Wind in the Door Page 16

  TWELVE

  A Wind in the Door

  The 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, Charl
es 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.”

  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.