Wind in the Door Page 8

  “I’ll be down at the foot of the road at seven o’clock. The high-school bus covers so much distance and makes so many stops it takes an hour and a half, and I get on at one of the first stops.”

  She felt an acquiescing response from the cherubim, and then he disappeared; she could not see even a shimmer, or feel a flicker of him in her mind. She headed back to the house. She kept the flashlight on, not for the known turnings of the path, but for whatever new, unknown surprises might be waiting for her.

  When Meg got to the stone wall Louise the Larger was there. Waiting. Neither greeting nor attacking. Waiting. Meg approached her cautiously. Louise watched her through eyes which shone in the flashlight like the water of a very deep well.

  “May I go by, please, Louise?” Meg asked timidly.

  Louise uncoiled, waving slightly in greeting, still looking intently at Meg. Then she bowed her head, and slithered off into the rocks. Meg felt that Louise had been waiting for her to give her a warning for whatever lay ahead, and to wish her well. It was strangely comforting to know that Louise’s well-wishing was going with her.

  There was sausage as well as hot porridge for breakfast. Meg felt that she ought to eat heartily, because who knew what lay ahead? But she could manage only a few mouthfuls.

  “Are you all right, Meg?” her mother asked.

  “Fine. Thanks.”

  “You look a little pale. Sure you aren’t coming down with something?”

  —She’s worried about all of us with this mitochondritis stuff. “Just the normal throes of adolescence,” she smiled at her mother.

  Sandy said, “If you don’t want your sausage, I’ll eat it.”

  Dennys said, “Half for me, okay?”

  Charles Wallace slowly and deliberately ate a full bowl of porridge, but gave the twins his sausage.

  “Well, then”—Meg washed her dishes and put them in the rack—“I’m off.”

  “Wait for us,” Sandy said.

  She did not want to wait for the twins, to listen to their chatter on the walk down to the bus. On the other hand, it would keep her from thinking about what lay ahead. She had thought of Mr. Jenkins for as far back as she could remember with distaste, annoyance, and occasionally outrage, but never before with fear.

  When she left the house she had a horrid, premonitory feeling that it would be a long time before she returned. Again she wished that Fortinbras were walking to the bus with them, as he often did, and then returning to make the walk again with Charles Wallace. But this morning he showed no inclination to leave the warmth of the kitchen.

  “What do you suppose will happen today?” Sandy asked as they started down the hill in the chill of early morning.

  Dennys shrugged. “Nothing. As usual. Race you to the foot of the hill.”

  FIVE

  The First Test

  Meg and the cherubim reached the deserted schoolyard in safety.

  “We’ve got a while to wait,” Meg told him, “and it’s okay for you, you’re invisible. But I’ve got to find a place to hide.” She could not see Proginoskes, but she talked at the faint shimmer in the air where she knew he was.

  “You’re too late,” the cherubim said, and Meg swung around to see Mr. Jenkins coming across the schoolyard from the faculty parking lot.

  Mr. Jenkins. The ordinary, everyday, usual Mr. Jenkins. There was no snake hissing and clacking at him, and he himself did nothing but continue his way across the schoolyard. He looked just as he always looked. He wore his usual dark business suit, and no matter how often it was brushed there was always a small snowfall of dandruff on his shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his eyes were muddy behind his bifocals. He was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, and whenever Meg saw him her feet seemed to grow larger and she couldn’t find a resting place for her hands.

  “All right, Margaret, what is this? What are you doing here?” He had every right to sound annoyed.

  She had nothing to reply. She felt Proginoskes close to her, felt his mind within hers, but he had nothing to suggest.

  “My dear child,” Mr. Jenkins said, and his voice was unwontedly compassionate. “If you have come again about your little brother, I can now tell you that we are reviewing his case. It is not my policy of education to have one child intimidated by his peers. But our initial testing shows that Charles Wallace’s talents are so unusual that unusual measures must be taken. I’ve had several consultations with the State Board, and we are considering getting a special tutor for him.”

  Meg looked warily at the principal. This sounded too good to be true.

  And Louise had been trying to warn her of something. Of what?

  The cherubim, too, was uneasy. She felt him moving lightly in her mind, feeling her response to this unexpectedly reasonable Mr. Jenkins.

  “That is nonsense,” Mr. Jenkins said to Mr. Jenkins. “We cannot make an exception for any one child. Charles Wallace Murry must learn to manage.”

  A second Mr. Jenkins was standing beside Mr. Jenkins.

  It was impossible. It was just as impossible as—

  But there were two identical, dour Mr. Jenkinses standing in front of her.

  Proginoskes shimmered, but did not materialize. Meg backed into the shimmer; she felt that the cherubim was opening an invisible wing and pulling her close to him. She could feel his tremendous, wild heartbeat, a frightened heartbeat, thundering in her ears.

  “We’re Namers,” she heard through the racing of the heart. “We’re Namers. What is their Name?”

  “Mr. Jenkins.”

  “No, no. This is the test, Meg, it must be. One of those Mr. Jenkinses is an Echthros. We have to know which is the real Mr. Jenkins.”

  Meg looked at the two men who stood glaring at each other. “Progo, you can feel into me. Can’t you feel into them? Can’t you kythe?”

  “Not when I don’t know who they are. You’re the one who knows the prototype.”

  “The what?”

  “The real one. The only Mr. Jenkins who is Mr. Jenkins. Look—”

  Suddenly beside the two Mr. Jenkinses stood a third Mr. Jenkins. He raised one hand in greeting, not to Meg, but to the other two men as he drew level with them. “Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes,” Mr. Jenkins Three said.

  The three men wheeled, stiffly, like marionettes, and walked across the schoolyard and into the building.

  “We must think. We must think.” Proginoskes’s kythe almost became opaque for a second, and Meg felt that he was restraining himself from spouting fire.

  Meg said, “Progo, if you really are a cherubim—”

  There was a great and surging invisible wave of indignation all around her.

  She hit the clenched fist of one hand against the palm of the other. “Wait. You told me to think, and I’m thinking.”

  “You don’t have to think out loud. You don’t have to talk to think, after all. You’re deafening me. Try to kythe with me, Meg.”

  “I still don’t understand kything. Is it like mental telepathy?”

  Proginoskes hesitated. “You might say that mental telepathy is the very beginning of learning to kythe. But the cherubic language is entirely kything—with you, with stars, with galaxies, with the salt in the ocean, the leaves of the trees.”

  “But I’m not a cherubim. How do I do it?”

  “Meg, your brain stores all the sensory impressions it receives, but your conscious mind doesn’t have a key to the storehouse. All I want you to do is to open yourself up to me so that I can open the door to your mind’s storehouse.”

  “All right. I’ll try.” To open herself entirely to the cherubim, to make herself completely vulnerable, was not going to be easy. But she trusted Proginoskes implicitly. “Listen,” she said, “cherubim have come to my planet before.”

  “I know that. Where do you think I got my information?”

  “What do you know about us?”

  “I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled
.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Meg said defensively.

  She felt a rippling of his wings. “In the middle of your cities?”

  “Well—no—but I don’t live in a city.”

  “And is your planet peaceful?”

  “Well, no—it isn’t very peaceful.”

  “I had the idea,” Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, “that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other.”

  “Yes, that’s so, but—”

  “And children go hungry.”

  “Yes.”

  “And people don’t understand each other.”

  “Not always.”

  “And there’s—there’s hate?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt Proginoskes pulling away. “All I want to do,” he was murmuring to himself, “is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars …”

  “Progo! You said we were Namers. I still don’t know: what is a Namer?”

  “I’ve told you. A Namer has to know who people are, and who they are meant to be. I don’t know why I should have been shocked at finding Echthroi on your planet.”

  “Why are they here?”

  “Echthroi are always about when there’s war. They start all war.”

  “Progo, I saw all that awfulness you took me to see, that tearing of the sky, and all, but you still haven’t told me exactly what Echthroi are.”

  Proginoskes probed into her mind, searching for words she could understand. “I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming—making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn’t need to hate. That’s why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.”

  “But what—”

  “Oh, earthling, earthling, why do you think Blajeny called for you? There is war in heaven, and we need all the help we can get. The Echthroi are spreading through the universe. Every time a star goes out another Echthros has won a battle. A star or a child or a farandola—size doesn’t matter, Meg. The Echthroi are after Charles Wallace and the balance of the entire universe can be altered by the outcome.”

  “But Progo, what does this have to do with our test—and with three Mr. Jenkinses—it’s insane.”

  Proginoskes responded coldly and quietly. “Precisely.”

  Into the cold and quiet came the sound of the school buses arriving, doors opening, children rushing out and into the school building.

  Charles Wallace was one of those children.

  Proginoskes moved quietly in her mind through the roar. “Don’t misunderstand me, Meg. It is the ways of the Echthroi which are insane. The ways of the Teachers are often strange, but they are never haphazard. I know that Mr. Jenkins has to have something to do with it, something important, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  Meg said, unhappily, “If I hate Mr. Jenkins whenever I think of him, am I Naming him?”

  Proginoskes shifted his wings. “You’re Xing him, just like the Echthroi.”

  “Progo!”

  “Meg, when people don’t know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named.”

  “And you think I’m supposed to Name Mr. Jenkins?” It was a ridiculous idea; no matter how many Mr. Jenkinses there were, he was Mr. Jenkins. That’s all.

  But Proginoskes was most definite. “Yes.”

  Meg cried rebelliously, “Well, I think it’s a silly kind of test.”

  “What you think is not the point. What you do is what’s going to count.”

  “How can it possibly help Charles?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is given us to do.”

  “But how do I do it? How do I Name Mr. Jenkins when all I think of when I see him is how awful he is?”

  Proginoskes sighed and flung several wings heavenwards so violently that he lifted several feet, materialized, and came down with a thud. “There’s a word—but if I say it you’ll just misunderstand.”

  “You have to say it.”

  “It’s a four-letter word. Aren’t four-letter words considered the bad ones on your planet?”

  “Come on. I’ve seen all the four-letter words on the walls of the washroom at school.”

  Proginoskes let out a small puff. “Luff.”

  “What?”

  “Love. That’s what makes persons know who they are. You’re full of love, Meg, but you don’t know how to stay within it when it’s not easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh—you love your family. That’s easy. Sometimes when you feel awful about somebody, you get back into rightness by thinking about—well, you seem to be telling me that you got back into love once by thinking about Charles Wallace.”

  “Yes—”

  “But this time it can’t be easy. You have to go on to the next step.”

  “If you mean you think I have to love Mr. Jenkins, you’ve got another think coming,” Meg snapped.

  Proginoskes gave a mighty sigh. “If we pass the test, you’ll go on and be taught—oh, some of the things I was taught my first billennium with the Teachers. I had to pass a galaxy of tests before I could qualify as a Star Namer. But you’re a human being, and it’s all quite different with you. I keep forgetting that. Am I lovable? To you?”

  All about Meg, eyes opened and shut; wings shifted; a small flame burned her hand and was rapidly withdrawn. She coughed and then sucked the burned place on her hand. But all she wanted was to put her arms around Proginoskes as she would around Charles Wallace. “Very lovable,” she said.

  “But you don’t love me the way you love that skinny Calvin?”

  “That’s different.”

  “I thought so. That’s the confusing kind. Not the kind you have to have in order to Name Mr. Jenkins.”

  “I hate Mr. Jenkins.”

  “Meg, it’s the test. You have to Name the real Mr. Jenkins, and I have to help you. If you fail, I fail too.”

  “Then what would happen?”

  “It’s your first time with a Teacher. And it would be your last.”

  “And you?”

  “When one has been with the Teachers as often as I have, one is given a choice. I could throw in my lot with the Echthroi—”

  “What!”

  “Quite a few of those who fail do.”

  “But the Echthroi are—”

  “You know what they are. Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate.”

  “Progo, you couldn’t.”

  “I hope I couldn’t. But others have. It’s not an easy choice.”

  “If you don’t go to the Echthroi—”

  All Proginoskes’s eyes were shielded by his wings. “I am a Namer. The Echthroi would un-Name. If I do not go with them, then I must X myself.”

  “What!?”

  “I’ll ask you a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?”

  “Oh, love, I suppose.”

  “So, if I care more about Naming than anything else, then maybe I have to give myself away, if it’s the only way to show my love. All the way away. To X myself.”

  “If you do it—X yourself—does it last forever?” Meg asked apprehensively.

  “Nobody knows. Nobody will know till the end of time.”

  “Do I have that choice, too, if—if we fail?” She turned away from the school building, towards the early-morning shouts and whistles, and pressed her face against the soft feathers of one great pinion.

  “It is not an option given to mortals, earthling.”

  “All that happens to me is that I go home?”

  “If you can call it all. There would be rejoicing in hell. But perhaps you don’t believe in hell?”

  Meg pushed this aside. “But if we fail, th
en you—”

  “I must choose. It’s better to X myself than to be Xed by the Echthroi.”

  “What you took me to see—it was what Mother talked about at the dinner table, what Father’s gone to Brookhaven about—it doesn’t seem to have much to do with Mr. Jenkins. It’s all so cosmic, so big—”

  “It isn’t size that matters, Meg. Right now it’s Charles Wallace. The Echthroi would annihilate Charles Wallace.”

  “A little boy!”

  “You’ve said yourself that he’s a special little boy.”

  “He is, oh, he is.” She gave a startled jump as the first bell went off inside the school building, strident, demanding. “Progo, I don’t understand any of it, but if you think Naming Mr. Jenkins is going to help Charles Wallace, I’ll do my best. You will help me?”

  “I’ll try.” But Proginoskes did not sound confident.

  From all around them came the usual schoolday din. Then the door to the cafeteria/gym opened, and a Mr. Jenkins came out. Which Mr. Jenkins? There was no telling them apart. Meg looked to the cherubim, but he had dematerialized again, leaving only a shimmer to show where he was.

  Mr. Jenkins came to her. She checked his shoulders. There was the dandruff. She went closer: smelled: yes, he had the Mr. Jenkins smell of old hair cream and what she always thought of as rancid deodorant. But all three of the Mr. Jenkinses could manage that much, she was sure. It was not going to be that easy.

  He looked at her coldly in the usual way, down one side of his slightly crooked nose. “I assume that you are as confused by all this as I am, Margaret. Why two strange men should wish to impersonate me I have no idea. It is most inconvenient, just at the beginning of school, when I am already overworked. I am told that it has something to do with you as well as your unfortunate little brother. I had hoped that this year you, at least, would not be one of my problems. It seems to me I have had to spend more time with you than with any other student in school. It is certainly my misfortune. And now not only do I have to cope with your little brother, who is equally difficult, but here you are again.”

  This was Mr. Jenkins. He had played upon the theme of this speech with infinite variations almost every time she was sent to his office.