A Wrinkle in Time Quintet

by Madeleine L'engle

  Polly’s grandparents were in the kitchen. Everything was reassuringly normal. Her grandfather was reading the paper. Her grandmother was making pancakes. Breakfast was usually catch-as-catch-can. Mrs. Murry often took coffee and a muffin to the lab. Mr. Murry hurried outdoors, working about the yard while the weather held.

  “Good morning, Polly, Nason.” Mrs. Murry sounded unsurprised as they panted in, Polly scratched and disheveled from her plunge down the precipice. “Alex requested pancakes, and since he’s a very undemanding person, I was happy to oblige. Join us. I’ve made more than enough batter.”

  “I hope I’m not intruding.” The bishop seated himself.

  Polly tried to keep her voice normal. “Here’s another Ogam stone. Where shall I put it?”

  “If there’s room, put it beside the one Nase brought in last night,” her grandmother said. “How many pancakes can you eat, Nase?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can eat anything. I don’t think I’m hungry.”

  “Nason! What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?”

  “I’m fine.” He looked at Polly. “Oh, dear. What have I done?”

  “What have you done?” Mr. Murry asked.

  Polly said, “You didn’t do anything, Bishop. It just happened.”

  Mrs. Murry put a stack of pancakes in front of him, and absently he lavished butter, poured a river of syrup, ate a large bite, put down his fork. “I may have done something terrible.”

  “Nason, what’s going on?” Mr. Murry asked.

  The bishop took another large bite. Shook his head. “I didn’t think it would happen. I didn’t think it could.”

  “What?” Mr. Murry demanded.

  “I thought the time gate was open only to me. I didn’t think—” He broke off.

  “Polly,” her grandfather asked, “do you know what all this is about?”

  Polly poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down. “The man by the oak, the one both Zachary and I saw, lived at the time of the Ogam stones.” She did her best to keep her voice level. “This morning when I went off for a walk, I—well, I don’t know what it’s all about, but somehow or other I went through the bishop’s time gate.”

  “Nase!”

  The bishop bent his head. “I know. It’s my fault. It must be my fault. Mea culpa.”

  Mrs. Murry asked, “Polly, what makes you think you went through a time gate?”

  “Everything was different, Grand. The trees were enormous, sort of like Hiawatha—this is the forest primeval. And the mountains were high and jagged and snow-capped. Young mountains, not ancient hills like ours. And where the valley is, there was a large lake.”

  “This is absurd.” Mrs. Murry put a plate of pancakes in front of her husband, then fixed a plate for Polly.

  “Nason!” Mr. Murry expostulated.

  The bishop looked unhappy. “Whenever I’ve tried to talk about it, you’ve been disbelieving and, well—disapproving, and I don’t blame you for that, so I’ve kept quiet. I wouldn’t have believed it, either, if it hadn’t kept happening. But I thought it was just me—part of being old and nearly ready to move on to—But Polly. That Polly should have—well! of course!”

  “Of course what?” Mr. Murry sounded more angry with each question.

  “Polly saw Annie first at the pool.” The bishop used the diminutive of Anaral tenderly.

  “Annie who?”

  “Anaral,” Polly said. “She’s the girl who came to the pool last night.”

  “When you were digging for the pool,” the bishop asked, “what happened?”

  “We hit water,” Mr. Murry said. “We’re evidently over an aquifer—an underground river.”

  “But this is the highest point in the state,” Polly protested. “Would there be an underground river this high up?

  “It would seem so.”

  The bishop put down his fork. Somehow the stack of pancakes had disappeared. “You do remember that most holy places—such as the sites of the great cathedrals in England—were on ground that was already considered holy before even the first pagan temples were built? And the interesting thing is that under most of these holy places is an underground river. This house, and the pool, are on a holy place. That’s why Anaral was able to come to the pool.”

  “Nonsense—” Mrs. Murry started.

  Mr. Murry sighed, as though in frustration. “We love the house and our land,” he said, “but it’s a bit farfetched to call it holy.”

  “This house is—what?—” the bishop asked, “well over two hundred years old?”

  “Parts of it, yes.”

  “But the Ogam stones indicate that there were people here three thousand years ago.”

  “Nason, I’ve seen the stone. I believe you that there is Ogam writing on them. I take them seriously. But I don’t want Polly involved in any of your—your—” Mr. Murry pushed up from his place so abruptly that he overturned his chair, righted it with an irritated grunt. The phone rang, making them all jump. Mr. Murry went to it. “Polly, it’s for you.”

  This was no time for an interruption. She wanted her grandparents to put everything into perspective. If they could believe what happened, it would be less frightening.

  “Sounds like Zachary.” Her grandfather handed her the phone.

  “Good morning, sweet Pol. I just wanted to tell you how good it was to see you yesterday, and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.”

  “Thanks, Zach. I look forward to it, too.”

  “Okay, see you then. Just wanted to double-check.”

  She went back to the table. “Yes. It was Zachary, to confirm getting together on Thursday.”

  “Something nice and normal,” her grandfather said.

  “Is it?” Polly asked. “He did see someone from three thousand years ago.”

  “All Hallows’ Eve,” the bishop murmured.

  “At least he’ll get you away from here,” her grandmother said. “Strange, isn’t it, that he should know about the Ogam stones.”

  Polly nodded. “Zachary tends to know all kinds of odd things. But what happened this morning is beyond me.”

  The bishop said gently, “Three thousand years beyond you, Polly. And, somehow or other, I seem to be responsible for it.”

  Mr. Murry went to the dresser and picked up one of the Ogam stones. “Nason, one reason I’ve tended to disbelieve you is that, if what you say is true, then you, a theologian and not a scientist, have made a discovery which it has taken me a lifetime to work out.”

  “Blundered into it inadvertently,” the bishop said.

  Mr. Murry sighed. “I thought I understood it. Now I’m not sure.”

  “Granddad. Please explain.”

  Mr. Murry sat down again, creakily. “It’s a theory of time, Polly. You know something about my work.”

  “A little.”

  “More than Nase, at any rate. You have a much better science background. Sorry, Nase, but—”

  “I know,” the bishop said. “This is no time for niceties.” He looked at Mrs. Murry. “Would it be possible for me to have another helping of pancakes?” Then, back to Mr. Murry: “This tesseract theory of yours—”

  Mrs. Murry put another stack of pancakes on the bishop’s plate.

  Mr. Murry said, “Tessering, moving through space without the restrictions of time, is, as you know, a mind thing. One can’t make a machine for it. That would be to distort it, disturb the space/time continuum, in a vain effort to relegate something full of blazing glory to the limits of technology. And of course that’s what’s happening, abortive attempts at spaceships designed to break the speed of light and warp time. It works well in the movies and on TV but not in the reality of the created universe.”

  “What you ask is too difficult,” the bishop said. “How many people are willing to take lightning into their bodies?”

  Mr. Murry smiled, and to Polly it was one of the saddest smiles she had ever seen. “You are,” her grandfather said.

  The bishop s
aid softly, “It was as if lightning flashed into my spirit…and with the light such a profound peace and joy came into my heart. In one moment I felt as if wholly revitalized by some infinite power, so that my body would be shattered like an earthen vessel.” He sighed. “That’s John Thomas, a Welshman in the mid-1700s. But it’s a good description, isn’t it?”

  “Very good,” Mr. Murry agreed. “But it also shocks me.”

  “Why?” the bishop asked.

  “Because you know more than I do.”

  “No—no—”

  “But you don’t know enough, Nase. You’ve opened a time gate that Annie—Anaral, whatever her name is—seems to be able to walk through and which has drawn Polly through it, and I want it closed.”

  Close it! How could it be closed!

  The door had been opened, and the winds of time were blowing against it, keeping it from closing, almost taking it off the hinges.

  “No!” Polly cried, stopping her grandfather in mid-sentence. “You can’t forbid me to go to the starwatching rock!”

  Her grandfather sighed heavily. “What a lifetime of working with the nature of the space/time continuum has taught me is that we know very little about space, and even less about time. I don’t know whether you and Nase have actually gone back three thousand years, or whether those young snow-capped mountains are some kind of hallucination. But I do know that you’re in our care, and we are responsible for you.”

  The bishop poured more syrup onto his pancakes. “Certainly some of the responsibility is mine.”

  Polly looked into his eyes, a faded silver that still held light, but there was nothing of the fanatic, of the madman, in his steady gaze.

  Mr. Murry said, “Nase, you’ve got to keep Polly out of this. You don’t know enough. We human creatures can make watches and clocks and sensitive timing devices, but we don’t understand what we’re timing. When something has happened—”

  “It doesn’t vanish,” the bishop said. “It makes waves, as sound does. Or a pebble dropped into a pond.”

  “Time waves?” Polly suggested. “Energy waves? Something to do with E = mc2?”

  Nobody responded. Mr. Murry started clearing the table, moving creakily, as though his joints pained him more than usual. Mrs. Murry sat looking out the window at the distant hills, her face unreadable.

  “I don’t know what to do about this.” Mr. Murry turned from the sink to look directly at Polly. “When we told your parents we’d love to have you come stay with us, it never occurred to your grandmother and me that you might get involved with Nase’s discoveries.”

  “We didn’t take them seriously enough,” her grandmother said. “We didn’t want to.”

  “Under the circumstances,” her grandfather said, “should we send Polly home?”

  “Granddad!” Polly protested.

  “We can’t keep you prisoner here,” her grandmother said.

  “Listen.” Polly was fierce. “I don’t think you can send me away. Really. If I’m into this tesseract thing that Bishop Colubra has opened—because that’s what’s happened, isn’t it?—then if you try to take me out of it, wouldn’t that do something to—maybe rip—the space/ time continuum?”

  Her grandfather walked to the windows, looked out across his garden, then turned. “It is a possibility.”

  “If time and space are one—” the bishop suggested, then stopped.

  “So it might,” Polly continued, “rip me, too?”

  “I don’t know,” her grandfather said. “But it’s a risk I’d rather not take.”

  “Look”—the bishop clapped his hands together softly—“Thursday is All Hallows’ Eve. Samhain, as Annie and Karralys might call it. The gates of time swing open most easily at this strange and holy time. If Polly will be willing to stay home just until after Thursday night—”

  “Zachary’s coming Thursday afternoon,” Polly reminded them. “I can’t very well tell Zachary that I can’t go anywhere with him because Bishop Colubra’s opened a tesseract and somehow or other I’ve blundered into it.” She tried to laugh. “Is Zachary in it, too?”

  The bishop shook his head slowly. “I think not. No. His seeing Karralys when he came to our time is one thing. Going through the time gate himself is quite another.”

  “If Zachary hasn’t gone through the time gate, then he’s not in the tesseract?”

  “I think not,” the bishop repeated. “Nor is Louise, even if—whether she believes it or not—she sawAnnie.”

  “Polly,” Mr. Murry queried, “you’re sure Zachary saw this person?”

  “Well, Granddad, yes.”

  Her grandfather had the hot water running, and he held his hands under the tap, nodding slowly. “Going somewhere with Zachary should be all right. Away from here, but not too far away. Nowhere near the star-watching rock.”

  “Just lie low till after Samhain,” the bishop urged. “And don’t go swimming unless one of your grandparents is with you.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Samhain. What does that mean?”

  “It’s the ancient Celtic New Year’s festival, when the animals were brought down from their grazing grounds for the winter. The crops were harvested, and there was a great feast. Places were set at the festival dinner for those who had died during the previous year, as a sign of honor and faith in the continuing of the spirits of the dead.”

  “It sounds like a sort of combination of Halloween and Thanksgiving,” Polly said.

  “And so it was. Pope Gregory III in the eighth century dedicated November 1 All Saints’ Day, and October 31 was All Hallows’ Eve.”

  “So,” Mr. Murry said dryly, “the Christian Church, and not for the first time, took over and renamed a pagan holiday.”

  The phone rang again, interrupting them. Mr. Murry went to it. “Yes, Louise, he’s here. It would seem that somehow or other Polly walked into three thousand years ago this morning, if such a thing is to be believed…No, I find it difficult, too…Yes, we’ll call.” He turned back to the table.

  “My little sister is a doctor,” the bishop said.

  “All right, Nason. We know your sister is a doctor.”

  “I made the mistake—if it was a mistake—Annie cut her finger deeply, badly. It needed stitching, and Cub, the young healer, is not experienced enough, and Karralys was away, so I brought Annie home with me.”

  “To now—to the present?” Incredulity, shock, and anger combined in Mr. Murry’s voice.

  “Just long enough for Louise to fix her finger. I took her right back.”

  “Oh, Nase.” Mr. Murry groaned. “You can’t play around with time that way.”

  “I couldn’t play around with Annie’s finger, either.”

  “Did Louise go along with you in this—this—”

  “She wasn’t happy about it, but there we were in her office and—to tell you the truth—she had never seen Annie before, so it didn’t occur to her to think in terms of three thousand years ago. Her first reaction was that Annie needed help, and quickly, so she did what had to be done. When I told her who Annie was, she didn’t really believe me, and I didn’t press the point. She just told me to get Annie back to wherever or whenever it was she came from as quickly as possible.”

  “Nason.” Mr. Murry stood up, sat down again. “This isn’t Star Trek and you can’t just beam people back and forth. How did you do it?”

  “Well, now, I’m not exactly sure. That’s part of the problem. Don’t shout at me, Alex.”

  “I’m beyond shouting.”

  “Granddad.” Polly tried to calm things down. Now that her grandparents were taking charge, the adventure began to seem exciting rather than terrifying. “Your tesseract thing—what you’ve been working on—space travel—it’s to free us from the restrictions of time, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But purely for the purpose of extra-solar-system exploration. That’s all. We don’t know enough to play around with it, as I know from my own experience.”

  The bishop spoke softly. “We cli
mbed the Matterhorn because it was there. We went to the moon because it was there. We’re going to explore the farther planets in our own solar system and then in our own galaxy and look toward the galaxies beyond because they’re there. I didn’t come to live with Louise with any idea of finding Ogam stones, but when I found one—well, I was interested because they were there.”

  “Here,” Mr. Murry corrected.

  “Here. I may have been foolish. But neither did I expect what has happened to Polly. Child, can you lie low till the weekend? Yes, go off somewhere on Thursday with your young man. Not that I think there’s any real danger. But don’t go to the star-watching rock—can you wait until Sunday?”

  “I don’t know.” Polly looked troubled. “I don’t know if that would do any good, because the first time I saw Anaral it was right here, last night while I was swimming.”

  The bishop held up his long, thin hands in a gesture of disclaimer, shook his head. Sunlight flashed off the topaz in his ring. “I’m sorry.” Then he looked at Polly. “Or am I? We may be on to something—”

  “Nason!” Mr. Murry warned.

  Mrs. Murry hit the palm of her hand softly against the table. “This is Polly’s study time. I think a little return to normalcy would be a good thing. There are some books up in her room she needs to look at.”

  “Good,” Mr. Murry said. “Perhaps this morning was just an aberration. By all means let’s try to return to normal.”

  Polly rose, went to the bishop. “This Ogam writing. You said it’s an alphabet. Do you have it written down? I mean, so that I could make sense of it?”

  “Yes. At home.”

  “Could I see it, please?”

  “Of course. I have what may be no more than my own version of Ogam in a notebook, but it’s helped me translate the Ogam stones. I’ll bring it over this afternoon.”

  Mrs. Murry started to intervene, then closed her mouth.

  “Thanks, Bishop,” Polly said, and turned to go upstairs.

  Up in her room Polly simply sat for a few minutes in the rocking chair, not reaching for the books. What she would have liked to do was go out to the star-watching rock. She was no longer afraid of being trapped in past time. Somehow the threshold was open to her, as it was to Anaral. But her grandparents would be upset and angry. Would it truly help if she stayed around the house until after Thursday?