A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle (4)

 

The great unicorn flung himself into the wind and they were soaring among the stars, part of the dance, part of the harmony. As each flaming sun turned on its axis, a singing came from the friction in the way a finger moved around the rim of a crystal goblet will make a singing, and the song varies in pitch and tone from glass to glass.

But this song was exquisite as no song from crystal or wood or brass can be. The blending of melody and harmony was so perfect that it almost made Charles Wallace relax his hold on the unicorn’s mane.

“No!” Meg cried aloud. “Hold on, Charles! Don’t let go!”

A blast of icy cold cut across the beauty of the flight, a cold which carried a stench of death and decay.

Retching, Charles Wallace buried his face in Gaudior’s mane, his fingers clenching the silver strands as the Echthroid wind tried to drag him from the unicorn’s back. The stench was so abominable that it would have made him loosen his grasp had not the pungent scent of Gaudior’s living flesh saved him as he pressed his face against the silver hide, breathing the strangeness of unicorn sweat. Gaudior’s bright wings beat painfully against invisible wings of darkness beating at them. The unicorn neighed in anguish, his clear tones lost in the howling of the tempest.

Suddenly his hoofs struck against something solid. He whinnied with anxiety. “Hold on tightly, don’t let go,” he warned. “We’ve been blown into a Projection.”

Charles Wallace could hardly be clutching the mane with more intensity. “A what?”

“We’ve been blown into a Projection, a possible future, a future the Echthroi want to make real.” His breath came in gasping gulps; his flanks heaved wildly under Charles Wallace’s legs.

The boy shivered as he remembered those darkly flailing wings and the nauseous odor. Whatever the Echthroi wanted to make real would be something fearful.

They were on a flat plain of what appeared to be solidified lava, although it had a faint luminosity alien to lava. The sky was covered with flickering pink cloud. The air was acrid, making them cough. The heat was intense and he was perspiring profusely under the light anorak, which held in the heat like a furnace.

“Where are we?” he asked, wanting Gaudior to tell him that they were not in his own Where, that this could not possibly be the place of the star-watching rock, of the woods, only a few minutes’ walk from the house.

Gaudior’s words trembled with concern. “We’re still here, in your own Where, although it is not yet a real When.”

“Will it be?”

“It is one of the Projections we have been sent to try to prevent. The Echthroi will do everything in their power to make it real.”

A shudder shook the boy’s slight frame as he looked around the devastated landscape. “Gaudior—what do we do now?”

“Nothing. You mustn’t loosen your hold on my mane. They want us to do something, and anything we do might be what they need to make this Projection real.”

“Can’t we get away?”

The unicorn’s ears flicked nervously. “It’s very difficult to find a wind to ride when one has been blown into a Projection.”

“But what do we do?”

“There is nothing to do but wait.”

“Is anybody left alive?”

“I don’t know.”

Around them a sulfurous wind began to rise. Both boy and unicorn were convulsed with paroxysms of coughing, but Charles Wallace did not loosen his grasp. When the seizure was over, he dried his streaming eyes on the silver mane.

When he looked up again, his heart lurched with horror. Waddling toward them over the petrified earth was a monstrous creature with a great blotched body, short stumps for legs, and long arms, with the hands brushing the ground. What was left of the face was scabrous and suppurating. It looked at the unicorn with its one eye, turned its head as though calling behind it to someone or something, and hurried toward them as fast as its stumps would take it.

“Oh, Heavenly Powers, save us!” Gaudior’s neigh streaked silver.

The anguished cry called Charles Wallace back to himself. He cried,

He took a deep breath and hot air seared his lungs and again he was assailed by an unquellable fit of coughing. He buried his face in the unicorn’s mane and tried to control the spasm which shook him. It was not until the racking had nearly passed that he became aware of something cool brushing his burning face.

He raised his eyes and with awed gratitude he saw snow, pure white snow drifting down from the tortured sky, covering the ruined earth. The monster had stopped its ponderous approach and was staring up at the sky, mouth open to catch the falling flakes.

With the snow came a light wind, a cool wind. “Hold!” Gaudior cried, and raised his wings to catch the wind. His four hoofs left the ground and he launched himself into the wind with a surge of power.

Charles Wallace braced, trying to tighten the grip of his legs about the unicorn’s broad neck. He could feel the wild beating of Gaudior’s heart as with mighty strokes he thrust along the wind through the darkness of outer space, until suddenly they burst into a fountain of stars, and the stench and the horror were gone.

The unicorn’s breath came in great gulps of star-lit air; the wings beat less frantically; and they were safely riding the wind again and the song of the stars was clear and full.

“Now,” said Gaudior, “we go.”

“Where?” Charles Wallace asked.

“Not Where,” Gaudior said. “When.”

Up, up, through the stars, up to the far reaches of the universe where the galaxies swirled in their starry dance, weaving time.

Exhausted, Charles Wallace felt his eyelids drooping.

“Do not go to sleep,” Gaudior warned.

Charles Wallace leaned over the unicorn’s neck. “I’m not sure I can help it,” he murmured.

“Sing, then,” Gaudior commanded. “Sing to keep yourself awake.” The unicorn opened his powerful jaws and music streamed out in full and magnificent harmony. Charles Wallace’s voice was barely changing from a pure treble to a warm tenor. Now it was the treble, sweet as a flute, which joined Gaudior’s mighty organ tones. He was singing a melody he did not know, and yet the notes poured from his throat with all the assurance of long familiarity.

They moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far galaxy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.

He was hardly aware when Gaudior’s hoofs struck ground and the melody dimmed until it was only a pervasive beauty of background. With a deep sigh Gaudior stopped his mighty song and folded his wings into his flanks.

Meg sighed as the beauty of the melody faded and all she heard was the soft movement of the wind in the bare trees. She realized that the room was cold, despite the electric heater which augmented the warm air coming up the attic stairs from the radiators below. She reached over Ananda to the foot of the bed and pulled up her old eiderdown and wrapped it around them both. A gust of wind beat at the window, which always rattled unless secured by a folded piece of cardboard or a sliver of wood stuck between window and frame.

“Ananda, Ananda,” she said softly, “the music—it was more—more real than any music I’ve ever heard. Will we hear it again?”

The wind dropped as suddenly as it had risen, and once again she could feel the warmth coming from the little heater. “Ananda, he’s really a very small boy … Where is Gaudior going to take him now? Whom is he going to go Within?” She closed her eyes, pressing the palm of her hand firmly against the dog.

It was the same Where as the Where of Harcels, but there were subtle differences, though it was still what Gaudior had called Once Upon a Time and Long Ago, so perhaps men still lived in peace and Charles Wallace would be in no danger. But no: time, though still young, was not as young as that, she felt.

The lake lapped close to the great rock and stretched across the valley to the horizon, a larger lake than the lake of Harcels’s time. The rock itself had been flattened by wind and rain and erosion, so that it looked like an enormous, slightly tilted tabletop. The forest was dark and deep, but the trees were familiar, pine and hemlock and oak and elm.

Dawn.

The air was pure and blue and filled with the fragrance of spring. The grass around the rock looked as though it had been covered with a fall of fresh snow, but the snow was a narcissus-like flower with a spicy scent.

On the tabletop stood a young man.

She did not see Charles Wallace. She did not see the unicorn. Only the young man.

A young man older than Charles Wallace. Harcels had been younger. This young man was older, perhaps not as old as Sandy and Dennys, but more than fifteen. She saw no hint of Charles Wallace within the man, but she knew that somehow he was there. As Charles Wallace had been himself and yet had been Harcels, so Charles Wallace was Within the young man.

He had been there all night, sometimes lying on his back to watch the stars swing slowly across the sky; sometimes with his eyes closed, as he listened to the lapping of the small waves on the pale sand, the clunkings of frogs and the hoot of a night bird, the sound of an occasional fish slipping through the water. Sometimes he neither heard nor saw; he did not sleep, but abandoned his senses and lay on the rock patiently opening himself to the wind.

Perhaps it was his gift of kything practiced with Meg that helped Charles Wallace slip more and more deeply into the being of another.

Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd.

Madoc, on the dawning of his wedding day.

Meg’s eyes slowly lowered; her body relaxed under the warmth of the eiderdown; but her hand remained on Ananda as she slid into sleep.

Madoc!

It was for Charles Wallace as though a shuttered window had suddenly been opened. It was not a ballad or a song he was trying to remember, it was a novel about a Welsh prince named Madoc.

He heard Gaudior’s warning neigh. “You are Within Madoc. Do not disturb him with outside thoughts.”

“But, Gaudior, Madoc was the key figure in the book—oh, why can’t I remember more!”

Again Gaudior cut him off. “Stop trying to think. Your job now is to let yourself go into Madoc. Let go.”

Let go.

It was almost like slipping down, deeper and deeper, into the waters of a pool, deeper and deeper.

Let go.

Fall into Madoc.

Let go.

Madoc rose from the rock and looked to the east, awaiting the sunrise with exalted anticipation. His fair skin was tanned, with a reddishness which showed that he was alien to so fierce a sun. He looked toward the indigo line of horizon between lake and sky, with eyes so blue that the sky paled in comparison. His hair, thick and gold as a lion’s mane, was nearly covered with an elaborate crown of early spring flowers. A lavish chain of flowers was flung over his neck and one shoulder. He wore a kilt of ferns.

The sky lightened, and the sun sent its fiery rays over the edge of the lake, reaching up into the sky, pulling itself, dripping, from the waters of the night. As the sun seemed to make a great leap out of the dark, Madoc began to sing in a strong, joyful baritone.

When he finished, still looking out over the water, his song was taken up as though by an echo, a strange, thin, cracked echo, and then an old man, dressed with the same abundance of flowers as Madoc, came out of the forest.

Madoc bent down and helped the old man up onto the rock. For all the Old One’s age, his stringy-looking muscles were strong, and though his hair was white, his dark skin had a glow of health.

When the strange duet was ended, the old man held up his hand in a gesture of blessing. “It is the day, my farsent son.”

“It is the day, my to-be-father. Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd, will be Madoc, son of Reschal, Old One of the Wind People.”

“A year ago today, you sang the song in your delirium,” Reschal said, “and it was the child of my old age who found you in the forest.”

“And it is mirth that is called for,” the young man affirmed, “and we shall sing today for birth, for the birth of the new One which Zyll and I will become when you join us together.”

“On the night that Zyll was born,” the Old One said, “I dreamed of a stranger from a distant land, across a lake far greater than ours—”

“From across the ocean”—the young man put his hand lightly on the Old One’s shoulder—“from the sea which beats upon the shores of Cymru, the sea which we thought went on and on until a ship would fall off at the end of the world.”

“The end of the world—” the old man started, but broke off, listening.

The young man listened, too, but heard nothing. “Is it the wind?”

“It is not the wind.” Reschal looked at the young man and put a gnarled hand on the richly muscled arm. “Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd—how strange those syllables sounded to us. We did not know what is a king, nor truly do we yet.”

“You have no need of a king, Old One of the People of the Wind. Owain, my father, is long buried: I am a lifetime away from Gwynedd in Cymru. When the soothsayer looked into the scrying glass and foretold my father’s death, he saw also that I would live my days far from Gwynedd.”

The old man again lifted his head to listen.

“Is it the wind?” Still, Madoc could hear nothing beyond the sounds of early morning, the lapping of the lake against the shore, the stirring of the wind in the hemlocks which made a distant roaring which always reminded him of the sea he had left behind him.

“It is not the wind.” There was no emotion in the old man’s face, only a continuing, controlled listening.

The young man could not hide the impatience in his voice. “When is Zyll coming?”

The dark Old One smiled at him with affection. “You have waited how many years?”

“I am seventeen.”

“Then you can wait a while longer, while Zyll’s maidens make her ready. And there are still questions I must ask you. Are you certain in your heart that you will never want to leave Zyll and this small, inland people and go back to the big water and your ship with wings?”

“My ship was broken by wind and wave when we attempted to land on the rocky shores of this land. The sails are torn beyond mending.”

“Another ship could be built.”

“Old One, even had I the tools to fell the trees for lumber for a new ship, even had my brother and my companions not perished, I would never wish to leave Zyll and my new brethren.”

“And your brother and your companions?”

“They are dead,” Madoc said bleakly.

“Yet you hold them back so that they cannot continue their journey.”

“We were far from home.” Madoc spoke softly. “It is a long journey for their spirits.”

“Are the gods of Gwynedd so weak they cannot care for their own?”

Madoc’s blue eyes were dark with grief. “When we left Gwynedd in Cymru because of the quarreling of my brethren over our father’s throne, it seemed to us the gods had already abandoned us. For brothers to wish to kill each other for the sake of power is to anger the gods.”

“Perhaps,” the old man said, “you must let the gods of Gwynedd go, as you must free your companions from your holding.”

“I brought them to their death. When my father died, and my brothers became drunk with lust for power, as no wine can make a man drunk, I felt the gods depart. In a dream I saw them turn their backs on our quarreling, saw them as clearly as anything the soothsayers see in their scrying glass. When I awoke, I took Gwydyr aside and said that I would not stay to watch brother against brother, but that I would go find the land the Wise Ones said was at the farther end of the sea. Gwydyr demurred at first.”

“He thought he might become king?”

“Yes, but Gwydyr and I were the youngest. The throne was not likely to be ours while the other five remained alive.”

“Yet you, Madoc, the seventh son, were the favored of the people.”

“Had I let them proclaim me king, there would have been no way to avoid bloodshed. I left Gwynedd to prevent the horror of brother against brother.”

“Have you”—the old man regarded Madoc keenly—“in fact left it?”

“I have left it. Gwynedd in Cymru is behind me. It will be ruled by whomever the gods choose. I do not wish to know. For now I am Madoc, son-to-be of Reschal, soon to be husband of Zyll of the People of the Wind.”

“And Gwydyr? Have you let him go?”

Madoc gazed across the lake. “In many ways it seemed that I was older than he, though there were seven years between us. When we came to the tribe on the Far Side of the Lake he was afraid of their dark skins and hair and their strange singing that was full of hoots and howls, and he ran from them. They kept me as guest, yet I was a prisoner, for they would not let me go into the forest to look for my brother. They sent a party of warriors to search for him, and when they returned they carried only the belt with the jeweled buckle which marked him as the son of a king. They told me he had been killed by a snake; Gwydyr did not know what a snake is, for we have none in Gwynedd. They told me that he had called my name before he died, and that he had left me the Song of the King’s Sons. And they buried him out in the forest. Without me, they buried my brother, and I do not even know the place where he is laid.”

“That is the way of the People on the Far Side of the Lake,” the old man said. “They fear the dead and try to escape the ancient terror.”

“The ancient terror?”

Reschal looked at the tender sky of early morning. “That which went wrong. Once there were no evil spirits to blight the crops, to bring drought or flood. Once there was nothing to fear, not even death.”

“And what happened to bring fear?”

“Who knows? It was so long ago. But is it not in Gwynedd, too?”

“It is in Gwynedd,” Madoc replied soberly, “or brother would not have turned against brother. Yes, we too know what you call the ancient terror. Death, it is thought, or at least the fear of death, came with it. Reschal, I would that I knew where those across the lake had laid my brother, that I may say the prayers that will free his soul.”

“It is their way to put the dead far from them and then to lose the place. They hide the dead, even from themselves, that their spirits may not come to the lake and keep the fish away.”

“And your people?”

The old man pulled himself up proudly. “We do not fear the spirits of our dead. When there has been love during life, why should that change after death? When one of us departs we have a feast of honor, and then we send the spirit to its journey among the stars. On clear nights we feel the singing of their love. Did you not feel it last night?”

“I watched the stars—and I felt that they accepted me.”

“And your brother? Did you feel his light?”

Madoc shook his head. “Perhaps if I could have found the place where they buried him …”

“You must let him go. For the sake of Zyll you must let him go.”

“When will come the Old Man’s daughter?” Madoc asked. “I felt the People on the Far Side of the Lake to try to find my brother’s grave, and in the forest I was quickly lost. For days I wandered, trying to make my way back, straying farther and farther from them. I was nearly dead when Zyll came hunting the healing herbs which are found only in the deepest part of the forest. When will come the Old Man’s daughter? Where is found the heart’s desire? Here, Reschal.”

“You will let Gwydyr go to his place among the stars?”

“Does it call for tears or mirth? Shall we sing for death or birth?” Madoc sang softly. “I have shed my tears for the past. Today is for mirth. Why have you dragged me through tears again?”

“So that you may leave them behind you,” Reschal said, and raised his withered arms to the sun. The lake, the shore, the rock, the forest behind, were bathed in golden light, and as though in response to Reschal’s gesture there came a sound of singing, a strange wild song of spring and flowers and sunlight and growing grass and the beating of the heart of all of those young and in love. And Madoc’s tears were dried, and thoughts of his lost companions and brother receded as the singing filled him with expectancy and joy.

The children of the tribe came first, wearing chains of flowers which flapped against their brown bellies as they danced along. Madoc, shining with delight, turned from the children to the Old One. But Reschal’s eyes were focused on the unseen distance across the lake and he was listening, not to the children, but to that sound for which he had been straining before. And now Madoc thought that he, too, heard a throbbing like a distant heartbeat. “Old One, I hear it now. What is it?”

Reschal gazed across the water. “It is the People Across the Lake. It is their drums.”

Madoc listened. “We have heard their drums before, when the wind blows from the south. But today the wind blows from the north.”

The old man’s voice was troubled. “We have always lived in peace, the People of the Wind and those Across the Lake.”

“Perhaps,” Madoc suggested, “they come to my wedding celebration?”

“Perhaps.”

The children had gathered around the rock and were looking expectantly at Madoc and Reschal. The Old One raised his arm again, and singing drowned out the steady beating of the drums, and the men and women of the tribe, ranging from coltish girls and boys to men and women with white hair and wrinkled skin, came dancing toward the great rock. In their midst, circled by a group of young women, was Zyll. She wore a crown on her head to match Madoc’s, and a short skirt made entirely of spring flowers. Her copper skin glowed as though lit by the sun from within, and her eyes met Madoc’s with a sparkle of love.

Nowhere, Madoc thought, could wedding garments be more beautiful, no matter how much gold was woven into the cloth, nor with how many jewels the velvets and satins were decorated.

The flower-bedecked crowd parted to let Zyll come to the rock. Madoc stooped for her upraised hands, and gently lifted her so that she stood between him and Reschal. She bowed to her father, and then began to move in the ritual wedding dance. Madoc, during the year he had spent with the Wind People, had seen Zyll dance many times before: at the birth of each moon; at the feast of the newborn sun in winter; at the spring and autumn equinox, dance for the Lords of the lake, the sky, the rain and rainbow, the snow and the wind.

But for the Wind Dancers, as well as for all the other Wind People with their various gifts, there was only one Wedding Dance.

Madoc stood transfixed with joy as Zyll’s body moved with the effortless lightness of the spring breeze. Her body leapt upward and it seemed that gravity had no power to pull her down to earth. She drifted gently from sky to rock as the petals fall from flowering trees.

Then she held out her hands to Madoc, and he joined in the dance, marveling as he felt some of Zyll’s effortlessness of movement enter his own limbs.

At first, when Zyll had found Madoc half dead in the forest, and had brought him to the Wind People, they had been afraid of him. His blue eyes, his pale skin, reddened by exposure, his tawny hair, were unlike anything they had ever seen. They approached him shyly, as though he were a strange beast who might turn on them. As they became accustomed to his presence, some of the Wind People proclaimed him a god. But then his anger flashed like lightning, and though there were some who said that his very fieriness announced him the Lord of the storm, he would have none of their attempts to set him apart.

“Stay with your own wind gods,” he commanded. “You have served them well, and you live in the light of their favor. I, too, will serve the Lords of this place, for it is their pleasure that I am still alive.”

Gradually the Wind People began to accept him as one of themselves, to forget his outer differences. The Old One said, “It is not an easy thing to refuse to be worshipped.”

“When people are worshipped, then there is anger and jealousy in the wake. I will not be worshipped, nor will I be a king. People are meant to worship the gods, not themselves.”

“You are wise beyond your years, my son,” Reschal said.

“My father did not want to be worshipped. But some of his sons did. That is why I am here.”

Across the lake the drums were silent.

The Old One watched Madoc and Zyll as their bodies slowly ceased the motions of the dance. Then he lifted Madoc’s hand and placed it over Zyll’s, and then put a hand on each of their heads. And as he did so, the sound of drums came again. Loud and close. Threatening.

A ripple went through the Wind People as they saw three dugout canoes approaching swiftly, each paddled by many men. Standing in the bow of the middle and largest dugout was a tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed man.

With a glad shout Madoc leapt from the rock and ran to the water’s edge. “Gwydyr!”