“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, what 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 tune 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.”