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 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 disc.
‘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, blending with the golden quality of the day, flowed 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 again afraid.
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 darken.
‘I want to watch the moon set,’ Charles Wallace said.
‘No, child. Do not turn around, any of you. Face out towards 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.
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. 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 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 their fragrance 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 round so that the shadow was behind them, so that they saw only the stars unobscured, the starlight on the mountain, the descending circle of the great moon slipping over the horizon. Then, without a word from Mrs Whatsit, they were travelling downwards, 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 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 beautiful creature on which they rode had been as rigid as they.
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?’
5
‘Yes,’ Mrs Which said. ‘Hhee iss beehindd thee ddarrkness, sso thatt eevenn wee cannott seee hhimm.’
Meg began to cry. 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 the great wings of Mrs Whatsit folded round her 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.
‘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 travelling at the speed of light. You understand that, little Meg?’
‘Yes,’ Meg nodded.
‘That, of course, is the impractical, long way round. We have learned to take short cuts 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.’
‘
‘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
Charles Wallace accepted the explanation serenely. Even Calvin did not seem perturbed. ‘Oh,
