggo aheadd.”

“I hate it when she gets cross,” Mrs Whatsit said, glancing over at Mrs Which, “and the trouble is, she always seems to be right. But I really don’t see how it could hurt, and it might make you all feel better. Go on, Medium dear.”

The Medium, smiling and humming softly, turned the crystal ball a little between her hands. Stars, comets, planets, flashed across the sky, and then the earth came into view again, the darkened earth, closer, closer, till it filled the globe, and they had somehow gone through the darkness until the soft white of clouds and the gentle outline of continents shone clearly.

“Calvin’s mother first,” Meg whispered to the Medium.

The globe became hazy, cloudy, then shadows began to solidify, to clarify, and they were looking into an untidy kitchen with a sink full of unwashed dishes. In front of the sink stood an unkempt woman with gray hair stringing about her face. Her mouth was open and Meg could see the toothless gums and it seemed that she could almost hear her screaming at two small children who were standing by her. Then she grabbed a long wooden spoon from the sink and began whacking one of the children.

“Oh, dear—” the Medium murmured, and the picture began to dissolve. “I didn’t really—”

“It’s all right,” Calvin said in a low voice. “I think I’d rather you knew.”

Now instead of reaching out to Calvin for safety, Meg took his hand in hers, not saying anything in words but trying to tell him by the pressure of her fingers what she felt. If anyone had told her only the day before that she,
Meg, the snaggle-toothed, the myopic, the clumsy, would be taking a boy’s hand to offer him comfort and strength, particularly a popular and important boy like Calvin, the idea would have been beyond her comprehension. But now it seemed as natural to want to help and protect Calvin as it did Charles Wallace.

The shadows were swirling in the crystal again, and as they cleared Meg began to recognize her mother’s lab at home. Mrs. Murry was sitting perched on her high stool, writing away at a sheet of paper on a clipboard on her lap. She’s writing Father, Meg thought. The way she always does. Every night.

The tears that she could never learn to control swam to her eyes as she watched. Mrs. Murry looked up from her letter, almost as though she were looking toward the children, and then her head drooped and she put it down on the paper, and sat there, huddled up, letting herself relax into an unhappiness that she never allowed her children to see.

And now the desire for tears left Meg. The hot, protective anger she had felt for Calvin when she looked into his home she now felt turned toward her mother.

“Let’s go!” she cried harshly. “Let’s
do
something!”

“She’s always so right,” Mrs Whatsit murmured, looking towards Mrs Which. “Sometimes I wish she’d just say I told you so and have done with it.”

“I only meant to help—” the Medium wailed.

“Oh, Medium, dear,
don’t
feel badly,” Mrs Whatsit said swiftly. “Look at something cheerful, do. I can’t bear to have you distressed!”

“It’s all right,” Meg assured the Medium earnestly. “Truly it is, Mrs. Medium, and we thank you very much.”

“Are you sure?” the Medium asked, brightening.

“Of course! It really helped ever so much because it made me mad, and when I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.”

“Well, kiss me good-bye for good luck, then,” the Medium said.

Meg went over to her and gave her a quick kiss, and so did Charles Wallace. The Medium looked smilingly at Calvin, and winked. “I want the young man to kiss me, too. I always did love red hair. And it’ll give you good luck, Laddie-me-love.”

Calvin bent down, blushing, and awkwardly kissed her cheek.

The Medium tweaked his nose. “You’ve got a lot to learn, my boy,” she told him.

“Now, good-bye, Medium dear, and many thanks,” Mrs Whatsit said. “I dare say we’ll see you in an eon or two.”

“Where are you going in case I want to tune in?” the Medium asked.

“Camazotz,” Mrs Whatsit told her. (Where and what was Camazotz? Meg did not like the sound of the word or the way in which Mrs Whatsit pronounced it.) “But please don’t distress yourself on our behalf. You know you don’t like looking in on the dark planets, and it’s very upsetting to us when you aren’t happy.”

“But I must know what happens to the children,” the Medium said. “It’s my worst trouble, getting fond. If I didn’t get fond I could be happy all the time.
Oh
, well,
ho
hum, I manage to keep pretty jolly, and a little snooze will do wonders for me right now. Good-bye, everyb—” and her word got lost in the general b-b-bz-z of a snore.

“Ccome,” Mrs Which ordered, and they followed her out of the darkness of the cave to the impersonal grayness of the Medium’s planet.

“Nnoww, cchilldrenn, yyouu musstt nott bee frrightennedd att whatt iss ggoingg tto hhappenn,” Mrs Which warned.

“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”

Without warning Meg was swept into nothingness again. This time the nothingness was interrupted by a feeling of clammy coldness such as she had never felt before. The coldness deepened and swirled all about her and through her, and was filled with a new and strange kind of darkness that was a completely tangible thing, a thing that wanted to eat and digest her like some enormous malignant beast of prey.

Then the darkness was gone. Had it been the shadow, the Black Thing? Had they had to travel through it to get to her father?

There was the by-now-familiar tingling in her hands and feet and the push through hardness, and she was on her feet, breathless but unharmed, standing beside Calvin and Charles Wallace.

“Is this Camazotz?” Charles Wallace asked as Mrs Whatsit materialized in front of him.

“Yes,” she answered. “Now let us just stand and get our breath and look around.”

They were standing on a hill and as Meg looked about her she felt that it could easily be a hill on earth. There were the familiar trees she knew so well at home: birches, pines, maples. And though it was warmer than it had been when they so precipitously left the apple orchard, there was a faintly autumnal touch to the air; near them were several small trees with reddened leaves very like sumac, and a big patch of goldenrod-like flowers. As she looked down the hill she could see the smokestacks of a town, and it might have been one of any number of familiar towns. There seemed to be nothing strange, or different, or frightening, in the landscape.

But Mrs Whatsit came to her and put an arm around her comfortingly. “I can’t stay with you here, you know, love,” she said. “You three children will be on your own. We will be near you; we will be watching you. But you will not be able to see us or to ask us for help, and we will not be able to come to you.”