“I guess so. Yes.”
“And yet your bodies are not close together. And you already know that nothing can separate you from Calvin when you kythe together.”
Yes. She was with Calvin. They were together. She felt the warmth of his quick smile, a smile which always had a slight quirk of sadness and acceptance unusual in a sixteen-year-old. He was not kything in words now, but in great waves of courage, of strength, flowing over and through her.
She accepted it, absorbed it. Fortitude. She was going to need a great deal. She opened herself, drank it in.
“All right,” Proginoskes told them. “We are together. We can continue.”
“What are we to do?” Mr. Jenkins asked.
“The second test,” the cherubim urged. “We must pass the second test.”
“And that is?”
“To Name Sporos. As Meg had to Name you.”
“But Sporos is already Named!”
“Not until he has Deepened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When Sporos Deepens,” Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, “it means that he conies of age. It means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.”
Meg asked, “The little farandolae who saved me—“
“They came of age, Meg.”
She pondered this. “I think I understand—“
“I don’t,” Mr. Jenkins said. “I thought we came here to try to help Charles Wallace, that he is ill because of his mitochondria—“
Proginoskes pushed back impatience. “He is.”
“But what does Sporos have to do with Charles Wallace?”
“The balance of life within Yadah is precarious. If Sporos and the others of his generation do not Deepen, the balance will be altered. If the farandolae refuse to Deepen, the song will be stilled, and Charles Wallace will die. The Echthroi will have won.”
“But a child—“ Mr. Jenkins asked. “One small child— why is he so important?”
“It is the pattern throughout Creation. One child, one man, can swing the balance of the universe. In your own Earth history what would have happened if Charlemagne had fallen at Roncesvalles? One minor skirmish?”
“It would have been an Echthroi victory?”
“And your history would have been even darker than it is.”
“Mr. Jenkins!” Meg called. “Listen, I just remembered: For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
“We must save Charles Wallace!” Mr. Jenkins cried. “What can we do, Progo? What can we do?”
11 Sporos.
A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never separated from each other, no matter how great the distance.
We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.
Calvin asked, “How can you sing with the stars?”
There was surprise at the question: it is the song. We sing it together. That is our joy. And our Being.
“But how do you know about stars—in here—inside—“
How could farae not know about stars when farae and stars sing together?
“You can’t see the stars. How can you possibly know about them?”
Total incomprehension from the farae. If Meg and Calvin kythed in visual images, this was their limitation. The farae had moved beyond physical sight.
“Okay,” Calvin said. “I know how little of ourselves, and of our brains, we’ve learned to use. We have billions of brain cells, and we use only the tiniest portion of them.”
Mr. Jenkins added with his dry, ropy kythe, “I have heard that the number of cells in the brain and the number of stars in the universe is said to be exactly equal.”
“Progo!” Meg asked. “You memorized the names of all the stars—how many are there?”
“How many? Great heavens, earthling, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.”
“I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that’s a great many.”
“But how many?”
“What difference does it make? I know their names. I don’t know how many there are. It’s their names that matter.”
The strong kything of the farae joined Proginoskes. “And the song. If it were not for the support of the singing of the galaxies, we farae on Yadah would have lost the melody, so few of the farandolae are Deepening. The un-Namers are at work.”
Meg felt a sudden chill, a pulling back, a fading of the Deepened farae; there was dissonance in the harmony; the rhythm faltered.
In her mind’s eye an image was flashed of a troop of farandolae dancing wildly about one fara-tree, going faster and faster, until she felt dizzy.
“Sporos is with them,” Proginoskes told her.
“What are they doing? Why are they spinning faster and faster?” The circle of farandolae revolved so rapidly that it
became a swirling blur. The fronds of the great fara around whom they swirled began to droop.
“They are absorbing the nourishment which the fara needs. The fara is Senex, from whom Sporos came.” There was chill in Proginoskes’s words.
The speed of the dancing farandolae became like a scream in Meg’s ears. “Stop!” she cried. “Stop it at once!” There was nothing merry or joyful in the dance. It was savage, wild, furious.
Then, through the raging of the dance came a strong, pure strain of melody, quiet, certain, noble. The dancing farandolae broke their circle and scampered about aimlessly ;-then, led by Sporos, they raced to another fara and began circling it.
The fronds of Senex greened, lifted.
Proginoskes said, “He is strong enough to hold out longer than any of the other farae. But even Senex cannot hold out forever.” He stopped abruptly. “Feel.”
“Feel?”
“The rhythm of the mitochondrion. Is it my tearfulness, or is Yadah faltering?”
“It is not you,” Meg answered the cherubim. They were all very still, listening, feeling. Again there came a slight irregularity in the steady pulsing. A faltering. A missed beat. Then it steadied, continued.
Like a gash through the non-light of Yadah Meg had a brief vision of Charles Wallace lying in his small room, gasping for air. She thought she saw Dr. Louise, but the strange thing was that she could not tell whether it was Dr.
Louise Colubra, or Louise the actual colubra. “Don’t give up. Breathe, Charles. Breathe.” And a steady voice, “It’s time to try oxygen.”
Then she was drawn back within the mitochondrion to Senex, the parent tree of Sporos. She tried to convey to him what she had just seen, but she received nothing from him in return. His incomprehension was even greater than Mr. Jenkins’s had been. She asked Proginoskes, “Does Senex know that Charles Wallace even exists?”
“As you know that your galaxy, the Milky Way, exists.”
“Does he know that Charles Wallace is ill?”
“As you know that your Earth is ill, by fish dying in the rivers, birds dying in the forests, people dying in the choked cities. You know by war and hate and chaos. Senex knows his mitochondrion is ill because the farandolae will not Deepen and many farae are dying. Listen. Kythe.”
A group of farandolae whirled about a fara; fronds drooped; color drained. The dance was a scream of laughter, ugly laughter. Meg smelled the stench which was like the stench in the twins’ garden when she had first encountered an Echthros.
She heard a voice. It was like a bad tape recording of Mr. Jenkins. “You need not Deepen and lose your power to move, to dance. No one can force you to. Do not listen to the farae. Listen to me.”
The great central trunk of the surrounded fara began to weaken.
Meg tried to project herself into the dance, to break the vortex. “Spores, come out! Don’t listen. You were sent to the Teacher. You belong with us. Come out, Sporos, you are meant to Deepen!”
Then it was as though she were the end skater in a violent game of crack-the-whip and suddenly was flung so wildly across the ice that she crashed into the end of the rink. The force with which she had been thrown was so fierce that her kything was completely blacked out.