“There are a goodly number of cherubim,” Proginoskes replied, “but none exactly alike.”
“That’s it,” Mr. Jenkins said. “That’s precisely it.” Absent-mindedly he brushed at the dandruff and lint on the shoulders of his dark suit.
Blajeny, listening carefully, bowed his great head courteously. “Precisely what, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Nobody should be exactly like anybody else.”
“Is anybody?”
“Those—those—imitation Mr. Jenkinses—to see myself doubled and trebled—there’s nothing left to hold on to.”
Impulsively Meg got up and ran to the principal. “But they aren’t like you, Mr. Jenkins! Nobody is! You are unique. I Named you, didn’t I?”
Mr. Jenkins’s eyes looked blurred and bewildered through the lenses of his spectacles. “Yes. Yes, you did. I suppose that’s why I’m here—wherever here is.” He turned to Blajeny. “Those other Mr. Jenkinses—you called them Echthroi?”
“Yes. The Echthroi are those who hate, those who would keep you from being Named, who would un-Name you. It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy.”
Mr. Jenkins said, heavily, “I fear I have not been a loving person.”
Meg felt a flash of intuition as sharp and brilliant as the cherubim’s flame; like flame, it burned. “Oh, Mr. Jenkins, don’t you see? Every time I was in your office, being awful and hating you, I was really hating myself more than you. Mother was right. She told me that you underestimate yourself.”
Mr. Jenkins responded in a strange voice she had never heard from him before, completely unlike his usual, nasal, shrill asperity. “We both do, don’t we, Margaret? When I thought your parents were looking down on me, I was really looking down on myself. But I don’t see any other way to look at myself.”
Now at last Meg glimpsed the Mr. Jenkins who had bought shoes for Calvin, who had clumsily tried to make those shoes look worn.
Mr. Jenkins turned to Blajeny. “These Echth—“
“Echthroi. Singular, Echthros.”
“These Echthroi who took on—who took on my likeness,” Mr. Jenkins said, “can they cause more trouble?”
“Yes.”
“They would harm Charles Wallace?”
“They would X—extinguish him,” the cherubim said.
Meg reached out in longing and fear towards her brother. “We shouldn’t have left him—“ she started, then closed her mouth. She felt the cherubim moving gently within her, helping her, giving her little shoves of thought, and then she seemed to be with Charles Wallace, not in actuality, not in person, but in her heart. In her heart’s sight she saw their mother carrying him up the stairs, Charles limp in his mother’s arms, legs dangling. Mrs. Murry went into his room, a small, paneled room with a little fireplace, and one wall papered in a blue and white snowflake pattern, a safe, comfortable room. The window looked out onto the pine woods behind the house; the light which came in was gentle, and kind.
Mrs. Murry laid Charles Wallace down on his bed, and began to undress him. The child barely had the strength to help her; he made an effort to smile and said, “I’ll be better soon. Meg will . . .”
“Meg will be home from school in a couple of hours,” their mother said. “She’ll be right up to see you. And Dr. Louise is on her way.”
“Meg isn’t—in school.” Speaking was almost too great an effort.
Mrs. Murry did not contradict him, as perhaps she might have normally, but helped him into his pajamas.
“I’m cold, Mother.”
She pulled the covers up over him. “I’ll get another blanket.”
A sound of feet pounding up the stairs, and the twins burst in:
“What’s this? What’s the matter?”
“Is Charles sick?”
Mrs. Murry answered quietly, “He’s not feeling very well.”
“Bad enough to go to bed?”
“Did he have trouble in school again?”
“School was fine. He took Louise and she made a great hit, evidently.”
“Our Louise?”
“Louise the Larger?”
“Yes.”
“Bully for you, Charles!”
“That’s telling them!”
Charles Wallace managed a reasonably good smile.
“Sandy,” Mrs. Murry said, “please bring up some wood for a fire. It’s a little chilly. Dennys, if you’d please go to the cedar closet and get another blanket . . .”
“Okay. Sure. Right away.”
“And Meg’ll read to you or something when she gets home, Charles.”
Meg thought she heard Charles Wallace saying once again that Meg was not in school, but it was as though a mist swept over the vivid scene, and Charles Wallace’s room was gone, and Meg was standing, pressed close against the cherubim, who had one wing strongly about her.
Blajeny said, “Now, my children, we must have a lesson. Let us make believe that it is daytime. You can, you know. Believing takes practice, but neither you, Calvin, nor you, Meg, is old enough to have forgotten completely how to do it. You must make believe for yourselves and for Mr. Jenkins. This may seem a trivial task, in view of the gravity of the circumstances, but it is practice for what is to come. Now. Make believe. Turn night to day.”
The cherubim withdrew his wing and Meg put her hand in Blajeny’s. Her own hand was very small in comparison, as small as it had been when she was younger than Charles Wallace and had held her father’s hand in complete love and trust. She looked up at Blajeny’s grave, black face, looked into the strange amber eyes which sometimes seemed to hold the cold light of the moon, and which now glowed with the warmth of the sun. Color flooded the imaged sky of Metron Ariston, a vast, arching blue canopy, cloudless, and shimmering with warmth. About the rock the green grasses of summer rippled in the breeze; a bird sang, was joined by another, others, until melody was all around them. The grass was brightened by field flowers, daisies, black-eyed Susans, Indian paintbrushes, butter-and-eggs, purple thistles, all the summer flowers blooming abundantly and brilliantly.
Colors blazed more brightly than normal. Calvin’s hair, the shade of an Indian paintbrush, burned like sunlight. His freckles seemed larger and more profuse than ever. The faded blue of his jacket had deepened to meet the gentian blue of his eyes. He had on one red sock and one purple sock.
Meg’s old kilt, faded from countless washings, looked bright and new, but her hair, she thought, was probably as mouse-brown as ever; and Mr. Jenkins was still pasty and colorless. Louise the Larger, however, looked even larger than usual, and her coils shone with purple and gold.
Meg looked towards Proginoskes and the shining of the cherubim was so brilliant it almost blinded her; she had to look away.
“Now, my children,” Blajeny said, and he included Mr. Jenkins in the appellation, “we will welcome the other member of this class.”
From behind the smaller of the two glacial rocks a tiny creature appeared and scampered over to them. It looked rather like a small, silver-blue mouse, and yet it seemed to Meg to be a sea creature rather than a land creature. Its ears were large and velvety, the fur shading off into lavender fringes at the tips, blowing gently in the breeze like sea plants moving in the currents of the ocean. Its whiskers were unusually long; its eyes were large and milky and had no visible pupil or iris, but there was nothing dulled about them; they shone like moonstones.
It spoke, but with neither a mouse’s squeak nor a human voice. The sound was like harp strings being plucked under water, and the long whiskers vibrated almost as though they were being played. It did not give forth words, and yet it was quite plain that it was saying something like “Hello, are you my classmates?”
Blajeny spoke in the mouse-creature’s language; words did not issue from his mouth; his granite lips were closed; and yet the children heard the lovely rippling harp sound.
The mouse-creature did not seem pleased, and made sounds which conveyed a good deal of doubt. Meg understood it to be complaining that if it had to pass even the most preliminary of examinations with an earthling, it was dubious that it could do so, A cherubim might be of some help, but surely earthlings were nothing but—
Proginoskes said, “I, too, had misgivings about earth-lings. But the girl earthling and I have just come through the first ordeal, and it was the girl who did it.”
The mouse-creature’s whiskers twingled. “It can’t have been much of an ordeal. Can we please get going, Blajeny? We have only a parsec before I make my preliminary report. And I can see I have a great deal to teach whomever I’m unfortunate enough to have as a partner—even if it’s the cherubim.” Its long, lavender tail, which had a fish-like fan at the tip, switched, and its whiskers bristled in Meg’s direction.
Meg bristled, too. “Perhaps when I’m as old as you are I’ll have learned a few things to teach you!”