A Wind in the Door Page 4

  She stopped, listened, waited for one of the twins to open the kitchen door and see what was going on. But nothing happened except that the wind blew wildly through the pantry. She shivered, and grabbed the first rain clothes that came to hand, a big black rubber poncho that belonged to the twins and had done double duty as a ground cloth for a tent; and Charles Wallace's yellow sou'wester. Then she took the big flashlight from the hook, shut the pantry door firmly behind her, and ran across the lawn, tripping over the croquet wicket. Limping, she crossed the patch of dandelion, burdock, and milkweed that was growing up in the opening the twins had cut in the barberry fence. Once she was in the vegetable garden she hoped that she would be invisible to anybody chancing to look out a window. She could imagine Sandy's or Dennys's reaction if they asked her where she was going and she told them she was looking for dragons.

  Why, in fact, had she come out? And what was she looking for? Was it dragons? Fortinbras and Louise both had seen--and not been afraid of--something, something which had left the feathers and scales. And that something--or somethings--was likely to be uncomfortable in the wet pasture. If it--or they--came to seek shelter in the house, she wanted to be prepared.

  Not only for dragons, in which she did not quite believe, despite her faith in Charles Wallace and the feather with the peculiar rachis, but also for Louise the Larger. The twins insisted that Louise was an unusual snake, but this afternoon was the first time Meg had seen any signs that Louise was anything more than a contented, common garden-variety snake.

  Meg checked the shadows on the wall, but there was no sign of Louise, so she lingered, not at all anxious to cross the apple orchard and go into the north pasture to the two glacial rocks. For a few minutes she would stay in the homely garden, and gather her courage, and be safe from discovery: the twins were hardly likely to come out after dark in the cold and wet, to admire the last few cabbages, or the vine which had borne their prize cucumber, the size of a vegetable marrow.

  The garden was bordered on the east by two rows of sunflowers which stood with their heavy, fringed heads bowed over so that they looked like a huddle of witches; Meg glanced at them nervously; raindrops dripped from their faces with melancholy unconcern, but no longer from the sky. There was a hint of light from the full moon behind the thinning clouds, turning all the vegetables into beings strange and unreal. The gaping rows where once beans had stood, and lettuce, and peas, had a forlorn look; there was an air of sadness and confusion about the carefully planned pattern.

  "Like everything else"--Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads--"it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school."

  She moved slowly along the orchard wall. The cidery smell of fallen apples was cut by the wind which had completely changed course and was now streaming across the garden from the northwest, sharp and glittery with frost. She saw a shadow move on the wall and jumped back: Louise the Larger, it must be Louise, and Meg could not climb that wall or cross the orchard to the north pasture until she was sure that neither Louise nor the not-quite-seen shape was lurking there waiting to pounce on her. Her legs felt watery, so she sat on a large, squat pumpkin to wait. The cold wind brushed her cheek; corn tassels hissed like ocean waves. She looked warily about. She was seeing, she realized, through lenses streaked and spattered by raindrops blowing from sunflowers and corn, so she took off her spectacles, felt under the poncho for her kilt, and wiped them. Better, though the world was still a little wavery, as though seen under water.

  She listened; listened. In the orchard she heard the soft plomp of falling apples; wind shaking the trees; branches rustling. She peered through the darkness. Something was moving, coming closer--

  Snakes never come out in the cold and dark, she knew that. Nevertheless--

  Louise--

  Yes, it was the big snake. She emerged from the rocks of the stone wall, slowly, warily, watchfully. Meg's heart was thumping, although Louise was not threatening. At least, Louise was not threatening her. But Louise was waiting, and this time there was no welcome in the waiting. Meg looked in fascination as the head of the snake slowly weaved back and forth, then quivered in recognition.

  Behind Meg a voice came. "Margaret."

  She whirled around.

  It was Mr. Jenkins. She looked at him in complete bewilderment.

  He said, "Your little brother thought I might find you here, Margaret."

  Yes, Charles would guess, would know where she was. But why would Mr. Jenkins have been speaking to Charles Wallace? The principal had never been to the Murrys' house, or any parents', for that matter. All confrontations were in the safe anonymity of his office. Why would he come through the wet grass and the still-dripping garden to look for her instead of sending one of the twins?

  He said, "I wanted to come find you myself, Margaret, because I feel that I owe you an apology for my sharpness with you last week when you came to see me." He held out a hand, pale in the moonlight wavering behind the clouds.

  In utter confusion she reached out to take his hand, and as she did so, Louise rose up on the wall behind her, hissing and making a strange, warning clacking. Meg turned to see the snake, looking as large and hooded as a cobra, hissing angrily at Mr. Jenkins, raising her large dark coils to strike.

  Mr. Jenkins screamed, in a way that she had never known a man could scream, a high, piercing screech.

  Then he rose up into the night like a great, flapping bird, flew, screaming across the sky, became a rent, an emptiness, a slash of nothingness--

  Meg found that she, too, was screaming.

  It could not have happened.

  There was no one, no thing there.

  She thought she saw Louise slithering back through a dark recess in the stone wall, disappearing--

  It was impossible.

  Her mind had snapped. It was some kind of hallucination caused by the weather, by her anxiety, by the state of the world--

  A thick, ugly smell, like spoiled cabbage, like flower stalks left too long in water, rose like a miasma from the place where Mr. Jenkins had been--

  But he could not have been there--

  She screamed again, in uncontrollable panic, as a tall shape hurtled towards her.

  Calvin. Calvin O'Keefe.

  She burst into hysterical tears of relief.

  He vaulted over the wall to her, his strong, thin arms tight around her, holding her. "Meg. Meg, what is it?"

  She could not control her terrified sobbing.

  "Meg, what's the matter? What's happened?" He shook her, urgently.

  Gasping, she tried to tell him. "I know it sounds incredible--" she finished. She was still trembling violently, her heart racing. When he did not speak, but continued soothingly to pat her back, she said, through a few final, hiccuping sobs, "Oh, Calvin, I wish I had imagined it. Do you think--do you think maybe I did?"

  "I don't know," Calvin said flatly. He continued to hold her strongly, comfortingly.

  Now that Calvin was here, would take over, she was able to manage a slightly hysterical giggle. "Mr. Jenkins always said I have too much imagination--but it's never been that kind of imagination. I've never hallucinated or anything, have I?"

  "No," he replied firmly. "You have not. What's that awful stench?"

  "I don't know. It's not nearly as bad now as it was just before you came."

  "It makes silage smell like roses. Yukh."

  "Calvin--Louise the Larger--it's not the first time today Louise has done something peculiar."

  "What?"

  She told him about Louise that afternoon. "But she wasn't attacking or anything then, she was still friendly. She's always been a friendly snake." She let her breath out in a long, quavering sigh. "Cal, let me have your handkerchief, please. My glasses are filthy and I can't see a thing, and right now I'd like to be able to see what's going on."

  "My handkerchief is filthy." But Calvin fished in his pockets.

  "It's better than
a kilt." Meg spat on her glasses and wiped them. Without their aid she could see no more of the older boy than a vague blur, so she made bold to say, "Oh, Cal, I was hoping you might come over tonight anyhow."

  "I'm surprised you're even willing to speak to me. I came over to apologize for what my brother did to Charles Wallace."

  Meg adjusted her spectacles with her usual rough shove up the nose, just as a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds and illuminated Calvin's troubled expression. She returned his handkerchief. "It wasn't your fault." Then--"I must have had a mental aberration or something, about Louise and Mr. Jenkins, mustn't I?"

  "I don't know, Meg. You've never had a mental aberration before, have you?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins, anyhow."

  She almost shouted, "What did you say!"

  "Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins. Fewmets is my new swear word. I'm tired of all the old ones. Fewmets are dragon droppings, and--"

  "I know fewmets are dragon droppings! What I want to know is why you picked on fewmets, of all things?"

  "It seemed quite a reasonable choice to me."

  Suddenly she was shaking again. "Calvin--please--don't--it's too serious."

  He dropped his bantering tone. "Okay, Meg, what's up about fewmets?"

  "Oh, Cal, I was so sort of shook about the Mr. Jenkins thing I almost forgot about the dragons."

  "The what?"

  She told him, all about Charles Wallace and his dragons, "and he's never hallucinated before, either." She told him again about Louise greeting the shadow of something they had not quite seen, "but it certainly wasn't Mr. Jenkins. Louise wasn't in the least friendly about Mr. Jenkins."

  "It's wild," Calvin said, "absolutely wild."

  "But we did see fewmets, Calvin--or something, more like feathers, really, but not like real feathers. Charles Wallace took one home--there was a whole pile of them--these sort of feathers, and dragon scales, by the biggest rock in the north pasture."

  Calvin sprang to his feet. "Let's go, then! Bring your flashlight."

  It was possible now for her to cross the orchard and go into the pasture with Calvin to take the lead. Uppermost in Meg's mind, superseding fear, was the need to prove that she and Charles Wallace weren't just making something up, that the wild tales she had told Calvin were real--not Mr. Jenkins turning into a flying emptiness in the sky, she did not want that to be real, but the dragons. For if nothing that had happened touched on reality, then she was going out of her mind.

  When they reached the pasture, Calvin took the light from her. "I'll go ahead a bit."

  But Meg followed close on his heels. She thought she could sense disbelief as he swept the arc of light around the base of the rock. The beam came to rest in a small circle, and in the center of the circle shone something gold and glittering.

  "Phew--" Calvin said.

  Meg giggled with relief and tension. "Don't you mean fewmets? Has anybody ever seen a fewmet?"

  Calvin was down on hands and knees, running his fingers through the little pile of feathers and scales. "Okay, okay, this is most peculiar. But what left it? After all, a gang of dragons just doesn't disappear."

  "A drive of dragons," Meg corrected, automatically. "Do you really think it's dragons?"

  Calvin did not answer. He asked, "Did you tell your mother?"

  "Charles Wallace showed the feather to the twins during dinner, and Mother saw it, too. The twins said it wasn't a bird's feather because the rachis isn't right, and then the conversation got shifted. I think Charles shifted it on purpose."

  "How is he?" Calvin asked. "How badly did Whippy hurt him?"

  "He's been hurt worse. Mother put compresses on his eye, and it's turning black and blue. But that's about all." She was not ready, yet, to mention his pallor, or shortness of wind. "You'd think we lived in the roughest section of an inner city or something, instead of way out in the peaceful country. There isn't a day he doesn't get shoved around by one of the bigger kids--it's not only Whippy. Cal, why is it that my parents know all about physics and biology and stuff, and nothing about keeping their son from being mugged?"

  Calvin pulled himself up onto the smaller of the two stones. "If it's any consolation to you, Meg, I doubt if my parents know the difference between physics and biology. Maybe Charles would be better off in a city school, where there're lots of different kinds of kids, white, black, yellow, Spanish-speaking, rich, poor. Maybe he wouldn't stand out as being so different if there were other different people, too. Here--well, everybody's sort of alike. People're kind of proud of having your parents live here, and pally with the president and all, but you Murrys certainly aren't like anybody else."

  "You've managed."

  "Same way the twins have. Playing by the laws of the jungle. You know that. Anyhow, my parents and grandparents were born right here in the village, and so were my great-grandparents. The O'Keefes may be shiftless, but at least they're not newcomers." His voice deepened with an old sadness.

  "Oh, Cal--"

  He shrugged his dark mood aside. "I think maybe we'd better go talk to your mother."

  "Not yet." Charles Wallace's voice came from behind them. "She's got enough worries. Let's wait till the dragons come back."

  Meg jumped. "Charles! Why aren't you in bed? Does Mother know you're out?"

  "I was in bed. Mother doesn't know I'm out. Obviously."

  Meg was near tears of exhaustion. "Nothing is obvious any more." Then, in her big-sister tone of voice: "You shouldn't be out this late."

  "What happened?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Meg, I came out because something frightened you." He sighed, a strangely tired and ancient sigh from so small a boy. "I was almost asleep and I felt you screaming."

  "I don't want to tell you about it. I don't want it to have happened. Where's Fortinbras?"

  "I left him at home and told him not to let on that I wasn't sound asleep in bed. I didn't want him tangling with dragons. Meg, what happened? You've got to tell me."

  Meg said, "Okay, Charles, I don't doubt your dragons any more. No dragons could be more incredible than Mr. Jenkins coming to look for me in the garden, and then turning into a--a great shrieking bird of nothingness." She spoke quickly, because what she was saying sounded so absurd.

  Charles Wallace did not laugh. He opened his mouth to speak, then swung around. "Who's here?"

  "Nobody," Calvin said. "Meg and me. You." But he jumped down from the rock.

  "There's somebody else. Near."

  Meg moved closer to Calvin. Her heart, it seemed, stopped beating.

  "Hush," Charles Wallace said, though they had not spoken. He listened with lifted head, like Fortinbras catching a scent.

  To the right of the pasture was a woods, a small forest of oak, maple, beech, stripped of all but a few brittle leaves, backed by the dark winter richness of assorted spruce and pine. The ground, which the moonlight did not reach, was covered with fallen damp leaves and pine needles which would silence footsteps. Then they heard the sharp crack of a breaking twig.

  Meg and Calvin, straining to peer through the trees, saw nothing.

  Then Charles Wallace cried, "My dragons!"

  They turned around, and they saw, there by the great rock--

  wings, it seemed like hundreds of wings, spreading, folding, stretching--

  and eyes

  how many eyes can a drive of dragons have?

  and small jets of flame

  Suddenly a voice called to them from the direction of the woods, "Do not be afraid!"

  THREE

  The Man in the Night

  A huge dark form strode swiftly through the woods and into the pasture; it reached them in a few strides, and then stood very still, so that the folds of the long robe seemed chiseled out of granite.

  "Do not be afraid," he repeated. "He won't hurt you."

  He?

  Yes. Charles Wallace's drive of dragons was a single creature, although Meg was not
at all surprised that Charles Wallace had confused this fierce, wild being with dragons. She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing, looking at her, looking at Charles Wallace and Calvin and the strange tall man. And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it could certainly start a grass fire if it weren't careful. Meg did not wonder that Charles Wallace had not approached it.

  Again the tall stranger reassured them. "He won't hurt you." The stranger was dark, dark as night and tall as a tree, and there was something in the repose of his body, the quiet of his voice, which drove away fear.

  Charles Wallace stepped towards him. "Who are you?"

  "A Teacher."

  Charles Wallace's sigh was longing. "I wish you were my teacher."

  "I am." The cello-like voice was calm, slightly amused.

  Charles Wallace advanced another step. "And my dragons?"

  The tall man--the Teacher--held out his hand in the direction of the wild creature, which seemed to gather itself together, to rise up, to give a great, courteous bow to all of them.

  The Teacher said, "His name is Proginoskes."

  Charles Wallace said, "He?"

  "Yes."

  "He's not dragons?"

  "He is a cherubim."

  "What!?"

  "A cherubim."

  Flame spurted skywards in indignation at the doubt in the atmosphere. Great wings raised and spread and the children were looked at by a great many eyes. When the wild thing spoke, it was not in vocal words, but directly into their minds.

  "I suppose you think I ought to be a golden-haired baby-face with no body and two useless little wings?"

  Charles Wallace stared at the great creature. "It might be simpler if you were."

  Meg pulled her poncho closer about her, for protection in case the cherubim spouted fire in her direction.

  "It is a constant amazement to me," the cherubim thought at them, "that so many earthling artists paint cherubim to resemble baby pigs."

  Calvin made a sound which, if he had been less astonished, would have been a laugh. "But cherubim is plural."