A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (56 page)

“Want my knife?” Beezie offered.

“No. My arrowhead’s sharp.”

For a moment he stared after his sister and grandmother as they wended their slow way. He sniffed the fragrance of the air. Although the apple trees were green,
the pink and white blossoms were still on the ground. The scent of lilac mingled with the mock orange. He might be able to
hear the trucks on the road and see the planes in the sky, but at least here he couldn’t smell them.

Chuck liked neither the trucks nor the planes. They all left their fumes behind them, blunting the smell of sunlight, of rain, of green and growing things, and Chuck “saw” with his nose almost more than with his eyes. Without looking he could easily tell his parents, his grandmother, his sister.
And he judged people almost entirely by his reaction to their odor.

“I don’t smell a thing,” his father had said after Chuck had wrinkled his nose at a departing customer.

Chuck had said calmly, “He smells unreliable.”

His father gave a small, surprised laugh. “He
is
unreliable. He owes me more than I can afford to be owed, for all his expensive clothes.”

When the strand of bittersweet was
severed, Chuck stood leaning against the rough bark of the tree, breathing in its resiny smell. In the distance he could see his grandmother and Beezie. The old woman smelled to him of distance, of the sea, which was fifty or more miles away, but perhaps it was a farther sea which clung to her. “And you smell green,” he had told her. “Ah, and that’s because I come from a far green country and the
scent of it will be with me always.”

“What color do I smell?” Beezie had asked.

“Yellow, like buttercups and sunlight and butterfly wings.”

Green and gold. Good smells. Home smells. His mother was the blue of sky in early morning. His father was the rich mahogany of the highboy in the living room, with the firelight flickering over the polished wood. Comfortable, safe smells.

And suddenly
the thought of the odor of cookies and freshly baked bread called to him, and he ran to catch up.

The family lived over the store in a long, rambling apartment. The front room, overlooking the street, was a storeroom, filled with cartons and barrels. Behind it were three bedrooms: his parents’, his own little cubbyhole, and the bigger room Beezie shared with the grandmother. Beyond these were
the kitchen and the large long room which served as living and dining room.

There was a fire crackling in the fireplace, for the spring evenings were apt to be chilly. The family was seated about a large round table set for tea, with cookies and bread still warm from the oven, a pitcher of milk, and a big pot of tea covered with the cozy the grandmother had brought with her from Ireland.

Chuck
took his place, and his mother poured his tea. “Did you save another tree?”

“Yes. I really should take Pa’s big clippers with me next time.”

Beezie pushed the plate of bread and butter to him. “Take your share quickly or I’ll eat it all up.”

Chuck’s sensitive nostrils twitched. There was a smell in the room which was completely unfamiliar to him, and of which he was afraid.

The father helped
himself to a cookie. “This is one of the times I wish Sunday afternoons came more than once a week.”

“You’ve been acting tired lately.” His wife looked at him anxiously.

“Being tired is the natural state of a country storekeeper who doesn’t have much business sense.”

The grandmother moved creakily from her chair at the table to her rocker. “Hard work’s not easy. You need more help.”

“Can’t
afford it, Grandma. How about telling us a story?”

“You’ve heard them all as many times as there are stars in the sky.”

“I never tire of them.”

“I’m told out for today.”

“Oh, come on, Grandma,” Mr. Maddox cajoled. “You never tire of storytelling, and you know you make most of it up as you go along.”

“Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.” She closed her eyes. “I will just
take a small snooze.”

“You tell me about the Indian princess, then, Pa,” Beezie ordered.

“I don’t know much about her as far as provable facts are concerned. My illustrious forebear, Matthew Maddox, from whom I may have inherited an iota of talent, wrote about her in his second novel. It was a best-seller in its day. Sad he couldn’t have known about its success, but it was published posthumously.
It was a strange sort of fantasy, with qualities which make some critics call it the first American science-fiction novel, because it played with time, and he’d obviously heard of Mendel’s theories of genetics. Anyhow, Beezie love, it’s a fictional account of the two brothers from ancient Wales who came to this country after their father’s death, the first Europeans to set foot on these uncharted
shores. And, as the brothers had quarreled in Wales, so they quarreled in the New World, and the elder of the two made his way to South America. Madoc, the younger brother, stayed with the Indians in a place which is nameless but which Matthew Maddox implies is right around here, and he married the Indian princess Zyll, or Zillah, and in the novel it is his strain which is lost, and must be
found again.”

“Sounds interesting,” Chuck said.

Beezie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t much like science fiction. I like fairy tales better.”

“
The Horn of Joy
has elements of both. The idea that the proud elder brother must be defeated by the inconsequential but honest younger brother is certainly a fairytale theme. There was also a unicorn in the story, who was a time traveler.”

“Whyn’t you tell
us about it before?” Beezie asked.

“Thought you’d be too young to be interested. Anyhow, I sold my copy when I was offered an outrageously large sum for it when I … it was too large an amount to turn down. Matthew Maddox, for a nineteenth-century writer, had an uncanny intuition about the theories of space, time, and relativity that Einstein was to postulate generations later.”

“But that’s not
possible,” Beezie protested.

“Precisely. But it’s all in Matthew’s book, nevertheless. It’s an evocative, haunting novel, and since Matthew Maddox assumed that he was descended from the younger Welshman, the one who stayed here, and the Indian princess, I’ve followed his fancy that the name Maddox comes from Madoc.” A shadow moved across his face. “When my father had a stroke and I had to leave
my poet’s garret in the city and come help out with the store, I had to give up my dream of following in Matthew’s footsteps.”

“Oh, Pa—” Chuck said.

“I’m mainly sorry for you children. I never had a
chance to prove whether or not I could be a writer, but I’m a failure as a merchant.” He rose. “I’d better go down to the store for an hour or so and work on accounts.”

When he left, holding on
to the banister as he went down the steep stairs, the smell that made Chuck afraid went with him.

Chuck told no one, not even Beezie, about the smell which was in his father but was not of his father.

Twice that week, Chuck had nightmares. When he cried out in terror his mother came hurrying, but he told her only that he had had a bad dream.

Beezie wasn’t put off so easily. “You’re worried
about something, Chuck.”

“There’s always something to worry about. Lots of people owe Pa money, and he’s worried about bills. I heard a salesman say he couldn’t give Pa any more credit.”

Beezie said, “You’re too young to worry about things like that. Anyhow, it isn’t the kind of thing you worry about.”

“I’m getting older.”

“Not that old.”

“Pa’s giving me more to do. I know more about the
business now.”

“But that’s not what you’re worried about.”

He tried another tack. “I don’t like the way Paddy O’Keefe’s always after you in school.”

“Paddy O’Keefe’s repeated sixth grade three times. He may be good at baseball, but I’m not one of the girls who thinks the sun rises and sets on him.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s after you.” He had succeeded in deflecting her attention.

“I don’t let
him near me. He never washes. What does he smell like, Chuck?”

“Like a dandruffy woodchuck.”

One evening after supper Beezie said, “Let’s go see if the fireflies are back.” It was Friday, and no school in the morning, so they could go to bed when they chose.

Chuck felt an overwhelming desire to get out of the house, away from the smell, which nearly made him retch. “Let’s go.”

It was still
twilight when they reached the flat rock. They sat, and the stone still held the warmth of the day’s sun. At first there were only occasional sparkles, but as it got darker Chuck was lost in a daze of delight as a galaxy of fireflies twinkled on and off, flinging upward in a blaze of light, dropping earthward like falling stars, moving in continuous effervescent dance.

“Oh, Beezie!” he cried.
“I’m dazzled with gorgeousness.”

Behind them the woods were dark with shadows. There was no moon, and a thin veil of clouds hid the stars. “If it were a clear night,” Beezie remarked, “the fireflies
wouldn’t be as bright. I’ve never seen them this beautiful.” She lay back on the rock, looking up at the shadowed sky, then closing her eyes. Chuck followed suit.

“Let’s feel the twirling of the
earth,” Beezie said. “That’s part of the dance the fireflies are dancing, too. Can you feel it?”

Chuck squeezed his eyelids tightly closed. He gave a little gasp. “Oh, Beezie! I felt as though the earth had tilted!” He sat up, clutching at the rock. “It made me dizzy.”

She gave her bubbling little giggle. “It can be a bit scary, being part of earth and stars and fireflies and clouds and rocks.
Lie down again. You won’t fall off, I promise.”

He leaned back, feeling the radiance soak into his body. “The rock’s still warm.”

“It’s warm all summer, because the trees don’t shade it. And there’s a rock in the woods that’s always cool, even on the hottest day, because the leaves are so close together that the sun’s fingers never touch it.”

Chuck felt a cold shadow move over him and shuddered.

“Someone walk over your grave?” Beezie asked lightly.

He jumped up. “Let’s go home.”

“Why? What’s wrong? It’s so beautiful.”

“I know—but let’s go home.”

When they got back, everything was in confusion. Mr. Maddox had collapsed from pain, and been rushed to the hospital. The grandmother was waiting for the children.

The frightening smell had exploded over Chuck with the violence of a mighty
wave as he entered.

The grandmother pulled the children to her and held them.

“But what is it? What’s wrong with Pa?” Beezie asked.

“The ambulance attendant thought it was his appendix.”

“But he will be all right?” she pleaded.

“Dear my love, we’ll have to wait and pray.”

Chuck pressed against her, quivering, not speaking. Slowly the smell was dissipating, leaving a strange emptiness in
its wake.

Time seemed to stand still. Chuck would glance at the clock, thinking an hour had passed, only to find it barely a minute. After a long while Beezie fell asleep, her head in her grandmother’s lap. Chuck was watchful, looking from the clock to the telephone to the door. But at length he, too, slept.

In his sleep he dreamed that he was lying on the flat rock, and feeling the swing of
the earth around the sun, and suddenly the rock tilted steeply, and he was sliding off, and he scrabbled in terror to keep from falling off the precipice into a sea of darkness. He
cried out, “Rocks—steep—” and the grandmother put her hand on the rock and steadied it and he stopped dreaming.

But when he woke up he knew that his father was dead.

NINE

The rocks with their steepness

The sudden shrilling of the telephone woke Meg with a jolt of terror. Her heart began to thud, and she pushed out of bed, hardly aware of Ananda. Her feet half in and half out of her slippers, one arm shoved into her robe, she stumbled downstairs and into her parents’ bedroom, but they were not there, so she hurried on down to the kitchen.

Her father was
on the phone, and she heard him saying, “Very well, Mrs. O’Keefe. One of us will be right over for you.”

It was not the president.

But Mrs. O’Keefe? In the middle of the night?

The twins, too, were in the doorway.

“What was that about?” Mrs. Murry asked.

“As you gathered, it was Mrs. O’Keefe.”

“At this time of night!” Sandy exclaimed.

“She’s never called us before,” Dennys said, “at any
time.”

Meg breathed a sigh of relief. “At least it wasn’t the president. What did she want?”

“She said she’s found something she wants me to see, and ordered me to go for her at once.”

“I’ll go,” Sandy said. “You can’t leave the phone, Dad.”

“You’ve got the weirdest mother-in-law in the world,” Dennys told Meg.

Mrs. Murry opened the oven door and the fragrance of hot bread wafted out. “How
about some bread and butter?”

“Meg, put your bathrobe on properly,” Dennys ordered.

“Yes, doc.” She put her left arm into the sleeve and tied the belt. If she stayed in the kitchen with the family, then time would pass with its normal inevitability. The kythe which had been broken by the jangling of the telephone was lost somewhere in her unconscious mind. She hated alarm clocks, because they
woke her so abruptly out of sleep that she forgot her dreams.

In the kything was something to do with Mrs. O’Keefe. But what? She searched her mind. Fireflies. Something to do with fireflies. And a girl and a boy, and the smell of fear. She shook her head.

“What’s the matter, Meg?” her mother asked.

“Nothing. I’m trying to remember something.”

“Sit down. A warm drink won’t hurt you.”

It was
important that she see Mrs. O’Keefe, but she couldn’t remember why, because the kythe was gone.

“I’ll be right back,” Sandy assured them, and went out the pantry door.

“What on earth …” Dennys said. “Mrs. O’Keefe is beyond me. I’m glad I’m not going in for psychiatry.”

Their mother set a plateful of fragrant bread on the table, then turned to put the kettle on. “Look!”