A Wind in the Door Page 5

  The fire-spouting beast returned, "I am practically plural. The little boy thought I was a drive of dragons, didn't he? I am certainly not a cherub. I am a singular cherubim."

  "What are you doing here?" Charles Wallace asked.

  "I was sent."

  "Sent?"

  "To be in your class. I don't know what I've done to be assigned to a class with such immature earthlings. I have a hard enough job as it is. I really don't fancy coming back to school at all at my age."

  "How old are you?" Meg held her poncho out wide, ready to use it as a shield.

  "Age, for cherubim, is immaterial. It's only for timebound creatures that age even exists. I am, in cherubic terms, still a child, and that is all you need to know. It's very rude to ask questions about age." Two of the wings crossed and uncrossed. The message had been rueful, rather than annoyed.

  Charles Wallace spoke to the tall man. "You are my teacher, and his teacher, too?"

  "I am."

  Charles Wallace looked up at the strange dark face which was stern and gentle at the same time. "It's too good to be true. I think I must be having a dream. I wish I'd just go on dreaming and not wake up."

  "What is real?" The Teacher stretched out an arm, and gently touched the bruise on Charles Wallace's cheek, the puffed and discolored flesh under his eye. "You are awake."

  "Or if you're asleep," Meg said, "we're all having the same dream. Aren't we, Calvin?"

  "The thing that makes me think we're awake is that if I were to dream about a cherubim, it wouldn't look like that--that--"

  Several very blue, long-lashed eyes looked directly at Calvin. "Proginoskes, as the Teacher told you. Proginoskes. And don't get any ideas about calling me Cherry, or Cheery, or Bimmy."

  "It would be easier," Charles Wallace said.

  But the creature repeated firmly, "Proginoskes."

  Out of the dark form of the Teacher came a deep, gentle rumbling of amusement, a rumbling which expanded and rose and bubbled into a great laugh. "All right, then, my children. Are you ready to start--we will call it, for want of a better word in your language, school--are you ready to start school?"

  Charles Wallace, a small and rather ludicrous figure in the yellow slicker he had pulled on over his pajamas, looked up at the oak-tree height and strength of the Teacher. "The sooner the better. Time's running out."

  "Hey, wait a minute," Calvin objected. "What are you going to do with Charles? You and the--the cherubim can't take him off without consulting his parents."

  "What makes you think I'm planning to?" The Teacher gave an easy little jump, and there he was, comfortably sitting on the tallest of the glacial rocks as though it were a stool, his arms loosely about his knees, the folds of his robe blending with the moonlit stone. "And I came not only to call Charles Wallace. I came to call all three of you."

  Meg looked startled. "All of us? But--"

  "You may address me as Blajeny," the Teacher said.

  Charles Wallace asked, "Mr. Blajeny? Dr. Blajeny? Sir Blajeny?"

  "Blajeny is enough. That is all of my name you need to know. Are you ready?"

  Meg still looked astonished. "Calvin and me, too?"

  "Yes."

  "But--" As always when she felt unsure, Meg was argumentative. "Calvin doesn't need--he's the best student in school, and the best athlete, he's important and everything. And I'm getting along, now. It's Charles who's the trouble--you can see for yourself. School, ordinary school, is just not going to work out for him."

  Blajeny's voice was cool. "That is hardly my problem."

  "Then why are you here?" That Blajeny might have been sent solely to help her brother did not seem at all astonishing to Meg.

  Again came the rumble that bubbled up into a laugh. "My dears, you must not take yourselves so seriously. Why should school be easy for Charles Wallace?"

  "It shouldn't be this bad. This is the United States of America. They'll hurt him if somebody doesn't do something."

  "He will have to learn to defend himself."

  Charles Wallace, looking very small and defenseless, spoke quietly. "The Teacher is right. It's a question of learning to adapt, and nobody can do that for me. If everybody will leave me alone, and stop trying to help me, I'll learn, eventually, how not to be conspicuous. I can assure you I haven't mentioned mitochondria and farandolae lately."

  The Teacher nodded grave approval.

  Charles Wallace moved closer to him. "I'm very glad you haven't come because I'm making such a mess of school. But--Blajeny--if you haven't come because of that, then why are you here?"

  "I have come not so much to offer you my help as to ask for yours."

  "Ours?" Meg asked.

  Charles Wallace looked up at the Teacher. "I'm not much of a help to anybody right now. It isn't just that I'm not getting along at school--"

  "Yes," Blajeny said. "I know of the other problem. Nevertheless you are called, and anybody who is invited to study with one of the Teachers is called because he is needed. You have talents we cannot afford to lose."

  "Then--"

  "We must find out what is making you ill and, if possible, make you well again."

  "If possible?" Meg asked anxiously.

  Calvin asked sharply, "Charles? Ill? What's wrong? What's the matter with Charles?"

  "Look at him," Meg said in a low voice. "Look how pale he is. And he has trouble breathing. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard." She turned to the Teacher. "Oh, please, please, Blajeny, can you help?"

  Blajeny looked down at her, darkly, quietly. "I think, my child, that it is you who must help."

  "Me?"

  "Yes."

  "You know I'd do anything in the world to help Charles."

  Calvin looked questioningly at the Teacher.

  "Yes, Calvin, you, too."

  "How? How can we help?"

  "You will learn as the lessons progress."

  Calvin asked, "Where are we going to have these lessons, then? Where's your school?"

  Blajeny jumped lightly down from the rock. Despite his height and girth he moved, Meg thought, as though he were used to a heavier gravity than earth's. He strode lightly halfway across the pasture to where there was a large, flat rock where the children often went with their parents to watch the stars. He dropped down onto the rock and lay stretched out on his back, gesturing to the others to join him. Meg lay beside him, with Calvin on her other side, so that she felt protected, not only from the cold night wind but from the cherubim, who had reached the rock with the beat of a wing and assorted himself into an assemblage of wings and eyes and puffs of smoke at a discreet distance from Charles Wallace, who was on Blajeny's other side.

  "It's all right, dragons," Charles Wallace said. "I'm not afraid of you."

  The cherubim rearranged his wings. "Proginoskes, please."

  Blajeny looked up at the sky, raised his arm, and made a wide, embracing gesture. The clouds had almost dispersed; only a few rapidly flying streamers veiled the stars, which blazed with the fierce brilliance of the rapidly plummeting mercury. The Teacher's sweeping motion indicated the entire sparkling stretch of sky. Then he sat up and folded his arms across his chest, and his strange luminous eyes turned inwards, so that he was looking not at the stars nor at the children, but into some deep, dark place far within himself, and then further. He sat there, moving in, in, deeper and deeper, for time out of time. Then the focus of his eyes returned to the children, and he gave his radiant smile and answered Calvin's question as though not a moment had passed.

  "Where is my school? Here, there, everywhere. In the schoolyard during first-grade recess. With the cherubim and seraphim. Among the farandolae."

  Charles Wallace exclaimed, "My mother's isolated the farandolae!"

  "So she has."

  "Blajeny, do you know if something's wrong with my farandolae and mitochondria?"

  Blajeny replied quietly, "Your mother and Dr. Colubra are trying to find that out."

  "Well, then, wh
at do we do now?"

  "Go home to bed."

  "But school--"

  "You will all go to school as usual in the morning."

  It was total anticlimax. "But your school--" Meg cried in disappointment. She had hoped that Charles Wallace would never have to enter the old red school building again, that Blajeny would take over, make everything all right ...

  "My children," Blajeny said gravely, "my school building is the entire cosmos. Before your time with me is over, I may have to take you great distances, and to very strange places."

  "Are we your whole class?" Calvin asked. "Meg and Charles Wallace and me?"

  Proginoskes let out a puff of huffy smoke.

  "Sorry--and the cherubim."

  Blajeny said, "Wait. You will know when the time comes."

  "And why on earth is one of our classmates a cherubim?" Meg said. "Sorry, Proginoskes, but it does seem very insulting to you to have to be with mortals like us."

  Proginoskes batted several eyes in apology. "I didn't mean what I said about immature earthlings. If we have been sent to the same Teacher, then we have things to learn from each other. A cherubim is not a higher order than earthlings, you know, just different."

  Blajeny nodded. "Yes. You have much to learn from each other. Meanwhile, I will give each of you assignments. Charles Wallace, can you guess what yours is?"

  "To learn to adapt."

  "I don't want you to change!" Meg cried.

  "Neither do I," Blajeny replied. "Charles Wallace's problem is to learn to adapt while remaining wholly himself."

  "What's my assignment, Blajeny?" Meg asked.

  The Teacher frowned briefly, in thought. Then, "I am trying to put it into earth terms, terms which you will understand. You must pass three tests, or trials. You must start immediately on the first one."

  "What is it?"

  "Part of the trial is that you must discover for yourself what it is."

  "But how?"

  "That I cannot tell you. But you will not be alone. Proginoskes is to work with you. You will be what I think you would call partners. Together you must pass the three tests."

  "But suppose we fail?"

  Proginoskes flung several wings over his eyes in horror at the thought.

  Blajeny said quietly, "It is a possibility, but I would prefer you not to suppose any such thing. Remember that these three trials will be nothing you could imagine or expect right now."

  "But Blajeny--I can hardly take a cherubim to school with me!"

  Blajeny looked affectionately at the great creature, whose wings were still folded protectingly about himself. "That is for the two of you to decide. He is not always visible, you know. Myself, I find him a little simpler when he's just a wind or a flame, but he was convinced he'd be more reassuring to earthlings if he enfleshed himself."

  Charles Wallace reached out and slipped his hand into the Teacher's. "If I could take him, just this way, looking like a drive of dragons, into the schoolyard with me, I bet I wouldn't have any trouble."

  Meg said, "Didn't you tell me you were supposed to bring a pet to school tomorrow?"

  Charles Wallace laughed. "We may bring a small pet tomorrow to share with the class."

  Proginoskes peered under one wing. "I am not a joking matter."

  "Oh, Progo," Meg assured him. "It's only whistling in the dark."

  Charles Wallace, still holding the Teacher's hand, asked him, "Will you come home with us now and meet my mother?"

  "Not tonight, Charles, it is very late for you to be up, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?"

  "Don't you know?"

  "I am only a Teacher, and I would not arrange the future ahead of time if I could. Come, I will walk part of the way back to the house with you."

  Meg asked, "What about Progo--Proginoskes?"

  The cherubim replied, "If it is not the time for Blajeny to meet your family, it is hardly the time for me. I am quite comfortable here. Perhaps you could come meet me early tomorrow morning, and we can compare our night thoughts."

  "Well--okay. I guess that's best. Good night, then."

  "Good night, Megling." He waved a wing at her, then folded himself up into a great puff. No eyes showed, no flame, no smoke.

  Meg shivered.

  Blajeny asked, "Are you cold?"

  She shivered again. "That thunderstorm before dinner--I suppose it was caused by a cold front meeting a warm front, but it did seem awfully cosmic. I never expected to meet a cherubim ..."

  "Blajeny," Calvin said, "you haven't given me an assignment."

  "No, my son. There is work for you, difficult work, and dangerous, but I cannot tell you yet what it is. Your assignment is to wait, without question. Please come to the Murrys' house after school tomorrow--you are free to do that?"

  "Oh, sure," Calvin said. "I can skip my after-school stuff for once."

  "Good. Until then. Now, let us go."

  Charles Wallace led the way, with Meg and Calvin close behind. The wind was blowing out of the northwest, colder, it seemed, with each gust. When they reached the stone wall to the apple orchard, the moon was shining clearly, with that extraordinary brightness which makes light and dark acute and separate. Some apples still clung to their branches; a few as dark as Blajeny, others shining with a silvery light, almost as though they were illuminated from within.

  On top of the pale stones of the wall lay a dark shadow, which was moving slowly, sinuously. It rose up, carefully uncoiling, seeming to spread a hood as it loomed over them. Its forked tongue flickered, catching the light, and a hissing issued from its mouth.

  Louise.

  But this was not the threatening Louise who had hissed and clacked at the impossible Mr. Jenkins; this was the Louise Meg and Charles Wallace had seen that afternoon, the Louise who had been waiting to greet the unknown shadow--the shadow who, Meg suddenly understood, must have been Blajeny.

  Nevertheless, she pressed closer to Calvin; she had never felt very secure around Louise, and the snake's strange behavior that afternoon and evening made her seem even more alien than when she was only the twins' pet.

  Now Louise was weaving slowly back and forth in a gentle rhythm, almost as though she were making a serpentine version of a deep curtsy; and the sibilant sound was a gentle, treble fluting.

  Blajeny bowed to the snake.

  Louise most definitely returned the bow.

  Blajeny explained gravely, "She is a colleague of mine."

  "But--but--hey, now," Calvin sputtered, "wait a minute--"

  "She is a Teacher. That is why she is so fond of the two boys--Sandy and Dennys. One day they will be Teachers, too."

  Meg said, "They're going to be successful businessmen and support the rest of us in the way to which we are not accustomed."

  Blajeny waved this aside. "They will be Teachers. It is a High Calling, and you must not be distressed that it is not yours. You, too, have a Work."

  Louise, with a last burst of her tiny, strange melody, dropped back to the wall and disappeared among the stones.

  "Perhaps we're dreaming after all," Calvin said, wonderingly.

  "What is real?" the Teacher asked again. "I will say good night to you now."

  Charles Wallace was reluctant to leave. "We won't wake up in the morning and find it all never happened? We won't wake up and find we dreamed everything?"

  "If only one of us does," Meg said, "and nobody else remembers any of it, then it's a dream. But if we all wake up remembering, then it really happened."

  "Wait until tomorrow to find what tomorrow holds," Blajeny advised. "Good night, my children."

  They did not ask him where he was going to spend the night--though Meg wondered--because it was the kind of presumptuous question one could not possibly ask Blajeny. They left him standing and watching after them, the folds of his robes chiseled like granite, his dark face catching and refracting the moonlight like fused glass.

  They crossed the orchard and garden and entered the house, as usual, by the
back way, through the pantry. The door to the lab was open, and the lights on. Mrs. Murry was bent over her microscope, and Dr. Colubra was curled up in an old red leather chair, reading. The lab was a long, narrow room with great slabs of stone for the floor. It had originally been used to keep milk and butter and other perishables, long before the days of refrigerators, and it was still difficult to heat in winter. The long work counter with the stone sink at one end was ideal for Mrs. Murry's lab equipment. In one corner were two comfortable chairs and a reading lamp, which softened the clinical glare of the lights over the counter. But Meg could not think of a time when she had seen her mother relaxing in one of those chairs; she inevitably perched on one of the lab stools.

  She looked up from the strange convolutions of the micro-electron microscope. "Charles! What are you doing out of bed?"

  "I woke up," Charles Wallace said blandly. "I knew Meg and Calvin were outside, so I went to get them."

  Mrs. Murry glanced sharply at her son, then greeted Calvin warmly.

  Charles Wallace asked, "Is it okay if we make some cocoa?"

  "It's very late for you to be up, Charles, and tomorrow's a school day."

  "It'll help me get back to sleep."

  Mrs. Murry seemed about to refuse, but Dr. Colubra closed her book, saying, "Why not, for once? Let Charles have a nap when he gets home in the afternoon. I'd like some cocoa myself. Let's make it out here while your mother goes on with her work. I'll do it."

  "I'll get the milk and stuff from the kitchen," Meg said.

  With Dr. Louise present they were not, she felt, free to talk to their mother about the events of the evening. The children were all fond of Dr. Louise, and trusted her completely as a physician, but they were not quite sure that she had their parents' capacity to accept the extraordinary. Almost sure, but not quite. Dr. Colubra had a good deal in common with their parents; she, too, had given up work which paid extremely well in both money and prestige, to come live in this small rural village. ("Too many of my colleagues have forgotten that they are supposed to practice the art of healing. If I don't have the gift of healing in my hands, then all my expensive training isn't worth very much.") She, too, had turned her back on the glitter of worldly success. Meg knew that her parents, despite the fact that they were consulted by the president of the United States, had given up much when they moved to the country in order to devote their lives to pure research. Their discoveries, many of them made in this stone laboratory, had made the Murrys more, rather than less, open to the strange, to the mysterious, to the unexplainable. Dr. Colubra's work was perforce more straightforward, and Meg was not sure how she would respond to talk of a strange dark Teacher, eight or nine feet tall, and even less sure how she would react to their description of a cherubim. She'd probably insist they were suffering from mass psychosis and that they all should see a psychiatrist at once.