
A Wrinkle in Time
1 Mrs. Whatsit
IT was a dark and stormy night.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
She wasn't usually afraid of weather. ---It's not just the
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A Wrinkle in Time
weather, she thought. ---It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.
School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped down to the lowest section in her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a child with parents as brilliant as yours are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'll have to stay back next year."
During lunch she'd rough-housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg, we aren't grammar-school kids any more. Why do you always act like such a baby?"
And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At this she'd thrown die books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye.
Sandy and Dennys, her ten-year-old twin brothers, who got home from school an hour earlier than she did, were dis-gusted. "Let us do the fighting when it's necessary," they told her.
---A delinquent, that's what I am, she thought grimly. --- That's what they'll be saying next. Not Mother. But Them.
Everybody Else. I wish Father---
But it was still not possible to think about her father without the danger of tears. Only her mother could talk about
4
Mrs. Wfwtsit
him in a natural way, saying, "When your father gets back---"
Gets back from where? And when? Surely her mother must know what people were saying, must be aware of the smugly vicious gossip. Surely it must hurt her as it did Meg.
But if it did she gave no outward sign. Nothing ruffled the serenity other expression.
---Why can't I hide it, too? Meg thought. Why do I always have to show everything?
The window rattled madly in the wind, and she pulled the quilt dose about her. Curled up on one of her pillows a gray fluff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head under again, and went back to sleep.
Everybody was asleep. Everybody except Meg. Even Charles Wallace, the "dumb baby brother," who had an uncanny way of knowing when she was awake and unhappy, and who would come, so many nights, tiptoeing up the attic stairs to her---even Charles Wallace was asleep.
How could they sleep? All day on the radio there had been hurricane warnings. How could they leave her up in the attic in the rickety brass bed, knowing that the roof might be blown right off the house, and she tossed out into the wild night sky to land who knows where?
Her shivering grew uncontrollable.
---You asked to have the attic bedroom, she told herself savagely. ---Mother let you have it because you're the oldest.
Ifs a privilege, not a punishment.
"Not during a hurricane, it isn't a privilege," she said
A WrinJde in Time
aloud. She tossed the quilt down on the foot of the bed, and stood up. The kitten stretched luxuriously, and looked up at her with huge, innocent eyes.
"Go back to sleep," Meg said. "Just be glad you're a kitten and not a monster like me." She looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible face, baring a mouthful of teeth covered with braces. Automatically she pushed her glasses into position, ran her fingers through her mouse-brown hair, so that it stood wildly on end, and let out a sigh almost as noisy as the wind.
The wide wooden floorboards were cold against her feet.
Wind blew in the crevices about the window frame, in spite of the protection the storm sash was supposed to offer. She could hear wind howling in the chimneys. From all the way downstairs she could hear Fortinbras, the big black dog, starting to bark. He must be frightened, too.
What was he barking at? Fortinbras never barked without reason.
Suddenly she remembered that when she had gone to the post office to pick up the mail she'd heard about a tramp who was supposed to have stolen twelve sheets from Mrs. Buncombe, the constable's wife. They hadn't caught him, and maybe he was heading for the Murry's house right now, isolated on a back road as it was; and this time maybe he'd be after more than sheets. Meg hadn't paid much attention to the talk about the tramp at the time, because the postmistress, with a sugary smile, had asked if she'd heard from her father lately.
She left her little room and made her way through the
Mrs. Whatsit
shadows of the main attic, bumping against the ping-pong table. ---Now I'll have a bruise on my hip on top of everything else, she thought.
Next she walked into her old dolls' house, Charles Wallace's rocking horse, the twins' electric trains. "Why must everything happen to me?" She demanded of a large teddy bear.
At the foot of the attic stairs she stood still and listened.
Not a sound from Charles Wallace's room on the right. On the left, in her parents' room, not a rustle from her mother sleeping alone in the great double bed. She tiptoed down the hall and into the twins' room, pushing again at her glasses as though they could help her to see better in the dark. Dennys was snoring. Sandy murmured something about baseball and subsided. The twins didn't have any problems. They weren't great students, but they weren't bad ones, either. They were perfectly content with a succes-sion of B's and an occasional A or C. They were strong and fast runners and good at games, and when cracks were made about anybody in the Murry family, they weren't made about Sandy and Dennys.
She left the twins' room and went on downstairs, avoid-ing the creaking seventh step. Fortinbras had stopped barking. It wasn't the tramp this time, then. Fort would go On barking if anybody was around.
---But suppose the tramp does come? Suppose he has a knife? Nobody lives near enough to hear if we screamed and screamed and screamed. Nobody'd care, anyhow.
---Ill make myself some cocoa, she decided. ---That'll
A Wrinkle in Time
cheer me up, and if the roof blows off at least I won't go off with it.
In the kitchen a light was already on, and Charles Wallace was sitting at the table drinking milk and eating bread and jam. He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six inches above the floor.
"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I've been waiting for you."
From under the table where he was lying at Charles Wallace's feet, hoping for a crumb or two, Fortinbras raised his slender dark head in greeting to Meg, and his tail thumped against the floor. Fortinbras had arrived on their doorstep, a half-grown puppy, scrawny and abandoned, one winter night. He was, Meg's father had decided, part Uewellyn setter and part greyhound, and he had a slender^
dark beauty that was all his own.
"Why didn't you come up to the attic?" Meg asked her brother, speaking as though he were at least her own age. "I've been scared stiff."
"Too windy up in that attic of yours," the little boy said.
"I knew you'd be down. I put some milk on the stove for you. It ought to be hot by now."
How did Charles Wallace always know about her? How could he always tell? He never knew---or seemed to care--- what Dennys or Sandy were thinking. It was his mother's mind, and Meg's, that he probed with frightening accuracy.
Was it because people were a little afraid of him that they whispered about the Murry's youngest child, who
8
Mrs. Whatsit
was rumored to be not quite bright? "I've heard that clever people often have subnormal children," Meg had once overheard. "The two boys seem to be nice, regular children, but that unattractive girl and the baby boy certainly aren't all there.'\*
It was true that Charles Wallace seldom spoke when anybody was around, so that many people thought he'd never learned to talk. And it was true that he hadn't talked at all until he was almost four. Meg would turn white with fury when people looked at him and clucked, shaking their heads sadly.
"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg." her father had once told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. "There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time.'\*
k
"I don't want him to grow up to be dumb like me," Meg had said.
"Oh, my darling, you're not dumb," her father answered. "You're like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace."
"How do you knowF^ Meg had demanded. "How do you know I'm not dumb? Isn't it just because you love me?"
"I love you, but that's not what tells me. Mother and I've given you a number of tests, you know."
Yes, that was true. Meg had realized that some of the "games" her parents played with her were tests of some
A Wrinkle in Time
kind, and that there had been more for her and Charles Wallace than for the twins. "IQ tests, you mean?"
"Yes, some of them."
"Is my IQ okay?"
"More than okay."
"What is it?"
"That I'm not going to tell you. But it assures me that both you and Charles Wallace will be able to do pretty much whatever you like when you grow up to yourselves.
You just wait till Charles Wallace starts to talk. You'll see."
How right he had been about that, though he himself had left before Charles Wallace began to speak, suddenly, with none of the usual baby preliminaries, using entire sentences. How proud he would have been!
"You'd better check the milk," Charles Wallace said to Meg now, his diction clearer and cleaner than that of most five-year-olds. "You know you don't like it when it gets a skin on top."
"You put in more than twice enough milk." Meg peered into the saucepan.
Charles Wallace nodded serenely. "I thought Mother might like some."
"I might like what?" a voice said, and there was their mother standing in the doorway.
"Cocoa," Charles Wallace said. "Would you like a liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwich? 111 be happy to make you one."
That would be lovely," Mrs. Murry said, "but I can make it myself if you're busy."
10
Mrs. Whatsit
"No trouble at all." Charles Wallace slid down from his chair and trotted over to the refrigerator, his pajamaed feet padding softly as a kitten's. "How about you, Meg?" he asked. "Sandwich?"
"Yes, please," she said. "But not liverwurst. Do we have any tomatoes?"
Charles Wallace peered into the crisper. "One. All right if I use it on Meg, Mother?"
"To what better use could it be put?" Mrs Murry smiled.
"But not so loud, please, Charles. That is, unless you want the twins downstairs, too."
"Let\*s be exclusive," Charles Wallace said. "That's my new word for the day. Impressive, isn't it?"
"Prodigious," Mrs. Murry said. "Meg, come let me look at that bruise."
Meg knelt at her mother's feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan;
geraniums bloomed on the window sills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The curtains, red, with a blue and green geo-metrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry's chair Fortinbras let out a contented sigh.
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A Wrinkle in Time
Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg's bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry's flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg's outrageous plainness. Meg's hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.
"You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?" Mrs. Murry asked. "A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. That's a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave you. By the way, shortly after you'd gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly you'd hurt him. I told her that since he's a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complain-ing. But she seemed to think it was all your fault."
"I suppose that depends on how you look at it," Meg said.
"Usually no matter what happens people think it's my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I'm sorry I tried to fight him. It's just been an awful week. And I'm full of bad feeling."
Mrs. Murry stroked Meg's shaggy head. "Do you know why?"
"I hate being an oddball," Meg said. "It's hard on Sandy
12
Mrs. WhatsU
and Dennys, too. I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're just able to pretend they are. I try to pretend, but it isn't any help."
"You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't," Mrs. Murry said. "I'm sorry, Meglet.
Maybe if Father were here he could help you, but I don't think I can do anything till you've managed to plow through some more time. Then things will be easier for you. But that isn't much help right now, is it?"
"Maybe if I weren't so repulsive-looking---maybe if I were pretty like you---"
"Mother's not a bit pretty; she's beautiful," Charles Wallace announced, slicing liverwurst. "Therefore I bet she was awful at your age."
"How right you are," Mrs. Murry said. "Just give yourself time, Meg." ^
"Lettuce on your sandwich. Mother?" Charles Wallace asked.
"No. thanks."
He cut the sandwich into sections, put it on a plate, and set it in front of his mother. "Yoursll be along in just a minute, Meg. I think I'll talk to Mrs. Whatsit about you."
"Who's Mrs. Whatsit?" Meg asked.
"I think I want to be exclusive about her for a while,"
Charles Wallace said, "Onion salt?"
"Yes, please."
"What's Mrs. Whatsit stand for?" Mrs. Murry asked.
"That's her name," Charles Wallace answered. "You know the old shingled house back in the woods that the kids
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A Wrinkle in Time
won't go near because they say it's haunted? That's where they live."
"They?"
"Mrs. Whatsit and her two friends.. I was out with Fortinbras a couple of days ago---you and the twins were at school, Meg. We like to walk in the woods, and suddenly he took off after a squirrel and I took off after him and we ended up by the haunted house, so I met them by accident, as you might say."
"But nobody lives there," Meg said.
"Mrs. Whatsit and her friends do. They've very enjoy-able."
"Why didn't you tell me about it before?" Mrs. Murry asked. "And you know you're not supposed to go off our property without permission, Charles."
"I know," Charles said. "That's one reason I didn't tell you. I Just rushed off after Fortinbras without thinking. -
And then I decided, well, I'd better save them for an emergency, anyhow."
A fresh gust of wind took the house and shook it, and suddenly the rain began to lash against the windows.
"I don't think I like this wind," Meg said nervously.
"Well lose some shingles off the roof, that's certain," Mrs.
Murry said. "But this house has stood for almost two hundred years and I think it will last a little longer, Meg.
There's been many a high wind up on this hill."
"But this is a hurricane!" Meg wailed. "The radio kept saying it was a hurricane!"
M
Mrs. Whatsit
"It's October," Mrs. Murry told her. "There've been storms in October before."
As Charles Wallace gave Meg her sandwich Fortinbras came out from under the table. He gave a long, low growl, and they could see the dark fur slowly rising on his back.
Meg felt her own skin prickle.
"What's wrong?" she asked anxiously.
Fortinbras stared at the door that opened into Mrs.
Murry's laboratory which was in the old stone dairy right off the kitchen. Beyond the lab a pantry led outdoors, though Mrs. Murry had done her best to train the family to come into the house through the garage door or the front door and not through her lab. But it was the lab door and not the garage door toward which Fortinbras was growling.
"You didn't leave' any nasty-smelling chemicals cooking over a Bunsen burner, did you, Mother?" Charles Wallace asked.
Mrs. Murray stood up. "No. But I think I'd better go see what's upsetting Fort, anyhow."
"It's the tramp, I'm sure it's the tramp," Meg said nervously.
"What tramp?" Charles Wallace asked.
"They were saying at the post office this afternoon that a tramp stole all Mrs. Buncombe's sheets."
"We'd better sit on the pillow cases, then," Mrs. Murry said lightly. "I don't think even a tramp would be out on a night like this, Meg."
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A Wrinkle in Time
"But that's probably why he is out," Meg wailed, "trying to find a place not to be out."
"In which case 111 offer him the barn till morning." Mrs.
Murry went briskly to the door.
"I'll go with you." Meg's voice was shrill.
"No, Meg, you stay with Charles and eat your sandwich."
"Eat!" Meg exclaimed as Mrs. Murry went out through the lab. "How does she expect me to eat?"
"Mother can take care of herself," Charles said. "Physically, that is." But he sat in his father's chair at the table and his legs kicked at the rungs; and Charles Wallace, unlike most small children, had the ability to sit still.
After a few moments that seemed like forever to Meg, Mrs. Murry came back in, holding the door open for---was it the tramp? It seemed small for Meg's idea of a tramp.
The age or sex was impossible to tell, for it was completely bundled up in clothes. Several scarves of assorted colors were tied about the head, and a man's felt hat perched atop.
A shocking pink stole was knotted about a rough overcoat, and black rubber boots covered the feet.
"Mrs. Whatsit," Charles said suspiciously, "what are you doing here? And at this time of night, too?"
"Now don't you be worried, my honey." A voice emerged from among turned-up coat collar, stole, scarves, and hat, a voice like an unoiled gate, but somehow not unpleasant.
"Mrs.---uh---Whatsit---says she lost her way," Mrs.
Murry said. "Would you care for some hot chocolate, Mrs.
Whatsit?"
"Charmed, I'm sure," Mrs. Whatsit answered, taking off
16
Mrs. Whatsit
the hat and die stole. "It isn't so much that I lost my way as that I got blown off course. And when I realized that I was at little Charles Wallace's house I thought I'd just come in and rest a bit before proceeding on my way."
"How did you know this was Charles Wallace's house?"
Meg asked.
"By the smell." Mrs. Whatsit untied a blue and green paisley scarf, a red and yellow flowered print, a gold Lib-erty print, a red and black bandanna. Under all this a sparse quantity of grayish hair was tied in a small but tidy knot on top of her head. Her eyes were bright, her nose a round, soft blob, her mouth puckered like an autumn apple. "My, but it's lovely and warm in here," she said.
"Do sit down." Mrs. Murry indicated a chair. "Would you like a sandwich, Mrs. Whatsit? I've had liverwurst and cream cheese; Charles has had bread and jam; and Meg, lettuce and tomato."
"Now, let me see," Mrs. Whatsit pondered. "I'm passionately fond of Russian caviar."
"You peeked!" Charles cried indignantly. "We're sav-ing that for Mother's birthday and you can't have any!"
Mrs. Whatsit gave a deep and pathetic sigh.
"No," Charles said. "Now, you mustn't give in to her, Mother, or I shall be very angry. How about tuna-fish salad?"
"All right," Mrs. Whatsit said meekly.
"Ill fix it," Meg offered, going to the pantry for a can of tuna fish.
---For crying out loud, she thought, ---this old woman
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A Wrinkle in Time
comes barging in on us in the middle of the night and Mother takes it as though there weren't anything pecuhar about it at all. I'll bet she is the tramp. Ill bet she did steal those sheets. And she's certainly no one Charles Wallace ought to be friends with, especially when he won't even talk to ordinary people.
"I've only been in the neighborhood a short time," Mrs.
Whatsit was saying as Meg switched off the pantry light and came back into the kitchen with the tuna fish, "and I didn't think I was going to like the neighbors at all until dear little Charles came over with his dog."
"Mrs. Whatsit," Charles Wallace demanded severely, "why did you take Mrs. Buncombe's sheets?"
"Well, I needed them, Charles dear."
"You must return them at once."
"But Charles, dear, I can't. I've used them."
"It was very wrong of you," Charles Wallace scolded.
"If you needed sheets that badly you should have asked
me.
Mrs. Whatsit shook her head and clucked. "You can't spare any sheets. Mrs. Buncombe can."
Meg cut up some celery and mixed it in with the tuna.
After a moment's hesitation she opened the refrigerator door and brought out a jar of little sweet pickles. ---Though why I'm doing it for her I don't know, she thought, as she cut them up. ---I don't trust her one bit.
"Tell your sister I'm all right," Mrs. Whatsit said to Charles. "Tell her my intentions are good."
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Mrs. Whatsit
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Charles intoned.
"My, but isn't he cunning." Mrs. Whatsit beamed at him fondly. "It's lucky he has someone to understand him."
"But I'm afraid he doesn't," Mrs. Murry said. "None of us is quite up to Charles."
"But at least you aren't trying to squash him down." Mrs.
Whatsit nodded her head vigorously. "You're letting him be himself."
"Here's your sandwich," Meg said, bringing it to Mrs.
Whatsit.
"Do you mind if I take off my boots before I eat?" Mrs.
Whatsit asked, picking up the sandwich nevertheless.
"Listen." She moved her feet up and down in her boots, and they could hear water squelching. "My toes are ever so damp. The trouble is that these boots arc a mite too tight for me, and I never can take them off by myseff."
Ill help you," Charles offered.
"Not you. You're not strong enough."
Ill help." Mrs. Murry squatted at Mrs. Whatsifs feet, yanking on one slick boot. When the boot came off it came suddenly. Mrs. Murry sat down with a thump. Mrs. Whatsit went tumbling backward with the chair onto the floor, sandwich held high in one old claw. Water poured out of the boot and ran over the floor and the big braided rug.
"Oh, dearie me," Mrs. Whatsit said, lying on her back in the overturned chair, her feet in the air, one in a red and white striped sock, the other still booted.
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A Wrinkle in Time
Mrs. Murry got to her feet. "Are you all right, Mrs.
Whatsit?"
"If you have some liniment I'll put it on my dignity,"
Mrs. Whatsit said, still supine. "I think it's sprained. A little oil of cloves mixed well with garlic is rather good."
And she took a large hite of sandwich.
\*\*Do please get up," Charles said. "I don't like to see you lying there that way. You're carrying things too far."
"Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?" But Mrs. Whatsit scrambled up, righted the chair, and then sat back down on the floor, the booted foot stuck out in front of her, and took another bite. She moved with great agility for such an old woman. At least Meg was rea-sonably sure that she was an old woman, and a very old woman at that.
Mrs. Whatsit, her mouth full, ordered Mrs. Murry, "Now pull while I'm already down.'\*
Quite calmly, as though this old woman and her boots were nothing out of the ordinary, Mrs. Murry pulled until the second boot relinquished the foot This foot was covered with a blue and gray Argyle sock. and Mrs. Whatsit sat there, wriggling her toes, contentedly finishing her sandwich before scrambling to her feet. "Ah," she said, "that's ever so much better," and took both boots and shook them out over the sink. "My stomach is full and I'm warm inside and out and it's time I went home."
"Don't you think you'd better stay till morning?" Mrs.
Murry asked.
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Mrs. Whatsit
"Oh, thank you, dearie, but there's so much to do I just can't waste time sitting around frivoling."
"It's much too wild a night to travel in."
"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs. Whatsit said. "I just got caught in a down draft and blown off course."
"Well, at least till your socks are dry---"
"Wet socks don't bother me. I just didn't like the water squishing around in my boots. Now don't worry about me, lamb." (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then 111 be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way. there is such a thing as a tesseract."
Mrs. Murry went very white and with one hand reached backward and clutched at a chair for support. Her voice trembled. "What did you say?"
Mrs. Whatsit tugged at her second boot. "'I said," she grunted, shoving her foot down in, "that there is"---shove ---"such a thing"---shove---"as a tesseract." Her foot went down into the boot, and grabbing shawls, scarves, and hat, she hustled out the door. Mrs. Murry stayed very still, making no move to help the old woman. As the door opened, Fortinbras streaked in, panting, wet and shiny as a seal.
He looked at Mrs. Murry and whined.
The door slammed.
"Mother, what's the matter!" Meg cried- "What did she say? What is it?"
"The tesseract---" Mrs. Murry whispered. "What did she mean? How could she have known?"
2 Mrs. Who
WHEN Meg woke to the jangling of her alarm clock the wind was still blowing but the sun was shining; the worst of the storm was over. She sat up in bed, shaking her head to clear it.
It must have been a dream. She'd been frightened by the storm and worried about the tramp so she'd just dreamed about going down to the kitchen and seeing Mrs, Whatsit and having her mother get all frightened and upset by that word---what was it? Tess---tess something.
She dressed hurriedly, picked up the kitten still curled
Mrs. Who
up on the bed, and dumped it unceremoniously on the floor. The kitten yawned, stretched, gave a piteous miaow, trotted out of the attic and down the stairs. Meg made her bed and hurried after it. In the kitchen her mother was making French toast and the twins were already at the table. The kitten was lapping milk out of a saucer.
"Where's Charles?" Meg asked.
"Still asleep. We had rather an interrupted night, if you remember."
"I hoped it was a dream," Meg said.
Her mother carefully turned over four slices of French toast, then said in a steady voice, "No, Meg. Don't hope it was a dream. I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be. I'm sorry I showed you I was
upset. Your father and I used to have a jeke about tesser-
. >\* •
act
"What is a tesseract?" Meg asked.
"It's a concept." Mrs. Murry handed the twins the syrup.
"Ill try to explain it to you later. There isn't time before school."
"I don't see why you didn't wake us up," Dermys said.
"It\*s a gyp we missed out on all the fun."
"Youll be a lot more awake in school today than I will."
Meg took her French toast to the table.
"Who cares," Sandy said. "If you're going to let old tramps come into the house in the middle of the night, Mother, you ought to have Den and me around to protect you."
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A Wrinkle in Time
"After all. Father would expect us to," Deimys added.
"We know you have a great mind and all. Mother,"
Sandy said, "but you don't have much sense. And certainly Meg and Charles don't."
"I know. We're morons." Meg was bitter.
"I wish you wouldn't be such a dope, Meg. Syrup, please."
Sandy reached across the table. "You don't have to take everything so personally. Use a happy medium, for heaven's sake. You just goof around in school and look out the window and don't pay any attention."
"You just make things harder for yourself," Dennys said.
"And Charles Wallace is going to have an awful time next year when he starts school. We know he's bright, but he's so funny when he's around other people, and they're so used to thinking he's dumb, I don't know what's going to happen to him. Sandy and 111 sock anybody who picks on him, but that's about all we can do."
"Let's not worry about next year till we get through this one," Mrs. Murry said. "More French toast, boys?"
« « «
At school Meg was tired and her eyelids sagged and her mind wandered. In social studies she was asked to name the principal imports and exports of Nicaragua, and though slie had looked them up dutifully the evening before, now she could remember none of them. The teacher was sar-castic, the rest of the class laughed, and she flung herself down in her seat in a fury. "Who cares about the imports and exports of Nicaragua, anyhow?" she muttered.
24
Mrs. Who
"If you're going to be rude, Margaret, you may leave the room," the teacher said.
"Okay, I will." Meg flounced out.
During study hall the principal sent for her. "What seems to be the problem now, Meg?" he asked, pleasantly enough.
Meg looked sulkily down at the floor. "Nothing, Mr.
Jenkins."
"Miss Porter tells me you were inexcusably rude."
Meg shrugged.
"Don't you realize that you just make everything harder for yourself by your attitude?" the principal asked. "Now, Meg, I'm convinced that you can do the work and keep up with your grade if you will apply yourself, but some of your teachers are not. You're going to have to do something about yourself. Nobody can do it tor you." Meg was silent.
"Well? What about it, Meg?"
\*\*I don't know what to do," Meg said.
"You could do your homework, for one thing. Wouldn't your mother help you?"
"If I asked her to."
"Meg, is something troubling you? Are you unhappy at home?" Mr. Jenkins asked.
At last Meg looked at him, pushing at her glasses in a characteristic gesture. "Everything's fine at home."
"I'm glad to hear it. But I know it must be hard on you to have your father away."
Meg eyed the principal warily, and ran her tongue over the barbed line of her braces.
"Have you had any news from him lately?"
25
A Wrinkle in Time
Meg was sure it was not only imagination that made her feel that behind Mr. Jenkins' surface concern was a gleam of avid curiosity. Wouldn't he like to know! she thought.
And if I knew anything he's the last person I'd tell. Well, one of the last
The postmistress must know that it was almost a year now since the last letter, and heaven knows how many people she'd told, or what unkind guesses she'd made about the reason for the long silence.
Mr. Jenkins waited for an answer, but Meg only shrugged.
"Just what was your father's line of business?" Mr. Jenkins asked. "Some kind of scientist, wasn't he?"
"He is a physicist.\*\* Meg bared her teeth to reveal the two ferocious lines of braces.
"Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
"I do face facts," Meg said. "They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you."
'Then why don't you face facts about your father?"
"You leave my father out of it!" Meg shouted.
"Stop bellowing." Mr. Jenkins said sharply. "Do you want the entire school to hear you?"
"So what?" Meg demanded. "I'm not ashamed of anything I'm saying. Are you?"
Mr. Jenkins sighed. "Do you enjoy being the most bel-ligerent, uncooperative child in school?"
Meg ignored this. She leaned over the desk toward the principal. "Mr. Jenkins, you've met my mother, haven't
26
Mrs. Who
you? You can't accuse her of not facing facts, can you? She's a scientist. She has doctors' degrees in both biology and bac-teriology. Her business is facts. When she tells me that my father isn't coming home, I'll believe it. As long as she says Father is coming home, then 111 believe that."
Mr. Jenkins sighed again. "No doubt your mother wants to believe that your father is coming home, Meg. Very well, I can't do anything else with you. Go on back to study hall.
Try to be a little less antagonistic. Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable."
When Meg got home from school her mother was in the lab, the twins were at Little League, and Charles Wallace, the kitten, and Fortinbras were waiting tor her. Fortinbras jumped up, put his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss, and the kitten rushed to his empty, saucer and mewed loudly.
"Come on," Charles Wallace said. "Let's go."
"Where?" Meg asked. \*Tm hungry, Charles. I don't want to go anywhere till I've had something to eat" She was still sore from the interview with Mr. Jenkins, and her voice sounded cross. Charles Wallace looked at her thoughtfully as she went to the refrigerator and gave the kitten some milk, then drank a mugful herself.
He handed her a paper bag. "Here's a sandwich and some cookies and an apple. I thought we'd better go see Mrs.Whatsit."
"Oh, golly," Meg said. "W/iy, Charles?"
27
A Wrinkle in Time
"You're still uneasy about her, aren't you?" Charles asked.
"Well, yes."
"Don't be. She's all right. I promise you. She's on our side."
"How do you know?"
"Meg," he said impatiently. "I know."
"But why should we go see her now?"
"I want to find out more about that tesseract thing.
Didn't you see how it upset Mother? You know when Mother can't control the way she feels, when she lets us see she's upset, then it's something big."
Meg thought for a moment. "Okay, let's go. But let's take Fortinbras with us."
"Well, of course. He needs the exercise."
They set off, Fortinbras rushing ahead, then doubling back to the two children, then leaping off again. The Murrys lived about four miles out of the village. Behind the house was a pine woods and it was through this that Charles Wallace took Meg.
"Charles, you know she's going to get in awful trouble--- Mrs. Whatsit, I mean---if they find out she's broken into the haunted house. And taking Mrs. Buncombe's sheets and everything. They could send her to jail."
"One of the reasons I want to go over this afternoon is to warn them."
'Them?"
"I told you she was there with her two friends. I'm not
28
Mrs. Who
even sure it was Mrs. Whatsit herself who took die sheets, though I wouldn't put it past her."
"But what would she want all those sheets for?"
"I intend to ask her," Charles Wallace said, "and to tell them they'd better be more careful. I don't really think they'll let anybody find them, but I just thought we ought to mention the possibility. Sometimes during vacations some of the boys go out there looking for thrills, but I don't think anybody's apt to right now, what with basketball and everything."
They walked in silence for a moment through die fragrant woods, the rusty pine needles gentle under their feet.
Up above them the wind made music in the branches.
Charles Wallace slipped his hand confidingly in Meg's, and {he sweet, little-boy gesture warmed her so that she felt the tense knot inside her begin to loosen. Gfiarles loves me at any rate, she thought.
"School awful again today?" he asked after a while.
^es. I got sent to Mr. Jenkins. He made snide remarks about Father."
Charles Wallace nodded sagely. "I know."
"How do you know?"
Charles Wallace shook his head. "I can't quite explain.
You tell me, that's all."
"But I never say anything. You just seem to know."
^Everything about you tells me," Charles said.
\*'How about the twins?" Meg asked. "Do you know about them, too?"
29
A Wrinkle in Time
"I suppose I could if I wanted to. If they needed me.
But it's sort of tiring, so I just concentrate on you and Mother.\*"
"You mean you read our minds?"
Charles Wallace looked troubled. "I don't think it's that.
It's being able to understand a sort of language, like sometimes if I concentrate very hard I can understand the wind talking with the trees. You tell me, you see, sort of inad--- inadvertently. That's a good word, isn't it? I got Mother to look it up in the dictionary for me this morning. I really must learn to reado except I'm afraid it will make it awfully hard for me in school next year if I already know things. I think it will be better if people go on thinking I'm not very bright. They won't hate me quite so much."
Ahead of them Fortinbras started barking loudly, the warning bay that usually told them that a car was coming up the road or that someone was at the door.
"Somebody's here," Charles Wallace said sharply. "Somebody's hanging around the house. Come on." He started to run, his short legs straining. At the edge of the woods Fortinbras stood in front of a boy, barking furiously.
As they came panting up the boy said, "For crying out loud, call off your dog."
"Who is he?" Charles Wallace asked Meg,
"Calvin 0'Keefe. He's in Regional, but he's older than I am. He's a big bug."
"It's all right, fella. I'm not going to hurt you," the boy said to Fortinbras.
"Sit, Fort," Charles Wallace commanded, and Fortin-30
Mrs. Who
bras dropped to his haunches in front of the boy, a low growl still pulsing in his dark throat.
"Okay." Charles Wallace put his hands on his hips. "Now tell us what you're doing here."
"I might ask the same of you," the boy said with some indignation. "Aren't you two of the Murry kids? This isn't your property, is it?" He started to move, but Fortinbras'
growl grew louder and he stopped.
"Tell me about him, Meg," Charles Wallace demanded.
"What would I know about him?" Meg asked. "He's a couple of grades above me, and he's on the basketball team."
"Just because I'm tall." Calvin sounded a little embarrassed. Tall he certainly was, and skinny. His bony wrists stuck out of the sleeves of his blue sweater; his worn corduroy trousers were three inches too short. He had orange hair that needed cutting and the appropriate freckles to go with it. His eyes were an oddly bright blue.
"Tell us what you're doing here," Charles Wallace said.
"What is this? The third degree? Aren't you the one who's supposed to be the moron?"
Meg flushed with rage, but Charles Wallace answered placidly, "That's right. If you want me to call my dog off you'd better give."
"Most peculiar moron I've ever met," Calvin said. "I just came to get away from my family."
Charles Wallace nodded. "What kind of family?"
"They all have runny noses. I'm third from the top of eleven kids. I'm a sport"
3i
A Wrinkle in Time
At that Charles Wallace grinned widely, "So 'm I."
"I don't mean like in baseball," Calvin said.
"Neither do I."
"I mean like in biology," Calvin said suspiciously.
"A change in gene," Charles Wallace quoted, "resulting in the appearance in the offspring of a character which is not present in the parents but which is potentially trans-missible to its offspring."
''What gives around here?" Calvin asked. "I was told you couldn't talk."
"Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillu-sion them? How old are you, Cal?"
"Fourteen."
"What grade?"
"Junior. Eleventh. I'm bright Listen, did anybody ask you to come here this afternoon?"
Charles Wallace, holding Fort by the collar, looked at Calvin suspiciously. "What do you mean, asked?"
Calvin shrugged. "You still don't trust me, do you?"
"I don't distrust you," Charles Wallace said.
"Do you want to tell me why you're here, then?"
"Fort and Meg and I decided to go for a walk. We often do in the afternoon."
Calvin dug his hands down in his pockets. "You're holding out on me.\*\*
"So 're you," Charles Wallace said.
"Okay, old sport," Calvin said, "I'll tell you this much.
Sometimes I get a feeling about things. You might call it a compulsion. Do you know what compulsion means?"
Mrs. Who
"Constraint. Obligation. Because one is compelled. Not a very good definition, but it's the Concise Oxford."
"Okay, okay," Calvin sighed. "I must remember I'm pre-conditioned in my concept of your mentality."
Meg sat down on die coarse grass at the edge of the woods. Fort gently twisted his collar out of Charles Wallace's hands and came over to Meg, lying down beside her and putting his head in her lap.
Calvin tried now politely to direct his words toward Meg as well as Charles Wallace, "When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can't explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn't happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I must come over to the haunted house. That's all I know, kid. I'm not holding anything back. Maybe it's because I'm supposed to meet you. You tell me."
Charles Wallace looked at Calvin probingly for a moment; then an almost glazed look came into his eyes, and he seemed to be thinking at him. Calvin stood very still, and waited.
At last Charles Wallace said. "Okay. I believe you. But I can't tell you. I think I'd like to trust you. Maybe you'd better come home with us and have dinner."
"Well, sure, but---what would your mother say to that?"
Calvin asked.
"She'd be delighted. Mother's all right. She's not one of us. But she's all right."
"What about Meg?"
"Meg has it tough," Charles Wallace said. "She's not really one thing or the other."
33
A Wrinkle in Time
"What do you mean, one of us?" Meg demanded. "What do you mean I'm not one thing or the other?"
"Not now. Meg," Charles Wallace said. "Slowly. Ill tell you about it later." He looked at Calvin, then seemed to make a quick decision. "Okay, let's take him to meet Mrs. Whatsit. If he's not okay shell know." He started off on his short legs toward the dilapidated old house.
The haunted house was half in the shadows of the clump of elms in which it stood. The elms were almost bare, now, and die ground around the house was yellow with damp leaves. The late afternoon light had a greenish cast which the blank windows reflected in a sinister way. An unhinged shutter thumped. Something else creaked. Meg did not wonder that the house had a reputation for being haunted.
A board was nailed across the front door, but Charles Wallace led the way around to the back. The door there appeared to be nailed shut, too, but Charles Wallace knocked, and the door swung slowly outward, creaking on rusty hinges. Up in one of the elms an old black crow gave its raucous cry, and a woodpecker went into a wild ratatat-tat. A large gray rat scuttled around the comer of the house and Meg let out a stifled shriek.
"They get a lot of fun out of using all the typical props,"
Charles Wallace said in a reassuring voice. "Come on.
Follow me."
Calvin put a strong hand to Meg's elbow, and Fort pressed against her leg. Happiness at their concern was so strong in her that her panic fled, and she followed Charles Wallace into the dark recesses of the house without fear.
34
Mrs. Who
They entered into a sort of kitchen. There was a huge fireplace with a big black pot hanging over a merry fire.
Why had there been no smoke visible from the chimney?
Something in the pot was bubbling, and it smelled more like one of Mrs. Murry's chemical messes than something to eat. In a dilapidated Boston rocker sat a plump little woman. She wasn't Mrs. Whatsit, so she must, Meg decided, be one of Mrs. Whatsit's two friends. She wore enormous spectacles, twice as thick and twice as large as Meg's, and she was sewing busily, with rapid jabbing stitches, on a sheet. Several other sheets lay on the dusty floor.
Charles Wallace went up to her. "I really don't think you ought to have taken Mrs. Buncombe's sheets without con-sulting me," he said, as cross and bossy as only a very small boy can be. \*'What on earth do you want them for?"
The plump little woman beamed at him. "Why, Charlsie, my pet! Le coew a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing."
"But that's not appropriate at all," Charles said crossly.
"Your mother would find it so." A smile seemed to gleam through the roundness of spectacles.
"I'm not talking about my mother's feelings about my father," Charles Wallace scolded. "I'm talking about Mrs.
Buncombe's sheets."
The little woman sighed. The enormous glasses caught the light again and shone like an owl's eyes. "In case we need ghosts, of course," she said. "I should think you'd have
35
A Wrinkle in Time
•
guessed. If we have to frighten anybody away Whatsit thought we ought to do it appropriately. That's why it's so much fun to stay in a haunted house. But we really didn't mean you to know about the sheets. Auf frischer Tat ertappt. German. In .flagrante delicto. Latin. Caught in the act. English. As I was saying---"
But Charles Wallace held up his hand in a peremptory gesture. "Mrs. Who, do you know this boy?"
Calvin bowed. "Good afternoon, Ma'am. I didn't quite catch your name."
"Mrs. Who will do," the woman said. "He wasn't my idea, Charlsie, but I think he's a good one."
"Where's Mrs. WTiatsit?" Charles asked.
"She's busy. It's getting near time, Charlsie, getting near time. Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. Seneca.
Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.
And he's a very good man, Charlsie, darling, but right now he needs our help."
"Who?" Meg demanded.
"And little Megsie! Lovely to meet you, sweetheart. Your father, of course. Now go home, loves. The time is not yet ripe. Don't worry, we won't go without you. Get plenty of food and rest. Feed Calvin up. Now, off with you! Justitiae soror fides. Latin again, of course. Faith is the sister of jus-tice. Trust in us! Now, shool" And she fluttered up from her chair and pushed them out the door with surprising power.
"Charles," Meg said. "I don't understand."
Charles took her by the hand and dragged her away from the house. Fortinbras ran on ahead, and Calvin was close
36
Mrs. Who
behind them. "No," he said, "I don't either, yet. Not quite.
Ill tell you what I know as soon as I can. But you saw Fort, didn't you? Not a growl. Not a quiver. Just as though there weren't anything strange about it. So you know it's okay.
Look, do me a favor, both of you. Let's not talk about it till we've had something to eat. I need fuel so I can sort things out and assimilate them properly."
"Lead on, moron," Calvin cried gaily. "I've never even seen your house, and I have the funniest feeling that for the first time in my life I'm going home!"
37
S Mrs. Which
IN the forest evening was already beginning to fall, and they walked in silence. Charles and Fortinbras gamboled on ahead. Calvin walked with Meg, his fingers barely touching her arm in a protective gesture.
This has been the most impossible, the most confusing afternoon of my life, she thought, yet I don't feel confused or upset anymore; I only feel happy. Why?
"Maybe we weren't meant to meet before this," Calvin said. "I mean, I knew who you were in school and every-38
Mrs. Which
thing, but I didn't know you. But I'm glad we've met now, Meg. We're going to be friends, you know."
"I'm glad, too," Meg whispered, and they were silent again.
When they got back to the house Mrs. Murry was still in the lab. She was watching a pale blue fluid move slowly through a tube from a beaker to a retort. Over a Bunsen burner bubbled a big, earthenware dish of stew. "Don't tell Sandy and Dennys I'm cooking out here," she said.
"They're always suspicious that a few chemicals may get in with the meat, but I had an experiment I wanted to stay with."
"This is Calvin 0'Keefe, Mother," Meg said. "Is there enough for him, too? It smells super."
"Hello, Calvin." Mrs. Murry shook hands with him. "Nice to meet you. We aren't having anything but stew tonight, but it's a good thick one."
"Sounds wonderful to me," Calvin said. "May I use your phone so my motherll know where I am?"
"Of course. Show him where it is, will you, please, Meg?
I won't ask you to use the one out here, if you don't mind.
I'd like to finish up this experiment."
Meg led the way into the house. Charles Wallace and Fortinbras had gone off. Outdoors she could hear Sandy and Dennys hammering at the fort they were building up in one of the maples. "This way." Meg went through the kitchen and into the living room.
"I don't know why I call her when I don't come home,"
39
A Wrinkle in Time
Calvin said, his voice bitter. "She wouldn't notice." He sighed and dialed. "Ma?" he said. "Oh, Hinky. Tell Ma I won't be home till late. Now don't forget. I don't want to be locked out again." He hung up, looked at Meg. "Do you know how lucky you are?"
She smiled rather wryly. "Not most of the time."
"A mother like that! A house like this! Gee, your mother's gorgeous! You should see my mother. She had all her upper teeth out and Pop got her a plate but she won't wear it, and most days she doesn't even comb her hair. Not that it makes much difference when she does." He clenched his fists. "But I love her. That's the funny part of it. I love them all, and they don't give a hoot about me. Maybe that's why I call when I'm not going to be home. Because I care. Nobody else does. You don't know how lucky you are to be loved."
Meg said in a startled way, "I guess I never thought of that. I guess I just took it for granted."
Calvin looked somber; then his enormous smile lit up his face again. "Things are going to happen, Meg! Good things! I feel it!" He began wandering, still slowly, around the pleasant, if shabby, living room. He stopped before a picture on the piano of a small group of men standing together on a beach. "Who's this?"
"Oh, a bunch of scientists."
"Where?"
Meg went over to the picture. "Cape Canaveral. This one's Father/\*
"Which?"
"Here."
40
Mrs. Which
"The one with glasses?"
"Yup. The one who needs a haircut." Meg giggled, forgetting her worries in her pleasure at showing Calvin the picture. "His hair's sort of the same color as mine, and he keeps forgetting to have it cut. Mother usually ends up doing it for him---she bought clippers and stuff---because he won't take the time to go to the barber."
Calvin studied the picture. "I like him," he announced judiciously. "Looks kind of like Charles Wallace, doesn't he?"
Meg laughed again. "When Charles was a baby he looked exactly like Father. It was really funny."
Calvin continued to look at the picture. "He's not handsome or anything. But I like him."
Meg was indignant. ""He is too handsome."
Calvin shook his head. "Nah. He's ,tall and skinny like
me.
"Well, I think you're handsome," Meg said. "Father's eyes are kind of like yours, too. You know. Really blue. Only you don't notice his as much because of the glasses."
"Where is he now?"
Meg stiffened. But she didn't have to answer because the door from lab to kitchen slammed, and Mrs. Murry came in, carrying a dish of stew. "Now," she called, "111
finish this up properly on the stove. Have you done your homework, Meg?"
"Not quite," Meg said, going back into the kitchen.
"Then I'm sure Calvin won't mind if you finish before dinner."
"Sure, go ahead." Calvin fished in his pocket and pulled
41
A Wrinkle in Time
out a wad of folded paper. "As a matter of fact I have some junk of mine to finish up. Math. That's one thing I have a hard time keeping up in. I'm okay on anything to do with words, but I don't do as well with numbers."
Mrs. Murry smiled. "Why don't you get Meg to help you?"
"But, see, I'm several grades above Meg."
\*Try asking her to help you with your math, anyhow,"
Mrs. Murry suggested.
"Well, sure," Calvin said. "Here. But it's pretty com-plicated."
Meg smoothed out the paper and studied it. "Do they care how you do it?" she asked. "I mean, can you work it out your own way?"
"Well, sure, as long as I understand and get the answers
• i • "
right.
"Well, we have to do it their way. Now look, Calvin, don't you see how much easier it would be if you did it this way?"
Her pencil flew over the paper.
"Hey!" Calvin said. "Hey! I think I get it. Show me once more on another one."
Again Meg's pencil was busy. "All you have to remember is that every ordinary fraction can be converted into an in-finite periodic decimal fraction. See? So 3/7 is 0.428571."
"This is the craziest family." Calvin grinned at her. "I suppose I should stop being surprised by now, but you're supposed to be dumb in school, always being called up on the carpet."
42
Mrs. Which
"Oh, I am."
"The trouble with Meg and math," Mrs. Murry said briskly, "is that Meg and her father used to play with numbers and Meg learned far too many short cuts. So when they want her to do problems the long way around at school she gets sullen and stubborn and sets up a fine mental block for herself."
"Are there any more morons like Meg and Charles around?" Calvin asked. "If so, I should meet more of them."
"It might also help if Meg's handwriting were legible^"
Mrs. Murry said. "'With a good deal of difficulty I can usually decipher it, but I doubt very much if her teachers can, or are willing to take the time. I'm planning on giving her a typewriter for Christmas. That may be a help."
"If I get anything right nobodyll believe it's me," Meg said.
"W^hat's a megaparsec?" Calvin asked.
"One of Father's nicknames for me," Meg said. 'It's also 3.26 million light years."
"What's E== me2?"
"Einstein's equation."
"What's E stand for?"
"Energy."
"m?"
"Mass."
1C •>t\\*>
c-r
"The square of the velocity of light in centimeters per second."
43
A Wrinkle in Time
"By what countries is Peru bounded?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. I think it's in South America somewhere."
"What's the capital of New York?"
"Well, New York City, of course!"
"Who wrote BosweITs Life ofJohnson?"
"Oh, Calvin, I'm not any good at English."
Calvin groaned and turned to Mrs. Murry. "I see what you mean. Her I wouldn't want to teach."
"She's a little one-sided, I grant you," Mrs. Murry said.
"though I blame her father and myself for that. She still enjoys playing with her dolls' house, though."
"Mother!" Meg shrieked in agony.
"Oh, darling, I'm sorry," Mrs. Murry said swiftly. "But I'm sure Calvin understands what I mean."
With a sudden enthusiastic gesture Calvin flung his arms out wide, as though he were embracing Meg and her mother, the whole house. "How did all this happen? Isn't it wonderful? I feel as though I were just being born! I'm not alone any more! Do you realize what that means to me?"
"But you're good at basketball and things," Meg protested. "You're good in school. Everybody likes you."
"For all the most unimportant reasons," Calvin said.
'There hasn't been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, lean hold myself down, but it isn't me."
Meg took a batch of forks from the drawer and turned them over and over, looking at them. "Im all confused again."
44
Mrs. Which
\*\*0h, so 'm I," Calvin said gaily. "But now at least I know we're going somewhere."
Meg was pleased and a little surprised when the twins were excited at having Calvin for supper. They knew more about his athletic record and were far more impressed by it than she. Calvin ate five bowls of stew, three saucers of Jello, and a dozen cookies, and then Charles Wallace in-sisted that Calvin take him up to bed and read to him. The twins, who had finished their homework, were allowed to watch half an hour of TV. Meg helped her mother with the dishes and then sat at the table and struggled with her homework. But she could not concentrate.
"Mother, are you upset?" she asked suddenly.
Mrs. Murry looked up from a copy of an English scientific magazine through which she was leafing. For a moment she did not speak. Then, "Yes."
"Why?"
Again Mrs. Murry paused. She held her hands out and looked at them. They were long and strong and beautiful.
She touched with the fingers of her right hand the broad gold band on the third finger of her left hand. "I'm still quite a young woman, you know," she said finally, "though I realize that that's difficult for you children to conceive.
And I'm still very much in love with your father. I miss him quite dreadfully."
"And you think all this has something to do with Father?"
"I think it must have."
45
A Wrinkle in Time
"But what?"
"That I don't know. But it seems the only explanation."
"Do you think things always have an explanation?"
"Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't
understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't ex-
• i-"
ist.
"I like to understand things," Meg said.
"We all do. But it isn't always possible."
"Charles Wallace understands more than the rest of us, doesn't he?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I suppose because he's---well, because he's different, Meg."
"Different how?"
"I'm not quite sure. You know yourself he's not like anybody else."
"No, And I wouldn't want him to be," Meg said defen-sively.
"Wanting doesn't have anything to do with it. Charles Wallace is what he is. Different. New."
"New?"
"Yes. That's what your father and I feel."
Meg twisted her pencil so hard that it broke. She laughed.
"I'm sorry. I'm really not being destructive. I'm just trying to get things straight."
46
Mrs. Which
"I know."
"But Charles Wallace doesn't look different from anybody else."
"No, Meg, but people are more than just the way they look. Charles Wallace's difference isn't physical. It's in essence."
Meg sighed heavily, took off her glasses and twirled them, put them back on again. "Well, I know Charles Wallace is different, and I know he's something more. I guess I'll just have to accept it without understanding it."
Mrs. Murry smiled at her. "Maybe that's really the point I was trying to put across."
"Yah," Meg said dubiously.
Her mother smiled again. "Maybe that's why our visitor last night didn't surprise me. Maybe that's why I'm able to have a---a willing suspension of disl^elief. Because of Charles Wallace."
"Are you like Charles?" Meg asked.
\*\*I? Heavens no. I'm blessed with more brains and op-portunities than many people, but there's nothing about me that breaks out of the ordinary mold."
"Your looks do," Meg said.
Mrs. Murry laughed. "You just haven't had enough basis for comparison, Meg. I'm very ordinary, really."
Calvin O'Keefe, coming in then, said, "Ha ha."
"Charles all settled?" Mrs. Murry asked.
"Yes."
"What did you read to him?"
47
A Wrinkle in Time
"Genesis, His choice. By the way, what kind of an experiment were you working on this afternoon, Mrs. Murry?"
Oh, something my husband and I were cooking up together. I don't want to be too far behind him when he gets back."
"Mother," Meg pursued. ^Charles says I'm not one thing or the other, not flesh nor fowl nor good red herring."
"Oh, for crying out loud," Calvin said, "you're Meg, aren't you? Come on and let's go for awalk."
But Meg was still not satisfied. "And what do you make of Calvin?" she demanded of her mother.
Mrs. Muny laughed. "I don't want to make anything of Calvin. I like him very much, and I'm delighted he's found his way here."
"Mother, you were going to tell me about a tesserae!"
"Yes." A troubled look came into Mrs. Murry's eyes. "But not now, Meg. Not now. Go on out for that walk with Calvin. I'm going up to kiss Charles and then I have to see that the twins get to bed."
Outdoors the grass was wet with dew. The moon was halfway up and dimmed the stars for a great arc. Calvin reached out and took Meg's hand with a gesture as simple and friendly as Charles Wallace's. "Were you upsetting your mother?" he asked gently.
"I don't think J was. But she's upset"
'^Vhat about?"
"Father."
Calvin led Meg across the lawn. The shadows of the
48
Mrs. Which
trees were long and twisted and there was a heavy, sweet, autumnal smell to the air. Meg stumbled as the land sloped suddenly downhill, but Calvin's strong hand steadied her.
They walked carefully across the twins' vegetable garden, picking their way through rows of cabbages, beets, broc-coli, pumpkins. Looming on their left were the tall stalks of corn. Ahead of them was a small apple orchard bounded by a stone wall, and beyond this the woods through which they had walked that afternoon. Calvin led the way to the wall, and then sat there, his red hair shining silver in the moonlight, his body dappled with patterns from the tangle of branches. He reached up, pulled an apple off a gnarled limb, and handed it to Meg, then picked one for himself.
"Tell me about your father,"
"He's a physicist."
"Sure, we all know that. And he's supposed to have left your mother and gone off with some dame." •
Meg jerked up from the stone on which she was perched, but Calvin grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back down. "Hold it, kid. I didn't say anything you hadn't heard already, did I?"
"No," Meg said, but continued to pull away. "Let me go."
"Come on, calm down. You know it isn't true, / know it isn't true. And how anybody after one look at your mother could believe any man would leave her for another woman just shows how far jealousy will make people go. Right?"
"I guess so," Meg said, but her happiness had fled and she was back in a morass of anger and resentment.
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A Wrinkle in Time
"Look, dope." Calvin shook her gently. "I just want to get things straight, sort of sort out the fact from fiction.
Your father's a physicist. That's a fact, yes?"
"Yes."
"He's a Ph.D. several times over."
"Yes."
"Most of the time he works alone but some of the time he was at the Institute for Higher Learning in Princeton.
Correct?"
"Yes."
"Then he did some work for the government, didn't he?"
Tes."
"You take it from there. That's all I know."
"That's about all I know, too," Meg said. "Maybe Mother knows more. I don't know. What he did was---well, it was what they call Classified."
"Top Secret, you mean?"
That's right."
"And you don't even have any idea what it was about?"
Meg shook her head. \*'No. Not really. Just an idea because of where he was."
"Well, where?"
"Out in New Mexico for a while; we were with him there;
and then he was in Florida at Cape Canaveral, and we were with him there, too. And then he was going to be traveling a lot, so we came here."
"You'd always had this house?"
"Yes. But we used to live in it just in the summer."
50
Mrs. Which
"And you don't know where your father was sent?"
"No. At first we got lots of letters. Mother and Father always wrote each other every day. I think Mother still writes him every night. Every once in a while the postmistress makes some kind of a crack about all her letters."
"I suppose they think she's pursuing him or something,"
Calvin said, rather bitterly. "They can't understand plain, ordinary love when they see it. Well, go on. What happened next?"
"Nothing happened," Meg said. "That's the trouble."
"Well, what about your father's letters?"
"They just stopped coming."
"You haven't heard anything at all?"
"No," Meg said. "Nothing." Her voice was heavy with misery.
Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.
At last Calvin spoke in a dry, unemotional voice, not looking at Meg. "Do you think he could be dead?"
Again Meg leaped up, and again Calvin pulled her down.
"No! They'd have told us if he were dead! There's always a telegram or something. They always tell you!"
"What do they tell you?"
Meg choked down a sob, managed to speak over it. "Oh, Calvin, Mother's tried and tried to find out. She's been down to Washington and everything. And all they'll say is
51
A Wrinkle in Time
that he's on a secret and dangerous mission, and she can be very proud of him, but he won't be able to---to communicate with us for a while. And they'll give us news as soon as they have it."
"Meg, don't get mad, but do you think maybe they don't know?"
A slow tear trickled down Meg's cheek. "That's what I'm afraid of."
"Why don't you cry?" Calvin asked gently. "You re just crazy about your father, aren't you? Go ahead and cry.
It'll do you good."
Meg's voice came out trembling over tears. "I cry much too much. I should be like Mother. I should be able to control myself."
"Your mother's a completely different person and she's a lot older than you are."
"I wish I were a different person," Meg said shakily. "I hate myself."
Calvin reached over and took off her glasses. Then he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped her tears.
This gesture of tenderness undid her completely, and she put her head down on her knees and sobbed. Calvin sat quietly beside her, every once in a while patting her head.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed finally. "I'm terribly sorry. Now you'll hate me."
"Oh, Meg, you are a moron," Calvin said. "Don't you know you're the nicest thing that's happened to me in a long time?"
y-
Mrs. Which
Meg raised her head, and moonlight shone on her tear-stained face; without the glasses her eyes were unexpect-edly beautiful. "If Charles Wallace is a sport, I think I'm a biological mistake." Moonlight flashed against her braces as slie spoke.
Now she was waiting to be contradicted. But Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?"
"I'm blind as a bat without them. I'm near-sighted, like Father."
"Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes,"
Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses.
I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have."
Meg smiled with pleasure. She could feel herself blushing and she wondered if the blush would be visible in the moonlight.
"Okay, hold it, you two," came a voice out of the shadows.
Charles Wallace stepped into the moonlight. "I wasn't spying on you," he said quickly, "and I hate to break things up, but this is it, kids, this is iti" His voice quivered with excitement.
"This is what?" Calvin asked.
"We're going."
"Going? Where?" Meg reached out and instinctively grabbed for Calvin's hand.
"I don't know exactly," Charles Wallace said. "But I think it's to find Father."
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A Wrinkle in Time
Suddenly two eyes seemed to spring at them out of the darkness; it was the moonlight striking on Mrs. Who's glasses. She was standing next to Charles Wallace, and how she had managed to appear where a moment ago there had been nothing but flickering shadows in the moonlight Meg had no idea. She heard a sound behind her and turned around. There was Mrs. Whatsit scrambling over the wall.
"My, but I wish there were no wind," Mrs. Whatsit said plaintively. "It's so difficult with all these clothes." She wore her outfit of the night before, rubber boots and all, with the addition of one of Mrs. Buncombe's sheets which she had draped over her. As she slid off the wall the sheet caught in a low branch and came off. The felt hat slipped over both eyes, and another branch plucked at the pink stole- "Oh, dear," she sighed. "I shall never learn to manage."
Mrs. Who wafted over to her, tiny feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground, the lenses of her glasses glittering.
"Come t'e picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What griev-ous pain a little fault doth give theef With a clawlike hand she pushed the hat up on Mrs. Whatsit's forehead, un-tangled the stole from the tree, and with a deft gesture took the sheet and folded it.
"Oh, thank you," Mrs. Whatsit said. "You're so clever!"
"Un asno viejo sabe mds quo un potro. A. Perez. An old ass knows more than a young colt"
"Just because you're a paltry few billion years---" Mrs.
Whatsit was starting indignantly, when a sharp, strange voice cut in.
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Mrs. Which
"AU1 rrightt, girrllss. Thiss iss nno ttime forr bbickkerr-ing."
"It's Mrs. Which," Charles Wallace said.
There was a faint gust of wind, the leaves shivered in it, the patterns of moonlight shifted, and in a circle of silver something shimmered, quivered, and the voice said, "I ddo nott thinkk I will! matterrialize commpletely. I ffindd itt verry ttirinngg, andd wee hhave mmuch ttoo ddoo."
THE trees were lashed into a violent frenzy. Meg screamed and clutched at Calvin, and Mrs. Which's authoritative voice called out, "Qquiett, chilidd!"
Did a shadow fall across the moon or did the moon simply go out, extinguished as abruptly and completely as a candle? There was still the sound of leaves, a terrified, ter-rifying rushing. All light was gone. Darkness was complete.
Suddenly the wind was gone, and all sound. Meg felt that
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The Black Thing
Calvin was being torn from her. When she reached for him her fingers touched nothing.
She screamed out, "Charles!" and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know. The word was flung back down her throat and she choked on it.
She was completely alone.
She had lost the protection of Calvin's hand. Charles was nowhere, either to save or to turn to. She was alone in a fragment of nothingness. No light, no sound, no feeling.
Where was her body? She tried to move in her panic, but there was nothing to move. Just as light and sound had vanished, she was gone, too. The corporeal Meg simply was not.
Then she felt her limbs again. Her legs and arms were tingling faintly, as though they had been asleep. She blinked her eyes rapidly, but though she herself was somehow back, nothing else was. It was not as simple as darkness, or absence of light. Darkness has a tangible quality;
it can be moved through and felt; in darkness you can bark your shins; the world of things still exists around you. She was lost in a horrifying void.
It was the same way with the silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.
Suddenly she was aware of her heart beating rapidly within the cage of her ribs. Had it stopped before? What had made it start again? The tingling in her arms and legs grew stronger, and suddenly she felt movement. This move-57
A Wrinkle in Time
ment, she felt, must be the turning of the earth, rotating on'
its axis, traveling its elliptic course about the sun. And this feeling of moving with the earth was somewhat like the feeling of being in the ocean, out in the ocean beyond this rising and falling of the breakers, lying on the moving water, pulsing gently with the swells, and feeling the gentle, inexorable tug of the moon.
I am asleep; I am dreaming, she thought. I'm having a nightmare. I want to wake up. Let me wake up.
"Well!" Charles Wallace's voice said. "That was quite a trip! I do think you might have warned us."
Light began to pulse and quiver. Meg blinked and shoved shakily at her glasses and there was Charles Wallace standing indignantly in front of her, his hands on his hips. "Meg!" he shouted. "Calvin! Where are you?"
She saw Charles, she heard him, but she could not go to him. She could not shove through the strange, trembling light to meet him.
Calvin's voice came as though it were pushing through a cloud. "Well, just give me time, will you? I'm older than you are."
Meg gasped. It wasn't that Calvin wasn't there and then that he was. It wasn't that part of him came first and then the rest of him followed, like a hand and then an arm, an eye and then a nose. It was a sort of shimmering, a looking at Calvin through water, through smoke, through fire, and then there he was, solid and reassuring.
"Meg!" Charles Wallace's voice came. "Meg! Calvin, where's Meg?"
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The Black Thing
"I'm right here," she tried to say, but her voice seemed to be caught at its source.
"Meg!" Calvin cried, and he turned around, looking about wildly.
"Mrs. Which, you haven't left Meg behind, have you?"
Charles Wallace shouted.
"If you've hurt Meg, any of you---" Calvin started, but suddenly Meg felt a violent push and a shattering as though she had been thrust through a wall of glass.
"Oh, there you are!" Charles Wallace said, and rushed over to her and hugged her.
"But where am I?" Meg asked breathlessly, relieved to hear that her voice was now coming out of her in more or less a normal way.
She looked around rather wildly. They were standing in a sunlit field, and the air about them was moving with the delicious fragrance that comes only on'the rarest of spring days when the sun's touch is gentle and the apple blossoms are just beginning to unfold. She pushed her glasses up on her nose to reassure herself that what she was seeing was real.
They had left the silver glint of a biting autumn evening;
and now around them everything was golden with light.
The grasses of the field were a tender new green, and scat-tered about were tiny, multicolored flowers. Meg turned slowly to face a mountain reaching so high into the sky that its peak was lost in a crown of puffy white clouds.
From the trees at the base of the mountain came a sudden singing of birds. There was an air of such ineffable peace
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A Wrinkle in Time
and joy all around her that her heart's wild thumping slowed.
"When shall we three meet again, In thunder, lightning, or in rain,"
came Mrs. Who's voice. Suddenly the three of them were there, Mrs, Whatsit with her pink stole askew; Mrs. Who with her spectacles gleaming; and Mrs. Which still little more than a shimmer. Delicate, multicolored butterflies were fluttering about them, as though in greeting.
Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who began to giggle, and they giggled until it seemed that, whatever their private joke was, they would fall down with the wild fun of it. The shimmer seemed to be laughing, too. It became vaguely darker and more solid; and then there appeared a figure in a black robe and a black peaked hat, beady eyes, a beaked nose, and long gray hair; one bony claw clutched a broomstick.
"Wwell, jusstt ttoo kkeepp yyou girrlls happpy," the strange voice said. and Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who fell into each other's arms in gales of laughter.
"If you ladies have had your fun I think you should tell Calvin and Meg a little more about all this," Charles Wallace said coldly. "You scared Meg half out of her wits, whisking her off this way without any warning."
"Finxerunt animi, faro et perpauca loquentis," Mrs. Who intoned. "Horace. To action little, less to words inclined."
"Mrs. Who, I wish you'd stop quoting!" Charles Wallace sounded very annoyed.
Mrs. Whatsit adjusted her stole. "But she finds it so diffi-60
The Black Thing
cult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own."
"Anndd wee mussttn'tt looose oun-sensses of hummorr,"
Mrs. Which said. "Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt allittllelligghtly."
"But that's going to be hard for Meg,'\* Mrs. Whatsit said.
"It's going to be hard for her to realize that we are serious."
"What about me?" Calvin asked.
"The life of your father isn\*t at stake," Mrs. Whatsit told him.
"What about Charles Wallace, then?"
Mrs. Whatsit's unoiled-door-hinge voice was warm with affection and pride. "Charles Wallace knows. Charles Wallace knows that it's far more than just the life of his father.
Charles Wallace knows what's at stake." ^
"But remember," Mrs. Who said, "Aeiproft ovSev, iravra 8\*
cfJvl^civ wcwT. Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything."
"Where are we now, and how did we get here?" Calvin asked.
"Uriel, the third planet of the star Malak in the spiral nebula Messier 101."
"This I\*m supposed to believe?" Calvin asked indignantly.
"Aas yyou llike," Mrs. Which said coldly.
For some reason Meg felt that Mrs. Which, despite her looks and ephemeral broomstick, was someone in whom
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A Wrinkle in Time
one could put complete trust. "It doesn't seem any more peculiar than anything else that's happened."
"Well, then, someone just tell me how we got here!"
Calvin's voice was still angry and his freckles seemed to stand out on his face. "Even traveling at the speed of light it would take us years and years to get here."
"Oh, we don't travel at the speed of anything," Mrs Whatsit explained earnestly. "We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle."
"Clear as mud," Calvin said.
Tesser, Meg thought. Could that have anything to do with Mother's tesseract?
She was about to ask when Mrs. Which started to speak, and one did not interrupt when Mrs. Which was speaking.
"Mrs. Whatsit iss yyoungg andd nnaive,"
"She keeps thinking she can explain things in words,"
Mrs. Who said. "Qui plus salt, plus se tait. French, you know.
The more a man knows, the less he talks."
"But she has to use words for Meg and Calvin," Charles reminded Mrs. Who. "If you brought them along, they have a right to know what's going on."
Meg went up to Mrs, Which. In the intensity of her question she had forgotten all about the tesseract. "Is my father here?"
Mrs. Which shook her head. "Nnott heeere, Megg. Llett Mrs, Whatsitt expllainn. Shee isss yyoungg annd thee llan-guage of worrds iss eeasierr fforr hherr thann itt iss fforr Mrs. Whoo andd mee."
"We stopped here," Mrs. Whatsit explained, "more or less
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The Black Thing
to catch our breaths. And to give you a chance to know what you're up against."
"But what about Father?" Meg asked. "Is he all right?"
"For the moment, love, yes. He's one of the reasons we're here. But you see, he's only one."
"Well, where is he? Please take me to himi"
"We can't, not yet," Charles said. "You have to be patient, Meg."
"But I'm not patient!" Meg cried passionately. "I've never been patient!"
Mrs. Who's glasses shone at her gently. "If you want to help your father then you must leam patience. Vitam im-pendere vero. To stake one's life for the truth. That is what we must do."
"That is what your father is doing." Mrs. Whatsit nodded, her voice, like Mrs. Who's, very serious, very solemn. Then she smiled her radiant smile. "Now! Why don't you three children wander around and Charles can explain things a little. You're perfectly safe on Uriel. That's why we stopped here to rest."
"But aren't you coming with us?" Meg asked fearfully.
There was silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Which raised her authoritative hand. "Sshoww themm," she said to Mrs.
Whatsit, and at something in her voice Meg felt prickles of apprehension.
"Now?" Mrs. Whatsit asked, her creaky voice rising to a squeak. Whatever it was Mrs. Which wanted them to see, it was something that made Mrs. Whatsit uncomfortable, too.
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A Wrinkle in Time
"Nnoww," Mrs. Which said. "Tthey mmay aas weDl knoww."
"Should---should I change?" Mrs. Whatsit asked.
"Bbetter."
"I hope it won't upset the children too much," Mrs.
Whatsit murmured, as though to herself.
"Should I change, too?" Mrs. Who asked. "Oh, but I've had fun in these clotlies. But 111 have to admit Mrs. Whatsit is the best at it. DOS Work lobt den Meister. German. The work proves the craftsman. Shall I transform now, too?"
Mrs. Which shook her head. "Nnott yett. Nnott heere.
Yyou mmay wwaitt."
"Now, don't be frightened, loves," Mrs. Whatsit said.
Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift.
The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description. Outwardly Mrs. Whatsit was surely no longer a Mrs. Whatsit. She was a marble white body with powerful flanks, something like a horse but at the same time completely unlike a horse, for from the magnificently modeled back sprang a nobly formed torso, arms, and a head resembling a man's, but a man with a perfection of dignity and virtue, an exaltation of joy such as Meg had never before seen. No, she thought, it's not like a Greek centaur. Not in the least.
From the shoulders slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry.
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Calvin fell to his knees.
"No," Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs.
Whatsit's voice. "Not to me, Calvin. Never to me. Stand up."
"Ccarrry themm," Mrs. Which commanded.
With a gesture both delicate and strong Mrs. Whatsit knelt in front of the children, stretching her wings wide and holding them steady, but quivering. "Onto my back, now,"
the new voice said.
The children took hesitant steps toward the beautiful creature.
"But what do we call you now?" Calvin asked.
"Oh, my dears," came the new voice, a rich voice with the warmth of a woodwind, the clarity of a trumpet, the mystery of an English hom. '"You can't go on changing my name each time I metamorphose. And I've had such pleasure being Mrs. Whatsit I think you'd better keep to that."
She? he? it? smiled at them, and the radiance of the smile was as tangible as a soft breeze, as directly warming as the rays of the sun.
"Come." Charles Wallace clambered up.
Meg and Calvin followed him, Meg sitting between the two boys. A tremor went through the great wings and then Mrs. Whatsit lifted and they were moving through the air.
Meg soon found that there was no need to cling to Charles Wallace or Calvin. The great creature's flight was serenely smooth. The boys were eagerly looking around the landscape.
"Look." Charles Wallace pointed. "The mountains are so tall that you can't see where they end."
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Meg looked upwards and indeed the mountains seemed to be reaching into infinity.
They left the fertile fields an(l flew across a great plateau of granite-like rock shaped into enormous monoliths. These had a definite, rhythmic form, but they were not statues;
they were like nothing Meg had ever seen before, and she wondered if they had been made by wind and weather, by the formation of this earth, or if they were a creation of beings like the one on which she rode.
They left the great granite plain and flew over a garden even more beautiful than anything in a dream. In it were gathered many of the creatures like the one Mrs. Whatsit had become, some lying among the flowers, some swimming in a broad, crystal river that flowed through the garden, some flying in what Meg was sure must be a kind of dance, moving in and out above the trees. They were making music, music that came not only from their throats but from the movement of their great wings as well.
"What are they singing?" Meg asked excitedly.
Mrs. Whatsit shook her beautiful head. "It won't go into your words. I can't possibly transfer it to your words. Are you getting any of it, Charles?"
Charles Wallace sat very still on the broad back, on his face an intently listening look, the look he had when he delved into Meg or his mother. "A little. Just a very little.
But I think I could get more in time."
"Yes. You could leam it, Charles. But there isn't time, We can only stay here long enough to rest up and make a few preparations."
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Meg hardly listened to her. "I want to know what they're saying! I want to know what it means."
"Try, Charles," Mrs. Whatsit urged. "Try to translate.
You can let yourself go, now. You don't have to hold back."
"But I can't!" Charles Wallace cried in an anguished voice. "I don't know enough! Not yet!"
"Then try to work with me and I'll see if I can't verbalize it a little for them."
Charles Wallace got his look of probing, of listening.
/ know that look! Meg thought suddenly. Now I think I know what it means! Because I've had it myself, sometimes, doing math with Father, when a problem is just about to come clear---
Mrs. Whatsit seemed to be listening to Charles's thoughts.
"Well, yes, that's an idea. I can try. Too bad you don't really know it so you can give it to me direct, Charles. It's so much more work this way."
"Don't be lazy," Charles said.
Mrs. Whatsit did not take offense. She explained, "Oh, it's my favorite kind of work, Charles. That's why they chose me to go along, even though I'm so much younger. It's my one real talent. But it takes a tremendous amount of energy, and we're going to need every ounce of energy for what's ahead of us. But I'll try. For Calvin and Meg I'll try."
She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving;
only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them: "Sing unto the
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A Wrinkle in Time
Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord!"
Throughout her entire body Meg felt a pulse of joy such as she had never known before. Calvin's hand reached out;
he did not clasp her hand in his; he moved his fingers so that they were barely touching hers, but joy flowed through them, back and forth between them, around them and about them and inside them.
When Mrs. Whatsit -sighed it seemed completely in-comprehensible that through this bliss could come the faintest whisper of doubt.
"We must go now, children." Mrs. Whatsit's voice was deep with sadness, and Meg could not understand. Raising her head, Mrs. Whatsit gave a call that seemed to be a command, and one of the creatures flying above the trees nearest them raised its head to listen, and then flew off and picked three flowers from a tree growing near the river and brought them over. "Each of you take one," Mrs.
Whatsit said. "I'll tell you how to use them later."
As Meg took her flower she realized that it was not a single blossom, but hundreds of tiny flowerets forming a kind of hollow bell.
"Where are we going?" Calvin asked.
"Up."
The wings moved steadily, swiftly. The garden was left
68
The Black Thing
behind, the stretch of granite, the mighty shapes, and then Mrs. Whatsit was flying upward, climbing steadily up, up, Below them the trees of the mountain dwindled, became sparse, were replaced by bushes and then small, dry grasses, and then vegetation ceased entirely and there were only rocks, points and peaks of rock, sharp and dangerous. "Hold on tight," Mrs. Whatsit said. "Don't slip."
Meg felt Calvin's arm circle her waist in a secure hold.
Still they moved upward.
Now they were in clouds. They could see nothing but drifting whiteness, and the moisture clung to them and con-densed in icy droplets. As Meg shivered, Calvin's grip tightened. In front of her Charles Wallace sat quietly. Once he turned Just long enough to give her a swift glance of tenderness and concern. But Meg felt as each moment passed that he was growing farther and farther away, that he was becoming less and less her adored baby brother and more and more one with whatever kind of being Mrs.
Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which in actuality were.
Abruptly they burst out of the clouds into a shaft of light. Below them there were still rocks; above them the rocks continued to reach up into the sky, but now, though it seemed miles upward, Meg could see where the mountain at last came to an end.
Mrs. Whatsit continued to climb, her wings straining a little. Meg felt her heart racing; cold sweat began to gather on her face and her lips felt as though they were turning blue. She began to gasp.
"All right, children, use your flowers now," Mrs. Whatsit
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said. "The atmosphere will continue to get thinner from now on. Hold the flowers up to your face and breathe through them and they will give you enough oxygen. It won't be as much as you're used to, but it will be enough."
Meg had almost forgotten the flowers, and was grateful to realize that she was still clasping them, that she hadn't let them fall from her fingers. She pressed her face into the blossoms and breathed deeply.
Calvin still held her with one arm, but he, too, held die flowers to his face.
Charles Wallace moved the hand with the flowers slowly, almost as though he were in a dream.
Mrs. Whatsit's wings strained against the thinness of the atmosphere. The summit was only a little way above them, and then they were there. Mrs. Whatsit came to rest on a small plateau of smooth silvery rock. There ahead of them was a great white disk.
"One of Uriel's moons,"\* Mrs. Whatsit told them, her mighty voice faintly breathless.
"Oh, it's beautiful!" Meg cried. "It's beautiful!'\*
The silver light from the enormous moon poured over them, blending with the golden quality of the day, flowing over the children, over Mrs. Whatsit, over the mountain peak.
"Now we will turn around," Mrs. Whatsit said, and at the quality of her voice, Meg was afraid again.
But when they turned she saw nothing. Ahead of them was the thin clear blue of sky; below them the rocks thrust-ing out of the shifting sea of white clouds.
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"Now we will wait," Mrs. Whatsit said, "for sunset and moonset."
Almost as she spoke the light began to deepen, to darken.
"I want to watch the moon set," Charles Wallace said.
"No, child. Do not turn around, any of you. Face out towards the dark. What I have to show you will be more visible then. Look ahead, straight ahead, as far as you can possibly look."
Meg's eyes ached from the strain of looking and seeing nothing. Then, above the clouds which encircled the mountain, she seemed to see a shadow, a faint thing of darkness so far off that she was scarcely sure she was really seeing it
Charles Wallace said, "What's that?"
"That sort of shadow out there," Calvin gestured. "What is it? I don't like it."
"Watch," Mrs. Whatsit commanded. '-
It was a shadow, nothing but a shadow. It was not even as tangible as a cloud. Was it cast by something? Or was it a Thing in itself?
The sky darkened. The gold left the light and they were surrounded by blue, blue deepening until where there had been nothing but the evening sky there was now a faint pulse of star, and then another and another and another.
There were more stars than Meg had ever seen before.
"The atmosphere is so thin here," Mrs. Whatsit said as though in answer to her unasked question, "that it does not obscure your vision as it would at home. Now look. Look straight ahead."
Meg looked. The dark shadow was still there. It had not
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A Wrinkle in Time
lessened or dispersed with the coming of night. And where the shadow was the stars were not visible.
What could there be about a shadow that was so terrible that she knew that there had never been before or ever would be again, anything that would chill her with a fear that was beyond shuddering, beyond crying or screaming.
beyond the possibility of comfort?
Meg's hand holding the blossoms slowly dropped and it seemed as though a knife gashed through her lungs. She gasped, but there was no air for her to breathe. Darkness glazed her eyes and mind, but as she started to fall into unconsciousness her head dropped down into the flowers which she was still clutching; and as she inhaled the fragrance of their purity her mind and body revived, and she sat up again.
The shadow was still there, dark and dreadful.
Calvin held her hand strongly in his, but she felt neither strength nor reassurance in his touch. Beside her a tremor went through Charles Wallace, but he sat very still
He shouldn't be seeing this. Meg thought. This is too much for so little a boy, no matter how different and ex-traordinary a little boy.
Calvin turned, rejecting the dark Thing that blotted out the light of the stars. "Make it go away, Mrs. Whatsit," he whispered. "Make it go away. It's evil."
Slowly the great creature turned around so that the shadow was behind them, so that they saw only the stars unobscured, the soft throb of starlight on the mountain, the descending circle of the great moon swiftly slipping over
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the horizon. Then, without a word from Mrs. Whatsit, they were traveling downward, down, down. When they reached the corona of clouds Mrs. Whatsit said, "You can breathe without the flowers now, my children."
Silence again. Not a word. It was as though the shadow had somehow reached out with its dark power and touched them so that they were incapable of speech. When they got back to the flowery field, bathed now in starlight, and moonlight from another, smaller, yellower, rising moon, a little of the tenseness went out of their bodies, and they realized that the body of the beautiful creature on which they rode had been as rigid as theirs.
With a graceful gesture it dropped to the ground and folded its great wings. Charles Wallace was the first to slide off. "Mrs. Who! Mrs. Whichi" he called, and there was an immediate quivering in the air. Mrs. Who's familiar glasses gleamed at them. Mrs. Which appeared, too; but, as she had told the children, it was difficult for her to materialize completely, and though there was the robe and peaked hat, Meg could look through them to mountain and stars.
She slid off Mrs. Whatsits back and walked, rather un-steadily after the long ride, over to Mrs Which.
"That dark Thing we saw," she said. "Is that what my father is fighting?"
73
"YES," Mrs. Which said. "Hhee iss beehindd thee ddarrk-ness, sso thatt eevenn wee cannott seee hhimm."
Meg began to cry, to sob aloud. Through her tears she could see Charles Wallace standing there, very small, very white. Calvin put his arms around her, but she shuddered and broke away, sobbing wildly. Then she was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs. Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs. Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words.
"My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have
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brought you here if there were no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it. Your father needs help, he needs courage, and for his children he may be able to do what he cannot do for himself."
"Nnow," Mrs. Which said. "Arre wee rreaddy?"
"Where are we going?" Calvin asked.
Again Meg felt an actual physical tingling of fear as Mrs.
Which spoke.
"Wwee musstt ggo bbehindd thee sshaddow."
"But we will not do it all at once," Mrs. Whatsit comforted them. "We will do it in short stages." She looked at Meg. "Now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again. Do you understand?"
"No," Meg said flatly.
Mrs. Whatsit sighed. "Explanations are-not easy when they are about things for which your civilization still has no words. Calvin talked about traveling at the speed of light. You understand that, little Meg?"
"Yes," Meg nodded.
"That, of course, is the impractical, long way around.
We have learned to take short cuts wherever possible."
"Sort of like in math?" Meg asked.
"Like in math." Mrs. Whatsit looked over at Mrs. Who.
"Take your skirt and show them."
"La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia. Spanish, my dears. Cervantes. Experience is the mother of knowledge."
Mrs. Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight.
"You see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "if a very small insect were
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to move from the section of skirt in Mrs. Who's right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across."
Swiftly Mrs. Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together.
\*'Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "he would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel."
Charles Wallace accepted the explanation serenely. Even Calvin did not seem perturbed. "Oh, dear," Meg sighed. "I guess I am a moron. I just don't get it."
"That is because you think of space only in three dimensions," Mrs. Whatsit told her. "We travel in the fifth dimension. This is something you can understand, Meg. Don't be afraid to try. Was your mother able to explain a tesseract to you?"
\*\*Well, she never did," Meg said. "She got so upset about it Why, Mrs. Whatsit? She said it had something to do with her and Father."
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"It was a concept they were playing with," Mrs. Whatsit said, "going beyond die fourth dimension to the fifth. Did your mother explain it to you, Charles?"
"Well, yes." Charles looked a little embarrassed. "Please don't be hurt, Meg. I just kept at her while you were at school till I got it out of her."
Meg sighed. "Just explain it to me."
"Okay," Charles said. "What is the first dimension?"
"Well---a line: ---------------------------------------"
"Okay. And the second dimension?"
"Well, you'd square the line. A flat square would be in the second dimension."
"And the third?"
"Well, you'd square the second dimension. Then the square wouldn't be flat any more. It would have a bottom, and sides, and a top."
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"And the fourth?"
''Well, I guess if you want to put it into mathematical terms you'd square the square. But you can't take a pencil and draw it the way you can the first three. I know it's got something to do with Einstein and time. I guess maybe you could call the fourth dimension Time."
"That's right," Charles said. "Good girl. Okay, then, for the fifth dimension you'd square the fourth, wouldn't you?"
"I guess so."
"Well, the fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points."
For a brief, illuminating second Meg's face had the listening, probing expression that was so often seen on Charles's.
"I see!" she cried. "I got it! For just a moment I got it! I can't possibly explain it now, but there for a second I saw it!" She turned excitedly to Calvin. "Did you get it?"
He nodded. "Enough. I don't understand it the way Charles Wallace does, but enough to get the idea."
"Sso nnow wee ggo," Mrs. Which said. "Tthere iss nott all thee ttime inn ttlie worrlld."
"Could we hold hands?" Meg asked.
Calvin took her hand and held it tightly in his.
"You can try," Mrs. Whatsit said, "though I'm not sure how it will work. You see, though we travel together, we
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travel alone. We will go first and take you afterward in the backwash. That may be easier for you." As she spoke the great white body began to waver, the wings to disolve into mist. Mrs. Who seemed to evaporate until there was nothing but the glasses, and then the glasses, too, disappeared. It reminded Meg of the Cheshire Cat.
---I've often seen a face without glasses, she thought; --- but glasses without a face! I wonder if I go that way, too.
First me and then my glasses?
She looked over at Mrs. Which. Mrs. Which was there and then she wasn't.
There was a gust of wind and a great thrust and a sharp shattering as she was shoved through---what? Then darkness; silence; nothingness. If Calvin was still holding her hand she could not feel it. But this time she was prepared for the sudden and complete dissolution other body. When she felt the tingling coming back to her fingertips she knew that this journey was almost over and she could feel again the pressure of Calvin's hand about hers.
Without warning, coming as a complete and unexpected shock, she felt a pressure she had never imagined, as though she were being completely flattened out by an enormous steam roller. This was far worse than the nothingness had been; while she was nothing there was no need to breathe, but now her lungs were squeezed together so that although she was dying for want of air there was no way for her lungs to expand and contract, to take in the air that she must have to stay alive. This was completely different from the
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thinning of atmosphere when they flew up the mountain and she had had to put the flowers to her face to breathe.
She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can't gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.
But then she seemed to hear a voice, or if not a voice, at least words, words flattened out like printed words on paper, "Oh, no! We can't stop here! This is a two-dimen-sional planet and the children can't manage herel"
She was whizzed into nothingness again, and nothingness was wonderful. She did not mind that she could not feel Calvin's hand, that she could not see or feel or be. The relief from the intolerable pressure was all she needed.
Then the tingling began to come back to her fingers, her toes; she could feel Calvin holding her tightly. Her heart beat regularly; blood coursed through her veins. Whatever had happened, whatever mistake had been made, it was over now. She thought she heard Charles Wallace saying, his words round and full as spoken words ought to be, "Really, Mrs. Which, you might have killed usF
This time she was pushed out of the frightening fifth dimension with a sudden, immediate jerk. There she was, herself again, standing with Calvin beside her, holding onto her hand for dear life, and Charles Wallace in front of her, looking indignant. Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs.
Which were not visible, but she knew that they were there;
the fact of their presence was strong about her.
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"Cchilldrenn, I appolloggize," came Mrs. Which's voice.
"Now, Charles, calm down," Mrs. Whatsit said, appear-ing not as the great and beautiful beast she had been when they last saw her, but in her familiar wild garb of shawls and scarves and the old tramp's coat and hat. "You know how difficult it is for her to materialize. If you are not substantial yourself it's very difficult to realize how limiting proto-plasm is."
"I ammm ssorry," Mrs. Which's voice came again; but there was more than a hint of amusement in it.
"It is not funny." Charles Wallace gave a childish stamp of his foot.
Mrs. Whos glasses shone out, and the rest of her appeared more slowly behind them. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." She smiled broadly. "Prospero in The Tempest. I do like that play."
"You didn't do it on purpose?' Charles demanded,
"Oh, my darling, of course not," Mrs. Whatsit said quickly. "It was just a very understandable mistake. It's very difficult for Mrs. Which to think in a corporeal way. She wouldn't hurt you deliberately; you know that. And it's really a very pleasant little planet, and rather amusing to be flat. We always enjoy our visits there."
"Where are we now, then?" Charles Wallace demanded.
"And why?"
"In Orion's belt. We have a friend here, and we want you to have a look at your own planet."
"When are we going home?" Meg asked anxiously.
"What about Mother? What about the twins? They\*!! be
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terribly worried about us. When we didn't come in at bed-time---well, Mother must be frantic by now. She and the twins and Fort will have been looking and looking for us, and of course we aren't there to be found!"
"Now, dont worry, my pet," Mrs. Whatsit said cheerfully. "We took care of that before we left. Your mother has had enough to worry her with you and Charles to cope with, and not knowing about your father, without our adding to her anxieties. We took a time wrinkle as well as a space wrinkle. It's very easy to do if you just know how."
"What do you mean?" Meg asked plaintively. "Please, Mrs. Whatsit, it's all so confusing."
"Just relax and don't worry over things that needn't trouble you,'\* Mrs. Whatsit said. "We made a nice, tidy little time tesser, and unless something goes terribly wrong well have you back about five minutes before you left, so there'll be time to spare and nobody'II ever need to know you were gone at all, though of course you'll be telling your mother, dear lamb that she is. And if something goes terribly wrong it won't matter whether we ever get back at
all."
"Ddon'tt ffrrightenn themm," Mrs. Which's voice came.
"Aare yyou llosingg ffaith?"
"Oh, no. No, I'm not."
But Meg thought her voice sounded a little faint.
"I hope this is a nice planet," Calvin said. "We can't see much of it. Does it ever clear up?"
Meg looked around her, realizing that she had been so
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breathless from the journey and the stop on the two-dimensional planet that she had not noticed her surroundings.
And perhaps this was not very surprising, for the main thing about the surroundings was exactly that they were unnoticeable. They seemed to be standing on some kind of nondescript, flat surface. The air around them was gray.
It was not exactly fog, but she could see nothing through it.
Visibility was limited to the nicely definite bodies of Charles Wallace and Calvin, the rather unbelievable bodies of Mrs-Whatsit and Mrs. Who, and a faint occasional glimmer that was Mrs. Which.
"Come, children," Mrs. Whatsit said. "We don't have far to go, and we might as well walk. It will do you good to stretch your legs a little."
As they moved through the grayness Meg caught an occasional glimpse of slaglike rocks, but there were no traces of trees or bushes, nothing but flat ground under their feet, no sign of any vegetation at all.
Finally, ahead of them there loomed what seemed to be a hill of stone. As they approached it Meg could see that there was an entrance that led into a deep, dark cavern.
"Are we going in there?" she asked nervously.
"Don't be afraid," Mrs. Whatsit said. "It's easier for the Happy Medium to work within. Oh, you'll like her, children. She's very jolly. If ever I saw her looking unhappy I would be very depressed myself. As long as she can laugh I'm sure everything is going to come out right in the end."
"Mmrs. Whattsitt," came Mrs. Which's voice severely,
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"jusstt beccause yyou arre verry youngg iss imo exxcuse forr tallkmgg tooo muchh."
Mrs. Whatsit looked hurt, but she subsided.
"Just how old are you?" Calvin asked her.
"Just a moment," Mrs. Whatsit murmured, and appeared to calculate rapidly upon her fingers. She nodded triumphantly. "Exactly 2,379,152,497 years, 8 months, and 3 days.
That is according to your calendar, of course, which even you know isn't very accurate." She leaned closer to Meg and Calvin and whispered, "It was really a very great honor for me to be chosen for this mission. It's just because of my verbalizing and materializing so well, you know. But of course we can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts. And I make far too many mistakes.
That's why Mrs. Who and I enjoyed seeing Mrs. Which make a mistake when she tried to land you on a two-dimen-sional planet. It was that we were laughing at, not at you.
She was laughing at herself, you see. She's really terribly nice to us younger ones."
Meg was listening with such interest to what Mrs.
Whatsit was saying that she hardly noticed when they went into the cave; the transition from the grayness of outside to the grayness of inside was almost unnoticeable-She saw a flickering light ahead of them, ahead and down, and it was toward this that they went. As they drew closer she realized that it was a fire.
"It gets very cold in here," Mrs. Whatsit said, "so we asked her to have a good bonfire going for you."
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As they approached the fire they could see a dark shadow against it, and as they went closer still they could see that the shadow was a woman. She wore a turban of beautiful pale mauve silk, and a long, flowing, purple satin gown. In her hands was a crystal ball into which she was gazing raptly. She did not appear to see the children, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, but continued to stare into the crystal ball; and as she stared she began to laugh; and she laughed and laughed at whatever it was that she was seeing.
Mrs. Which's voice rang out clear and strong, echoing against the walls of the cavern, and the words fell with a sonorous clang.
"WWEE ARRE HHERRE!"
The woman looked up from the ball, and when she saw them she got up and curtsied deeply. Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who dropped small curtsies in return, and the shimmer seemed to bow slightly.
"Oh, Medium, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said, "these are the children. Charles Wallace Murry." Charles Wallace bowed.
"Margaret Murry." Meg felt that if Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs.
Who had curtsied, she ought to, also; so she did, rather awkwardly. "And Calvin 0'Keefe." Calvin bobbed his head. "We want them to see their home planet," Mrs.
Whatsit said.
The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. "Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?"
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Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave.
"Therre willl nno Uonggerr bee sso manyy pplleasanntt thinggss too llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddoo ssomethingg abboutt tliee unnppleassanntt oness."
The Medium sighed and held the ball high.
"Look, children," Mrs. Whatsit said. "Look into it well."
"Que la terre est petite a qui la voit des deux! Delille.
How small is the earth to him who looks from heaven,"
Mrs. Who intoned musically.
Meg looked into the crystal ball, at first with caution, then with increasing eagerness, as she seemed to see an enormous sweep of dark and empty space, and then galaxies swinging across it. Finally they seemed to move in closer on one of the galaxies.
"Your own Milky Way," Mrs. Whatsit whispered to Meg.
They were headed directly toward the center of the galaxy; then they moved off to one side; stars seemed to be rushing at them. Meg flung her arm up over her face as though to ward off the blow.
"Llookkl" Mrs. Which commanded.
Meg dropped her arm. They seemed to be moving in toward a planet. She thought she could make out polar ice caps. Everything seemed sparkling clear.
"No, no. Medium dear, that's Mars," Mrs. Whatsit re-proved gently.
"Do I have to?" the Medium asked.
"NNOWW!" Mrs. Which commanded.
The bright planet moved out of their vision. For a
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moment there was the darkness of space; then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear.
It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books.
"Is it because of our atmosphere that we can't see properly?" she asked anxiously.
"Nno, Mmegg, yyou knnoww thatt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere," Mrs. Which said. "Yyou mmusstt bee brrave."
"It's the Thing!" Charles Wallace cried. "It's the Dark Thing we saw from the mountain peak on Uriel when we were riding on Mrs. Whatsit's back!"
"Did it just come?" Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth. "Did it just come while we've been gone?"
Mrs. Which's voice seemed very tired. "Ttell herr," she said to Mrs. Whatsit.
Mrs. Whatsit sighed. "No, Meg. It hasn't just come. It has been there for a great many years. That is why your planet is such a troubled one."
"But why---" Calvin started to ask, his voice croaking hoarsely.
Mrs. Whatsit raised her hand to silence him. "We showed you the Dark Thing on Uriel first---oh, for many reasons.
First, because the atmosphere on the mountain peaks there is so clear and thin you could see it for what it is. And we
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thought it would be easier for you to understand it if you saw it---well, someplace else first, not your own earth."
"I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate
the Dark Thing!"
Mrs, Whatsit nodded. "Yes, Charles dear. We all do.
That's another reason we wanted to prepare you on Uriel.
We thought it would be too frightening for you to see it first of all about your own, beloved world."
"But what is it?" Calvin demanded. "We know that it's evil, but what is it?"
"Yyouu hhave ssaidd itti" Mrs. Which's voice rang out.
"Itt iss EeviII. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknesss!"
"But what's going to happen?" Meg's voice trembled.
"Oh, please, Mrs. Which, tell us what's going to happen!"
"Wee wwill cconnttinnue ttoffightt!"
Something in Mrs. Which's voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs.
Which with pride and confidence.
"And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs.
Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of tlie tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won't seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a
The Tesseract
little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well."
"Who have our fighters been?" Calvin asked.
"Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said.
Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness com-prehended it not."
"Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why of course, Jesusl"
"Of course!" Mrs. Whatsit said. "Co on, Charles, love.
There were others. All your great artists. They've been lights for us to see by."
"Leonardo da Vinci?" Calvin suggested tentatively.
"And Michelangelo?"
"And Shakespeare," Charles Wallace called out, "and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!"
Now Calvin's voice rang with confidence. "And Schweit-zer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rem-brandt and St. Francis!"
"Now you, Meg," Mrs. Whatsit ordered.
"Oh, Euclid, I suppose." Meg was in such an agony of impatience that her voice grated irritably. "And Coperni-cus. But what about Father? Please, what about Father?"
"Wee aarre ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr," Mrs. Which said.
"But where is he?" Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.
Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. "On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong."
All traces of cheer had left the Happy Medium's face.
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She sat holding the great ball, looking down at the shadowed earth, and a slow tear coursed down her cheek. "I can't stand it any longer," she sobbed. "Watch now, children, watch!"
AGAIN they focused their eyes on the crystal ball. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again.
"Watch!" the Medium told them.
The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to comfort them?
Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only
9^
A Wrinkle in Time
a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.
"You see!" the Medium cried, smiling happily. "It can be overcome? It is being overcome all the time!"
Mrs. Whatsit sighed, a sigh so sad that Meg wanted to put her arms around her and comfort her.
"Tell us exactly what happened, then, please," Charles Wallace said in a small voice.
"It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning."
Mrs. Which spoke again. Her voice sounded tired, and they knew that speaking was a tremendous effort for her.
"Itt wass nnott sso Uongg aggo fforr yyou, wwass itt?" she asked gently.
Mrs. Whatsit shook her head.
Charles Wallace went up to Mrs. Whatsit. "I see. Now I understand. You were a star, once, weren't you?"
Mrs. Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded.
"And you did---you did what that star just did?"
With her face still covered, Mrs. Whatsit nodded again.
Charles Wallace looked at her, very solemnly. "I should like to kiss you."
Mrs. Whatsit took her hands down from her face and
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pulled Charles Wallace to her in a quick embrace. He put his arms about her neck, pressed his cheek against hers, and then kissed her.
Meg felt that she would have liked to kiss Mrs. Whatsit, too, but that after Charles Wallace, anything that she or Calvin did or said would be anticlimax. She contented herself with looking at Mrs. Whatsit. Even though she was used to Mrs. Whatsit's odd getup (and the very oddness of it was what made her seem so comforting), she realized with a fresh shock that it was not Mrs. Whatsit herself that she was seeing at all. The complete, the true Mrs.
Whatsit, Meg realized, was beyond human understanding.
What she saw was only the game Mrs. Whatsit was playing; it was an amusing and charming game, a game full of both laughter and comfort, but it was only the tiniest facet of all the things Mrs. Whatsit could be. ,.
"I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Whatsit faltered. "I didn't mean ever to let you know. But, oh, my dears, I did so love being a star!"
"Yyouu arre sstill verry yyoungg," Mrs. Which said, her voice faintly chiding.
The Medium sat looking happily at the star-filled sky in her ball, smiling and nodding and chuckling gently. But Meg noticed that her eyes were drooping, and suddenly Iier head fell forward and she gave a faint snore.
"Poor thing," Mrs. Whatsit said, "we've worn her out. It's very hard work for her."
"Please, Mrs. Whatsit," Meg asked, "what happens now?
Why are we here? What do we do next? Where is Father?
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When are we going to him?" She clasped her hands plead-ingly.
"One thing at a time, love!" Mrs. Whatsit said.
Mrs. Who cut in. "As paredes tern ouvidos. That's Portu-guese. Walls have ears."
"Yes, let us go outside," Mrs. Whatsit said. "Come, well let her sleep."
But as they turned to go, the Medium Jerked her head up and smiled at them radiantly. "You weren't going to go without saying good-by to me, were you?" she asked.
"We thought we'd just let you sleep, dear." Mrs. Whatsit patted the Medium's shoulder. "We worked you terribly hard and we know you must be very tired."
"But I was going to give you some ambrosia or nectar or at least some tea---"
At this Meg realized that she was hungry. How much time had passed since they had had their bowls of stew?
she wondered.
But Mrs. Whatsit said, "Oh, thank you, dear, but I think we'd better be going."
"They don't need to eat, you know," Charles Wallace whispered to Meg. "At least not food, the way we do.
Eating's just a game with them. As soon as we get organized again I'd better remind them that they II have to feed us sooner or later."
The Medium smiled and nodded. "It does seem as though I should be able to do something nice for you, after having had to show those poor children such horrid things. Would they like to see their mother before they go?"
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"Could we see Father?" Meg asked eagerly.
"Nno," Mrs. Which said. "Wwee aare ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr, Mmegg. Doo nnott bbee immpatientt."
"But she could see her mother, couldn't she?" the Medium wheedled.
"Oh, why not," Mrs. Whatsit put in. "It won't take long and it can't do any harm."
"And Calvin, too?" Meg asked. "Could he see his mother, too?"
Calvin touched Meg in a quick gesture, and whether it was of thanks or apprehension she was not sure.
"I tthinkk itt iss a misstake." Mrs. Which was disapprov-ing. "Bbutt ssince yyou hhave menttionedd itt I ssupposse yyouu musstt ggo aheadd."
"I hate it when she gets cross," Mrs. Whatsit said, glanc-ing over at Mrs. Which, "and the trouble is, she always seems to be right. But I really don't see how'it could hurt, and it might make you all feel better. Go on. Medium dear."
The Medium, smiling and humming softly, turned the crystal ball a little between her hands. Stars, comets, planets, flashed across the sky, and then the earth came into view again, the darkened earth, closer, closer, till it filled the globe, and they had somehow gone through the darkness until the soft white of clouds and the gentle outline of continents shone clearly.
"Calvin's mother first," Meg whispered to the Medium,
The globe became hazy, cloudy, then shadows began to solidify, to clarify, and they were looking into an untidy kitchen with a sink full of unwashed dishes. In front of the
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sink stood an unkempt woman with gray hair stringing about her face. Her mouth was open and Meg could see the toothless gums and it seemed that she could almost hear her screaming at two small children who were standing by her. Then she grabbed a long wooden spoon from the sink and began whacking one of the children.
"Oh, dear---" the Medium murmured, and the picture began to dissolve. "I didn't really---"
"It's all right," Calvin said in a low voice. "I think I'd rather you knew."
Now instead of reaching out to Calvin for safety, Meg took his hand in hers, not saying anything in words but trying to tell him by the pressure of her fingers what she felt.
If anyone had told her only the day before that she, Meg, the snaggle-toothed, the myopic, the clumsy, would be taking a boy's hand to offer him comfort and strength, particularly a popular and important boy like Calvin, the idea would have been beyond her comprehension. But now it seemed as natural to want to help and protect Calvin as it did Charles Wallace.
The shadows were swirling in the crystal again, and as they cleared Meg began to recognize her mother's lab at home. Mrs. Murry was sitting perched on her high stool, writing away at a sheet of paper on a clipboard on her lap.
She's writing Father, Meg thought. The way she always does. Every night.
The tears that she could never leam to control swam to her eyes as she watched. Mrs. Murry looked up from her letter, almost as though she were looking toward the chil-96
The Happy Medium
dren, and then her head drooped and she put it down on the paper, and sat there, huddled up, letting herself relax into an unhappiness that she never allowed her children to see.
And now the desire for tears left Meg. The hot, protective anger she had felt for Calvin when she looked into his home she now felt turned toward her mother.
"Let's go!" she cried harshly. "Let's do somethingi"
"She's always so right," Mrs. Whatsit murmured, looking towards Mrs. Which. "Sometimes I wish she'd just say I told you so and have done with it."
"I only meant to help---" the Medium wailed.
"Oh, Medium, dear, don't feel badly," Mrs. Whatsit said swiftly. "Look at something cheerful, do. I can't bear to have you distressed!"
"It's all right," Meg assured the Medium earnestly. "Truly it is, Mrs. Medium, and we thank you very much."
"Are you sure?" the Medium asked, brightening.
"Of course! It really helped ever so much because it made me mad, and when I'm mad I don't have room to be scared."
"Well. kiss me good-by for good luck, then," the Medium said.
Meg went over to her and gave her a quick kiss, and so did Charles Wallace. The Medium looked smilingly at Calvin, and winked. "I want the young man to kiss me, too. I always did love red hair. And it'll give you good luck, Laddie-me-love."
Calvin bent down, blushing, and awkwardly kissed her cheek.
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The Medium tweaked his nose. Touve got a lot to learn, my boy," she told him.
"Now, good-by. Medium dear, and many thanks," Mrs.
Whatsit said. "I dare say well see you in an eon or two."
"Where are you going in case I want to tune in?" the Medium asked.
"Camazotz," Mrs. Whatsit told her. (Where and what was Camazotz? Meg did not like the sound of the word or the way in which Mrs. Whatsit pronounced it.) "But please don't distress yourself on our behalf. You know you don't like looking in on the dark planets, and It's very upsetting to us when you aren't happy."
"But I must know what happens to the children," the Medium said. "It's my worst trouble, getting fond. If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time. Oh, well, ho hum, I manage to keep pretty jolly, and a little snooze will do wonders for me right now. Good-by, everyb---" and her word got lost in the general b-b-bz-z of a snore.
""Ccome," Mrs. Which ordered, and they followed her out of the darkness of the cave to the impersonal grayness of the Medium's planet.
"Nnoww, cchilldrenn, yyouu musstt nott bee frright-ennedd att whatt iss ggoingg tto hhappenn," Mrs. Which warned.
"Stay angry, little Meg," Mrs. Whatsit whispered. "You will need all your anger now."
Without warning Meg was swept into nothingness again.
This time the nothingness was interrupted by a feeling of clammy coldness such as she had never felt before. The
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coldness deepened and swirled all about her and through her, and was filled with a new and strange kind of darkness that was a completely tangible thing, a thing that wanted to eat and digest her like some enormous malignant beast of prey.
Then the darkness was gone. Had it been the shadow, the Black Thing? Had they had to travel through it to get to her father?
There was the by-now-familiar tingling m her hands and feet and the push through hardness, and she was on her feet, breathless but unharmed, standing beside Calvin and Charles Wallace.
"Is this Camazotz?" Charles Wallace asked as Mrs.
Whatsit materialized in front of him.
"Yes," she answered. "Now let us just stand and get our breath and look around."
They were standing on a hill and as Meg looked about her she felt that it could easily be a hill on earth. There were the familiar trees she knew so well at home: birches, pines, maples. And though it was warmer than it had been when they so precipitously left the apple orchard, there was a faintly autumnal touch to the air; near them were several small trees with reddened leaves very like sumac, and a big patch of goldenrod-like flowers. As she looked down the hill she could see the smokestacks of a town, and it might have been one of any number of familiar towns.
There seemed to be nothing strange, or different, or frightening, in the landscape.
But Mrs. Whatsit came to her and put an arm around her
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comfortingly. "I can't stay with you here, you know, love,"
she said. "You three children will be on your own. We will be near you; we will be watching you. But you will not be able to see us or to ask us for help, and we will not be able to come to you."
"But is Father here?" Meg asked tremblingly.
f-vr \*>
Yes.
"But where? When will we see him?" She was poised for running, as though she were going to sprint off, immediately, to wherever her father was.
"That I cannot tell you. You will just have to wait until the propitious moment."
Charles Wallace looked steadily at Mrs. Whatsit. "Are you afraid for us?"
"A little."
"But if you weren't afraid to do what you did when you were a star, why should you be afraid for us now?"
"But I was afraid," Mrs. Whatsit said gently. She looked steadily at each of the three children in turn. "You will need help," she told them, "but all I am allowed to give you is a little talisman. Calvin, your great gift is your ability to communicate, to communicate with all kinds of people. So, for you, I will strengthen this gift. Meg, I give you your faults."
"My faults!" Meg cried.
"Your faults."
"But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!"
Tes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think youTI find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz. Charles Wallace, to you I can give only the resilience of your childhood."
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From somewhere Mrs. Who's glasses glimmered and they heard her voice. "Calvin," she said, "a hint. For you a hint. Listen well:
... For that he was a spirit too delicate
To act their earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing their grand bests, they did confine him
By help of their most potent ministers,
And in their most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, he didst painfully remain....
Shakespeare. The Tempest."
"Where are you, Mrs. Who?" Charles Wallace asked.
"Where is Mrs. Which?"
"We cannot come to you now," Mrs. Who's voice blew to them like the wind. "AUwissend bin ich nicht; doch uiel ist mir bewisst. Goethe. I do not know everything; still many things I understand. That is for you, Charles. .Remember that you do not know everything." Then the voice was directed to Meg. "To you I leave my glasses, little blind-as-a-bat- But do not use them except as a last resort. Save them for the final moment of peril." As she spoke there was another shimmer of spectacles, and then it was gone, and the voice faded out with it. The spectacles were in Meg's hand.
She put them carefully into the breast pocket of her blazer, and the knowledge that they were there somehow made her a little less afraid.
"Tto alii tthreee offyyou I ggive mmy ccommandd," Mrs.
Which said. "Ggo ddownn innttoo tthee ttownn. Ggo tto-getherr. Ddoo nnott llett tthemm ssepparate yyou. Bbee
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sstrongg." There was a flicker and then it vanished. Meg shivered.
Mrs. Whatsit must have seen the shiver, for she patted Meg on the shoulder. Then she turned to Calvin. "Take care of Meg."
"I can take care of Meg," Charles Wallace said rather sharply. "I always have."
Mrs. Whatsit looked at Charles Wallace, and the creaky voice seemed somehow both to soften and to deepen at the same time. "Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you."
"Why?"
"Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you."
At the tone of Mrs. Whatsifs voice, both warning and frightening, Meg shivered again. And Charles Wallace butted up against Mrs. Whatsit in the way he often did with his mother, whispering, "Now I think I know what you meant about being afraid."
"Only a fool is not afraid," Mrs. Whatsit told him. "Now go." And where she had been there was only sky and grasses and a small rock.
"Come on," Meg said impatiently. "Come on, Iet\*s go/"
She was completely unaware that her voice was trembling like an aspen leaf. She took Charles Wallace and Calvin each by the hand and started down the hill.
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Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.
"Look!" Charles Wallace said suddenly. "They're skipping and bouncing in rhythml Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment."
This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again.
Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses.
Like the paths. Like the flowers.
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope.
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Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them.
"How can they do it?" Meg asked wonderingly. "We couldn't do it that way if we tried. What does it mean?"
"Let's go back." Calvin's voice was urgent.
"Back?" Charles Wallace asked. "Where?"
"I don't know. Anywhere. Back to the hill. Back to Mrs.
Whatsit and Mrs-Who and Mrs. Which. I don't like this."
"But they aren't there. Do you think they'd come to us if we turned back now?"
"I don't like it," Calvin said again.
"Come on." Impatience made Meg squeak. "You know we can't go back. Mrs. Whatsit said to go into the town."
She started on down the street, and the two boys followed her. The houses, all identical, continued, as far as the eye could reach.
Then, all at once, they saw the same thing, and stopped to watch. In front of one of the houses stood a little boy with a ball, and he was bouncing it. But he bounced it rather badly and with no particular rhythm, sometimes dropping it and running after it with awkward, furtive leaps, sometimes throwing it up into the air and trying to catch it. The door of his house opened and out ran one of the mother figures. She looked wildly up and down the street, saw the children and put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a scream, grabbed the little boy and rushed indoors with him. The ball dropped from his fingers and rolled out into the street.
Charles Wallace ran after it and picked it up, holding it 104
The Happy Medium
out for Meg and Calvin to see. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary, brown rubber ball.
"Let's take it in to him and see what happens," Charles Wallace suggested.
Meg pulled at him. "Mrs. Whatsit said for us to go on into the town."
"Well, we are in the town, aren't we? The outskirts anyhow. I want to know more about this. I have a hunch it
may help us later. You go on if you don't want to come with
»>
me.
"No," Calvin said firmly. "We're going to stay together.
Mrs. Whatsit said we weren't to let them separate us. But I'm with you on this. Let's knock and see what happens."
They went up the path to the house, Meg reluctant, eager to get on into the town. "Let's hurry," she begged, please!
Don't you want to find Father?" 1-
"Yes," Charles Wallace said, "but not Dlindly. How can we help him if we don't know what we're up against? And it's obvious we've been brought here to help him, not just to find him." He walked briskly up the steps and knocked at the door. They waited. Nothing happened. Then Charles Wallace saw a bell, and this he rang. They could hear the bell buzzing in the house, and the sound of it echoed down the street. After a moment the mother figure opened the door. All up and down the street other doors opened, but only a crack, and eyes peered toward the three children and the woman looking fearfully out the door at them.
"What do you want?" she asked. "It isn't paper time yet;
we've had milk time; we've had this month's Puller Prush
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A Wrinkle in Time
Person; and I've given my Decency Donations regularly.
All my papers are in order."
"I think your little boy dropped his ball," Charles Wallace said, holding it out.
The woman pushed the ball away. "Oh, no! The children in our section never drop balls! They're all perfectly trained. We haven't had an Aberration for three years."
All up and down the block, heads nodded in agreement.
Charles Wallace moved closer to the woman and looked past her into the house. Behind her in the shadows he could see the little boy, who must have been about his own age.
"You can't come in," the woman said. "You haven't shown me any papers. I don't have to let you in if you haven't any papers."
Charles Wallace held the ball out beyond the woman so that the little boy could see it. Quick as a flash the boy leaped forward and grabbed the ball from Charles Wallace's hand, then darted back into the shadows. The woman went very white, opened her mouth as though to say something. then slammed the door in their faces instead. All up and down the street doors slammed.
"What are they afraid of?" Charles Wallace asked.
''What's the matter with them?"
"Don't you know?" Meg asked him. "'Don't you know what all this is about, Charles?"
"Not yet," Charles Wallace said. "Not even an inkling.
And I'm trying. But I didn't get through anywhere. Not even a chink. Let's go." He stumped down the steps.
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The Happy Medium
After several blocks the houses gave way to apartment buildings; at least Meg felt sure that that was what they must be. They were fairly tall, rectangular buildings, ab-solutely plain, each window, each entrance exactly like every other. Then, coming toward them down the street, was a boy about Calvin's age riding a machine that was something like a combination of a bicycle and a motorcycle.
It had the slimness and lightness of a bicycle, and yet as the foot pedals turned they seemed to generate an unseen source of power, so that the boy could pedal very slowly and yet move along the street quite swiftly. As he reached each entrance he thrust one hand into a bag he wore slung over his shoulder, pulled out a roll of papers, and tossed it into the entrance. It might have been Dennys or Sandy or any one of hundreds of boys with a newspaper route in any one of hundreds of towns back honie, and yet, as with the children playing ball and jumping'rope, there was something wrong about it. The rhythm of the gesture never varied. The paper flew in identically the same arc at each doorway, landed in identically the same spot. It was impossible for anybody to throw with such consistent perfection.
Calvin whistled. "I wonder if they play baseball here?"
As the boy saw them he slowed down on his machine and stopped, his hand arrested as it was about to, plunge into the paper bag. "What are you kids doing out on the street?" he demanded. "Only route boys are allowed out now, you know that."
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"No, we don't know it," Charles Wallace said. "We're strangers here. How about telling us something about this place?"
"You mean you've had your entrance papers processed and everything?" the boy asked. "You must have if you're here," he answered himself. "And what are you doing here if you don't know about us?"
"You tell me," Charles Wallace said.
"Are you examiners?" the boy asked a little anxiously.
"Everybody knows our city has the best Central Intelligence Center on the planet. Our production levels are the highest. Our factories never close; our machines never stop rolling. Added to this we have five poets, one musician, three artists, and six sculptors, all perfectly channeled."
"What are you quoting from?" Charles Wallace asked.
"The Manual, of course," the boy said. "We are the most oriented city on the planet. There has been no trouble of any kind for centuries. All Camazotz knows our record.
That is why we are the capital city of Camazotz. That is why CENTRAL Central Intelligence is located here. That is why IT makes ITs home here." There was something about the way he said "IT' that made a shiver run up and down Meg's spine.
But Charles Wallace asked briskly, "Where is this Central Intelligence Center of yours?"
"CENTRAL Central," the boy corrected. "Just keep going and you can't miss it. You are strangers, aren't youl What are you doing here?"
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The Happy Medium
"Are you supposed to ask questions?" Charles Wallace demanded severely.
The boy went white, just as the woman had. "I humbly beg your pardon. I must continue my route now or I will have to talk my timing into the explainer." And he shot off down the street on his machine.
Charles Wallace stared after him. "What is it?" he asked Meg and Charles. "There was something funny about the way he talked, as though---well, as though he weren't really doing the talking. Know what I mean?"
Calvin nodded, thoughtfully. "Funny is right. Funny peculiar. Not only the way he talked, either. The whole thing smells."
"Come on." Meg pulled at them. How many times was it she had urged them on? "Let's go find Father. He'll be able to explain it all to us."
They walked on. After several more blocks they began to see other people, grown-up people, not children, walking up and down and across the streets. These people ignored the children entirely, seeming-to be completely intent on their own business. Some of them went into the apartment buildings. Most of them were heading in the same direction as the children. As these people came to the main street from the side streets they would swing around the corners ^with an odd, automatic stride, as though they were so deep in their own problems and tlie route was so familiar that they didn't have to pay any attention to where they were going.
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After a while the apartment buildings gave way to what must have been office buildings, great stem structures with enormous entrances. Men and women with brief cases poured in and out.
Charles Wallace went up to one of the women, saying politely, "Excuse me, but could you please tell me---" But she hardly glanced at him as she continued on her way.
"Look." Meg pointed. Ahead of them, across a square, was the largest building they had ever seen, higher than the Empire State Building, and almost as long as it was high.
"This must be it," Charles Wallace said, "their CENTRAL Central Intelligence or whatever it is. Let's go on."
"But if Father's in some kind of trouble with this planet,"
Meg objected, "isn't that exactly where we shouldn't go?"
"Well, how do you propose finding him?" Charles Wallace demanded.
"I certainly wouldn't ask there!"
"I didn't say anything about asking. But we aren't going to have the faintest idea where or how to begin to look for him until we find out something more about this place, and I have a hunch that that's the place to start. If you have a better idea, Meg, why of course just say so."
"Oh, get down off your high horse," Meg said crossly.
"Let's go to your old CENTRAL Central Intelligence and get it over with."
"I think we ought to have passports or something," Calvin suggested. "This is much more than leaving America to go to Europe. And that boy and the woman both seemed
no
The Happy Medium
to care so much about having things in proper order. We certainly haven't got any papers in proper order."
"If we needed passports or papers Mrs. Whatsit would have told us so," Charles Wallace said.
Calvin put his hands on his hips and looked down at Charles Wallace. "Now look here, old sport. I love those three old girls just as much as you do, but I'm not sure they know everything."
"They know a lot more than we do."
"Granted. But you know Mrs. Whatsit talked about having been a star. I wouldn't think that being a star would give her much practice in knowing about people. When she tried to be a person she came pretty close to goofing it up.
There was never anybody on land or sea like Mrs. Whatsit the way she got herself up."
"She was just having fun," Charles said. Uf she'd wanted to look like you or Meg I' m sure she could have;"
Calvin shook his head. "I'm not so sure. And these people seem to be people, if you know what I mean. They aren't like us, I grant you that, there's something very off-beat about them. But they're lots more like ordinary people than the ones on Uriel."
"Do you suppose they're robots?" Meg suggested.
Charles Wallace shook his head. "No. That boy who dropped the ball wasn't any robot. And I don't think the rest of them are, either. Let me listen for a minute."
They stood very still, side by side, in the shadow of one of the big office buildings. Six large doors kept swinging
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A Wrinkle in Time
open, shut, open, shut, as people went in and out, in and out, looking straight ahead, straight ahead, paying no attention to the children whatsoever, whatsoever. Charles wore his listening, probing look. "They're not robots," he said suddenly and definitely. "I'm not sure what they are, but they're not robots. I can feel minds there. I can't get at them at all, but I can feel them sort of pulsing. Let me try a minute more."
The three of them stood there very quietly. The doors kept opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and the stiff people hurried in and out, in and out, walking jerkily like figures in an old silent movie. Then, abruptly, the stream of movement thinned. There were only a few people and these moved more rapidly, as if the film had been speeded up. One white-faced man in a dark suit looked directly at the children, said, "Oh, dear, I shall be late," and flickered into the building.
"He's like the white rabbit," Meg giggled nervously.
"I'm scared," Charles said. "I can't reach them at all. I'm completely shut out."
"We have to find Father---" Meg started again.
"Meg---" Charles Wallace's eyes were wide and frightened. "I'm not sure I'll even know Father. It's been so long, and I was only a baby---"
Meg's reassurance came quickly. "You'll know himi Of course youll know him! The way you'd know me even without looking because I'm always there for you, you can always reach in---"
"Yes." Charles punched one small fist into an open palm
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The Happy Medium
with a gesture of great decision. "Let's go to CENTRAL
Central Intelligence."
Calvin reached out and caught both Charles and Meg by the arm. "You remember when we met, you asked me why I was there? And I told you it was because I had a compulsion, a feeling I just had to come to that particular place at that particular moment?"
"Yes, sure."
"I've got another feeling. Not the same kind, a different one, a feeling that if we go into that building we're going into terrible danger."
113
"WE knew we were going to be in danger," Charles Wallace said. "Mrs. Whatsit told us that."
"Yes, and she told us that it was going to be worse for you than for Meg and me, and that you must be careful.
You stay right here with Meg, old sport, and let me go in and case the joint and then report to you."
"No," Charles Wallace said firmly. "She told us to stay together. She told us not to go off by ourselves."
"She told you not to go off by yourself. I'm the oldest and I should go in first."
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The Man with Red Eyes
"No." Meg's voice was flat "Charles is right, Cal. We have to stay together. Suppose you didn't come out and we had to go in after you? Unh-unh. Come on. But let's hold hands if you don't mind."
Holding hands, they crossed the square. The huge CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building had only one door, but it was an enormous one, at least two stories high and wider than a room, made of a dull, bronzelike material.
"Do we just knock?" Meg giggled.
Calvin studied the door. "There isn't any handle or knob or latch or anything. Maybe there's another way to get in."
"Let\*s try knocking anyhow," Charles said. He raised his hand, but before he touched the door it slid up from the top and to each side, splitting into three sections that had been completely invisible a moment before. The startled children looked into a great entrance hall of dull, 'greeny marble.
Marble benches lined three of the walls. People were sitting there like statues. The green of the marble reflecting on their faces made them look bilious. They turned their heads as the door opened, saw the children, looked away-again.
"Come on," Charles said. and, still holding hands, they stepped in. As they crossed the threshold the door shut silently behind them. Meg looked at Calvin and Charles and they, like the waiting people, were a sickly green.
The children went up to the blank fourth wall. It seemed unsubstantial, as though one might almost be able to walk through it. Charles put out his hand. "It's solid, and icy col4."
Calvin touched it, too. "Ugh."
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A Wrinkle in Time
Meg's left hand was held by Charles, her right by Calvin, and she had no desire to let go either of them to touch the wall.
"Let's ask somebody something." Charles led them over to one of the benches. "Er, could you tell us what's the procedure around here?" he asked one of the men. The men all wore nondescript business suits, and though their features were as different one from the other as the features of men on earth, there was also a sameness to them.
---Like the sameness of people riding in a subway, Meg thought. ---Only on a subway every once in a while there's somebody different and here there isn't.
The man looked at the children warily. "The procedure for what?"
"How do we see whoever's in authority?" Charles asked.
"You present your papers to the A machine. You ought to know that," the man said severely.
"Where is the A machine?" Calvin asked.
The man pointed to the blank wall.
"But there isn't a door or anything," Calvin said. "How do we get in?"
"You put your S papers in the B slot," the man said.
"Why are you asking me these stupid questions? Do you think I don't know the answers? You'd better not play any games around here or youll have to go through the Process machine again and you don't want to do that."
"We're strangers here," Calvin said. "That's why we don't know about tilings. Please tell us, sir, who you are and what you do.\*\*
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The Man with Red Eyes
"I run a number-one spelling machine on the second-grade level."
"But what are you doing here now?" Charles Wallace asked.
"I am here to report that one of my letters is jamming, and until it can be properly oiled by an F Grade oiler there is danger of jammed minds."
"Strawberry jam or raspberry?" Charles Wallace murmured. Calvin looked down at Charles and shook Us head warningly. Meg gave the little boy's hand a slight, understanding pressure. Charles Wallace, she was quite sure, was not trying to be rude or funny; it was his way of whistling in the dark.
The man looked at Charles sharply. "I think I shall have to report you. I'm fond of children, due to the nature of my work and I don't like to get them in trouble, but rather than run the risk myself of reprocessing I must report you."
"Maybe that's a good idea," Charles said. "Who do you report us to?"
"To whom do I report you."
"Well, to whom, then. I'm not on the second-grade level
..»
yet
---I wish he wouldn't act so sure of himself, Meg thought, looking anxiously at Charles and holding his hand more and more tightly until he wriggled his fingers in protest. That's what Mrs. Whatsit said he had to watch, being proud.
---Don't, please don't, she thought hard at Charles Wallace.
She wondered if Calvin realized that a lot of the arrogance was bravado.
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A Wrinkle in Time
The man stood up, moving jerkily as though he had been sitting for a long time. "I hope he isn't too hard on you," he murmured as he led the children toward the empty fourth wall. "But I've been reprocessed once and that was more than enough. And I don't want to get sent to IT. I've never been sent to IT and I can't risk having that happen."
There was IT again. What was this IT?
The man took from his pocket a folder filled with papers of every color. He shuffled through them carefully, finally withdrawing one. "I've had several reports to make lately.
I shall have to ask for a requisition for more A-21 cards."
He took the card and put it against the wall. It slid through the marble, as though it were being sucked in, and disappeared. "You may be detained for a few days," the man said, "but I'm sure they won't be too hard on you because of your youth. Just relax and don't fight and it will all be much easier for you." He went back to his seat, leaving the children standing and staring at the blank wall.
And suddenly the wall was no longer there and they were looking into an enormous room lined with machines. They were not unlike the great computing machines Meg had seen in her science books and that she knew her father sometimes worked with. Some did not seem to be in use; in others lights were flickering on and off. In one machine a long tape was being eaten; in another a series of dot-dashes were being punched. Several white-robed attendants were moving about, tending the machines. If they saw the children they gave no sign.
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The Man with Red Eyes
Calvin muttered something.
"What?" Meg asked him.
"There is nothing to fear except fear itself," Calvin said.
Tm quoting. Like Mrs. Who. Meg, I'm scared stiff."
"So 'm I." Meg held his hand more tightly. "Come on."
They stepped into the room with the machines. In spite of the enormous width of the room it was even longer than it was wide. Perspective made the long rows of machines seem almost to meet. The children walked down the center of the room, keeping as far from the machines as possible.
"Though I don't suppose they're radioactive or anything," Charles Wallace said, "or that they're going to reach out and grab us and chew us up."
After they had walked for what seemed like miles, they could see that the enormous room did have an end, and that at the end there was something. >.
Charles Wallace said suddenly, and his voice held panic, "Don't let go my handsl Hold me tight! He's trying to get at me!"
"Who?" Meg squeaked.
"I don't know. But he's trying to get in at me! I can feel him!"
"Let's go back." Calvin started to pull away.
"No," Charles Wallace said. "I have to go on. We have to make decisions, and we can't make them if they're based on fear." His voice sounded old and strange and remote.
Meg, clasping his small hand tightly, could feel it sweating in hers.
ii9
A Wrinkle in Time
As they approached the end of the room their steps slowed. Before them was a platform. On the platform was a chair, and on the chair was a man.
What was there about him that seemed to contain all the coldness and darkness they had felt as they plunged through the Black Thing on their way to this planet?
"I have been waiting for you, my dears," the man said.
His voice was kind and gentle, not at all the cold and frightening voice Meg had expected. It took her a moment to realize that though the voice came from the man, he had not opened his mouth or moved his lips at all, that no real words had been spoken to fall upon her ears, that he had somehow communicated directly into their brains.
"But how does it happen that there are three of you?"
the man asked.
Charles Wallace spoke with harsh boldness, but Meg could feel him trembling. "Oh, Calvin just came along for the ride."
"Oh, he did, did he?" For a moment there was a sharp-ness to the voice that spoke inside their minds. Then it relaxed and became soothing again. "I hope that it has been a pleasant one so far.

