Wrinkle in Time

cheek against hers. But the demon Charles Wallace sniggered. She turned away from him and looked again at the man in the column.

‘Oh, Father —’ she whispered longingly, but the man in the column did not move to look at her.The horn- rimmed glasses, which always seemed so much a part of him, were gone, and the expression of his eyes was turned inwards, as though he were deep in thought. He had grown a beard, and the silky brown was shot with grey. His hair, too, had not been cut. It wasn’t just the overlong hair of the man in the snapshot at Cape Canaveral; it was pushed back from his high forehead and fell softly almost to his shoulders, so that he looked like someone in another century, or a shipwrecked sailor. But there was no question, despite the change in him, that he was her father, her own beloved father.

‘My, he looks a mess, doesn’t he?’ Charles Wallace said, and sniggered.

Meg swung on him with sick rage, ‘Charles, that’s father! Father!’

‘So what?’

Meg turned away from him and held out her arms to the man in the column.

‘He doesn’t see us, Meg,’ Calvin said gently.

‘Why? Why?’

‘I think it’s sort of like those little peepholes they have in apartments, in the front doors,’ Calvin explained. ‘You know. From inside you can look through and see everything. And from outside you can’t see anything at all. We can see him, but he can’t see us.’

‘Charles!’ Meg pleaded. ‘Let me in to father!’

‘Why?’ Charles asked placidly.

Meg remembered that when they were in the room with the man with red eyes she had knocked Charles Wallace back into himself when she tackled him and his head cracked on the floor; so she hurled herself at him. But before she could reach him his fist shot out and punched her hard in the stomach. She gasped for breath. Sickly, she turned away from her brother, back to the transparent wall. There was the cell, there was the column with her father inside. Although she could see him, although she was almost close enough to touch him, he seemed farther away than he had been when she had pointed him out to Calvin in the picture on the piano. He stood there quietly as though frozen in a column of ice, an expression of suffering and endurance on his face that pierced into her heart like an arrow.

‘You say you want to help father?’ Charles Wallace’s voice came from behind her, with no emotion whatsoever.

‘Yes. Don’t you?’ Meg demanded, swinging round and glaring at him.

‘But of course. That is why we are here.’

‘Then what do we do?’ Meg tried to keep the desperation out of her voice, trying to sound as drained of feeling as Charles, but nevertheless ending on a squeak.

‘You must do as I have done, and go in to IT,’ Charles said.

‘No.’

‘I can see you don’t really want to save father.’

‘How will my being a zombie save father?’

‘You will just have to take my word for it, Margaret,’ came the cold, flat voice from Charles Wallace, ‘IT wants you and IT will get you. Don’t forget that I, too, am part of IT, now. You know I wouldn’t have done IT if IT weren’t the right thing to do.’

‘Calvin,’ Meg asked in agony, ‘will it really save father?’

But Calvin was paying no attention to her. He seemed to be concentrating with all his power on Charles Wallace. He stared into the pale blue that was all that was left of Charles Wallace’s eyes. ‘And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands…/ she did confine thee… into a cloven pine —’ he whispered, and Meg recognized Mrs Who’s words to him.

For a moment Charles Wallace seemed to listen. Then he shrugged and turned away. Calvin followed him, trying to keep his eyes focused on Charles’s. ‘If you want a witch, Charles,’ he said, ‘IT is the witch. Not our ladies. Good thing I had The Tempest at school this year, isn’t it, Charles? It was the witch who put Ariel in the cloven pine, wasn’t it?’

Charles Wallace’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. ‘Stop staring at me.’

Breathing quickly with excitement, Calvin continued to pin Charles Wallace with his stare. ‘You’re like Ariel in the cloven pine, Charles. And I can let you out. Look at me, Charles. Come back to us.’

Again the shudder went through Charles Wallace.

Calvin’s intense voice hit at him. ‘Come back, Charles. Come back to us.’

Again Charles shuddered. And then it was as though an invisible hand had smacked against his chest and knocked him to the ground, and the stare with which Calvin had held him was broken. Charles sat there on the floor of the corridor whimpering, not a small boy’s sound, but a fearful, animal noise.

‘Calvin.’ Meg turned on him, clasping her hands intensely. ‘Try to get to father.’

Calvin shook his head. ‘Charles almost came out. I almost did it. He almost came back to us.’

‘Try father,’ Meg said again.

‘How?’

‘Your cloven pine thing. Isn’t father imprisoned in a cloven pine even more than Charles? Look at him, in that column there. Get him out, Calvin.’

Calvin spoke in an exhausted way. ‘Meg, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get in. Meg, they’re asking too much of us.’

‘Mrs Who’s spectacles!’ Meg said suddenly. Mrs Who had told her to use them only as a last resort, and surely that was now. She reached into her pocket and the spectacles were there, cool and light and comforting. With trembling fingers she pulled them out.

‘Give me those spectacles!’ Charles Wallace’s voice came in a harsh command, and he scrambled up off the floor and ran at her.

She barely had time to snatch off her own glasses and put on Mrs Who’s, and, as it was, one earpiece dropped down her cheek and they barely stayed on her nose. As Charles Wallace lunged at her she flung herself against the transparent door and she was through it. She was in the cell with the imprisoning column that held her father. With trembling fingers she straightened Mrs Who’s glasses and put her own in her pocket.

‘Give them to me,’ came Charles Wallace’s menacing voice, and he was in the cell with her, with Calvin on the outside pounding frantically to get in.

Meg kicked at Charles Wallace and ran at the column. She felt as though she were going through something dark and cold. But she was through. ‘Father!’ she cried. And she was in his arms.

This was the moment for which she had been waiting, not only since Mrs Which whisked them off on their journeys, but during the long months and years before, when the letters had stopped coming, when people made remarks about Charles Wallace, when Mrs Murry showed a rare flash of loneliness or grief. This was the moment that meant that now and for ever everything would be all right.

As she pressed against her father all was forgotten except joy. There was only the peace and comfort of leaning against him, the wonder of the protecting circle of his arms, the feeling of complete reassurance and safety that his presence always gave her.

Her voice broke on a happy sob. ‘Oh, Father! Oh, Father!’

‘Meg!’ he cried in glad surprise. ‘Meg, what are you doing here? Where’s your mother? Where are the boys?’

She looked out of the column, and there was Charles Wallace in the cell, an alien expression distorting his face. She turned back to her father. There was no more time for greeting, for joy, for explanations. ‘We have to go to Charles Wallace,’ she said, her words tense. ‘Quickly.’

Her father’s hands were moving gropingly over her face, and as she felt the touch of his strong, gentle fingers, she realized with a flooding of horror that she could see him, that she could see Charles in the cell and Calvin in the corridor, but her father could not see them, could not see her. She looked at him in panic, but his eyes were the same steady blue that she remembered. She moved her hand brusquely across his line of vision, but he did not blink.

‘Father!’ she cried. ‘Father! Can’t you see me?’

His arms went around her again in a comforting, reassuring gesture. ‘No, Meg.’