In her attic bedroom Meg regarded Ananda, who thumped her massive tail in a friendly manner. “What’s this about?” Meg demanded.
Ananda merely thudded again, waking the kitten, who gave a halfhearted brrtt and stalked across the pillow.
Meg looked at her battered alarm clock, which stood in its familiar place on the bookcase. The hands did not seem to have moved. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t understand.”
Ananda whined softly, an ordinary whine coming from an ordinary dog of questionable antecedents, a mongrel like many in the village.
“Gaudior,” Meg murmured. “More joyful. That’s a good name for a unicorn. Gaudior, Ananda: that joy without which the universe will fall apart and collapse. Has the world lost its joy? Is that why we’re in such a mess?” She stroked Ananda thoughtfully, then held up the hand which had been pressing against the dog’s flank. It glowed with radiant warmth. “I told Charles Wallace I’m out of practice in kything. Maybe I’ve been settling for the grownup world. How did you know we needed you, Ananda? And when I touch you I can kythe even more deeply than I’ve ever done before.” She put her hand back on the comfortable flank and closed her eyes, shivering with the strain of concentration.
She saw neither Charles Wallace nor the unicorn. She saw neither the familiar earth with the star-watching rock, the woods, the hills, nor the night sky with its countless galaxies. She saw nothing. Nothing. There was no wind to ride or be blown by.
Nothing was. She was not. There was no dark. There was no light. No sight nor sound nor touch nor smell nor taste. No sleeping nor waking. No dreaming, no knowing.
Nothing.
And then a surge of joy.
All senses alive and awake and filled with joy.
Darkness was, and darkness was good. As was light.
Light and darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm.
The morning stars sang together and the ancient harmonies were new and it was good. It was very good.
And then a dazzling star turned its back on the dark, and it swallowed the dark, and in swallowing the dark it became the dark, and there was something wrong with the dark, as there was something wrong with the light. And it was not good. The glory of the harmony was broken by screeching, by hissing, by laughter which held no merriment but was hideous, horrendous cacophony.
With a strange certainty Meg knew that she was experiencing what Charles Wallace was experiencing. She saw neither Charles Wallace nor the unicorn, but she knew through Charles Wallace’s knowing.
The breaking of the harmony was pain, was brutal anguish, but the harmony kept rising above the pain, and the joy would pulse with light, and light and dark once more knew each other, and were part of the joy.
Stars and galaxies rushed by, came closer, closer, until many galaxies were one galaxy, one galaxy was one solar system, one solar system was one planet. There was no telling which planet, for it was still being formed. Steam boiled upward from its molten surface. Nothing could live in this primordial caldron.
Then came the riders of the wind when all the riders sang the ancient harmonies and the melody was still new, and the gentle breezes cooled the burning. And the boiling, hissing, flaming, steaming, turned to rain, aeons of rain, clouds emptying themselves in continuing torrents of rain which covered the planet with healing darkness, until the clouds were nearly emptied and a dim light came through their veils and touched the water of the ocean so that it gleamed palely, like a great pearl.
Land emerged from the seas, and on the land green began to spread. Small green shoots rose to become great trees, ferns taller than the tallest oaks. The air was fresh and smelled of rain and sun, of green of tree and plant, blue of sky.
The air grew heavy with moisture. The sun burned like brass behind a thick gauze of cloud. Heat shimmered on the horizon. A towering fern was pushed aside by a small greenish head on a long, thick neck, emerging from a massive body. The neck swayed sinuously while the little eyes peered about.
Clouds covered the sun. The tropical breeze heightened, became a cold wind. The ferns drooped and withered. The dinosaurs struggled to move away from the cold, dying as their lungs collapsed from the radical change in temperature. Ice moved inexorably across the land. A great white bear padded along, snuffling, looking for food.
Ice and snow and then rain again and at last sunlight breaking through the clouds, and green again, green of grass and trees, blue of sky by day, sparkle of stars by night.
* * *
Unicorn and boy were in a gentle, green glade, surrounded by trees.
“Where are we?” Charles Wallace asked.
“We’re here,” the unicorn replied impatiently.
“Here?”
Gaudior snorted. “Don’t you recognize it?”
Charles Wallace looked around at the unfamiliar landscape. Tree ferns spread their fronds skyward as though drinking blue. Other trees appeared to be lifting their branches to catch the breeze. The boy turned to Gaudior. “I’ve never been here before.”
Gaudior shook his head in puzzlement. “But it’s your own Where, even if it’s not your own When.”
“My own what?”
“Your own Where. Where you stood and called on all Heaven with its power and I was sent to you.”
Again Charles Wallace scanned the unfamiliar landscape and shook his head.
“It’s a very different When,” Gaudior conceded. “You’re not accustomed to moving through time?”
“I’ve moved through fifteen years’ worth of time.”
“But only in one direction.”
“Oh—” Understanding came to the boy. “This isn’t my time, is it? Do you mean that Where we are now is the same place as the star-watching rock and the woods and the house, but it’s a different time?”
“For unicorns it is easier to move about in time than in space. Until we learn more what we are meant to do, I am more comfortable if we stay in the same Where.”
“You know Where we are, then? I mean—When we are? Is it time gone, or time to be?”
“It is, I think, what you would call Once Upon a Time and Long Ago.”
“So we’re not in the present.”
“Of course we are. Whenever we are is present.”
“We’re not in my present. We’re not When we were when you came to me.”
“When I was called to you,” Gaudior corrected. “And When is not what matters. It’s what happens in the When that matters. Are you ready to go?”
“But—didn’t you say we’re right here? Where the star-watching rock was—I mean, will be?”
“That’s what I said.” Gaudior’s hoof pawed the lush green of the young grass. “If you are to accomplish what you have been asked to accomplish, you will have to travel in and out.”
“In and out of time?”
“Time, yes. And people.”
Charles Wallace looked at him in startlement. “What?”
“You have been called to find a Might-Have-Been, and in order to do this, you will have to be sent Within.”
“Within—Within someone else?… But I don’t know if I can.”
“Why not?” Gaudior demanded.
“But—if I go Within someone else—what happens to my own body?”
“It will be taken care of.”
“Will I get it back?”
“If all goes well.”
“And if all does not go well?”
“Let us hold firmly to all going well.”
Charles Wallace wrapped his arms about himself as though for warmth. “And you wonder that I’m frightened?”
“Of course you’re frightened. I’m frightened, too.”
“Gaudior, it’s a very scary thing just to be told casually that you’re going to be inside someone else’s body. What happens to me?”
“I’m not entirely sure. But you don’t get lost. You stay you. If all goes well.”
“But I’m someone else, too?”
“If you’re open enough.”
“If I’m in another body, do I have to be strong enough for both of us?”
“Perhaps,” Gaudior pointed out, “your host will be the stronger of the two. Are you willing?”
“I don’t know …” He seemed to hear Meg warning him that it was always disastrous when he decided that he was capable of taking on, singlehanded, more than anyone should take on.
“It would appear,” Gaudior said, “that you have been called. And the calling is never random, it is always according to the purpose.”
“What purpose?”
Gaudior ignored him. “It appears that you are gifted in going Within.”
“But I’ve never—”
“Are you not able to go Within your sister?”
“When we kythe, then, yes, a little. But I don’t literally go Within Meg, or become Meg. I stay me.”
“Do you?”
Charles Wallace pondered this. “When I’m kything with Meg, I’m wholly aware of her. And when she kythes with me, then she’s more aware of me than she is of herself. I guess kything is something like your going Within—that makes it sound a little less scary.”
Gaudior twitched his beard. “Now you have been called to go Within in the deepest way of all. And I have been called to help you.” The light in his horn pulsed and dimmed. “You saw the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“And you saw how a destroyer, almost since the beginning, has tried to break the ancient harmonies?”
“Where did the destroyer come from?”
“From the good, of course. The Echthros wanted all the glory for itself, and when that happens the good becomes not good; and others have followed that first Echthros. Wherever the Echthroi go, the shadows follow, and try to ride the wind. There are places where no one has ever heard the ancient harmonies. But there is always a moment when there is a Might-Have-Been. What we must do is find the Might-Have-Beens which have led to this particular evil. I have seen many Might-Have-Beens. If such and such had been chosen, then this would not have followed. If so and so had been done, then the light would partner the dark instead of being snuffed out. It is possible that you can move into the moment of a Might-Have-Been and change it.”
Charles Wallace’s fingers tightened in the silver mane. “I know I can’t avert disaster just because Mrs. O’Keefe told me to. I may be arrogant, but not that arrogant. But my sister is having a baby, and I can be strong enough to attempt to avert disaster for her sake. And Mrs. O’Keefe gave me the rune …” He looked around him at the fresh green world. Although he was still wearing boots and the warm Norwegian anorak, he was not uncomfortable. Suddenly song surrounded him, and a flock of golden birds settled in the trees. “When are we, then? How long ago?”
“Long. I took us all the way back before this planet’s Might-Have-Beens, before people came and quarreled and learned to kill.”
“How did we get to here—to long ago?”
“On the wind. The wind blows where it will.”
“Will it take us Where—When—you want us to go?”
The light of the unicorn’s horn pulsed, and the light in the horn, holding the blue of the sky, was reflected in Charles Wallace’s eyes. “Before the harmonies were broken, unicorns and winds danced together with joy and no fear. Now there are Echthroi who are greedy for the wind, as for all else, so there are times when they ride the wind and turn it into a tornado, and you had better be grateful we didn’t ride one of those—it’s always a risk. But we did come to When I wanted, to give us a little time to catch our breaths.”
The golden birds fluttered about them, and then the sky was filled with a cloud of butterflies which joined the birds in patterned flight. In the grass little jeweled lizards darted.
“Here the wind has not been troubled,” Gaudior said. “Come. This glimpse is all I can give you of this golden time.”
“Must we leave so soon?”
“The need is urgent.”
Yes, the need was indeed urgent. Charles Wallace looked up at the unicorn. “Where do we go now?”
Gaudior pawed the lush green impatiently. “Not Where; can you not get that through your human skull? When. Until we know more than we know now, we will stay right here in your own Where. There is something to be learned here, and we have to find out what.”
“You don’t know?”
“I am a mere unicorn.” Gaudior dropped his silver lashes modestly. “All I know is that there is something important to the future right here in this place where you watch stars. But whatever it was did not happen until the ancient music of the spheres was distorted. So now we go to a When of people.”
“Do you know when that When is?”
The light in Gaudior’s horn dimmed and flickered, which Charles Wallace was beginning to recognize as a sign that the unicorn was troubled or uncertain. “A far When. We can ride this wind without fear, for here the ancient harmonies are still unbroken. But it may roughen if the When we enter is a dissonant one. Hold on tight. I will be taking you Within.”
“Within—who am I going Within?” Charles Wallace twined the mane through his fingers.
“I will ask the wind.”
“You don’t know?”
“Questions, questions.” Gaudior stomped one silver hoof. “I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.” The light in the horn pulsed with brilliance; sparks flew from Gaudior’s hoofs, and they were off and up. The smooth flanks became fluid, and slowly great wings lifted and moved with the wind.
The boy felt the wind swoop under and about them. Riding the unicorn, riding the wind, he felt wholly in freedom and joy; wind, unicorn, boy, merged into a single swiftness.
Stars, galaxies, circled in cosmic pattern, and the joy of unity was greater than any disorder within.
And then, almost without transition, they were in a place of rocks and trees and high grasses and a large lake. What would, many centuries later, become the star-watching rock was a small mountain of stone. The woods behind the rock was a forest of towering fern trees and giant umbrageous trees he did not recognize. In front of the rock, instead of the valley of Charles Wallace’s When, there was a lake stretching all the way to the hills, sparkling in the sunlight. Between the rock and the lake were strange huts of stone and hide, half house, half tent, forming a crescent at the lake’s edge.
In front of and around the dwellings was activity and laughter, men and women weaving, making clay from the lake into bowls and dishes, painting the pottery with vivid colors and intricate geometrical designs. Children played at the water’s edge, splashing and skipping pebbles.
A boy sat on an outcropping of rock, whittling a spear with a sharp stone. He was tanned and lean, with shining hair the color of a blackbird’s wing, and dark eyes which sparkled like the water of the lake. His cheekbones were high, and his mouth warm and full. He gave the making of the spear his full concentration. He looked across the glinting waters of the lake and sniffed the scent of fish. Then he turned back to his spear, but his sensitive nostrils quivered almost imperceptibly as he smelled in turn the green of grass, the blue of sky, the red blood of an animal in the forest. He did not appear to notice the unicorn standing behind him on the hill of stone, or if he did, he took the beautiful creature completely for granted. Gaudior’s wings were folded back into the flanks now, so that they were invisible; the light in the horn was steady.
Meg pressed her hand intently against Ananda. The big dog turned her head and licked her hand reassuringly with her warm, red tongue.
Meg felt her senses assailed with an awareness she had never experienced with such intensity before, even in childhood. The blue of sky was so brilliant it dazzled her inner eye. Although it was cold in the attic, she could feel the radiant warmth of the day; her skin drank the loveliness of sun. She had never before smelled rock, nor the richness of the dark earth, nor the wine of the breeze, as she smelled them now.
Why? How? She could see the unicorn, but she could not see Charles Wallace. Where was he?
Then she understood.
Charles Wallace was Within the boy on the rock. In some strange way, Charles Wallace was the boy on the rock, seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears (never had bird song trilled with such sparkling clarity), smelling through his nose, and kything all that his awakened senses received.
Gaudior neighed softly. “You must be careful,” he warned. “You are not Charles Wallace Murry. You must lose yourself as you do when you kythe with your sister. You must become your host.”
“My host—”
“Harcels, of the People of the Wind. You must not know more than he knows. When you think thoughts outside his thoughts, you must keep them from him. It is best if you do not even think them.”
Charles Wallace stirred timidly within Harcels. How would he, himself, accept such an intrusion by another? Had he ever been so intruded?
“No,” Gaudior replied, speaking only to that part of Charles Wallace which was held back from complete unity with Harcels. “We do not send anyone Within unless the danger is so great that—”
“That—”
The light in the horn flickered. “You know some of the possibilities if your planet is blown up.”
“A few,” Charles Wallace said starkly. “It just might throw off the balance of things, so that the sun would burst into a supernova.”
“That is one of the possibilities, yes. Everything that happens within the created Order, no matter how small, has its effect. If you are angry, that anger is added to all the hate with which the Echthroi would distort the melody and destroy the ancient harmonies. When you are loving, that lovingness joins the music of the spheres.”
Charles Wallace felt a ripple of unease wash over him. “Gaudior—what am I supposed to do—Within Harcels?”
“You might start by enjoying being Within him,” Gaudior suggested. “In this When, the world still knows the Old Music.”
“Does he see you, as I do?”
“Yes.”
“He is not surprised.”
“To joy, nothing is surprising. Relax, Charles. Kythe with Harcels. Be Harcels. Let yourself go.” He struck one hoof against rock, drawing sparks, leapt from the rock in a great arc, and galloped into the woods.
Harcels rose, stretched languorously. He, too, leapt from the rock with the gravity-defying ease of a ballet dancer, landed on the springy grass, rolled over in merriment, sprang to his feet, and ran to the water’s edge, calling to the children, the weavers, the potters.
At the edge of the lake he stood very still, isolating himself from the activity around him. He pursed his lips and whistled, a long sweet summons, and then called softly, “Finna, Finna, Finna!”
Halfway across the lake there was a disturbance in the water and a large creature came swimming, leaping, flying, toward Harcels, who in turn flung himself into the water and swam swiftly to meet it.
Finna was akin to a dolphin, though not as large, and her skin was an iridescent blue-green. She had the gracious smile of a dolphin, and the same familiarity with sea and air. As she met Harcels she sent a small fountain of water through her blowhole, drenching the boy, who shouted with laughter.
For a few moments they wrestled together, and then Harcels was riding Finna, leaping through the air, holding tight as Finna dove down, down deep below the surface, gasping as she flashed again up into the sunlight, sending spray in every direction.
It was sheer joy.
What Charles Wallace had known in occasional flashes of beauty was Harcels’s way of life.
In the attic bedroom Meg kept her hand on Ananda. A shudder moved like a wave over them both. “Oh, Ananda,” Meg said, “why couldn’t it have stayed that way? What happened?”
* * *
—When? Charles Wallace wondered.—When are we?
For Harcels, all Whens were Now. There was yesterday, which was gone, which was only a dream. There was tomorrow, which was a vision not unlike today. When was always Now, for there was little looking either backward or forward in this young world. If Now was good, yesterday, though a pleasurable dream, was not necessary. If Now was good, tomorrow would likely continue to be so.
The People of the Wind were gentle and harmonious. On the rare occasions when there was a difference of opinion, it was mediated by the Harmonizer, and his judgment was always accepted. Fish were caught, flesh shot with bow and arrow, never more than needed. Each person in the tribe knew what he was born to do, and no gift was considered greater or less than another. The Harmonizer held a position no more lofty than the youngest cook just learning to build a fire or clean a fish.
One day a wild boar of monstrous size chased a small party of hunters, and the smallest and slowest among them was gored in the side. Harcels helped carry him home, and knelt all through the night with the Healer, bringing fresh cool moss to lay against the fevered wound, singing the prayers of healing as each star moved in its own ordained dance across the sky.
In the morning there was great rejoicing, for not only was the fiery wound cooling but it was recognized that Harcels had found his gift and would be apprenticed to the Healer, and when the Healer went to dwell with those who move among the stars, Harcels would take his place.
The melody was clear and pure. The harmony was undistorted. Time was still young and the sun was bright by day and moved without fear to rest in the realm of distant stars by night.
Harcels had many friends among his people, but his heart’s companions were beasts: Finna, and Eyrn, a great bird something between an eagle and a giant gull, and large enough for Harcels to ride. Eyrn’s feathers were white, tipped with rose, shading to purple. She was crowned with a tuft of rosy feathers, and her eyes were ruby. With Harcels firmly astride she would fly high, high, higher, until the air was thin and the boy gasped for breath. She flew far and high, so that he could see the dwellings of distant tribes, could see the ocean that stretched, it seemed, across all the rest of the world.
Harcels asked the Teller of Tales about the other tribes.
“Leave them be,” the Teller of Tales said in the sharpest voice he had ever been heard to use.
“But it might be fun to know them. They might have things to teach us.”
“Harcels,” the Teller of Tales said, “I, too, have ridden a creature like your Eyrn, and I have had my steed descend in a hidden place, that I might watch unseen. I saw a man kill a man.”
“But why? Why ever would one man kill another?”
The Teller of Tales looked long into the clear eyes of the boy. “Let us hope you will never have to know.”
It was easy for Charles Wallace to live Within Harcels, in the brightness of the young sun, where darkness was the friend of light. One day when Harcels was astride Eyrn, they flew over a cluster of dwellings and the boy started to ask Eyrn to descend, but Charles Wallace gently drew his thoughts to the pleasure of flight as Eyrn threw himself upon a stream of wind and glided with the merest motion of wings. Charles Wallace was not certain that this small interference was permissible; he knew only that if Harcels learned the ways of the tribes who knew how to kill, his joy would vanish with his innocence.
—It was the right thing to do, Meg kythed to him fiercely.—It has to be the right thing.
She looked again at the clock. The hands had barely moved. While the seasons were following each other in swift succession in that Other Time where Charles Wallace lived Within Harcels, time was arrested in her own present moment. Time was moving only in that When in which the land so familiar and dear to her was different, where the flat star-watching rock was a hill of stone, the green valley a lake, and the little woods a dark forest.
She sighed achingly for a time so full of joy that it was difficult to realize it had once been real.
Ananda whined and looked at Meg with great anxious eyes.
“What is it?” Meg asked in alarm. She heard Gaudior’s neigh, and saw a pulsing of silver light, the diamond-brilliant light which lit the unicorn’s horn.
Charles Wallace was astride Gaudior’s great neck, looking from within his own eyes at Harcels, Within whom he had known such spontaneity and joy that his own awareness would evermore share in it. He rubbed his cheek gently against the unicorn’s silver neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“Don’t thank me,” Gaudior snorted. “I’m not the one to decide whom you go Within.”
“Who does, then?”
“The wind.”
“Does the wind tell you?”
“Not until you are Within. And don’t expect it to be this way every time. I suspect that you were sent Within Harcels to help get you accustomed to Within-ing in the easiest way possible. And you must let yourself go even more deeply into your hosts if you are to recognize the right Might-Have-Beens.”
“If I let myself go, how can I recognize?”
“That you will have to discover for yourself. I can only tell you that this is how it works.”
“Am I to be sent Within again now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not as afraid as I was, but, Gaudior, I’m still afraid.”
“That’s all right,” Gaudior said.
“And if I let more of myself go, how can I kythe properly with Meg?”
“If you’re meant to, you will.”
“I’m going to need her …”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I am.”
Gaudior blew three iridescent bubbles. “Hold tight, tight, tight. We’re off on the wind, and there may be Echthroi this time who will try to take you from my back and throw you off the rim of the world.”