“I don’t know,” Calvin said flatly. He continued to hold her strongly, comfortingly.
Now that Calvin was here, would take over, she was able to manage a slightly hysterical giggle. “Mr. Jenkins always said I have too much imagination—but it’s never been that kind of imagination. I’ve never hallucinated or anything, have I?”
“No,” he replied firmly. “You have not. What’s that awful stench?”
“I don’t know. It’s not nearly as bad now as it was just before you came.”
“It makes silage smell like roses. Yukh.”
“Calvin—Louise the Larger—it’s not the first time today Louise has done something peculiar.”
“What?”
She told him about Louise that afternoon. “But she wasn’t attacking or anything then, she was still friendly.
She’s always been a friendly snake.” She let her breath out in a long, quavering sigh. “Cal, let me have your handkerchief, please. My glasses are filthy and I can’t see a thing, and right now I’d like to be able to see what’s going on.”
“My handkerchief is filthy.” But Calvin fished in his pockets.
“It’s better than a kilt.” Meg spat on her glasses and wiped them. Without their aid she could see no more of the older boy than a vague blur, so she made bold to say, “Oh, Cal, I was hoping you might come over tonight anyhow.”
“I’m surprised you’re even willing to speak to me. I came over to apologize for what my brother did to Charles Wallace.”
Meg adjusted her spectacles with her usual rough shove up the nose, just as a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds and illuminated Calvin’s troubled expression. She returned his handkerchief. “It wasn’t your fault.” Then— “I must have had a mental aberration or something, about Louise and Mr. Jenkins, mustn’t I?”
“I don’t know, Meg. You’ve never had a mental aberration before, have you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins, anyhow.”
She almost shouted, “What did you say!”
“Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins. Fewmets is my new swear word. I’m tired of all the old ones. Fewmets are dragon droppings, and—“
“I know fewmets are dragon droppings! What I want to know is why you picked on fewmets, of all things?”
“It seemed quite a reasonable choice to me.”
Suddenly she was shaking again. “Calvin—please—don’t —it’s too serious.”
He dropped his bantering tone. “Okay, Meg, what’s up about fewmets?”
“Oh, Cal, I was so sort of shook about the Mr. Jenkins thing I almost forgot about the dragons.”
“The what?”
She told him, all about Charles Wallace and his dragons, “and he’s never hallucinated before, either,” She told him again about Louise greeting the shadow of something they had not quite seen, “but it certainly wasn’t Mr. Jenkins. Louise wasn’t in the least friendly about Mr. Jenkins.”
“It’s wild,” Calvin said, “absolutely wild.”
“But we did see fewmets, Calvin—or something, more like feathers, really, but not like real feathers. Charles Wallace took one home—there was a whole pile of them— these sort of feathers, and dragon scales, by the biggest rock in the north pasture.”
Calvin sprang to his feet. “Let’s go, then! Bring your flashlight.”
It was possible now for her to cross the orchard and go into the pasture with Calvin to take the lead. Uppermost in Meg’s mind, superseding fear, was the need to prove that she and Charles Wallace weren’t just making something up, that the wild tales she had told Calvin were real—not Mr. Jenkins turning into a flying emptiness in the sky, she did not want that to be real, but the dragons. For if nothing that had happened touched on reality, then she was going out of her mind.
When they reached the pasture, Calvin took the light from her. “I’ll go ahead a bit.”
But Meg followed close on his heels. She thought she could sense disbelief as he swept the arc of light around the base of the rock. The beam came to rest in a small circle, and in the center of the circle shone something gold and glittering.
“Phew—“ Calvin said.
Meg giggled with relief and tension. “Don’t you mean fewmets? Has anybody ever seen a fewmet?”
Calvin was down on hands and knees, running his fingers through the little pile of feathers and scales. “Okay, okay, this is most peculiar. But what left it? After all, a gang of dragons just doesn’t disappear.”
“A drive of dragons,” Meg corrected, automatically. “Do you really think it’s dragons?”
Calvin did not answer. He asked, “Did you tell your mother?”
“Charles Wallace showed the feather to the twins during dinner, and Mother saw it, too. The twins said it wasn’t a bird’s feather because the rachis isn’t right, and then the conversation got shifted. I think Charles shifted it on purpose.”
“How is he?” Calvin asked. “How badly did Whippy hurt him?”
“He’s been hurt worse. Mother put compresses on his eye, and it’s turning black and blue. But that’s about all.”
She was not ready, yet, to mention his pallor, or shortness of wind. “You’d think we lived in the roughest section of an inner city or something, instead of way out in the peaceful country. There isn’t a day he doesn’t get shoved around by one of the bigger kids—it’s not only Whippy. Cal, why is it that my parents know all about physics and biology and stuff, and nothing about keeping their son from being mugged?”
Calvin pulled himself up onto the smaller of the two stones. “If it’s any consolation to you, Meg, I doubt if my parents know the difference between physics and biology. Maybe Charles would be better off in a city school, where there’re lots of different kinds of kids, white, black, yellow, Spanish-speaking, rich, poor. Maybe he wouldn’t stand out as being so different if there were other different people, too. Here—well, everybody’s sort of alike. People’re kind of proud of having your parents live here, and pally with the President and all, but you Murrys certainly aren’t like anybody else.”
“You’ve managed.”
“Same way the twins have. Playing by the laws of the jungle. You know that. Anyhow, my parents and grandparents were born right here in the village, and so were my great-grandparents. The O’Keefes may be shiftless, but at least they’re not newcomers.” His voice deepened with an old sadness.
“Oh, Cal—“
He shrugged his dark mood aside. “I think maybe we’d better go talk to your mother.”
“Not yet.” Charles Wallace’s voice came from behind them. “She’s got enough worries. Let’s wait till the dragons come back.”
Meg jumped. “Charles! Why aren’t you in bed? Does Mother know you’re out?”
“I was in bed. Mother doesn’t know I’m out. Obviously.”
Meg was near tears of exhaustion. “Nothing is obvious any more.” Then, in her big-sister tone of voice: “You shouldn’t be out this late.”
“’What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Meg, I came out because something frightened you.” He sighed, a strangely tired and ancient sigh from so small a boy. “I was almost asleep and I felt you screaming.”
“I don’t want to tell you about it. I don’t want it to have happened. Where’s Fortinbras?”
“I left him at home and told him not to let on that I wasn’t sound asleep in bed. I didn’t want him tangling with dragons. Meg, what happened? You’ve got to tell me.”
Meg said, “Okay, Charles, I don’t doubt your dragons any more. No dragons could be more incredible than Mr. Jenkins coming to look for me in the garden, and then turning into a—a great shrieking bird of nothingness.” She spoke quickly, because what she was saying sounded so absurd.
Charles Wallace did not laugh. He opened his mouth to speak, then swung around. “Who’s here?”
“Nobody,” Calvin said. “Meg and me. You.” But he jumped down from the rock.
“There’s somebody else. Near.”
Meg moved closer to Calvin. Her heart, it seemed, stopped beating.
“Hush,” Charles Wallace said, though they had not spoken. He listened with lifted head, like Fortinbras catching a scent.
To the right of the pasture was a woods, a small forest of oak,, maple, beech, stripped of all but a few brittle leaves, backed by the dark winter richness of assorted spruce and pine. The ground, which the moonlight did not reach, was covered with fallen damp leaves and pine needles which would silence footsteps. Then they heard the sharp crack of a breaking twig.
Meg and Calvin, straining to peer through the trees, saw nothing.
Then Charles Wallace cried, “My dragons!”
They turned around, and they saw, there by the great rock—
wings, it seemed like hundreds of wings, spreading, folding, stretching—
and eyes
how many eyes can a drive of dragons have?
and small jets of flame
Suddenly a voice called to them from the direction of the woods, “Do not be afraid!”
3 The Man in the Night.
A huge dark form strode swiftly through the woods and into the pasture; it reached them in a few strides, and then stood very still, so that the folds of the long robe seemed chiseled out of granite.