Authors: Madeleine L'Engle

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Classics, #Time Travel, #Retail, #Personal

A Wind in the Door (18 page)

BOOK: A Wind in the Door

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Meg confronted Mr. Jenkins. “Okay, but what about school? Won’t the trouble there go on just as miserably as ever?”

Mr. Jenkins sounded his most acid. “I think not.”

“What will you
do
, Mr. Jenkins? Can you make things different?”

“I don’t know. I cannot dictate Charles Wallace’s safety. He must learn, himself, to adapt. But I have less fear of the situation than I did before. After our—uh—recent experiences, the old red schoolhouse is going to be easier to enter each morning. Now I think that I am going to find upgrading an elementary school a pleasant change, and at the moment it seems a quite possible challenge.”

The twins again looked astonished. Sandy asked in a deflated way, “Well, then, isn’t anybody hungry?”

“We were so worried about Charles, we haven’t eaten for—”

“I’d like a turkey dinner,” Charles Wallace said.

Mrs. Murry looked at him, and some of the strain eased from her face. “I’m afraid I can’t manage that, but I can thaw some steaks from the freezer.”

“Can I come down when dinner is ready?”

Dr. Louise looked at him with her sharply probing gaze. “I don’t see why not. Meg, you and Calvin stay with him until then. The rest of us will go to the kitchen to be useful. Come along, Mr. Jenkins, you can help me set the table.”

When the three of them were alone, Charles Wallace said to Calvin, “You didn’t say a word.”

“I didn’t need to.” Calvin sat on the foot of Charles Wallace’s bed. He looked as tired as Dr. Louise, and as happy. He put one hand lightly over Meg’s. “It will be good to have a feast together, and celebrate.”

Meg cried, “How can we have a feast without Progo!”

“I haven’t forgotten Progo, Meg.”

“But where is he?”

“Meg, he Xed himself.”

“But where is he?”

(Where doesn’t matter.)

Calvin’s hand pressed more strongly against Meg’s. “As Progo might say, he is Named. And so he’s all right. The Echthroi did not get Progo, Meg. He Xed of his own volition.”

“But, Calvin—”

“Proginoskes is a cherubim, Meg. It was his own choice.”

Meg’s eyes were too bright. “I wish human beings couldn’t have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt.”

Charles Wallace hugged her. “I didn’t imagine my dragons, did I?”

As he had intended her to, she gave a watery smile.

Immediately after dinner Dr. Louise ordered Charles Wallace back to bed. Meg held out her arms to kiss him good night. She knew that he was aware of her feeling of incompleteness without Proginoskes, and, as he kissed her cheek, he whispered, “Why don’t you and Calvin go out to the north pasture and the big rocks and look around?”

She nodded, then glanced at Calvin. Wordlessly they slipped out to the pantry and put on ski jackets. When they had left the house behind them, he said, “It’s funny to talk instead of kything, isn’t it? I suppose we’d better get used to it.”

She walked close beside him, across the rich, newly spaded earth of the garden. “There are things we aren’t going to be able to talk about in front of people except in kything.”

Calvin reached for one of her mittened hands. “I have a feeling we’re not supposed to talk about them too much.”

Meg asked, “But Blajeny—where’s Blajeny?”

Calvin’s hand held hers firmly. “I don’t know, Meg. I suspect that he’s wherever he’s been sent, Teaching.”

They paused at the stone wall.

“It’s a cold night, Meg. I don’t think Louise will come out.” He climbed the wall and moved swiftly to the two glacial rocks. The great stones loomed darkly against the sky. The grass about them was crunchy with frost. And empty.

Meg said, “Let’s go to the star-watching rock.”

The star-watching rock lay coldly under the brilliance of the stars. There was nothing there. A tear trickled down Meg’s cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of one mitten.

Calvin put his arm around her. “I know, Meg. I want to know what’s happened to Progo, too. All I know is that somehow or other, he’s all right.”

“I think I
know
he’s all right. But my mind would like to be in on the knowing.” She shivered.

“We’d better go in. I promised your parents we wouldn’t stay out long.”

She felt an extraordinary reluctance to leave, but she allowed Calvin to lead her away. When they reached the stone wall she stopped. “Wait a minute—”

“Louise isn’t—” Calvin started, but a dark shadow slid out of the stones, uncoiled slowly and gracefully, and bowed to them.

“Oh, Louise,” Meg said, “Louise—”

But Louise had dropped to the wall again and disappeared somewhere within it. Nevertheless Meg felt comforted and reassured. In silence they returned to the
house. In the pantry they hung their jackets on the hooks; the door to the lab was closed. So was the door to the kitchen.

Then the kitchen door blew open with a bang.

Sandy and Dennys were at the dining table, doing homework. “Hey,” Sandy said, “you don’t need to be so violent.”

“You could just
open
the door, you don’t have to take it off its hinges.”

“We didn’t touch the door,” Meg said. “It blew open.”

Sandy slammed his Latin text shut. “That’s nonsense. There’s hardly any wind tonight, and what there is, is coming from the opposite direction.”

Dennys looked up from his math paper. “Charles Wallace wants you to come upstairs to him, Meg. Shut the door, at any rate. It’s cold.”

Sandy got up and shut the door firmly. “You were gone long enough.”

“Did you count the stars or something?”

“We don’t have to count them,” Meg said. “They just need to be known by Name.”

Calvin’s eyes met hers for a long moment and held her gaze, not speaking, not kything, simply being.

Then she went up to Charles Wallace.

OTHER NOVELS IN THE TIME QUINTET

An Acceptable Time

Many Waters

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

A Wrinkle in Time

GOFISH

QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A writer.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

Right away. As soon as I was able to articulate, I knew I wanted to be a writer. And I read. I adored
Emily of New Moon
and some of the other L. M. Montgomery books and they impelled me because I loved them.

When did you start to write?

When I was five, I wrote a story about a little “gurl.”

What was the first writing you had published?
When I was a child, a poem in
CHILD LIFE
. It was all about a lonely house and was very sentimental.

Where do you write your books?

Anywhere. I write in longhand first, and then type it. My first typewriter was my father’s pre-World War One machine. It was the one he took with him to the war. It had certainly been around the world.

What is the best advice you have ever received about writing?

To just write.

What’s your first childhood memory?

One early memory I have is going down to Florida for a couple of weeks in the summertime to visit my grandmother. The house was in the middle of a swamp, surrounded by alligators. I don’t like alligators, but there they were, and I was afraid of them.

What is your favorite childhood memory?

Being in my room.

As a young person, whom did you look up to most?

My mother. She was a storyteller and I loved her stories. And she loved music and records. We played duets together on the piano.

What was your worst subject in school?

Math and Latin. I didn’t like the Latin teacher.

What was your best subject in school?

English.

What activities did you participate in at school?

I was president of the student government in boarding school and editor of a literary magazine, and also belonged to the drama club.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Night owl.

What was your first job?

Working for the actress Eva La Gallienne, right after college.

What is your idea of the best meal ever?

Cream of Wheat. I eat it with a spoon. I love it with butter and brown sugar.

Which do you like better: cats or dogs?

I like them both. I once had a wonderful dog named Touche. She was a silver medium-sized poodle, and quite beautiful. I wasn’t allowed to take her on the subway, and I couldn’t afford to get a taxi, so I put her around my neck, like a stole. And she pretended she was a stole. She was an actor.

What do you value most in your friends?

Love.

What is your favorite song?

“Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”

What time of the year do you like best?

I suppose autumn. I love the changing of the leaves. I love the autumn goldenrod, the Queen Anne’s lace.

What was the original title of
A Wrinkle in Time
?

“Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which.”

How did you get the idea for
A Wrinkle in Time
?

We were living in the country with our three kids on this dairy farm. I started reading what Einstein wrote about time. And I used a lot of those principles to make a universe that was creative and yet believable.

How hard was it to get
A Wrinkle in Time
published?

I was kept hanging for two years. Over and over again I received nothing more than the formal, printed rejection slip. Eventually, after twenty-six rejections, I called my agent and said, “Send it back. It’s too different. Nobody’s going to publish it.” He sent it back, but a few days later a friend of my mother’s insisted that I meet John Farrar,
the publisher. He liked the manuscript, and eventually decided to publish it. My first editor was Hal Vursell.

Which of your characters is most like you?

None of them. They’re all wiser than I am.

THE L’ENGLE CAST OF CHARACTERS