A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (49 page)

“Would there have been slavery in Vespugia?”

“Not sure. Bolivar died in 1830, and his influence would likely have filtered through to Vespugia. So I doubt if there’d have been slaves.”

“Well, good.”

“Okay, and also in
1865 the Atlantic cable was finally completed. Oh, and here’s something for you, Den: Lister caused a scandal by insisting on antiseptic surgery and using carbolic acid on a compound wound.”

Dennys applauded. “You’re almost as veritable an encyclopedia as Charles Wallace.”

“Charles has it in his head and I have to look it up in a reference book. My sphere of knowledge is considerably more limited.
Mendel came out with his law of heredity that year”—he peered down at the book again—“and the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and Edward Whymper climbed the Matterhorn. And Lewis Carroll wrote
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.”

“Indeed, 1865 was quite a year,” Dennys said. “What have you learned, Meg?”

“I think maybe a lot. Thanks, both of you.”

“Get back into bed,” Dennys chided. “You don’t want
to get chilled wandering around this drafty old barn in the middle of the night.”

“I’m warm.” She indicated her heavy robe and slippers. “I’m taking care. But thanks.”

“If we made you some hot chocolate, would you drink it?”

“I’m off hot chocolate.”

“Some consommé or bouillon?”

“No, thanks, really, I don’t want anything. I’ll get back into bed.”

Sandy called after her, “And also in 1865
Rudyard Kipling was born, and Verlaine wrote
Poèmes saturniens
, and John Stuart Mill wrote
Auguste Comte and Positivism
, and Purdue, Cornell, and the universities of Maine were founded.”

She waved back at him, then paused as he continued, “And Matthew Maddox’s first novel,
Once More United
, was published.”

She turned back, asking in a carefully controlled voice, “Maddox? I don’t think I’ve ever
heard of that author.”

“You stuck to math in school.”

“Yeah, Calvin always helped me with my English papers. Did this Matthew Maddox write anything else?”

Sandy flipped through the pages. “Let’s see. Nothing in 1866, 1867. 1868, here we are,
The Horn of Joy
.”

“Oh, that,” Dennys said. “I remember him now. I had to take a lit course my sophomore year in college, and I took nineteenth-century
American literature. We read that, Matthew Maddox’s second and last book,
The Horn of Joy
. My prof said if he hadn’t died he’d have been right
up there with Hawthorne and James. It was a strange book, passionately antiwar, I remember, and it went way back into the past, and there was some weird theory of the future influencing the past—not my kind of book at all.”

“But you remember it,” Meg remarked.

“Yeah, I remember it, for some reason. There was a Welsh prince whose brothers were fighting for the throne. And he left Wales with one of his brothers, and was shipwrecked and landed somewhere on the New England coast. There was more, but I can’t think of it right now.”

“Thanks,” Meg said. “Thanks a lot.”

Ananda greeted her joyfully at the head of the stairs. Meg fondled the dog’s floppy ear.
“I really would have liked something hot to drink, but I didn’t want Sandy and Dennys coming up to the attic and staying to talk when we have to concentrate on kything with Charles Wallace.” She got back into bed and Ananda jumped up beside her and settled down. The clock’s hands had moved ahead fifteen minutes, the length of time she had spent with Sandy and Dennys. And time was of the essence.
But she felt that the trip downstairs had been worth it. She had found the author and the title of the book for Charles Wallace. And she had found a connection between Wales
and Vespugia in 1865. But what did the connection mean? Madoc was Welsh, but he didn’t go to Vespugia, he came here, and married here.

She shook her head. Maybe Charles Wallace and Gaudior could make something out of it.

And how any of this could connect with Mrs. O’Keefe was a mystery.

SIX

The lightning with its rapid wrath

Thanks, Meg,” Charles Wallace whispered. “Oh, Gaudior, she really did help us, she and the twins.” He leaned forward to rest his cheek against the unicorn’s neck. “The book was by Matthew Maddox. I don’t think I ever read it, but I remember Dennys talking about it. And Mrs. O’Keefe was a Maddox, so she’s
got
to be descended from Matthew.”

“Descended,”
Gaudior snorted. “You make it sound like a fall.”

“If you look at Mrs. O’Keefe, that’s what it’s like,” Charles Wallace admitted. “1865. Can we go there?”

“Then,” the unicorn corrected. “When. We can try, if you think it’s important. We’ll hope for a favorable wind.”

Charles Wallace looked alarmed. “You mean we might get blown into another Projection?”

“It’s always a risk. We know the Echthroi
are after us, to stop us. So you must hold on.”

“I’ll hold on for dear life. The last thing I want is to get blown into another Projection.”

Gaudior blew softly through his teeth. “I find our most recent information not very helpful.”

“But it could be important, a group of Welshmen going to South America in 1865. I think we should try to go to Vespugia.”

“That’s a long way, and unicorns do
not travel well to different Wheres. And to try to move in
both
space and time—I don’t like it.” He flicked his tail.

“Then how about trying to move to 1865, right here, the year Matthew Maddox published his first novel? Then we could try to move from 1865 here to 1865 in Vespugia. And maybe we could learn something from Matthew Maddox.”

“Very well. It’s less dangerous to go elsewhen first than
to try to go elsewhen and elsewhere simultaneously.” He began to gallop, and as he flung himself onto a gust of wind, the wings lifted and they soared upward.

The attack, just as they went through a shower of stars, was completely unexpected. A freezing gust blasted the wind on which they were riding, taking away Charles Wallace’s breath. His knuckles whitened as he clenched the mane, which seemed
to strengthen into steel wire to help him hold his grasp. He had a horrible sense of Gaudior battling with a darkness which was like an anti-unicorn,
a flailing of negative wings and iron hoofs. The silver mane was torn from his hands as he was assailed by the horrible stench which accompanied Echthroi. Dark wings beat him from the unicorn’s back and he felt the burning cold of outer space. This
was more horrible than any Projection. His lungs cracked for lack of air. He would become a burnt-out body, a satellite circling forever the nearest sun …

A powerful wrench, and air rushed into his battered lungs. He felt a sharp tug at the nape of his neck, and the blue anorak tightened against his throat. The agonizing stench was gone and he was surrounded by the scent of unicorn breath, smelling
of stars and frost. Gaudior was carrying him in his mouth, great ivory teeth clamped on the strong stuff of the anorak.

Gaudior’s iridescent wings beat against the dark. Charles Wallace held his breath. If Gaudior dropped him, the Echthroi would be waiting. His armpits were cut from the pulling of the anorak, but he knew that he must not struggle. Gaudior’s breath gusted painfully from between
clenched teeth.

Then the silver hoofs touched stone, and they were safely at the star-watching rock. Gaudior opened his teeth and dropped the boy. For the first moments Charles Wallace was so weak that he collapsed onto the rock. Then he struggled to his feet, still trembling from the
near disaster. He stretched his arms to ease his sore armpits and shoulders. Gaudior was breathing in great,
panting gusts, his flanks heaving.

The soft breeze around them filled and healed their seared lungs.

Gaudior rolled his lips, and took a deep draught of clear air. Then he bent down and nuzzled Charles Wallace in the first gesture of affection he had shown. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get away. The Echthroi are enraged that the wind managed to send you Within Madoc, and they’re trying to
stop you from going Within anyone else.”

Charles Wallace stroked the unicorn’s muzzle. “You saved me. I’d be tumbling in outer space forever if you hadn’t grabbed my anorak.”

“It was one chance in a million,” Gaudior admitted. “And the wind helped me.”

Charles Wallace reached up to put his arms around Gaudior’s curving neck. “Even with help, it wasn’t easy. Thank you.”

Gaudior made a unicorn
shrug; his curly beard quivered. “Unicorns find it embarrassing to be thanked. Please desist.”

It was a hot, midsummer’s day, with thunderheads massed on the horizon. The lake was gone, and the familiar valley stretched to the hills. The woods were a forest
of mighty elms and towering oaks and hemlock. In the far distance was what looked like a cluster of log cabins.

“I don’t think this looks
like 1865,” he told Gaudior.

“You’d know more about that than I would. I didn’t have much opportunity to learn earth’s history. I never expected this assignment.”

“But, Gaudior, we have to know When we are.”

“Why?”

Charles Wallace tried to quell his impatience, which was all the sharper after the terror of the attack. “If there’s a Might-Have-Been we’re supposed to discover, we have to know
When it is, don’t we?”

Gaudior’s own impatience was manifested by prancing. “Why? We don’t have to know everything. We have a charge laid on us, and we have to follow where it leads. You’ve been so busy trying to do the leading that we almost got taken by the Echthroi.”

Charles Wallace said nothing.

“Perhaps,” Gaudior granted grudgingly, “it wasn’t entirely your fault. But I think we should
not try to control the Whens and the Wheres, but should go Where we’re sent. And what with all that contretemps with the Echthroi, you’re still in your own body, and you’re supposed to be Within.”

“Oh. What should I do?”

Gaudior blew mightily through flared nostrils. “I will
have to ask the wind.” And he raised his head and opened his jaws. Charles Wallace waited anxiously until the unicorn
lowered his head and raised one wing, stretching it to its full span. “Step close to me,” he ordered.

Charles Wallace moved under the wing and leaned against Gaudior’s flank. “Did the wind say When we are?”

“You make too many demands,” Gaudior chided, and folded his wing until Charles Wallace felt smothered. Gasping for breath, he tried to push his way out into the air, but the wing held him
firmly, and at last his struggling ceased.

When he opened his eyes the day had vanished, and trees and rock were bathed in moonlight.

He was Within. Lying on the rock, looking up at the moon-bathed sky. Only the most brilliant stars could compete with the silver light. Around him the sounds of summer sang sweetly. A mourning dove complained from her place deep in the darkest shadows. A grandfather
frog boomed his bull-call. A pure trilling of bird song made him sit up and call out in greeting, “Zylle!”

A young woman stepped out from the shadows of the forest. She was tall and slender, except for her belly, which was heavy with child. “Thanks for meeting me, Brandon.”

Charles Wallace-within-Brandon Llawcae gave her a swift hug. “Anything I do with you is fun, Zylle.”

Again, as when he
was Within Harcels, he was younger than fifteen, perhaps eleven or twelve, still very much a child, an eager, intelligent, loving child.

In the moonlight she smiled at him. “The herbs I need to ease the birthing of my babe are found only when the moon is full, and only here. Ritchie fears it would offend Goody Adams, did she know.”

Goody, short for Goodwife. That’s what the Pilgrims said, instead
of Mrs. This was definitely not 1865, then. More than a century earlier, perhaps even two centuries. Brandon Llawcae must be the son of early settlers …

“Let yourself go,” Gaudior knelled. “Let yourself be Brandon.”

“But why are we here?” Charles Wallace demurred. “What can we learn here?”

“Stop asking questions.”

“But I don’t want to waste time …” Charles Wallace said anxiously.

Gaudior
whickered irritably. “You are here, and you are in Brandon. Let go.”

Let go.

Be Brandon.

Be.

“So,” Zylle continued, “it is best that Ritchie not know, either. I can always trust you, Brandon. You don’t open
your mouth and spill everything out when to do so would bring no good.”

Brandon ducked his head shyly, then looked swiftly up at Zylle’s eyes, which were a startling blue in her brown
face. “I have learned from the People of the Wind that ’tis no harm to hold a secret in the heart.”

Zylle sighed. “No, it is no harm. But it grieves me that you and I may not share our gifts with those we love.”

“My pictures.” Brandon nodded. “My parents want me to try not to see my pictures.”

“Among my people,” Zylle said, “you would be known as a Seer, and you would be having the training
in prayer and trusting that would keep your gift very close to the gods, from whom the gift comes. My father had hoped that Maddok might have the gift, because it is rare to have two with blue eyes in one generation. But my little brother’s gift is to know about weather, when to plant and when to harvest, and that is a good gift, and a needed one.”

“I miss Maddok.” Bran scowled down at the rock.
“He never comes to the settlement any more.”

Zylle placed her hand lightly on his shoulder. “It’s different in the settlement now that there are more families. Maddok no longer feels welcome.”

“I welcome him!”

“He knows that. And he misses you, too. But it isn’t only that the settlement is larger. Maddok is older, and
has to do more work at home. But he will always be your friend.”

“And I’ll
always be his. Always.”

“Your pictures—” Zylle looked at him intently. “Are you able to stop seeing them?”

“Not always. When I look at something that holds a reflection, sometimes the pictures come, whether I will or no. But I try not to ask them to come.”

“When you see your pictures, it is all right to tell me what you see, the way you used to tell Maddok.”