The Sphinx at Dawn

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “No one is older than I am, and it is very rude of you to call me old. I am as young as the dawn. Very well, O Prince, you have come. What do you want of me?”

  “I’m not a prince, either. I’m just a boy and my parents are poor.”

  The camel arched its neck. “Poor but honest.”

  “And if I had my choice of all the parents in the world, they are the ones I would choose.”

  “You did,” the camel said, and blew three milky bubbles with careful pleasure.

  The Sphinx shifted her massive body slightly. “Why have you come to me, Prince?”

  “But I told you: I’m not a king, nor a prince. I’m just a boy.”

  “Nonsense. If you are not yet a king, then you are at least a prince. Nobody of lesser degree can see me as you see me, nor hear me as you hear me. I am very hungry. You are far too young for breakfast but a prince hasn’t come my way for many generations, so I suppose you will have to do.”

  The boy opened the saddle bag at the side of the camel and drew out a wineskin and a loaf of bread. “It’s not very much, but I’ll be glad to share it with you.”

  “So kind of you.”

  The camel whinnied to the boy. “Beware. She’s up to her tricks again. I warned you not to come.”

  “Eat your breakfast, little prince. The only way I can share it is by eating you, and I shall be happy to do so. I am hungry for a prince.”

  The boy broke his loaf and put the largest piece down by the feet of the Sphinx. “I don’t think you’d really eat me for breakfast, and this is very good bread. My mother baked it herself. I know that you’re not allowed to eat me as long as I can answer your riddles.” Without fear he stared at the Sphinx. The Sphinx stared back. The camel blew several more bubbles and then curled his wicked black lips, baring his long yellow teeth, and sneered.

  “You are not to tell him the answers,” the Sphinx told the camel.

  The boy laughed. “Will he have to? I can ask riddles, too, you see, Sphinx.”

  The Sphinx scowled; she was not pleased with his laughter; he was supposed to be pale with terror. “I ask the riddles around here.”

  The camel nuzzled his leathery lips against the back of the boy’s neck, making him laugh at the tickling. “It is not your turn to ask riddles, little son. Later, when you are a man, you will ask riddles. For many people you will, yourself, be a riddle. But you must learn that many things are reversed for you.” His long, beautifully-fringed lids dropped over his eyes.

  The boy regarded the arrogant beast with affection. “If I can answer the Sphinx’s riddles, it is because you have taught me; you never talk in anything but riddles.”

  “Before you may ask riddles, you must first answer them.”

  The Sphinx was cross at all the interruptions. She was not used to having anybody else take over the conversation. “I do not brook any interference, Camel, you know that, so keep out of this. And I do not care for constant interruptions when I am preparing for a pleasant meal. You do understand, don’t you, child, that if you cannot answer my riddles I will devour you? The desert is covered with the bones of young princes who have failed to provide me with the correct answers. But I do not fancy eating children. Not enough meat on their bones.”

  “I told you I’m not a prince.”

  “If you are edible you are a prince. You smell delectably edible.”

  The camel looked impatient. “Stop quibbling. Get along with it.”

  “Why don’t you get along, Camel? Nobody invited you to breakfast.”

  “I’ve already eaten, thank you. And I’m not leaving. This is his and my last day together. The young one’s years in Egypt are over. The frightened king of his land is dead.”

  The boy sighed. “I thought perhaps you could explain that, O Sphinx. Why would any king be frightened of me? Can you tell me?”

  “You must not ask questions out of turn.”

  The camel rose, its knobbly knees knocking together. “Let’s get this idiotic riddle business over with. She makes me nervous when she’s planning breakfast.”

  “You are not to help him. You must play fair.”

  The boy looked at the bread he had placed between the cruel paws. “All right. Let’s have your riddle.”

  The Sphinx drew back her claws. “But is this the time? There was another prince, many years ago, at least twice your age. His feet were pierced and he answered my riddle, but he did the right things at the wrong time, and suffered for it. His name was Oedipus. For all his mistiming he was a king.”

  The boy looked down at his feet, tanned and perfect against the lighter tan of the sand. “Kings have come to me, so I’m told, but for all that I am only a boy, an ordinary boy like any other.”

  The camel made one of its noises and tossed its head.

  “Your camel is ill-mannered.”

  The boy’s laugh pealed forth. “Aren’t all camels?”

  “Why do you like the desert?”

  “Is that a riddle?”

  “It is a question.”

  “What is the difference between a question and a riddle?”

  “A question may be answered with a lie, but the answer to a riddle must hold truth.” Then the Sphinx stopped, furious. “There! What did I tell you? You’re not playing fair! You’ve made me give an answer! I told you that you are not to ask until you have answered. I’ll start off with an easy one. How can there be an eagle without any bones?”

  The child had many friends in the desert, eagles and mice and owls and dragons and ostriches and wild desert asses. He thought now of the eagles and looked up into the pale vault of sky, still untouched by the heat of the sun, but there was no great bird swooping overhead. He regarded the empty sky, imaging an eagle to himself, and then laughed. “That is an easy one! An eaglet when it’s unhatched, when it’s first in the egg, doesn’t have any bones.”

  “The camel told you!”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “I will not be thwarted so easily.” The Sphinx’s massive tail was twitching back and forth as though to dislodge one of the stinging desert flies which came to plague it. “In marble walls as white as milk, lined with skin as soft as silk, within a fountain crystal clear, a golden apple doth appear. No doors there are to this stronghold, yet thieves break in and steal the gold.—What is it?”

  The camel tried to stamp with both forepaws at once, stumbled to its knees and then rose with clumsy dignity. “Talk about playing fair—that’s much too difficult.”

  “I am the Sphinx. I can ask anything I choose.”

  “Within reason.”

  “The Sphinx does not have to be reasonable. If I were reasonable I would have starved centuries ago. In any case it follows in absolutely logical progression.”

  “It’s mean.” The camel curled his nostrils angrily. Then he looked at the child and carefully blew a single bubble.

  “The answer is an egg,” said the boy.

  The Sphinx roared in frustration. “Who told you?”

  The boy, smiling, looked toward the camel who was rubbing his knees together to relieve their itching. The camel drew his rubbery lips back in a self-satisfied snigger.

  “Camels should not be able to answer riddles.”

  The twitch of the camel’s tail matched, in miniature, that of the Sphinx. “Camels listen, and they hear, and they remember. We are ourselves, if not riddles, at least enigmas. There are not many people who know a camel’s night thoughts.”

  The stone tail made a furious clatter. “Enough. I will ask another riddle. Hush. What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three in the evening?”

  The huge mass of the Sphinx seemed to grow to even greater proportions in the silence.

  The boy looked very small as he looked up at the hooded stone eyes. He smiled confidently. “That, O Sphinx, is the question Oedipus answered on his way from Corinth to Thebes. The camel didn’t need to help me with that. Everybody in Egypt knows the answer to that riddle.”
r />   “Answer it, then.”

  “Man, O Sphinx, is the answer. At any rate it is the answer which was given by Oedipus and you accepted it: man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, stands upright as a young man, and walks three-legged with a stick in old age. I really don’t think it’s a very good riddle and I don’t know how you managed to make so many meals over it. Have you really eaten many men, Sphinx?”

  “Many.”

  “Then you are many men, are you not? And if I cannot answer your riddles and you eat me, then you will be me, too.”

  “You will learn, child,” the Sphinx said, “that we all live by eating of each other. If you eat only my words, you are a part of me.”

  The boy laughed up at the broken stone face. “Do you ever eat your own words?”

  “Never.”

  “And do you really want to eat me?”

  “I am tired of men, child. I would make men kings, and instead I have to digest them inwardly, which is often a fearful nuisance. Or, like Oedipus, they come with a curse, out of joint with time. What is time?”

  “Is that the next riddle?”

  “You may answer it as such.”

  The child closed his eyes thinking. “Time is a thought, in my head and yours. It is a river which changes even as we step into it. It is what holds you here in the desert, imprisoned in stone.” He opened his eyes.

  Beside him the camel moved his foolish head on the long curved neck back and forth to catch a tiny breeze; his red eyes caught the fiery rays of the sun which was beginning to throw long arms of light up over the horizon.

  The Sphinx gave a low, dragon’s growl. “What is more unkind than wind?”

  The child cocked his head at the Sphinx, smiling, thinking, unafraid. The camel rose awkwardly, ambled across the sand, and blew gently in the little boy’s ear.

  The child laughed. “Ingratitude, Sphinx. Blow, blow, thou winter wind: thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.”

  The Sphinx raised an angry stone paw and banged it down with a crash like thunder. “I demand an explanation!”

  The camel whickered, rolling its red eyes in satisfaction.

  “Oh, I saw you tell him, you ingrate, you proof of the riddle’s truth. But how did you know the answer? It’s out of your time and sphere entirely.”

  “Then it wasn’t a fair question.”

  “Riddles aren’t supposed to be fair. Only true. You’re the one who wasn’t fair.”

  “I was right. The answer to a riddle only has to be right.” He stalked a few paces away on the sand, hump swaying, knobbly knees knocking.

  “You’ve offended him.”

  The Sphinx looked down her broken nose. “It’s hardly possible to speak to a camel without offending it. And he had no right to know the answer to that.”

  “But then you’d have had to eat me.”

  The Sphinx raised its massive stone wings and settled them again. “All right, tell me. Tell me how he knew.”

  “He’s an old camel,” the child said. “He has many friends and a long memory.”

  “Can he remember things that haven’t been yet?”

  “One of our friends is a unicorn. He moves through the years as easily as the camel moves across the desert.” The boy stood still, listening, waiting.

  In the far, far distance beyond the horizon, came the sound of silver on glass, and a paleness at the edge of the sky, cooler than the sun which glimmered gold below the curve of earth. Against the paleness came a sensation of motion; the desert floor vibrated with it; there was a tremor in the sand under the boy’s feet; the ripples of the dunes curved and spread out in delicate waves. The motion against the horizon quivered; there was a brilliant sparking of desert dust, and then the sound and light receded.

  “He won’t always come. He’s very shy.”

  “And I have had it made very clear to me that I am not fit companion for a unicorn.” But she looked with satisfaction at the child. “So you will be a very great king, then. I knew it! But I do not see why your friend the unicorn would bother with a camel. Camels are dirty, ignorant, and self-centered. I’ve never known one who wasn’t. And always hungry and thirsty. I cannot see why they have the reputation they do for abstention when I go centuries without a single soul to eat. I am very hungry, young king.”

  “You have asked your riddles, and he has answered them.”

  “It wasn’t fair—”

  “Truth is not always fair, Sphinx,” said the camel, “as you well know. He has answered the riddles and in doing so he has become a man and he will no longer be able to speak easily with us, his desert friends. We are going now. Farewell.”

  “Wait! I haven’t tried him in history. Let me see if he knows any history.”

  “No Egyptian history then. Nothing peculiar out of the future or an unknown world.”

  “Why would I bother? You’d just tell him. No, I shall ask him his own history. That is something you know nothing about.”

  “I am uneasy. I don’t like this. I—”

  “No.” The Sphinx gave a terrible smile. “His history is where time and eternity touch, and you and your friends move only on one side or the other, not where they meet. Who, boy, was betrayed by a kiss?” Her voice was intolerably gentle.

  There was silence across the desert, and then a cold dawn wind, and across the wind blew a butterfly and landed briefly on the child’s shoulder, then was blown along with the wind. “Why am I afraid? I know the answer to that. My father has told me much about the prophets. The answer to that question, Sphinx, is in the book of the prophet Samuel, and it refers to Joab, who kissed Amasa, and then killed him with a knife. Why am I afraid?”

  “Because it is time to say goodbye. Because here in the desert you have made time and eternity meet, and you have answered the riddles. Now you must return to your own country and discover the kingdom of which you are the prince.”

  “You frighten me. I am only an ordinary boy and I do not think I want to be a prince.”

  “All boys want to be princes.”

  “But that is only in their dreams.”

  “There are visions which are so terrible that they become true. Let us say goodbye to the Sphinx. It is time to leave.”

  The boy raised his arm in farewell. He looked taller, not as much a child as when he had first ridden to the Sphinx across the desert.

  “Come on, then, it’s time for us to go. Your mother and father will be wondering where you are, and they’ll be annoyed with me for bringing you home late when they are packing up and getting ready to leave. They’ll never understand that you’re safe as long as you’re with me.”

  “More or less. You can protect him from bandits and cocatrices with no respect for princes, and you find oases if it gets too hot. But you could not have kept me from eating him if I had wished to.” She stretched out her enormous lethal claws, then sheathed them. “But we have shared each other’s words, little son, and we are part of one another now. Wherever you go from now on you will always take with you some of my wisdom and some of my indignation and some of my pain.”

  “Is there another riddle?”

  “Yes, there is the final riddle. What do you have that I will keep forever and ever and beyond the time my stone has crumbled into sand and beyond that again?”

  The boy ran quickly to the Sphinx and rubbed his hand lightly against her stone flank, then clambered up her side, panting, reaching for toe and finger holds, until he had reached her great head. “This is what you will keep,” he said, and gave her a kiss. “You will keep my love.”

  “That is always your answer, isn’t it? The most difficult answer of all.”

  The boy scrambled down the Sphinx’s side, gave a leap, and bounded onto the sand.

  The sun lifted above the horizon, and Sphinx, camel, and child turned to gold.

  “Come on. I shall have to run all the way in the heat.” The camel knelt by the boy, who climbed up on the hump and took up the reins. He raised his hand once more to th
e Sphinx in salute.

  The camel turned and began to gallop across the desert, rocking wildly, so that the boy had to hang on tightly to keep from falling off and could not see the shadow moving across the stone body of the Sphinx.

  The Sphinx lay crouched, immobile, lifeless and inert stone. Her vacant eyes did not know the camel and the boy as they disappeared over the horizon.

  A Biography of Madeleine L’Engle

  Madeleine L’Engle was the award-winning author of more than sixty books encompassing children’s and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, and books on prayer. Her best-known work is the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children’s literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. The Washington Post called the science fantasy tale of an adolescent girl and her telepathic brother’s journey through space and time “one of the most enigmatic works of fiction ever created.”

  L’Engle was born on November 29, 1918, in New York City, where both of her parents were artists—her mother a pianist and her father a novelist, journalist, and music and drama critic for the New York Sun. Although she wrote her first story at the age of five and devoted her time to her journals, short stories, and poetry, L’Engle struggled in school and often felt disliked by her teachers and peers. She recalled one of her elementary school teachers calling her stupid and another accusing her of plagiarism when she won a writing contest.

  At twelve, L’Engle and her family moved to France for her father’s health (he had been a soldier during World War I and suffered lung damage), and she was sent to boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Two of her novels, A Winter’s Love and The Small Rain, drew on her experiences in Europe. She returned to the United States three years later to attend another boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina. L’Engle flourished during these years and went on to graduate from Smith College with honors in English.

  After college, she moved back to New York City and started work as a stage actress while devoting her free time to writing. During this time, she published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, and wrote many plays that were produced in regional theaters. While touring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as an understudy, she met actor Hugh Franklin, and they married in 1946. After the birth of their daughter Josephine the following year, they bought an old farmhouse, which they called Crosswicks, in Goshen, a small town in rural Connecticut, planning on weekends in the country. When she became pregnant with their second child, Bion, they moved to Crosswicks permanently and ran the local general store. Their family grew with an adopted daughter, Maria. After nearly a decade in Connecticut, they moved back to New York so her husband, who would go on to star in All My Children, could focus on his acting career. She was happy to return and hoped that she would find success as an author again. Indeed, A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962.