"But why you, sir?"
"I wasn't the first. We drew straws, and I was second."
"What happened to the first man?"
"We don't--look! Did her eyelids move?" Silence. Then: "No. It was only a shadow."
But I did blink, Meg tried to tell them. I'm sure I did. And I can hear you! Do something!
But there was only another long silence, during which perhaps they were looking at her, watching for another shadow, another flicker. Then she heard her father's voice again, quiet, a little warmer, more like his own voice. "We drew straws, and I was second. We know Hank went. We saw him go. We saw him vanish right in front of the rest of us. He was there and then he wasn't. We were to wait for a year for his return or for some message. We waited. Nothing."
Calvin, his voice cracking: "Jeepers, sir. You must have been in sort of a flap."
Her father: "Yes. It's a frightening as well as an exciting thing to discover that matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. We can know this, but it's far more than we can understand with our puny little brains. I think you will be able to comprehend far more than I. And Charles Wallace even more than you."
"Yes, but what happened, please, sir, after the first man?"
Meg could hear her father sigh. "Then it was my turn. I went. And here I am. A wiser and a humbler man. I'm sure I haven't been gone two years. Now that you've come I have some hope that I may be able to return in time. One thing I have to tell the others is that we know nothing."
Calvin: "What do you mean, sir?"
Her father: "Just what I say. We're children playing with dynamite. In our mad rush we've plunged into this before--"
With a desperate effort Meg made a sound. It wasn't a very loud sound, but it was a sound. Mr. Murry stopped. "Hush. Listen."
Meg made a strange, croaking noise. She found that she could pull open her eyelids. They felt heavier than marble but she managed to raise them. Her father and Calvin were hovering over her. She did not see Charles Wallace. Where was he?
She was lying in an open field of what looked like rusty, stubby grass. She blinked, slowly, and with difficulty.
"Meg," her father said. "Meg. Are you all right?"
Her tongue felt like a stone tongue in her mouth, but she managed to croak, "I can't move."
"Try," Calvin urged. He sounded now as though he were very angry with her. "Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your fingers."
"I can't. Where's Charles Wallace?" Her words were blunted by the stone tongue. Perhaps they could not understand her, for there was no answer.
"We were knocked out for a minute, too," Calvin was saying. "You'll be all right, Meg. Don't get panicky." He was crouched over her, and though his voice continued to sound cross he was peering at her with anxious eyes. She knew that she must still have her glasses on because she could see him clearly, his freckles, his stubby black lashes, the bright blue of his eyes.
Her father was kneeling on her other side. The round lenses of Mrs Who's glasses still blurred his eyes. He took one of her hands and rubbed it between his. "Can you feel my fingers?" He sounded quite calm, as though there were nothing extraordinary in having her completely paralyzed. At the quiet of his voice she felt calmer. Then she saw that there were great drops of sweat standing out on his forehead, and she noticed vaguely that the gentle breeze that touched her cheeks was cool. At first his words had been frozen and now the wind was mild: was it icy cold here or warm? "Can you feel my fingers?" he asked again.
Yes, now she could feel a pressure against her wrist, but she could not nod. "Where's Charles Wallace?" Her words were a little less blurred. Her tongue, her lips were beginning to feel cold and numb, as though she had been given a massive dose of novocaine at the dentist's. She realized with a start that her body and limbs were cold, that not only was she not warm, she was frozen from head to toe, and it was this that had made her father's words seem like ice, that had paralyzed her.
"I'm frozen--" she said faintly. Camazotz hadn't been this cold, a cold that cut deeper than the wind on the bitterest of winter days at home. She was away from IT, but this unexplained iciness was almost as bad. Her father had not saved her.
Now she was able to look around a little, and everything she could see was rusty and gray. There were trees edging the field in which she lay, and their leaves were the same brown as the grass. There were plants that might have been flowers, except that they were dull and gray. In contrast to the drabness of color, to the cold that numbed her, the air was filled with a delicate, springlike fragrance, almost imperceptible as it blew softly against her face. She looked at her father and Calvin. They were both in their shirt sleeves and they looked perfectly comfortable. It was she, wrapped in their clothes, who was frozen too solid even to shiver.
"Why am I so cold?" she asked. "Where's Charles Wallace?" They did not answer. "Father, where are we?"
Mr. Murry looked at her soberly. "I don't know, Meg. I don't tesser very well. I must have overshot, somehow. We're not on Camazotz. I don't know where we are. I think you're so cold because we went through the Black Thing, and I thought for a moment it was going to tear you away from me."
"Is this a dark planet?" Slowly her tongue was beginning to thaw; her words were less blurred.
"I don't think so," Mr. Murry said, "but I know so little about anything that I can't be sure."
"You shouldn't have tried to tesser, then." She had never spoken to her father in this way before. The words seemed hardly to be hers.
Calvin looked at her, shaking his head. "It was the only thing to do. At least it got us off Camazotz."
"Why did we go without Charles Wallace? Did we just leave him there?" The words that were not really hers came out cold and accusing.
"We didn't 'just leave him,' " her father said. "Remember that the human brain is a very delicate organism, and it can be easily damaged."
"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 se
nt 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 there, 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 com
e 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."
A Wrinkle in Time Page 13
