A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L'engle

  When Mrs Whatsit sighed it seemed completely incomprehensible 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 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 condensed 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 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 the 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 thrusting out of the shifting sea of white clouds.

  "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 toward 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 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 extraordinary 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 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 Which!" 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 Whatsit's back and walked, rather unsteadily after the long ride, over to Mrs Which.

  "That dark Thing we saw," she said. "Is that what my father is fighting?"

  FIVE

  The Tesseract

  "Yes," Mrs Which said. "Hhee iss beehindd thee ddarrkness, 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 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 shortcuts 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 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."

  "It was a concept they were playing with," Mrs Whatsit said, "going beyond the 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 anymore. It would have a bottom, and sides, and a top."

  "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 tthe 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 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 of her 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 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-dimensional planet and the children can't manage here!"

  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 us!"

  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.

  "Cchilldrenn, I appolloggize," came Mrs Which's voice.

  "Now, Charles, calm down," Mrs Whatsit said, appearing 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 co
at 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 protoplasm 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 Who's 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'll be terribly worried about us. When we didn't come in at bedtime--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, don't 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 we'll have you back about five minutes before you left, so there'll be time to spare and nobody'll 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."