“May I go by, please, Louise?” Meg asked timidly.
Louise uncoiled, waving slightly in greeting, still looking intently at Meg. Then she bowed her head, and slithered off into the rocks. Meg felt that Louise had been waiting for her to give her a warning for whatever lay ahead, and to wish her well. It was strangely comforting to know that Louise’s well-wishing was going with her.
There was sausage as well as hot porridge for breakfast. Meg felt that she ought to eat heartily, because who knew what lay ahead? But she could manage only a few mouthfuls.
“Are you all right, Meg?” her mother asked.
“Fine. Thanks.”
“You look a little pale. Sure you aren’t coming down with something?”
She’s worried about all of us with this mitochondritis stuff. “Just the normal throes of adolescence,” she smiled at her mother.
Sandy said, “If you don’t want your sausage, I’ll eat it.”
Dennys said, “Half for me, okay?”
Charles Wallace slowly and deliberately ate a full bowl of porridge, but gave the twins his sausage.
“Well, then”—Meg washed her dishes and put them in the rack—“I’m off.”
“Wait for us,” Sandy said.
She did not want to wait for the twins, to listen to their chatter on the walk down to the bus. On the other hand, it would keep her from thinking about what lay ahead. She had thought of Mr. Jenkins for as far back as she could remember with distaste, annoyance, and occasionally outrage, but never before with fear.
When she left the house she had a horrid, premonitory feeling that it would be a long time before she returned. Again she wished that Fortinbras were walking to the bus with them, as he often did, and then returning to make the walk again with Charles Wallace. But this morning he showed no inclination to leave the warmth of the kitchen.
“What do you suppose will happen today?” Sandy asked as they started down the hill in the chill of early morning.
Dennys shrugged. “Nothing. As usual. Race you to the foot of the hill.”
5 The First Test.
Meg and the cherubim reached the deserted schoolyard in safety.
“We’ve got a while to wait,” Meg told him, “and it’s okay for you, you’re invisible. But I’ve got to find a place to hide.” She could not see Proginoskes, but she talked at the faint shimmer in the air where she knew he was.
“You’re too late,” the cherubim said, and Meg swung around to see Mr. Jenkins coming across the schoolyard from the faculty parking lot.
Mr. Jenkins. The ordinary, everyday, usual Mr. Jenkins. There was no snake hissing and clacking at him, and he himself did nothing but continue his way across the school-yard. He looked just as he always looked. He wore his usual dark business suit, and no matter how often it was brushed there was always a small snowfall of dandruff on his shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his eyes were muddy behind his bifocals. He was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, and whenever Meg saw him her feet seemed to grow larger and she couldn’t find a resting place for her hands.
“All right, Margaret, what is this? What are you doing here?” He had every right to sound annoyed.
She had nothing to reply. She felt Proginoskes close to her, felt his mind within hers, but he had nothing to suggest.
“My dear child,” Mr. Jenkins said, and his voice was un-wontedly compassionate. “If you have come again about your little brother, I can now tell you that we are reviewing his case. It is not my policy of education to have one child intimidated by his peers. But our initial testing shows that Charles Wallace’s talents are so unusual that unusual measures must be taken. I’ve had several consultations with the State Board, and we are considering getting a special tutor for him.”
Meg looked warily at the principal. This sounded too good to be true.
And Louise had been trying to warn her of something. Of what?
The cherubim, too, was uneasy. She felt him moving lightly in her mind, feeling her response to this unexpectedly reasonable Mr. Jenkins.
“That is nonsense,” Mr. Jenkins said to Mr. Jenkins. “We cannot make an exception for any one child. Charles Wallace Murry must learn to manage.”
A second Mr. Jenkins was standing beside Mr. Jenkins.
It was impossible. It was just as impossible as—
But there were two identical, dour Mr. Jenkinses standing in front of her.
Proginoskes shimmered, but did not materialize. Meg backed into the shimmer; she felt that the cherubim was opening an invisible wing and pulling her close to him. She could feel his tremendous, wild heartbeat, a frightened heartbeat, thundering in her ears.
“We’re Namers,” she heard through the racing of the heart. “We’re Namers. What is their Name?”
“Mr. Jenkins.”
“No, no. This is the test, Meg, it must be. One of those Mr. Jenkinses is an Echthros, We have to know which is the real Mr. Jenkins.”
Meg looked at the two men who stood glaring at each other. “Progo, you can feel into me. Can’t you feel into them? Can’t you kythe?” .
“Not when I don’t know who they are. You’re the one who knows the prototype.”
“The what?”
“The real one. The only Mr. Jenkins who is Mr. Jenkins. Look—“
Suddenly beside the two Mr. Jenkinses stood a third Mr. Jenkins. He raised one hand in greeting, not to Meg, but to the other two men as he drew level with them. “Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes,” Mr. Jenkins Three said.
The three men wheeled, stiffly, like marionettes, and walked across the schoolyard and into the building.
“We must think. We must think.” Proginoskes’s kythe almost became opaque for a second, and Meg felt that he was restraining himself from spouting fire.
Meg said, “Progo, if you really are a cherubim—“
There was a great and surging invisible wave of indignation all around her.
She hit the clenched fist of one hand against the palm of the other. “Wait. You told me to think, and I’m thinking.”
“You don’t have to think out loud. You don’t have to talk to think, after all. You’re deafening me. Try to kythe with me, Meg.”
“I still don’t understand kything. Is it like mental telepathy?”
Proginoskes hesitated. “You might say that mental telepathy is the very beginning of learning to kythe. But the cherubic language is entirely kything—with you, with stars, with galaxies, with the salt in the ocean, the leaves of the trees.”
“But I’m not a cherubim. How do I do it?”
“Meg, your brain stores all the sensory impressions it receives, but your conscious mind doesn’t have a key to the storehouse. All I want you to do is to open yourself up to me so that I can open the door to your mind’s storehouse.”
“All right. I’ll try.” To open herself entirely to the cherubim, to make herself completely vulnerable, was not going to be easy. But she trusted Proginoskes implicitly. “Listen,” she said, “cherubim have come to my planet before.”
“I know that. Where do you think I got my information?”
“What do you know about us?”
“I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled.”
“It’s beautiful,” Meg said defensively.
She felt a rippling of his wings. “In the middle of your cities?”
“Well—no—but I don’t live in a city.”
“And is your planet peaceful?”
“Well, no—it isn’t very peaceful.”
“I had the idea,” Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, “that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other.”
“Yes, that’s so,but—“
“And children go hungry.”
“Yes.”
“And people don’t understand each other.”
“Not always.”
“And there’s—there’s hate?”
“Yes.”
She felt Proginoskes pulling away. “All I want to do,” he was murmuring to himself, “is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars . . .”
“Progo! You said we were Namers. I still don’t know: what is a Namer?”
“I’ve told you. A Namer has to know who people are, and who they are meant to be. I don*t know why I should have been shocked at finding Echthroi on your planet.”
“Why are they here?”
“Echthroi are always about when there’s war. They start all war.”
‘”Progo, I saw all that awfulness you took me to see, that tearing of the sky, and all, but you still haven’t told me exactly what Echthroi are.”
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.”