“Calvin’s mother first,” Meg whispered to the Medium,
The globe became hazy, cloudy, then shadows began to solidify, to clarify, and they were looking into an untidy kitchen with a sink full of unwashed dishes. In front of the sink stood an unkempt woman with gray hair stringing about her face. Her mouth was open and Meg could see the toothless gums and it seemed that she could almost hear her screaming at two small children who were standing by her. Then she grabbed a long wooden spoon from the sink and began whacking one of the children.
“Oh, dear-” the Medium murmured, and the picture began to dissolve. “I didn’t really-”
“It’s all right,” Calvin said in a low voice. “I think I’d rather you knew.”
Now instead of reaching out to Calvin for safety, Meg took his hand in hers, not saying anything in words but trying to tell him by the pressure of her fingers what she felt. If anyone had told her only the day before that she, Meg, the snaggle-toothed, the myopic, the clumsy, would be taking a boy’s hand to offer him comfort and strength, particularly a popular and important boy like Calvin, the idea would have been beyond her comprehension. But now it seemed as natural to want to help and protect Calvin as it did Charles Wallace.
The shadows were swirling in the crystal again, and as they cleared Meg began to recognize her mother’s lab at home. Mrs. Murry was sitting perched on her high stool, writing away at a sheet of paper on a clipboard on her lap. She’s writing Father, Meg thought. The way she always does. Every night.
The tears that she could never learn to control swam to her eyes as she watched. Mrs. Murry looked up from her letter, almost as though she were looking toward the children, and then her head drooped and she put it down on the paper, and sat there, huddled up, letting herself relax into an unhappiness that she never allowed her children to see.
And now the desire for tears left Meg. The hot, protective anger she had felt for Calvin when she looked into his home she now felt turned toward her mother.
“Let’s go!” she cried harshly. “Let’s do something!”
“She’s always so right,” Mrs. Whatsit murmured, looking towards Mrs. Which. “Sometimes I wish she’d just say I told you so and have done with it.”
“I only meant to help-” the Medium wailed.
“Oh, Medium, dear, don’t feel badly,” Mrs. Whatsit said swiftly. “Look at something cheerful, do. I can’t bear to have you distressed!”
“It’s all right,” Meg assured the Medium earnestly. “Truly it is, Mrs. Medium, and we thank you very much.”
“Are you sure?” the Medium asked, brightening.
“Of course! It really helped ever so much because it made me mad, and when I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.”
“Well. kiss me good-by for good luck, then,” the Medium said.
Meg went over to her and gave her a quick kiss, and so did Charles Wallace. The Medium looked smilingly at Calvin, and winked. “I want the young man to kiss me, too. I always did love red hair. And it’ll give you good luck, Laddie-me-love.”
Calvin bent down, blushing, and awkwardly kissed her cheek.
The Medium tweaked his nose. Touve got a lot to learn, my boy,” she told him.
“Now, good-by. Medium dear, and many thanks,” Mrs. Whatsit said. “I dare say well see you in an eon or two.”
“Where are you going in case I want to tune in?” the Medium asked.
“Camazotz,” Mrs. Whatsit told her. (Where and what was Camazotz? Meg did not like the sound of the word or the way in which Mrs. Whatsit pronounced it.) “But please don’t distress yourself on our behalf. You know you don’t like looking in on the dark planets, and It’s very upsetting to us when you aren’t happy.”
“But I must know what happens to the children,” the Medium said. “It’s my worst trouble, getting fond. If I didn’t get fond I could be happy all the time. Oh, well, ho hum, I manage to keep pretty jolly, and a little snooze will do wonders for me right now. Good-by, everyb-” and her word got lost in the general b-b-bz-z of a snore.
“”Ccome,” Mrs. Which ordered, and they followed her out of the darkness of the cave to the impersonal grayness of the Medium’s planet.
“Nnoww, cchilldrenn, yyouu musstt nott bee frrightennedd att whatt iss ggoingg tto hhappenn,” Mrs. Which warned.
“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs. Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”
Without warning Meg was swept into nothingness again. This time the nothingness was interrupted by a feeling of clammy coldness such as she had never felt before. The coldness deepened and swirled all about her and through her, and was filled with a new and strange kind of darkness that was a completely tangible thing, a thing that wanted to eat and digest her like some enormous malignant beast of prey.
Then the darkness was gone. Had it been the shadow, the Black Thing? Had they had to travel through it to get to her father?
There was the by-now-familiar tingling m her hands and feet and the push through hardness, and she was on her feet, breathless but unharmed, standing beside Calvin and Charles Wallace.
“Is this Camazotz?” Charles Wallace asked as Mrs. Whatsit materialized in front of him.
“Yes,” she answered. “Now let us just stand and get our breath and look around.”
They were standing on a hill and as Meg looked about her she felt that it could easily be a hill on earth. There were the familiar trees she knew so well at home: birches, pines, maples. And though it was warmer than it had been when they so precipitously left the apple orchard, there was a faintly autumnal touch to the air; near them were several small trees with reddened leaves very like sumac, and a big patch of goldenrod-like flowers. As she looked down the hill she could see the smokestacks of a town, and it might have been one of any number of familiar towns. There seemed to be nothing strange, or different, or frightening, in the landscape.
But Mrs. Whatsit came to her and put an arm around her comfortingly. “I can’t stay with you here, you know, love,” she said. “You three children will be on your own. We will be near you; we will be watching you. But you will not be able to see us or to ask us for help, and we will not be able to come to you.”
“But is Father here?” Meg asked tremblingly.
“Yes.”
“But where? When will we see him?” She was poised for running, as though she were going to sprint off, immediately, to wherever her father was.
“That I cannot tell you. You will just have to wait until the propitious moment.”
Charles Wallace looked steadily at Mrs. Whatsit. “Are you afraid for us?”
“A little.”
“But if you weren’t afraid to do what you did when you were a star, why should you be afraid for us now?”
“But I was afraid,” Mrs. Whatsit said gently. She looked steadily at each of the three children in turn. “You will need help,” she told them, “but all I am allowed to give you is a little talisman. Calvin, your great gift is your ability to communicate, to communicate with all kinds of people. So, for you, I will strengthen this gift. Meg, I give you your faults.”
“My faults!” Meg cried.
“Your faults.”
“But I’m always trying to get rid of my faults!”
Tes,” Mrs. Whatsit said. “However, I think you’ll find they’ll come in very handy on Camazotz. Charles Wallace, to you I can give only the resilience of your childhood.”
From somewhere Mrs. Who’s glasses glimmered and they heard her voice. “Calvin,” she said, “a hint. For you a hint. Listen well:
… For that he was a spirit too delicate
To act their earthy and abhorr’d commands,
Refusing their grand bests, they did confine him
By help of their most potent ministers,
And in their most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, he didst painfully remain….
Shakespeare. The Tempest.”
“Where are you, Mrs. Who?” Charles Wallace asked. “Where is Mrs. Which?”
“We cannot come to you now,” Mrs. Who’s voice blew to them like the wind. “AUwissend bin ich nicht; doch uiel ist mir bewisst. Goethe. I do not know everything; still many things I understand. That is for you, Charles. .Remember that you do not know everything.” Then the voice was directed to Meg. “To you I leave my glasses, little blind-as-a-bat – But do not use them except as a last resort. Save them for the final moment of peril.” As she spoke there was another shimmer of spectacles, and then it was gone, and the voice faded out with it. The spectacles were in Meg’s hand. She put them carefully into the breast pocket of her blazer, and the knowledge that they were there somehow made her a little less afraid.