An Echthros-Mr. Jenkins whinnied with laughter. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
A harsh twang wounded the melody of the farae who were still singing.
Once again Meg felt faltering in the mitochondrion. Yadah was in pain. Suddenly she remembered the farandolae who had saved her from the Echthros when Proginoskes brought her into Yadah. Not all the farandolae had thrown in their lot with the Echthroi. Or were those who had Xed themselves that she might live the only ones who
would defy the Echthroi?
She began calling urgently, “Sporos! Farandolae! Come away from the Echthroi. You will dance yourselves to death. Come to Senex and Deepen. This is what you were born to do. Come!”
Some of the farandolae faltered. Others whirled the faster, crying, “We don’t need to Deepen. That’s only an old superstition. It’s a stupid song they sing, all this Glory, glory, glory.
We are the ones who are glorious.”
“The stars—” Meg called desperately.
“Another superstition. There are no stars. We are the greatest beings in the universe.”
Ugliness seeped past Meg and to Sporos. “Why do you
want
to Deepen?”
Sporos’s twingling was slightly dissonant. “Farandolae are born to Deepen.”
“Fool. Once you Deepen and put down roots you won’t be able to romp around as you do now.”
“But—”
“You’ll be stuck in one place forever with those fuddy-duddy farae, and you won’t be able to run or move, ever again.”
“But—”
The strength and calm of Senex cut through the ugliness. “It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.”
Indecision quivered throughout Sporos.
Senex continued, “It is true, small offspring. Now
that I am rooted I am no longer limited
by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with the stars. I dance with the galaxies. I share in the joy—and in the grief. We farae must have our part in the rhythm of the mitochondria, or we cannot be. If we cannot be, then we are not.”
“You mean, you die?” Meg asked.
“Is that what you call it? Perhaps. I am not sure. But the song of Yadah is no longer full and rich. It is flaccid,
its harmonies meager. By our arrogance we make Yadah suffer.”
Meg felt Calvin beside Senex, urging, “Sporos, you are my partner. We are to work together.”
“Why? You’re no use to me.”
“Sporos, we
are
partners, whether we like it or not.”
Meg joined in. “Sporos! We need you to help save Charles Wallace.”
“Why do we have to bother about this Charles Wallace? He’s nothing but a stupid human child.”
“He’s
your
galaxy. That ought to make him special enough, even for you.”
A cruel slashing cut between their kything, as though a great beak had cut a jagged wound. “Sporos! It is I, Mr. Jenkins. I am the teacher who is greater than all Teachers because I know the Echthroi.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s kything clamp like steel.
The Echthros-Mr. Jenkins was holding Sporos, and
speaking with honey-sweet
words. “Do not listen to the earthlings; do not listen to the farae. They are stupid and weak. Listen to me and you will be powerful like the Echthroi. You will rule the universe.”
“Sporos!” The real Mr. Jenkins’s kything was not strong enough to break through the stream. “He is not Mr. Jenkins. Do not listen!”
Calvin’s kythe came more strongly than Mr. Jenkins’s. “There are two Mr. Jenkinses
by you, Sporos, two Mr. Jenkinses kything you. You know that one is not real. Deepen, Sporos, that is where your reality lies. That is how you will find your place, and how you will find your true center.”
Meg’s mind’s-ears were assailed by a howling which was Echthroid, though it appeared to come from the pseudo-Mr. Jenkins. “Reality is meaningless. Nothing is the center. Come. Join the others
in the race. Only a few more farae to surround and you will have Yadah for your own.”
“Yadah will die,” Meg cried. “We will all die. You will die!”
“If you come with us, you will be nothing,” the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins spoke in cloying kythe, “and nothing can happen to nothing.”
Sporos’s long whiskers trembled painfully. “I am very young. I should not be asked to make major decisions for several
centuries.”
“You’re old enough to listen to Senex,” Meg told him. “You’re old enough to listen to
me
. After all, I’m a galaxy to you. It’s time for you to Deepen.”
Sporos wriggled in the clasp of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins. “Come, Sporos, fly with the Echthroi. Then you will crackle across the universe. There are too many mitochondria in creation. There are too many stars in the heavens. Come
with us to naught, to nought.”
“Deepen, Sporos, my child, Deepen.”
“Sporos!” The Echthroid howl beat against the rhythm of Yadah. “We will make you a prince among Echthroi.”
Meg felt a gust of wind, the familiar flicker of flame: Proginoskes. The cherubim flung his kything across the void of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, like a rope flung from cliff’s edge to cliff’s edge. “Sporos, all farandolae
are royal. All singers of the song are princes.”
“Nonsense. In Name only.”
“The Name matters.”
“Only to matter.”
Proginoskes’s kything was so gentle that it undercut the storm of Echthroi. “You are created matter, Sporos. You are part of the great plan, an indispensable part. You are needed, Sporos; you have your own unique share in the freedom of creation.”
“Do not listen to that hideous
cherubim. He’s nothing but a deformed emanation of energy. We will give you no name and you will have power.”
Calvin pushed in again. “Sporos, you are my partner. Whatever we do, we must do it together. If you join the wild farandolae again I am coming into the dance with you.”
Sporos quivered, “To help kill the farae?”
“No. To be with you.”
Meg cried, “Progo, let’s go, too! We can help Calvin.”
In her impetuous relief at having something to do, she did not feel the cherubim pulling her back, but plunged into the irrational tarantella and was immediately swept out of control. Calvin was whirling beside Sporos, unable to pull him away from the circle closing in on the dying fara.
Meg was totally in the power of the revolving, twangling farandolae. The orbital velocity sucked her in, through
the circle and against the limp trunk of the fara.
Within the deathly center of the dance it was dark; she could not image the whirling farandolae; she could not kythe Calvin or Sporos. She heard only a silence which was not silence because within this vortex there was an emptiness which precluded the possibility of sound.
Caught in this anguished vacuum she was utterly powerless. She was sucked
against the trunk of the fara, but the fara was now too weak to hold her up; it was she who had to hold the dying Deepened One, to give it her own life’s blood. She felt it being drained from her. The fara’s trunk strengthened. It was Meg who was dying.
Then arms were around her, holding her, pouring life back into her, Mr. Jenkins’s arms, the real Mr. Jenkins. His strength and love filled her.
As she returned to life, the firm, rhythmic tendrils of the reviving fara caressed her. Mr. Jenkins held them both, and his power did not weaken. The murderous circle was broken. Calvin held Sporos in his arms and a tear slid down his cheek. Meg turned towards him, to comfort him.
The moment she kythed away from Mr. Jenkins and to Calvin, a new circle formed, not of farandolae, but of Mr. Jenkinses,
Mr. Jenkinses swirling their deathly ring around the real Mr. Jenkins.
Meg whirled back towards him, but it was too late. Mr. Jenkins was surrounded. Meg cried, “Deepen, Sporos, it’s the only hope!”
The scattered farandolae darted hither and thither in confusion. Proginoskes reached out wing after invisible wing to pull them in. There was a frightened twingle.
“Look at the Echthroi!” Proginoskes
commanded. “They are killing Mr. Jenkins as they made you kill your own farae. Look. This is what it is like.”
“Mr. Jenkins!” Meg called. “We have to save Mr. Jenkins. Oh, Sporos, Deepen, it’s the second ordeal, you must Deepen.”
“For Mr. Jenkins?”
“For yourself, for all of us.”
“But why did Mr. Jenkins—didn’t he know what would happen to him?”
“Of course he knew. He did it to save us.”
“To save us all,” Calvin added. “The Echthroi have him, Sporos. They are going to kill him. What are you going to do?”
Sporos turned towards Senex, the fara from whom he had been born. He reached out small green tendrils towards all the farandolae. “It is Deepening time,” he said.
They heard a faint echo of the music which had been such joy when Blajeny took them to witness the birth of a
star. The farae were singing, singing, strengthening. Sporos was joining in the song. All about them farandolae were Deepening, and adding their music to the flowing of the song.
Meg’s exhaustion and relief were so great that she forgot Mr. Jenkins. She assumed blindly that now that Sporos and the other farandolae were Deepening, now that the second ordeal had been successfully accomplished,
all was well; the Echthroi were vanquished; Charles Wallace would recover; she could relax.
Then she felt Proginoskes pushing through her thoughtlessness. “Meg! You forget! There are three tests!”
She turned from rejoicing. The circle of pseudo-Mr.
Jenkinses was whirling wildly about the principal, closing in on him.
Proginoskes kythed so strongly that she was pulled back into painful awareness.
“We cannot let the Echthroi get Mr. Jenkins. This is the third test, to rescue Mr. Jenkins. Senex, Sporos, everybody, help us!”
Meg heard a shrill, high scream, a scream that turned into a horrible laugh of triumph. It came from Mr. Jenkins. One Mr. Jenkins. There was no longer a spiral of Echthroid Jenkinses surrounding the principal. They had closed in, and entered their prey.
Proginoskes’s
kything cut like a knife. “The Echthroi have him. We must get him away.”
TWELVE
A Wind in the Door
T
he Echthros-Mr. Jenkins reached towards them. The horrible, familiar stench assailed Meg. A loathsome kything came to her in Mr. Jenkins’s tones superimposed on the whine of metal rubbing against metal. “Nonsense. Of course the Echthroi haven’t got me. I am Mr. Jenkins, and I took the Echthroi into me because they are right. It is not the Echthroi who are empty; it
was I. They have filled me with the pleasure of the abyss of nothingness. Come let me X you, come to me, come …”
Sporos’s long, tendrilly whiskers quivered. A faint twingling came from them, but now he was kything, his young greenery moving rhythmically, his delicate new needles and leaves and blades shimmering with the rhythm of Senex, of the singing farae, of Yadah. “Earthlings, forgive me.
I will sing for you. The Echthroi cannot bear the song.”
Mr. Jenkins kythed like a corkscrew. “Life as we have known it is meaningless, Margaret. Civilization has failed. Your parents know this. They are giving up.”
“No, no,” Calvin protested. “They’re not like that, they’d never give up.”
“Sing,” Sporos called to the Deepening farandolae, “sing with us. Our galaxy is in danger; we must save
him.”
Mr. Jenkins overrode him. “There is no hope except extinguishment. Let us hasten it.”
Meg cried through the boring of the corkscrew. “Mr. Jenkins, no! Stop it!”
Calvin joined her. “Mr. Jenkins, come back, come out of the Echthroi!”
“I am back. I am here. I am finally myself. Nothing. X-Mr. Jenkins. To be Xed is the only good.”
Again Meg felt a bone-shattering wrench. Every muscle in
her cried out in protest. Then she was flashed a brilliant image of Calvin tugging at Mr. Jenkins, powerful images of Calvin wrestling with a Mr. Jenkins suddenly wild and strong. Mr. Jenkins’s thin, flabby arms beat at Calvin with steel-spring blows. Calvin, with his lithe wiriness, eluded most of the blows, and tried desperately to catch Mr. Jenkins by the wrists—caught him—
The wrists became
talons, became nothing. Calvin
was left holding nothing. Meg heard the screeching Echthroi-laugh, and Mr. Jenkins hit Calvin a thundering blow.
Meg saw red-blackness, Calvin reeling, being pulled, sucked into the vortex of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins.
Then the images of Calvin staggering from the blow, steadying himself, readying himself, vanished. The images were gone, but Calvin was there, was
with her, was part of her. She had moved beyond knowing him in sensory images to that place which is beyond images. Now she was kything
Calvin
, not red hair, or freckles, or eager blue eyes, or the glowing smile; nor was she hearing the deep voice with the occasional treble cracking; not any of this, but—
Calvin.
She was with Calvin, kything with every atom of her being, returning to him all
the fortitude and endurance and hope which he had given her.
Then she felt Proginoskes trying to get her attention and turned her kythe unwillingly towards him. “Meg, I can help Calvin, but I can’t help Mr. Jenkins. You may be able to. Try to go to him. Perhaps you can still reach him.”
She pulled back. If she went to the Echthroid-Mr. Jenkins, would the pain of the Echthroi take her again?
There were no little farandolae to save her this time. She could not do it, could not knowingly open herself to that pain—
But Mr. Jenkins had come into the whirling circle of death for her sake. If Mr. Jenkins was possessed by Echthroi now it was because of his love for her.
She gave a sigh of acceptance of what she must do. Then she turned her kythe towards Mr. Jenkins who was somewhere in
the horrible Echthroid version of himself.
“Mr. Jenkins!” She flung her kythe towards him with all her might. And now she no longer saw the thinning brown hair, the same mouse-brown as her own, or the middle-aged eyes behind the lenses of the horn-rimmed spectacles, or the sloping shoulders with the light snowfall of dandruff, but something deeper, more real, beyond, past, through the senses,
something which was the true person. She was with Mr. Jenkins as she had been with Calvin, Calvin who was so important to her that she didn’t dare even whisper to herself how important he was—
Mr. Jenkins, too, was real, and she was with him, kything herself entirely to him—
From somewhere deep inside the Echthroid version of himself he was trying to say something, he was repeating, repeating,
and finally she heard, a phrase he had used earlier, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” The single phrase was all he could manage.
She held on to it. If the Echthroi are nothing, and Mr. Jenkins is now part of that nothing, if Calvin is being Xed into that nothing—
“Fill it! Fill it!” came Calvin’s desperate kythe. Through it came a vivid image of Charles Wallace blue and gasping, her parents standing
by his bed; Dr. Louise working the emergency oxygen tank; Fortinbras lying across the threshold as though to bar death from entering the room. “Fill it!”
She was cold with desperation. “Progo! Progo, what do I do?”
She heard only an echo of Calvin’s call. “Fill the vacuum. Fill it.” He was fighting desperately, not for his own life but for Meg’s, for Charles Wallace’s, for the singing farae,
for the whole of being …
She kythed wildly. “Progo, we passed the first test, I Named Mr. Jenkins. And the second—Sporos has Deepened. Are we failing the third test? Calvin can’t hold out any longer. Do I have to go into the Echthroi? Is that what I have to do? What will you do if I fail?”
She knew. She knew what Proginoskes would do.
Calvin was weakening rapidly, unable to counter the sledgehammer
blows of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins—
She flung herself into Mr. Jenkins, trying to hold the cruel arms, trying to pull him away from Calvin by the sheer force of her kythe.
The pain.
It came again, as she had known it would.
Agony. Red anguish pounding against her eyeballs …
… Charles Wallace was sharing in that anguish, his parents helpless as his small body convulsed in spasms of pain. They
struggled to hold him, the Murrys, the Louises, to hold him during the convulsions, to give the racked frame support …
Fortinbras stood in the doorway growling, his hackles rising …
The Echthroi were—
Meg’s kythe was faint, almost obliterated by pain. “Calvin—Mr. Jenkins—don’t fight the Echthroi—help me fill them—”
Cold.
Cold beyond snow and ice and falling mercury.
Cold beyond the absolute
zero of outer space.
Cold pulverizing her into nothingness.
Cold and pain.
She struggled.
You are not to X me, Echthroi. I fill you.
Cold.
Darkness.
Emptiness.
Nothing.
Naught.
Nought.
Echth
X
Then
Proginoskes.
A great cry. A tempest of wind. A lightning flash of fire across the cold, breaking, burning the cold and pain.
Proginoskes Xing.
Wings. All the wings. Stretched
to their fullest span. Eyes. All the eyes opening and closing, opening, dimming—
Oh, no—
Going out—
No—
Flame. Smoke. Feathers flying. Proginoskes flinging his great cherubic self into the void of the Echthroi who were Xing Mr. Jenkins and Calvin and Meg—and Charles Wallace.
Wings and flame and wind, a great howling of all the hurricanes in the world meeting and battling—
“Progo!” Her cry
kythed across Yadah, and then she knew what she must do. She must do as Mr. Jenkins had done when he had broken through the mad circle of whirling farandolae and held her. She must hold the Echthroi, hold them by holding Mr. Jenkins and Calvin—by holding Charles Wallace—
Hold them, Meg. Hold them all. Put your arms
around them, around the Echthroi spreading their gaping, tearing nothingness across
creation.
Size does not matter. You can hold them all, Charles and Calvin and Mr. Jenkins and the burning sphere of the newborn star—
She cried out, “I hold you! I love you, I Name you. I Name you, Echthroi. You are not nothing. You are.”
A small white feather which was not a feather floated through the cold.
I Name you, Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Name you Proginoskes.
I fill you with Naming.
Be!
Be, butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be caterpillar and comet,
be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us,
dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation,
sea gulls and seraphim,
angle worms and angel host,
chrysanthemum and cherubim
(O cherubim)
Be!
Sing for the glory
of the living and the loving
the flaming of creation
sing with us
dance with us
be with us
Be!
They were not her words only.
They were the words of Senex,
of the Deepening Sporos,
of all the singing farae,
the laughter of the greening farandolae,
Yadah itself,
all the mitochondria,
all the human hosts,
the earth,
the sun,
the dance of
the star whose birthing she had seen,
the galaxies,
the cherubim and seraphim,
wind and fire,
the words of the Glory.
Echthroi! You are Named! My arms surround you. You are no longer nothing. You are. You are filled. You are me.
You are
Meg.
“Meg!”
Her encircling arms were around Charles Wallace.
“Where—”
(Where doesn’t matter.)
Here.
Here in Charles Wallace’s familiar room.
Meg. Calvin. Mr. Jenkins. One Mr. Jenkins. The real Mr. Jenkins.
The Murrys. Dr. Louise, her stethoscope swinging loosely about her neck, looking disheveled, exhausted, happy …
The twins, Dennys with a big smudge of garden earth across his face, both boys still grubby and tired from their labors.
And Charles Wallace. Charles Wallace sitting up in bed, breathing quite easily and normally. Fortinbras
no
longer guarded the door, which now stood invitingly open. The oxygen tank, no longer needed, was in the corner.
“Charles! Oh, Charles Wallace!” Meg hugged him, swallowing a large and unexpected sob. “Are you all right? Are you really all right?”
“He’s much better,” Dr. Louise said. “We know very little about mitochondritis, but—” Her delicate little bird’s voice faded off, and she looked
questioningly at Meg.
So did her father. “Whatever happened—wherever you were—Charles Wallace was talking about mitochondria and farandolae in his delirium, and something which sounded like Echthroi—”
“And about you,” her mother added.
Meg explained flatly, “We were in one of Charles Wallace’s mitochondria.”
Mr. Murry pushed his spectacles up his nose in the same gesture which his daughter
used. “So he said.” He looked at his youngest son. “I am not in a doubting mood.”
Mrs. Murry said, “Just when we thought—when we thought it was all over—Charles Wallace gasped, ‘The Echthroi are gone!’ and suddenly his breathing started to improve.”
“All I can say,” Dennys said, “is that when Charles
Wallace goes back to school, he’d better not talk the way he was doing while he was delirious.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Sandy said. “I don’t like things I don’t understand.”
“If Mother and Father hadn’t been so upset about Charles Wallace,” Dennys glared at Meg, “they’d have been furious with you for not coming right home from school.”
“Where were you, anyhow?” Sandy asked.
“Do you really expect us to swallow this stuff about your being
inside
Charles Wallace?”
“If you’d just
be
realistic
for once.”
“After all, we were worried, too.”
“And then some.”
They looked at Meg, then wheeled and looked at Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins said, “Meg is quite correct. And I was with her.”
The twins replied with total and stunned silence.
Finally Dennys shrugged and said, “Maybe one day someone will get around to telling us what really went on.”
“I suppose since Charles is all
right—”
“We’ll just be glad about that. All’s well that ends well and all that stuff.”
“Even if everybody’s holding out on us as usual.”
They turned to Dr. Louise: “Charles is really okay?” “Is Charles really all right?”
Dr. Louise answered them, “It’s my opinion that he’ll be completely recovered in a day or so.”