Meg stood on the wall beside him. There was nothing to see except the wind blowing through the sun-bleached grasses, and ‘the two tall rocks, turning purple in the autumn evening light. “Are you sure it wasn’t just the rocks or shadows or something?”
“Do rocks or shadows look like dragons?”
“No, but—“
“Meg, they were right by the rocks, all sort of clustered together, wings, it looked like hundreds of wings, and eyes opening and shutting between the wings, and some smoke and little spurts of fire, and I warned them not to set the pasture on fire.”
“How did you warn them?”
“I spoke to them. In a loud voice. And the flames stopped.”
“Did you go close?”
“It didn’t seem wise. I stayed here on the wall and watched for a long time. They kept folding and unfolding wings and sort of winking all those eyes at me, and then they all seemed to huddle together and go to sleep, so I went home to wait for you. Meg! You don’t believe me.”
She asked, flatly, “Well, where have they gone?”
“You’ve never not believed me before.”
She said, carefully, “It’s not that I don’t believe you.” In a strange way she did believe him. Not, perhaps, that he had seen actual dragons—but Charles Wallace had never before tended to mix fact and fancy. Never before had he separated reality and illusion in such a marked way. She looked at him, saw that he had a sweatshirt on over his grubby shut. She held her arms about herself, shivered, and said—although she was quite warm enough— “I think I’ll go back to the house and get a cardigan. Wait here. I won’t be long. If the dragons come back—“
“I think they will come back.”
“Then keep them here for me. I’ll be as fast as I can.”
Charles Wallace looked at her levelly. “I don’t think Mother wants to be interrupted right now.”
“I’m not going to interrupt her. I’m just going to get my cardigan.”
“Okay, Meg,” he sighed.
She left him sitting on the wall, looking at the two great glacial deposits, waiting for dragons, or whatever it was he thought he’d seen. All right, he knew that she was going back to the house to talk to their mother, but as long as she didn’t admit it out loud she felt that she managed to keep at least a little of her worry from him.
She burst into the laboratory.
Her mother was sitting on a tall lab stool, not looking into the microscope in front of her, not writing on the clipboard which rested on her knee, just sitting thoughtfully. “What is it, Meg?”
She started to blurt out Charles Wallace’s talk of dragons, and that he had never had delusions before, but since Charles Wallace himself had not mentioned them to their mother, it seemed like a betrayal for her to do so, though his silence about the dragons may have been because of the presence of Dr. Louise.
Her mother repeated, a little impatiently, “What is it, Meg?”
“What’s wrong with Charles Wallace?”
Mrs. Murry put the clipboard down on the lab counter beside the microscope. “He had some trouble with the bigger boys again in school today.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean, Meg?”
“He said you had Dr. Colubra here for him.”
“Louise was here for lunch, so I thought she might as well have a look at him.”
“And?”
“And what, Meg?”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“We don’t know, Meg. Not yet, at any rate.”
“Charles says you’re worried about him.”
“I am. Aren’t you?”
“Yes. But I thought it was all school. And now I don’t think it is. He got out of breath just walking across the orchard. And he’s too pale. And he imagines things. And he looks—I don’t like the way he looks.”
“Neither do I.”
“What is it? What’s wrong? Is it a virus or something?”
Mrs. Murry hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“Mother, please, if there’s anything really wrong with Charles I’m old enough to know.”
“I don’t know whether there is or not. Neither does Louise. When we find out anything definite, I’ll tell you. I promise you that.”
“You’re not hiding anything?”
“Meg, there’s no use talking about something I’m not sure of. I should know in a few days.”
Meg twisted her hands together nervously. “You really are worried.”
Mrs. Murry smiled. “Mothers tend to be. Where is he now?”
“Oh—I left him on the stone wall—I said I was coming in for a cardigan. I’ve got to run back or he’ll think—“ Without finishing she rushed out of the lab, grabbed a cardigan from one of the hooks in the pantry, and ran across the lawn.
When she reached Charles Wallace he was sitting on the wall, just as she had left him. There was no sign of dragons.
She had not really expected that there would be. Nevertheless, she was disappointed, her anxiety about Charles subtly deepened.
“What did Mother say?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
His large, deep-seeing blue eyes focused on her. “She didn’t mention mitochondria? Or farandolae?”
“Hunh? Why should she?”
Charles Wallace kicked the rubber heels of his sneakers against the wall, looked at Meg, did not answer.
Meg persisted, “Why should Mother mention mitochondria? Isn’t that—talking about them—what got you into trouble your very first day in school?”
“I am extremely interested in them. And in dragons. I’m sorry they haven’t come back yet.” He was very definitely changing the subject. “Let’s wait a while longer for them. I’d rather face a few dragons any day than the kids in the schoolyard. Thank you for going to see Mr. Jenkins on my behalf, Meg.”
That was supposed to be a deep, dark secret. “How did you know?”
“I knew.”
Meg hunched her shoulders. “Not that it did any good.” She had not really had much hope that it would. Mr. Jenkins had been, for several years, the principal of the large regional high school. When he was moved, just that September, to the small grade school in the village, the official story was that the school needed upgrading, and Mr. Jenkins was the only man to do the job. The rumor was that he hadn’t been able to handle the wilder element over at Regional. Meg had her doubts whether or not he could handle anybody, anywhere. And she was completely convinced that he would neither understand nor like Charles Wallace.
The morning that Charles Wallace set off for first grade, Meg was far more nervous than he was. She could not concentrate during her last classes, and when school was finally over and she climbed the hill to the house and found him with a puffed and bleeding upper lip and a scrape across his cheek, she had a sulking feeling of inevitability combined with a burning rage. Charles Wallace had always been thought of by the villagers as peculiar, and probably not quite all there. Meg, picking up mail at the post office, or eggs at the store, overheard snatches of conversations: That littlest Murry kid is a weird one. I hear clever people often have dumb kids. They say he can’t even talk.’
It would have been easier if Charles Wallace had actually been stupid. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t very good at pretending that he didn’t know more than the other six-year-olds in his class. His vocabulary itself was against him; he had, in fact, not started talking until late, but then it was in complete sentences, with none of the baby preliminaries. In front of strangers he still seldom spoke at all—one of the reasons he was thought dumb; and suddenly there he was in first grade and talking like—like his parents, or his sister. Sandy and Dennys got along with everybody. It wasn’t surprising that Charles was resented; everybody expected him to be backward, and he talked like a dictionary.
“Now, children”—the first-grade teacher smiled brightly at the gaggle of new first-graders staring at her that first morning—“I want each one of you to tell me something about yourselves.” She looked at her list. “Let’s start with Mary Agnes. Which one is Mary Agnes?”
A small girl with one missing front tooth, and straw-colored hair pulled tightly into pigtails, announced that she lived on a farm and that she had her own chickens; that morning there had been seventeen eggs.
“Very good, Mary Agnes. Now, let*s see, how about you, Richard—are you called Dicky?”
A fat little boy stood up, bobbing and grinning.
“What have you got to tell us?”
“Boys ain’t like girls,” Dicky said. “Boys is made different, see, like—“
“That’s fine, Dicky, just fine. Well learn more about that later. Now, Albertina, suppose you tell us something.”
Albertina was repeating first grade. She stood up, almost a head taller than the others, and announced proudly, “Our bodies are made up of bones and skinses and muskle and blood cells and stuff like that.”