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“My, but isn’t he cunning.” Mrs Whatsit beamed at him fondly. “It’s lucky he has someone to understand him.” “But I’m afraid he doesn’t,” Mrs. Murry said. “None of us is quite up to Charles.” “But at least you aren’t trying to squash him down.” Mrs Whatsit nodded her head vigorously. “You’re letting him be himself.”
“If you have some liniment I’ll put it on my dignity,” Mrs Whatsit said, still supine. “I think it’s sprained.
“I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”
I really must learn to read, except I’m afraid it will make it awfully hard for me in school next year if I already know things. I think it will be better if people go on thinking I’m not very bright. They won’t hate me quite so much.”
“What gives around here?” Calvin asked. “I was told you couldn’t talk.” “Thinking I’m a moron gives people something to feel smug about,” Charles Wallace said. “Why should I disillusion them? How old are you, Cal?”
“Do you think things always have an explanation?” “Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we’re not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”
Again Mrs Which’s voice reverberated through the cave. “Therre willl nno llonggerr bee sso manyy pplleasanntt thinggss too llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddoo ssomethingg abboutt thee unnppleassanntt oness.”
“And we’re not alone, you know, children,” came Mrs Whatsit, the comforter. “All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it’s a grand and exciting battle. I know it’s hard for you to understand about size, how there’s very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won’t seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it’s a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it’s done so well.” “Who have our
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“It was a star,” Mrs Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”
“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”
“Nobody suffers here,” Charles intoned. “Nobody is ever unhappy.” “But nobody’s ever happy, either,” Meg said earnestly. “Maybe if you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy.
“Tell me,” the beast said. “What do you suppose you’d do if three of us suddenly arrived on your home planet.” “Shoot you, I guess,” Calvin admitted. “Then isn’t that what we should do with you?”
“We do not know what things look like, as you say,” the beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”
What can I tell you that will mean anything to you? Good helps us, the stars help us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us. Oh, my child, I cannot explain! This is something you just have to know or not know.”
How can I explain it to you? Oh, I know. In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet.” “Yes, yes,” Calvin said impatiently. “What’s that got to do with the Happy Medium?” “Kindly pay me the courtesy of listening to me.” Mrs Whatsit’s voice was stern, and for a moment Calvin stopped pawing the ground like a nervous colt. “It is a very strict form of poetry, is it not?” “Yes.” “There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?” “Yes.” Calvin nodded. “And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does
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“We tend to think things are new because we’ve just discovered them.”
“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.”
“Not everybody is able to see me,” he told her. “I’m real, and most earthlings can bear very little reality.
“Come, littleling. I’ll take you some place yesterday and show you.” “How can you take me yesterday?” “I can’t possibly take you today, silly. It’s time for you to go in to breakfast and your mother dislikes tardiness. And who knows what we may have to do or where we may have to go before tomorrow? Come.”
She could hear, too clearly, her father’s voice, calm and rational, speaking to her mother. “It isn’t just in distant galaxies that strange, unreasonable things are happening. Unreason has crept up on us so insidiously that we’ve hardly been aware of it. But think of the things going on in our own country which you wouldn’t have believed possible only a few years ago.”
“There are still stars which move in ordered and beautiful rhythm. There are still people in this world who keep promises. Even little ones, like your cooking stew over your Bunsen burner. You may be in the middle of an experiment, but you still remember to feed your family. That’s enough to keep my heart optimistic, no matter how pessimistic my mind. And you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”
Proginoskes probed into her mind, searching for words she could understand. “I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming—making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn’t need to hate. That’s why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.”
“What you think is not the point. What you do is what’s going to count.”
“Love. That’s what makes persons know who they are. You’re full of love, Meg, but you don’t know how to stay within it when it’s not easy.”
“Progo! Help me! How can I feel love for Mr. Jenkins?” Immediately he opened a large number of eyes very wide. “What a strange idea. Love isn’t feeling. If it were, I wouldn’t be able to love. Cherubim don’t have feelings.” “But—” “Idiot,” Proginoskes said, anxiously rather than crossly. “Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do. I’ve never had a feeling in my life.
It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy.”
“It is not always on the great or the important that the balance of the universe depends.”
“Time isn’t any more important than size. All that is required of you is to be in the Now, in this moment which has been given us.”
“Did you count the stars or something?” “We don’t have to count them,” Meg said. “They just need to be known by Name.”
“More than that. Interdependence. Not just one thing leading to another in a straight line, but everything and everyone everywhere interreacting.”
“I mean it and I don’t mean it,” Dennys said. “I do think we’ve got our priorities wrong, we human beings. We’ve forgotten what’s worth saving and what’s not, or we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Her father said, “You know, my dears, the world has been abnormal for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”
“And the fire with all the strength it hath,” Charles Wallace said softly. “But what kind of strength?” Meg asked. She looked at the logs crackling merrily in the fireplace. “It can keep you warm, but if it gets out of hand it can burn your house down. It can destroy forests. It can burn whole cities.” “Strength can always be used to destroy as well as create,” Charles Wallace said. “This fire is to help and heal.” “I hope,” Meg said. “Oh, I hope.”
