“See, Meg,” Calvin crouched over her, tense and worried, “if your father had tried to yank Charles away when he tessered us, and if IT had kept grabbing hold of Charles, it might have been too much for him, and we’d have lost him forever. And we had to do something right then.”
“Why?”
“IT was taking us. You and I were slipping, and if your father had gone on trying to help us he wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer, either.”
“You told him to tesser,” Meg charged Calvin.
“There isn’t any question of blame,” Mr. Murry cut in severely. “Can you move yet?”
All Meg’s faults were uppermost in her now, and they were no longer helping her. “No! And you’d better take me back to Camazotz and Charles Wallace quickly. You’re supposed to be able to help!” Disappointment was as dark and corrosive in her as the Black Thing. The ugly words tumbled from her cold lips even as she herself could not believe that it was to her father, her beloved, longed-for father, that she was talking to in this way. If her tears had not still been frozen they would have gushed from her eyes.
She had found her father and he had not made everything all right. Everything kept getting worse and worse. If the long search for her father was ended, and he wasn’t able to overcome all their difficulties, there was nothing to guarantee that it would all come out right in the end. There was nothing left to hope for. She was frozen, and Charles Wallace was being devoured by IT, and her omnipotent father was doing nothing. She teetered on the seesaw of love and hate, and the Black Thing pushed her down into hate. “You don’t even know where we are!” she cried out at her father. “We’ll never see Mother or the twins again! We don’t know where earth is! Or even where Camazotz is! We’re lost out in space! What are you going to do!” She did not realize that she was as much in the power of the Black Thing as Charles Wallace.
Mr. Murry bent over her, massaging her cold fingers. She could not see his face. “My daughter, I am not a Mrs Whatsit, a Mrs Who, or a Mrs Which. Yes, Calvin has told me everything he could. I am a human being, and a very fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
“The Black Thing!” Meg cried out at him. “Why did you let it almost get me?”
“You’ve never tessered as well as the rest of us,” Calvin reminded her. “It never bothered Charles and me as much as it did you.”
“He shouldn’t have taken me, then,” Meg said, “until he learned to do it better.”
Neither her father nor Calvin spoke. Her father continued his gentle massage. Her fingers came back to life with tingling pain. “You’re hurting me!”
“Then you’re feeling again,” her father said quietly. “I’m afraid it is going to hurt, Meg.”
The piercing pain moved slowly up her arms, began in her toes and legs. She started to cry out against her father when Calvin exclaimed, “Look!”
Coming toward them, moving in silence across the brown grass, were three figures.
What were they?
On Uriel there had been the magnificent creatures. On Camazotz the inhabitants had at least resembled people. What were these three strange things approaching?
They were the same dull gray color as the flowers. If they hadn’t walked upright they would have seemed like animals. They moved directly toward the three human beings. They had four arms and far more than five fingers to each hand, and the fingers were not fingers, but long waving tentacles. They had heads, and they had faces. But where the faces of the creatures on Uriel had seemed far more than human faces, these seemed far less. Where the features would normally be there were several indentations, and in place of ears and hair were more tentacles. They were tall, Meg realized as they came closer, far taller than any man. They had no eyes. Just soft indentations.
Meg’s rigid, frozen body tried to shudder with terror, but instead of the shudder all that came was pain. She moaned.
The Things stood over them. They appeared to be looking down at them, except that they had no eyes with which to see. Mr. Murry continued to kneel by Meg, massaging her.
He’s killed us, bringing us here, Meg thought. I’ll never see Charles Wallace again, or Mother, or the twins. . . .
Calvin rose to his feet. He bowed to the beasts as though they could see him. He said, “How do you do, sir—ma’am—?”
“Who are you?” the tallest of the beasts said. His voice was neither hostile nor welcoming, and it came not from the mouthlike indentation in the furry face, but from the waving tentacles.
—They’ll eat us, Meg thought wildly.—They’re making me hurt. My toes—my fingers—I hurt. . . .
Calvin answered the beast’s question. “We’re—we’re from earth. I’m not sure how we got here. We’ve had an accident. Meg—this girl—is—is paralyzed. She can’t move. She’s terribly cold. We think that’s why she can’t move.”
One of them came up to Meg and squatted down on its huge haunches beside her, and she felt utter loathing and revulsion as it reached out a tentacle to touch her face.
But with the tentacle came the same delicate fragrance that moved across her with the breeze, and she felt a soft, tingling warmth go all through her that momentarily assuaged her pain. She felt suddenly sleepy.
I must look as strange to it as it looks to me, she thought drowsily, and then realized with a shock that of course the beast couldn’t see her at all. Nevertheless a reassuring sense of safety flowed through her with the warmth which continued to seep deep into her as the beast touched her. Then it picked her up, cradling her in two of its four arms.
Mr. Murry stood up quickly. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the child.”
ELEVEN
Aunt Beast
“No!” Mr. Murry said sharply. “Please put her down.”
A sense of amusement seemed to emanate from the beasts. The tallest, who seemed to be the spokesman, said, “We frighten you?”
“What are you going to do with us?” Mr. Murry asked.
The beast said, “I’m sorry, we communicate better with the other one.” He turned toward Calvin. “Who are you?”
“I’m Calvin O’Keefe.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m a boy. A—a young man.”
“You, too, are afraid?”
“I’m—not sure.”
“Tell me,” the beast said. “What do you suppose you’d do if three of us suddenly arrived on your home planet.”
“Shoot you, I guess,” Calvin admitted.
“Then isn’t that what we should do with you?”
Calvin’s freckles seemed to deepen, but he answered quietly. “I’d really rather you didn’t. I mean, the earth’s my home, and I’d rather be there than anywhere in the world—I mean, the universe—and I can’t wait to get back, but we make some awful bloopers there.”
The smallest beast, the one holding Meg, said, “And perhaps they aren’t used to visitors from other planets.”
“Used to it!” Calvin exclaimed. “We’ve never had any, as far as I know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
The middle beast, a tremor of trepidation in his words, said, “You aren’t from a dark planet, are you?”
“No.” Calvin shook his head firmly, though the beast couldn’t see him. “We’re—we’re shadowed. But we’re fighting the shadow.”
The beast holding Meg questioned, “You three are fighting?”
“Yes,” Calvin answered. “Now that we know about it.”
The tall one turned back to Mr. Murry, speaking sternly. “You. The oldest. Man. From where have you come? Now.”
Mr. Murry answered steadily. “From a planet called Camazotz.” There was a mutter from the three beasts. “We do not belong there,” Mr. Murry said, slowly and distinctly. “We were strangers there as we are here. I was a prisoner th
ere, and these children rescued me. My youngest son, my baby, is still there, trapped in the dark mind of IT.”
Meg tried to twist around in the beast’s arms to glare at her father and Calvin. Why were they being so frank? Weren’t they aware of the danger? But again her anger dissolved as the gentle warmth from the tentacles flowed through her. She realized that she could move her fingers and toes with comparative freedom, and the pain was no longer so acute.
“We must take this child back with us,” the beast holding her said.
Meg shouted at her father. “Don’t leave me the way you left Charles!” With this burst of terror a spasm of pain wracked her body and she gasped.
“Stop fighting,” the beast told her. “You make it worse. Relax.”
“That’s what IT said,” Meg cried. “Father! Calvin! Help!”
The beast turned toward Calvin and Mr. Murry. “This child is in danger. You must trust us.”
“We have no alternative,” Mr. Murry said. “Can you save her?”
“I think so.”
“May I stay with her?”
“No. But you will not be far away. We feel that you are hungry, tired, that you would like to bathe and rest. And this little—what is the word?” the beast cocked its tentacles at Calvin.
“Girl,” Calvin said.
“This little girl needs prompt and special care. The coldness of the—what is it you call it?”
“The Black Thing?”
“The Black Thing. Yes. The Black Thing burns unless it is counteracted properly.” The three beasts stood around Meg, and it seemed that they were feeling into her with their softly waving tentacles. The movement of the tentacles was as rhythmic and flowing as the dance of an undersea plant, and lying there, cradled in the four strange arms, Meg, despite herself, felt a sense of security that was deeper than anything she had known since the days when she lay in her mother’s arms in the old rocking chair and was sung to sleep. With her father’s help she had been able to resist IT. Now she could hold out no longer. She leaned her head against the beast’s chest, and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air.
I hope I don’t smell awful to it, she thought. But then she knew with a deep sense of comfort that even if she did smell awful the beasts would forgive her. As the tall figure cradled her she could feel the frigid stiffness of her body relaxing against it. This bliss could not come to her from a thing like IT. IT could only give pain, never relieve it. The beasts must be good. They had to be good. She sighed deeply, like a very small child, and suddenly she was asleep.
When she came to herself again there was in the back of her mind a memory of pain, of agonizing pain. But the pain was over now and her body was lapped in comfort. She was lying on something wonderfully soft in an enclosed chamber. It was dark. All she could see were occasional tall moving shadows which she realized were beasts walking about. She had been stripped of her clothes, and something warm and pungent was gently being rubbed into her body. She sighed and stretched and discovered that she could stretch. She could move again, she was no longer paralyzed, and her body was bathed in waves of warmth. Her father had not saved her; the beasts had.
“So you are awake, little one?” The words came gently to her ears. “What a funny little tadpole you are! Is the pain gone now?”
“All gone.”
“Are you warm and alive again?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” She struggled to sit up.
“No, lie still, small one. You must not exert yourself as yet. We will have a fur garment for you in a moment, and then we will feed you. You must not even try to feed yourself. You must be as an infant again. The Black Thing does not relinquish its victims willingly.”
“Where are Father and Calvin? Have they gone back for Charles Wallace?”
“They are eating and resting,” the beast said, “and we are trying to learn about each other and see what is best to help you. We feel now that you are not dangerous, and that we will be allowed to help you.”
“Why is it so dark in here?” Meg asked. She tried to look around, but all she could see was shadows. Nevertheless there was a sense of openness, a feel of a gentle breeze moving lightly about, that kept the darkness from being oppressive.
Perplexity came to her from the beast. “What is this dark? What is this light? We do not understand. Your father and the boy, Calvin, have asked this, too. They say that it is night now on our planet, and that they cannot see. They have told us that our atmosphere is what they call opaque, so that the stars are not visible, and then they were surprised that we know stars, that we know their music and the movements of their dance far better than beings like you who spend hours studying them through what you call telescopes. We do not understand what this means, to see.”
“Well, it’s what things look like,” Meg said helplessly.
“We do not know what things look like, as you say,” the beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”
“Oh, no!” Meg cried. “It’s—it’s the most wonderful thing in the world!”
“What a very strange world yours must be!” the beast said, “that such a peculiar-seeming thing should be of such importance. Try to tell me, what is this thing called light that you are able to do so little without?”
“Well, we can’t see without it,” Meg said, realizing that she was completely unable to explain vision and light and dark. How can you explain sight on a world where no one has ever seen and where there is no need of eyes? “Well, on this planet,” she fumbled, “you have a sun, don’t you?”
“A most wonderful sun, from which comes our warmth, and the rays which give us our flowers, our food, our music, and all the things which make life and growth.”
“Well,” Meg said, “when we are turned toward the sun—our earth, our planet, I mean, toward our sun—we receive its light. And when we’re turned away from it, it is night. And if we want to see we have to use artificial lights.”
“Artificial lights,” the beast sighed. “How very complicated life on your planet must be. Later on you must try to explain some more to me.”
“All right,” Meg promised, and yet she knew that to try to explain anything that could be seen with the eyes would be impossible, because the beasts in some way saw, knew, understood, far more completely than she, or her parents, or Calvin, or even Charles Wallace.
“Charles Wallace!” she cried. “What are they doing about Charles Wallace? We don’t know what IT’s doing to him or making him do. Please, oh, please, help us!”
“Yes, yes, little one, of course we will help you. A meeting is in session right now to study what is best to do. We have never before been able to talk to anyone who has managed to escape from a dark planet, so although your father is blaming himself for everything that has happened, we feel that he must be quite an extraordinary person to get out of Camazotz with you at all. But the little boy, and I understand that he is a very special, a very important little boy—ah, my child, you must accept that this will not be easy. To go back through the Black Thing, back to Camazotz—I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“But Father left him!” Meg said. “He’s got to bring him back! He can’t just abandon Charles Wallace!”
The beast’s communication suddenly became crisp. “Nobody said anything about abandoning anybody. That is not our way. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want, and we still do not know what to do. And we cannot allow you, in your present state, to do anything that would jeopardize us all. I can see that you wish your father to go rushing back to Camazotz, and you could probably make him do this, and then where would we be? No. No. You must wait until you are more calm. Now, my darling, here is a robe for you to keep you warm and comfortable.” Meg felt herself being lifted again, and a soft, light garment was slipped about her. “Don’t worry about your little brother.” The ten
tacles’ musical words were soft against her. “We would never leave him behind the shadow. But for now you must relax, you must be happy, you must get well.”
The gentle words, the feeling that this beast would be able to love her no matter what she said or did, lapped Meg in warmth and peace. She felt a delicate touch of tentacle to her cheek, as tender as her mother’s kiss.
“It is so long since my own small ones were grown and gone,” the beast said. “You are so tiny and vulnerable. Now I will feed you. You must eat slowly and quietly. I know that you are half starved, that you have been without food far too long, but you must not rush things or you will not get well.”
Something completely and indescribably and incredibly delicious was put to Meg’s lips, and she swallowed gratefully. With each swallow she felt strength returning to her body, and she realized that she had had nothing to eat since the horrible fake turkey dinner on Camazotz which she had barely tasted. How long ago was her mother’s stew? Time no longer had any meaning.
“How long does night last here?” she murmured sleepily. “It will be day again, won’t it?”
“Hush,” the beast said. “Eat, small one. During the coolness, which is now, we sleep. And, when you waken, there will be warmth again and many things to do. You must eat now, and sleep, and I will stay with you.”
“What should I call you, please?” Meg asked.
“Well, now. First, try not to say any words for just a moment. Think within your own mind. Think of all the things you call people, different kinds of people.”
While Meg thought, the beast murmured to her gently. “No, mother is a special, a one-name; and a father you have here. Not just friend, nor teacher, nor brother, nor sister. What is acquaintance? What a funny, hard word. Aunt. Maybe. Yes, perhaps that will do. And you think of such odd words about me. Thing, and monster! Monster, what a horrid sort of word. I really do not think I am a monster. Beast. That will do. Aunt Beast.”
“Aunt Beast,” Meg murmured sleepily, and laughed.
“Have I said something funny?” Aunt Beast asked in surprise. “Isn’t Aunt Beast all right?”
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet) Page 14
