A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle (10)

 

A field of dandelions. Yellow. Yellow. Exploding into white, into a blizzard of white, a terror of white. Green stems, sickly trickling ooze.

Grandma.

Grandma.

Grandma, you’re not going to die. Not ever.

Gedder.

Smell. Bad smell.

Gun. Gedder’s gun. Stop him

terrible fall

Gwen Zillah

head hurts

hurts

crystal horn heals

Matthew’s unicorn comes

tip touches head with light heals

 

Beezie! Grandma! Ma! Pa!

 

Two stones in the cemetery.

A fight at the edge of the cliff, like Gwydyr and Madoc at the edge of the lake. Bad. Bad.

Beezie, never let him touch you.

From inside himself Charles Wallace watched as the unicorn lowered his head and the blazing tip of the horn touched Chuck’s head, pouring light into it. He kept the horn there until the light had poured itself out, and the spasms of pain subsided and the boy stopped babbling and slept.

“Charles Wallace!”

He listened. The voice sounded like Gaudior, and yet it was not Gaudior, and he no longer saw the silver beauty of the unicorn nor the light of the horn. Nothing was visible, not even darkness. Something was happening, and he did not know what. He was still Within Chuck, and yet he was intensely conscious of himself as Charles Wallace, and something was pulling him.

Meg sat up, blinking and rubbing her hand against Ananda’s fur. The kitten had returned and was sleeping on the pillow. At first Meg did not know why there were tears on her cheeks, or why she was frightened.

She closed her eyes in sadness and saw the unicorn standing motionless by the star-watching rock. A pear-shaped drop of crystal slid from Gaudior’s eye and shattered into a thousand fragments on the stone. The unicorn looked up at the sky. The stars were sparkling brilliantly. Small wisps of starlit cloud moved in the rapid north wind. She thought she heard Gaudior saying, “The Old Music was in them once. That was a victory for the Echthroi.”

Meg thought of Mrs. O’Keefe waiting downstairs. Yes. That was a victory for the enemy, indeed. That Beezie, the golden child, should have become the old hag with missing teeth and resentful eyes was unbearable.

There’s more to her than meets the eye.

Infinitely more.

And what now? What’s going to happen?

To Chuck?

To Charles Wallace?

“Charles Wallace!”

He listened. Was it Gaudior? He could hear, but he could not see, and the voice echoed as though coming from a great distance.

“Charles Wallace.” The voice was compassionate. “You don’t have to stay Within Chuck now that this has happened. We did not expect this.”

Charles Wallace felt cold and confused and therefore cross. “But I am Within Chuck.”

“Yes. And Chuck is unconscious, and when he comes to, he will not be the same. His skull has been fractured. Although the healing of the horn has taken away the worst of the pain it could not repair the brain damage. And so there have been instructions that you are to be released now if you so desire.”

Charles Wallace felt weighed down by darkness and pain.

The almost-Gaudior voice continued. “Within Chuck as he is now, you will have no control over his actions. His brain is short-circuited. If there is a Might-Have-Been which you should alter in order to avert disaster, you will have no ability either to recognize it or to change it.”

“If you release me from Within Chuck, then what?”

“You will be sent Within someone else, and then you will be better able to accomplish your mission. Time is of the essence, as you understand. And we do not know what may happen while you are trapped Within this injured child.”

“Who are you?” Charles Wallace asked the invisible voice. “You sound like Gaudior, but you aren’t Gaudior.”

The voice laughed gently. “No, I am not Gaudior. All the healing light went from his horn, but he could not cure Chuck, though he kept him from dying—and that may not have been a kindness. He has gone home to dip his horn in the pools of healing to replenish it.”

“Then who are you?”

Again the voice laughed. “You saw me when Gaudior took you home after you nearly drowned in the Ice Age sea. I am the unicorn you saw come forth from the shell.”

“Why can’t I see you? Why can’t I see anything?” The words of the voice had reassured him, and yet he still felt foreboding.

“While you are in Chuck, you see only what Chuck sees, and he is unconscious, and will be for several days. Come, Charles Wallace, there’s no time to be lost. Let us help you out of Chuck. If Mad Dog Branzillo is to be prevented from starting a holocaust you must not dally.”

“I have to think—” Something was wrong, and he did not know what.

“Charles Wallace. Gaudior will corroborate what I have told you. Chuck’s brain has been damaged. He’s little better than an idiot. Come out.”

“If I come out, will I see you?” There was something about the voice which was inconsistent with the visual image of the baby unicorn; but of course it would no longer be a baby.

“Of course you’ll see me. Hurry. There’s a terrible urgency about what you are to accomplish.”

“I?”

“Of course, you. You were selected, weren’t you?”

“No. Beezie—Mrs. O’Keefe—laid a charge on me.”

“Because you’re the only one who can prevent Branzillo.”

“But I can’t—”

“Of course you can.” The voice was tenderly patient. “Why do you think you were chosen?”

“Well—Gaudior seemed to think it was that I might be able to go Within people, because of the way Meg and I kythe.”

“Exactly. You were chosen because of your special gifts, and your unusual intelligence. You know that yourself, don’t you?”

“Well—I can kythe. And I know my I. Q.’s high, as far as that goes. But that’s not enough—”

“Of course it is. And you have the ability to see the difference between right and wrong, and to make the correct decisions. You were selected because you are an extraordinary young man and your gifts and your brains qualify you. You are the only one who can control the Might-Have-Been.”

Charles Wallace’s stomach was churning.

“Come, Charles Wallace. You have been chosen. You are in control of what is going to happen. You are needed. We must go.”

Charles Wallace began to throw up. Was it in reaction to the tempting words, or because Chuck, with his bashed-in skull, was vomiting? But he knew that whatever the voice looked like, it was not a unicorn. When he had stopped retching he said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not like Gaudior. Gaudior would never say what you’ve just said. It was trying to use my high I. Q. and trying to control things that got us into trouble in the first place. I don’t know what I’m supposed to use, but it’s not my intellect or strength. For better or worse, I’m Within Chuck. And I’ve never come out of Within on my own. It’s always happened to me. I’m staying Within.”

Meg let out a long sigh. “He made the right choice, didn’t he?”

Ananda’s warm tongue gently touched Meg’s hand.

Meg closed her eyes, listening. She thought she heard a howl of defeat, and she whiffed the ugly stench of Echthroi.

So they had been trying to get at Charles Wallace in a much more subtle way than by trying to snatch him from Gaudior’s back or throw him into Projections.

Duthbert Mortmain had nearly killed Chuck. Nothing went in straight lines for him any more, not time, not distance. His mind was like the unstable earth, full of faults, so that layers shifted and slid. It was like being in a nightmare from which there was no possibility of waking. She ached for him, and for Charles Wallace Within him.

* * *

Pain and panic

the world tilting

twirling on its axis, out of control

spinning off away from the sun into the dark

light bursting against his eyes, an explosion of light

a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors assailing his nostrils

“Chuck!” The voice came echoing from a vast distance, echoing along the unseen walls of a dark tunnel.

“Chuck! It’s Beezie, your sister. Chuck, can you hear me?”

He was weighted down by the vast heaviness of the atmosphere, but he managed to lift one finger in response to Beezie’s calling, afraid, as he did so, that if the weight lifted he would fall off the wildly tilting earth …

“He hears me! Ma, Chuck moved his finger!”

Slowly the rampant, out-of-control speed lessened, and the planet resumed its normal pace. Colors stopped their kaleidoscopic dance and stayed in place. Smells became identifiable once more: coffee; bread; apples. Beezie: the gold was not as brilliant as it had been, but it was still Beezie. And their mother: the blue was cloudy now, hardly blue at all, closer to the grey of rain clouds. Grandma: where is Grandma’s smell? Why is there emptiness? Where is the green?

“Grandma!”

“She’s dead, Chuck. Her heart gave out.”

“Gedder pushed her. He killed her.”

“No, Chuck.” Beezie’s voice was bitter, and the bitterness further muted the gold. “Duthbert Mortmain. He was furious with her, and he was going to strike her, but you saved her, and he hit you instead, and you fell all the way down the stairs and fractured your skull. And Grandma—she just …”

“What? Did Gedder—”

“No, no, not Gedder, Chuck, Duthbert Mortmain. He felt as awful as he’s capable of feeling. He and Ma drove you to the hospital, and I stayed home with Grandma, and she looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Beezie, I can’t wait any longer. My Patrick’s come for me.’ And she gave a little gasp, and that was all.”

He heard her, but between the stark words came other sounds and the smell of a hot and alien wind. Time’s layers slipped and slid under him. “But Gwen shouldn’t marry Gedder. Gwydyr’s children shouldn’t marry Madoc’s.”

There was panic in Beezie’s voice. “What are you talking about? Chuck, please don’t. You scare me. I want you to get all the way well.”

“Not Let’s Pretend. Real. Gwen and Gedder—it would be bad, bad …”

The cliff loomed high over him, dark, shadowing. Gedder was at the top of the cliff, waiting, waiting … who was he waiting for?

* * *

Chuck slowly improved, until he could put cans and boxes on the store shelves. Even though he could not manage school, he recovered enough to mark the prices on the store’s stock. He seldom made a mistake, and when he did, Duthbert Mortmain did not box his ears.

Sometimes Chuck saw him as Mortmain, sometimes as Gedder, when his worlds warped. “Gedder is nicer than he used to be,” he reported to Beezie. “He’s nicer to Ma. And to Grandma and me.”

“Grandma—” A sob choked Beezie’s voice. “Chuck, how can you! How can you play Let’s Pretend about that?” Her voice rose with outrage. “How can you go away from me like this when I need you? Don’t leave me!”

He heard and he did not hear. He was caught between the layers and he could not get into the right layer so that he could be with Beezie. “Grandma says I’m not to let him hear me call him Gedder, because that’s not his real name, so I won’t.” He had intended to say, he thought he was saying, “I’ll never leave you, Beezie,” but the words of the other layer came out of his mouth. “Where’s Matthew? I want to talk to him. He has to get Zillah to Vespugia.”

Sometimes the earth started to tilt again and he could not stand upright against the velocity. Then he had to stay in bed until the tilting steadied.

He climbed the attic stairs one day when the earth was firm under his feet, and crawled into all the dimmest and most cobwebby corners, until his hands felt a packet. At first he thought it was an old tobacco pouch, but then he saw that it was oilskin wrapped about some papers. Letters. And newspaper clippings.

Letters from Bran to Zillah, to Matthew. Urgent letters.

He looked at them and the words danced and flickered. Sometimes they seemed to say one thing, sometimes another. He could not read the small print. He pushed the heels of his hands against his eyeballs and everything sparkled like fireworks. He sobbed with frustration, and took the letters and clippings downstairs and put them under his pillow.

—I’ll tell Grandma. She’ll help me read them.

The kythe came to Meg in distorting waves.

One minute she understood, and the next she was caught up in Chuck’s shifting universe. She pulled herself away from the kythe to try to think.

—What’s coming clear, she thought,—is that it’s important to know whether Mad Dog Branzillo is from Madoc’s or Gwydyr’s line. Somehow or other, it’s between the two babies in the scry, the scry which both Madoc and Brandon Llawcae saw.

We don’t know much about Gwydyr’s line. He was disgraced, and he went to Vespugia eventually, and we think Gedder is his descendant.

We know a little more about Madoc’s line. From each time Charles Wallace has gone Within, we know that most of Madoc’s ancestors stayed around here.

So Branzillo’s ancestors matter. And it’s all in Matthew Maddox’s book that Charles Wallace can’t get at because the Echthroi are blocking him. But what can Charles Wallace do about it, even if he and Gaudior ever do get to Patagonia?

Slowly, she moved back into the kythe.

“Chuck.” It was Beezie’s voice.

“Here I am.”

“How do you feel?”

“Dizzy. The earth’s spinning, like the night we saw the fireflies.”

“The night Pa died.”

“Yes. Like then.”

“You remember?” she asked in surprise.

“Of course.”

“Lots of things you don’t remember. That’s why you can’t go to school any more. Chuck—”

“What?”

“Ma’s going to have a baby.”

“She can’t. Pa’s dead.”

“She’s married again.”

“She and Gedder can’t have a baby. It would be bad.”

“I thought you were talking the way you used to. I thought you were all right!” Her voice rose in frustration and outrage. “Not Gedder! Mortmain!”

He tried to come back to her, but he could not. “Same difference. Same smell. The baby has to come from Madoc. Bran and Zillah have to have the baby because of the prayer.”

“What prayer?” she shouted.

“Where’d you learn that?”

“The letters.”

“What letters?”

He became impatient. “Bran’s letters, of course.”

“But we’ve read them all. There wasn’t anything like that in them.”

“Found some more.”

“When? Where?”

“In the attic. Grandma helps me read them.”

“Where are they?” she demanded.

He fumbled under his pillow. “Here.”

* * *

Chuck walked through a spring evening, smelling of growing grass, and blossoms drifting from the trees. He walked over the fields, over the brook, drinking the water rushing with melting snow, lifting his head, clambering to his feet, going on to the flat rock. Pain walked with him, and there was a dark veil of cloud between his eyes and the world. If a chair was pulled out of place he walked into it. Trees and rocks did not move; he felt safer at the rock than anywhere else.

He did not tell anybody about the veil.

He began to make mistakes in stamping the prices on the stock, but Duthbert Mortmain assumed it was because the fall had made him half-witted.

The baby came, a boy, and the mother no longer worked in the store. Paddy O’Keefe had dropped out of school and came in to help. Chuck followed Paddy’s instructions, marking the cans with the stamp which Paddy set for him. He heard Paddy say, “He’s more trouble than he’s worth. Whyn’t you send him to the nuthouse?”

Mortmain muttered something about his wife.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll hurt the baby?” Paddy asked.

After that, Chuck stayed out of the way as much as possible, spending the warm days at the flat rock, the cold ones curled up in the attic. He saw Beezie to talk to only in the evenings, and Sunday afternoons.

“Chuck, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not seeing properly.”

“It’s all right.”

“Ma—”

“Don’t tell Ma!”

“But you ought to see a doctor.”

“No! All they want is any excuse to put me away. You must have heard them, Paddy and Duthbert. They want to put me in an institution. For my own good, Mortmain said to Ma. He said I’m an idiot and I might hurt the baby.”

Beezie burst into tears and flung her arms around her brother. “You wouldn’t!”

“I know I wouldn’t. But it’s the one thing Ma might listen to.”

“And you’re not an idiot!”

His cheeks were wet with Beezie’s tears. “If you tell them about my eyes they’ll put me in an insane asylum for my own good and the baby’s. I’m trying to keep out of the way.”

“I’ll help you, oh, Chuck, I’ll help you,” Beezie promised.

“I have to stay long enough to make sure Matthew sends Zillah to Vespugia. He’s saving the money.”

“Oh, Chuck,” Beezie groaned. “Don’t let them hear you talk like this.”

* * *

As the veil deepened and darkened, his inner vision lightened. When the weather was fine he lay out on the flat rock all day, looking up toward the sky and seeing pictures, pictures more vivid than anything he had seen with unveiled eyes. His concentration was so intense that he became part of all that was happening in the pictures. Sometimes in the evenings he told Beezie about them, pretending they were dreams, in order not to upset her.

“I dreamed about riding a unicorn. He was like moonlight, and so tall I had to climb a tree to get on his back, and we flew among the fireflies, and the unicorn and I sang together.”

“That’s a lovely dream. Tell me more.”

“I dreamed that the valley was a lake, and I rode a beautiful fish sort of like a porpoise.”

“Pa said the valley was a lake, way back in prehistory. Archaeologists have found fish fossils in the glacial rocks. Maybe that’s why you dreamed it.”

“Grandma told us about the lake, the day we blew dandelion clocks.”

“Oh, Chuck, you’re so strange, the way you remember some things …”

“And I dreamed about a fire of roses, and—” He reached gropingly for her hand. “I can move in and out of time.”

“Oh, Chuck!”

“I can, Beezie.”

“Please—please stop.”

“It’s only dreams,” he comforted. “Well, then. But don’t tell Ma.”

“Only you and Grandma.”

“Oh, Chuck.”

He knew the route to the rock so well that it was easier for him to go in the dark, when he could see nothing, than in sunlight when shafts of brilliance penetrated the veil like spears and hurt his eyes and confused his sense of direction.

Time. Time. There wasn’t much time.

Time. Time was as fluid as water.

He stood by Matthew’s couch. “You can’t wait any longer. You have to get Zillah to Vespugia now, or it will be too late.”

Matthew is writing, writing against time. It’s all in the book Pa talked about. They don’t want me to see the book.

Ritchie is cutting a window in Brandon’s room, before leaving for Wales …

But Zillah isn’t there … Why is there an Indian girl instead?

Because it isn’t Zillah’s time. She comes later, in Matthew’s time

Unicorns can move in time

and idiots

space is more difficult

Paddy wants me out of the way. Paddy and Mortmain. Not much time

Did you not learn in Gwynedd that there is room for one king only?

You will be great, little Madog, and call the world your own, to keep or destroy as you will. It is an evil world, little Madog.

You will do good for your people, El Zarco, little Blue Eyes. The prayer has been answered in you, blue for birth, blue for mirth

Which blue will it be

 

They are fighting

up on the cliff

on the steep rock

 

the world

it’s tilting

it’s going too fast

I’m going to fall