Wrinkle in Time

‘Well!’ Charles Wallace’s voice said. ‘That was quite a trip! I do think you might have warned us.’

Light began to pulse and quiver. Meg blinked and shoved shakily at her glasses and there was Charles Wallace standing indignantly in front of her, his hands on his hips. ‘Meg!’ he shouted. ‘Calvin! Where are you?’

She saw Charles, she heard him, but she could not go to him. She could not shove through the strange, trembling light to meet him.

Calvin’s voice came as though it were pushing through a cloud. ‘Well, just give me time, will you? I’m older than you are.’

Meg gasped. It wasn’t that Calvin wasn’t there and then that he was. It wasn’t that part of him came first and then the rest of him followed, like a hand and then an arm, an eye and then a nose. It was a sort of shimmering, a looking at Calvin through water, through smoke, through fire, and then there he was, solid and reassuring.

‘Meg!’ Charles Wallace’s voice came. ‘Meg! Calvin, where’s Meg?’

‘I’m right here,’ she tried to say, but her voice seemed to be caught at its source.

‘Meg!’ Calvin cried, and he turned round, looking about wildly.

‘Mrs Which, you haven’t left Meg behind, have you?’ Charles Wallace shouted.

‘If you’ve hurt Meg, any of you —’ Calvin started, but suddenly Meg felt a violent push and a shattering as though she had been thrust through a wall of glass.

‘Oh, there you are!’ Charles Wallace said, and rushed over to her and hugged her.

‘But where am I?’ Meg asked breathlessly, relieved to hear that her voice was now coming out of her in more or less a normal way.

She looked round rather wildly. They were standing in a sunlit field, and the air about them was moving with the delicious fragrance that comes only on the rarest of spring days when the sun’s touch is gentle and the apple blossoms are just beginning to unfold. She pushed her glasses up her nose to reassure herself that what she was seeing was real.

They had left the silver glint of a biting autumn evening; and now around them everything was golden with light. The grasses of the field were a tender new green, and scattered about were tiny, multicoloured flowers. Meg turned slowly to face a mountain reaching so high into the sky that its peak was lost in a crown of puffy white clouds. From the trees at the base of the mountain came a sudden singing of birds. There was an air of such peace and joy all around her that her heart’s wild thumping slowed.

‘When shall we three meet again,

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’

came Mrs Who’s voice. Suddenly the three of them were there, Mrs Whatsit with her pink stole askew; Mrs Who with her spectacles gleaming; and Mrs Which still little more than a shimmer. Delicate, multicoloured butterflies were fluttering about them, as though in greeting.

Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who began to giggle, and they giggled until it seemed that, whatever their private joke was, they would fall down with the wild fun of it. The shimmer seemed to be laughing, too. It became vaguely darker and more solid; and then there appeared a figure in a black robe and a black peaked hat, beady eyes, a beaked nose and long grey hair; one bony claw clutched a broomstick.

‘Wwell, jusstt ttoo kkeepp yyou girrlls happpy,’ the strange voice said, and Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who fell into each other’s arms in gales of laughter.

‘If you ladies have had your fun I think you should tell Calvin and Meg a little more about all this,’ Charles Wallace said coldly. ‘You scared Meg half out of her wits, whisking her off this way without any warning.’

‘Finxerunt animi, raro et perpauca loquentis,’ Mrs Who intoned. ‘Horace. To action little, less to words inclined.’

‘Mrs Who, I wish you’d stop quoting!’ Charles Wallace sounded very annoyed.

Mrs Whatsit adjusted her stole. ‘But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own.’

‘Anndd wee mussttn’tt looose ourr sensses of hummourr,’ Mrs Which said. ‘Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt a llittlle lligghtly.’

‘But that’s going to be hard for Meg,’ Mrs Whatsit said. ‘It’s going to be hard for her to realize that we are serious.’

‘What about me?’ Calvin asked.

‘The life of your father isn’t at stake,’ Mrs Whatsit told him.

‘What about Charles Wallace, then?’

Mrs Whatsit’s unoiled-door-hinge voice was warm with affection and pride. ‘Charles Wallace knows. Charles Wallace knows that it’s far more than just the life of his father. Charles Wallace knows what’s at stake.’

‘But remember,’ Mrs Who said, ‘

Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.’

‘Where are we now, and how did we get here?’ Calvin asked.

‘Uriel, the third planet of the star Malak in the spiral nebula Messier 101.’

‘This I’m supposed to believe?’ Calvin asked indignantly.

‘Aas yyou llike,’ Mrs Which said coldly.

For some reason Meg felt that Mrs Which, despite her looks and ephemeral broomstick, was someone in whom one could put complete trust. ‘It doesn’t seem any more peculiar than anything else that’s happened.’

‘Well, then, someone just tell me how we got here!’ Calvin’s voice was still angry and his freckles seemed to stand out on his face. ‘Even travelling at the speed of light it would take us years and years to get here.’

‘Oh, we don’t travel at the speed of anything.’ Mrs Whatsit explained earnestly. ‘We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle.’

‘Clear as mud,’ Calvin said.

— Tesser, Meg thought. — Could that have anything to do with mother’s tesseract?

She was about to ask when Mrs Which started to speak, and one did not interrupt when Mrs Which was speaking. ‘Mrs Whatsit iss yyoungg andd nnaive.’

‘She keeps thinking she can explain things in words,’ Mrs Who said. ‘Qui plus sait, plus se tail. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.’

‘But she has to use words for Meg and Calvin,’ Charles reminded Mrs Who. ‘If you brought them along, they have a right to know what’s going on.’

Meg went up to Mrs Which. In the intensity of her question she had forgotten all about the tesseract. ‘Is my father here?’

Mrs Which shook her head. ‘Nnott heeere, Megg. Llett Mrs Whatsitt expllainn. Shee isss yyoungg annd thee llanguage of worrds iss eeasierr fforr hherr thann itt iss fforr Mrs Whoo andd mee.’

‘We stopped here,’ Mrs Whatsit explained, ‘more or less to catch our breaths. And to give you a chance to know what you’re up against.’

‘But what about father?’ Meg asked. ‘Is he all right?’

‘For the moment, love, yes. He’s one of the reasons we’re here. But you see, he’s only one.’

‘Well, where is he? Please take me to him!’

‘We can’t, not yet,’ Charles said. ‘You have to be patient, Meg.’

‘But I’m not patient!’ Meg cried passionately. ‘I’ve never been patient!’

Mrs Who’s glasses shone at her gently. ‘If you want to help your father then you must learn patience. Vitam impendere vero. To stake one’s life for the truth.That is what we must do.’

‘That is what your father is doing.’ Mrs Whatsit nodded, her voice, like Mrs Who’s, very serious, very solemn. Then she smiled her radiant smile. ‘Now! Why don’t you three children wander around and Charles can explain things a little. You’re perfectly safe on Uriel. That’s why we stopped here to rest.’

‘But aren’t you coming with us?’ Meg asked fearfully.

There was silence for a moment. Then Mrs Which raised her authoritative hand, ‘Sshoww themm,’ she said to Mrs Whatsit, and at something in her voice Meg felt prickles of apprehension.