W-in-Time - Wind in the Door, A - L'Engle, Madeline.
    

   1 Charles Wallace's Dragons.
    "There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden." Meg Murry took her head 
out of the refrigerator where she had been foraging for an after-school snack, 
and looked at her six-year-old brother. "What?" "There are dragons in the twins' 
vegetable garden. Or there were. They've moved to the north pasture now." Meg, 
not replying—it did not do to answer Charles Wallace too quickly when he said 
something odd—returned to the refrigerator. "I suppose I'll have lettuce and 
tomato as usual. I was looking for something new and different and exciting." 
"Meg, did you hear me?" "Yes, I heard you. I think I'll have liverwurst and 
cream cheese." She took her sandwich materials and a bottle of milk and set them 
out on the kitchen table. Charles Wallace waited patiently. She looked at him, 
scowling with an anxiety she did not like to admit to herself, at the fresh rips 
in the knees of his blue jeans, the streaks of dirt grained deep in his shirt, a 
darkening bruise on the cheekbone under his left eye. "Okay, did the big boys 
jump you in the schoolyard this time, or when you got off the bus?" "Meg, you 
aren't listening to me." "I happen to care that you've been in school for two 
months now and not a single week has gone by that you haven't been roughed up. 
If you've been talking about dragons in the garden or wherever they are, I 
suppose that explains it." "I haven't. Don't underestimate me. I didn't see them 
till I got home." Whenever Meg was deeply worried she got angry. Now she scowled 
at her sandwich. "I wish Mother'd get the spreadable kind of cream cheese. This 
stuff keeps going right through the bread. Where is she?" "In the lab, doing an 
experiment. She said to tell you she wouldn't be long." "Where's Father?" "He 
got a call from L.A., and he's gone to Washington for a couple of days." Like 
the dragons in the garden, their father's visits to the White House were 
something best not talked about at school. Unlike the dragons, these visits were 
real.
    Charles Wallace picked up Meg's doubting. "But I saw them, Meg, the dragons. 
Eat your sandwich and come see." "Where're Sandy and Dennys?" "Soccer practice. 
I haven't told anybody but you." Suddenly sounding forlorn, younger than his six 
years, he said, "I wish the high-school bus got home earlier. I've been waiting 
and waiting for you." Meg returned to the refrigerator to get lettuce. This was 
a cover for some rapid thinking, although she couldn't count on Charles Wallace 
not picking up her thoughts, as he had picked up her doubts about the dragons. 
What he had actually seen she could not begin to guess. That he had seen 
something, something unusual, she was positive.
    Charles Wallace silently watched her finish making the sandwich, carefully 
aligning the slices of bread and cutting it in precise sections. "I wonder if 
Mr. Jenkins has ever seen a dragon?" Mr. Jenkins was the principal of the 
village school, and Meg had had her own troubles with him. She had small hope 
that Mr. Jenkins would care what happened to Charles Wallace, or that he would 
be willing to interfere in what he called 'the normal procedures of democracy.' 
"Mr. Jenkins believes in the law of the jungle." She spoke through a mouthful. 
"Aren't there dragons in the jungle?" Charles Wallace finished his glass of 
milk. "No wonder you always flunk social studies. Eat your sandwich and stop 
stalling. Let's go and see if they're still there." They crossed the lawn, 
followed by Fortinbras, the large, black, almost-Labrador dog, happily sniffing 
and snuffling at the rusty autumnal remains of the rhubarb patch. Meg tripped 
over a wire hoop from the croquet set, and made an annoyed grunt, mostly at 
herself, because she had put the wickets and mallets away after the last game, 
and forgotten this one. A low wall of barberry separated the croquet lawn from 
Sandy's and Dennys's vegetable garden. Fortinbras leaped over the barberry, and 
Meg called automatically, "Not in the garden, Fort," and the big dog backed out, 
between rows of cabbage and broccoli. The twins were justly proud of their 
organic produce, which they sold around the village for pocket money.
    "A dragon could make a real mess of this garden," Charles Wallace said, and 
led Meg through rows of vegetables. "I think he realized that, because suddenly 
he sort of wasn't there." "What do you mean, he sort of wasn't there? Either he 
was there, or he wasn't." "He was there, and then when I went to look closer, he 
wasn't there, and I followed him—not really him, because he was much faster than 
I, and I only followed where he'd been. And he went to the big glacial rocks in 
the north pasture." Meg looked scowlingly at the garden. Never before had 
Charles Wallace sounded as implausible as this.
    He said, "Come on," and moved past the tall sheaves of corn, which had only 
a few scraggly ears left. Beyond the corn the sunflowers caught the slanting 
rays of the afternoon sun, then* golden faces reflecting brilliance.
    "Charles, are you all right?" Meg asked. It was not like Charles to lose 
touch with reality. Then she noticed that he was breathing heavily, as if he had 
been running, though they had not been walking rapidly. His face was pale, his 
forehead beaded with perspiration, as though from over-exertion.
    She did not like the way he looked, and she turned her mind back to the 
unlikely tale of dragons, picking her way around the luxuriant pumpkin vines, 
"Charles, when did you see these—dragons?" "A dollop of dragons, a drove of 
dragons, a drive of dragons," Charles Wallace panted. "After I got home from 
school. Mother was all upset because I looked such a mess. My nose was still 
very bloody." "I get upset, too." "Meg, Mother thinks it's more than the bigger 
kids punching me." "What's more?" Charles Wallace scrambled with unusual 
clumsiness and difficulty over the low stone wall which edged the orchard. "I 
get out of breath." Meg said sharply, "Why? What did Mother say?" Charles walked 
slowly through the high grass in the orchard. "She hasn't said. But it's sort of 
like radar blipping at me." Meg walked beside him. She was tall for her age, and 
Charles Wallace small for his. "There are times when I wish you didn't pick up 
radar signals quite so well." "I can't help it, Meg. I don't try to. It just 
happens. Mother thinks something is wrong with me." "But what?" she almost 
shouted.
    Charles Wallace spoke very quietly. "I don't know. Something bad enough so 
her worry blips loud and clear. And I know there's something wrong. Just to walk 
across the orchard like this is an effort, and it shouldn't be. It never has 
been before." "When did this start?" she asked sharply. "You were all right last 
weekend when we went walking in the woods." "I know. I've been sort of tired all 
autumn, but it's been worse this week, and much worse today than it was 
yesterday. Hey, Meg! Stop blaming yourself because you didn't notice." She had 
been doing precisely that. Her hands felt cold with panic. She tried to push her 
fear away, because Charles Wallace could read his sister even more easily than 
he could their mother. He picked up a windfall apple, looked it over for worms, 
and bit into it. His end-of-summer tan could not disguise his extreme pallor, 
nor his shadowed eyes; why hadn't she noticed this? Because she hadn't wanted 
to. It was easier to blame Charles Wallace's paleness and lethargy on his 
problems at school.
    "Why doesn't Mother have a doctor look at you, then? I mean a real doctor?" 
"She has." "When?" "Today." "Why didn't you tell me before?" "I was more 
interested in dragons." "Charles!" "It was before you got home from school. Dr. 
Louise came to have lunch with Mother—she does, quite often, anyhow—" "I know. 
Go on." "So when I got home from school she went over me, from top to toe." 
"What did she say?" "Nothing much. I can't read her the way I can read Mother. 
She's like a little bird, twittering away, and all the time you know that sharp 
mind of hers is thinking along on another level. She's very good at blocking me. 
All I could gather was that she thought Mother might be right about— about 
whatever it is. And she'd keep in touch." They had finished crossing the orchard 
and Charles Wallace climbed up onto the wall again and stood there, looking 
across an unused pasture where there were two large out-croppings of glacial 
rock. "They're gone," he said. "My dragons are gone." Meg stood on the wall 
beside him. There was nothing to see except the wind blowing through the 
sun-bleached grasses, and 'the two tall rocks, turning purple in the autumn 
evening light. "Are you sure it wasn't just the rocks or shadows or something?" 
"Do rocks or shadows look like dragons?" "No, but—" "Meg, they were right by the 
rocks, all sort of clustered together, wings, it looked like hundreds of wings, 
and eyes opening and shutting between the wings, and some smoke and little 
spurts of fire, and I warned them not to set the pasture on fire." "How did you 
warn them?" "I spoke to them. In a loud voice. And the flames stopped." "Did you 
go close?" "It didn't seem wise. I stayed here on the wall and watched for a 
long time. They kept folding and unfolding wings and sort of winking all those 
eyes at me, and then they all seemed to huddle together and go to sleep, so I 
went home to wait for you. Meg! You don't believe me." She asked, flatly, "Well, 
where have they gone?" "You've never not believed me before." She said, 
carefully, "It's not that I don't believe you." In a strange way she did believe 
him. Not, perhaps, that he had seen actual dragons—but Charles Wallace had never 
before tended to mix fact and fancy. Never before had he separated reality and 
illusion in such a marked way. She looked at him, saw that he had a sweatshirt 
on over his grubby shut. She held her arms about herself, shivered, and 
said—although she was quite warm enough— "I think I'll go back to the house and 
get a cardigan. Wait here. I won't be long. If the dragons come back—" "I think 
they will come back." "Then keep them here for me. I'll be as fast as I can." 
Charles Wallace looked at her levelly. "I don't think Mother wants to be 
interrupted right now." "I'm not going to interrupt her. I'm just going to get 
my cardigan." "Okay, Meg," he sighed.
    She left him sitting on the wall, looking at the two great glacial deposits, 
waiting for dragons, or whatever it was he thought he'd seen. All right, he knew 
that she was going back to the house to talk to their mother, but as long as she 
didn't admit it out loud she felt that she managed to keep at least a little of 
her worry from him.
    She burst into the laboratory.
    Her mother was sitting on a tall lab stool, not looking into the microscope 
in front of her, not writing on the clipboard which rested on her knee, just 
sitting thoughtfully. "What is it, Meg?" She started to blurt out Charles 
Wallace's talk of dragons, and that he had never had delusions before, but since 
Charles Wallace himself had not mentioned them to their mother, it seemed like a 
betrayal for her to do so, though his silence about the dragons may have been 
because of the presence of Dr. Louise.
    Her mother repeated, a little impatiently, "What is it, Meg?" "What's wrong 
with Charles Wallace?" Mrs. Murry put the clipboard down on the lab counter 
beside the microscope. "He had some trouble with the bigger boys again in school 
today." "That's not what I mean." "What do you mean, Meg?" "He said you had Dr. 
Colubra here for him." "Louise was here for lunch, so I thought she might as 
well have a look at him." "And?" "And what, Meg?" "What's the matter with him?" 
"We don't know, Meg. Not yet, at any rate." "Charles says you're worried about 
him." "I am. Aren't you?" "Yes. But I thought it was all school. And now I don't 
think it is. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard. And he's too 
pale. And he imagines things. And he looks—I don't like the way he looks." 
"Neither do I." "What is it? What's wrong? Is it a virus or something?" Mrs. 
Murry hesitated. "I'm not sure." "Mother, please, if there's anything really 
wrong with Charles I'm old enough to know." "I don't know whether there is or 
not. Neither does Louise. When we find out anything definite, I'll tell you. I 
promise you that." "You're not hiding anything?" "Meg, there's no use talking 
about something I'm not sure of. I should know in a few days." Meg twisted her 
hands together nervously. "You really are worried." Mrs. Murry smiled. "Mothers 
tend to be. Where is he now?" "Oh—I left him on the stone wall—I said I was 
coming in for a cardigan. I've got to run back or he'll think—" Without 
finishing she rushed out of the lab, grabbed a cardigan from one of the hooks in 
the pantry, and ran across the lawn.
    When she reached Charles Wallace he was sitting on the wall, just as she had 
left him. There was no sign of dragons.
    She had not really expected that there would be. Nevertheless, she was 
disappointed, her anxiety about Charles subtly deepened.
    "What did Mother say?" he asked.
    "Nothing." His large, deep-seeing blue eyes focused on her. "She didn't 
mention mitochondria? Or farandolae?" "Hunh? Why should she?" Charles Wallace 
kicked the rubber heels of his sneakers against the wall, looked at Meg, did not 
answer.
    Meg persisted, "Why should Mother mention mitochondria? Isn't that—talking 
about them—what got you into trouble your very first day in school?" "I am 
extremely interested in them. And in dragons. I'm sorry they haven't come back 
yet." He was very definitely changing the subject. "Let's wait a while longer 
for them. I'd rather face a few dragons any day than the kids in the schoolyard. 
Thank you for going to see Mr. Jenkins on my behalf, Meg." That was supposed to 
be a deep, dark secret. "How did you know?" "I knew." Meg hunched her shoulders. 
"Not that it did any good." She had not really had much hope that it would. Mr. 
Jenkins had been, for several years, the principal of the large regional high 
school. When he was moved, just that September, to the small grade school in the 
village, the official story was that the school needed upgrading, and Mr. 
Jenkins was the only man to do the job. The rumor was that he hadn't been able 
to handle the wilder element over at Regional. Meg had her doubts whether or not 
he could handle anybody, anywhere. And she was completely convinced that he 
would neither understand nor like Charles Wallace.
    The morning that Charles Wallace set off for first grade, Meg was far more 
nervous than he was. She could not concentrate during her last classes, and when 
school was finally over and she climbed the hill to the house and found him with 
a puffed and bleeding upper lip and a scrape across his cheek, she had a sulking 
feeling of inevitability combined with a burning rage. Charles Wallace had 
always been thought of by the villagers as peculiar, and probably not quite all 
there. Meg, picking up mail at the post office, or eggs at the store, overheard 
snatches of conversations: That littlest Murry kid is a weird one. I hear clever 
people often have dumb kids. They say he can't even talk.' It would have been 
easier if Charles Wallace had actually been stupid. But he wasn't, and he wasn't 
very good at pretending that he didn't know more than the other six-year-olds in 
his class. His vocabulary itself was against him; he had, in fact, not started 
talking until late, but then it was in complete sentences, with none of the baby 
preliminaries. In front of strangers he still seldom spoke at all—one of the 
reasons he was thought dumb; and suddenly there he was in first grade and 
talking like—like his parents, or his sister. Sandy and Dennys got along with 
everybody. It wasn't surprising that Charles was resented; everybody expected 
him to be backward, and he talked like a dictionary.
    "Now, children"—the first-grade teacher smiled brightly at the gaggle of new 
first-graders staring at her that first morning—"I want each one of you to tell 
me something about yourselves." She looked at her list. "Let's start with Mary 
Agnes. Which one is Mary Agnes?" A small girl with one missing front tooth, and 
straw-colored hair pulled tightly into pigtails, announced that she lived on a 
farm and that she had her own chickens; that morning there had been seventeen 
eggs.
    "Very good, Mary Agnes. Now, let*s see, how about you, Richard—are you 
called Dicky?" A fat little boy stood up, bobbing and grinning.
    "What have you got to tell us?" "Boys ain't like girls," Dicky said. "Boys 
is made different, see, like—" "That's fine, Dicky, just fine. Well learn more 
about that later. Now, Albertina, suppose you tell us something." Albertina was 
repeating first grade. She stood up, almost a head taller than the others, and 
announced proudly, "Our bodies are made up of bones and skinses and muskle and 
blood cells and stuff like that." "Very good, Albertina. Isn't that good, class? 
I can see we're going to have a group of real scientists this year. Let's all 
clap for Albertina, shall we? Now, uh"—she looked down at her list 
again—"Charles Wallace. Are you called Charlie?" "No," he said. "Charles 
Wallace, please." "Your parents are scientists, aren't they?" She did not wait 
for an answer. "Let's see what you have to tell us." Charles Wallace ('You 
should have known better!' Meg scolded him that night) stood and said, "What I'm 
interested in right now are the farandolae and the mitochondria." "What was 
that, Charles? The mighty what?" "Mitochondria. They and the farandolae come 
from the prokaryocytes—" "The what?" "Well, billions of years ago they probably 
swam into what eventually became our eukaryotic cells and they've just stayed 
there. They have their own DNA and RNA, which means they're quite separate from 
us. They have a symbiotic relationship with us, and the amazing thing is that 
we're completely dependent on them for our oxygen." "Now, Charles, suppose you 
stop making silly things up, and the next time I call on you, don't try to show 
off. Now, George, you tell the class something . . ." At the end of the second 
week of school, Charles Wallace paid Meg an evening visit in her attic bedroom.
    "Charles," she said, "can't you just not say anything at all?" Charles 
Wallace, in yellow footed pajamas, his fresh wounds band-aided, his small nose 
looking puffy and red, lay on the foot of Meg's big brass bed, his head pillowed 
on the shiny black bulk of the dog, Fortinbras. He sounded weary, and lethargic, 
although she hadn't noticed this at the time. "It doesn't work. Nothing works. 
If I don't talk, I'm sulking. If I talk I say something wrong. I've finished the 
workbook—the teacher said you must've helped me— and I know the reader by 
heart." Meg, circling her knees with her arms, looked down at boy and dog; 
Fortinbras was strictly not allowed on beds, but this rule was ignored in the 
attic. "Why don't they move you up to second grade?" "That would be even worse. 
They're that much bigger than I." Yes. She knew that was true.
    So she decided to go see Mr. Jenkins. She boarded the high-school bus as 
usual at seven o'clock, in the grey, uninviting light of an early morning 
brewing a nor'easter. The grade-school bus, which had not nearly so far to go, 
left an hour later. When the high-school bus made its first. stop in the village 
she slipped off, and then walked the two miles to the grade school. It was an 
old, inadequate building, painted the traditional red, overcrowded and 
understaffed. It certainly did need upgrading, and taxes were being raised for a 
new school.
    She slipped through the side door which the custodian opened early. She 
could hear the buzz of his electric floor polisher in the front hall by the 
still-locked entrance doors, and under cover of its busy sound she ran across 
the hall and darted into a small broom closet and leaned, too noisily for 
comfort, against the hanging brooms and dry mops. The closet smelted musty and 
dusty and she hoped she could keep from sneezing until Mr. Jenkins was in his 
office and his secretary had brought him his ritual mug of coffee. She shifted 
position and leaned against the corner, where she could see the glass top of the 
door to Mr. Jenkins's office through the narrow crack.
    She was stuffy-nosed and cramp-legged when the light in the office finally 
went on. Then she waited for what seemed all day but was more like half an hour, 
while she listened to the click of the secretary's heels on the polished tile 
floor, then the roar of children entering the school as the doors were unlocked. 
She thought of Charles Wallace being pushed along by the great wave of children, 
mostly much bigger than he was.
    —It's like the mob after Julius Caesar, she thought,— only Charles isn't 
much like Caesar. But I’ll bet life was simpler when all Gaul was divided in 
three parts.
    The bell screamed for the beginning of classes. The secretary clicked along 
the corridor again. That would be with Mr. Jenkins's coffee. The high heels 
receded. Meg waited for what she calculated was five minutes, then emerged, 
pressing her forefinger against her upper lip to stifle a sneeze. She crossed 
the corridor and knocked on Mr. Jenkins's door, just as the sneeze burst out 
anyhow.
    He seemed surprised to see her, as well he might, and not at all pleased, 
though his actual words were, "May I ask to what I owe this pleasure?" "I need 
to see you, please, Mr. Jenkins." "Why aren't you in school?" "I am. This 
school." "Kindly don't be rude, Meg. I see you haven't changed any over the 
summer. I had hoped you would not be one of my problems this year. Have you 
informed anybody of your whereabouts?" The early morning light glinted off his 
spectacles, veiling his eyes. Meg pushed her own spectacles up her nose, but 
could not read his expression; as usual, she thought, he looked as though he 
smelled something unpleasant.
    He sniffed. "I will have my secretary drive you to school. That will mean 
the loss of her services for a full half day." “I’ll hitchhike, thanks." 
"Compounding one misdemeanor with another? In this state, hitchhiking happens to 
be against the law." "Mr. Jenkins, I didn't come to talk to you about 
hitchhiking, I came to talk to you about Charles Wallace." "I don't appreciate 
your interference, Margaret." "The bigger boys are bullying him. They'll really 
hurt him if you don't stop them." "If anybody is dissatisfied with my handling 
of the situation and wishes to discuss it with me, I think it should be your 
parents." Meg tried to control herself, but her voice rose with frustrated 
anger. "Maybe they're cleverer than I am and know it won't do any good. Oh, 
please, please, Mr. Jenkins, I know people have thought Charles Wallace isn't 
very bright, but he's really—" He cut across her words. "We've run IQ tests on 
all the first-graders. Your little brother's IQ is quite satisfactory." "You 
know it's more than that, Mr. Jenkins. My parents have run tests on him, too, 
all kinds of tests. His IQ is so high it's untestable by normal standards." "His 
performance gives no indication of this." "Don't you understand, he's trying to 
hold back so the boys won't beat him up? He doesn't understand them, and they 
don't understand him. How many first-graders know about farandolae?" "I don't 
know what you're talking about, Margaret. I do know that Charles Wallace does 
not seem to me to be very strong." "He's perfectly all right!" "He is extremely 
pale, and there are dark circles under his eyes." "How would you look if people 
punched you in the nose and kept giving you black eyes just because you know 
more than they do?" "If he's so bright"—Mr. Jenkins looked coldly at her through 
the magnifying lenses of his spectacles—"I wonder your parents bother to send 
him to school at all?" "If there weren't a law about it, they probably 
wouldn't." Now, standing by Charles Wallace on the stone wall, looking at the 
two glacial rocks where no dragons lurked, Meg recalled Mr. Jenkins's words 
about Charles Wallace's pallor, and shivered.
    Charles asked, "Why do people always mistrust people who are different? Am I 
really that different?" Meg, moving the tip of her tongue over her teeth which 
had only recently lost their braces, looked at him affectionately and sadly. 
"Oh, Charles, I don't know. I'm your sister. I've known you ever since you were 
born. I'm too close to you to know." She sat on the stone wall, first carefully 
checking the rocks: a large, gentle, and completely harmless black snake lived 
in the stone wall. She was a special pet of the twins, and they had watched her 
grow from a small snakelet to her present flourishing size. She was named 
Louise, after Dr. Louise Colubra, because the twins had learned just enough 
Latin to pounce on the odd last name.
    "Dr. Snake," Dennys had said. "Weirdo." "It's a nice name," Sandy said. 
"We'll name our snake after her. Louise the Larger." "Why the Larger?" "Why 
not?" "Does she have to be larger than anything?" "She is." "She certainly isn't 
larger than Dr. Louise." Dennys bristled. "Louise the Larger is very large for a 
snake who lives in a garden wall, and Dr. Louise is a very small doctor—I mean, 
she's a tiny person. I suppose as a doctor she's pretty mammoth." "Well, doctors 
don't have to be any size. But you're right, Den, she is tiny. And our snake is 
big." The twins seldom disagreed about anything for long.
    "The only trouble is, she's more like a bird than a snake." "Didn't snakes 
and birds, way back in evolution, didn't they evolve originally from the same 
phylum, or whatever you call it? Anyhow, Louise is a very good name for our 
snake." Dr. Louise, fortunately, was highly amused. Snakes were misunderstood 
creatures, she told the twins, and she was honored to have such a handsome one 
named after her. And snakes, she added, were on the caduceus, which is the 
emblem for doctors, so it was all most appropriate.
    Louise the Larger had grown considerably since her baptism, and Meg, though 
not actively afraid of her, was always careful to look for Louise before she 
sat. Louise, at this moment, was nowhere to be seen, so Meg relaxed and turned 
her thoughts again to Charles Wallace. "You're a lot brighter than the twins, 
but the twins are far from dumb. How do they manage?" Charles Wallace said, "I 
wish they'd tell me." "They don't talk at school the way they do at home, for 
one thing." "I thought if I was interested in mitochondria and farandolae, other 
people would be, too." "You were wrong." "I really am interested in them. Why is 
that so peculiar?" "I don't suppose it is so peculiar for the son of a physicist 
and a biologist." "Most people aren't. Interested, I mean." "They aren't 
children of two scientists, either. Our parents provide us with all kinds of 
disadvantages. I'll never be as beautiful as Mother." Charles Wallace was tired 
of reassuring Meg. "And the incredible thing about farandolae is their size." 
Meg was thinking about her hair, the ordinary straight brown of a field mouse, 
as against her mother's auburn waves. "What about it?" "They're so small that 
all anyone can do is postulate them; even the most powerful micro-electron 
microscope can't show them. But they're important to us—we'd die if we didn't 
have farandolae. But nobody at school is remotely interested. Our teacher has 
the mind of a grasshopper. As you were saying, it's not an advantage having 
famous parents." "If they weren't famous—you bet everybody knows when L.A. 
calls, or Father makes a trip to the White House— they'd be in for it too7 We're 
all different, our family. Except the twins. They do all right. Maybe because 
they're normal. Or know how to act it. But then I wonder what normal is, anyhow, 
or isn't? Why are you so interested in f arandolae?" "Mother's working on them." 
"She's worked on lots of things and you haven't been this interested." "If she 
really proves their existence, she'll probably get the Nobel Prize." "So? That's 
not what's bugging you about them." x "Meg, if something happens to our 
farandolae—well, it would be disastrous." "Why?" Meg shivered, suddenly cold, 
and buttoned her cardigan. Clouds were scudding across the sky, and with them a 
rising wind.
    "I mentioned mitochondria, didn't I?" "You did. What about them?" 
"Mitochondria are tiny little organisms living in our cells. That gives you an 
idea of how tiny they are, doesn't it?" "Enough." "A human being is a whole 
world to a mitochondrion, just the way our planet is to us. But we're much more 
dependent on our mitochondria than the earth is on us. The earth could get along 
perfectly well without people, but if anything happened to our mitochondria, 
we'd die." "Why should anything happen to them?" Charles Wallace gave a small 
shrug. In the darkening light he looked very pale. "Accidents happen to people. 
Or diseases. Things can happen to anything. But what I've sort of picked up from 
Mother is that quite a lot of mitochondria are in some kind of trouble because 
of their f aran-dolae." "Has Mother actually told you all this?" "Some of it. 
The rest I've just—gathered." Charles Wallace did gather things out of his 
mother's mind, out of Meg's mind, as another child might gather daisies in a 
field. "What are farandolae, then?" She shifted position on the hard rocks of 
the wall.
    "Farandolae live in a mitochondrion sort of the same way a mitochondrion 
lives in a human cell. They're genetically independent of their mitochondria, 
just as mitochondria are of us. And if anything happens to the farandolae in a 
mitochondrion, the mitochondrion gets—gets sick. And probably dies." A dry leaf 
separated from its stem and drifted past Meg's cheek. "Why should anything 
happen to them?" she repeated.
    Charles Wallace repeated, too, "Accidents happen to people, don't they? And 
disease. And people killing each other in wars." "Yes, but that's people. Why 
are you going on so about mitochondria and farandolae?" "Meg, Mother's been 
working in her lab, night and day, almost literally, for several weeks now. 
You've noticed that." "She often does when she's on to something." "She's on to 
farandolae. She thinks she's proved their existence by studying some 
mitochondria, mitochondria which are dying." "You're not talking about all this 
stuff at school, are you?" "I do learn some things, Meg. You aren't really 
listening to me." "I'm worried about you." "Then listen. The reason Mother's 
been in her lab so much trying to find the effect of farandolae on mitochondria 
is that she thinks there's something wrong with my mitochondria." "What?" Meg 
jumped down from the stone wall and swung around to face her brother.
    He spoke very quietly, so that she had to bend down to hear. "If my 
mitochondria get sick, then so do I." All the fear which Meg had been trying to 
hold back threatened to break loose. "How serious is it? Can Mother give you 
something for it?" "I don't know. She won't talk to me. I'm only guessing. She's 
trying to shut me out till she knows more, and I can only get in through the 
chinks. Maybe it's not really serious. Maybe it's all just school; I really do 
get punched or knocked down almost every day. It's enough to make me feel— 
Hey—look at Louise!" Meg turned, following his gaze. Louise the Larger was 
slithering along the stones of the wall towards them, moving rapidly, sinuously, 
her black curves shimmering purple and silver in the autumn light. Meg cried, 
"Charles! Quick!" He did not move. "She won't hurt us." "Charles, run! She's 
going to attack!" But Louise stopped her advance, just a few feet from Charles 
Wallace, and raised herself up, uncoiling until she stood, barely on the last 
few inches of her length, rearing up and looking around expectantly.
    Charles Wallace said, "There's someone near. Someone Louise knows." "The—the 
dragons?" "I don't know. I can't see anything. Hush, let me feel." He closed his 
eyes, not to shut out Louise, not to shut out Meg, but in order1 to see with his 
inner eye. "The dragons —I think—and a man, but more than a man—very tall and—" 
He opened his eyes, and pointed into the shadows where the trees crowded thickly 
together. "Look!" Meg thought she saw a dim giant shape moving towards them, but 
before she could be sure, Fortinbras came galloping across the orchard, barking 
wildly. It was not his angry bark, but the loud announcing bark with which he 
greeted either of the Murry parents when they had been away. Then, with his 
heavy black tail lifted straight out behind him, his nose pointing and 
quivering, he stalked the length of the orchard, jumped the wall to the north 
pasture, and ran, still sniffing, to one of the big glacial rocks.
    Charles Wallace, panting with effort, followed him.
    ties going to where my dragons were! Come on, Meg, maybe he's found 
fewmets!" She hurried after boy and dog. "How would you know a dragon dropping? 
Fewmets probably look like bigger and better cow pies." Charles Wallace was down 
on his hands and knees. "Look." On the moss around the rock was a small drift of 
feathers. They did not look like bird feathers. They were extraordinarily soft 
and sparkling at the same time; and between the feathers were bits of glinting 
silver-gold, leaf-shaped scales which, Meg thought, might well belong to 
dragons.
    "You see, Meg! They were here! My dragons were here!" 2 A Rip in the Galaxy.
    When Meg and Charles Wallace returned to the house, silently, each holding 
strange and new thoughts, evening was moving in with the wind. The twins were 
waiting for them, and wanted Charles Wallace to go out in the last of the light 
to play catch.
    "It's too dark already," Charles Wallace said.
    "We've got a few minutes. Come on, Charles. You may be bright, but you're 
slow at playing ball. I could pitch when I was six, and you can't even catch 
without fumbling." Dennys patted Charles, a pat more like a whack. "He's 
improving. Come on, we've only got a few minutes." Charles Wallace shook his 
head. He did not mention that he did not feel well; he just said, firmly, "Not 
tonight." Meg left the twins still arguing with him, and went into the kitchen. 
Mrs. Murry was just coming in from the laboratory, and her mind was still on her 
work. She peered vaguely into the refrigerator.
    Meg confronted her, "Mother, Charles Wallace thinks something is wrong with 
his mitochondria or farandolae or something." Mrs. Murry shut the refrigerator 
door. "Sometimes Charles Wallace thinks too much." "What does Dr. Colubra think? 
About this mitochondria bit?" "That it's a possibility. Louise thinks the bad 
flu strain this autumn, which has caused a lot of deaths, may not be flu at all, 
but mitochondritis." "And that's what Charles maybe has?" "I don't know, Meg. 
I'm trying to find out. When I know something, I will tell you. I've already 
said that. Meanwhile, let me alone." Meg took a step backwards, sat down on one 
of the dining chairs. Her mother never talked in that cold, shutting-out way to 
her children. It must mean that she was very worried indeed.
    Mrs. Murry turned towards Meg with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, Megatron. I 
didn't mean to be sharp. I'm in the difficult position of knowing more about the 
possible ailments of mitochondria than almost anybody else today. I didn't 
expect to be confronted with the results of my work quite so soon. And I still 
don't know enough to tell you— or.Louise—anything definite. Meanwhile, there's 
no point in our getting all worried unless we know there's a real reason. Right 
now we'd better concentrate on Charles Wallace's problems at school." "Is he 
well enough to go to school?" "I think so. For now. I don't want to take him out 
until I have to." "Why not?" "He'd just have to go back eventually, Meg, and 
then things would be harder than ever. If he can just get through these first 
weeks—" "Mother, nobody around here has ever known a six-year-old boy like 
Charles." "He's extremely intelligent. But there was a day when it wasn't 
unusual for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old to graduate from Harvard, or Oxford 
or Cambridge." "It's unusual today. And you and Father can hardly send him to 
Harvard at six. Anyhow, it isn't just that he's intelligent. How does he know 
what we're thinking and feeling? I don't know how much you've told him, but he 
knows an awful lot about mitochondria and farandolae." "I've told him a 
reasonable amount." "He knows more than a reasonable amount. And he knows you're 
worried about him." Mrs. Murry perched on one of the high stools by the kitchen 
counter which divided the work area from the rest of the bright, rambly dining 
and studying room. She sighed, "You're right, Meg. Charles Wallace not only has 
a good mind, he has extraordinary powers of intuition. If he can - learn to 
discipline and channel them when he grows up—if he—" She broke off. "I have to 
think about getting dinner." Meg knew when to stop pushing her mother. "I'll 
help. What're we having?" She did not mention Charles Wallace's dragons. She did 
not mention Louise the Larger's strange behavior, nor the shadow of whatever it 
was they had not quite seen.
    "Oh, spaghetti's easy"—Mrs. Murry pushed a curl of dark red hair back from 
her forehead—"and good on an autumn night." "And we've got all the tomatoes and 
peppers and stuff from the twins' garden. Mother, I love the twins even when 
they get in my hair, but Charles—" "I know, Meg. You and Charles have always had 
a very special relationship." "Mother, I can't stand what's happening to him at 
school." "Neither can I, Meg." "Then what are you doing about it?" "We're trying 
to do nothing. It would be easy—for now —to take Charles out of school. We 
thought about that immediately, even before he— But Charles Wallace is going to 
have to live in a world made up of people who don't think at all in any of the 
ways that he does, and the sooner he starts learning to get along with them, the 
better. Neither you nor Charles has the ability to adapt that the twins do." 
"Charles is a lot brighter than the twins." "A life form which can't adapt 
doesn't last very long." "I still don't like it." "Neither do your father and I, 
Meg. Bear with us. Remember, you do have a tendency to rush in when the best 
thing to do is wait and be patient for a while." "I'm not in the least patient." 
"Is that for my information?" Mrs. Murry took tomatoes, onions, green and red 
peppers, garlic and leeks, out of the vegetable bin. Then, starting to slice 
onions into a large, black iron pot, she said thoughtfully, "You know, Meg, you 
went through a pretty rough time at school yourself." "Not as bad as Charles. 
And I'm not as bright as Charles —except maybe in math." "Possibly you're 
not—though you do tend to underestimate your own particular capacities. What I'm 
getting at is that you do seem, this year, to be finding school moderately 
bearable." "Mr. Jenkins isn't there any more. And Calvin O'Keefe is. Calvin's 
important. He's the basketball star and president of the senior class and 
everything. Anybody Calvin likes is sort of protected by his—his aura." "Why do 
you suppose Calvin likes you?" "Not because of my beauty, that's for sure." "But 
he does like you, doesn't he, Meg?" "Well, yes, I guess so, but Calvin likes 
lots of people. And he could have any girl in 'school if he wanted to." "But he 
chose you, didn't he?" Meg could feel herself flushing. She put her hands up to 
her cheeks. "Well. Yes. But it's different. It's because of some of the things 
we've been through together. And we're friend-friends—I mean, we're not like 
most of the other kids.", "I'm glad you're-friend-friends. I've become very fond 
of that skinny, carrot-headed young man." Meg laughed. "I think Calvin confuses 
you with Pallas Athene. You're his absolute ideal. And he likes all of us. His 
own family's certainly a mess. I really think he likes me only because of our 
family." Mrs. Murry sighed. "Stop being self-deprecating, Meg." "Maybe at least 
I can learn to cook as well as you do. Did you know it was one of Calvin's 
brothers who beat Charles Wallace up today? I bet he's upset—I don't mean 
Whippy, he couldn't care less—Calvin. Somebody's bound to have told him." "Do 
you want to call him?" "Not me. Not Calvin. I just have to wait. Maybe he'll 
come over or something." She sighed. "I wish life didn't have to be so 
complicated. Do you suppose I'll ever be a double Ph.D. like you, Mother?" Mrs. 
Murry looked up from slicing peppers, and laughed. "It's really not the answer 
to all problems. There are other solutions. At this point I'm more interested in 
knowing whether or not I've put too many red peppers in the spaghetti sauce; 
I've lost count." They had just sat down to dinner when Mr. Murry phoned to tell 
them that he was going directly from Washington to Brookhaven for a week. Such 
trips were not unusual for either of their parents, but right now anything that 
took either her father or mother away struck Meg as sinister. Without much 
conviction she said, "I hope he has fun. He likes lots of the people there." But 
she felt a panicky dependence on having both her parents home at night. It 
wasn't only because of her fears for Charles Wallace; it was that suddenly the 
.whole world Was unsafe and uncertain. Several houses nearby had been broken 
into that autumn, and while nothing of great value had been taken, drawers had 
been emptied with casual maliciousness, food dumped on living-room floors, 
upholstery slashed. Even their safe little village was revealing itself to be 
unpredictable and irrational and precarious, and while Meg had already begun to 
understand this with her mind, she had never before felt it with the whole of 
herself. Now a cold awareness of the uncertainty of all life, no matter how 
careful the planning, hollowed emptily in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed.
    Charles Wallace looked at her and said, unsmilingly, "The best laid plans of 
mice and men ..." "Gang aft agley," Sandy finished.
    "Man proposes, God disposes," Dennys added, not to be outdone.
    The twins held out their plates for more spaghetti, neither one ever having 
been known to lose his appetite. "Why does Father have to stay a whole week?" 
Sandy asked.
    "It's his work, after all," Dennys said. "Mother, I think you could have put 
more hot peppers in the sauce." "He's been away a lot this autumn. He ought to 
stay home with his family at least some of the time. I think the sauce is okay." 
"Of course it's okay. I just like it a little hotter." Meg was not thinking 
about spaghetti, although she was sprinkling Parmesan over hers. She wondered 
what their mother would say if Charles Wallace told her about his dragons. If 
there really were dragons, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in the north 
pasture, oughtn't their parents to know?
    Sandy said, "When I grow up I'm going to be a banker and make money. Someone 
in this family has to stay in the real world." "Not that we don't think science 
is the real world, Mother," Dennys said, "but you and Father aren't practical 
scientists, you're theoretical scientists." Mrs. Murry demurred, "I'm not wholly 
impractical, you know, Sandy, and neither is your father." "Spending hours and 
hours peering into your micro-electron microscope, and listening to that 
micro-sonar whatsit isn't practical," Sandy announced.
    "You just look at things nobody else can see," Dennys added, "and listen to 
things nobody else can hear, and think about them." Meg defended her mother. "It 
would be a good idea if more people knew how to think. After Mother thinks about 
something long enough, then she puts it into practice. Or someone else does." 
Charles Wallace cocked his head with a pleased look. "Does practical mean that 
something works out in practice?" His mother nodded.
    "So it doesn't matter if Mother sits and thinks. Or if Father spends weeks 
over one equation. Even if he writes it on the tablecloth. His equations are 
practical if someone else makes them work out in practice." He reached in his 
pocket, as though in answer to Meg's thoughts about the dragons, and drew out a 
feather, not a bird feather, but a strange glitter catching the light. "All 
right, my practical brothers, what is this?" Sandy, sitting next to Charles 
Wallace, bent over the dragon feather. "A feather." Dennys got up and went 
around the table so that he could see. "Let me—" Charles Wallace held the 
feather between them. "What kind is it?" "Hey, this is most peculiar!" Sandy 
touched the base of the feather. "I don't think it's from a bird." "Why not?" 
Charles Wallace asked.
    "The rachis isn't right." "The what?" Meg asked.
    "The rachis. Sort of part of the quill. The rachis should be hollow, and 
this is solid, and seems to be metallic. Hey, Charles, where'd you get this 
thing?" Charles Wallace handed the feather to his mother. She looked at it 
carefully. "Sandy's right. The rachis isn't like a bird's." Dennys said, "Then 
what—" Charles Wallace retrieved the feather and put it back in his pocket. "It 
was on the ground by the big rocks in the north pas'ture. Not just this one 
feather. Quite a few others." Meg suppressed a slightly hysterical giggle. 
"Charles and I think it may be fewmets." Sandy turned to her with injured 
dignity. "Fewmets are dragon droppings." Dennys said, "Don't be silly." Then, 
"Do you know what it is, Mother?" She shook her head. "What do you think it is, 
Charles?" Charles Wallace, as he occasionally did, retreated into himself. When 
Meg had decided he wasn't going to answer at all, he said, "It's something 
that's not in Sandy's and Dennys's practical world. When I find out more, I'll 
tell you." He sounded very like their mother.
    "Okay, then." Dennys had lost interest. He returned to his chair. "Did 
Father tell you why he has to go rushing off to Brookhaven, or is it another of 
those top-secret classified: things?" Mrs. Murry looked down at the checked 
tablecloth, and at the remains of an equation which had not come out in the 
wash; doodling equations on anything available was a habit of which she could 
not break her husband. "It's not really secret. There've been several bits about 
it in the papers recently." "About what?" Sandy asked.
    "There's been an unexplainable phenomenon, not in our part of the galaxy, 
but far across it, and in several other galaxies—well, the easiest way to 
explain it is that our new supersensitive sonic instruments have been picking up 
strange sounds, sounds which aren't on any normal register, but much higher. 
After such a sound—a cosmic scream, the Times rather sensationally called 
it—there appears to be a small rip in the galaxy." "What does that mean?" Dennys 
asked.
    "It seems to mean that several stars have vanished." "Vanished where?" 
"That's the odd part. Vanished. Completely. Where the stars were there is, as 
far as our instruments can detect, nothing. Your father was out in California 
several weeks ago, you remember, at Mount Palomar." "But things can't just 
vanish," Sandy said. "We had it in school—the balance of matter." Their mother 
added, very quietly, "It seems to be getting unbalanced." "You mean like the 
ecology?" "No. I mean that matter actually seems to be being annihilated." 
Dennys said flatly, "But that's impossible." "E = MC2," Sandy said. "Matter can 
be converted into energy, and energy into matter. You have to have one or the 
other." Mrs. Murry said, "Thus far, Einstein's law has never been disproved. But 
it's coming into question." "Nothingness—" Dennys said. "That's impossible." 
"One would hope so." "And that's what Father's going off about?" "Yes, to 
consult with several other scientists, Shasti from India, Shen Shu from 
China—you've heard of them." Outside the dining-room windows came a sudden 
brilliant flash of light, followed by a loud clap of thunder. The windows 
rattled. The kitchen door burst open. Everybody jumped.
    Meg sprang up, crying nervously, "Oh, Mother—" "Sit down, Meg. You've heard 
thunder before." "You're sure it's not one of those cosmic things?" Sandy shut 
the door.
    Mrs. Murry was calmly reassuring. "Positive. They're completely inaudible to 
human ears." Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed. "As a matter of fact, 
there are only two instruments in the world delicate enough to pick up the 
sound, which is incredibly high-pitched. It's perfectly possible that it's been 
going on for billennia, and only now are our instruments capable of recording 
it." "Birds can hear sounds way above our normal pitch," Sandy said, "I mean, 
way up the scale, that we can't hear at all." "Birds can't hear this." Dennys 
said, "I wonder if snakes can hear as high a pitch as birds?" "Snakes don't have 
ears," Sandy contradicted.
    "So? They feel vibrations and sound waves. I think Louise hears all kinds of 
things out of human range. What's for dessert?" Meg's voice was still tense. "We 
don't usually have thunderstorms in October," "Please calm down, Meg." Mrs. 
Murry started clearing the table. "If you'll stop and think, you'll remember 
that we've had an unseasonable storm for every month in the year." Sandy said, 
"Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? 
What's for dessert?" "I don't—" Meg started defensively, then jumped as the rain 
began to pelt against the windows.
    "There's some ice cream in the freezer," Mrs. Murry said. "Sorry, I haven't 
been thinking about desserts." "Meg's supposed to make desserts," Dennys said. 
"Not that we expect pies or anything, Meg, but even you can't go too wrong with 
Jell-O." Charles Wallace caught Meg's eye, and she closed her mouth. He put his 
hand in the pocket of his robe again, though this time he did not produce the 
feather, and gave her a small, private smile. He may have been thinking about 
his dragons, but he had also been listening carefully, both to the conversation 
and to the storm, his fair head tilted slightly to one side. "This ripping in 
the galaxy, Mother—does it have any effect on our own solar system?" "That," 
Mrs. Murry replied, "is what we would all like to know." Sandy brushed this 
aside impatiently. "It's all much too complicated for me. I'm sure banking is a 
lot simpler." "And more lucrative," Dennys added.
    The windows shook in the wind. The twins looked through the darkness at the 
slashing rain.
    "It's a good thing we brought in so much stuff from the garden before 
dinner." "This is almost hail." Meg asked nervously, "Is it dangerous, this—this 
ripping in the sky, or whatever it is?" "Meg, we really know nothing about it. 
It may have been going on all along, and we only now have the instruments to 
record it." "Like farandolae," Charles Wallace said. "We tend to think things 
are new because we've just discovered them." "But is it dangerous?" Meg 
repeated.
    "Meg, we don't know enough about it yet. That's why it's important that your 
father and some of the other physicists get together at once." "But it could be 
dangerous?" "Anything can be dangerous." Meg looked down at the remains of her 
dinner. Dragons and rips in the sky. Louise and Fortinbras greeting something 
large and strange. Charles Wallace pale and listless. She did not like any of 
it. "I'll do the dishes," she told her mother.
    They cleaned up the kitchen in silence. Mrs. Murry had sent the reluctant 
twins to practice for the school orchestra, Dennys on the flute, which he played 
well, accompanied by Sandy, less skillfully, on the piano. But it was a 
pleasant, familiar noise, and Meg relaxed into it. When the dishwasher was 
humming, the pots and pans polished and hung on their hooks, she went up to her 
attic bedroom to do her homework. This room was supposed to be her own, private 
place, and it would have been perfect except for the fact that it was seldom 
really private: the twins kept their electric trains in the big, open section of 
the attic; the ping-pong table was there, and anything anybody didn't want 
around downstairs but didn't want to throw away. Although Meg's room was at the 
far end of the attic, it was easily available to the twins when they needed help 
with their math homework. And Charles Wallace always knew, without being told, 
when she was troubled, and would come up to the attic to sit on the foot of her 
bed. The only time she didn't want Charles Wallace was when he himself was what 
was troubling her. She did not want him now.
    Rain was still spattering against her window, but with diminishing force. 
The wind was swinging around from the south to the west; the storm was passing 
and the temperature falling. Her room was cold, but she did not plug in the 
little electric heater her parents had given her to supplement the inadequate 
heat which came up the attic stairs. Instead, she shoved her books aside and 
tiptoed back downstairs, stepping carefully over the seventh stair, which not 
only creaked but sometimes gave off a report like a shot.
    The twins were still practicing. Her mother was in the living room, in front 
of the fire, reading to Charles Wallace, not from books about trains, or 
animals, which the twins had liked at that age, but from a scientific magazine, 
an article called "The Polarizabilities and Hyperpolarizabil-ities of Small 
Molecules," by the theoretical chemist, Peter Liebmann.
    —Ouch, Meg thought ruefully. —This kind of thing is Charles Wallace's 
bedtime reading and our parents expect him to go to first grade and not get into 
trouble?
    Charles Wallace lay on the floor in front of the fire, staring into the 
flames, half listening, half brooding, his head as usual pillowed on 
Fortinbras's comfortable bulk. Meg would have liked to take Fort with her, but 
that would mean letting the family know she was going out. She hurried as 
quickly and silently as possible through the kitchen and out into the pantry. As 
she pulled the kitchen door closed behind her, slowly, carefully, so nobody 
would hear, the pantry door flew open with a bang, and the door to her mother's 
lab, on the left, slammed shut in a gust of wind.
    She stopped, listened, waited for one of the twins to open the kitchen door 
and see what was going on. But nothing happened except that the wind blew wildly 
through the pantry. She shivered, and grabbed the first rain clothes that came 
to hand, a big black rubber poncho that belonged to the twins and had done 
double duty as a ground cloth for a tent; and Charles Wallace's yellow 
sou'wester. Then she took the big flashlight from the hook, shut the pantry door 
firmly behind her, and ran across the lawn, tripping over the croquet wicket. 
Limping, she crossed the patch of dandelion, burdock, and milkweed that was 
growing up in tne opening the twins had cut in the barberry fence. Once she was 
in the vegetable garden she hoped that she would be invisible to anybody 
chancing to look out a window. She could imagine Sandy's or Dennys's reaction if 
they asked her where she was going and she told them she was looking for 
dragons.
    Why, in fact, had she come out? And what was she looking for? Was it 
dragons? Fortinbras and Louise both had seen—and not been afraid of—something, 
something which had left the feathers and scales. And that something—or 
somethings—was likely to be uncomfortable in the wet pasture. If it—or they—came 
to seek shelter in the house, she wanted to be prepared.
    Not only for dragons, in which she did not quite believe, despite her faith 
in Charles Wallace and the feather with the peculiar rachis, but also for Louise 
the Larger. The twins insisted that Louise was an unusual snake, but this 
afternoon was the first time Meg had seen any signs that Louise was anything 
more than a contented, common garden-variety snake.
    Meg checked the shadows on the wall, but there was no sign of Louise, so she 
lingered, not at all anxious to cross the apple orchard and go into the north 
pasture to the two glacial rocks. For a few minutes she would stay in the homely 
garden, and gather her courage, and be safe from discovery: the twins were 
hardly likely to come out after dark in the cold and wet, to admire the last few 
cabbages, or the vine which had borne their prize cucumber, the size of a 
vegetable marrow.
    The garden was bordered on the east by two rows of sunflowers which stood 
with their heavy, fringed heads bowed over so that they looked like a huddle of 
witches; Meg glanced at them nervously; raindrops dripped from their faces with 
melancholy unconcern, but no longer from the sky. There was a hint of light from 
the full moon behind the thinning clouds, turning all the vegetables into beings 
strange and unreal. The gaping rows where once beans had stood, and lettuce, and 
peas, had a forlorn look; there was an air of sadness and confusion about the 
carefully planned pattern.
    "Like everything else"—Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower 
heads—''it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that 
a little kid shouldn't be safe in school." She moved slowly along the orchard 
wall. The cidery smell of fallen apples was cut by the wind which had completely 
changed course and was now streaming across the garden from the northwest, sharp 
and glittery with frost. She saw a shadow move on the wall and jumped back: 
Louise the Larger, it must be Louise, and Meg could not climb that wall or cross 
the orchard to the north pasture until she was sure that neither Louise nor the 
not-quite-seen shape was lurking there waiting to pounce on her. Her legs felt 
watery, so she sat on a large, squat pumpkin to wait. The cold wind brushed her 
cheek; corn tassels hished like ocean waves. She looked warily about. She was 
seeing, she realized, through lenses streaked and spattered by raindrops blowing 
from sunflowers and corn, so she took off her spectacles, felt under the poncho 
for her kilt, and wiped them. Better, though the world was still a little 
wavery, as though seen under water.
    She listened; listened. In the orchard she heard the soft plomp of falling 
apples; wind shaking the trees; branches rustling. She peered through the 
darkness. Something was moving, coming closer— Snakes never come out in the cold 
and dark, she knew that. Nevertheless— Louise— Yes, it was the big snake. She 
emerged from the rocks of the stone wall, slowly, warily, watchfully. Meg's 
heart was thumping, although Louise was not threatening. At least, Louise was 
not threatening her. But Louise was waiting, and this time there was no welcome 
in the waiting. Meg looked in fascination as the head of the snake slowly weaved 
back and forth, then quivered in recognition.
    Behind Meg a voice came. "Margaret." She whirled around.
    It was Mr. Jenkins. She looked at him in complete bewilderment.
    He said, "Your little brother thought I might find you here, Margaret." Yes, 
Charles would guess, would know where she was. But why would Mr. Jenkins have 
been speaking to Charles Wallace? The principal had never been to the Murrys' 
house, or any parents', for that matter. All confrontations were in the safe 
anonymity of his office. Why would he come through the wet grass and the 
still-dripping garden to look for her instead of sending one of the twins?
    He said, "I wanted to come find you myself, Margaret, because I feel that I 
owe you an apology for my sharpness with you last week when you came to see me." 
He held out a hand, pale in the moonlight wavering behind the clouds.
    In utter confusion she reached out to take his hand, and as she did so, 
Louise rose up on the wall behind her, hissing and making a strange, warning 
clacking. Meg turned to see the snake, looking as large and hooded as a cobra, 
hissing angrily at Mr. Jenkins, raising her large dark coils to strike.
    Mr. Jenkins screamed, in a way that she had never known a man could scream, 
a high, piercing screech.
    Then he rose up into the night like a great, flapping bird, flew, screaming 
across the sky, became a rent, an emptiness, a slash of nothingness— Meg found 
that she, too, was screaming.
    It could not have happened.
    There was no one, no thing there.
    She thought she saw Louise slithering back through a dark recess in the 
stone wall, disappearing— It was impossible.
    Her mind had snapped. It was some kind of hallucination caused by the 
weather, by her anxiety, by the state of the world— A thick, ugly smell, like 
spoiled cabbage, like flower stalks left too long in water, rose like a miasma 
from the place where Mr. Jenkins had been— But he could not have been there— She 
screamed again, in uncontrollable panic, as a tall shape hurtled towards her.
    Calvin. Calvin O'Keefe.
    She burst into hysterical tears of relief.
    He vaulted over the wall to her, his strong, thin arms tight around her, 
holding her. "Meg. Meg, what is it?" She could not control her terrified 
sobbing.
    "Meg, what's the matter? What's happened?" He shook her, urgently.
    Gasping, she tried to tell him. "I know it sounds incredible—" she finished. 
She was still trembling violently, her heart racing. When he did not speak, but 
continued soothingly to pat her back, she said, through a few final, hiccup-ing 
sobs, "Oh, Calvin, I wish I had imagined it. Do you think—do you think maybe I 
did?" "I don't know," Calvin said flatly. He continued to hold her strongly, 
comfortingly.
    Now that Calvin was here, would take over, she was able to manage a slightly 
hysterical giggle. "Mr. Jenkins always said I have too much imagination—but it's 
never been that kind of imagination. I've never hallucinated or anything, have 
I?" "No," he replied firmly. "You have not. What's that awful stench?" "I don't 
know. It's not nearly as bad now as it was just before you came." "It makes 
silage smell like roses. Yukh." "Calvin—Louise the Larger—it's not the first 
time today Louise has done something peculiar." "What?" She told him about 
Louise that afternoon. "But she wasn't attacking or anything then, she was still 
friendly.
    She's always been a friendly snake." She let her breath out in a long, 
quavering sigh. "Cal, let me have your handkerchief, please. My glasses are 
filthy and I can't see a thing, and right now I'd like to be able to see what's 
going on." "My handkerchief is filthy." But Calvin fished in his pockets.
    "It's better than a kilt." Meg spat on her glasses and wiped them. Without 
their aid she could see no more of the older boy than a vague blur, so she made 
bold to say, "Oh, Cal, I was hoping you might come over tonight anyhow." "I'm 
surprised you're even willing to speak to me. I came over to apologize for what 
my brother did to Charles Wallace." Meg adjusted her spectacles with her usual 
rough shove up the nose, just as a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds 
and illuminated Calvin's troubled expression. She returned his handkerchief. "It 
wasn't your fault." Then— "I must have had a mental aberration or something, 
about Louise and Mr. Jenkins, mustn't I?" "I don't know, Meg. You've never had a 
mental aberration before, have you?" "Not that I know of." "Fewmets to Mr. 
Jenkins, anyhow." She almost shouted, "What did you say!" "Fewmets to Mr. 
Jenkins. Fewmets is my new swear word. I'm tired of all the old ones. Fewmets 
are dragon droppings, and—" "I know fewmets are dragon droppings! What I want to 
know is why you picked on fewmets, of all things?" "It seemed quite a reasonable 
choice to me." Suddenly she was shaking again. "Calvin—please—don't —it's too 
serious." He dropped his bantering tone. "Okay, Meg, what's up about fewmets?" 
"Oh, Cal, I was so sort of shook about the Mr. Jenkins thing I almost forgot 
about the dragons." "The what?" She told him, all about Charles Wallace and his 
dragons, "and he's never hallucinated before, either," She told him again about 
Louise greeting the shadow of something they had not quite seen, "but it 
certainly wasn't Mr. Jenkins. Louise wasn't in the least friendly about Mr. 
Jenkins." "It's wild," Calvin said, "absolutely wild." "But we did see fewmets, 
Calvin—or something, more like feathers, really, but not like real feathers. 
Charles Wallace took one home—there was a whole pile of them— these sort of 
feathers, and dragon scales, by the biggest rock in the north pasture." Calvin 
sprang to his feet. "Let's go, then! Bring your flashlight." It was possible now 
for her to cross the orchard and go into the pasture with Calvin to take the 
lead. Uppermost in Meg's mind, superseding fear, was the need to prove that she 
and Charles Wallace weren't just making something up, that the wild tales she 
had told Calvin were real—not Mr. Jenkins turning into a flying emptiness in the 
sky, she did not want that to be real, but the dragons. For if nothing that had 
happened touched on reality, then she was going out of her mind.
    When they reached the pasture, Calvin took the light from her. "I'll go 
ahead a bit." But Meg followed close on his heels. She thought she could sense 
disbelief as he swept the arc of light around the base of the rock. The beam 
came to rest in a small circle, and in the center of the circle shone something 
gold and glittering.
    "Phew—" Calvin said.
    Meg giggled with relief and tension. "Don't you mean fewmets? Has anybody 
ever seen a fewmet?" Calvin was down on hands and knees, running his fingers 
through the little pile of feathers and scales. "Okay, okay, this is most 
peculiar. But what left it? After all, a gang of dragons just doesn't 
disappear." "A drive of dragons," Meg corrected, automatically. "Do you really 
think it's dragons?" Calvin did not answer. He asked, "Did you tell your 
mother?" "Charles Wallace showed the feather to the twins during dinner, and 
Mother saw it, too. The twins said it wasn't a bird's feather because the rachis 
isn't right, and then the conversation got shifted. I think Charles shifted it 
on purpose." "How is he?" Calvin asked. "How badly did Whippy hurt him?" "He's 
been hurt worse. Mother put compresses on his eye, and it's turning black and 
blue. But that's about all." She was not ready, yet, to mention his pallor, or 
shortness of wind. "You'd think we lived in the roughest section of an inner 
city or something, instead of way out in the peaceful country. There isn't a day 
he doesn't get shoved around by one of the bigger kids—it's not only Whippy. 
Cal, why is it that my parents know all about physics and biology and stuff, and 
nothing about keeping their son from being mugged?" Calvin pulled himself up 
onto the smaller of the two stones. "If it's any consolation to you, Meg, I 
doubt if my parents know the difference between physics and biology. Maybe 
Charles would be better off in a city school, where there're lots of different 
kinds of kids, white, black, yellow, Spanish-speaking, rich, poor. Maybe he 
wouldn't stand out as being so different if there were other different people, 
too. Here—well, everybody's sort of alike. People're kind of proud of having 
your parents live here, and pally with the President and all, but you Murrys 
certainly aren't like anybody else." "You've managed." "Same way the twins have. 
Playing by the laws of the jungle. You know that. Anyhow, my parents and 
grandparents were born right here in the village, and so were my 
great-grandparents. The O'Keefes may be shiftless, but at least they're not 
newcomers." His voice deepened with an old sadness.
    "Oh, Cal—" He shrugged his dark mood aside. "I think maybe we'd better go 
talk to your mother." "Not yet." Charles Wallace's voice came from behind them. 
"She's got enough worries. Let's wait till the dragons come back." Meg jumped. 
"Charles! Why aren't you in bed? Does Mother know you're out?" "I was in bed. 
Mother doesn't know I'm out. Obviously." Meg was near tears of exhaustion. 
"Nothing is obvious any more." Then, in her big-sister tone of voice: "You 
shouldn't be out this late." “'What happened?" "What do you mean?" "Meg, I came 
out because something frightened you." He sighed, a strangely tired and ancient 
sigh from so small a boy. "I was almost asleep and I felt you screaming." "I 
don't want to tell you about it. I don't want it to have happened. Where's 
Fortinbras?" "I left him at home and told him not to let on that I wasn't sound 
asleep in bed. I didn't want him tangling with dragons. Meg, what happened? 
You've got to tell me." Meg said, "Okay, Charles, I don't doubt your dragons any 
more. No dragons could be more incredible than Mr. Jenkins coming to look for me 
in the garden, and then turning into a—a great shrieking bird of nothingness." 
She spoke quickly, because what she was saying sounded so absurd.
    Charles Wallace did not laugh. He opened his mouth to speak, then swung 
around. "Who's here?" "Nobody," Calvin said. "Meg and me. You." But he jumped 
down from the rock.
    "There's somebody else. Near." Meg moved closer to Calvin. Her heart, it 
seemed, stopped beating.
    "Hush," Charles Wallace said, though they had not spoken. He listened with 
lifted head, like Fortinbras catching a scent.
    To the right of the pasture was a woods, a small forest of oak,, maple, 
beech, stripped of all but a few brittle leaves, backed by the dark winter 
richness of assorted spruce and pine. The ground, which the moonlight did not 
reach, was covered with fallen damp leaves and pine needles which would silence 
footsteps. Then they heard the sharp crack of a breaking twig.
    Meg and Calvin, straining to peer through the trees, saw nothing.
    Then Charles Wallace cried, "My dragons!" They turned around, and they saw, 
there by the great rock— wings, it seemed like hundreds of wings, spreading, 
folding, stretching— and eyes how many eyes can a drive of dragons have?
    and small jets of flame Suddenly a voice called to them from the direction 
of the woods, "Do not be afraid!" 3 The Man in the Night.
    A huge dark form strode swiftly through the woods and into the pasture; it 
reached them in a few strides, and then stood very still, so that the folds of 
the long robe seemed chiseled out of granite.
    "Do not be afraid," he repeated. "He won't hurt you." He?
    Yes. Charles Wallace's drive of dragons was a single creature, although Meg 
was not at all surprised that Charles Wallace had confused this fierce, wild 
being with dragons. She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, 
and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, 
kitten eyes, dragon eyes, 'opening and closing, looking at her, looking at 
Charles Wallace and Calvin and the strange tall man. And wings, wings in 
constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread 
out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the 
creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke 
spouted up between the wings; it could certainly start a grass fire if it 
weren't careful. Meg did not wonder that Charles Wallace had not approached it.
    Again the tall stranger reassured them. "He won't hurt you." The stranger 
was dark, dark as night and tall as a tree, and there was something in the 
repose of his body, the quiet of his voice, which drove away fear.
    Charles Wallace stepped towards him. "Who are you?" "A Teacher." Charles 
Wallace's sigh was longing. "I wish you were my teacher." "I am." The cello-like 
voice was calm, slightly amused.
    Charles Wallace advanced another step. "And my dragons?" The tall man—the 
Teacher—held out his hand in the direction of the wild creature, which seemed to 
gather itself together, to rise up, to give a great, courteous bow to all of 
them.
    The Teacher said, "His name is Proginoskes." Charles Wallace said, "He?" 
"Yes." "He's not dragons?" "He is a cherubim." "What!?" "A cherubim." Flame 
spurted skywards in indignation at the doubt in the atmosphere. Great wings 
raised and spread and the children were looked at by a great many eyes. When the 
wild thing spoke, it was not in vocal words, but directly into their minds.
    "I suppose you think I ought to be a golden-haired baby-face with no body 
and two useless little wings?" Charles Wallace stared at the great creature. "It 
might be simpler if you were." Meg pulled her poncho closer about her, for 
protection in case the cherubim spouted fire in her direction.
    "It is a constant amazement to me," the cherubim thought at them, "that so 
many earthling artists paint cherubim to resemble baby pigs." Calvin made a 
sound which, if he had been less astonished, would have been a laugh. "But 
cherubim is plural." The fire-spouting beast returned, "I am practically plural. 
The little boy thought I was a drive of dragons, didn't he? I am certainly not a 
cherub. I am a singular cherubim." "What are you doing here?" Charles Wallace 
asked.
    "I was sent." "Sent?" "To be in your class. I don't know what I've done to 
be assigned to a class with such immature earthlings. I have a hard enough job 
as it is. I really don't fancy coming back to school at all at my age." "How old 
are you?" Meg held her poncho out wide, ready to use it as a shield.
    "Age, for cherubim, is immaterial. It's only for time-bound creatures that 
age even exists. I am, in cherubic terms, still a child, and that is all you 
need to know. It's very rude to ask questions about age." Two of the wings 
crossed and uncrossed. The message had been rueful, rather than annoyed.
    Charles Wallace spoke to the tall man. "You are my teacher, and his teacher, 
too?" "lam." Charles Wallace looked up at the strange dark face which was stern 
and gentle at the same time. "It's too good to be true. I think I must be having 
a dream. I wish I'd just go on dreaming and not wake up." "What is real?" The 
Teacher stretched out an arm, and gently touched the bruise on Charles Wallace's 
cheek, the puffed and discolored flesh under his eye. "You are awake." "Or if 
you're asleep," Meg said, "we're all having the same dream. Aren't we, Calvin?" 
"The thing that makes me think we're awake is that if I were to dream about a 
cherubim, it wouldn't look like that—that—" Several very blue, long-lashed eyes 
looked directly at Calvin. "Proginoskes, as the Teacher told you. Proginoskes. 
And don't get any ideas about calling me Cherry, or Cheery, or Bimmy." "It would 
be easier," Charles Wallace said.
    But the creature repeated firmly, "Proginoskes." Out of the dark form of the 
Teacher came a deep, gentle rumbling of amusement, a rumbling which expanded and 
rose and bubbled into a great laugh. "All right, then, my children. Are you 
ready to start—we will call it, for want of a better word in your language, 
school—are you ready to start school?" Charles Wallace, a small and rather 
ludicrous figure in the yellow slicker he had pulled on over his pajamas, looked 
up at the oak-tree height and strength of the Teacher. "The sooner the better. 
Time's running out." "Hey, wait a minute," Calvin objected. "What are you going 
to do with Charles? You and the—the cherubim can't take him off without 
consulting his parents." "What makes you think Pm planning to?" The Teacher gave 
an easy little jump, and there he was, comfortably sitting on the tallest of the 
glacial rocks as though it were a stool, his arms loosely about his knees, the 
folds of his robe blending with the moonlit stone. "And I came not only to call 
Charles Wallace. I came to call all three of you." Meg looked startled. "All of 
us? But—" "You may address me as Blajeny," the Teacher said.
    Charles Wallace asked, "Mr. Blajeny? Dr. Blajeny? Sir Blajeny?" "Blajeny is 
enough. That is all of my name you need to know. Are you ready?" Meg still 
looked astonished. "Calvin and me, too?" "Yes." "But—" As always when she felt 
unsure, Meg was argumentative. "Calvin doesn't need—he's the best student in 
school, and the best athlete, he's important and everything. And I'm getting 
along, now. It's Charles who's the trouble —you can see for yourself. School, 
ordinary school, is just not going to work out for him." Blajeny's voice was 
cool. "That is hardly my problem." "Then why are you here?" That Blajeny might 
have been sent solely to help her brother did not seem at all astonishing to 
Meg.
    Again came the rumble that bubbled up into a laugh. "My dears, you must not 
take yourselves so seriously. Why should school be easy for Charles Wallace?" 
"It shouldn't be this bad. This is the United States of America. They'll hurt 
him if somebody doesn't do something." "He will have to learn to defend 
himself." Charles Wallace, looking very small and defenseless, spoke quietly. 
"The Teacher is right. It's a question of learning to adapt, and nobody can do 
that for me. If everybody will leave me alone, and stop trying to help me, I'll 
learn, eventually, how not to be conspicuous. I can assure you I haven't 
mentioned mitochondria and farandolae lately." The Teacher nodded grave 
approval.
    Charles Wallace moved closer to him. "I'm very glad you haven't come because 
I'm making such a mess of school. But—Blajeny—if you haven't come because of 
that, then why are you here?" "I have come not so much to offer you my help as 
to ask for yours." "Ours?" Meg asked.
    Charles Wallace looked up at the Teacher. "I'm not much of a help to anybody 
right now. It isn't just that I'm not getting along at school—" "Yes," Blajeny 
said. "I know of the other problem. Nevertheless you are called, and anybody who 
is invited to study with one of the Teachers is called because he is needed. You 
have talents we cannot afford to lose." "Then—" "We must find out what is making 
you ill and, if possible, make you well again." "If possible?" Meg asked 
anxiously.
    Calvin asked sharply, "Charles? I’ll? What's wrong? What's the matter with 
Charles?" "Look at him," Meg said in a low voice. "Look how pale he is. And he 
has trouble breathing. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard,” 
She turned to the Teacher. "Oh, please, please, Blajeny, can you help?" Blajeny 
looked down at her, darkly, quietly. "I think, my child, that it is you who must 
help." "Me?" "Yes." "You know I'd do anything in the world to help Charles." 
Calvin looked questioningly at the Teacher.
    "Yes, Calvin, you too." "How? How can we help?" "You will learn as the 
lessons progress." Calvin asked, "Where are we going to have these lessons, 
then? Where's your school?" Blajeny jumped lightly down from the rock. Despite 
his height and girth he moved, Meg thought, as though he were used to a heavier 
gravity than earth's. He strode lightly halfway across the pasture to where 
there was a large, flat rock where the children often went with their parents to 
watch the stars. He dropped down onto the rock and lay stretched out on his 
back, gesturing to the others to join him. Meg lay beside him, with Calvin on 
her other side, so that she felt protected, not only from the cold night wind 
but from the cherubim, who had reached the rock with the beat of a wing and 
assorted himself into an assemblage of wings and eyes and puffs of smoke at a 
discreet distance from Charles Wallace, who was on Blajeny's otherside.
    "It's all right, dragons," Charles Wallace said. I’m not afraid of you." The 
cherubim rearranged his wings. "Proginoskes, please." Blajeny looked up at the 
sky, raised his arm, and made a wide, embracing gesture. The clouds had almost 
dispersed; only a few rapidly flying streamers veiled the stars, which blazed 
with the fierce brilliance of the rapidly plummeting mercury. The Teacher's 
sweeping motion indicated the entire sparkling stretch of sky. Then he sat up 
and folded his arms across his chest, and his strange luminous eyes turned 
inwards, so that he was looking not at the stars nor at the children but into 
some deep, dark place far within himself, and then further. He sat there, moving 
in, in, deeper and deeper, for time out of time. Then the focus of his eyes 
returned to the children, and he gave his radiant smile and answered Calvin's 
question as though not a moment had passed.
    "Where is my school? Here, there, everywhere. In the schoolyard during 
first-grade recess. With the cherubim and seraphim. Among the farandolae." 
Charles Wallace exclaimed, "My mother's isolated the farandolae!" "So she has." 
"Blajeny, do you know if something's wrong with my farandolae and mitochondria?" 
Blajeny replied quietly, "Your mother and Dr. Colubra are trying to find that 
out." "Well, then, what do we do now?" "Go home to bed." "But school—" "You will 
all go to school as usual in the morning." It was total anticlimax. "But your 
school—" Meg cried in disappointment. She had hoped that Charles Wallace would 
never have to enter the old red school building again, that Blajeny would take 
over, make everything all right ...
    "My children," Blajeny said gravely, "my school building is the entire 
cosmos. Before your tune with me is over, I may have to take you great 
distances, and to very strange places." "Are we your whole class?" Calvin asked. 
"Meg and Charles Wallace and me?" Proginoskes let out a puff of huffy smoke.
    "Sorry—and the cherubim." Blajeny said, "Wait You will know when the time 
comes." "And why on earth is one of our classmates a cherubim?" Meg said. 
"Sorry, Proginoskes, but it does seem very insulting to you to have to be with 
mortals like us." Proginoskes batted several eyes in apology. "I didn't mean 
what I said about immature earthlings. If we have been sent to the same Teacher, 
then we have things to learn from each other. A cherubim is not a higher order 
than earthlings, you know, just different." Blajeny nodded. "Yes. You have much 
to learn from each other. Meanwhile, I will give each of you assignments. 
Charles Wallace, can you guess what yours is?" "To learn to adapt." "I don't 
want you to change!" Meg cried.
    "Neither do I," Blajeny replied. "Charles Wallace's problem is to learn to 
adapt while remaining wholly himself." "What's my assignment, Blajeny?" Meg 
asked.
    The Teacher frowned briefly, in thought. Then, "I am trying to put it into 
earth terms, terms which you will understand. You must pass three tests, or 
trials. You must start immediately on the first one." "What is it?" "Part of the 
trial is that you must discover for yourself what it is." "But how?" "That I 
cannot tell you. But you will not be alone. Proginoskes is to work with you. You 
will be what I think you would call partners. Together you must pass the three 
tests." "But suppose we fail?" Proginoskes flung several wings over his eyes in 
horror at the thought.
    Blajeny said quietly, "It is a possibility, but I would prefer you not to 
suppose any such thing. Remember that these three trials will be nothing you 
could imagine or expect right now." "But Blajeny—I can hardly take a cherubim to 
school with me!" Blajeny looked affectionately at the great creature, whose 
wings were still folded protectingly about himself. "That is for the two of you 
to decide. He is not always visible, you know. Myself, I find him a little 
simpler when he's just a wind or a flame, but he was convinced he'd be more 
reassuring to earthlings if he enfleshed himself." Charles Wallace reached out 
and slipped his hand into the Teacher's. "If I could take him, just this way, 
looking like a drive of dragons, into the schoolyard with me, I bet I wouldn't 
have any trouble." Meg said, "Didn't you tell me you were supposed to bring a 
pet-to school tomorrow?" Charles Wallace laughed. "We may bring a small pet 
tomorrow to share with the class." Proginoskes peered under one wing. "I am not 
a joking matter." "Oh, Progo," Meg assured him. "It's only whistling in the 
dark." Charles Wallace, still holding the Teacher's hand, asked him, "Will you 
come home with us now and meet my mother?" "Not tonight, Charles, it is very 
late for you to be up, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?" "Don't you 
know?" "I am only a Teacher, and I would not arrange the future ahead of time if 
I could. Come, I will walk part of the way back to the house with you." Meg 
asked, "What about Progo—Proginoskes?" The cherubim replied, "If it is not the 
time for Blajeny to meet your family, it is hardly the time for me. I am quite 
comfortable here. Perhaps you could come meet me early tomorrow morning, and we 
can compare our night thoughts." "Well—okay. I guess that's best. Good night, 
then." "Good night, Megling." He waved a wing at her, then folded himself up 
into a great puff. No eyes showed, no flame, no smoke.
    Meg shivered.
    Blajeny asked, "Are you cold?" She shivered again. "That thunderstorm before 
dinner— I suppose it was caused by a cold front meeting a warm front, but it did 
seem awfully cosmic. I never expected to meet a cherubim . . ." "Blajeny," 
Calvin said, "you haven't given me an assignment." "No, my son. There is work 
for you, difficult work, and dangerous, but I cannot tell you yet what it is. 
Your assignment is to wait, without question. Please come to the Murrys' house 
after school tomorrow—you are free to do that?" "Oh, sure," Calvin said. "I can 
skip my after-school stuff for once." , "Good. Until then. Now, let us go." 
Charles Wallace led the way, with Meg and Calvin close behind. The wind was 
blowing out of the northwest, colder, it seemed, with each gust. When they 
reached the stone wall to the apple orchard, the moon was shining clearly, with 
that extraordinary brightness which makes light and dark acute and separate. 
Some apples still clung to their branches; a few as dark as Blajeny, others 
shining with a silvery light, almost as though they were illuminated from 
within.
    On top of the pale stones of the wall lay a dark shadow, which was moving 
slowly, sinuously. It rose up, carefully uncoiling, seeming to spread a hood as 
it loomed over them. Its forked tongue flickered, catching the light, and a 
hissing issued from its mouth.
    Louise.
    But this was not the threatening Louise who had hissed and clacked at the 
impossible Mr. Jenkins; this was the Louise Meg and Charles Wallace had seen 
that afternoon, the Louise who had been waiting to greet the unknown shadow—the 
shadow who, Meg suddenly understood, must have been Blajeny.
    Nevertheless, she pressed closer to Calvin; she had never felt very secure 
around Louise, and the snake's strange behavior that afternoon and evening made 
her seem even more alien than when she was only the twins' pet.
    Now Louise was weaving slowly back and forth in a gentle rhythm, almost as 
though she were making a serpentine version of a deep curtsy; and the sibilant 
sound was a gentle, treble fluting.
    Blajeny bowed to the snake.
    Louise most definitely returned the bow.
    Blajeny explained gravely, "She is a colleague of mine." "But—but—hey, now," 
Calvin sputtered, "wait a minute—" "She is a Teacher. That is why she is so fond 
of the two boys—Sandy and Dennys. One day they will be Teachers, too." Meg said, 
"They're going to be successful businessmen and support the rest of us in the 
way to which we are not accustomed." Blajeny waved this aside. "They will be 
Teachers. It is a High Calling, and you must not be distressed that it is not 
yours. You, too, have a Work." Louise, with a last burst of her tiny, strange 
melody, dropped back to the wall and disappeared among the stones.
    "Perhaps we're dreaming after all," Calvin said, wonderingly.
    "What is real?" the Teacher asked again. "I will say good night to you now." 
Charles Wallace was reluctant to leave. "We won't wake up in the morning and 
find it all never happened? We won't wake up and find we dreamed everything?" 
"If only one of us does," Meg said, "and nobody else remembers any of it, then 
it's a dream. But if we all wake up remembering, then it really happened." "Wait 
until tomorrow to find what tomorrow holds," Blajeny advised. "Good night, my 
children." They did not ask him where he was going to spend the night—though Meg 
wondered—because it was the kind of presumptuous question one could not possibly 
ask Blajeny. They left him standing and watching after them, the folds of his 
robes chiseled like granite, his dark face catching and refracting the moonlight 
like fused glass.
    They crossed the orchard and garden and entered the house, as usual, by the 
back way, through the pantry. The door to the lab was open, and the lights on. 
Mrs. Murry was bent over her microscope, and Dr. Colubra was curled up in an old 
red leather chair, reading. The lab was a long, narrow room with great slabs of 
stone for the floor. It had originally been used to keep milk and butter and 
other perishables, long before the days of refrigerators, and it was still 
difficult to heat in winter. The long work counter with the stone sink at one 
end was ideal for Mrs. Murry's lab equipment. In one corner were two comfortable 
chairs and a reading lamp, which softened the clinical glare of the lights over 
the counter. But Meg could not think of a time when she had seen her mother 
relaxing in one of those chairs; she inevitably perched on one of the lab 
stools.
    She looked up from the strange convolutions of the micro-electron 
microscope. "Charles! What are you doing out of bed?" "I woke up," Charles 
Wallace said blandly. "I knew Meg and Calvin were outside, so I went to get 
them." Mrs. Murry glanced sharply at her son, then greeted Calvin warmly.
    Charles Wallace asked, "Is it okay if we make some cocoa?" "It's very late 
for you to be up, Charles, and tomorrow's a school day." "It'll help me get back 
to sleep." Mrs. Murry seemed about to refuse, but Dr. Colubra closed her book, 
saying, "Why not, for once? Let Charles have a nap when he gets home in the 
afternoon. I'd like some cocoa myself. Let's make it out here while your mother 
goes on with her work. I'll do it." "I'll get the milk and stuff from the 
kitchen," Meg said.
    With Dr. Louise present they were not, she felt, free to talk to their 
mother about the events of the evening. The children were all fond of Dr. 
Louise, and trusted her completely as a physician, but they were not quite sure 
that she had their parents' capacity to accept the extraordinary. Almost sure, 
but not quite. Dr. Colubra had a good deal in common with their parents; she, 
too, had given up work which paid extremely well in both money and prestige, to 
come live in this small rural village. (Too many of my colleagues have forgotten 
that they are supposed to practice the art of healing. If I don't have the gift 
of healing in my hands, then all my expensive training isn't worth very much!) 
She, too, had turned her back on the glitter of worldly success. Meg knew that 
her parents, despite the fact that they were consulted by the President of the 
United States, had given up much when they moved to the country in order to 
devote their lives to pure research. Their discoveries, many of them made in 
this stone laboratory, had made the Murrys more, rather than less, open to the 
strange, to the mysterious, to the unexplainable. Dr. Colubra's work was 
perforce more straightforward, and Meg was not sure how she would respond to 
talk of a strange dark Teacher, eight or nine feet tall, and even less sure how 
she would react to their description of a cherubim. She'd probably insist they 
were suffering from mass psychosis and that they all should see a psychiatrist 
at once.
    —Or is it just that I'm afraid to talk about it, even to Mother? Meg 
wondered, as she took sugar, cocoa, milk, and a saucepan from the kitchen and 
returned to the pantry.
    Dr. Colubra was saying, "That stuff about cosmic screams and rips in distant 
galaxies offends every bit of the rational part of me." Mrs. Murry leaned 
against the counter. "You didn't believe in farandolae, either, until I proved 
them to you." "You haven't proven them to me," Dr. Louise said. "Yet." She 
looked slightly ruffled, like a little grey bird. Her short, curly hair was 
grey; her eyes were grey above a small beak of a nose; she wore a grey flannel 
suit. "The main reason I think you may be right is that you go to that idiot 
machine—" she pointed at the micro-electron microscope—"the way my husband used 
to go to his violin. It was always like a lovers' meeting." Mrs. Murry turned 
away from her 'idiot machine.' "I think I wish I'd never heard of farandolae, 
much less come to the conclusions—" She stopped abruptly, then said, "By the 
way, kids, I was rather surprised, just before you all barged into the lab, to 
have Mr. Jenkins call to suggest that we give Charles Wallace lessons in 
self-defense." Mr. Jenkins? Meg wondered. Aloud she said, "But Mr. Jenkins never 
calls parents. Parents have to go to him." She almost asked, 'Are you sure it 
was Mr. Jenkins?' And stopped herself as she remembered that she had not told 
Blajeny about the horrible Mr. Jenkins-not-Mr. Jenkins who had turned into a 
bird of nothingness, the Mr. Jenkins Louise had resented so fiercely. She should 
have told Blajeny; she would tell him first thing in the morning.
    Charles Wallace climbed up onto one of the lab stools and perched close to 
his mother. "What I really need are lessons in adaptation. I've been reading 
Darwin, but he hasn't helped me much." "See what we mean?" Calvin asked Dr. 
Louise. "That's hardly what one expects from a six-year-old." "He-really does 
read Darwin," Meg assured the doctor.
    "And I still haven't learned how to adapt," Charles Wallace added.
    Dr. Louise was making a paste of cocoa, sugar, and a little hot -water from 
one of Mrs. Murry's retorts. "This is just water, isn't it?" she asked.
    "From our artesian well. The very best water." Dr. Louise added milk, little 
by little. "You kids are too young to remember, and your mother is a good ten 
years younger than I am, but I'll never forget, a great many years ago, when the 
first astronauts went to the moon, and I sat up all night to watch them." "I 
remember it all right," Mrs. Murry said. "I wasn't that young." Dr. Louise 
stirred the cocoa which was heating over a Bunsen burner. "Do you remember those 
first steps on the moon, so tentative to begin with, on that strange, airless, 
alien terrain? And then, in a short time, Armstrong and Aldrin were striding 
about confidently, and the commentator remarked on this as an extraordinary 
example of man's remarkable ability to adapt" "But all they had to adapt to was 
the moon's surface!" Meg objected. "It wasn't inhabited. I'll bet when our 
astronauts reach some place with inhabitants it won't be so easy. It's a lot 
simpler to adapt to low gravity, or no atmosphere, or even sandstorms, than it 
is to hostile inhabitants." Fortinbras, who had an uncanine fondness for cocoa, 
came padding out to the lab, his nose twitching in anticipation. He stood on his 
hind legs and put his front paws on Charles Wallace's shoulders.
    Dr. Colubra asked Meg, "Do you think the first-graders in the village school 
are hostile inhabitants, then?" "Of course! Charles isn't like them, and so 
they're hostile towards him. People are always hostile to anybody who's 
different." "Until they get used to him," the doctor said.
    "They're not getting used to Charles." Charles Wallace, fondling the big 
dog, said, "Don't forget to give Fort a saucer—he likes cocoa." "Xou have the 
strangest pets," Dr. Louise said, but she poured a small dish of cocoa for 
Fortinbras. "I'll let it cool a bit before I put it on the floor. Meg, we need 
mugs." "Okay." Meg hurried off to the kitchen, collected a stack of mugs, and 
returned to the laboratory.
    Dr. Louise lined them up and poured the cocoa. "Speaking of pets, how's my 
namesake?" Meg nearly spilled the cocoa she was handing to her mother. She 
looked closely at Dr. Louise, but though the question had seemed pointed, the 
little bird face showed nothing more than amused interest; as Charles Wallace 
said, Dr. Louise was very good at talking on one level and thinking on another.
    Charles Wallace answered the question. "Louise the Larger is a magnificent 
snake. I wonder if she'd like some cocoa? Snakes like milk, don't they?" Mrs. 
Murry said firmly, "You are not going back out tonight to find if the snake, 
magnificent though she be, likes cocoa. Save your experimental zeal for 
daylight. Louise is undoubtedly sound asleep." Dr. Louise carefully poured out 
the last of the cocoa into her own mug. "Some snakes are very sociable at night. 
Many years ago when I was working in a hospital in the Philippines I had a boa 
constrictor for a pet; we had a problem with rats in the ward, and my boa 
constrictor did a thorough job of keeping the rodent population down. He also 
liked cream-of-mushroom soup, though I never tried him on cocoa, and he was a 
delightful companion in the evenings, affectionate and cuddly." Meg did not 
think that she would enjoy cuddling with a snake, even Louise.
    "He also had impeccable judgment about human nature. He was naturally a 
friendly creature, and if he showed me that he disliked or distrusted somebody, 
I took him seriously. We had a man brought to the men's ward who seemed to have 
nothing more seriously wrong with him than a slightly inflamed appendix, but my 
boa constrictor took a dislike to him the moment he was admitted. That night he 
tried to kill the man in the next bed—fortunately we got to him in time. But the 
snake knew, After that, I listened to his warnings immediately." "Fortinbras has 
the same instinct about people," Mrs. Murry said. "Too bad we human beings have 
lost it." Meg wanted to say, "So does Louise the Larger," but her mother or the 
doctor would have asked her on what experience she based such a remark; it would 
have sounded more likely coming from the twins.
    Charles Wallace regarded Dr. Colubra, who had returned to the red leather 
chair and was sipping cocoa, her legs tucked under her like a child; as a matter 
of fact, she was considerably smaller than Meg. Charles said, "We take Louise 
very seriously, Dr, Louise. Very seriously." Dr. Louise nodded. Her voice was 
light and high. "That was what I had in mind." Calvin finished his cocoa. "Thank 
you very much. I'd better get on home now. See you in school tomorrow, Meg. 
Thanks again, Mrs. Murry and Dr. Colubra. Good night." When he had gone, Mrs. 
Murry said, "All right, Charles. The twins have been in bed for an hour. Meg, 
it's time for you, too. Charles, I'll come check on you in a few minutes." As 
they left the lab, Meg could see her mother turning back to the micro-electron 
microscope.
    Meg undressed slowly, standing by her attic window, wondering if Dr. 
Louise's talk about snakes had been entirely casual chat over a cup of cocoa; 
perhaps it was only the strange events of the evening which caused her to look 
for meanings under the surface of what might well be unimportant conversation. 
She turned out the lights and looked out the window. She could see across the 
vegetable garden to the orchard, but the trees still held enough leaves so that 
she could not see into the north pasture.
    Was there really a cherubim waiting at the star-watching rock, curled up 
into a great feathery ball, all those eyes closed in sleep?
    Was he real?
    What is real?
    4 Proginoskes.
    Meg woke up before dawn, suddenly and completely, as though something had 
jerked her out of sleep. She listened: only the usual noises of the sleeping 
house. She turned on the light and looked at her clock; she had set the alarm 
for six, as usual. It was now five. She had another whole hour in which she 
could curl up under the covers, and luxuriate in warmth and comfort, and doze— 
Then she remembered.
    She tried to reassure herself that she was remembering a dream, although it 
was not the way that a dream is remembered. It must have been a dream, obviously 
it must have been a dream— The only way to prove that it was nothing but a 
dream, without waking Charles Wallace and asking him, was to get dressed and go 
out to the star-watching rock and make sure that there was no cherubim there. 
And—if by some slim chance it had not been a dream, she had promised the 
cherubim that she would come to him before breakfast.
    Had it not been for the horrible moments with Mr. Jenkins screeching across 
the sky, she would not have wanted it to be a dream. She desperately wanted 
Blajeny to be real, to take care of everything. But the unreality of Mr. 
Jenkins, who had always been disagreeably predictable, was far more difficult 
for her to accept than the Teacher, or even a cherubim who looked like a drive 
of dragons.
    She dressed hurriedly, putting on her kilt and a clean blouse. She tiptoed 
downstairs as quietly and carefully as she had the night before, through the 
kitchen and into the pantry, where she put on her heaviest jacket, and a 
multicolored knitted tarn o'shanter, one of her mother's rare successful 
ventures into domesticity.
    This tune no wind blew, no doors slammed. She turned on the flashlight to 
guide her. It was a still, chill pre-dawn. The grass was white with spider-web 
tracings of dew and light frost. A thin vapor moved delicately across the lawn. 
The mountains were curtained by ground fog, although in the sky she could see 
stars. She ran across the garden, looking warily about her. But there was no Mr. 
Jenkins, of course there was no Mr. Jenkins. At the stone wall she looked 
carefully for Louise, but there was no sign of the big snake. She crossed the 
orchard, climbed the wall again —still no Louise, it was much too early and much 
too cold for snakes, anyhow—and ran across the north pasture, past the two 
glacial rocks, and to the star-watching rock.
    There was nothing there except the mist whirling gently in the faint breeze.
    So it had all been a dream.
    Then the mist seemed to solidify, to become moving wings, eyes opening and 
shutting, tiny flickers of fire, small puffs of misty smoke ....
    "You're real," she said loudly. "You're not something I dreamed after all." 
Proginoskes delicately stretched one huge wing skywards, then folded it. "I have 
been told that human beings seldom dream about cherubim. Thank you for being 
prompt. It is in the nature of cherubim to dislike tardiness." Meg sighed, in 
resignation, in fear, and, surprisingly, in relief. "Okay, Progo, I guess you're 
not a figment of my imagination. What do we do now? I've got just about an hour 
before breakfast." "Are you hungry?" "No, I'm much too excited to be hungry, but 
if I don't turn up on time, it won't go down very well if I explain that I was 
late because I was talking with a cherubim. My mother doesn't like tardiness, 
either." Proginoskes said, "Much can be accomplished in an hour. We have to find 
out what our first ordeal is." "Don't you know?" "Why would I know?" "You're a 
cherubim." "Even a cherubim has limits. When three ordeals are planned, then 
nobody knows ahead of time what they are; even the Teacher may not know." "Then 
what do we do? How do we find out?" Proginoskes waved several wings slowly back 
and forth in thought, which would have felt very pleasant on a hot day, but 
which, on a cold morning, made Meg turn up the collar of her jacket. The 
cherubim did not notice; he continued waving and thinking. Then she could feel 
his words moving slowly, tentatively, within her mind. "H you've been assigned 
to me, I suppose you must be some kind of a Namer, too, even if a primitive 
one." "A what?" "A Namer. For instance, the last time I was with a Teacher—or at 
school, as you call it—my assignment was to memorize the names of the stars." 
"Which stars?" "All of them." "You mean all the stars, in all the galaxies?" 
"Yes. If he calls for one of them, someone has to know which one he means. 
Anyhow, they like it; there aren't many who know them all by name, and if your 
name isn't known, then it's a very lonely feeling." "Am I supposed to learn the 
names of all the stars, too?" It was an appalling thought "Good galaxy, no!" 
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Proginoskes waved several wings, which, Meg was 
learning, was more or less his way of expressing "I haven't the faintest idea." 
"Well, then, if I'm a Namer, what does that mean? What does a Namer do?" The 
wings drew together, the eyes closed, singly, and in groups, until all were 
shut. Small puffs of mist-like smoke rose, swirled about him. "When I was 
memorizing the names of the stars, part of the purpose was to help them each to 
be more particularly the particular star each one was supposed to be. That's 
basically a Namer's job. Maybe you're supposed to make earthlings feel more 
human." "What's that supposed to mean?" She sat down on the rock beside him; she 
was somehow no longer afraid of his wildness, his size, his spurts of fire.
    He asked, "How do I make you feel?" She hesitated, not wanting to be rude, 
forgetting that the cherubim, far more than Charles Wallace, did not need her 
outward words to know what was being said within. But she answered truthfully, 
"Confused." Several puffs of smoke went up. "Well, we don't know each other very 
well yet. Who makes you least confused?" "Calvin." There was no hesitation here. 
"When I'm with Calvin, I don't mind being me." "You mean he makes you more you, 
don't you?" "I guess you could put it that way." "Who makes you feel the least 
you?" "Mr. Jenkins." Proginoskes probed sharply, "Why are you suddenly upset and 
frightened?" "He's the principal of the grade school in the village this year. 
But he was in my school last year, and I was always getting sent to his office. 
He never understands anything, and everything I do is automatically wrong. 
Charles Wallace would probably be better off if he weren't my brother. That's 
enough to finish him with Mr. Jenkins." "Is that all?" "What do you mean?" "When 
you say Mr. Jenkins, I feel such a cold wave of terror wash over you that I feel 
chilly myself." "Progo—something happened last night—before we met you and 
Blajeny—when I was all alone in the garden—" Her voice tailed off.
    "What happened, earthling? Tell me. I have a feeling this may be important." 
Why should it be difficult to tell Proginoskes? The cherubim himself was just as 
unbelievable. But the cherubim was himself, was Proginoskes, while Mr. Jenkins 
had not been Mr. Jenkins.
    As she tried to explain to Proginoskes she could sense him pulling away, and 
suddenly he flung all his wings about himself in a frantic reflex of 
self-preservation. Then two eyes looked out at her under one wing. "Echthroi." 
It was an ugly word. As Proginoskes uttered it the morning seemed colder.
    "What did you say?" Meg asked.
    "Your Mr. Jenkins—the real one—could he do anything like the one you just 
told me about? Could he fly into a nothingness in the sky? This is not a thing 
that human beings can do, is it?" "No." "You say he was like a dark bird, but a 
bird that was nothingness, and that he tore the sky?" .'Well—that's how I 
remember it. It was all quick and unexpected and I was terrified and I couldn't 
really believe that it had happened." "It sounds like the Echthroi." He covered 
his eyes again.
    "The what?" Slowly, as though with a great effort, he uncovered several 
eyes. "The Echthroi. Oh, earthling, if you do not know Echthroi—" "I don't want 
to. Not if they're like what I saw last night." Proginoskes agitated his wings. 
"I think we must go see this Mr. Jenkins, the one you say is at your little 
brother's school." "Why?" Proginoskes withdrew into all his wings again. Meg 
could feel him thinking grumpily, —They told me it was going to be difficult . . 
. Why couldn't they have sent me off some place quiet to recite the stars again? 
... Or I'm even willing to memorize farandolae . . . I've never been to Earth 
before, I'm too young, I'm scared of the shadowed planets, what kind of a star 
has this planet got, anyhow?
    Then he emerged, slowly, one pan- of eyes at a time. "Megling, I think you 
have seen an Echthros. If we are dealing with Echthroi, then—I just know with 
every feather on my wings (and you might try counting my feathers, sometime) 
that we have to go see this Mr. Jenkins. It must be part of the trial." "Mr. 
Jenkins? Part of our first test? But that's—it doesn't make sense." "It does to 
me." "Progo," she objected, "it's impossible. I can slip off my school bus and 
then walk to the grade school the way I did when I went to talk to Mr. Jenkins 
about Charles Wallace— and a fat lot of good that did—" "If you have seen an 
Echthros, everything is different," Proginoskes said.
    "Okay, I can get to the grade school all right, but I can't possibly take 
you with me. You're so big you wouldn't even fit into the school bus. Anyhow, 
you'd terrify everybody." At the thought she smiled, but Proginoskes was not in 
a laughing mood.
    "Not everybody is able to see me," he told her. "I’m real, and most 
earthlings can bear very little reality. But if it will relieve your mind, I'll 
dematerialize." He waved a few wings Q1 gracefully. "It's really more 
comfortable for me not to be burdened with matter, but I thought it would be 
easier for you if you could converse with someone you could see." The cherubim 
was there in front of her, covering most of the star-watching rock, and then he 
was not there. She thought she saw a faint shimmer in the air, but it might have 
been the approach of dawn. She could feel him, however, moving within her mind. 
"Are you feeling extremely brave, Megling?" "No." A faint light defined the 
eastern horizon. The stars were dim, almost extinguished.
    "I think we're going to have to be brave, earth child, but it will be easier 
because we're together. I wonder if the Teacher knows." "Knows what?" "That 
you've seen an Echthros." "Progo, I don't understand. What is an Echthros?" 
Abruptly, Proginoskes materialized, raised several wings, and gathered her in. 
"Come, littleling. I'll take you some place yesterday and show you." "How can 
you take me yesterday?" "I can't possibly take you today, silly. It's time for 
you to go in to breakfast and your mother dislikes tardiness. And who knows what 
we may have to do or where we may have to go before tomorrow? Come." He drew her 
further in to him.
    She found herself looking directly into one of his eyes, a great, amber 
cat's eye, the dark mandala of the pupil, opening, compelling, beckoning.
    She was drawn towards the oval, was pulled into it, was through it.
    Into the ultimate night on the other side.
    Then she felt a great, flaming wind, and knew that somehow she herself was 
part of that wind.
    Then she felt a great shove, and she was standing, on a bare stone mountain 
top, and Proginoskes was blinking and winking at her. She thought she saw the 
oval, mandala-eye through which she had come, but she was not sure.
    The cherubim raised a great "wing to sketch the slow curve of sky above 
them. The warm rose and lavender of sunset faded, dimmed, was extinguished. The 
sky was drenched with green at the horizon, muting upwards into a deep, purply 
blue through which stars began to appear in totally unfamiliar constellations.
    Meg asked, "Where are we?" "Never mind where. Watch." She stood beside him, 
looking at the brilliance of the stars. Then came a sound, a sound which was 
above sound, beyond sound, a violent, silent, electrical report, which made her 
press her hands in pain against her ears. Across the sky, where the stars were 
clustered as thickly as in the Milky Way, a crack shivered, slivered, became a 
line of nothingness. ' If this kind of thing was happening in the universe, no 
matter how far away from earth and the Milky Way, Meg did not wonder that her 
father had been summoned to Washington and Brookhaven.
    "Progo, what is it? What happened?" "The Echthroi have Xed." "What?" 
"Annihilated. Negated. Extinguished. Xed." Meg stared in horrible fascination at 
the rent in the sky. This was the most terrible thing she had ever seen, more 
horrifying than the Mr. Jenkins-Echthros the night before. She pressed close to 
the cherubim, surrounding herself with wings and eyes and puffs of smoke, but 
she could still see the rip in the sky.
    She could not bear it.
    She closed her eyes to shut it out. She tried to think of the most 
comfortable thing possible, the safest, most reasonable, ordinary thing. What, 
then? The dinner table at home: winter: the red curtains drawn across the 
windows, and a quiet snow falling softly outdoors; an applewood fire in the 
fireplace and Fortinbras snoring happily on the hearth; a tape playing Hoist's 
The Planets—no, maybe that wasn't too comforting; in her mind's ear she shifted 
to a ghastly recording of the school band, with Sandy and Dennys playing 
somewhere in the cacophony.
    Dinner was over, and she was clearing the table and starting the dishes and 
only half listening to the conversation of her parents, who were lingering over 
their coffee.
    It was almost as tangible as though she were actually there, and she thought 
she felt Proginoskes pushing at her mind, helping her remember.
    Had she really listened that attentively to her parents while she stood 
running hot water over the plates? Their voices were as clear as though she were 
actually in the room.
    Her father must have mentioned the terrible thing which Proginoskes had-just 
shown her, the terrible thing which was terrible precisely because it was not a 
thing, because it was nothing. She could hear, too clearly, her father's voice, 
calm and rational, speaking to her mother. "It isn't just in distant galaxies 
that strange, unreasonable things are happening. Unreason has crept up on us so 
insidiously that we've hardly been aware of it. But think of the things going on 
in our own country which you wouldn't have believed possible only a few years 
ago." Mrs. Murry swirled the dregs of her coffee. "I don't think I believe all 
of them now, although I know they're happening." She looked up to see that the. 
twins and Charles Wallace were out of the room, that Meg was splashing water in 
the sink as she scoured a pot. "Ten years ago we didn't even have a key to this 
house. Now we lock up when we go out. The irrational violence is even worse in 
the cities." Mr. Murry absent-mindedly began working out an equation on the 
tablecloth. For once Mrs. Murry did not even seem to notice. He said, "They've 
never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could 
eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove home from 
Washington the traffic was so bad I could have made better time with a horse. 
There were huge signs proclaiming SPEED LIMIT 65 MPH, and we were crawling along 
at 20." "And the children and I kept dinner hot for you for three hours, and 
finally ate, pretending we weren't worried that you might have been in an 
accident," Mrs. Murry said bitterly. "Here we are, at the height of civilization 
in a well-run state in a great democracy. And four ten-year-olds were picked up 
last week for pushing hard drugs in the school where our six-year-old is 
regularly given black eyes and a bloody nose." She suddenly noticed the equation 
growing on the tablecloth. "What are you doing?" ' "I have a hunch that there's 
some connection between your discoveries about the effects of farandolae on 
mitochondria, and that unexplained phenomenon out in space." His pencil added a 
fraction, some Greek characters, and squared them.
    Mrs. Murry said in a low voice, "My discoveries are not very pleasant." "I 
know." "I isolated farandolae because something beyond increasing air pollution 
has to account for the accelerating number of deaths from respiratory failure, 
and this so-called flu epidemic. It was the micro-sonarscope which gave me the 
first clue—" She stopped abruptly, looked at her husband. "It's the same sound, 
isn't it? The strange 'cry* of the ailing mitochondria, and the 'cry' picked up 
in those distant galaxies by the new paraboloidoscope—there's a horrid 
similarity between them. I don't like it. I don't like the fact that we don't 
even see what's going on in our own back yard. L.A. is trying as honorably as a 
president can try in a world which has become so blunted by dishonor and 
violence that people casually take it for granted. We have to see a great, 
dramatic fissure in the sky before we begin to take danger seriously. And I have 
to be deathly worried about our youngest child before I regard farandolae except 
in a cool and academic manner." Meg had turned from the kitchen sink at the pain 
in her mother's voice, and had seen her father reach across the table for her 
mother's hand. "My dear, this is not like you. With my intellect I see cause for 
nothing but pessimism and even despair. But I can't settle for what my intellect 
tells me. That's not all of it." "What else is there?" Mrs. Murry's voice was 
low and anguished.
    "There are still stars which move in ordered and beautiful rhythm. There are 
still people in this world who keep promises. Even little ones, like your 
cooking stew over your Bunsen burner. You may be in the middle of an experiment, 
but you still remember to feed your family. That's enough to keep my heart 
optimistic, no matter how pessimistic my mind. And you and I have good enough 
minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect 
is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument." Proginoskes said, "He's a wise 
man, your father." "Could you hear me remembering?" "I was remembering with you. 
Most of that conversation you didn't hear with your conscious mind, you know."- 
"I have a very good memory—" Meg started. Then she stopped herself. "Okay. I 
know I couldn't have remembered all that by myself. I suppose I just sort of 
took in the sound waves, didn't I? But how did you get it all from me?" 
Proginoskes looked at her with two, ringed owl-like eyes. "You're beginning to 
learn how to kythe." "To what?" "Kythe. It's how cherubim talk. It's talking 
without words, just the same way that I can be myself and not be enfleshed." 
"But I have to be enfleshed, and I need words." "I know, Meg," he replied 
gently, "and I will keep things worded for you. But it will help if you will 
remember that cherubim kythe without words among each other. For a human 
creature you show a distinct talent for kything." She blushed slightly at the 
compliment; she had a feeling that paying compliments is a habit not often 
indulged in by cherubim. "Progo, I wish I'd been able to see the equation Father 
was doodling on the tablecloth. If I'd seen it, then it might be somewhere in my 
mind for you to pull out." "Think," Proginoskes said. "I'll help." "Mother put 
the tablecloth in the wash." "But you remember there were some Greek letters." 
"Yes . . ." "Let me try to find them with you." She closed her eyes.
    "That's right. Relax, now. Maybe this is the way for us to kythe. —Don't you 
try to think. Just let me move about." Out of the corner of her mind's eye she 
seemed to see three Greek characters among the numbers in the loosely strung 
equation her father was scribbling on the cloth. She thought them at 
Proginoskes.
    "exo- Epsilon, chi, and theta. That's Echth," the cherubim told her.
    oo "Echthroi—but how could Father—" "Think of the conversation we just 
recalled, Meg. Your parents are very aware of the evil in the world." "All 
right. Yes. I know. Okay." Meg sounded cross, "Until Charles started school I 
hoped maybe we could ignore it. Like ostriches or something." The cherubim 
withdrew its wings from her entirely, leaving her exposed and cold on the 
strange hilltop. "Open your eyes and look where the sky is torn." "I'd rather 
not." "Go on. I've got all my eyes open, and you only have to open two." Meg 
opened her eyes. The rent in the sky was still there. She wondered what this 
distant phenomenon could have to do with Charles Wallace's pallor, with 
mitochondritis, or whatever it was. "How—oh, Progo, how did the Echthroi do 
that?" Like Charles Wallace, he picked up her particular anxiety. "It has to do 
with un-Naming. If we are Namers, the Echthroi are un-Namers, non-Namers." 
"Progo, what does that have to do with Mr. Jenkins?" She felt a wave of 
apprehension roll through her. "Little-ling, I think that is what we must find 
out. I think that it is part of our first ordeal. Let us go." He drew her back 
into himself again; again she was confronted with the single eye, was pulled 
through the opening, oval pupil. Then the pupil snapped shut, and they were 
together on the star-watching rock with dawn slowly lightening the east.
    Progo spread his wings wide, and she moved out. "What do we do now?" he 
said.
    The cherubim was asking her? "I am only a human being, not quite 
full-grown," she replied. "How would I know?" "Megling, I've never been on your 
planet before. This is your home. Charles Wallace is your brother. You are the 
one who knows Mr. Jenkins. You must tell me what we are to do now." Meg stamped, 
loudly and angrily, against the hard, cold surface of the rock. "This is too 
much responsibility! I'm still only a child! I didn't ask for any of this!" "Are 
you refusing to take the test?" Proginoskes pulled away from her.
    "But I didn't ask for it! I didn't ask for Blajeny, or you, or any of it!" 
"Didn't you? I thought you were worried about Charles Wallace." "I am! I'm 
worried about everything!" "Meg." Proginoskes was somber and stern. "Are you 
going to enter into the ordeal? I must know. Now." Meg stamped again. "Of course 
I'm going to. You know I have to. Charles Wallace is in danger. I'll do anything 
to help him, even if it seems silly." "Then what do we do now?" She shoved at 
her glasses as though that would help her think. "I'd better go home now and 
have breakfast. Then I'll get on my school bus—it stops at the bottom of the 
hill and maybe you'd better wait for me there. Fortinbras might bark at you; I'm 
sure he'd know you were in the house even if you dematerialize, or whatever you 
call it." "Whatever you think best," Proginoskes said meekly.
    "I'll be down at the foot of the road at seven o'clock. The high-school bus 
covers so much distance and makes so many stops it takes an hour and a half, and 
I get on at one of the first stops." She felt an acquiescing response from the 
cherubim, and then he disappeared; she could not see even a shimmer, or feel a 
flicker of him in her mind. She headed back to the house. She kept the 
flashlight on, not for the known turnings of the path, but for whatever new, 
unknown surprises might be waiting for her.
    When Meg got to the stone wall Louise the Larger was there. Waiting. Neither 
greeting nor attacking. Waiting. Meg approached her cautiously. Louise watched 
her through eyes which shone in the flashlight like the water of a very deep 
well.
    "May I go by, please, Louise?" Meg asked timidly.
    Louise uncoiled, waving slightly in greeting, still looking intently at Meg. 
Then she bowed her head, and slithered off into the rocks. Meg felt that Louise 
had been waiting for her to give her a warning for whatever lay ahead, and to 
wish her well. It was strangely comforting to know that Louise's well-wishing 
was going with her.
    There was sausage as well as hot porridge for breakfast. Meg felt that she 
ought to eat heartily, because who knew what lay ahead? But she could manage 
only a few mouthfuls.
    "Are you all right, Meg?" her mother asked.
    "Fine. Thanks." "You look a little pale. Sure you aren't coming down with 
something?" —She's worried about all of us with this mitochondritis stuff. "Just 
the normal throes of adolescence," she smiled at her mother.
    Sandy said, "If you don't want your sausage, I’ll eat it." Dennys said, 
"Half for me, okay?" Charles Wallace slowly and deliberately ate a full bowl of 
porridge, but gave the twins his sausage.
    "Well, then"—Meg washed her dishes and put them in the rack—"I'm off." "Wait 
for us," Sandy said.
    She did not want to wait for the twins, to listen to their chatter on the 
walk down to the bus. On the other hand, it would keep her from thinking about 
what lay ahead. She had thought of Mr. Jenkins for as far back as she could 
remember with distaste, annoyance, and occasionally outrage, but never before 
with fear.
    When she left the house she had a horrid, premonitory feeling that it would 
be a long time before she returned. Again she wished that Fortinbras were 
walking to the bus with them, as he often did, and then returning to make the 
walk again with Charles Wallace. But this morning he showed no inclination to 
leave the warmth of the kitchen.
    "What do you suppose will happen today?" Sandy asked as they started down 
the hill in the chill of early morning.
    Dennys shrugged. "Nothing. As usual. Race you to the foot of the hill." 5 
The First Test.
    Meg and the cherubim reached the deserted schoolyard in safety.
    "We've got a while to wait," Meg told him, "and it's okay for you, you're 
invisible. But I've got to find a place to hide." She could not see Proginoskes, 
but she talked at the faint shimmer in the air where she knew he was.
    "You're too late," the cherubim said, and Meg swung around to see Mr. 
Jenkins coming across the schoolyard from the faculty parking lot.
    Mr. Jenkins. The ordinary, everyday, usual Mr. Jenkins. There was no snake 
hissing and clacking at him, and he himself did nothing but continue his way 
across the school-yard. He looked just as he always looked. He wore his usual 
dark business suit, and no matter how often it was brushed there was always a 
small snowfall of dandruff on his shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut 
short, and his eyes were muddy behind his bifocals. He was neither short nor 
tall, fat nor thin, and whenever Meg saw him her feet seemed to grow larger and 
she couldn't find a resting place for her hands.
    "All right, Margaret, what is this? What are you doing here?" He had every 
right to sound annoyed. She had nothing to reply. She felt Proginoskes close to 
her, felt his mind within hers, but he had nothing to suggest.
    "My dear child," Mr. Jenkins said, and his voice was un-wontedly 
compassionate. "If you have come again about your little brother, I can now tell 
you that we are reviewing his case. It is not my policy of education to have one 
child intimidated by his peers. But our initial testing shows that Charles 
Wallace's talents are so unusual that unusual measures must be taken. I've had 
several consultations with the State Board, and we are considering getting a 
special tutor for him." Meg looked warily at the principal. This sounded too 
good to be true.
    And Louise had been trying to warn her of something. Of what?
    The cherubim, too, was uneasy. She felt him moving lightly in her mind, 
feeling her response to this unexpectedly reasonable Mr. Jenkins.
    "That is nonsense," Mr. Jenkins said to Mr. Jenkins. "We cannot make an 
exception for any one child. Charles Wallace Murry must learn to manage." A 
second Mr. Jenkins was standing beside Mr. Jenkins.
    It was impossible. It was just as impossible as— But there were two 
identical, dour Mr. Jenkinses standing in front of her.
    Proginoskes shimmered, but did not materialize. Meg backed into the shimmer; 
she felt that the cherubim was opening an invisible wing and pulling her close 
to him. She could feel his tremendous, wild heartbeat, a frightened heartbeat, 
thundering in her ears.
    "We're Namers," she heard through the racing of the heart. "We're Namers. 
What is their Name?" "Mr. Jenkins." "No, no. This is the test, Meg, it must be. 
One of those Mr. Jenkinses is an Echthros, We have to know which is the real Mr. 
Jenkins." Meg looked at the two men who stood glaring at each other. "Progo, you 
can feel into me. Can't you feel into them? Can't you kythe?" .
    "Not when I don't know who they are. You're the one who knows the 
prototype." "The what?" "The real one. The only Mr. Jenkins who is Mr. Jenkins. 
Look—" Suddenly beside the two Mr. Jenkinses stood a third Mr. Jenkins. He 
raised one hand in greeting, not to Meg, but to the other two men as he drew 
level with them. "Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes," Mr. Jenkins 
Three said.
    The three men wheeled, stiffly, like marionettes, and walked across the 
schoolyard and into the building.
    "We must think. We must think." Proginoskes's kythe almost became opaque for 
a second, and Meg felt that he was restraining himself from spouting fire.
    Meg said, "Progo, if you really are a cherubim—" There was a great and 
surging invisible wave of indignation all around her.
    She hit the clenched fist of one hand against the palm of the other. "Wait. 
You told me to think, and I'm thinking." "You don't have to think out loud. You 
don't have to talk to think, after all. You're deafening me. Try to kythe with 
me, Meg." "I still don't understand kything. Is it like mental telepathy?" 
Proginoskes hesitated. "You might say that mental telepathy is the very 
beginning of learning to kythe. But the cherubic language is entirely 
kything—with you, with stars, with galaxies, with the salt in the ocean, the 
leaves of the trees." "But I'm not a cherubim. How do I do it?" "Meg, your brain 
stores all the sensory impressions it receives, but your conscious mind doesn't 
have a key to the storehouse. All I want you to do is to open yourself up to me 
so that I can open the door to your mind's storehouse." "All right. I'll try." 
To open herself entirely to the cherubim, to make herself completely vulnerable, 
was not going to be easy. But she trusted Proginoskes implicitly. "Listen," she 
said, "cherubim have come to my planet before." "I know that. Where do you think 
I got my information?" "What do you know about us?" "I have heard that your host 
planet is shadowed, that it is troubled." "It's beautiful," Meg said 
defensively.
    She felt a rippling of his wings. "In the middle of your cities?" 
"Well—no—but I don't live in a city." "And is your planet peaceful?" "Well, 
no—it isn't very peaceful." "I had the idea," Proginoskes moved reluctantly 
within her mind, "that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and 
killing each other." "Yes, that’s so,but—" "And children go hungry." "Yes." "And 
people don't understand each other." "Not always." "And there's—there's hate?" 
"Yes." She felt Proginoskes pulling away. "All I want to do," he was murmuring 
to himself, "is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars . . ." 
"Progo! You said we were Namers. I still don't know: what is a Namer?" "I've 
told you. A Namer has to know who people are, and who they are meant to be. I 
don*t know why I should have been shocked at finding Echthroi on your planet." 
"Why are they here?" "Echthroi are always about when there's war. They start all 
war." '"Progo, I saw all that awfulness you took me to see, that tearing of the 
sky, and all, but you still haven't told me exactly what Echthroi are." 
Proginoskes probed into her mind, searching for words she could understand. "I 
think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their 
business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming—making people not know who 
they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to 
hate. That's why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the 
uni-vere like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then 
the Echthroi will be vanquished." "But what—" "Oh, earthling, earthling, why do 
you think Blajeny called for you? There is war in heaven, and we need all the 
help we can get. The Echthroi are spreading through the universe. Every time a 
star goes out another Echthros has won a battle. A star or a child or a 
farandola—size doesn't matter, Meg. The Echthroi are after Charles Wallace and 
the balance of the entire universe can be altered by the outcome." "But Progo, 
what does this have to do with our test— and with three Mr. Jenkinses—it's 
insane." Proginoskes responded coldly and quietly. "Precisely." Into the cold 
and quiet came the sound of the school buses arriving, doors opening, children 
rushing out and into the school building.
    Charles Wallace was one of those children.
    Proginoskes moved quietly in her mind through the roar. "Don't misunderstand 
me, Meg. It is the ways of the Echthroi which are insane. The ways of the 
Teachers are often strange, but they are never haphazard. I know that Mr. 
Jenkins has to have something to do with it, something important, or we wouldn't 
be here." Meg said, unhappily, "If I hate Mr. Jenkins whenever I think of him, 
am I Naming him?" Proginoskes shifted his wings. "You're Xing him, just like the 
Echthroi." "Progo!" "Meg, when people don't know who they are, they are open 
either to being Xed, or Named." "And you think I'm supposed to Name Mr. 
Jenkins?" It was a ridiculous idea; no matter how many Mr. Jenkinses there were, 
he was Mr. Jenkins. That's all.
    But Proginoskes was most definite. "Yes." Meg cried rebelliously, "Well, I 
think it's a silly kind of test." "What you think is not the point. What you do 
is what's going to count." "How can it possibly help Charles?" "I don't know. We 
don't have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is 
given us to do." "But how do I do it? How do I Name Mr. Jenkins when all I think 
of when I see him is how awful he is?" Proginoskes sighed and flung several 
wings heavenwards so violently that he lifted several feet, materialized, and 
came down with a thud. "There's a word—but if I say it you'll just 
misunderstand." "You have to say it." "It's a four-letter word. Aren't 
four-letter words considered the bad ones on your planet?" "Come on. I've seen 
all the four-letter words on the walls of the washroom at school." Proginoskes 
let out a small puff. "Luff." "What?" "Love. That's what makes persons know who 
they are.
    You're full of love, Meg, but you don't know how to stay within it when it's 
not easy." "What do you mean?" "Oh—you love your family. That's easy. Sometimes 
when you feel awful about somebody, you get back into tightness by thinking 
about—well, you seem to be telling me that you got back into love once by 
thinking about Charles Wallace." "Yes—" "But this time it can't be easy. You 
have to go on to the next step." "If you mean you think I have to love Mr. 
Jenkins, you've got another think coming," Meg snapped.
    Proginoskes gave a mighty sigh. "If we pass the test, you'll go on and be 
taught—oh, some of the things I was taught my first billennium with the 
Teachers. I had to pass a galaxy of tests before I could qualify as a 
Star'Namer. But you're a human being, and it's all quite different with you. I 
keep forgetting that. Am I lovable? To you?" All about Meg, eyes opened and 
shut; wings shifted; a small flame burned her hand and was rapidly withdrawn. 
She coughed and then sucked the burned place on her hand. But all she wanted was 
to put her arms around Proginoskes as she would around Charles Wallace. "Very 
lovable," she said.
    "But you don't love me the way you love that skinny Calvin?" "That's 
different." "I thought so; That's the confusing kind. Not the kind you have to 
have in order to Name Mr. Jenkins." "I hate Mr. Jenkins." "Meg, it's the test. 
You have to Name the real Mr. Jenkins, and I have to help you. If you fail, I 
fail too." "Then what would happen?" "It's your first time with a Teacher. And 
it would be your last." "And you?" "When one has been with the Teachers as often 
as I have, one is given a choice. I could throw in my lot with the Echthroi—" 
"What!" "Quite a few of those who fail do." "But the Echthroi are—" "You know 
what they are. Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The 
worms. Those who hate." "Progo, you couldn't." "I hope I couldn't. But others 
have. It's not an easy choice." "If you don't go to the Echthroi—" All 
Proginoskes's eyes were shielded by his wings. "I am a Namer, The Echthroi would 
un-Name. If I do not go with them, then I must X myself." "What!?" "I'll ask you 
a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?" "Oh, 
love, I suppose." "So, if I care more about Naming than anything else, then 
maybe I have to give myself away, if it's the only way to show my love. All the 
way away. To X myself." "If you do it—X yourself—does it last forever?" Meg 
asked apprehensively.
    "Nobody knows. Nobody will know till the end of time." "Do I have that 
choice, too, if—if we fail?" She turned away from the school building, towards 
the early-morning shouts and whistles, and pressed her face against the soft 
feathers of one great pinion.
    "It is not an option given to mortals, earthling." "All that happens to me 
is that I go home?" "If you can call it all. There would be rejoicing in hell. 
But perhaps you don't believe in hell?" Meg pushed this aside. "But if we fail, 
then you—" "I must choose. It's better to X myself than to be Xed by 
theEchthroi." "What you took me to see—it was what Mother talked about at the 
dinner table, what Father's gone to Brook-haven about—it doesn't seem to have 
much to do with Mr. Jenkins. It's all so cosmic, so big—" "It isn't size that 
matters, Meg. Right now it's Charles Wallace. The Echthroi would annihilate 
Charles Wallace." "A little boy!" "You've said yourself that he's a special 
little boy." "He is, oh, he is." She gave a startled jump as the first bell went 
off inside the school building, strident, demanding. "Progo, I don't understand 
any of it, but if you think Naming Mr. Jenkins is going to help Charles Wallace, 
I'll do my best. You will help me?" "I'll try." But Proginoskes did not sound 
confident. From all around them came the usual schoolday din.
    Then the door to the cafeteria/gym opened, and a Mr. Jenkins came out. Which 
Mr. Jenkins? There was no telling them apart. Meg looked to the cherubim, but he 
had de-materialized again, leaving only a shimmer to show where he was.
    Mr. Jenkins came to her. She checked his shoulders. There was the dandruff. 
She went closer: smelled: yes, he had the Mr. Jenkins smell of old hair cream 
and what she always thought of as rancid deodorant. But all three of the Mr. 
Jenkinses could manage that much, she was sure. It was not going to be that 
easy.
    He looked at her coldly in the usual way, down one side of his slightly 
crooked nose. "I assume that you are as confused by all this as I am, Margaret. 
Why two strange men should wish to impersonate me I have no idea. It is most 
inconvenient, just at the beginning of school, when I am already overworked. I 
am told that it has something to do with you as well as your unfortunate little 
brother. I had hoped that this year you, at least, would not be one of my 
problems. It seems to me I have had to spend more time with you than with any 
other student in school. It is certainly my misfortune. And now not only do I 
have to cope with your little brother, who is equally difficult, but here you 
are again." This was Mr. Jenkins. He had played upon the theme of this speech 
with infinite variations almost every time she was sent to his office.
    "For some reason obscure to me, you are supposed to choose between the 
impostors and me. It is certainly in my interests to have you pass this absurd 
test. Then perhaps I can keep you out of my school." "And then," said Mr. 
Jenkins Two, appearing beside Mr. Jenkins One, "I will have time to concentrate 
on present problems instead of those which ought to be past. Now, Meg, if you 
will just for once in your life do it my way, not yours ... I understand you're 
basically quite bright in mathematics. If you would simply stop approaching each 
problem in your life as though you were Einstein and had to solve the problems 
of the universe, and would deign to follow one or two basic rules, you—and 
I—would have a great deal less trouble." This, too, was authentic Jenkins.
    The shimmer of the cherubim wavered uneasily.
    "Meg," Mr. Jenkins Two said, "I urge you to resolve this nonsense and tell 
the impostors that I am Mr. Jenkins. This whole farce is wasting a great deal of 
time. I am Mr. Jenkins, as you have cause to know." She felt Proginoskes probing 
wildly. "Meg, when have you been most you, the very most you?" She closed her 
eyes. She remembered the first afternoon Calvin had come to the Murrys'. Calvin 
was an honor student, but he was far better with words than with numbers, and 
Meg had helped him with a trigonometry problem. Since trig was not taught in 
Meg's grade, her easy competence was one of her first surprises for Calvin. But 
at the time she had not thought of surprising him. She had concentrated wholly 
on Calvin, on what he was doing, and she had felt wholly alive and herself.
    "How is that going to help?" she asked the cherubim.
    "Think. You didn't know Calvin very well then, did you?" "No." "But you 
loved him, didn't you?" "Then? I wasn't thinking about love. I was just thinking 
about trig." "Well, then," Proginoskes said, as though that explained the entire 
nature of love.
    "But I can't think about trig with Mr. Jenkins. And I can't love him." "You 
love me." "But, Progo, you're so awful you're lovable." "So is he. And you have 
to Name him." A third Mr. Jenkins joined the other two. "Meg. Stop panicking and 
listen to me." The three men stood side by side, identical, grey, dour, 
unperceptive, overworked: unlovable.
    "Meg," Mr. Jenkins Two said, "if you will Name me, and quickly, I will see 
to it that Charles Wallace gets into competent medical hands immediately." "It's 
hardly that easy," Mr. Jenkins Three said. "After all, her parents—" "—do not 
know how to handle the situation, nor do they understand how serious it is," Mr. 
Jenkins Two snapped.
    Mr. Jenkins Three waved this aside. "Meg, does it not seem extraordinary to 
you that you should be confronted with three of me?" There seemed to be no 
answer to this question.
    Mr. Jenkins One shrugged in annoyance.
    Mr. Jenkins Two said, "It is imperative that we stick to essentials at this 
point. Our number is peripheral." The real Mr. Jenkins was very fond of 
discarding peripherals and sticking to essentials.
    Mr. Jenkins Three said, "That there is only one of me, and that I am he, is 
the main point." Mr. Jenkins Two snorted. "Except for the small but important 
fact that I am he. This trial that has been brought on us is an extraordinary 
one. None of us—that is, you and I, Margaret—will ever be the same again. Being 
confronted with these two mirror visions of myself has made me see myself 
differently. None of us likes to see himself as he must appear to others. I 
understand your point of view much better than I did before. You were quite 
right to come to me about your little brother. He is indeed special, and I have 
come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in not realizing this, and 
treating him accordingly." "Don't trust him," Mr. Jenkins Three said.
    Mr. Jenkins Two swept on. "I believe that you and I had a—shall we call it a 
run-in?—over the imports and exports of Nicaragua, which you were supposed to 
learn for one of your social-studies classes. You were quite right when you 
insisted that it was unnecessary for you to learn the imports and exports of 
Nicaragua. I shall try not to make the same kind of mistake with Charles 
Wallace. If Charles Wallace's interests are different from those of our usual 
first-grader, we will try to understand that he has been taught by an eminent 
physicist father. I am sorry for all the needless pain you have been caused. And 
I can assure you that if you Name me, Charles Wallace will find school a 
pleasanter place, and I have no doubt his health will improve." Meg looked 
warily at Mr. Jenkins Two. This was, indeed, a changed Mr. Jenkins, and she did 
not trust the change. On the other hand, she remembered vividly the battle they 
had had over the imports and exports of Nicaragua.
    Mr. Jenkins Three murmured, "Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much." 
Mr. Jenkins Two sputtered, "What's that?" Mr. Jenkins One looked blank.
    Mr. Jenkins Three cried triumphantly, "I could have told you he would not 
recognize Shakespeare. He is an impostor." Meg had her doubts whether or not the 
real Mr. Jenkins would recognize Shakespeare.
    Mr. Jenkins Two said, "Shakespeare is peripheral. If I have often been 
irritable in the past it is because I have been worried. Despite your unkind 
opinion of me, I do not like seeing any of my children unhappy." He sniffed.
    Mr. Jenkins One looked down his nose. "If I had the cooperation of the 
School Board and the P.T.A. it might un: tie my hands so that I could accomplish 
something." Meg looked at the three men in their identical business suits. "It's 
like a game on television." "It is not a game," Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply. 
"The stakes are much too high." Meg asked, "What happens to you—all of you—if I 
Name the wrong one?" For a moment all the atoms of air in the schoolyard seemed 
to shiver; it was as though a lightning bolt of nothingness had flashed across 
the schoolyard, ripping the fabric of the atmosphere, then closed together 
again. Although nothing had been visible, Meg thought of a dark and terrible 
vulture slashing across the sky.
    Mr. Jenkins One said, "I do not believe in the supernatural. But this entire 
situation is abnormal." His rabbity nose wriggled in pink distaste.
    Then all three men swung around as the side door to the school opened, and 
Charles Wallace, Louise the Larger twined around his arm and shoulders, walked 
down the steps and across the schoolyard.
    6 The Real Mr. Jenkins.
    "Charles!" Meg cried.
    All three Mr. Jenkinses held up warning hands, said simultaneously, "Charles 
Wallace Murry, what is it now?" Charles Wallace looked with interest at the 
three men. "Hello, what's this?" Mr. Jenkins One said, "What are you doing with 
that— that—" All three men were visibly fearful of Louise. There was no telling 
the 'real' Mr. Jenkins by a variation in response to the snake. Louise reared 
her head,, half closed her eyes, and made the strange, clacking, warning sound 
which Meg had heard the night before. Charles Wallace stroked her soothingly, 
and looked speculatively at the three men.
    "We were supposed to bring a small pet to school today, to share with the 
class." Meg thought, —Good for you, Charles, to think of Louise the Larger. If 
you terrified Mr. Jenkins, that would send you up a notch in the other kids' 
estimation. If there's one thing everybody in school agrees on, it's that Mr. 
Jenkins is a retarded rodent.
    Mr. Jenkins Three said severely, "You know perfectly well that small pets 
were meant, Charles Wallace. Turtles or tropical fish of perhaps even a 
hamster." "Or a gerbil," Mr. Jenkins Two added. "A gerbil would be acceptable." 
"Why have you multiplied?" Charles Wallace asked. "I found one of you quite 
enough." Louise clacked again; it was a flesh-chilling sound.
    Mr. Jenkins Three demanded, "Why aren't you in class, Charles?" "Because the 
teacher told me to take Louise the Larger and go home. I really don't understand 
why. Louise is , friendly and she wouldn't hurt anybody. Only the girls were 
scared of her. She lives in our stone wall by the twins' vegetable garden." Meg 
looked at Louise, at the hooded eyes, the wary position of the head, the warning 
twitching of the last few inches of her black tail. Blajeny had told them that 
Louise was a Teacher. Louise herself had certainly shown in the past twenty-four 
hours that she was more than an ordinary garden snake. Louise would know—did 
know, Meg was sure —the real Mr. Jenkins. Swallowing her own shyness of all 
snakes, she reached out towards Charles Wallace. "Let me have Louise for a 
little while, please, Charles." But Proginoskes spoke in her mind. "No, Meg. You 
have to do it yourself. You can't let Louise do it for you." All right. She 
accepted that. But perhaps Louise could still help.
    Charles Wallace regarded his sister thoughtfully. Then he held out the arm 
around which Louise's lower half was coiled. The snake slithered sinuously to 
Meg. Her body felt cold, and tingled with electricity. Meg tried not'to flinch.
    "Mr. Jenkins," Meg said. "Each of you. One at a time.
    What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and Louise? Charles Wallace 
can't possibly walk home alone. It's too far. What are you going to do about 
Charles Wallace and school in general?" Nobody volunteered an answer. All three 
folded their arms impassively across their chests.
    "Mr. Jenkins Three," Meg said.
    "Are you Naming me, Meg? That's right." "I'm not Naming anybody yet. I want 
to know what you're going to do." "I thought I had already told you. It is a 
situation which I shall have to guide carefully. It was foolish of Charlie to 
bring a snake to school. Snakes are quite frightening to some people, you know." 
Louise hissed slowly. Mr. Jenkins Three turned visibly paler.
    He said, "I shall have a long, quiet session with Charles Wallace's teacher. 
Then I will speak to each child in the first-grade room, separately. I shall see 
to it that each one has an understanding of the problem. If any of them group 
together and try bullying, I shall use strong disciplinary methods. This school 
has been run in far too lax and permissive a manner. From now on, I intend to 
hold the reins. And now, Charles Wallace, I shall drive you home. Your sister 
will bring your pet." Meg turned away from him. "Mr. Jenkins Two?" Mr. Jenkins 
Two detached himself by one pace from the others. "Force, that's what that 
impostor is advocating. Dictatorship. I will never put up with a dictatorship. 
But you should not have brought the snake to school, Charlie. You should have 
known better. But I think I understand. You thought it would enhance your social 
prestige, and make you more of an equal in the eyes of your peers. There's where 
happiness lies, in success with your peer group. I want all my children to be 
like each other, so we must help you to be more normal, even if it means that 
you must go to school elsewhere for a while. I understand there's someone from 
another galaxy who's interested in helping you. Perhaps that's our answer for 
the time being." Meg turned to Mr. Jenkins One. He gave a small, annoyed, Mr. 
Jenkins shrug. "I really do not foresee much change in my relationship with 
Charles Wallace in the future. Why interplanetary travel should be thought of as 
a solution to all earth's problems I do not understand. We have sent men to the 
moon and to Mars and we are none the better for it. Why sending Charles Wallace 
a few billion light-years across space should improve him any, I fail to see. 
Unless, of course, it helps his physical condition, about which nobody except 
myself appears concerned." He looked at his wristwatch. "How much longer does 
this farce continue?" Meg could feel sharp, painful little flickers as the 
cherubim thought at her. She did not want to listen.
    "It's all a waste of time!" she cried. "Why do I have to bother with all 
these Mr. Jenkinses? What can it possibly have to do with Charles?" Louise the 
Larger's breath was cool and gentle against her ear. "It doess, it doess," the 
snake hissed.
    Proginoskes said, "You don't need to know why. Just get on with it." Charles 
Wallace spoke wearily. "Give me Louise, please, Meg, I want to go home." "It's 
too far for you to walk." "We'll take it slowly." Mr. Jenkins Three said 
sharply, "I have already said I will drive you home. You may take the snake as 
long as it stays in the back seat." Mr. Jenkins One and Two said simultaneously, 
"I will drive Charles Wallace. And the snake." They shuddered slightly, not 
quite simultaneously, but in syncopation.
    Charles Wallace held out his arm and Louise slithered from Meg to the little 
boy. "Let's go," he said to the three men, turned away from them, and started to 
walk to where the faculty parked their cars. The Mr. Jenkinses followed him, 
walking abreast, all with the stiff, ungainly gait which was distinctively and 
solely Mr. Jenkins.
    "But who will he go with?" Meg asked Proginoskes.
    "The real one." "But then—" "I think that when they turn the corner there'll 
be only one of them. It gives us a small respite, at any rate." The cherubim 
materialized slowly, becoming at first a shimmer, then a transparent outline, 
then deepening in dimensions until he moved into complete visibility as the 
three Mr. Jenkinses disappeared. "Don't waste time," he thought sharply at her. 
"Think. What's the nicest thing you've ever heard about Mr. Jenkins?" "Nice? 
Nothing nice. Listen, maybe all of them are impostors. Maybe they won't come 
back." Again the sharp little pain. "That's too easy. One of them's real, and 
for some reason he's important. Think, Meg. You must know something good about 
him." "I don't want to know anything good about him." "Stop thinking about 
yourself. Think about Charles. The real Mr. Jenkins can help Charles." "How?" 
"We don't need to know how, Meg! Stop blocking me. It's our only hope. You must 
let me kythe with you." She, felt him moving about within her mind, more gently 
now, but persistently. "You're still blocking me." J "I'm trying not to—" "I 
know. Do some math problems in your head. Anything to shut out your un-love and 
let me in about Mr. Jenkins. Do some math for Calvin. You love Calvin. Good. 
Think about Calvin. Meg! Calvin's shoes." "What about them?" "What kind of shoes 
does he have on?" "His regular school shoes, I suppose. How would I know? I 
think he has only one pair of shoes, and his sneakers." "What are the shoes 
like?" "I don't know. I didn't notice. I don't bother much about clothes." 
"Think some more math and let me show them to you." Shoes. Strong, fairly new 
Oxfords which Calvin wore over mismated red and purple socks, the kind of shoes 
Mr. O'Keefe could ill afford to buy for his family. Meg saw the shoes vividly; 
the image was given her by Proginoskes; she had been quite truthful when she 
told him that she didn't notice clothes. Nevertheless, her mind registered all 
that she saw and it was there, stored, available to the kything of the cherubim. 
She saw with a flash of intuition that her kything was like a small child's 
trying to pick out a melody on the piano with one finger, as against the harmony 
of a full orchestra, like the cherubic language.
    In her mind's ear came the echo of Calvin's voice, coming back to her from 
an afternoon when she had been sent— unfairly, she thought—to Mr. Jenkins's 
office, and been dealt with—unfairly—there. Calvin's voice, quiet, calming, 
infuriatingly reasonable. "When I started seventh grade and went over to 
Regional, my mother bought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost her a 
dollar, which was more than she could spare, and they were women's Oxfords, the 
kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for 
me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I 
got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could jam my feet 
in, and went to school. The kids knew me too well to make remarks in my 
presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a 
few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he'd noticed I'd 
outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair he thought would 
fit me. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he 
hadn't gone out and bought them for me. I make enough money in the summers now 
to buy my own shoes, but I’ll never forget that he gave me the first decent pair 
of shoes I ever had. Sure I know all the bad things about him, and they're all 
true, and I've had my own run-ins with him, but on the whole we get along, maybe 
because my parents don't make him feel inferior, and he knows he can do things 
for me that they can't." Meg muttered, "It'd have been a lot easier if I could 
have gone on hating him." Now it was Proginoskes's voice in her mind's ear, not 
Calvin's. "What would be easier?" "Naming him." "Would it? Don't you know more 
about him now?" "Second-hand. I've never known him to do anything else nice." 
"How do you suppose he feels about you?" "He's never seen me except when I'm 
snarly," she admitted. She found herself almost laughing as she-remembered Mr. 
Jenkins saying, 'Margaret, you are the most contumacious child it has ever been 
my misfortune to have in this office,' and she had had to go home and look up 
'contumacious.' Proginoskes probed," "Do you think he'd believe anything good 
about you?" "Not likely." "Would you like him to see a different Meg? The real 
Meg?" She shrugged.
    "Well, then, how would you like to be different with him?" Frantically, she 
said, "I wish I had gorgeous blond hair." "You wouldn't, not really." "Of course 
I would!" "If you had gorgeous blond hair, you wouldn't be you." "That might be 
a good idea. Ouch, Progo, you hurt!" "This isn't any time for self-indulgence." 
"When Mr. Jenkins is being nice, he's not being Mr. Jenkins. Being nice on Mr. 
Jenkins would be like blond hair on me." Proginoskes sent ice-cold anger through 
her. "Meg, there's no more time. They'll be back any moment now." Panic churned 
in her. "Progo, if I don't Name right, if I fail, what will you do?" "I told 
you. I have to choose." "That's not telling me. I want to know which way you're 
going to choose." Proginoskes's feathers shivered as though a cold wind had 
blown through them. "Meg, there isn't much time. They're on their way back. You 
have to Name one of them." "Give me a hint." "This isn't a game. Mr. Jenkins was 
right." She shot him an anguished glance, and he lowered several sets of 
eyelashes in apology. "Progo, even for Charles Wallace, how can I do the 
impossible? How can I love Mr." Jenkins?" Proginoskes did not respond. There was 
no Same, no smoke; only a withdrawing of eyes behind wings.
    "Progo! Help me! How can I feel love for Mr. Jenkins?" Immediately he opened 
a large number of eyes very wide. "What a strange idea. Love isn't feeling. If 
it were, I wouldn't be able to love. Cherubim don't have feelings." "But—" 
"Idiot," Proginoskes said, anxiously rather than crossly. "Love isn't how you 
feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of 
fact, I matter only with earth people." "Progo, you matter to me." Proginoskes 
puffed enveloping pale blue clouds. "That's not what I meant. I meant that 
cherubim only matter with earth people. You call it materializing." "Then, if 
you become visible only for us, why do you" have to look so terrifying?" 
"Because when we matter, this is how we come out. When you got mattered, you 
didn't choose to look the way you do, did you?" "I certainly did not. I'd have 
chosen quite differently. I'd have chosen to be beautiful—oh, I see! You mean 
you don't have any more choice about looking like a drive of deformed dragons 
than I do about my hair and glasses and everything? You aren't doing it this way 
just for fun?" Proginoskes held three of its wings demurely over a great many of 
its eyes. "I am a cherubim, and when a cherubim " takes on matter, this is how." 
Meg knelt in front of the great, frightening, and strangely beautiful creature. 
"Progo, I'm not a wind or a flame of fire. I'm a human being. I feel. I can't 
think without feeling. If you matter to me, then what you decide to do if I fail 
matters." "I fail to see why." She scrambled to her feet, batting at the last 
wisps of pale blue smoke which stung her eyes, and shouted, "Because if you 
decide to turn into a worm or whatever and join the Echthroi, I don't care 
whether I Name right or not! It just doesn't matter to me! And Charles Wallace 
would feel the same way—I know he would!" Proginoskes probed gently and 
thoughtfully into her mind. "I don't understand your feelings. I'm trying to, 
but I don't. It must be extremely unpleasant to have feelings." "Progo! What 
will you do?" Silence. No flame. No smoke. All eyes closed. Proginoskes folded 
the great wings completely. His words were very small as they moved into her 
mind. "X. If you fail, I will X myself." He vanished.
    Meg swung around and three Mr. Jenkinses were walking towards her from the 
direction of the parking lot. She-faced them. "Mr. Jenkins." Identical, hateful, 
simultaneous, they stepped towards her.
    Mr. Jenkins One sniffed, the end of his pink nose wriggling distastefully. 
"I am back. I left Charles Wallace with your mother. Now will you please get rid 
of these two—uh —pranksters. I resent this intrusion on my time and privacy." 
Mr. Jenkins Two pointed to One accusingly. "That impostor lost his temper and 
showed his true colors when your little brother brought his snake to school. The 
impostor forgot himself and called the child a sn—" "Delete," Mr. Jenkins Three 
said sharply. "He used words unsuitable for a child. Blip it." Mr. Jenkins Two 
said, "He doesn't love children." Mr. Jenkins Three said, "He can't control 
children." Mr. Jenkins Two said, "I will make Charles Wallace happy." Mr. 
Jenkins, Three said, "I will make him successful." Mr. Jenkins One looked at his 
watch.
    Meg closed her eyes. And suddenly she did not feel. She had been pushed into 
a dimension beyond feeling, if such a-thing is possible, and if Progo was right, 
it is possible. There was nothing but a cold awareness which had nothing to do 
with what she normally would have thought of as feeling. Her voice issued from 
her lips almost without volition, cold, calm, emotionless. "Mr. Jenkins Three—" 
He stepped forward, smiling triumphantly.
    "No. You're not the real Mr. Jenkins. You're much too powerful. You'd never 
have to be taken away from a regional school you couldn't control and made 
principal of a grade school you couldn't control, either." She looked at Mr. 
Jenkins One and Two. Her hands were ice-cold and she had the sensation in the 
pit of the stomach which precedes acute nausea, but she was unaware of this 
because she was still in the strange realm beyond feeling. "Mr. Jenkins Two—" He 
smiled.
    Again she shook her head. "I wasn't quite as sure about you at first. But 
wanting to make everybody happy and just like everybody else is just as bad as 
Mr. Jenkins Three manipulating everybody. Bad as Mr. Jenkins is, he's the only 
one of the three of you who's human enough to make as many mistakes as he does, 
and that's you, Mr. Jenkins One—" Suddenly she gaye a startled laugh. "And I do 
love you for it." Then she burst into tears of nervousness and exhaustion. But 
she had no doubt that she was right.
    The air about the schoolyard was rent with a great howling and shrieking and 
then a cold nothingness which could only be the presence of Echthroi. It was as 
though rip after rip were being slashed in the air, and then the edges were 
drawn together and healed.
    Silence. And quiet. And a small, ordinary, everyday wind.
    Proginoskes materialized, delicately unfolding wing after wing to reveal his 
myriad various eyes.
    Mr. Jenkins One, the real Mr. Jenkins, fainted.
    7 Metron Ariston.
    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 pos- session." "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-farandpla 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." 8 Journey into the Interior.
    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 what- 
ever 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.
    9 Farandolae and Mitochondria.
    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.
    10 Yadah.
    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?" 11 
Sporos.
    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." 12 A Wind in the Door.
    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.