PUFFIN MODERN CLASSICS

 

MRS FRISBY

and the Rates of NIMH

 

Robert O’Brien was the pseudonym of Robert Leslie Conly. He was born in New York City in 1922 and intended to become a professional pianist. But during the summer vacations when he was a student, he worked in a camp for boys and learned about storytelling — telling stories in the dark proved the best way of learning what kinds of stories children like. When he finished high school he had a variety of jobs and then began to write freelance stories, poems and essays. He was married with four children and was an editor of the National Geographic Magazine in Washington DC until his death in 1973. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a winner of the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal.

ROBERT C. O’BRIEN

MRS FRISBY

and the Rates of NIMH

Illustrated by

Justin Todd

PUFFIN

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First published in the United States of America by Atheneum Publishers 1971 First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1972

Published in Puffin Books 1975  Published in Puffin Modern Classics 1994 This edition published 2011

 

Text copyright © Robert C. O’Brien, 1971 Illustrations copyright © Justin Todd, 1994 Introduction copyright © Julia Eccleshare, 2011 All rights reserved

 

The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

 

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

 

ISBN: 978-0-14-196858-2

Introduction

 

by Julia Eccleshare

Puffin Modern Classics series editor

 

Resourceful mothers are familiar in children’s fiction, but few have to fight against such odds as Mrs Frisby, who will do anything to save the life of her dangerously ill son Timothy. Reading about all she does, it is easy to forget that she is just a field mouse or, more significantly, that she is helped by … rats!

And that’s the point. Within this clever, witty and heartwarming story, the author subverts everything you have ever thought about rats. From being troublesome vermin they are elevated to kind, caring and, above all, highly intelligent and well-organized creatures who think and plan their way out of difficulties. For readers, they are a classic group of vulnerable underdogs who become strong and outwit their oppressors, not through the acquisition of familiar comic-book super powers but by the simpler yet equally effective power of learning to read. It’s a message with strong resonance for all readers who are themselves, in a way, also growing more powerful because of what they are learning even as they read the story.

When Mrs Frisby is directed by a crow to ask the rats for the help she needs to save her son’s life, she little imagines what she’ll find. Apart from their whereabouts in the farmyard, she knows nothing of them, not even that they knew her husband and that he was privy to their secret. Soon she too learns just how these rats are different and how they came about that difference.

The story that Nicodemus, the rat leader, eloquently and elegantly narrates is both entertaining and shocking. It raises serious questions about how humans treat animals and will lead many readers to question the propriety of intervening in nature at all, and of experimenting on animals in particular.

With its strong farmyard setting and its clearly described view of how the natural world survives through the delicately poised interactions between the different creatures in it and their mutual support, this is a tremendous adventure in which all is almost lost many times. It is also a reminder of the importance and power of intelligence in creating a better world and, above all, a celebration of the empowerment and liberation of … reading!

To Catherine Fitzpatrick

Contents

The Sickness of Timothy Frisby Mr Ages

The Crow and the Cat Mr Fitzgibbon’s Plough Five Days

A Favour from Jeremy The Owl

‘Go to the Rats’ In the Rosebush Brutus

In the Library Isabella

A Powder for Dragon The Marketplace

In the Cage The Maze

A Lesson in Reading The Air Ducts

The Boniface Estate The Main Hall

The Toy Tinker Thorn Valley Captured

Seven Dead Rats Escape

At the Meeting The Doctor Epilogue

The Sickness of Timothy Frisby

 

Mrs Frisby, the head of a family of field mice, lived in an underground house in the vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr Fitzgibbon. It was a winter house, such as some field mice move to when food becomes too scarce, and the living too hard in the woods and pastures. In the soft earth of a bean, potato, pea and asparagus patch there is plenty of food left over for mice after the human crop has been gathered.

Mrs Frisby and her family were especially lucky in the house itself. It was a slightly damaged cement block, the hollow kind with two oval holes through it; it had somehow been abandoned in the garden during the summer and lay almost completely buried, with only a bit of one corner showing above ground, which is how Mrs Frisby had discovered it. It lay on its side in such a way that the solid parts of the block formed a roof and a floor, both waterproof, and the hollows made two spacious rooms. Lined with bits of leaves, grass, cloth, cotton fluff, feathers and other soft things Mrs Frisby and her children had collected, the house stayed dry, warm and comfortable all winter. A tunnel to the surface-earth of the garden, dug so that it was slightly larger than a mouse and slightly smaller than a cat’s foreleg, provided access, air, and even a fair amount of light to the living room. The bedroom, formed by the second oval, was warm but dark, even at midday. A short tunnel through the earth behind the block connected the two rooms.

Although she was a widow (her husband had died only the preceding summer), Mrs Frisby was able, through luck and hard work, to keep her family — there were four children — happy and well fed. January and February were the hardest months; the sharp, hard cold that began in December lasted until March, and by February the beans and peas had been picked over (with help from the birds), the asparagus roots were frozen into stone, and the potatoes had been thawed and refrozen so many times they had acquired a slimy structure and a rancid taste. Still, the Frisbys made the best of what there was, and one way or another they kept from being hungry.

Then, one day at the very end of February, Mrs Frisby’s younger son, Timothy, fell sick.

That day began with a dry, bright, icy morning. Mrs Frisby woke up early, as she always did. She and her family slept close together in a bed of down, fluff, and bits of cloth they had gathered, warm as a ball of fur.

She stood up carefully so as not to awaken the children, and walked quietly through the short tunnel to the living room. Here it was not so warm, but not really cold either. She could see from the light filtering down the entrance tunnel that the sun was up, and bright. She looked at the food in her pantry, a hollowed-out space lined with small stones in the earth behind the living room. There was plenty of food for breakfast, and lunch and dinner, too, for that matter; but still the sight depressed her, for it was the same tiresome fare they had been eating every day, every meal, for the last month. She wished she knew where to find a bit of green lettuce, or a small egg, or a taste of cheese, or a muffin. There were eggs in plenty not far off, in the hen-house. But hens and hens’ eggs are too big for a field mouse to cope with; and besides, between the garden and the hen-house there was a wide sward of shrubs and grass, some of it grown up quite tall. Cat territory.

She climbed up the tunnel, emerging whiskers first, and looked around warily. The air was sharp, and there was white frost thick on the ground and on the dead leaves at the edge of the wood across the garden patch.

Mrs Frisby set off over the gently furrowed earth, and when she reached the fence, she turned right, skirting the border of the forest, searching with her bright round eyes for a bit of carrot, a frozen

parsnip, or something green. But there was nothing green at that time of year but the needles on the pine trees and the leaves on the holly, neither of which a mouse — or any other animal, for that matter

— can eat.

And then, straight in front of her, she did see something green. She had reached the far corner of the garden, and there, at the edge of the woods where it met the fence, was a stump. In the stump there was a hole, and out of the hole protruded something that looked a little like a leaf, but was not.

Mrs Frisby had no trouble at all going through the wire fence, but she approached the hole cautiously. If the stump was hollow, as it seemed to be, there was no telling who or what might be living in it.

A foot or so from the hole she stopped, stood still, and watched and listened. She could hear no sound, but from there she could see what the green was. It was, in fact, a yellowish-brownish-green: a bit of a sweet corn husk. But what was a sweet corn husk doing there? The cornfield was in a different part of the farm altogether, away beyond the pasture. Mrs Frisby hopped closer and then, carefully, crept up the side of the stump and peered inside. When her eyes got used to the dark, she saw that she had found a treasure: a winter’s supply of food, carefully stored and then, for some reason, forgotten or abandoned.

But stored by whom? A racoon perhaps? Not very likely, so far from the stream. More likely a squirrel or a ground hog. She knew that both of these felt free to help themselves to the new corn each year, and that they were strong enough to carry ears away and store them.

But whoever had done it, why had he then abandoned the store? And then she remembered. Back in November there had come from near that edge of the woods the sound that sends all of the animals in the forest shivering to their hiding places — the sound of hunters’ guns shooting, the sound that is accompanied, for someone, by a fiery stabbing pain. And then he never needs his stored food again.

Still, since Mrs Frisby did not even know what kind of animal it had been, much less his name, she could not shed many tears over him — and food was food. It was not the green lettuce she had longed for, but she and her children were extremely fond of corn, and there were eight large ears in the stump, a noble supply for a mouse family. Down under the corn she also could see a pile of fresh peanuts (from still another part of the farm), some hickory nuts, and a stack of dried, sweet-smelling mushrooms.

With her forepaws and sharp teeth she pulled off a part of the husk from the top ear of corn and folded it double to serve as a crude carrying bag. Then she pulled loose as many of the yellow kernels as she could easily lift, and putting them in the husk-bag she hopped off briskly for home. She would come back for more after breakfast and bring the children to help.

She backed down the tunnel entrance to her house tail first, pulling the corn after her and calling cheerfully as she went:

‘Children! Wake up! See what I have for breakfast. A surprise!’

They came hurrying out, rubbing their eyes in excitement, for any kind of surprise in food was a rare and festive thing in the cold dead of winter. Teresa, the oldest, came first; crowding close behind her was Martin, the biggest, a strong, quick mouse, dark-haired and handsome like his poor father. Then came Cynthia, the youngest, a slim, pretty girl-mouse, light-haired and, in fact, a little light- headed as well, and over-fond of dancing.

‘Where is it?’ she said. ‘What is it? Where’s the surprise?’ ‘Where is Timothy?’ asked Mrs Frisby.

‘Mother,’ said Teresa, concerned, ‘he says he’s sick and can’t get up.’

‘Nonsense. Martin, tell your brother to get out of bed at once, or he’ll get no breakfast.’

Martin ran to the bedroom obediently but came back in a moment alone.

‘He says he feels too sick, and he doesn’t want any breakfast, even a surprise. I felt his forehead, and it’s burning hot.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘That sounds as if he really is sick.’ Timothy had, on occasion, been known to think he was sick when he really was not. ‘Here, you may all have your breakfast — save Timothy’s — and I’ll go up and see what’s wrong.’

She opened up the green carrying bag and put the corn on the table, dividing it into five equal shares. The dining table was a smooth piece of lath supported on both ends by stones.

‘Corn!’ shouted Martin. ‘Oh, Mother. Where did you ever get it?’

‘Eat up,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘and a little later I’ll show you, because there’s a lot more where this came from.’ And she disappeared into the little hallway that led to the bedroom.

‘A lot more,’ Martin repeated as he sat down with his two sisters. ‘That sounds like enough to last till moving day.’

‘I hope so,’ Cynthia said. ‘When is moving day, anyway?’ ‘Two weeks,’ said Martin authoritatively. ‘Maybe three.’

‘Oh, Martin, how do you know?’ protested Teresa. ‘What if it stays cold? Anyway, suppose Timothy isn’t well enough?’

At this dreadful thought, so casually raised, they all grew worried and fell silent. Then Cynthia said:

‘Teresa, you shouldn’t be so gloomy. Of course he’ll be well. He’s just got a cold. That’s all.’ She finished eating her corn, and so did the others.

In the bedroom Mrs Frisby felt Timothy’s forehead. It was indeed hot, and damp with sweat. She took his pulse and dropped his wrist in alarm at what she felt.

‘Do you feel sick in your stomach?’

‘No, Mother. I feel all right, only cold, and when I sit up I get dizzy. And I can’t get my breath too well.’

Mrs Frisby peered anxiously at his face, and would have looked at his tongue, but in the dark room she could see no more than the dim outline of his head. He was the thinnest of her children and had a dark complexion like his father and brother. He was narrow of face; his eyes were unusually large and bright, and shone with the intensity of his thought when he spoke. He was, Mrs Frisby knew, the smartest and most thoughtful of her children, though she would never have admitted this aloud. But he was also the frailest, and when colds or flu or virus infections came around he was the first to catch them and the slowest to recover. He was also — perhaps as a result — something of a hypochondriac. But there was no doubt he was really sick this time. His head felt as if he had a high fever, and his pulse was very fast.

‘Poor Timothy. Lie back down and keep covered.’ She spread over him some of the bits of cloth they used as blankets. ‘After a while we’ll fix you a pallet in the living room so you can lie out where it’s light. I’ve found a fine supply of corn this morning, more than we can eat for the rest of the winter. Would you like some?’

‘No, thank you. I’m not hungry. Not now.’

He closed his eyes, and in a few minutes he went to sleep. But it was a restless sleep in which he tossed and moaned continually.

In mid-morning Mrs Frisby, Martin, and Cynthia set off for the stump to carry home some more of the corn, and some peanuts and mushrooms (the hickory nuts they would leave, for they were too hard for mouse jaws to crack, and too tedious to gnaw through). They left Teresa at home to look after

Timothy, whom they had wrapped up and helped into a temporary sickbed in the living room. When they returned at lunchtime, carrying heavy loads of food, they found her near tears from worry.

Timothy was much worse. His eyes looked wild and strange from the fever; he trembled continuously, and each breath he took sounded like a gasp for life.

Teresa said: ‘Oh, Mother, I’m so glad you’re back. He’s been having nightmares and shouting about monsters and cats; and when I talk to him, he doesn’t hear me at all.’

Not only was Timothy not hearing with his ears; his eyes, though wide open, were not seeing, or if they were, he was not recognizing what they saw. When his mother tried to talk to him, to hold his hand and ask him how he felt, he stared past her as if she did not exist. Then he gave out a long, low moan and seemed to be trying to say something, but the words would not form properly and made no sense at all.

The other children stared in frightened silence. Finally Martin asked: ‘Mother, what is it? What’s wrong with him?’

‘He is terribly ill. His fever is so high he has become delirious. There is nothing for it — I will have to go and see Mr Ages. Timothy must have medicine.’

Mr Ages

 

Mr Ages was a white mouse who lived across the farm and beyond, in a house that was part of a brick wall. The wall lined the basement of what had once been a large farmhouse. The farmhouse itself had burned down so many years ago that nobody could remember what it had looked like nor who had lived there. The basement remained, a great square hole in the ground; and in its crumbling walls, protected from the wind and snow, numerous small creatures lived. In summer there were snakes, dangerous to Mrs Frisby, but there was no need to worry about them in winter.

Just the same, it was a long, hard journey and could be risky unless she was extremely cautious. It was so far, in fact, that Mrs Frisby would not ordinarily have set out so late in the day, for fear that the dark would catch her before she got back. But Timothy obviously could not wait until the next day. So only five minutes after she had announced that she must go, she was gone.

If she had been able to follow her nose, that is, to take the shortest route to where Mr Ages lived, her journey would have been easy enough. But since that would have led her close to the farmhouse and the barn, and since the cat stalked those grounds relentlessly, she had to plot a much more roundabout way, circling the whole wide farmyard and sticking to the fringe of the woods.

She loped along briskly, moving in the easy, horse-like canter mice use when they are trying to cover ground. Her progress was almost completely noiseless; she chose her path where the earth was bare, or where grass grew, and she avoided dead leaves, which would rustle and crackle even under her small weight. Always she kept an eye out for hiding places — logs, roots, stones, things to scurry under if she should meet a larger animal who might be unfriendly. For though the cat was number one, there were other things in the woods that chased mice.

And as she did all this, she worried about Timothy and hoped that Mr Ages would know something that would help him.

 

*

It was more than two hours later that she saw she was getting close to the brick wall where he lived. Though her husband had been a great friend of Mr Ages and had visited him often, Mrs Frisby herself had been there only once before, and that had been in summer. Still, she remembered the place clearly. It was an odd sort of clearing in the woods. Long ago, when the old house had been lived in, before it had burned, there must have been a wide lawn around it. Over the years this clearing had grown over with a strange mixture of high, rank grass, tall weeds, berries and wild flowers. In the summer it was a wild and beautiful place, bright with blooms and full of the smell of blackberry blossoms and purple clover. There were harsher plants as well — spiny thistles and poisonous nightshade, and bees droning everywhere.

But in winter it had a bleak and almost ghostly look, for the blossoms and the green leaves were gone, and only the dry skeletons of the weeds stood, hung with stalks and seeds and pods that rattled in the wind. It was from these seeds and others, and from the flowers and roots beneath them, that Mr Ages made the draughts and powders that could sometimes save the sick from dying.

 

The time she had been here before — that was for Timothy, too, when he was only a baby, scarcely bigger than a marble. He had wandered, while playing with the other children, a little way from them and had been bitten or stung by something poisonous. They did not know what. When the others found

him, he lay curled in a ball, paralysed and scarcely able to breathe.

That time her husband Mr Frisby had been alive, and between them, taking turns, they had managed to carry Timothy to Mr Ages’ house. It was a sad and frightening journey, and when they arrived they had been afraid he might already be dead. Mr Ages looked at him, examined his tongue, felt his pulse, and found a small red lump near his neck. ‘Spider,’ he said. ‘Not a black widow, but bad enough.’ He had forced a few drops of milky liquid into Timothy’s mouth and held him upright so that it could trickle down his throat, for Timothy could not swallow. In a few minutes his small muscles had unlocked, and he was able to move his arms and legs. ‘He’ll be all right,’ said Mr Ages, ‘but weak for a few hours.’

The trip back home had been a happy one, and the other children were wide-eyed with joy to see Timothy alive. Yet Mrs Frisby thought that this had been the beginning of his frailness. From that time on he tended to stumble a little when he walked, especially when he was tired; he never grew as big or as vigorous as his brother Martin. But he thought a great deal more, and in that he resembled his father.

 

Now she reached Mr Ages’ house, a hole in the brick wall where one end of a heavy floor beam had once rested. It was about two feet below the top of the wall, and one reached it by climbing down a sort of rough stairway of broken brick ends. She knocked on his door, made of a piece of shingle. ‘Oh, let him be in, please,’ she thought, but he was not. There was no answer, so she sat down to wait on the narrow ledge of brick in front of his door.

Half an hour passed, the sun sinking lower in the west all the time, before she heard a slight scratching noise up above, and there he came, carrying a cloth sack bulging with some kind of lumpy material. His fur was a soft grey-white, and so glossy he seemed almost to glow. Mrs Frisby had heard that Mr Ages was not truly a white mouse; that is, he had not been born with white fur, but had turned white from old age. Whether this was so or not she did not know. Certainly he seemed very old, and very wise; yet he walked nimbly enough.

‘Oh, Mr Ages, I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me, Mrs Frisby.’

‘Of course I remember you. And I was sad to hear about poor Mr Frisby. How is your young son — Timothy, was it?’

‘It’s about him I’ve come to see you. He’s taken terribly sick.’

‘Has he? I was afraid he might turn out to be not as strong as the others.’ ‘I hoped you might be able to help him.’

‘That may be. Come in, please, so I can put down this sack.’

Mr Ages’ house, somewhat larger than a shoebox but about the same shape, resembled the house of a hermit. It was bare of furniture except for a bit of bedding in one corner, a stool made of a piece of brick, and another piece of brick worn smooth from use as a pestle on which he ground out his medicines. Along one entire wall, arranged neatly in small piles, stood the raw materials he had collected: roots, seeds, dried leaves, pods, strips of bark and shrivelled mushrooms.

To this row he now added the contents of his sack. It held a number of small plants, all of them the same kind, with stringy roots and dark, veined green leaves that looked like mint.

‘Pipsissewa,’ said Mr Ages. ‘Botanically, Chimaphila umbellata. It stays green all winter, and makes a very useful spring tonic. Most people use only the leaves, but I have found the roots even more effective.’ He arranged the plants in an orderly pile. ‘But that’s not what you’re here for. What’s

wrong with young Timothy?’

‘He has a very high fever. He’s delirious. I don’t know what to do.’ ‘How high?’

‘So high that he feels burning hot to the touch, runs with perspiration, and yet he shivers with cold at the same time.’

‘Keep him wrapped up in a blanket.’ ‘I do.’

‘And his pulse?’

‘So fast that you cannot tell one heartbeat from the next.’ ‘His tongue?’

‘So coated that it looks purple.’ ‘How does he breathe?’

‘He breathes very rapidly, and the air rasps in his chest. He said, at first, that he could not get his breath.’

‘But he does not cough.’ ‘No.’

‘He has pneumonia,’ said Mr Ages. ‘I have some medicine that will help him. But the most important thing is to keep him warm. And he must stay in bed.’ He went to the back of his house, and from a ledge formed by a projecting brick he took three packets of medicine, powders neatly wrapped in white paper.

‘Give him one of these tonight. Mix it in water and make him drink it. If he is still delirious, hold his nose and pour it down his throat. Give him the second one tomorrow morning, and the third the next morning.’

Mrs Frisby took the packages. ‘Will he get better?’ she asked, dreading to hear the answer.

‘He will get better this time. His fever will be less on the second day, and gone the third, after he has taken all the medicine. That does not mean he will have recovered; his lungs will still be terribly weak and sensitive. If he gets the least bit cold, or breathes cold air — even a breath or two — the pneumonia will surely come back worse than before. And the second time he may not recover. This will be true for at least three weeks, and more likely a month.’

‘And after that?’

‘Even after that he should be careful, though we may hope by then the weather will be warmer.’

By now the sun was getting low in the west, settling into the high mountains beyond the woods.

Mrs Frisby thanked Mr Ages and set out for home as quickly as she could go.

The Crow and the Cat

 

Mrs Frisby looked again at the sun and saw that she faced an unpleasant choice. She could go home by the same roundabout way she had come, in which case she would surely end up walking alone in the woods in the dark — a frightening prospect, for at night the forest was alive with danger. Then the owl came out to hunt, and foxes, weasels and strange wild cats stalked among the tree trunks.

The other choice would be dangerous, too, but with luck it would get her home before dark. That would be to take a straighter route, across the farmyard between the barn and the chicken house, going not too close to the house but cutting the distance by half. The cat would be there somewhere, but by daylight — and by staying in the open, away from the shrubs — she could probably spot him before he saw her.

The cat: He was called Dragon. Farmer Fitzgibbon’s wife had given him the name as a joke when he was a small kitten pretending to be fierce. But when he grew up, the name turned out to be an apt one. He was enormous, with a huge, broad head and a large mouth full of curving fangs, needle sharp. He had seven claws on each foot and a thick, furry tail, which lashed angrily from side to side. In colour he was orange and white, with glaring yellow eyes; and when he leaped to kill, he gave a high, strangled scream that froze his victims where they stood.

But Mrs Frisby preferred not to think about that. Instead, as she came out of the woods from Mr Ages’ house and reached the farmyard fence she thought about Timothy. She thought of how his eyes shone with merriment when he made up small jokes, which he did frequently, and how invariably kind he was to his small, scatterbrained sister Cynthia. The other children sometimes laughed at her when she made mistakes, or grew impatient with her because she was forever losing things, but Timothy never did. Instead, he would help her find them. And when Cynthia herself had been sick in bed with a cold, he had sat by her side for hours and entertained her with stories. He made these up out of his head, and he seemed to have a bottomless supply of them.

Taking a firm grip on her packets of medicine, Mrs Frisby went under the fence and set out towards the farmyard. The first stretch was a long pasture; the barn itself, square and red and big, rose in the distance to her right; to her left, farther off were the chicken houses.

When at length she came abreast of the barn, she saw the wire fence that marked the other end of the pasture; and as she approached it, she was startled by a sudden outburst of noise. She thought at first it was a hen, strayed from the chicken-yard — caught by a fox? She looked down the fence and saw that it was no hen at all, but a young crow, flapping in the grass, acting most oddly. As she watched, he fluttered to the top wire of the fence, where he perched nervously for a moment. Then he spread his wings, flapped hard, and took off — but after flying four feet he stopped with a snap and crashed to the ground again, shedding a flurry of black feathers and squawking loudly.

He was tied to the fence. A piece of something silvery — it looked like wire — was tangled around one of his legs; the other end of it was caught in the fence. Mrs Frisby walked closer, and then she could see it was not wire after all, but a length of silver-coloured string, probably left over from a Christmas package.

The crow was sitting on the fence, pecking ineffectively at the string with his bill, cawing softly to himself, a miserable sound. After a moment he spread his wings, and she could see he was going to try to fly again.

‘Wait,’ said Mrs Frisby.

The crow looked down and saw her in the grass.

‘Why should I wait? Can’t you see I’m caught? I’ve got to get loose.’

‘But if you make so much noise again the cat is sure to hear. If he hasn’t heard already.’

‘You’d make a noise, too, if you were tied to a fence with a piece of string, and with night coming on.’

‘I would not,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘if I had any sense and knew there was a cat near by. Who tied you?’ She was trying to calm the crow, who was obviously terrified.

He looked embarrassed and stared at his feet. ‘I picked up the string. It got tangled with my foot. I sat on the fence to try to get it off, and it caught on the fence.

‘Why did you pick up the string?’

The crow, who was very young indeed — in fact, only a year old — said wearily: ‘Because it was shiny.’

‘You knew better.’ ‘I had been told.’

Birdbrain, thought Mrs Frisby, and then recalled what her husband used to say: The size of the brain is no measure of its capacity. And well she might recall it, for the crow’s head was double the size of her own.

‘Sit quietly,’ she said. ‘Look towards the house and see if you see the cat.’

‘I don’t see him. But I can’t see behind the bushes. Oh, if I could just fly higher.’

‘Don’t,’ said Mrs Frisby. She looked at the sun; it was setting behind the trees. She thought of Timothy, and of the medicine she was carrying. Yet she knew she could not leave the foolish crow there to be killed — and killed he surely would be before sunrise — just for want of a few minutes’ work. She might still make it by dusk if she hurried.

‘Come down here,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the string off.’ ‘How?’ said the crow dubiously.

‘Don’t argue. I have only a few minutes.’ She said this in a voice so authoritative that the crow fluttered down immediately.

‘But if the cat comes …’ he said.

‘If the cat comes, he’ll knock you off the fence with one jump and catch you with the next. Be still.’ She was already at work with her sharp teeth, gnawing at the string. It was twined and twisted and twined again around his right ankle, and she saw she would have to cut through it three times to get it off.

As she finished the second strand, the crow, who was staring towards the house, suddenly cried out: ‘I see the cat!’

‘Quiet!’ whispered Mrs Frisby. ‘Does he see us?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. He’s looking at me. I don’t think he can see you.’

‘Stand perfectly still. Don’t get in a panic.’ She did not look up but started on the third strand. ‘He’s moving this way.’

‘Fast or slow?’

‘Medium. I think he’s trying to figure out what I’m doing.’

She cut through the last strand, gave a tug, and the string fell off. ‘There, you’re free. Fly off, and be quick.’

‘But what about you?’ ‘Maybe he hasn’t seen me.’

‘But he will. He’s coming closer.’

Mrs Frisby looked around. There was not a bit of cover anywhere near, not a rock nor a hole nor a

log; nothing at all closer than the chicken yard — and that was in the direction the cat was coming from, and a long way off.

‘Look,’ said the crow. ‘Climb on my back. Quick. And hang on.’

Mrs Frisby did what she was told, first grasping the precious packages of medicine tightly between her teeth.

‘Are you on?’ ‘Yes.’

She gripped the feathers on his back, felt the beat of his powerful black wings, felt a dizzying upward surge, and shut her eyes tight.

‘Just in time,’ said the crow, and she heard the angry scream of the cat as he leaped at where they had just been. ‘It’s lucky you’re so light. I can scarcely tell you’re there.’ Lucky indeed, thought Mrs Frisby; if it had not been for your foolishness I’d never have got into such a scrape. However, she thought it wise not to say so, under the circumstances.

‘Where do you live?’ asked the crow. ‘In the garden patch. Near the big stone.’

‘I’ll drop you off there.’ He banked alarmingly, and for a moment Mrs Frisby thought he meant it literally. But a few seconds later — so fast does the crow fly — they were gliding to earth a yard from her front door.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Mrs Frisby, hopping to the ground.

‘It’s I who should be thanking you,’ said the crow. ‘You saved my life.’ ‘And you mine.’

‘Ah, but that’s not quite even. Yours wouldn’t have been risked if it had not been for me — and my piece of string.’ And since this was just what she had been thinking, Mrs Frisby did not argue.

‘We all help one another against the cat,’ she said.

‘True. Just the same I am in debt to you. If the time ever comes when I can help you, I hope you will ask me. My name is Jeremy. Mention it to any crow you see in these woods and he will find me.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘I will remember.’ Jeremy flew away to the woods, and she entered her house, taking the three doses of medicine with her.

Mr Fitzgibbon’s Plough

 

When Mrs Frisby went into her house, she found Timothy asleep and the other children waiting, frightened, sad and subdued.

‘He went to sleep right after you left,’ Teresa said. ‘He’s waked up twice, and the second time he wasn’t delirious. He said his chest hurt and his head hurt. But, Mother, he seemed so weak — he could hardly talk. He asked where you were, and I told him. Then he went back to sleep.’

Mrs Frisby went to where Timothy lay, a small ball of damp fur curled under a bit of cloth blanket. He looked scarcely larger than he had when she and Mr Frisby had carried him to Mr Ages as an infant, and the thought of that trip made her wish Mr Frisby were alive to reassure the children and tell them not to worry. But he was not, and it was she who must say it.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Mr Ages gave me some medicine for him and says he will recover.’ She mixed the contents of one of the packets, a grey-green powder, in water, and then gently shook Timothy awake.

He smiled. ‘You’re back,’ he said in a voice as small as a whisper.

‘I’m back, and I’ve brought you some medicine. Mr Ages says it will make you all right.’ She lifted his head on her arm, and he swallowed the medicine. ‘I expect it’s bitter,’ she said.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘It tastes like pepper.’ And he fell back to sleep immediately.

The next morning, as predicted, his fever was lower, his breathing grew easier, and his heartbeat slowed down; still, that day he slept seven hours out of each eight. The next day he stayed awake longer, and on the third day had no fever at all, just as Mr Ages had said. However, since Mr Ages had been right in all that, Mrs Frisby knew he was sure to have been right in the other things he had said: Timothy was not really strong yet. He must stay in bed, stay warm, and breathe only warm air.

During those three days she had stayed close by his side, but on the fourth she felt cheerful enough to go for a walk, and also to fetch some more of the corn from the stump so they could have it for supper.

She went out of her front door into the sunshine and was surprised to find a spring day waiting for her. The weather had turned warm while she had stayed indoors; February was over and March had come in, as they say, like a lamb. There was a smell of dampness in the air as the frosted ground thawed, a smell of things getting ready to grow. It made her feel even more cheerful than before, and she walked almost gaily across the garden.

And yet despite the fine warmth of the day — indeed, in a way, because of it — Mrs Frisby could not quite get rid of a nagging worry that kept flickering in her mind; it was the kind of worry that, if you push it out of this corner of your thoughts, pops up in that corner, and finally in the middle, where it has to be faced. It was the thought of Moving Day.

Everybody knows that the ground hog comes up from the deep hole where he has slept away the winter, looks around, and if he decides the cold weather is not over, goes back down to sleep for another six weeks. Field mice like Mrs Frisby are not so lucky. When winter is over, they must move out of the garden and back to the meadow or the pasture. For as soon as the weather allows, Farmer Fitzgibbon’s tractor comes rumbling through, pulling the sharp-bladed plough through the soil, turning over every foot of it. No animal caught in the garden that day is likely to escape alive, and all the winter homes, all the tunnels and holes and nests and cocoons, are torn up. After the plough comes the harrow, with its heavy creaking discs, and then the people with hoes and seeds.

Not all the field mice move into the garden for the winter, of course. Some find their way to barn

lofts; some even creep into people’s houses and live under the eaves or in attics, taking their chances with mousetraps. But the Frisbys had always come to the garden, preferring the relative safety and freedom of the outdoors.

Moving Day therefore depends on the weather, and that is why a fine day set Mrs Frisby worrying, even as she enjoyed it. As soon as the frost was out of the ground, the plough would come, and that could happen as much as a month earlier (or later) one year than the last.

And the worry was this: If it came too soon, Timothy would not be able to move. He was supposed to stay in bed, and moving meant a long walk across the field of winter wheat, up and down the hill to the brook’s edge, where the Frisbys made their summer home. Not only that — the home itself would be damp and chilly for the first few weeks (as summer homes always are) until early spring turned to late spring and the nights grew truly warm. This was something that Mrs Frisby and the children did not ordinarily mind; Moving Day, in fact, was normally a gay time, for it marked the end of the grey weather and the frost. It was like the beginning of a summer holiday.

But this year? Now that Mrs Frisby had faced the problem, she did not see any answer except to hope that the day would not come too early. In another month (according to Mr Ages), Timothy would be strong enough. Perhaps she was only borrowing trouble. One warm day, she told herself, does not make a summer. No, nor even a spring.

She walked on through the garden and saw ahead of her a small figure she knew. It was a lady shrew, a tiny thing scarcely bigger than a peanut, but with a wit as sharp as her teeth. She lived in a simple hole in the ground a few yards away; Mrs Frisby met her often and had grown to like her, though shrews are generally unpopular, having a reputation for short tempers and extremely large appetites.

‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Frisby.

‘Ah, Mrs Frisby. Good morning indeed. Too good is what I’m thinking.’ The shrew was holding a stalk of straw, which she now thrust into the earth. It went down easily for two inches or more before it bent in her hand. ‘Look at that. The top of the frost is gone already. Another few days like this, and it will be all gone. Then we will have the tractor in here again, breaking everything up.’

‘So soon? Do you really think so?’ asked Mrs Frisby, her worry returning in a rush, stronger than before.

‘He ploughs when the frost is gone. Remember the spring of sixty-five? That year he ploughed on the eleventh day of March, and on a Sunday at that. I moved down to the woods that night and nearly froze to death in a miserable hollow log. And that day came after a week of days just like this.’

Mrs Frisby did remember it; her family, too, had shivered through those chilly nights. For the fact was, the earlier Moving Day came, the colder the nights were likely to be.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I hope it doesn’t happen this year. Poor Timothy’s too sick to move.’ ‘Sick is he? Take him to Mr Ages.’

‘I’ve been myself. But he was too weak to get out of bed, and still is.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Then we must hope for another frost, or that the tractor will break down. I wish someone would drive a tractor through his house and see how he likes it.’ So muttering, the lady shrew moved off, and Mrs Frisby continued across the garden. The remark was illogical, of course, for they both knew that without Mr Fitzgibbon’s plough there would be no garden to live in at all, and there was no way he could turn the earth without also turning up their houses.

Or was there? What the shrew had said was meant to be sympathetic, but it was not helpful. It meant, Mrs Frisby realized, that she, too, could see no solution to the problem. But that did not mean that there was none. She remembered something her husband, Mr Frisby, used to say: All doors are

hard to unlock until you have the key. All right. She must try to find the key. But where? Whom to ask?

And then, as if to make things worse, she heard a sound that filled her with alarm. It came from across the fence in the farmyard, a loud, sputtering roar. It was Mr Fitzgibbon starting his tractor.

Five Days

 

The sound of the tractor did not necessarily mean that Mr Fitzgibbon was getting ready to plough. He used it for many other things — hauling hay and firewood, for instance, and mowing, and clearing snow in the winter. Mrs Frisby reminded herself of all this as she hurried over to the corner post.

That was a very thick fence post at the corner of the garden nearest the farmhouse and the tractor shed. She had discovered long ago that it had, a few inches above the ground, a convenient knot hole with a hollow place behind it in which she could hide, when she had reason to, and watch what was going on in the yard. The cat, Dragon, also knew of its existence, so she had to look sharply when she came out.

She came up carefully behind the post, stared this way and that, and then darted around it and up into the hole. All clear.

Mr Fitzgibbon had backed the tractor out of the big, cluttered shed where he kept it. Leaving the motor idling, he climbed down from the seat and called to the house. In a moment his older son Paul came out, closing the door carefully behind him. Paul, at fifteen, was a quiet, hardworking boy, rather clumsy in his movements but strong and careful about his chores. In a few seconds he was followed by his younger brother Billy, who at twelve was noisier and had an annoying habit of skimming rocks across the grass at anything that moved. Mrs Frisby did not much care for Billy.

‘All right, boys,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon, ‘let’s haul it out and see about that linch-pin.’

‘It was just about worn through last autumn, I remember,’ Paul said. The boys disappeared into the shed, and Mr Fitzgibbon remounted the tractor; he turned it around and backed it slowly towards the shed, so that the rear end was out of Mrs Frisby’s sight.

There was some clanking and clanging inside the shed while Mr Fitzgibbon, looking over his shoulder, worked some levers on the side of the tractor.

‘All set?’

He shifted the gears and eased the tractor forward again. Hitched behind it, clear of the ground, was the plough.

Mrs Frisby’s heart sank. Surely he was not going to start now?

But as soon as he had the plough out in the sunlight, Mr Fitzgibbon turned the tractor’s engine off.

It died with a splutter, and they all gathered around the plough-hitch.

‘Sure enough,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘She’s just about ready to shear. Paul, I’m glad you remembered that. If I order it today, Henderson’s will have a new one in three or four days.’

‘It took five days last time,’ Paul said.

‘Five, then. That’s just about right anyway. It’s too wet to plough now, but five days like this ought to dry the ground out. Let’s grease up while we’ve got it out. Billy, get the grease gun.’

In her hiding place Mrs Frisby breathed a sigh of relief, and then began to worry again immediately. Five days, although a respite, was too short. Three weeks, Mr Ages had said, would be the soonest Timothy could get out of bed, the soonest he could live through a chill night without getting pneumonia again. She sighed and felt like weeping. If only the summer house were as warm as the cement block house. But it was not, and even if it were, he could not make the long journey. They might try to carry him — but what was the use of that? Only to have him sick again after the first night there.

She might, she thought, go back to Mr Ages and see if he had any ideas that would help. Was there some medicine that would make Timothy get strong sooner? She doubted it; surely, if he had such

medicine he would have given it to her the first time. She was thinking about this when she climbed out through the knot hole and slithered to the ground below — not ten feet from the cat.

Dragon lay stretched out in the sunlight, but he was not asleep. His head was up and his yellow eyes were open, staring in her direction. She gasped in terror and whirled around the fence post to put it between her and him. Then, without pausing, she set out on a dash across the garden as fast as she could run, expecting at any instant to hear the cat’s scream and feel his great claws on her back. She reached the shrew’s hole and considered for a fraction of a second diving into it, but it was too small.

Then she glanced back over her shoulder and saw an amazing sight. The cat had not moved at all! He was lying exactly as before, except that now one of his eyes was closed. The other, however, was still looking straight at her, so she did not pause, but raced on.

Finally, when she was a safe distance away — two-thirds across the garden and nearly home — she stopped and looked again more carefully. The cat still lay there and seemed to have gone to sleep. That was so odd — so unheard of — she could hardly believe it. Feeling quite safe, but puzzled, she looked for a vantage point from which she could see better. By rights, she should be dead, and though she had escaped by what seemed almost a miracle, she scolded herself for having been so careless. If the cat had killed her, who would take care of the children?

She saw a dead asparagus plant, stiff, tall, with branches like a small tree. She climbed it and from near the top looked back to the farmyard. Mr Fitzgibbon and his sons had finished greasing the tractor and gone on somewhere else. But the cat still lay on the grass, seemingly asleep. Why had he not chased her? Was it possible that, close as she had been, he had not seen her? She could not believe that. The only explanation she could think of was that he had just finished a very large meal and was feeling so stuffed and lazy he did not want to take the trouble to get up. But that was almost as unbelievable; certainly it had never happened before. Was it possible that he was sick?

Then, on what had already been a day of oddities and alarms, she noticed something else strange. Beyond the cat, quite far beyond, between the barn and the house, she saw what looked like a troop of dark grey figures marching in columns. Marching? Not exactly, but moving slowly and all in line.

They were rats.

There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving between them and behind them. It looked like a thick piece of rope, a long piece, maybe twenty feet. No. It was stiffer than rope. It was electric cable, the heavy, black kind used for outdoor wiring and strung on telephone poles. The rats were hauling it laboriously through the grass, inching it along in the direction of a very large wild rosebush in the far corner of the yard. Mrs Frisby quickly guessed where they were taking it, though she could not guess why. In that rosebush, concealed and protected by dense tangles of fiercely sharp thorns, was the entrance to a rat hole. All the animals knew about it and were careful to stay away.

But what would rats want with such a long piece of wire? Mrs Frisby could not imagine. Even more curious, how did they dare to pull it across the yard in broad daylight when the cat was right there? The rats were bigger than Mrs Frisby, and could be, when necessary, dangerous fighters, but they were no match for Dragon.

She watched them for quite a long time. It was obvious that they knew exactly what they were doing, and they looked as well drilled as a group of soldiers. They had about twenty-five yards to go to reach the rosebush; as if at a signal (which, however, she was too far away to hear), they would all pull together, moving the wire about a foot. Then they would pause, rest, and heave again. It was about twenty minutes before the first rat disappeared into the bush. A little later the last bit of wire disappeared behind them like a thin black snake, and Mrs Frisby climbed down from the asparagus

bush.

All that time the cat had slept on.

A Favour from Jeremy

 

In her worry about Moving Day, in watching the tractor, the cat, and finally the rats, Mrs Frisby had forgotten that she had set out originally to get some corn for supper. Now she remembered it, so instead of continuing to her house she turned towards the far corner of the garden and the stump at the edge of the woods beyond. She was a little tired after her dash from the cat, so she walked along slowly, feeling the warmth of the sun and the smell of the breeze.

This mild breeze, carrying the moist essence of early spring, caused a dead leaf to flutter here and there, and across the garden near the fence it moved something that sparkled in the sunlight. This caught the corner of Mrs Frisby’s eye; she glanced at it, saw that it was only a bit of tin foil (or aluminium foil) blown from somewhere, and she looked away again. Then she looked back, for at that moment a black object plummeted from the sky, and she recognized her friend Jeremy the crow.

A thought crossed Mrs Frisby’s mind. She changed direction again, and, moving more quickly, ran across the earth to where Jeremy stood. He was hopping around the shiny piece of foil, eyeing it from one direction and another.

What had occurred to Mrs Frisby was that although Jeremy was not the brightest of animals she had met, and though he was young, he knew things and places she did not, and one had to begin somewhere. As she approached him, he had picked up the foil in his beak and was spreading his wings to fly off.

‘Wait, please,’ she called.

He turned, folded his wings, and then replaced the foil carefully on the ground. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘You remember me?’

‘Of course. You saved me from the cat.’ Then he added. ‘What do you think of this piece of foil?’ Mrs Frisby looked at it without much interest.

‘It’s just a piece of foil,’ she said. ‘It’s not very big.’

‘True. But it’s shiny — especially when the sun strikes it just so.’ ‘Why are you so interested in shiny things?’

‘Well, really, I’m not. At least not very. But I have a friend who likes them, so when I see one I pick it up.’

‘I see. That’s very thoughtful. And would the friend be female?’ ‘As a matter of fact, yes. She is. How did you know?’

‘Just a guess,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘Do you remember saying once that if I needed help, I might ask you?’

‘I do. Any time. Just ask for Jeremy. Any of the crows can find me. And now, if you will excuse me …’ He bent over to pick up the foil again.

‘Please don’t go yet,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘I think perhaps you can help me now.’

‘Ah,’ said Jeremy. ‘What kind of help? Are you hungry? I’ll bring you some seeds from the barn loft. I know where they’re stored.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘We have enough to eat.’ And then she told him, as briefly as she could, about Timothy, his sickness, and the problem of Moving Day. Jeremy knew about Moving Day; crows do not have to move, but they keep a close watch on such activities as ploughing and planting so as to get their fair share of what’s planted, and with their sharp eyes they see the small animals leaving before the plough.

So he clucked sympathetically when he heard Mrs Frisby’s story, cocked his head to one side, and thought as hard as he could for as long as he could, which was about thirty seconds. His eyes closed with the effort.

‘I don’t know what you should do,’ he said finally. ‘I’m sorry. But maybe I can help even so. At least, I can tell you what we do when we don’t know what to do.’

‘We?’

‘The crows. Most of the birds.’ ‘What do you do, then?’

‘Over that way,’ Jeremy nodded in the direction of the deep woods and faraway mountains that rose beyond the fence, ‘about a mile from here there grows a very large beech tree, the biggest tree in the whole forest. Near the top of the tree there is a hollow in the trunk. In the hollow lives an owl who is the oldest animal in the woods — some say the world.

‘When we don’t know what to do, we ask him. Sometimes he answers our questions, sometimes he doesn’t. It depends on how he feels. Or as my father used to say — what kind of humour he’s in.’

Or possibly, thought Mrs Frisby, on whether or not he knows the answer. But she said:

‘Could you ask him, then, if he knows of any help for me?’ She did not think it likely that he would.

‘Ah, no,’ Jeremy said, ‘that won’t do. That is, I could ask him, but I don’t think the owl would listen. Imagine. A crow come to ask for help for a lady mouse with a sick child. He wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Then what’s to be done?’

‘What’s to be done? You must go yourself and ask him.’

‘But I could never find the tree. And if I did, I don’t think I could climb so high.’

‘Ah, now. That is where I can help, as I said I would. I will carry you there on my back, the way I did before. And home again, of course.’

Mrs Frisby hesitated. It was one thing to leap on a crow’s back when the cat is only three jumps away and coming fast, but quite another to do it deliberately, and to fly deep into a dark and unknown forest. In short, Mrs Frisby was afraid.

Then she thought of Timothy, and of the big steel plough blade. She told herself: I have no choice. If there is any chance that the owl might be able to help me, to advise me, I must go. She said to Jeremy:

‘Thank you very much. I will go and talk to the owl if you will take me. It’s a great favour.’ ‘It’s nothing,’ said Jeremy. ‘You’re welcome. But we can’t go now.’

‘Why not?’

‘In the daytime, when the sun is out, the owl goes deep into the hollow and sleeps. That is, they say he sleeps, but I don’t believe it. How could anyone sleep so long? I think he sits in there, part of the time at least, and thinks. And that’s why he knows so much.

‘But anyway, he won’t speak in the daytime, not to anyone. And at night he’s out flying, flying and hunting …’

‘I know,’ said Mrs Frisby — and that was another reason to be afraid.

‘The time to see him is just at dusk. Then, when the light gets dim, he comes to the entrance of the hollow and watches while the dark comes in. That’s the time to ask him questions.’

‘I understand,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘Shall we go this evening?’

‘At five o’clock,’ Jeremy said, ‘I’ll be at your house.’ He picked up the piece of foil in his bill, waved goodbye, and flew off.

The Owl

 

Jeremy appeared as promised when the last thumbnail of sun winked out over the mountains beyond the meadow. Mrs Frisby was waiting, her heart pounding in her ears, and three of the children were there to watch — Teresa and Martin standing beside their mother, and Cynthia, who was afraid of the crow, just a pair of round eyes peering out of the round doorway. Timothy was down below, taking a nap, and had not been told about the expedition lest he worry and blame himself for the risk his mother must take. (Indeed, the words Moving Day had not been mentioned in his presence.) Even to the other children Mrs Frisby had explained only a part of the problem; that is, she had not told them that there were only five days left, nor anything about Mr Fitzgibbon and the tractor. She did not want to worry them, either.

Jeremy landed with a swoosh — a bit dramatically, perhaps — and nodded at the children and Mrs Frisby.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Here I am.’

Mrs Frisby introduced Martin and Teresa (and Cynthia’s eyes). Martin, who wished he were going on the trip himself, asked Jeremy in excitement:

‘How high can you fly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know exactly,’ Jeremy said. ‘A couple of miles, I suppose.’ ‘Mother, did you hear? You’ll be two miles up in the air.’

‘Martin, it won’t be necessary to go so high on this trip.’ Jeremy said cheerfully: ‘No, but I can, if you’d like.’

‘No, thank you. I wouldn’t think of your taking the trouble.’ She was trying hard to hide her terror, and Martin had not helped matters at all. But Jeremy suddenly saw that she was trembling and realized that she must be afraid.

‘It’s all right,’ he said kindly. ‘There’s nothing to be nervous about. I fly over the woods a dozen times a day.

Yes, thought Mrs Frisby, but you’re not riding on your back, and you can’t fall off.

‘All right,’ she said as bravely as she could. ‘I’m ready. Teresa and Martin, take care of Timothy until I come back, and be sure you don’t tell him where I’ve gone.’ With a small leap she was on Jeremy’s back, lying as flat as she could and holding tight to the glossy feathers between his wings, as a horseback rider grips the horse’s mane before a jump. Martin and Teresa waved good-bye, but she did not see them, for she had her face pressed against the feathers and her eyes closed.

Once again she felt the surge of power as the crow’s broad wings beat down against the air; this time it lasted longer for they were going higher than before. Then the beating became gentler as they levelled off, and then, to her alarm, it stopped altogether. What was wrong? The crow must have felt her grow tense, for suddenly from ahead she heard his voice:

‘An updraft,’ he said. ‘We’re soaring. There’s usually one over this stretch of woods in the evening.’ A current of warm air, rising from the woods, was carrying them along. So smooth was the motion that they seemed to stand still, and Mrs Frisby ventured to open her eyes and lift her head just a trifle. She could not look straight down — that was Jeremy’s back — but off to the right, and a bit behind them, she saw a greybrown square the size of a postage stamp. She realized with a gasp that it was the garden patch, and Martin and Teresa, if they were still there, were too small to be seen.

‘Look to the left,’ said Jeremy, who was watching her over his shoulder. She did, and saw what looked like a wide, fearsome snake, blue-green in colour, coiling through the woods.

‘What is it?’ she asked in wonder. ‘You really don’t know? It’s the river.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Frisby, rather ashamed of her ignorance. She had heard of the river, of course, but had not known that it looked like a snake. She had never been there, since to reach it one had to cross the entire width of the forest. There were advantages to being a bird.

In a minute more they had left the updraft, and Jeremy’s wings resumed pumping. They went higher, and Mrs Frisby closed her eyes again. When she opened them, the garden patch had vanished far behind them, and Jeremy, searching the trees below, began a long slanting descent. Eventually, as he banked sharply, Mrs Frisby saw off his wing tip a greybrown patch among a group of tall green pines; from so high it looked like a gnarled grey bush, but as they circled lower she could see that it was in fact an enormous tree, leafless, skeletal, and partly dead. One huge branch had recently broken off and fallen, and three pine trunks lay bent double under its weight. It was a gloomy and primeval spot, deeply shadowed in the grey dusk. Jeremy circled over it one more time, looking at a certain mark three-fourths of the way up the towering main trunk. Just below this spot another great branch, itself as big as an ordinary tree, jutted out over the tops of the pines, and on this at last Jeremy fluttered gently to rest. They were some ten feet from the main trunk, and Mrs Frisby could see, just above the place where the branch joined the tree, a dark round hole as large as a lunch plate.

‘We’re here,’ Jeremy said in a low voice. ‘There’s where he lives.’ ‘Should I get down?’ Instinctively, Mrs Frisby spoke in a whisper.

‘Yes. We’ve got to walk closer. But quietly. He doesn’t like loud noises.’ ‘It’s so high.’ She still clung to the crow’s back,

‘But the limb is broad. You’ll be safe enough.’

And indeed the limb was almost as wide as a pavement. Mrs Frisby gathered her courage, slithered down, and felt the solid wood under her feet; still she could not help thinking about how far it was to the ground below.

‘There he is,’ said Jeremy, staring at the hole. ‘It’s just the right time.’

They inched their way along the limb, Mrs Frisby gripping the rough bark tightly, being careful not to stumble; and as they came closer, she could dimly perceive a shape like a squat vase sitting back in the hollow of the tree. Near the top of the vase, wide apart, two round yellow eyes glowed in the dark.

‘He can’t see us,’ Jeremy whispered. ‘It’s still too light.’

Perhaps not, but he could hear, for now a deep round voice, a voice like an organ tone, echoed out of the hollow trunk:

‘Who is standing outside my house?’ Jeremy answered:

‘Sir, I am a crow. My name is Jeremy. And I have brought a friend, I hope we have not disturbed you. My friend needs your advice.’

‘I see. And can your friend not speak for himself?’ ‘Sir, my friend is a lady, a lady mouse.’

‘A mouse?’ The sonorous voice sounded unbelieving. ‘Why should a crow be a friend to a mouse?’ ‘I was trapped, sir, and she set me free. She saved me from the cat.’

‘That is possible,’ said the owl, ‘though unusual. I have heard of such a thing before. We all help one another against the cat.’

‘True. And now, sir, my friend herself is in trouble.’

‘I understand,’ said the owl, moving closer to the round entrance of his hollow. ‘Mrs Mouse, I cannot see you, for the glare of the daylight is too bright. But if you step inside my house, I will listen

to what you have to say.’

Mrs Frisby hesitated. She knew something of the dietary habits of owls, and did not much like the idea of being trapped in his house. Finally, she said timidly:

‘Sir, I would not want to intrude. And I can hear you quite well from out here.’

‘Mrs Mouse, please understand that I have no interest at all, as a general rule, in helping mice to solve their problems. If you have indeed saved a bird from the cat, I will spare you a few minutes. But I do not discuss problems with people I cannot see. Either come inside, or tell your friend to take you home again.’

Behind her, Mrs Frisby heard Jeremy whisper, very softly, ‘It’s all right. He wouldn’t harm you in his own home.’

She whispered back, ‘I hope not.’ She walked up the limb to the hollow, climbed over the sill and stepped inside.

Up so close, the owl looked very large. Each of his feathery feet was tipped with five gleaming talons an inch long. His beak was curved and sharp and cruel. He blinked his yellow eyes and said:

‘Please step across the room, away from the light.’

Mrs Frisby did as she was told. As she grew accustomed to the dimness, she looked around her. The chamber into which she had stepped was spacious — at that level, almost half of the huge trunk was hollow — and clean, but the floor was extremely rough. It was not really a floor at all, but only the jagged ends of dead wood sticking up from below, like stalagmites in a cave, so that Mrs Frisby had to climb rather than walk as she crossed the room. At the back the walls narrowed to a corner, and there she saw that the owl had built himself a nest, as big as a water bucket, of twigs and leaves; from the top she could see protruding some wisps of the feathers with which he had lined it.

When she got near this nest, she stopped and faced the owl, who had turned from the light of the doorway and was peering at her with his great yellow eyes. Jeremy was nowhere to be seen. She could only hope he was still waiting on the limb outside.

‘Now,’ said the owl, ‘you may state your problem.’

‘Go to the Rats’

 

Mrs Frisby began nervously, trying to arrange her thoughts:

‘It’s about my youngest son, Timothy. He is sick, too sick to leave his bed. And Moving Day is only five days off.’

‘Wait,’ said the owl. ‘Moving from where? Moving to where?’

‘From the garden patch, where we’re living, to the edge of the pasture by the stream.’

‘Which garden?’ It had not occurred to Mrs Frisby until now that a bird, flying freely over miles of countryside, would look down on many gardens.

‘It belongs to Mr Fitzgibbon.’ ‘The one with the large stone?’ ‘Yes. My house is near the stone.’

‘What makes you so sure Moving Day will come in five days?’

Mrs Frisby told him about the tractor, and what Mr Fitzgibbon had said: five days until ploughing. ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘it might turn cold again, and freeze, or even snow …’

‘No,’ said the owl, sounding quite sure, ‘it will not. The wild onions are already up in the pastures.’ He asked her then what kind of house she had, and exactly where it was in relation to the big stone; apparently he knew the spot well.

But the more she talked to him, the more Mrs Frisby became convinced that he would produce no solution to her problem. It had been foolish of her to think he could, foolish of her to come at all. Because, she thought, there really was no solution. At last she fell silent, and the owl asked no more questions. Finally he said:

‘Lying where it does, your house will inevitably be turned up by the plough, and probably broken to bits in the process. There is no feasible way to prevent this. My only advice to you is this: If you stay in the house you will surely be crushed and killed, all of you. Therefore, it is better to take your chances with moving. Wrap your son Timothy up as warmly as you can, help him as much as possible on the journey, and hope for warm weather on Moving Day. That way you are at least sure to save yourself and the other children.’

The owl paused, turned away from her and looked again at the entrance to his hollow; the patch of light it admitted was growing steadily dimmer.

‘And now, if you will excuse me — the night is falling, and I have no more time to spare. I regret that I can not give you a more satisfactory solution to your problem. Good evening, Mrs …’ he paused. ‘I don’t believe you told me your name.’

‘Mrs Frisby.’ The poor mouse spoke with a sob in her throat, for the owl had said exactly what she feared he would say. And she had no real hope for Timothy. The owl had said, in effect: Either Timothy alone must die, or they must all die together. Even if Moving Day should be extraordinarily warm, the nights were sure to be frosty, and that would be the end of him. Still, one must be polite, and she added sadly: ‘I thank you, sir, for listening to me.’

But at the mention of her name an extraordinary change had come over the owl. He turned back to face her again and stared at her most intently. Indeed, he gave an agitated flutter of his wings and half flew, half hopped closer to her, bending forward until his great sharp beak was only a few inches from her face. Mrs Frisby shrank back in fear. What had she done wrong?

‘Did you say Mrs Frisby?’ ‘Yes. You asked my name.’

‘Related to Jonathan Frisby?’

‘Yes. He was my husband. He died last summer. He was Timothy’s father. But how did you know about him?’

‘That is not important,’ said the owl, drawing back a little and looking at her in a new way — almost as if with deference. ‘I will say this: His name was not unknown in these woods. And if you are his widow, that puts matters in a different light.’

Something in the way he said this caused Mrs Frisby’s hopes to lift a little. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I mean, madame, that there is a way that your son’s life might just possibly be saved. I did not mention it to you because I saw no way you could conceivably do it, and I did not want to arouse false hope. But if you are Jonathan Frisby’s widow — then perhaps it can be done.’

‘I don’t understand at all,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘What is this thing?’ ‘It is not a thing that I can do myself. You must go to the rats.’

‘To the rats? But I don’t know any rats. They have nothing to do with me.’

‘I don’t doubt that. They have little to do with anyone except themselves, and will have less as time goes on. Nonetheless, I think they will help you, and if they will, they can.’

‘But what can they do?’

‘They must move your house to a place where it will be safe from the plough.’ Now Mrs Frisby’s spirits fell again, and she said, almost bitterly:

‘You are joking, sir; you are not serious. No rat could move my house. It is far too heavy, much too big.’

‘The rats on Mr Fitzgibbon’s farm have — things — ways — you know nothing about. They are not like the rest of us. They are not, I think, even like most other rats. They work at night, in secret. Mrs Frisby, do you know their main entrance?’

‘In the rosebush? Yes.’

‘Go there. You will find a sentry guarding the door. His name is Justin. Tell him who you are, and that you came at my request. Tell him that you want to see a rat named Nicodemus. I think they will let you in, though they may insist on swearing you to secrecy. If they should ask that, you must of course use your own judgement; but my advice would be to do as they ask.’

Mrs Frisby was close to complete bewilderment. ‘Secrecy,’ she said. ‘Secrecy about what?’

‘That I cannot reveal. I, too, have agreed to it. Also, there is much I do not know, though I have given advice on certain aspects of their — projects.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘I don’t understand at all. But if it might save Timothy, I will try to do what you say.’

‘Tell them,’ added the owl, ‘that I suggest moving the house into the lee of the stone. Remember that — the lee of the stone. Also, do not forget the names: Justin and Nicodemus.’

‘Justin. Nicodemus. The lee of the stone,’ repeated Mrs Frisby. ‘I will remember.’ She was now so entirely puzzled that she did not think to ask what the phrase meant. Presumably the rats would know.

‘And, Mrs Frisby,’ said the owl, moving again towards the entrance to the hollow, ‘please understand: I was an admirer of your late husband, though I never met him in person, I wish you well. I hope your son’s life can be saved. You see, I can understand your particular need, for I face a similar problem.’

‘You?’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘But you have no Moving Day.’

‘I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow,’ the owl said, ‘for more years than anyone can

remember. But now, when the wind blows hard in winter and rocks the forest, I sit here in the dark, and from deep down in the bole, down near the roots, I hear a new sound. It is the sound of strands of wood creaking in the cold and snapping one by one. The limbs are falling; the tree is old, and it is dying. Yet I cannot bring myself, after so many years, to leave, to find a new home and move into it, perhaps to fight for it. I, too, have grown old. One of these days, one of these years, the tree will fall and when it does, if I am still alive, I will fall with it.’

With this sad prediction the owl stepped through his doorway, spread his great wings and was gone, soaring silently downward into the shadowy woods below.

Mrs Frisby followed him out on to the limb. To her relief, Jeremy was still waiting where she had left him, though not very patiently.

‘We must hurry,’ he said. ‘It’s almost dark. I’m not supposed to be out so late.’ Mrs Frisby, who had the same feeling, climbed on his back, much less afraid now for two reasons: First, she was getting used to air travel; second, since the woods below them were dark, she could no longer see how far away the ground was.

‘He talked to you for a long time,’ said Jeremy as they flew. ‘Did he tell you anything that will help?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Frisby. Since the owl had brought up the matter of secrecy, and had, in fact, been secretive himself, she was not sure just how much she should tell Jeremy.

‘Why don’t you know?’

‘I mean, he told me some things, but I don’t know whether they’ll help or not.’ She decided to counter with a question of her own. ‘What does “in the lee” mean?’

Jeremy, being like all birds knowledgeable about the wind, knew the answer to that. ‘It means the calm side, the side the wind doesn’t blow from. When there’s a strong wind, you fly up to the barn from the lee, so you don’t get bashed into the wall. My father taught me that.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Frisby, and she became more puzzled than ever. What had the wind to do with it? ‘He told me,’ she said finally, deciding it could do no harm, ‘to go and see the rats.’

‘The rats?’ Jeremy was startled. ‘But they don’t have anything to do with us.’ ‘I know. But he thought they might help.’

‘What could they do?’

‘He thought they might move my whole house. But how they could do it, I can’t imagine.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt that they could,’ said Jeremy. ‘Everyone knows — at least all the birds know — that the rats can do things. They’re up to something; nobody is quite sure what. For one thing, they’re building themselves a new house, way back in the woods, over the mountains. They’ve even made quite a big clearing near it. I’d show you, but it’s too dark now.

‘They used to carry food, like the rest of us. But now we see them with other things — pieces of metal, and bits of machinery, and things I can’t even recognize. They take them into that rosebush, and what happens to them I don’t know. But the owl knows more than most. I expect he’s had some dealings with them. Just the same, I’ve never heard of their helping anybody but themselves.’

‘Neither have I. But I’m going to ask them anyway. There isn’t anyone else to ask.’

By the time they reached the garden, it had gone almost completely dark, and Jeremy could not linger.

‘Good night, Jeremy,’ said Mrs Frisby, feeling almost affectionate towards the crow. ‘Thank you for taking me, and for waiting to bring me back.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Jeremy. ‘If you need me again, just ask. After all, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here to ask.’ And he flew off into the darkness, the last crow to get home that night.

In the Rosebush

 

When Mrs Frisby got home, Teresa, Martin and Cynthia were eating supper, as she had told them to do if it got dark before she returned. Coming silently down the tunnel, she could hear them talking in the room below, and she paused a moment to eavesdrop on their conversation, Obviously Cynthia had been worrying, and Teresa was reassuring her.

‘She couldn’t have got back sooner than this, Cynnie. Don’t you remember? The crow said it was a

mile to the tree. It might even be farther.’ ‘Yes, but crows fly so fast.’

‘But if he went two miles high’ — that was Martin — ‘it would be three miles altogether.’ ‘Six,’ said Teresa. ‘Two up, two down, and one to get there and one to get back.’

‘That’s right. No wonder she isn’t back yet.’

‘But what about the owl? You know how owls are.’

‘It was still light when they got there. He couldn’t see.’

‘But it’s dark now,’ said Cynthia. ‘Oh, I wish she’d come back. I’m scared.’ ‘Not so loud,’ Teresa said. ‘Timothy will hear.’

‘I’m home,’ called Mrs Frisby, hurrying the rest of the way down.

And now it appeared that they had all been worried, for they ran to her, and even Martin, who ordinarily avoided such displays, threw his arms around her.

‘Oh Mother,’ cried Cynthia, near tears. ‘I was so worried.’ ‘Poor Cynthia. It’s all right.’

‘How high did you fly?’ asked Martin, recovering quickly.

‘High enough so the trees looked like bushes, the garden like a postcard, and the river like a snake.’ ‘Did you see the owl? What did he say?’

‘I saw him. Later, I’ll tell you about it. First I want to see Timothy. How is he? Why didn’t you move his bed out here?’

Teresa said: ‘I wanted to, but he said he’d rather stay in the bedroom. I think he’s feeling worse again.’

But when Mrs Frisby went to see him, she found him sitting up, and his forehead felt not at all feverish.

‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘I stayed in here because I wanted to think about something.’ ‘Think about what?’

‘About Moving Day.’

‘Moving Day! But why? What about it?’

Had he, after all, overheard her talking to the others? Heard about her flight to the owl? But no, he was explaining.

‘I haven’t been outdoors since I got sick, so I don’t know what it’s like. I mean the weather. But today, this afternoon, I noticed something.’

‘What was that?’

‘A smell in the air, a warm, wet smell. If you sniff you can still smell it, though it’s not so strong now.’

Mrs Frisby had noticed this, of course, both indoors and out.

‘It’s the smell of the frost melting,’ Timothy went on. ‘I remember it from last year. And after that, it wasn’t long until we moved. Mother, when are we going to move this year?’

‘Oh, not for a long time yet.’ Mrs Frisby tried to sound as casual as she could. ‘It’s still much too cold, too early to think about it.’

‘I have to think about it,’ said Timothy. He sounded serious, but calm and unworried. ‘Because if it comes too soon, I don’t know if I can go. I tried walking a little bit today, in here, when the others were outside.’

‘Timothy, you’re supposed to stay in bed! You’ll make yourself sick again.’

‘I know, I know. But I had to find out. And I didn’t walk much. I couldn’t. I only went a few steps, and I got so dizzy I had to lie down again.’

‘Of course you did. You haven’t really recovered yet.’ ‘I suppose I haven’t. That’s why I wanted to think.’

‘Timothy, you must not worry about it. That will only make you worse.’

‘I’m not worried at all. I thought I would be, but I’m not — or maybe I think I should be, but I can’t. What I really think about is how nice it is there, in the summer beside the brook, and it’s true, I want to go. But I’m not scared. I was afraid you might be, or that you might think I was. That’s really what I wanted to tell you. I’m just going to wait and see what happens. So you shouldn’t worry about it, either.’

Mrs Frisby realized that he had somehow switched their positions. He had seen the danger he was in — guessed, somehow, that Moving Day was near, and that he was very likely to die. And yet here he was — reassuring her. She wanted to tell him about the owl and the rats, tell him that something still might be done. But she decided she had better not; she did not really know if they would help. It would be better to wait until she had seen them.

So instead she said, rather lamely: ‘Timothy, don’t think about it any more. When the time comes, we’ll see how you are and then decide what to do.’

The next morning at daybreak she went to see the rats. She had never been in the rosebush before, never even really close to it, and now, the nearer she got, the more nervous she became. No one had ever told her — nor, as far as she knew, told any of the other animals — to keep away from it. It was just something one knew. The rats on Mr Fitzgibbon’s farm kept to themselves. One did not prowl in their domain.

She had, before coming out of the garden, looked around carefully to be sure Dragon was nowhere in sight. But even Dragon, though he would chase a rat up to the edge of the bush, would not follow him into it.

The thorns, of course, helped to discourage trespassers. Mrs Frisby had never realized until that moment standing next to it, how very big the bush was, how dense, how incredibly thorny. It was bigger than the tractor shed, and its branches were so densely intertwined that as small as she was, Mrs Frisby could find no easy way to crawl into it, though she walked all the way around it looking. She remembered approximately where she had seen the rats go in, and she studied that part of the bush carefully. How had they done it?

Then she saw that on one branch, close to the ground, the thorns had been scraped off, and about a half-inch of it — just big enough for a handhold — was worn smooth. She put her hand on this and pushed timidly. The branch yielded easily, rather like a swinging door, and behind it she saw a trail, a sort of tunnel through the bush, wide enough so that she could walk into it without touching thorns on either side. When she went forward, she released the branch, and it swung back silently into place behind her. She was inside the bush, and it was dark.

She walked forward, peering into the dimness and following the small trail which wound in a curving course towards the centre of the bush, its earthen floor packed firm by the pressure of small

feet. Then, straight ahead of her she saw the entrance.

She had expected — what? A round hole in the earth, most likely, but certainly nothing like what she saw. First, a sizeable clearing — about five feet across — had been cut from the centre of the bush. Branches overhead had been cleared away, too, not quite to the top of the bush but almost, so that the sunlight filtered through easily, and soft moss grew on the ground. In the middle of this bright green cave rose a small mound, eight inches tall, in the end of which was an arched entrance neatly lined with stone, like a small doorway without any door. Behind the entrance a tunnel, its floor also lined with stones, led backwards and downwards.

Beside the entranceway, looking at her with dark, unblinking eyes, stood the biggest rat she had ever seen.

Brutus

 

‘Stop where you are,’ said the rat. ‘How did you get in here?’

‘I walked in,’ said Mrs Frisby, keeping her voice calm with an effort. ‘I found a branch with the thorns smoothed off. I pushed it back, and found …’

‘I know,’ said the rat, rather rudely. ‘And now, walk out again. You aren’t allowed in here.’ He moved a few inches towards her, placing himself between her and the entrance. She noticed how powerful his muscles looked under his glossy coat. He would almost be a match for Dragon — almost, but not quite.

‘Go on,’ he repeated. ‘But I have a reason …’

‘I don’t care what you have. Go away. You’re small. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’ ‘Are you Justin?’ Mrs Frisby inched back as the rat inched forward.

‘I’m Brutus, Justin’s not here.’ That was reasonably obvious, Mrs Frisby thought. The rat named Brutus added: ‘You know Justin?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘That is, not exactly.’

‘If you don’t know him, how do you know his name?’ Brutus sounded puzzled, and Mrs Frisby observed that although he was greatly oversized and muscular, and his eyes were bright enough, he looked very young.

‘It was told to me by a friend. Can I see him?’

‘Justin? No. He’s at a meeting. I’m taking his place. They’re all at a meeting but me.’ Bad luck, thought Mrs Frisby. He’s a substitute. She said:

‘Then I’ll wait for him.’

‘No,’ said Brutus. ‘You can’t stay here. I’ve got orders. Now go, or I’ll have to take you out myself.’ He moved forward again.

‘My name,’ said the mouse desperately, ‘is Mrs Jonathan Frisby. I want to see Nicodemus.’ It did not work.

‘I don’t care what your name is, and you can’t see Nicodemus, that’s sure.’ Brutus now looked puzzled and annoyed. ‘Move on, and be quick.’

‘All right,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘You needn’t force me. I’ll go.’ She turned slowly and walked back the way she had come. She felt like crying — after coming all this way, after flying to see the owl, to be turned back so abruptly at the end. She thought, as she walked into the darker part of the bush, maybe she could just wait for an hour or so, until the meeting (what kind of a meeting could it be?) was over and then go back, and perhaps the rat named Justin would be at the entrance then. But would Justin pay any more attention to her than Brutus had done? She had a feeling that he would.

But when she stopped she heard footsteps behind her. She looked back and saw Brutus was following her, so she started again, hurrying to keep out of his sight. After a while she paused again and listened. This time there was no sound. He must have gone back to his post. She sat down on the ground.

Then, ahead of her, in the direction of the place where she had entered the bush, she heard a rustle, a faint scraping noise. It was the branch she had pushed to get in. Someone else was moving it. Someone was coming in, walking along the narrow path towards her. It must be another rat. Suddenly she was terrified. What would he do, meeting her unexpectedly in this dimness?

She shrank to one side, as close as she could get to the wall of thorns, hoping that whoever it was

might go on past, not seeing her.

Then he came around the curve, and she saw him. It was her old friend, Mr Ages, the white mouse.

He was moving extremely slowly, and she realized that he was limping badly. One of his legs was injured; it was wrapped up in splints and bandaged.

‘Mr Ages,’ she called softly, ‘it’s Mrs Frisby.’ ‘Who?’ He peered into the shadow. ‘I can’t see you.’

‘Mrs Frisby.’ She moved into the middle of the path in front of him.

‘Why, so it is. Mrs Frisby. How do you do?’ He sounded cordial enough, but he was startled. ‘I didn’t know that you … How do you happen to be in here?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Then tell it to me while I rest. I’m supposed to be at a meeting, but I’m late already, and a few minutes more won’t matter. As you can see, I had a bad fall and broke my ankle.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it doesn’t hurt.’

‘It is mending. But I can walk only slowly and need to rest frequently.’ He sat down with a sigh. ‘Now tell me what you’re doing in the rats’ bush.’

Mrs Frisby (who was wondering the same thing about him) told him as briefly as she could about Timothy, Jeremy, the owl, and Brutus. Mr Ages listened in silence, interrupting only once.

‘You went into the owl’s tree?’ ‘Yes. But I was afraid.’

‘I should think so. That took courage.’ ‘I had to do it.’

When she had finished her story, Mr Ages sat quietly for a minute, considering it.

‘Poor Timothy,’ he said at last. ‘I should have thought of that myself. But, of course, when I gave you the medicine, the weather had not yet turned warm. Then I fell and broke my leg, and I forgot all about it.’ He stood up.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you should come with me back to the entrance.’ ‘But I can’t. Brutus will still be there.’

‘Mrs Frisby, having done all that you have done, you are not going to give up now. I’ll talk to Brutus.’

‘You know him?’

‘I have known him since he was born. He’s not very old, you know. I think he will do what I ask.’ From the way he said this, Mrs Frisby could tell he did not merely think it, he knew it. But how?

‘All right,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I’ll try again. But I don’t understand. How do you know Brutus?’ ‘We had better move along.’ They started back towards the entrance at Mr Ages’ slow, limping

pace. ‘As to how I know Brutus — that’s a much longer story than yours, and I doubt that I’m the one to tell it to you. It is for Nicodemus to say.’

‘But I will tell you this: If we go in the entrance — as we will, if you are to ask for help — you must promise that you will never tell anyone anything at all about what you see and hear.’

‘I will promise,’ said Mrs Frisby. Again, she thought, she had no choice. ‘The owl told me that, too.’

When they approached the entrance again, Mrs Frisby saw that Brutus stood at his post as before, but that another rat had joined him. Two of them, she thought. I hope Mr Ages knows them both. The new rat saw them coming. He looked alert, dark grey in colour, and extraordinarily handsome, though not so huge as Brutus.

‘Mr Ages,’ he said. ‘How’s the leg?’

‘Better. But it will be a while before I can run again.’

‘Justin,’ said Brutus, staring at Mrs Frisby. ‘There she is. That’s the one I was telling you about.’ ‘Is she now.’ Justin looked at her casually. He did not sound particularly alarmed.

‘Mrs Frisby,’ said Mr Ages formally, ‘may I present my friends Justin and Brutus?’ ‘How do you do?’ Brutus sounded doubtful.

‘Mrs Frisby?’ said Justin. ‘Not Mrs Jonathan Frisby?’

‘She is Mrs Jonathan Frisby,’ said Mr Ages. ‘A widow, as you know.’ ‘Madame,’ said Justin, bowing politely, ‘it is an honour to meet you.’ Brutus now looked astonished. ‘You both know her? Who is she?’ ‘Brutus,’ said Mr Ages gently, ‘don’t you remember Mr Jonathan?’ Brutus wrinkled his brow. ‘Mr Jonathan? You mean the one Dragon …’ ‘Yes,’ said Justin quickly. ‘And this is Mrs Jonathan.’

‘Oh,’ said Brutus. Then, to Mrs Frisby: ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have chased you off.’ ‘Well,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘I did try. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘No,’ Mr Ages added. ‘Because on the way out she met me coming in. She needs to talk to Nicodemus — and quickly.’

Brutus looked doubtful again. ‘Nicodemus? But can she? I mean, how about the rules? What about the Plan?’

Mr Ages said: ‘That has been taken care of. She has promised secrecy, and she is to be trusted completely. That I, myself, guarantee. After all, consider who she is.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘… and who her children are.’

Who am I, then? Mrs Frisby asked herself in wonder. I suppose that, too, will have to come from Nicodemus.

Mr Ages said to Justin: ‘What about the meeting? It can’t be over already.’

‘It was temporarily adjourned,’ said Justin, ‘to wait for you. In fact, I came to find you.’ ‘Then I suppose we had better go in.’

Justin led the way through the arched entrance, with Mrs Frisby and Mr Ages following. Brutus remained outside at his post.

In the Library

 

The tunnel led gently downwards, and after the first dozen steps they were in darkness. Mrs Frisby could see nothing at all. Behind her Mr Ages limped along; ahead she could hear the scuffle of Justin’s footsteps. She followed the sound blindly. Then she heard his voice.

‘Just walk straight forward, Mrs Frisby. There’s nothing to trip over, and nothing to bump into. If you get off course, you’ll feel the wall.’ He added: ‘The dark part doesn’t last long.’

Now what did he mean by that? She thought it over for a minute or two as she walked and had just decided to ask him, when to her surprise she saw ahead of her a faint glow. A light! But how could there be a light down so far? ‘There, we’re through it,’ said Justin cheerfully. ‘I know that blackout bit must be annoying the first time, but it’s necessary.’

‘But aren’t we under the ground?’

‘Oh yes. About three feet down by now, I’d guess.’ ‘Then how can it be light?’

‘I could tell you,’ Justin said, ‘but if you’ll wait fifteen seconds, you’ll see for yourself.’

In a few more steps the tunnel — Mrs Frisby could now discern, dimly, its shape and direction — took a turn to the right, and she did see for herself. She stopped in astonishment.

Ahead of her stretched a long, well-lit hallway. Its ceiling and walls were a smoothly curved arch, its floor hard and flat, with a soft layer of carpet down the middle. The light came from the walls, where every foot or so on both sides a tiny light bulb had been recessed and the hole in which it stood, like a small window, had been covered with a square of coloured glass — blue, green or yellow. The effect was that of stained-glass windows in sunlight.

Justin was watching her and smiling. ‘Do you like it? The carpet and the coloured glass we don’t really need. Some of the wives did that on their own, just for looks. They cut the glass, believe it or not, from old bottles. The carpet was a piece of trim they found somewhere.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘But how …’ ‘We’ve had electricity for years now.’

‘Five,’ said Mr Ages.

‘Five,’ said Justin agreeably. ‘The lights’ — they were the very small, very bright twinkling kind

 

• ‘we found on trees. In fact, most of our lights come from trees. Not until after Christmas, of course

• about New Year. The big light bulbs we have trouble handling.’

 

Mrs Frisby was familiar with electricity (her husband, who knew all kinds of things, had once explained it to her). At night she had seen the lamps shining in Mr Fitzgibbon’s house, and at Christmas time the lights that his sons strung on a pine tree outside.

‘You mean you just took them?’ she asked.

‘We were careful to take only a few from each tree,’ said Mr Ages.

‘It was like picking fruit,’ Justin said rather dreamily. ‘The annual light bulb harvest. We had to go quite far up the road before we had enough. Even so, it took two Christmases.’

‘Justin,’ said Mr Ages, ‘I think we’d better get on.’

They continued along the corridor, which curved always slightly to the right, so Mrs Frisby could never really tell how long it was, and which soon began to incline more steeply into the ground. Mrs Frisby noticed that the air, which should have been dank and damp so deep underground, was on the contrary fresh and clean, and she thought she could even detect a very faint breeze blowing past her ears as she moved.

In a few more minutes the hall widened abruptly into a large oval chamber. Here the lights were set in the ceiling; at the far end, Mrs Frisby could see, the long tunnel continued and looked as if it slanted upward again — perhaps to another entrance, a back door. Was this, then, their destination, the main hall of the rats? But if so, where were all the other rats? The room was entirely empty — not even a stick of furniture.

‘A storeroom,’ said Justin. ‘Sometimes full. Now empty.’

Then she saw that off one side of the chamber there was a stairway leading down, and beside it a small door. Justin led them to the door.

‘For freight only,’ he said with a grin at Mr Ages. ‘But considering your limp, I think we can make an exception. The stairs wouldn’t be easy.’

Mrs Frisby looked at the stairway. It went down in a spiral and each step was neatly inlaid with a rectangular piece of slate. She could not tell how far down it led, since after the first turn of the spiral she could see no more, but she had a feeling it was a long way down. As Justin said, it would be hard for Mr Ages.

Justin opened the door. It led into a square room that looked like a cupboard.

‘After you,’ he said. Mrs Frisby went in, the others followed, and the door swung shut. On the wall were two knobs. Justin pushed one of them, and Mrs Frisby, who had never been in a lift before, gasped and almost fell as she felt the floor suddenly sink beneath her feet. Justin reached out a hand to steady her.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I should have warned you.’ ‘But we’re falling!’

‘Not quite. We’re going down, but we’ve got two strong cables and an electric motor holding us.’

Still, Mrs Frisby held her breath during the rest of the descent, until finally the small lift came to a gentle stop and Justin opened the door. Then she breathed again and looked out.

The room before her was at least three times as big as the one they had just left, and corridors radiated from it in as many directions as petals from a daisy. Directly opposite the lift an open arch led into what looked like a still larger room — seemingly some kind of an assembly hall, for it had a raised platform at one end.

And now there were rats. Rats by dozens — standing and talking in groups of twos and threes and fours, rats walking slowly, rats hurrying, rats carrying papers. As Mrs Frisby stepped from the elevator, it became obvious that strangers were a rarity down there, for the hubbub of a dozen conversations stopped abruptly, and all heads turned to look at her. They did not look hostile, nor were they alarmed — since her two companions were familiar to them — but merely curious. Then, as quickly as it had died out, the sound of talking began again, as if the rats were too polite to stand and stare. But one of them, a lean rat with a scarred face, left his group and walked towards them.

‘Justin. Mr Ages. And I see we have a guest.’ He spoke graciously, with an air of quiet dignity, and Mrs Frisby noticed two more things about him. First, the scar on his face ran across his left eye, and over this eye he wore a black patch, fastened by a cord around his head. Second, he carried a satchel

 

• rather like a handbag — by a strap over his shoulders.

 

‘A guest whose name you will recognize,’ said Justin. ‘She is Mrs Jonathan Frisby. Mrs Frisby, this is Nicodemus.’

‘A name I recognize indeed,’ said the rat called Nicodemus. ‘Mrs Frisby — are you perhaps aware of this? — your late husband was one of our greatest friends. You are welcome here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Frisby, but she was more puzzled than ever. ‘In fact, I did not know that you knew my husband. But I’m glad to hear it, because I’ve come to ask your help.’

‘Mrs Frisby has a problem,’ said Mr Ages. ‘An urgent one.’

‘If we can help you, we will,’ said Nicodemus. He asked Mr Ages: ‘Can it wait until after the meeting? An hour? We were just ready to begin again.’

Mr Ages considered. ‘An hour will make no difference, I think.’

Nicodemus said: ‘Justin, show Mrs Frisby to the library, where she can be comfortable until the meeting is over.’

By this time the last of the other assembled rats had made their way into the large meeting hall, where they sat facing the raised platform. Nicodemus followed them, pulling some papers and a small reading glass from the satchel at his side as he walked to the front of the room.

Justin led Mrs Frisby in another direction, down a corridor to their left, and again she had the impression of a faint, cool breeze against her face. She realized that the corridor she had walked in up above was merely a long entranceway, and that the halls around her were the rats’ real living quarters. The one down which Justin led her was lined with doors, one of which he opened.

‘In here,’ he said.

The room they entered was big, square, well lit, and had a faint musty smell. ‘It’s reasonably comfortable, and if you like to read …’ he gestured at the walls. They were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, and on the shelves stood — Mrs Frisby dredged in her memory. ‘Books,’ she said. ‘They’re books.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin. ‘Do you read much?’

‘Only a little,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘My husband taught me. And the children …’ She started to tell him how. Laboriously scratching letters in the earth with a stick — it seemed so long ago. But Justin was leaving.

‘Excuse me — I’ve got to go to the meeting. I hate meetings, but this one’s important. We’re finishing up the schedule for the Plan.’ He pronounced it with a capital P.

‘The Plan?’

But he was out of the door, closing it gently behind him.

Mrs Frisby looked around her. The room — the library, Nicodemus had called it — had, in addition to its shelves of books, several tables with benches beside them, and on these were stacked more books, some of them open.

Books. Her husband, Jonathan, had told her about them. He had taught her and the children to read (the children had mastered it quickly, but she herself could barely manage the simplest words; she had thought perhaps it was because she was older). He had also told her about electricity. He had known these things — and so, it emerged, did the rats. It had never occurred to her until now to wonder how he knew them. He had always known so many things, and she had accepted that as a matter of course. But who had taught him to read? Strangely, it also emerged that he had known the rats. Had they taught him? What had been his connection with them? She remembered his long visits with Mr Ages. And Mr Ages knew the rats, too.

She sighed. Perhaps when the meeting was over and she had had a chance to talk to Nicodemus — and had told him about Timothy and Moving Day — perhaps when that was settled, he could explain all this to her.

She noticed at the far end of the room a section of wall where there were no bookshelves. There was, instead, a blackboard, covered with words and numbers written in white chalk. There were pieces of chalk and an eraser in a rack at the bottom of it. The blackboard stood near the end of the longest of the tables. Was the library also used as a classroom? When she looked at the blackboard and, rather laboriously, read what was written on it, she saw that it was not. It was, rather, a conference room.

At the top of the board, in large letters, were printed the words:

 

THE PLAN OF THE RATS OF NIMH.

Isabella

 

Mrs Frisby spelled it out slowly: The Plan of the Rats of Nimh. What, or where, was Nimh? The name had a strange and faraway sound. Had these rats, then, come here from somewhere else? Did that explain why they had books and electric lights and wires and an electric motor? Yet they had been here — or at least there had been rats here — for as long as she could remember. Still, that was not so very long.

She wondered what other things they had. Suddenly she had an almost overwhelming desire to look around — to see what was behind the other doors and down the other corridors. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the hall. It was entirely deserted and silent, except that when she listened carefully she could hear a faint humming in the distance, as if something were running — another motor?

She started out into the hall, and then changed her mind. Better not. Nicodemus had been friendly

 

• they had all been friendly — but explicit. He had said she was to wait in the library. And she was not there to pry but to get help. She went back into the library, closed the door, and sat on one of the benches. The books on the table were mostly paperbacks — small enough so that the rats could handle them easily enough, but too big for her; so she sat in front of the blackboard and looked at it again.

 

Beneath the title across the top, in neatly chalked handwriting, were columns of words and figures:

SCHEDULE

January:

Group 1 (10): Oats. 30 loads = 2 bu.

Group 2 (10): Wheat. 30 loads = 2 bu.

Group 3 (10): Corn. 20 loads = 1 ½ bu.

Group 4 (10): Misc. seeds Est. 10 loads total

 

The rest of the blackboard was filled with more rows of figures, each headed by the name of a month: February, March, April, May, and so on until the end of July. At the bottom a separate square was ruled off:

Ploughs (Arthur’s group) (14) Plough No. 2. Complete: Jan. 1

Plough No. 3. Complete: Feb. 10

Plough No. 4. Complete: Mar. 20

Mrs Frisby stared at all this, trying to make head or tail of it, but she could not. It was quite incomprehensible.

She was still puzzling over it when the door opened and a rat came in. It was a girl-rat, small and quite young, judging by her looks. She was carrying a pencil and some papers and looking at the papers as she walked, so that she did not see Mrs Frisby at first. When she did she gasped and dropped the papers, scattering them on the floor. Her eyes opened wide.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know you. How did you get in?’ She backed towards the door. ‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘I’m a friend of Mr Ages.’ The rat was very young indeed, only a

child.

‘But why are you in here? Who let you in?’ ‘Nicodemus. He told me to wait here.’

The girl-rat looked doubtful. ‘You might be a spy.’ ‘A spy! How could I be? A spy from where?’

‘I don’t know. From outside. Maybe from Nimh?’ ‘I don’t even know what Nimh is.’

‘That’s what you say.’

‘But I don’t. What is it?’ asked Mrs Frisby, feeling slightly annoyed.

‘It’s a place.’ The girl-rat, her alarm apparently subsiding, began picking up her scattered papers. ‘I’m supposed to be practising my reading.’

‘What kind of a place?’

‘It’s where we came from. I don’t know too much about it. I’ve never been there.’ ‘How can you come from there if you’ve never been there?’

‘My father and mother did. I was born afterwards. I think it’s white. Anyway, I know one thing.

We don’t want to go back. We don’t want to get caught.’

So, Mrs Frisby thought — that sounds as if, whatever Nimh was, the rats had escaped from it to come here. But she realized that she was not likely to get very clear information from such a child. Again, she hoped that Nicodemus would explain it.

‘Did Nicodemus come from Nimh, too?’ ‘Yes.

‘And Justin?’

‘Yes. You know Justin?’ ‘Yes.’

‘I suppose you’re not a spy,’ said the girl-rat. She sounded mildly disappointed. Then she added irrelevantly: ‘Justin’s not married.’ She climbed on one of the benches and opened a book. ‘He’s the best one of all. He’s not even afraid of Dragon.’ She read in the book for perhaps thirty seconds, picked up her pencil, then put it down again. ‘I’m too young to get married.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘For a while yet. But that won’t last long.’

‘That’s what my mother says. But it seems long. And Justin might marry somebody else.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Mrs Frisby, who could see beyond the tip of her nose. ‘He’s pretty young himself yet. What’s your name?’

‘Isabella.’

‘It’s a pretty name.’

‘It’s all right. Only my brother calls me Izzy. I don’t like that.’ ‘I don’t wonder. Where’s your brother?’

‘At the meeting. He’s older. All the men are at the meeting. But my mother didn’t go. The mothers don’t always go. She’s in the grain room, packing grain.’

‘Packing grain?’

‘For the Plan. She doesn’t like the Plan, though.’ The Plan again.

‘What is the Plan? Why doesn’t she like it?’

‘It’s just — the Plan. For where we’re going to live and all that. She doesn’t like it because she says it’s too hard — no more electric lights, no more refrigerator, no more running water. But she isn’t deserting or anything. Not like Jenner. We didn’t like Jenner.’

‘Who’s Jenner?’

‘He was in the group, but he quit. Maybe he went back to Nimh. We don’t know.’

Mrs Frisby was gradually getting a picture of life in the rat colony — a somewhat confusing one because Isabella was a child, but nonetheless certain things were apparent: They had a grain room (presumably for food storage); the females sometimes went to meetings and sometimes not; Nicodemus seemed to be the leader; they had a Plan for the future that some rats did not like; and one, named Jenner, had deserted. Or had others gone with him? She was about to ask Isabella when the library door opened and Nicodemus, Justin, and Mr Ages entered. Another rat came with them, a stranger.

A Powder for Dragon

 

The strange rat was named Arthur. He was stocky, square and muscular, with bright, hard eyes. He looked efficient.

‘You might call him our chief engineer,’ said Nicodemus to Mrs Frisby, ‘as, indeed, you might call Justin the captain of the guard — if we had any such titles, but we don’t. Mr Ages thought Arthur should come along, though he didn’t say why. So we still don’t know what your problem is.’

Isabella was gone. She had dropped her papers on the floor again when the others had entered, and Justin, to her intense confusion and visible delight, had helped her pick them up.

‘Hello, Izzy,’ he said. ‘How’s the reading coming?’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I finished the Third Reader last week. Now I’m on the Fourth.’

‘The Fourth Reader already! You’re getting quite grown up!’ At that she had almost dropped the papers a third time and made a dash for the door. It did not matter, Mrs Frisby noticed, if Justin called her Izzy — just so long as he called her something.

Nicodemus closed the door behind her, then sat down on one of the benches, facing Mrs Frisby; the others sat down, too, Mr Ages stretching his splinted leg in front of him. Nicodemus took the reading glass from his satchel, opened it, and through it gravely examined Mrs Frisby’s face. ‘You will forgive the glass and the scrutiny,’ he said. ‘When I lost my left eye, I also damaged the right one; I can see little close-up without the glass — indeed, not very much even with it.’ At length he folded the glass and put it on the table.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘what is it we can do to help you?’

So Mrs Frisby recounted once more the events that had led to her coming there, and at the end repeated what the owl had advised her to say — move the house into the lee of the stone.

She added: ‘I don’t understand just what he meant by that. Jeremy — the crow — says it means the side where there’s no wind. But what good would that do?’

‘I think I know what he meant,’ said Nicodemus. ‘In a broad sense, lee means the sheltered side. A bird, flying over Mr Fitzgibbon’s garden, would notice something most of us would miss.’

He reached down into his satchel and took out a sheet of paper and a pencil; he opened the reading glass again. As he talked, he drew a sketch:

‘When a farmer ploughs a field with a big rock in it, he ploughs around the rock — close on each side, leaving a triangle of unploughed land on each end.

‘Mrs Frisby’s house is beside the rock, and will get ploughed up — and probably crushed, as the owl said. But if we can move it a few feet — so that it lies buried behind the rock — in the lee — then she and her children can stay in it as long as they need to.

‘From the air, the way the owl sees it, the garden would look like that.’ He inspected the sketch through the reading glass and then placed it on the table.

Mrs Frisby climbed up on the bench and looked at it. It was a rough map, showing the garden, the big stone near the middle, and the way the furrows made by the plough would curve around it, rather like waves around a boat.

‘Show me where your house is buried,’ said Nicodemus. Mrs Frisby pointed to the spot on the sketch.

‘I know where that cement block is,’ said the rat named Arthur. ‘In fact, I thought about bringing it in, but I decided it was too long a haul. They had it tied on top of the harrow for weight, and it fell off just as they were finishing the garden.’

‘Can you move it,’ asked Nicodemus, pointing at the sketch, ‘to this spot right there, and bury it again?’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘That shouldn’t be hard.’

Mrs Frisby was delighted; looking at the map, it all became clear, and she could see what a beautifully simple idea it was. When Mr Fitzgibbon ploughed, he would go right past their house; they would not have to move until Timothy was well and until the weather was truly warm. She remembered again what her husband had said — how easy to unlock a door when you have the key. She had found the key. Or rather, the owl had found it.

Nicodemus asked Arthur: ‘How long will it take?’

‘Depends. With a party of ten, a couple of hours. With twenty, maybe an hour.’ ‘We can spare twenty. But it’s still too long.’ He looked worried.

So did Arthur. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to work at night — but even so … There’s just no cover at all. It’s wide open.’

‘We’ll have to take care of Dragon,’ said Justin.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Ages, ‘and with this leg, I can’t do it. I’d never make it to the bowl, much less get back again.’

Mrs Frisby, looking at their baffled faces, felt her delight subsiding. Obviously something was wrong.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I know about Dragon, of course, but …’

‘At night,’ said Justin, ‘Dragon prowls the farmyard like a tiger. And you don’t see him until he’s on top of you.’

‘Then you can’t move my house after all.’

‘Well,’ Justin said, ‘ordinarily …’ He turned to Nicodemus. ‘Should I explain it to her?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nicodemus.

‘Ordinarily,’ said Justin, ‘when we have a long project to do at night — sometimes even by day — we make sure Dragon won’t bother us: We put sleeping powder in his food. Mr Ages makes it. It doesn’t do the cat any harm; but he stays extremely drowsy for the next eight hours or so. We station a sentry to watch him, and we’re free to work.’

‘You did it yesterday!’ cried Mrs Frisby, remembering the figures toiling with the wire through the grass, remembering how strangely disinterested Dragon had seemed when he saw her. ‘I saw the cat sleeping in the yard.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin, ‘but today Mr Ages has a broken leg.’ ‘Then he can’t make the powder?’

‘It isn’t that,’ said Mr Ages. ‘I’ve plenty of powder.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Justin, ‘it’s Mr Ages who puts it in Dragon’s dinner bowl, inside the farm kitchen. With his leg broken, he can’t move fast enough.’

‘But why Mr Ages?’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘Can’t someone else do it?’ ‘I’d be glad to do it myself,’ said Justin, ‘but I’m too big.’

‘You see,’ Nicodemus explained, ‘Mrs Fitzgibbon feeds the cat in the morning and in the evening, and his bowl is always kept in the same place — next to a cabinet in one corner of the kitchen. There’s a very shallow space between the floor and the bottom of the cabinet. A few years ago when we conceived the idea of putting Dragon to sleep, we cut a hole in the floor just behind the cabinet — if we put it anywhere else they’d see it. To reach the bowl, Mr Ages crawls under the cabinet. When he gets to the edge, he makes a quick dash to the bowl, drops in the powder, and dashes back out of sight. But with a broken leg, he can’t dash.’

‘We might try leaving some bait outside the house,’ said Justin. ‘That worked once.’

‘Once out of a dozen tries,’ said Nicodemus. ‘It isn’t dependable, and we don’t have much time. To be safe, we ought to move that block tonight.’

‘If we had some catfood …’ said Justin, thinking aloud. ‘He might eat that, even on the porch, because he knows it’s his. Maybe tonight I could go in through the attic and down to the kitchen …’

‘No use,’ said Mr Ages. ‘They keep it in a metal cabinet up on the wall. You couldn’t get it without a crew. And that would make too much noise.’

‘Anyway,’ said Nicodemus, ‘it would put off moving the block until tomorrow night.’

‘Then,’ Justin said, ‘I guess what we do is stake our scouts wherever we can, try to keep track of Dragon, and hope for the best. Some nights he doesn’t go near the garden at all. We might be lucky.’

‘Or we might not,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t like it. We can’t dig that block out without some noise, you know.’

Mrs Frisby interrupted quietly. ‘There is another way,’ she said. ‘If Mr Ages can get into the kitchen, so can I. If you will give me the powder and show me the way, I will try to put it in Dragon’s bowl.’

Justin said quickly: ‘No. It’s no job for a lady.’

‘You forget,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘I’m Timothy’s mother. If you, and Arthur, and others in your group can take risks to save him, surely I can, too. And consider this: I don’t want any of you to be hurt — maybe even killed — by Dragon. But even more, I don’t want the attempt to fail. Perhaps the worst that will happen to you, with luck, is that you will have to scatter and run, and leave my house unmoved. But then what will happen to us? Timothy, at least, will die. So if there is no one else to put the cat to sleep, I must do it.’

Nicodemus considered, and then spoke:

‘She’s right, of course. If she chooses to take the risk, we can’t deny her the right.’ To Mrs Frisby he added: ‘But you should know that the danger is great. It was in the same kitchen yesterday, running from Dragon’s bowl, that Mr Ages got his leg broken. And it was in doing the same thing, last year, that your husband died.’

The Marketplace

 

Mrs Frisby’s head was buried in her arms. ‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘All I knew was that he didn’t come back. But I never knew what happened. I didn’t even know he knew you. Why didn’t he ever tell me?’

Justin touched her shoulder gently. ‘It’s hard for you to learn it this way, so suddenly,’ he said. ‘We thought about telling you when it happened, but we decided we shouldn’t. It wouldn’t have done any good.’

‘You ask why Jonathan never told you about us,’ Nicodemus added. ‘He had a reason, a good one.

Still he worried about it a lot, and he might have told you in the end. But then it was too late.’

‘What was the reason?’ Mrs Frisby raised her face. There were tears on her cheeks, but she had stopped crying.

‘To answer that I would have to tell you quite a long story — the whole story about us, and Nimh, and Jonathan, and how we came here. He came with us, you see. I don’t mind doing that but I don’t know if there is time now.’

‘I think there is,’ said Justin, ‘if Mr Ages and I go to get the powder while you’re telling it.’ ‘With this leg,’ said Mr Ages glumly, ‘that will take long enough to tell it twice.’

‘I had forgotten,’ said Justin contritely. ‘Would it be better if I went alone?’

‘No,’ said Mr Ages. ‘There are so many different powders in my storeroom. You wouldn’t know which to bring back. I’ll go with you. But we’ll go slowly.’

‘And I,’ said Arthur, ‘will see about the equipment for tonight. We’ll need shovels, crowbars, block and tackle, rollers …’ He left, still listing tools.

Nicodemus said to Mrs Frisby, ‘I think that we, too, should leave the library. There will be others coming in, like Isabella, to practise reading, and some to do research.’

‘Research?’

‘We’ve got some new books on agriculture — farming, gardening, fertilizing, things like that — and we’re studying them. It’s part of the Plan.’

‘I don’t know what the Plan is.’

‘No,’ agreed Nicodemus, ‘but when I’ve told you our story, you’ll understand that, too.’

He opened the door and led Mrs Frisby down the corridor past several more doors, all closed. He stopped before one, which he opened.

‘My office,’ he said. ‘Please come in.’

The room she entered was smaller than the library, but much more comfortably — almost elegantly — furnished. There was a rug on the floor (the same pattern, she noticed, as the carpet in the hallway above), a light recessed in the ceiling and another in the wall next to a table. There were bookshelves; on one shelf an electric clock hummed quietly to itself. A book lay open on the table, with a chair in front of it; against the opposite wall stood a small sofa, neatly upholstered in cloth. But what attracted Mrs Frisby’s attention most was a box in one corner of the room, a box with dials and a small light shining on the front; from this box came the soft sound of music. She listened entranced.

‘You like music?’ said Nicodemus. ‘So do I.’

‘That must be a radio.’ Again, something vaguely remembered from what Jonathan had once told her. Music. She had heard it only two or three times in her life, when the Fitzgibbons had left a window open and someone was playing inside. And never up close. It was a lovely sound.

‘Yes,’ said Nicodemus. ‘We didn’t get it for music, of course, but to hear the news. Still, as long as

it’s here — why not use it?’

He sat down, and so did Mrs Frisby.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I will tell you about Nimh. You’ll be interested, I think, because your husband was part of it. And when I’m finished, I think you will see why he felt he could not tell you himself.’

 

The story begins (Nicodemus continued) not at Nimh, but at a marketplace on the edge of a big city. It was called the Farmers’ Market, a great square of a place with a roof over part of it and no walls to speak of. There early every morning the farmers arrived from all over the surrounding countryside, with trucks full of tomatoes, corn, cabbages, potatoes, eggs, chickens, hams, food for the city. One part of it was reserved for the fishermen who brought crabs and oysters and bass and flounders. It was a fine place, noisy and full of smells.

We lived near this market — my father, my mother, my nine sisters and brothers and I — underground in a big pipe that had once been part of a storm sewer, but was no longer used. There were hundreds of other rats in the neighbourhood. It was a rough life, but not so hard as you might think, because of the market.

Every evening at five o’clock the farmers and the fishermen would close up their stalls, pack their trucks, and go home. At night, hours later, the cleaning men would arrive with brooms and hoses. But in between, the market was ours. The food the farmers left behind! Peas and beans that fell from the trucks, tomatoes and potatoes, pieces of meat and fish trimmed as waste — they lay on the pavements and in the gutters; they filled great bins that were supposed to be covered but seldom were. There was always ten times more than we could eat, and so there was never any need for fighting over it.

Fighting? Quite the contrary, the marketplace was a perfect place for playing, and so we did, the young rats at least, as soon as we had finished eating. There were empty boxes for hide-and-seek, there were walls to climb, tin cans to roll, and pieces of twine to tie and swing on. There was even, in the middle of the square, a fountain to swim in when the weather was hot. Then, at the first clang of the cleaning men in the distance, one of the older rats would sound a warning, and everyone would pick up as much food as he could carry home. All of us kept a reserve supply, because some days — Sundays and holidays — the market would be closed, and we were never quite sure when this would happen.

When I went to the market, it was usually with two companions, my elder brother Gerald and a friend of ours named Jenner. These were my two closest friends; we liked the same games, the same jokes, the same topics of conversation — even the same kinds of food. I particularly admired Jenner, who was extremely quick and intelligent.

One evening in early autumn Jenner and I set out for the marketplace. It must have been September, for the leaves were just turning yellow and some children were throwing a football in a vacant lot. Gerald had to stay at home that night; he had caught a cold, and since the air was chilly, my mother thought he should not go out. So Jenner and I went without him. I remember we promised to bring him back some of his favourite food, beef liver, if we could find any.

We took our usual route to the market, not along the streets but through the narrow alleys between the buildings, mostly commercial warehouses and garages, that bordered the square. As we walked, we were joined by more rats; at that time of day they converged on the marketplace from all directions. When we reached the square, I noticed that there was a white truck of an odd, square shape parked on the street bordering it, perhaps a hundred yards away. I say I noticed it — I did not pay any particular attention to it, for trucks were common enough in that part of town; but if I had, I would have noticed that printed on each side of it were four small letters: NIMH. I would not have known what they were, of

course, for at that time neither I nor any of the other rats knew how to read.

It was growing dark when we reached the market, but through the dusk we could see that there was an unusually large supply of food — a great mound of it — near the centre of the square, away from the roofed-over portion. I suppose that should have served as a warning, but it didn’t. I remember Jenner’s saying, ‘They must have had a really busy day,’ and we ran joyfully towards the pile along with several dozen other rats.

Just as we reached the food it happened. All around us suddenly there was shouting. Bright, blinding searchlights flashed on, aimed at us and at the mound of food, so that when we tried to run away from it, we could not see where we were going. Between and behind the lights there were shadows moving swiftly, and as they came towards us I could see that they were men — men in white uniforms carrying nets, round nets with long handles.

‘Look out!’ cried Jenner. ‘They’re trying to catch us.’ He darted in one direction, I in another, and I lost sight of him.

We all ran — straight towards the men with the nets. There was no other way to run; they had us encircled. The nets flailed down, scooped, flailed again. I suppose some rats got through, slipping between the men and past the lights. I felt a swish — a net just missed me. I turned and ran back towards the mound, thinking I might hide myself in it. But then came another swish, and that time I felt the enveloping fibres fall over me. They entangled my legs, then my neck, I was lifted from the ground along with three other rats, and the net closed around us.

In the Cage

 

Mrs Frisby said: ‘But why did they want to catch you? And how did you ever get away again?’

‘At first,’ said Nicodemus, ‘I thought it must be because they didn’t like our stealing the food. And yet you could hardly even call it stealing — it was waste food, and all they did with it was haul it away to the city incinerator. So what harm if we ate some of it? Of course, there are people who just dislike rats, whether they’re doing any harm or not.

‘And mice, too,’ said Mrs Frisby.

‘True,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Though not so much as rats. I think. Anyway, that wasn’t the reason at all; but what the real reason was, I didn’t find out for a while. As to getting away — that, too, didn’t happen until much later.’

 

No, I was firmly and inextricably caught, snared in the net and helpless (Nicodemus continued). When the man who held it saw that he had four rats, he pulled a draw string that closed it up. He put the net down and picked up another, an empty one. He moved on into the square, leaving us to lie there. I tried gnawing my way out, but the strands were made of some kind of plastic, as hard as wire.

The noise and movements began to die down eventually; I supposed the rats in the square had all either been caught or had escaped. I heard one man call to another: ‘I suppose that’s the lot.’ Someone else was turning a light this way and that, searching the rest of the market area.

‘Not a one to be seen.’

‘We could hide and wait for another wave.’

‘There won’t be another wave. Not tonight. Probably not for four or five nights.’ ‘Word gets around.’

‘You mean they communicate?’ A third voice.

‘You bet they communicate. And the next time they do come, you can be sure they’ll case the place carefully. We were lucky. These rats hadn’t been bothered for years. They’d grown careless.’

‘How many did the lab order?’ Someone was turning out the lights one at a time. ‘Five dozen. How many have we got?’

‘About that. Maybe more.’ ‘Let’s load the truck.’

In a minute or so I felt myself being lifted up; and swinging back and forth in the net, I was carried with my three companions to the white truck I had seen earlier. Its back doors were open, and it was lighted inside. I could see that its whole interior was a large wire cage. Into this our net was thrust; the man then opened the draw string and we were dumped on to the floor, which was covered with sawdust. The other nets were emptied one at a time the same way; and in a few minutes there was a good-sized crowd of us on the floor, all more or less dazed and all (if I was typical) terrified. The cage was locked, the doors clanged shut, and the lights went out. I heard the truck motor start; a second later the floor lurched beneath me. We were moving. Where were they taking us? For what purpose?

Then, in the dark, I heard a voice beside me.

‘Nicodemus?’ It was Jenner. You can imagine how glad I was to hear him. But I was sorry, too. ‘Jenner. I thought maybe you got away.’

‘I was in the last net. I thought I saw you across the floor.’ ‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s a lab?’ ‘A laboratory.’

‘Yes, but what is it?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve just heard the word somewhere.’ ‘Well, I think that’s where we’re going. Whatever it is.’

The truck rumbled along through the dark, over bumpy streets at first, then, at a higher speed, over a smooth road. There were no windows in the back, so it was impossible to see where we were going

 

• not that I would have known anyway, never before having been more than half a dozen streets from home. I think we drove for about two hours, but it might have been less, before the truck slowed down, and turned, and finally came to a stop.

 

The back doors were opened again, and through the wire wall of the cage I saw that we had come to a building, very modern, of white cement and glass. It was square and big, about ten storeys tall. Night had fallen, and most of its windows were dark, but the platform to which our truck drove us was lighted, and there were people waiting for us.

A door opened, and three men came out. One of them pushed a cart, a trolley piled with small wire cages. The man beside him was dressed in a heavy coat, boots, and thick leather gloves. The third man wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a white coat. He was obviously the leader.

The men from the truck, the ones who had caught us, now joined the men from the building. ‘How many did you get?’ asked the man in the white coat.

‘Hard to count — they keep moving around. But I make it between sixty and seventy.’ ‘Good. Any trouble?’

‘No. It was easy. They acted almost tame.’ ‘I hope not. I’ve got enough tame ones.’

‘Oh, they’re lively enough. And they look healthy.’ ‘Let’s get them out.’

The man with the gloves and the boots then donned a wire face-mask as well, and climbed in among us. He opened a small sliding trapdoor at the back of our cage; a man outside held one of the small cages up to the opening, and one at a time we were pushed out into our individual little prisons. A few of the rats snarled and tried to bite; I did not, and neither did Jenner; it was too obviously futile. When it was finished, the man in the white coat said, ‘Sixty-three — good work.’ A man from the trolley said, ‘Thanks, Dr Schultz.’ And we were stacked on the hand truck and wheeled into the building.

Dr Schultz. I did not know it then, but I was to be his prisoner (and his pupil) for the next three years.

We spent the rest of that night in a long white room. It was, in fact, a laboratory, with a lot of equipment at one end that I didn’t understand at all then — bottles and shiny metal things and black boxes with wires trailing from them. But our end held only rows of cages on shelves, each cage with a tag on it, and each separated from its neighbours by wooden partitions on both sides. Someone came around with a stack of small jars and fastened one to my cage; a little pipe led through the bars like a sipping straw — drinking water. Then the lights were dimmed and we were left alone.

That cage was my home for a long time. It was not uncomfortable; it had a floor of some kind of plastic, medium soft and warm to the touch; with wire walls and ceiling, it was airy enough. Yet just the fact that it was a cage made it horrible. I, who had always run where I wanted, could go three hops forward, three hops back again, and that was all. But worse was the dreadful feeling — I know we all had it — that we were completely at the mercy of someone we knew not at all, for some purpose we

could not guess. What were their plans for us?

As it turned out, the uncertainty itself was the worst suffering we had to undergo. We were treated well enough, except for some very small, very quick flashes of pain, which were part of our training. And we were always well fed, though the food, scientifically compiled pellets, was not what you’d call delicious.

But of course we didn’t know that when we arrived, and I doubt that any of us got much sleep that first night. I know I didn’t. So, in a way, it was a relief when early the next morning the lights snapped on and Dr Schultz entered. There were two other people with him, a young man and a young woman. Like him, they were dressed in white laboratory coats. He was talking to them as they entered the room and walked towards our cages.

‘… three groups. Twenty for training on injection series A, twenty on series B. That will leave twenty-three for the control group. They get no injections at all — except, to keep the test exactly even, we will prick them with a plain needle. Let’s call the groups A, B, and C for control; tag them and number them A-1 to A-20, B-1 to B-20, and so on. Number the cages the same way, and keep each rat in the same cage throughout. Diet will be the same for all.’

‘When do we start the injections?’

‘As soon as we’re through with the tagging. We’ll do that now. George, you number the tags and the cages. Julie, you tie them on. I’ll hold.’

So the young woman’s name was Julie; the young man was George. They all put gloves on, long, tough plastic ones that came to their elbows. One by one we were taken from our cages, held gently but firmly by Dr Schultz while Julie fastened around each of our necks a narrow ribbon of yellow plastic bearing a number. I learned eventually that mine was number A-10.

They were kind, especially Julie. I remember that when one rat was being tagged, she looked at it and said, ‘Poor little thing, he’s frightened. Look how he’s trembling.’

‘What kind of biologist are you?’ said Dr Schultz. ‘The “poor little thing” is a she, not a he.’

When my turn came, the door of my cage slid open just enough for Dr Schultz to put his gloved hand through. I cowered to the back of the cage, which was just what he expected me to do; one hand pressed me flat against the wire wall; then his fingers gripped my shoulders. The other hand held my head just behind the ears, and I was powerless. I was lifted from the cage and felt the plastic collar clipped around my neck. I was back inside with the door closed in less than a minute. The collar was not tight, but by no amount of tugging, twisting or shaking was I ever able to get it off.

I watched through the wire front of my cage as the others were caught and tagged. About six cages down from me, on the same shelf, I saw them put a collar on Jenner; but once he was back in his cage, I could see him no longer.

A little later in the morning they came around again, this time pushing a table on wheels. It was loaded with a bottle of some clear liquid, a long rack of sharp needles, and a plunger. Once more I was lifted from the cage. This time George did the holding while Dr Schultz fastened one of the needles to the plunger. I felt a sharp pain in my hip; then it was over. We all got used to that, for from then on we got injections at least twice a week. What they were injecting and why, I did not know. Yet for twenty of us those injections were to change our whole lives.

The Maze

 

During the days that followed, our lives fell into a pattern, and the reason for our captivity gradually became clear. Dr Schultz was a neurologist — that is, an expert on brains, nerves, intelligence, and how people learn things. He hoped, by experimenting on us, to find out whether certain injections could help us to learn more and faster. The two younger people working with him, George and Julie, were graduate workers in biology.

‘Watch always,’ he told them, ‘for signs of improvement, faster learning, quicker reaction in group A as compared to group B, and both as compared to the control group.’

My own training began on the day after the first injections. It was George who did it; I suppose Julie and Dr Schultz were doing the same test on other rats. He took my cage from the shelf and carried it to another room, similar to the first one but with more equipment in it, and no shelves of cages. He placed the cage in a slot against a wall, slid open the end, opened a matching door in the wall — and I was free.

Or so I thought. The small doorway in the wall led into a short corridor, which opened, or seemed to, directly on to a green lawn. I could see it clearly, and behind it some bushes, and behind them a street — all outdoors, and nothing but air between me and them. Furthermore, I could smell the fresh outdoor breeze blowing in. Were they letting me go?

I made a dash towards the open end of the corridor — and then jumped back, I could not go on. About two feet from my cage (still open behind me) there was something dreadfully wrong with the floor. When my feet touched it, a terrible, prickling feeling came over my skin, my muscles cramped, my eyes blurred and I got instantly dizzy. I never got used to that feeling — no one ever does — but I did experience it many times, and eventually learned what it was: electric shock. It is not exactly a pain, but it is unbearable.

Yet I was in a frenzy to reach that open lawn, to run for the bushes, to get away from the cage. I tried again — and jumped back again. No use. Then I saw, leading off to the left, another corridor. I had not noticed it at first because I had been looking so eagerly at the open end of the one I was in. The second one seemed to stop about five feet away in a blank wall. Yet there was light there: it must turn a corner. I ran down it, cautiously, not trusting the floor. At the end it turned right — and there was the lawn again, another opening. I got closer that time; then just as I thought I was going to make it — another shock. I pulled back and saw that there was still another corridor, leading off to the right. Again I ran, again I saw the open escape hole, and again I was stopped by shock. This was repeated over and over; yet each time I seemed to get a little closer to freedom.

But when finally I reached it and the grass was only a step away, a wire wall snapped down in front of me, another behind me; the ceiling opened above me and a gloved hand reached in and picked me up.

A voice said: ‘Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.’ It was George.

I had, after all my running through the corridors, emerged into a trap only a few feet from where I had started, and, through a concealed opening up above, George had been watching everything I did.

I had been in what is called a maze, a device to test intelligence and memory. I was put in it many times again, and so were the others. The second time I got through it a little faster, because I remembered — to some extent — which corridors had electric floors and which did not. The third time I was still faster; and after each trial George (or sometimes Julie, sometimes Dr Schultz) would

write down how long it took. You might ask: Why would I bother to run through it at all, if I knew it was only a trick? The answer is I couldn’t help it. When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running towards is an illusion.

There were more injections, and other kinds of tests, and some of these were more important than the maze, because the maze was designed only to find out how quickly we could learn, while some of the others actually taught us things — or at least led up to the actual teaching.

One was what Dr Schultz called ‘shape recognition’. We would be put into a small room with three doors leading out — one round, one square, and one triangular. These doors were on hinges, with springs that held them shut, but they were easy to push open, and each door led into another room with three more doors like the first one. But the trick was this: If you went through the wrong door, the room you entered had an electric floor, and you got a shock. So you had to learn: In the first room, you used the round door; second room, triangle, and so on.

All of these activities helped to pass the time, and the weeks went by quickly, but they did not lessen our longing to get away. I wished for my old home in the storm sewer; I wished I could see my mother and father, and run with my brother to the marketplace I know all the others felt the same way; yet it seemed a hopeless thing. Still there was one rat who decided to try it anyway.

He was a young rat, probably the youngest of all that had been caught, and by chance he was in the cage next to mine; I might mention that like Jenner and me, he was in the group Dr Schultz called A. His name was Justin.

It was late one night that I heard him calling to me, speaking softly, around the wooden partition between our cages. Those partitions generally kept all of us from getting to know each other as well as we might have done, and discouraged us from talking much to one another; it was quite hard to hear around them, and of course you could never see the one you were talking to. I think Dr Schultz had purposely had them made of some soundproof material. But you could hear, if you and your neighbour got in the corners of the cages nearest each other and spoke out through the wire front.

‘Nicodemus?’

‘Yes?’ I went over to the corner. ‘How long have we been here?’

‘You mean since the beginning? Since we were caught?’ ‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know. Several months — I think, but I have no way to keep track.’ ‘I know. I don’t either. Do you suppose it’s winter outside now?’ ‘Probably. Or late autumn.’

‘It will be cold.’ ‘But not in here.’

‘No. But I’m going to try to get out.’ ‘Get out? But how? Your cage is shut.’

‘Tomorrow we get injections, so they’ll open it. When they do, I’m going to run.’ ‘Run where?’

‘I don’t know. At least I’ll get a look around. There might be some way out. What can I lose?’ ‘You might get hurt.’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway they won’t hurt me.’

By they he meant Dr Schultz and the other two. He added confidently:

‘All those injections, all the time they’ve spent — we’re too valuable to them now. They’ll be careful.’

That idea had not occurred to me before, but when I thought about it, I decided he was right. Dr Schultz, Julie and George had spent most of their working hours with us for months; they could not afford to let any harm come to us. On the other hand, neither could they afford to allow any of us to escape.

Justin made his attempt the next morning. And it did cause a certain amount of excitement, but not at all what we expected. It was Julie who opened Justin’s cage with a hypodermic in her hand. Justin was out with a mighty leap, hit the floor (about four feet down) with a thump, shook himself and ran, disappearing from my view heading towards the other end of the room.

Julie seemed not at all alarmed. She calmly placed the needle on a shelf, then walked to the door of the laboratory and pushed a button on the wall near it. A red light came on over the door. She picked up a notebook and pencil from a desk near the door and followed Justin out of my sight.

A few minutes later Dr Schultz and George entered. They opened the door cautiously and closed it behind them. ‘The outer door is shut, too,’ said Dr Schultz. ‘Where is it?’

‘Down here,’ said Julie, inspecting the air ducts. ‘Really? Which one is it?’

‘It’s one of the A group, just as you expected. Number nine. I’m keeping notes on it.’

Obviously the red light was some kind of a warning signal, both outside the door and in — ‘laboratory animal at large.’ And not only had Dr Schultz known one of us was out, but he had expected it to happen.

‘… a few days sooner than I thought,’ he was saying, ‘but so much the better. Do you realize …’ ‘Look,’ said Julie. ‘He’s doing the whole baseboard — but he’s studying the windows, too. See

how he steps back to look up?’

‘Of course,’ said Dr Schultz. ‘And at the same time he’s watching us, too. Can’t you see?’ ‘He’s pretty cool about it,’ said George.

‘Can you imagine one of the lab rats doing that? Or even one of the controls? We’ve got to try to grasp what we have on our hands. The A group is now three hundred per cent ahead of the control group in learning, and getting smarter all the time. B group is only twenty per cent ahead. It’s the new DNA that’s doing it. We have a real breakthrough, and since it is DNA, we may very well have a true mutation, a brand new species of rat. But we’ve got to be careful with it. I think we should go ahead now with the next injection series.’

‘The steroids?’ (Whatever that meant.)

‘Yes. It may slow them up a little — though I doubt it. But even if it does, it will be worth it, because I’m betting it will increase their life span by double at least. Maybe more Maybe much more.’

‘Look,’ said Julie, ‘A-9 has made a discovery. He’s found the mice.’ George said: ‘See how he’s studying them.’

‘Probably,’ said Dr Schultz wryly, ‘he’s wondering if they’re ready for their steroid injections, too.

As a matter of fact, I think the G group is. They’re doing almost as well as A group.’ ‘Should I get the net and put him back?’ George asked.

‘I doubt that you’ll need it,’ Dr Schultz said, ‘now that he’s learned he can’t get out.’ But they were underestimating Justin. He had learned no such thing.

A Lesson in Reading

 

Of course, Justin did not escape that day, nor even that year. When they — Julie — put on a glove and went to pick him up, he submitted meekly enough, and in a short time he was back in his cage.

Yet he had learned some things. He had, as Julie noticed, examined the air ducts — the openings along the wall through which warm air flowed in winter, cool air in summer — and he had studied the windows. Mainly he had learned that he could, occasionally at least, jump from his cage and wander around without incurring any anger or injury. All of this, eventually, was important. For it was Justin, along with Jenner, who finally figured out how to get away. I had a part in it, too. But all that came later.

I won’t go into details about the rest of our training except for one part of it that was the most useful of all. But in general, during the months that followed, two things were happening:

First, we were learning more than any rats ever had before, and were becoming more intelligent than any rats had ever been.

The second thing could be considered, from some points of view, even more important — and certainly more astonishing — than the first. Dr Schultz (you will recall) had said that the new series of injections might increase our life span by double or more. Yet even he was not prepared for what happened. Perhaps it was the odd combination of both types of injections working together — I don’t know, and neither did he. But the result was that as far as he could detect, in the A group the ageing process seemed to stop almost completely.

For example — during the years we were in the laboratory, most of the rats in the control group grew old and sickly, and finally died; so did those in B group, for though they were getting injections, too, the formula was not the same as ours. But among the twenty of us in A group, no one could see any signs that we were growing older at all. Apparently (though we seldom saw them) the same thing was happening with the G group, the mice who were getting the same injections we were.

Dr Schultz was greatly excited about this. ‘The short life span has always been a prime limiting factor in education,’ he told George and Julie. ‘If we can double it, and speed up the learning process at the same time, the possibilities are enormous.’ Double it! Even now, years later, years after the injections were stopped, we seem scarcely any older than we were then.

We could not detect either of these things ourselves. That is, we didn’t feel any different, and since we had no contact with the other groups, we had no basis for comparison. All we had to go by was what Dr Schultz said. He and the others were preparing a research paper about us — to be published in some scientific journal — so each morning he dictated the results of the previous day’s tests into a tape recorder. We heard all of it, though there was a lot of technical stuff we couldn’t understand, especially at first. Until the paper was published (he kept reminding George and Julie of this) the whole experiment was to be kept secret.

The one important phase of training began one day after weeks of really hard work at the ‘shape recognition’ that I mentioned before. But this was different. For the first time they used sounds along with shapes, and pictures, real pictures we could recognize. For example, one of the first and simplest of these exercises was a picture, a clear photograph, of a rat. I suppose they felt sure we would know what that was. This picture was shown on a screen, with a light behind it. Then, after I had looked at the picture and recognized it, a shape flashed on the screen under it — a sort of half circle and two straight lines, not like anything I had seen before. Then the voice began:

‘Are.’

‘Are.’

‘Are.’

It was Julie’s voice, speaking very clearly, but it had a tinny sound — it was a record. After repeating ‘are’ a dozen times or so, that particular shape disappeared and another one came on the screen, still under the picture of the rat. It was a triangle, with legs on it. And Julie’s voice began again:

‘Aiee.’

‘Aiee.’

‘Aiee.’

When that shape disappeared a third one came on the screen. This one was a cross. Julie’s voice said:

‘Tea.’

‘Tea.’

‘Tea.’

Then all three shapes appeared at once, and the record said:

‘Are.’

‘Aiee.’

‘Tea.’

‘Rat.’

You will already have recognized what was going on: they were teaching us to read. The symbols under the picture were the letters R-A-T. But the idea did not become clear to me, nor to any of us, for quite a long time. Because, of course, we didn’t know what reading was.

Oh, we learned to recognize the shapes easily enough, and when I saw the rat picture I knew straight away what symbols would appear beneath it. In the same way, when the picture showed a cat, I knew the same shapes would appear, except the first one would be a half-circle, and Julie’s voice would repeat: ‘See — see — see.’ I even learned that when the photograph showed not one but several rats, a fourth shape would appear under it — a snaky line — and the sound with that one was ‘ess — ess — ess’. But as to what all this was for, none of us had any inkling.

It was Jenner who finally figured it out. By this time we had developed a sort of system of communication, a simple enough thing, just passing spoken messages from one cage to the next, like passing notes in school. Justin, who was still next to me, called to me one day:

‘Message for Nicodemus from Jenner. He says important.’ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘what’s the message?’

‘Look at the shapes on the wall next to the door. He says to look carefully.’

My cage, like Jenner’s and those of the rest of A group, was close enough to the door so I could see what he meant: near the doorway there was a large, square piece of white cardboard fastened to the wall — a sign. It was covered with an assortment of black markings to which I had never paid any attention (though they had been there ever since we arrived).

Now, for the first time, I looked at them carefully, and I grasped what Jenner had discovered.

The top line of black marks on the wall were instantly familiar: R-A-T-S; as soon as I saw them I thought of the picture that went with them; and as soon as I did that I was, for the first time, reading. Because, of course, that’s what reading is: using symbols to suggest a picture or an idea. From that time on it gradually became clear to me what all these lessons were for, and once I understood the idea, I was eager to learn more. I could scarcely wait for the next lesson, and the next. The whole concept of reading was, to me at least, fascinating. I remember how proud I was when, months later, I

was able to read and understand that whole sign. I read it hundreds of times, and I’ll never forget it: RATS MAY NOT BE REMOVED FROM THE LABORATORY WITHOUT WRITTEN

PERMISSION. And at the bottom, in smaller letters, the word NIMH.

But then a puzzling thing came up, a thing we’re still not sure about even now. Apparently Dr Schultz, who was running the lessons, did not realize how well they were succeeding. He continued the training, with new words and new pictures every day; but the fact is, once we had grasped the idea and learned the different sounds each letter stood for, we leaped way ahead of him. I remember well, during one of the lessons, looking at a picture of a tree. Under it the letters flashed on: T-R-E-E. But in the photograph, though the tree was in the foreground, there was a building in the background, and a sign near it. I scarcely glanced at T-R-E-E, but concentrated instead on reading the sign. It said:

NIMH. PRIVATE PARKING BY PERMIT ONLY. RESERVED FOR DOCTORS AND STAFF. NO

VISITOR PARKING. The building behind it, tall and white, looked very much like the building we were in.

I’m sure Dr Schultz had plans for testing our reading ability. I could even guess, from the words he was teaching us, what the tests were going to be like. For example, he taught us ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘door’, ‘food’, ‘open’, and so on. It was not hard to imagine the test: I would be placed in one chamber, my food in another. There would be two doors, and a sign saying: ‘For food, open door at right.’ Or something like that. Then if I — if all of us — moved unerringly towards the proper door, he would know we understood the sign.

As I said. I’m sure he planned to do this, but apparently he did not think we were ready for it yet. I think maybe he was even a little afraid to try it; because if he did it too soon, or if for any other reason it did not work, his experiment would be a failure. He wanted to be sure, and his caution was his undoing.

Justin announced one evening around the partition:

‘I’m going to get out of my cage tonight and wander around a bit.’ ‘How can you? It’s locked.’

‘Yes. But did you notice, along the bottom edge there’s a printed strip?’

I had not noticed it. I should perhaps explain that when Dr Schultz and the others opened our cages we could never quite see how they did it; they manipulated something under the plastic floor, something we couldn’t see.

‘What does it say?’

‘I’ve been trying to read it the last three times they brought me back from training. It’s very small print. But I think I’ve finally made it out. It says: To release door, pull knob forward and slide right.’

‘Knob?’

‘Under the floor, about an inch back, there’s a metal thing just in front of the shelf. I think that’s the knob, and I think I can reach it through the wire. Anyway, I’m going to try.’

‘Now?’

‘Not until they close up.’

‘Closing up’ was a ritual Dr Schultz, George and Julie went through each night. For about an hour they sat at their desks, wrote notes in books, filed papers in cabinets, and finally locked the cabinets. Then they checked all the cages, dimmed the lights, locked the doors and went home, leaving us alone in the still laboratory.

About half an hour after they left that night, Justin said: ‘I’m going to try now.’ I heard a scuffling noise, a click and scrape of metal, and in a matter of seconds I saw his door swing open. It was as simple as that — when you could read.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘If you jump down, you won’t be able to get back in. Then they’ll know.’

‘I thought of that. I’m not going to jump down. I’m going to climb up the outside of the cage. It’s easy. I’ve climbed up the inside a thousand times. Above these cages there’s another shelf, and it’s empty. I’m going to walk along there and see what I can see. I think there’s a way to climb to the floor and up again.’

‘Why don’t I go with you?’ My door would open the same way as his.

‘Better not this time, don’t you think? If something goes wrong and I can’t get back, they’ll say: It’s just A-9 again. But if two of us are found outside, they’ll take it seriously. They might put new locks on the cages.’

He was right, and you can see that already we both had the same idea in mind: that this might be the first step towards escape for all of us.

The Air Ducts

 

And so it was.

By teaching us to read, they had taught us how to get away.

Justin climbed easily up the open door of his cage and vanished over the top with a flick of his tail. He came back an hour later, greatly excited and full of information. Yet it was typical of Justin that even excited as he was, he stayed calm, he thought clearly. He climbed down the front of my cage rather than his own, and spoke softly; we both assumed that by now the other rats were asleep.

‘Nicodemus? Come on out. I’ll show you how.’ He directed me as I reached through the wire bars of the door and felt beneath it. I found the small metal knob, slid it forward and sidewards, and felt the door swing loose against my shoulder. I followed him up the side of the cage to the shelf above. There we stopped. It was the first time I had met Justin face to face.

He said: ‘It’s better talking here than around that partition.’ ‘Yes. Did you get down?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you get back up?’

‘At the end of this shelf there’s a big cabinet — they keep the mouse cages in it. It has wire mesh doors. You can climb up and down them like a ladder.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I remember now.’ I had seen that cabinet many times when my cage was carried past it. For some reason — perhaps because they were smaller — the mice were kept in cages- within-a-cage.

Justin said: ‘Nicodemus. I think I’ve found the way to get out.’ ‘You have! How?’

‘At each end of the room there’s an opening in the base board at the bottom of the wall. Air blows through one of them and out of the other. Each one has a metal grid covering it, and on the grid there’s a sign that says: Lift to adjust air flow. I lifted one of them; it hangs on hinges, like a trapdoor. Behind it there is a thing like a metal window — when you slide it open, more air blows in.

‘But the main thing is, it’s easily big enough to walk through and get out.’ ‘But what’s on the other side? Where does it lead?’

‘On the other side there’s a duct, a thing like a square metal pipe built right into the wall. I walked along it, not very far, but I can figure out where it must go. There’s bound to be a duct like it leading to every room in the building, and they must all branch off one main central pipe — and that one has to lead, somewhere, to the outside. Because that’s where our air comes from. That’s why they never open the windows. I don’t think those windows can open.’

He was right, of course. The building had central air conditioning; what we had to do was find the main air shaft and explore it. There would have to be an intake at one end and an outlet at the other. But that was easier said than done, and before it was done there were questions to be answered. What about the rest of the rats? There were twenty of us in the laboratory, and we had to let the others know. So, one by one we woke them and showed them how to open their cages. It was an odd assembly that gathered that night, under the dimmed lights in the echoing laboratory, on the shelf where Justin and I had talked. We all knew each other in a way, from the passing of messages over the preceding months; yet except for Jenner and me, none of us had ever really met. We were strangers — though, as you can imagine, it did not take long for us to develop a feeling of comradeship, for we twenty were alone in a strange world. Just how alone and how strange none of us really understood at first; yet in a

way we sensed it from the beginning. The group looked to me as leader, probably because it was Justin and I who first set them free, and because Justin was obviously younger than I.

We did not attempt to leave that night, but went together and looked at the metal grid Justin had discovered, and made plans for exploring the air ducts. Jenner was astute at that sort of thing; he could foresee problems.

‘With a vent like this leading to every room,’ he said, ‘it will be easy to get lost. When we explore, we’re going to need some way of finding our way back here.’

‘Why should we come back?’ someone asked.

‘Because it may take more than one night to find the way out. If it does, whoever is doing the exploring must be back in his cage by morning. Otherwise Dr Schultz will find out.’

Jenner was right. It took us about a week. What we did, after some discussion, was to find some equipment: first, a large spool of thread in one of the cabinets where some of us had seen Julie place it one day; second, a screwdriver that was kept on a shelf near the electric equipment — because as Jenner pointed out, there would probably be a screen over the end of the air-shaft to keep out debris, and we might have to pry it loose. What we really needed was a light, for the ducts, at night, were completely dark. But there was none to be had, not even a box of matches. The thread and screwdriver we hid in the duct, a few feet from the entrance. We could only hope they would not be missed, or that if they were, we wouldn’t be suspected.

Justin and two others were chosen as the exploration party (one of the others was Arthur, whom you’ve met). They had a terrible time at first: here was a maze to end all mazes, and in the dark they quickly lost their sense of direction. Still they kept at it, night after night, exploring the network of shafts that laced like a cubical spiderweb through the walls and ceilings of the building. They would tie the end of their thread to the grid in our laboratory and unroll it from the spool as they went. Time and time again they reached the end of the thread and had to come back.

‘It just isn’t long enough,’ Justin would complain. ‘Every time I come to the end, I think: if I could just go ten feet farther …’

And finally, that’s what he did. On the seventh night, just as the thread ran out, he and the other two reached a shaft that was wider than any they had found before, and it seemed, as they walked along it, to be slanting gently upward. But the spool was empty.

‘You wait here,’ Justin said to the others. ‘I’m going just a little way farther. Hang on to the spool, and if I call, call back.’ (They had tied the end of the thread around the spool so they would not lose it in the dark.)

Justin had a hunch. The air coming through the shaft had a fresher smell where they were, and seemed to be blowing harder than in the other shafts. Up ahead he thought he could hear the whir of a machine running quietly, and there was a faint vibration in the metal under his feet. He went on. The shaft turned upward at a sharp angle — and then, straight ahead, he saw it: a patch of lighter-coloured darkness than the pitch black around him, and in the middle of it, three stars twinkling. It was the open sky. Across the opening there was, as Jenner had predicted, a coarse screen of heavy wire.

He ran towards it for a few seconds longer, and then stopped. The sound of the machine had grown suddenly louder, changing from a whir to a roar. It had, obviously, shifted speed; an automatic switch somewhere in the building had turned it from low to high, and the air blowing past Justin came on so hard it made him gasp. He braced his feet against the metal and held on. In a minute, as suddenly as it had roared, the machine returned to a whisper. He looked around and realized he was lucky to have stopped; by the dim light from the sky he could see that he had reached the point where perhaps two dozen air shafts came together like branches into the trunk of a tree. If he had gone a few steps farther

he would never have been able to distinguish which shaft was his. He turned in his tracks, and in a few minutes he rejoined his friends.

We had a meeting that night, and Justin told all of us what he had found. He had left the thread, anchored by the screwdriver, to guide us out. Some were for leaving immediately, but it was late, and Jenner and I argued against it. We did not know how long it would take us to break through the screen at the end. If it should take more than an hour or two, daylight would be upon us. We would then be unable to risk returning to the laboratory, and would have to spend the day in the shaft — or try to get away by broad daylight. Dr Schultz might even figure out how we had gone and trap us in the air shaft. Finally, reluctantly, everyone agreed to spend one more day in the laboratory and leave early the next night. But it was a hard decision, with freedom so near and everyone thinking as I did: ‘Suppose

…’ Suppose Dr Schultz grew suspicious and put locks on our cages? Suppose someone found our thread and pulled it out? (This was unlikely — the near end, tied to the spool, was six feet up the shaft, well hidden.) Just the same, we were uneasy.

Then, just as we were ending our meeting, a new complication arose. We had been standing in a rough circle on the floor of the laboratory, just outside the two screen doors that enclosed the mice cages. Now, from inside the cabinet, came a voice:

‘Nicodemus.’ It was a clear but plaintive call, the voice of a mouse. We had almost forgotten the mice were there, and I was startled to hear that one of them knew my name. We all grew quiet.

‘Who’s calling me?’ I asked.

‘My name is Jonathan,’ said the voice. ‘We have been listening to your talk about going out. We would like to go, too, but we cannot open our cages.’

As you can imagine, this caused a certain consternation, coming at the last minute. None of us knew much about the mice, except what we had heard Dr Schultz dictate into his tape recorder. From that, we had learned only that they had been getting the same injections we were getting, and that the treatment had worked about as well on them as on us. They were a sort of side experiment, without a control group.

Justin was studying the cabinet.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘If we can get the doors open.’ Someone muttered: ‘They’ll slow us down.’

‘No,’ said the mouse Jonathan. ‘We will not. Only open our cages when you go, and we will make our own way. We won’t even stay with you, if you prefer.’

‘How many are you?’ I asked.

‘Only eight. And the cabinet doors are easy to open. There’s just a simple hook, half-way up.’

But Justin and Arthur had already figured that out. They climbed up the screen, unhooked the hook, and the doors swung open.

‘The cages open the same way as yours,’ said another mouse, ‘but we can’t reach far enough to unlatch them.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow night, as soon as Dr Schultz and the others leave, we’ll open your cages, and you can follow the thread with us to get out. After that you’re on your own.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jonathan, ‘and thank you.’

‘And now,’ I said, ‘we should all get back to the cages. Justin, please hook the doors again.’

I had latched myself into my cage and was getting ready for sleep when I heard a scratching noise on the door, and there was Jenner, climbing down from above.

‘Nicodemus,’ he said, ‘can I come in?’

‘Of course. But it’s getting towards morning.’

‘I won’t stay long.’ He unlatched the door and entered. ‘There’s something we’ve got to decide.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, too.’ ‘When we do get out, where are we going to go?’

I could not see Jenner’s face in the dark of the cage, but I knew from his voice that he was worrying. I said:

‘At first I thought, home, of course. But then, when I began remembering, I realized that won’t work. We could find the way, I suppose, now that we can read. But if we did — what then? We wouldn’t find anyone we know.’

‘And yet,’ Jenner said, ‘you know that’s not the real point.’ ‘No.’

‘The real point is this: We don’t know where to go because we don’t know what we are. Do you want to go back to living in a sewer-pipe? And eating other people’s garbage? Because that’s what rats do. But the fact is, we aren’t rats any more. We’re something Dr Schultz has made. Something new. Dr Schultz says our intelligence has increased more than one thousand per cent. I suspect he’s underestimated; I think we’re probably as intelligent as he is — maybe more. We can read, and with a little practise, we’ll be able to write, too. I mean to do both. I think we can learn to do anything we want. But where do we do it? Where does a group of civilized rats fit in?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to find out. It won’t be easy. But even so, the first step must be to get out of here. We’re lucky to have a chance, but it won’t last. We’re a jump ahead of Dr Schultz; if he knew what we know, he wouldn’t leave us alone in here another night. And he’s sure to find out soon.’

‘Another thing to worry about,’ Jenner said. ‘If we do get away, when he finds we’re gone — won’t he figure out how we did it? And won’t he realize that we must have learned to read?’

‘Probably.’

‘And then what? What will happen when he announces that there’s a group of civilized rats roaming loose — rats that can read, and think, and figure things out?’

I said: ‘Let’s wait until we’re free before we worry about that.’

But Jenner was right. It was a thing to worry about, and maybe it still is.

The next day was terrible. I kept expecting to hear Dr Schultz say: ‘Who took my screwdriver?’ And then to hear Julie add: ‘My thread is missing, too.’ That could have happened and set them to thinking — but it didn’t, and that night, an hour after Julie, George, and Dr Schultz left the laboratory, we were out of our cages and gathered, the whole group of us, before the mouse cabinet. Justin opened its doors, unlatched their cages, and the mice came out. They looked very small and frightened, but one strode bravely forward.

‘You are Nicodemus?’ he said to me. ‘I’m Jonathan. Thank you for taking us out with you.’ ‘We’re not out yet,’ I said, ‘but you’re welcome.’

We had no time for chatting. The light coming in the windows was turning grey; in less than an hour it would be dark, and we would need light to figure out how to open the screen at the end of the shaft.

We went to the opening in the baseboard.

‘Justin,’ I said, ‘take the lead. Roll up the thread as you go. I’ll bring up the rear. No noise. There’s sure to be somebody awake somewhere in the building. We don’t want them to hear us.’ I did not want to leave the thread where it might be found: the more I thought about it, the more I felt sure Dr Schultz would try to track us down, for quite a few reasons.

Justin lifted the grid, pushed open the sliding panel, and one by one we went through. As I watched the others go ahead of me, I noticed for the first time that one of the mice was white. Then I went in myself, closing the grid behind me and pushing the panel half shut again, its normal position.

With Justin leading the way, we moved through the dark passage quickly and easily. In only fifteen or twenty minutes we had reached the end of the thread; then, as Justin had told us it would, the shaft widened; we could hear the whir of the machine ahead, and almost immediately we saw a square of grey daylight. We reached the end of the shaft, and there a terrible thing happened.

Justin — you will recall — had told us that the machine, the pump that pulled air through the shaft, had switched from low speed to high when he had first explored through there. So we were forewarned. The trouble was, the forewarning was no use at all, not so far as the mice were concerned. We were approaching the lighted square of the opening when the roar began. The blast of air came like a sudden whistling gale; it took my breath and flattened my ears against my head, and I closed my eyes instinctively. I was still in the rear, and when I opened my eyes again I saw one of the mice sliding past me, clawing uselessly with his small nails at the smooth metal beneath him. Another followed him, and still another, as one by one they were blown backward into the dark maze of tunnels we had just left. I braced myself in the corner of the shaft and grabbed at one as he slid by. It was the white mouse. I caught him by one leg, pulled him around behind me and held on. Another blew face on into the rat ahead of me and stopped there — it was Jonathan, who had been near the lead. But the rest were lost, six in all. They were simply too light; they blew away like dead leaves, and we never

saw them again.

In another minute the roar stopped, the rush of air slowed from a gale to a breeze, and we were able to go forward again.

I said to the white mouse: ‘You’d better hold on to me. That might happen again.’

He looked at me in dismay. ‘But what about the others? Six are lost! I’ve got to go back and look for them.’

Jonathan quickly joined him: ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That would be useless and foolish. You have no idea which shaft they were blown into, nor even if they all went the same way. And if you should find them — how would you find your way out again? And suppose the wind comes again? Then there would be eight lost instead of six.’

The wind did come again, half a dozen times more, while we worked with the screwdriver to pry open the screen. Each time we had to stop work and hang on. The two mice clung to the screen itself; some of us braced ourselves behind them, in case they should slip. And Justin, taking the thread with him as a guideline, went back to search for the other six. He explored shaft after shaft to the end of the spool, calling softly as he went — but it was futile. To this day we don’t know what became of those six mice. They may have found their way out eventually, or they may have died in there. We left an opening in the screen for them just in case.

The screen. It was heavy wire, with holes about the size of an acorn, and it was set in a steel frame. We pried and hammered at it with the screwdriver, but we could not move it. It was fastened on the outside — we couldn’t see how. Finally the white mouse had an idea.

‘Push the screwdriver through the wire near the bottom,’ he said, ‘and pry up.’ We did, and the wire bent a fraction of an inch. We did it again, prying down, then left, then right. The hole in the wire grew slowly bigger, until the white mouse said: ‘I think that’s enough.’ He climbed to the small opening and by squirming and twisting, he got through. Jonathan followed him; they both fell out of sight, but in a minute Jonathan’s head came back in view on the outside.

‘It’s a sliding bolt,’ he said. ‘We’re working on it.’ Inside we could hear the faint rasping as the

two mice tugged on the bolt handle, working it back. Then the crack at the base of the screen widened; we pushed it open, and we were standing on the roof of Nimh, free.

The Boniface Estate

 

Mrs Frisby said: ‘Jonathan and Mr Ages got the screen open.’

‘Yes,’ Nicodemus said, ‘and without them I doubt that we could have done it. The steel frame was strong, the bolt was secure, and the wire so stiff, we could not have bent it enough for one of us to go through. So we were glad they were with us and asked them if they would, after all, like to stay with us. Since there were only two of them, they said they would, for the time being at least.’

 

And now began a journey that was to last, with some interruptions, for almost two years. Parts of it were pleasant (it was a joyful feeling, at first, just to be free again and to get those laboratory collars off), and parts of it were terrible. I have made notes about all of it, and if the time ever comes when rats publish books of their own, I intend to write a book about it. It would be a long book, full of trouble and danger, too much to tell now. It was in one of the dangerous times that I lost my eye and got the scar you can see on my face.

But we did have some happy times, and some pieces of great good luck, two in particular, that help to explain how we got here and what our plans are now.

It was early summer when we got out. We had known that beforehand — we could tell by the lateness of the light through the windows, though it was dark when we finally stood on the roof. We had no trouble getting down the side of the building, however. There were downspouts in the corners with plenty of toeholds (we dropped the screwdriver and spool of thread into one of these); a little lower there was ivy; we were all good climbers, and there was moonlight to see by. In less than fifteen minutes we were on the ground. Staying in the darkest shadows, under the bushes when we could, we sped away from Nimh, not knowing or caring at first what direction we were going. Nobody saw us.

 

During the next few weeks we lived as we could. We had, in a way, to learn all over again how to get along, for although the world outside the laboratory was the same, we ourselves were different. We were, a couple of times, reduced to eating from dumps and garbage cans. But knowing how to read, we quickly learned to recognize signs on buildings: Groceries, Supermarket, Meats & Vegetables, for instance, let us know that there was food inside for the taking. And once inside a supermarket at night (they always leave a few lights on) we could even read the signs on the wall directing us to Section 8 for Dairy Products (cheese), Section 3 for Baked Goods, and so on. In the country there were barns and silos stocked with grain and corn, and chicken houses full of eggs.

Occasionally we came upon other rats, and a few times we talked with them, but not for long. Because after just a few words they would begin to look at us strangely, and edge away. Somehow they could tell that we were different. I think we even looked different; either the diet or the injections at Nimh had made us bigger and stronger than other rats, and all the strange rats we saw looked, to us, surprisingly weak and puny. So we were set apart from even our own kind.

It was while we were in the country that we had our first important stroke of luck. We had just decided, after nearly four months of freedom and constant roving, to find a place to settle down — if not permanently, at least for the winter. We thought that it should be in the country, but not too far from a town, so that we would have access to grocery stores as well as barns and gardens.

(It was about this time, too, that I began to wonder, and worry somewhat, about the fact that whatever we ate, whatever we needed, must always be stolen. Rats had always lived that way. And yet

 

• why? I talked to some of the others about this. It was the beginning of a discontent and an idea that kept growing, although slowly.)

 

The season was autumn. We were walking one evening down a winding country road. We never walked really on the road, but along the edge, so that we could vanish into the bushes or a ditch if anyone came along. You can imagine that twenty rats and two mice travelling in procession would cause some comment, and we did not want that.

As we walked, we reached a very high fence of wrought iron, the kind that looks like a row of black iron spears fastened together, with pointed tops — an expensive fence, surrounding a large estate with a big, expensive-looking house in the middle, and well-kept grounds and gardens. We walked along past this fence until we reached a gate.

‘There’s nobody living in there,’ said Justin. ‘How do you know?’

The gate’s padlocked. And look. Dead weeds standing outside it, not even bent. Nobody’s driven in here for a while.’

The house had a quiet, deserted look. There was a letterbox in front, hanging, open, empty. ‘I wonder if we could get in,’ Jenner said.

‘Why should we?’

‘It’s a big place. It would have a big pantry, big cupboard, big freezer. If it’s as empty as it looks

…’

We turned into the grounds, moving cautiously, and from beneath some bushes we watched the

windows. As dusk fell, lights came on in several of them, both upstairs and down.

Jenner said: ‘That’s supposed to make us think there’s someone there.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin, ‘but there isn’t. I could see one of the lamps when it came on. There was nobody near it. And they all came on at the same time.’

‘Automatic switches. To keep burglars away.’

‘Well, they’re not keeping me away,’ said Justin. He ran to the house, climbed to one of the windowsills, and looked in. He tried another. Then came back. ‘Nobody,’ he said.

So we went in. We found a small window in the back with a cracked pane, knocked out one corner of the glass, and climbed through. At first, we planned just to look for food. We found it, too, enough to last us for a year or more. As Jenner had predicted, there was a big freezer, well stocked — bread, meat, vegetables, everything — and a whole room full of shelves covered with tinned food. The tins baffled us at first, as they had in the grocery stores. We could read what was in them, but we couldn’t get it out. Then Arthur found a machine on the kitchen counter. He read the instructions on the side of it: Slide tin under cutter and press switch. We tried it. The tin turned slowly around in the machine, and when we pulled it out, the top had been cut free. I’ll always remember what was in that first tin — vegetable soup, delicious.

After we had eaten, we wandered around the house. It was a rich man’s mansion, with beautiful furniture and fine rugs and carpeting on the floor. There was a crystal chandelier in the dining room, and a big stone fireplace in the living room.

But the greatest treasure of all, for us, was in the study. This was a large rectangular room, with walnut panelling, a walnut desk, leather chairs, and walls lined to the ceiling with books. Thousands of books, about every subject you could think of. There were shelves of paperbacks; there were encyclopaedias, histories, novels, philosophies, and textbooks of physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, and others, more than I can name. Luckily, there was even one of those small ladders-on- wheels they use in some libraries to get to the top shelves.

Well, we fell on those books with even more appetite than on the food, and in the end, we moved into the house and stayed all winter. We could do that, it turned out, without much fear of discovery. We learned that from some newspaper cuttings I found on the desk in the study: They were about a wedding, and most of them showed pictures of a newly married couple leaving a house to begin their honeymoon. The groom was a Mr Gordon Boniface — ‘heir to the Gould-Stetson fortune’ — and the house they were leaving was the house we were in. According to the clippings, they were going on a trip all the way around the world. They were coming back to the Boniface Estate in May. Until then, it was our estate.

Oh, there was a caretaker-gardener who came three times a week, and once in a while he would check the house in a cursory sort of way. That is, he would unlock the front door, glance around to see that everything looked all right, and then lock it and leave. But he didn’t live there; he lived in a small house down the road. And we were expecting him when he came; we had figured out, from the way the place was kept up, the lawns mowed, leaves raked, gardens weeded and watered, that there had to be somebody working on it. So we posted a watch, saw him coming, and kept watching him all the time he was there. And we made sure, when he looked in the house, that everything did look all right.

This involved a certain amount of work. We had to haul all our empty tin cans and other rubbish at night out into a hidden place in the woods quite far from the house. We cleaned up after ourselves carefully; we learned to use the water taps and the dusting cloths we found in the kitchen cupboard. If the caretaker had looked more closely, in fact, he would have seen that the kitchen counters were somewhat shinier than they should have been in an empty house. But he didn’t. He never even noticed the small corner of glass missing from the back window.

And all winter, far into the night, we read books and we practised writing.

The Main Hall

 

There came a knock on Nicodemus’s office door; it opened, and Justin and Mr Ages entered. ‘Back so soon?’ said Nicodemus.

‘Soon?’ said Justin. ‘It’s past noon. It’s lunchtime.’

‘Past noon!’ Mrs Frisby stood up, remembering her children waiting at home. Down in the rats’ home, in the artificial light, it was hard to tell the passage of time, and she had been so engrossed in Nicodemus’s story that she had not glanced at the clock.

Justin was wearing a satchel like Nicodemus’s, and from it he took a small paper package. ‘Here’s Dragon’s medicine,’ he said, putting it on the table. He asked Mrs Frisby: ‘Did he tell you about the Toy Tinker?’

Nicodemus said: ‘No. I was just coming to that.’

‘But I can’t stay to hear it now,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘My children will be waiting for their lunch.’

A plan was worked out. Mrs Frisby would go home to take care of her children. Nicodemus, Justin, Arthur and the other rats involved would work out the details of moving her house which would be done that night at about eleven o’clock — ‘after the Fitzgibbons are asleep and we’re sure Dragon is, too,’ said Nicodemus. Mrs Frisby would return in mid-afternoon to the rosebush.

Mr Ages said: ‘And I’m going to lie down. After making that trip with this cast, I’m tired.’

‘You can have your choice of rooms,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Now that Jenner and his friends are gone, we have seven empty,’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Ages. ‘Mrs Frisby, when you return I will tell you as well as I can exactly how to put the powder in Dragon’s food.’

 

As she hurried home, Mrs Frisby considered just how much she should tell her children about all that had happened — and all that was going to happen. She decided at that stage, at least, she would not tell them about their father’s connection with the rats. Also that she would not say she had volunteered to put the sleeping powder into Dragon’s bowl. That would worry them; she could tell them, perhaps, when it was safely done — when, among other things, there would be no chance for Martin to volunteer in her place.

She would tell them simply that as the owl had suggested, she had gone to the rats and asked for help. She had found them friendly and intelligent, and a group of them were coming that night to move the house to a place where it would be safe from the plough. That would be enough. She could tell them the whole story later — when she knew it all herself.

But it was not enough. The children were sceptical at first, then intensely curious, especially Timothy (who was looking stronger and feeling more energetic, but still staying in bed, primarily because Teresa and Martin had made him).

‘But why should the rats do that?’ said Timothy. ‘We don’t know them at all. Nobody does. They keep to themselves.’

‘Maybe it’s because the owl sent me,’ said Mrs Frisby, searching for an answer that would satisfy him. ‘They seem to be impressed by the owl.’

‘For that matter,’ said Timothy, ‘I don’t even see why the owl wanted to help. He’s no friend of ours, either.’

‘Maybe they thought someday we could do them a favour in return.’ ‘Oh, Mother!’ said Cynthia. ‘How could we ever do them a favour?’

‘You forget. I did do Jeremy a favour. That’s what started the whole thing.’

‘That, and my getting sick,’ said Timothy. ‘I wish I could get up. I’m tired of bed.’

‘Not yet,’ said Mrs Frisby, glad to change the subject. ‘You must save your strength, because tonight you will have to get up for a little while, when they move the house. We must be sure you’re well wrapped up and hope that the night is warm.’

‘It will be,’ said Martin. ‘It’s turned quite hot outside.’ They ate lunch.

 

That afternoon Mrs Frisby told the children that she must leave them to confer again with the rats about moving the house. When she thought of the danger she would face in just a few more hours, she wanted to kiss them all goodbye. But knowing that Timothy, at least, was already suspicious, she did not dare, but told them only that they should not worry if she was a little late getting home for supper.

On her way back to the rosebush she felt quite relieved, almost cheerful. Her problem was nearly solved, and the final solution was in sight. If all went well, Timothy would be saved.

If all went well. Then the thought of what she had to do came back to her like the clanging of an alarm bell. What worried her most was not so much putting the powder into Dragon’s bowl, but the fear that at the last minute she might lose her nerve and bungle it somehow. That could wreck the plans.

She looked towards the Fitzgibbons’ farmhouse, and there, on the back porch, lying in the sun, was Dragon. He was watching a pair of sparrows playing in the grass halfway to the chicken yard; the tip of his tail hardly twitched as he debated whether or not they were near enough to spring for. He looked very big and very dangerous.

At least he was not looking in her direction, and Mrs Frisby hurried on to the bush, directly to the hidden entrance, and slipped inside. When she reached the arched portal, Brutus was standing guard as before, but this time he greeted her politely.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said. ‘May I go in?’

‘If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll get Justin.’ He went inside the arch and pressed a small button on the wall. Mrs Frisby had not noticed it before.

‘A doorbell,’ she said.

‘It rings a buzzer down below. If I pushed it three times, you’d see some action.’ ‘Action?’

‘That’s the alarm signal. A dozen rats would come out of this door, ready to fight. All the rest, with the women and children, would be hurrying out of the back door.’

‘I didn’t know there was a back door.’

‘It comes out in the woods, in a blackberry bramble. It’s got a longer tunnel than this one.’

When Justin appeared, they went down the same hallway as before, but this time, when they reached the chamber where the lift and the stairway led down, Justin paused.

‘Nicodemus thought you might like to see our main hall — just a quick look. He said you asked about the Plan.’

‘I did,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘but he didn’t tell me about it.’

‘It’s more than just a plan now, but we’re used to calling it that. If you see the main hall, you’ll get an idea of what we’re doing.’

So instead of going down as they had before, Justin led the way across the chamber, where as Mrs

Frisby had noticed, the tunnel continued. They walked along for what seemed like several more minutes.

‘Somewhere right along here,’ Justin remarked, ‘we’re entering the woods. You’ll notice the tunnel runs a bit crooked. We had to bend it to go around tap roots — some as thick as fence posts.’

They went on until they came to a fork in the tunnel. ‘Right fork leads out to the blackberry bramble,’ said Justin. ‘Left fork leads to the main hall.’ They took the left fork.

‘Now brace yourself for a surprise.’

From ahead came noises: the sound of many rats talking, a sound of hurrying and thumping and of machinery running. They stepped into a room as full of activity as a factory.

It was the biggest room Mrs Frisby had ever seen, half the size of a house, with a ceiling and floor of hard grey rock. It was brightly lit with electric bulbs — here the large-sized ones, strung unshaded

 

• and beneath them were rats at work everywhere. Rats running electric motors that ran belts that ran small circular saws, lathes, drills, grindstones, and other tools Mrs Frisby could not name; rats hammering, welding, cutting. But most of all, rats hauling.

 

There was a steady procession to and from the far end of the chamber, and each of these rats wore a harness to which was fastened a pair of large, sturdy sacks, one on each side, like a miniature pack horse. As the rats trooped in, their sacks were empty. They disappeared into a part of the room that was hidden by a high wall of wood. When they came out, the sacks were full and heavy.

As she watched, a troop of ten, their sacks bulging, went past her out of the tunnel; they greeted Justin and nodded at her, but they did not pause. She noticed that just inside the entrance an electric fan whirred quietly, aiming inward, pulling fresh air into the room from somewhere out in the woods.

Mrs Frisby stood beside Justin and gaped. She felt dizzy at the sight, the motion, the noise, and the size of the room, which must have measured twenty feet long and almost as wide.

‘How could you ever dig out such a big room?’ she asked.

‘We didn’t,’ said Justin. ‘We found it. It’s a natural cave. You can see that the ceiling and floor are solid rock. That’s the reason, or the main one, we chose this spot to live. Others had lived here before us. Probably, for centuries before there was a farmhouse, bears. Then wolves, then foxes, then ground hogs. We had quite a cleaning job to do, I can tell you.

‘When we found it, there was a large hole, only a few feet long, leading straight in, but it was so full of sticks and leaves you could hardly see it. We closed that entrance entirely and dug another, longer and narrower — our back door. Then we dug our living quarters under the rosebush, and the entrance you came in. But the cave is still our chief workshop. Let’s go in.’

As they entered some of the rats looked up, some waved and smiled, but all quickly turned back to the work they were doing. as if they were in a hurry.

‘They’re all on a schedule,’ Justin explained, talking close to Mrs Frisby’s ear to be heard above the noise, ‘so they can’t stop working.’

One group, especially busy, was gathered around an odd-shaped object of wood and metal about a foot long. It was curved and had a point at one end; it looked, Mrs Frisby thought, rather like the side of a small boat. Could the rats be making a boat? Then she saw that they were fastening a strong metal ring to the top of it.

Justin led her to it.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is our most important invention, the key to the whole Plan. We made a pilot model last autumn. We tried it out, and it worked. So now we’re making three more.’

‘But what is it?’

‘It’s a plough. Nicodemus designed it himself, after reading every book he could find about farm

tools. It’s light and sharp, especially made to be pulled by rats. It takes eight of us to pull it — more if the turf is tough. But with it we can turn over, in a day of hard work, a patch of earth about ten by fifteen feet.’

‘But why? What do you need it for?’ ‘Come over here, and I’ll show you.’

He led the way to the back of the cave where the high walls stood. He opened a door and beckoned her through. She stood in a large wooden bin; starting at her feet and rising in a slope to the wall of the cave was a small mountain of grain.

‘Oats,’ said Justin.

He led her on, opened another door on another mountain. ‘Wheat,’ he said. And others:

‘Barley.’

‘Corn.’ ‘Soy beans.’

‘We’ve been building these stockpiles for a long time,’ he said. ‘All from Mr Fitzgibbon’s barn. We now have a two-year supply for one hundred and eight rats, plus enough to plant for two crops, in case the first one fails. In there’ — he gestured towards the last bin in the row — ‘we have boxes of seeds. Seeds for tomatoes, beets, carrots, melons and a lot more.’

All the time they stood there, the steady procession of rats continued. They entered the bins, took off their harness-sacks, filled the sacks with grain, put them on again, and left through the tunnel, out of the back door. They looked, Mrs Frisby thought, like very large ants endlessly toiling on an anthill.

Justin must have got the same impression, for he said:

‘If the ants can do it, Nicodemus says, if the bees can do it, so can we.’ ‘Do what?’

‘Why, live without stealing, of course. That’s the whole idea. That’s the Plan.’

The Toy Tinker

 

‘We left the Boniface Estate on the first of May,’ said Nicodemus. ‘We knew a lot more than when we went in. We had been there eight months.’

‘Then,’ said Justin, ‘we found the Toy Tinker.’

They were back in Nicodemus’s office; Mr Ages, having rested, sat with them. ‘Not quite yet,’ said Mr Ages.

‘No,’ said Nicodemus. ‘That was in late summer. When we first got out, we began searching for a place to live permanently, or at least a place where we could stay as long as we wanted. We had a pretty clear idea of what we were looking for. We had had plenty of time to talk about it, on the long winter evenings in the library between reading books.’

 

The reading we did! We knew very little about the world, you see, and we were curious. We learned about astronomy, about electricity, biology and mathematics, about music and art. I even read quite a few books on poetry and got to like it pretty well.

But what I liked best was history. I read about the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, and the Dark Ages, when the old civilizations fell apart and the only people who could read and write were the monks. They lived apart in monasteries. They led the simplest kind of lives, and studied and wrote; they grew their own food, built their own houses and furniture. They even made their own tools and their own paper. Reading about that, I began getting some ideas of how we might live.

Most of the books were about people; we tried to find some about rats, but there wasn’t much.

We did find a few things. There were two sets of encyclopaedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were about the most hated animals on earth, except maybe snakes and germs. That seemed strange to us, and unjust. Especially when we learned that some of our close cousins

 

• squirrels, for instance, and rabbits — were well liked. But people think we spread diseases, and I suppose possibly we do, though never intentionally, and surely we never spread as many diseases as people themselves do.

 

Still, it seemed to us that the main reason we were hated must be that we always lived by stealing. From the earliest times, rats lived around the edges of human cities and farms, stowed away on men’s ships, gnawed holes in their floors and stole their food. Sometimes we were accused of biting human children; I didn’t believe that, nor did any of us — unless it was some kind of abnormal rat, bred in the worst of city slums. And that, of course, can happen to people, too.

Had we, then, no use at all in the world? One encyclopaedia had a sentence of praise for us: ‘The common rat is highly valued as an experimental animal in medical research due to his toughness, intelligence, versatility and biological similarity to man.’ We knew quite a bit about that already.

But there was one book, written by a famous scientist, that had a chapter about rats. Millions of years ago, he said, rats seemed to be ahead of all the other animals, seemed to be making a civilization of their own. They were well organized and built quite complicated villages in the fields. Their descendants today are the rats known as prairie dogs.

But somehow it didn’t work out. The scientist thought maybe it was because the rats’ lives were too easy; while the other animals (especially the monkeys) were living in the woods and getting tougher and smarter, the prairie dogs grew soft and lazy and made no more progress. Eventually the monkeys came out of the woods, walking on their hind legs, and took over the prairies and almost everything else. It was then that the rats were driven to become scavengers and thieves, living on the

fringes of a world run by men.

Still it was interesting to us that for a while, at least, the rats had been ahead. We wondered. If they had stayed ahead, if they had gone on and developed a real civilization — what would it have been like? Would rats, too, have shed their tails and learned to walk erect? Would they have made tools? Probably, though we thought not so soon and not so many; a rat has a natural set of tools that monkeys lack: sharp pointed teeth that never stop growing. Consider what the beavers can build with no tools but their rodent teeth.

Surely rats would have developed reading and writing, judging by the way we took to it. But what about machines? What about cars and aeroplanes? Maybe not aeroplanes. After all, monkeys, living in trees, must have felt a need to fly, must have envied the birds around them. Rats may not have that instinct.

In the same way, a rat civilization would probably never have built skyscrapers, since rats prefer to live underground. But think of the endless subways-below-subways-below-subways they would have had.

We thought and talked quite a bit about all this, and we realized that a rat civilization, if one ever did grow up, would not necessarily turn out to be anything at all like human civilization. The fact was, after eight months in the Boniface Estate, none of us was sorry to move out of it. It had given us shelter, free food, and an education, but we were never really comfortable there. Everything in it was designed for animals who looked, moved and thought differently from the way we did. Also, it was above ground, and that never felt quite natural to us.

So, when we left, we decided that our new home should be underground, preferably, if we could find it, in a cave. But where? We thought hard, and studied maps and atlases — there were plenty of those in the study. Finally, we reached some conclusions: To find a cave, we would have to go where there were mountains — there aren’t many caves in flatlands. And for food, it would have to be near a town or better, near a farm.

So we wanted to find a farm, preferably a big one, with a big barn and silos full of grain, near the mountains. We studied the maps some more, and it was Jenner, I think, who spotted this area as a good place to look. On the map, a big part of it was covered with the contour lines that show mountains, and across these were written the words, ‘Thorn Mountains National Forest’. Beneath that, in smaller letters, it said, ‘Protected Wilderness Preserve’. Bordering this, where the mountains turned to foothills, the map showed rolling country with quite a few roads but hardly any towns, which, we thought, ought to mean farmland.

We were right, as of course you know now. It took us two months of steady travelling to get to the Thorn Mountains National Forest, but we found it; we’re under the edge of it right now. And there are plenty of caves, most of them never visited by people — because people aren’t allowed to drive into a wilderness preserve. There aren’t any roads in the forest, but only a few jeep trails used by rangers, and aeroplanes are not permitted to fly over it.

We looked at a lot of caves, some big, some small, some dry, but mostly damp. Before we chose this cave and this farm, however, we found the Toy Tinker.

It began as a sad sort of thing. We found an old man lying in the woods one morning, near one of the jeep trails not so far from here, and he was dead. We don’t know what he died of; we guessed it must have been a heart attack. He was dressed in a black suit, old-fashioned in style but neat, not ragged. His hair was white, and his face looked gentle.

‘I wonder who he was, and where he was going,’ Justin said.

‘Whoever he was,’ Jenner said, ‘he wasn’t supposed to be in here at all.’

‘We ought to bury him,’ I said.

So we did, not by digging a grave, but by covering him with a high mound of leaves and stones and twigs and earth. It was in gathering material for this mound that Justin made the second discovery. He was back in the bushes, out of our sight.

‘Look here,’ he called. ‘I’ve found a truck.’

It was a very ancient truck, with a small round hood, but it had been lovingly polished and was wonderfully shiny. The body, which was square and large, had been rebuilt and painted red and gold. It had little windows and white curtains, and between them, lettered in gold, were signs:

 

THE TOY TINKER

 

Toys Repairs Hobby Kits Model Sets

Electrical  Toys All Work Guaranteed

 

Obviously the truck had belonged to the old man. He was a pedlar and a mender of toys, the red and gold wagon was his shop and his home, and he had driven into the woods to camp for the night. It was against the law, of course, so he had concealed the truck behind some bushes, off the trail, under a big beech tree. We could see where he had made a campfire, carefully surrounding it with stones and clearing away the brush so he would not set the woods afire. Beyond the beech tree a narrow brook flowed. It was a peaceful spot.

We could see what had probably caused the old man’s death: one wheel of the truck had sunk into the soft earth and was stuck. A shovel lay near it — he had been trying to dig it out. The work had been too hard for him, and he had started to go for help when he collapsed.

This much we could figure out just by looking. Then somebody said: ‘Whose truck is it now?’

‘It belongs to his heirs,’ I said.

‘Whoever they are,’ said Jenner. ‘He may not even have any. He seems to have been alone.’ ‘Anyway,’ said someone else, ‘how would they ever find it?’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘We don’t know who he was, and if we did, we have no way of notifying anyone. So I suppose, if we want it, the truck is ours.’

‘Why don’t we see what’s in it?’

Thorn Valley

 

‘It might almost be easier to tell what wasn’t in it,’ Nicodemus continued. ‘That truck was as roomy as a small bus, and the old man hadn’t wasted a square foot of it. Not that it was cluttered; on the contrary, everything was neatly in place on its shelf, or hook, or in its cabinet.’

 

It took us a while to understand what a treasure we had found. The truck contained, as you might expect, a big stock of toys. It also contained the old man’s simple living quarters: a bed, a lamp, a work table, a folding chair, a bucket for carrying water, a plate, pots, pans, and so on. There was a tiny refrigerator with food in it, and some tinned stuff — peas, beans, peaches, things like that.

Most of the toys — we thought at first — we had no particular use for. There were toy cars and trucks, windmills and merry-go-rounds, aeroplanes, boats and a lot of others, mostly run on batteries. It was entertaining to look at them, and some of them we even tried out; for a while the floor looked like Christmas morning.

We tired of that and explored further into the truck. Up near the front we found several large cardboard boxes, and when we opened them we found that they were full of electric motors of assorted sizes — replacement engines for broken or worn-out toys. There were dozens of them, ranging from very small, no bigger than a spool of thread, up to some so heavy we could hardly move them.

Then, next to these, we found the real treasure: the old man’s tools. They were neatly arranged in shining rows inside a steel cabinet as big as a trunk. There were screwdrivers, saws, hammers, clamps, vices, wrenches, pliers. There were welding tools, soldering irons, and electric drills. And the beauty of it was, since they were designed for working on toys, they were nearly all miniature, easily small enough for us to handle. Yet they were themselves not toys; they were made of the finest tempered steel, like the tools of a watchmaker or a dentist.

It was Arthur who said it first:

‘Do you realize what we’ve got here? We could open our own machine shop. With these tools and all these motors, we could make anything we wanted.’

‘We could,’ said Jenner, ‘except you’ve forgotten one thing.’ ‘What’s that?’

‘We have no electricity. The old man couldn’t have run these tools off batteries. The small toy motors, yes, but not the real ones, not the power tools. He had to plug into house current to use those. See, there’s his extension cord on the wall.’

There was a long coil of heavy black cable hanging from a hook on the wall. It had a plug on one end and a socket on the other.

Now another rat spoke up, a rat named Sullivan. He was a great friend of Arthur’s, and like him, had a particular interest in engines and electricity.

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘we could plug into a house current, too.’ ‘How?’ I said. ‘Who’d let us?’

‘Do you remember that cave we looked at the other day? The one we decided was too close to the farmhouse?’

That was the beginning of it. The end you have seen yourself. He was speaking of the cave you saw today.

We all trooped back to it and examined it more carefully. It was too close, or at least closer than we had planned to live to a human habitation. But then we saw the huge rosebush near the tractor shed,

where, with quite a lot of digging, we could put a concealed entrance. But most important, we noticed that there was an electric light in the tractor shed.

Mr Fitzgibbon had an underground power cable leading out from his house to the shed. We dug a tunnel to it, tapped it, and we had all the electricity we needed. Near it ran a water pipe. We tapped that, too, and we had running water. Then, a few at a time, we moved the tools and the motors from the Toy Tinker’s truck to the cave. We got nearly all of them before the truck disappeared. We went back one day and it was gone — only the hole remained, where its tyre had been sunk. The forest rangers must have found it and hauled it away. But they never discovered or disturbed the mound where the old man lay buried.

 

So we built ourselves the life you see around you. Our colony thrived and grew to one hundred and fifteen. We taught our children to read and write. We had plenty to eat, running water, electricity, a fan to draw in fresh air, a lift, a refrigerator. Deep underground, our home stayed warm in winter and cool in summer. It was a comfortable, almost luxurious existence.

And yet all was not well. After the first burst of energy, the moving in of the machines, the digging of tunnels and rooms — after that was done, a feeling of discontent settled upon us like some creeping disease.

We were reluctant to admit it at first. We tried to ignore the feeling or to fight it off by building more things — bigger rooms, fancier furniture, carpeted hallways, things we did not really need. I was reminded of a story I had read at the Boniface Estate when I was looking for things written about rats. It was about a woman in a small town who bought a vacuum cleaner. Her name was Mrs Jones, and up until then she, like all of her neighbours, had kept her house spotlessly clean by using a broom and a mop. But the vacuum cleaner did it faster and better, and soon Mrs Jones was the envy of all the other housewives in town — so they bought vacuum cleaners, too.

The vacuum cleaner business was so brisk, in fact, that the company that made them opened a branch factory in the town. The factory used a lot of electricity, of course, and so did the women with their vacuum cleaners, so the local electric power company had to put up a big new plant to keep them all running. In its furnaces the power plant burned coal, and out of its chimneys black smoke poured day and night, blanketing the town with soot and making all the floors dirtier than ever. Still, by working twice as hard and twice as long, the women of the town were able to keep their floors almost as clean as they had been before Mrs Jones ever bought a vacuum cleaner in the first place.

The story was part of a book of essays, and the reason I had read it so eagerly was that it was called ‘The Rat Race’ — which, I learned, means a race where, no matter how fast you run, you don’t get anywhere. But there was nothing in the book about rats, and I felt bad about the title because, I thought, it wasn’t a rat race at all, it was a People Race, and no sensible rats would ever do anything so foolish.

And yet here we were, rats getting caught up in something a lot like the People Race, and for no good reason. And the worst thing was that even with our make-work projects, we didn’t really have enough to do. Our life was too easy. I thought of what the scientist had written about our prairie dog ancestors, and I was worried.

So were many of the others. We called a meeting — indeed, a whole series of meetings, extending over more than a year. We talked and argued and considered, and we remembered our evenings in the library at the Boniface Estate when we had wondered what a rat civilization would be like. Oddly enough, Jenner, my old and best friend, took little part in these discussions; he remained rather glumly

silent and seemed disinterested. But most of the others felt as I did, and slowly some things became clear; we saw our problems and figured out, as well as we could, what to do about them.

First, we realized that finding the Toy Tinker’s truck, which had seemed like such an enormous stroke of luck, had in fact led us into the very trap we should have avoided. As a result we were now stealing more than ever before: not only food, but electricity and water. Even the air we breathed was drawn in by a stolen fan, run by stolen current.

It was this, of course, that made our life so easy that it seemed pointless. We did not have enough work to do because a thief’s life is always based on somebody else’s work.

Second, there was always the fear, in the back of our minds, that we might get caught. Or perhaps not caught — we took precautions against that — so much as found out. Mr Fitzgibbon was surely aware that some of his crops were being removed. And as our group grew larger, we would have to take more and more.

Already, he had begun lining some of his grain bins with sheet metal. That didn’t bother us particularly, because we knew how to get the doors open. But suppose he should take to locking them? We could cut through the locks, of course, or even through the sheet metal walls; we have the tools for that. But it would be a dead giveaway. What would Mr Fitzgibbon think about rats who could cut through metal?

All these things we worried about and talked about and puzzled over. But we could not find any easy answer — because there was none.

There was, however, a hard answer.

I began taking long walks into the forest. I had an idea in the back of my head. Sometimes I went alone, sometimes with some of the others.

On one particular day I went with Jenner. I had not yet told him about my idea, nor did I on the morning we set out, but merely proposed a direction. We took along enough food for lunch. I remember that it was autumn, a bright, cool day; the leaves made a rustling sound when the wind blew, and some were turning yellow.

In my walks I had been exploring the jeep trails, trying to find out where they went and where they didn’t go, trying to find the wildest parts of the forest, places where not even the rangers ever went.

A few times I tried asking for information. I asked two squirrels, for instance, if they knew what lay on the other side of a mountain that rose before me. But they were silly, fearful creatures; and after looking at me in surprise, they both scurried up an oak tree and scolded senselessly in loud voices, shaking their tails, until I left. I asked some chipmunks, and they were more polite. They couldn’t answer my question (never having been farther than a hundred yards from where they were born!), but advised me to ask the birds — more specifically, one bird, a very old owl who was famous throughout the forest. They even told me how to find the enormous tree in which he lived.

That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the owl. He knew every tree, every trail, every stone in the forest. He was (as you know) not naturally friendly towards rats, or mice either, but when I told him about our life at Nimh, and our escape, he grew interested. Though he did not say so, I think he had already been watching some of our activities from the air in the evenings. Anyway, he was curious and listened carefully when I told him about our problems and my ideas for solving them. I have talked to him many times since.

It was he who told me about Thorn Valley.

The valley lies deep in the forest, beyond the big tree. The jeep trails do not cross it, nor even go close to it, for the mountains around it are forbidding, too steep and rocky even for jeeps, and are covered with thorny thickets. The owl told me that in all the years he had been flying, he had never

seen a human being near it.

Yet the bottom of the valley is level and broad and nearly a mile along; steep cliffs wall it in all around. There are three ponds or small lakes in it, and apparently these are fed by springs, for they never dry up. On clear days, the owl said, he sometimes saw small fish swimming in them. I thought: Could rats weave fish nets or make fish hooks?

It was this valley I was looking for the day I set out with Jenner. I had careful directions from the owl; yet it took us half a day, moving briskly, to reach the base of the mountains. Then up, up, very steeply, for more than an hour — not really difficult for us, since rats are better climbers than men; also, we are shorter, so we had little trouble with the spiney underbrush. From the top of the high ridge at last we looked down, and the valley lay before us.

It was beautiful and still, a wild and lonely place. Through the green and yellow treetops below us I could see the water of one of the ponds sparkling in the sun. I got the idea that my eyes — our eyes — were the first ever to see it. Yet that was not true, for as we descended into the valley, a deer suddenly appeared in the trees ahead and went bounding off down the slope. There were wild animals there, and I wondered if they even suspected that outside these walls of mountains there were cities and roads and people.

Most of the valley floor was in forest, great spreading oak and maple trees, but near one of the ponds I saw what I had hoped to find — a large natural clearing, a glade where only coarse grass and wild flowers grew, and some clumps of raspberry bushes. This clearing was on the far side of the valley; beyond it the mountain wall rose again, a steep slope with big outcroppings of stone — granite ledges that thrust six or ten feet out of the earth.

‘We could live here,’ I said to Jenner.

‘I suppose we could,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful place. But it’s a long way from the barn. Think how far we’d have to carry food. And no electricity.’

‘We could grow our own food,’ I said. I started to add, but didn’t: And maybe, someday, make our own electricity, if we decided we wanted to.

‘We don’t know how. Anyway, where would we grow it?’

‘Right here. It would be easy to clear away these weeds and bushes. And if we dug into that mountainside, under those rock ledges, we’d have all the cave space we wanted, dry and warm, with a good roof. There could be room enough for a thousand of us.’

‘There aren’t a thousand of us.’ ‘There might be, someday.’

‘But why? Why move? We’ve got a better place to live right now. We’ve got all the food we want. We’ve got electricity, and lights, and running water. I can’t understand why everybody talks about changing things.’

‘Because everything we have is stolen.’

‘That’s silly. Is it stealing when farmers take milk from cows, or eggs from chickens? They’re just smarter than the cows and chickens, that’s all. Well, people are our cows. If we’re smart enough, why shouldn’t we get food from them?’

‘It’s not the same. Farmers feed the cows and chickens and take care of them. We don’t do anything for what we take. Besides, if we keep it up, we’re sure to be found out.’

‘What then? What if we are? People have been trying to exterminate rats for centuries, but they haven’t succeeded. And we’re smarter than the others. What are they going to do? Dynamite us? Let them try it. We’ll find out where they keep the dynamite and use it on them.’

‘Then we’d really be found out. Don’t you see, Jenner, if we ever did anything like that, they’d

figure out who we are and what we know? Then only two things could happen. Either they’d hunt us all down and kill us, or they’d capture us and put us in a sideshow, or maybe take us back to Nimh. And this time we’d never get away.’

‘I don’t believe any of that,’ Jenner said. ‘You’ve got this idea stuck in your head. We’ve got to start from nothing and work hard and build a rat civilization. I say, why start from nothing if you can start with everything? We’ve already got a civilization.’

‘No. We haven’t. We’re just living on the edge of somebody else’s, like fleas on a dog’s back. If the dog drowns, the fleas drown, too.’

 

*

That was the beginning of an argument that never had a satisfactory ending. Jenner would not yield to my point of view, nor I to his. It wasn’t that he was lazy and didn’t want to work. He was just more cynical than the rest of us; stealing did not bother him. And he was a pessimist. He never believed that we could really make it on our own. Maybe he was right. But I, and most of the others, felt that we must at least try. If we fail — well, then I suppose we must come back here, or find some other farm. Or eventually forget all we learned and go back to stealing garbage.

So we began working out the Plan. It has been a long time coming. Three years ago this spring we started watching Mr Fitzgibbon to learn what he did, and how he did it, to bring food out of the earth. We collected books and magazines on farming. We discovered early that in order to stop stealing we would, for a while, have to steal more than ever. We’ve laid up a two-year food supply, so that even if we don’t succeed in growing a good crop the first year, we won’t go hungry. We’ve got two-thirds of it moved to Thorn Valley already, and we’ve dug a dry cave to store it in, under one of the big rocks. We’ve got seeds; we have our ploughs; we’ve cleared and cultivated part of the land near the pond; and in a few days we’ll begin our first planting. We’ve even dug some irrigation ditches, in case there’s a drought.

We have a schedule worked out, sort of a countdown, and by early June we will be out of this cave, and out of Mr Fitzgibbon’s barn, I hope forever.

Captured

 

‘Speaking of schedules and countdowns’ — Mr Ages spoke suddenly — ‘we’ve got one for this evening. It’s getting late.’

The clock on Nicodemus’s desk said five o’clock.

‘Mrs Fitzgibbon feeds Dragon at six p.m.’ He spoke gently, but his voice had a chilling sound to Mrs Frisby. They all looked at her.

‘I’m ready,’ she said quietly, ‘but there are still a few minutes, and one question you have not yet answered. Why did Jonathan never tell me anything about Nimh, or any of the rest?’

Mr Ages said: ‘I’ll try to explain. When Nicodemus and the others moved into the cave near the rosebush, they invited Jonathan and me to stay with them — after all, we had been with them for many months by that time — and at first we did. But after a few weeks we decided to move out. We were, you realize, different. We both felt strange, associating always and only with rats, even though they were our close and good friends. As for me, I wanted more solitude and less society; Jonathan, on the other hand, was younger than I and felt lonely.

‘So we moved, at first together, to the basement of the old farmhouse where I still live. Then Jonathan met you, at a stream near the woods somewhere, I think he said …’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘I remember.’

‘From then on he worried. He didn’t want to be secretive, but he didn’t know how to tell you one thing. I’m sure Nicodemus has explained to you that the injections we got at Nimh had two effects. One of them was that none of us seemed to be growing any older at all — the children, yes, but not the adults. Apparently the injections had given us all a much longer lifespan than even Dr Schultz had anticipated.

‘You can see why this would have been a dreadful thing for Jonathan to have to tell you. You never had the injections. That meant that while he stayed young, you would grow older, and older, and finally die. He loved you, and he could hardly stand that thought. Yet if it was distressing to him — he thought — how much more painful it would be to you! That is what he could not bring himself to tell you.

‘He would have told you eventually; I know he intended to. Indeed, you would have found it out yourself, you would have seen it happening. But it was hard; he kept putting it off, then, finally, it was too late.’

‘Poor Jonathan,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘He should have told me. I wouldn’t have minded. But will my children …’

‘Also have longer lives ?’ said Nicodemus. ‘We don’t know yet. We think so, but our own children are not yet old enough to be certain. We do know they have inherited the ability to learn. They master reading almost without effort.’

He stood up, took out his reading glass, and looked at the clock. But Mrs Frisby interrupted again. ‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘What happened to Jenner?’

Nicodemus said: ‘He left. He was against the Plan from the start. In our discussions, he tried to persuade others to oppose it, too. Only a few joined him; though there are some others who are still doubtful about it, they’re going to stay with us and try it.

‘The arguments stayed reasonably friendly, but the last straw, for Jenner, was when we decided to destroy the machines.’

‘Destroy them!’

‘For two reasons. One, so that if anyone ever finds the cave, there won’t be any evidence of what we’ve been doing — nothing but broken bits of metal, debris that will look like ordinary junk. We’ll pull out our electric cable, our lights and our water pipes. We’ll close up all the tunnels leading in.

‘The other reason is more important. When we move to Thorn Valley, we’re going to have some hard times. We know that, and we’re braced for it. If this cave is still open, with the machines and lights, the carpets and running water still here, there will be a terrible temptation to give up and move back to the soft life. We want to remove that temptation.

‘But when Jenner heard the decision — it was made at a meeting — he grew really angry. He denounced us all as idiots and dreamers. He stamped out of the meeting, and a few days later he left the group forever, taking six of his followers with him. We don’t know where they went, but we think they will try to find a place where they can set up a new life like this one.

‘I wish them luck, but they’ll have trouble. There won’t be any Toy Tinker this time. They’ll have to steal their machines — everything. That worries us a bit, because if they get caught, who knows what might happen? But there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re going ahead with the Plan; and once we get to Thorn Valley, I think we can stop worrying.’

Justin stood up. ‘It’s time to go.’ He picked up the paper with the sleeping draught in it.

 

Mrs Frisby, Justin and Mr Ages walked together up the long corridor to the rosebush.

‘Remember, when you come up through the hole in the kitchen floor,’ Mr Ages said, ‘you’ll be under a cabinet. It’s low, but there’s room to move. Go a few steps forward, and you’ll be able to see out into the room.

‘Mrs Fitzgibbon will be there, getting dinner for her family. They eat at about six. When she’s got their dinner ready, she’ll feed Dragon. He won’t be in the kitchen, but he’ll be waiting just outside the kitchen door on the porch. She doesn’t let him in while she’s cooking because he makes such a pest of himself, rubbing against her ankles and getting between her feet.

‘If you look to your right, you’ll see his bowl. It’s blue, and it has the word Kitty written over and over again around the side. She’ll pick it up, fill it with catfood, and put it down again in the same place.

‘Then watch closely. She’ll walk over to the door to let him in, and that’s your chance. Her back will be towards you. She’s got to walk about twenty feet — it’s a big kitchen. The bowl will be about two feet away from you. Be sure the paper packet is open — then dash out, dump the powder into the food, and dash back. You don’t want to be in sight when Dragon comes in. I can tell you that from experience.’

‘Is that how you got hurt?’

‘I got there a few seconds late. I decided there was still time. I was wrong.’

 

At the arch in the rosebush Mr Ages left them. With his cast, he would not be able to climb through the hole to the kitchen; there was no point in his going further.

Mrs Frisby and Justin moved out of the rosebush and looked around them. It was still light, though the sun was low on the horizon. Straight ahead of them, perhaps two hundred feet away, stood the big white farmhouse. Dragon was already on the porch, sitting just outside the door, looking at it expectantly. To their right was the tractor shed, and beyond that was the barnyard fence and the barn itself, casting a long shadow. Behind them rose the woods and the mountains; to the left Mrs Frisby could see the big stone in the middle of the garden, near which her children waited. As soon as her

task was done, she thought, she must hurry to them and get ready for the move.

‘We go under the right side of the house,’ Justin said quietly. ‘Follow me.’ They made their way around the edge of the yard, staying in the shadows, keeping an eye on Dragon. Justin still wore his satchel and had put the powder package in it.

There was a basement under the main part of the Fitzgibbons’ house, but the big kitchen had been added later and stood on a foundation of concrete blocks, with only a crawl space beneath. As they approached this grey foundation, Mrs Frisby saw that near the middle of it, a few inches off the ground, there was a square patch of darker grey. It was a hole, left for ventilation, and there was a screen over it. When they reached it, Justin caught hold of the screen and pulled the corner. It swung open.

‘We loosened it a bit,’ he explained, holding it open for her. Mrs Frisby crept through.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It’s dark. There’s a drop of about a foot. Just jump. We put some straw at the bottom, so it’s soft.’

Holding her breath, Mrs Frisby jumped blindly into the blackness, and felt the cushion of straw under her feet. In a moment Justin landed beside her. They were under the Fitzgibbons’ kitchen.

‘Now,’ he said softly, ‘look to your left. See the patch of light? That’s the hole. The light comes from the kitchen. We’ve piled earth up under it, so it’s easy to reach. Come on.’

Mrs Frisby followed him; as they got near the bright hole she could see around her a little. They were walking across bare earth, dry and cool to the touch; overhead there were heavy wooden beams holding up the floor, and above those the floorboards themselves. Under the hole rose a small round hill of earth. They walked up this, and then Justin whispered:

‘This is as far as I can go. There’s not room for me to get through. I’ll wait here. Come back down as soon as you’ve finished. Here’s the powder.’ He handed her the paper packet. ‘Remember to tear it open before you go out to Dragon’s bowl. Hurry, now. I can hear Mrs Fitzgibbon moving around. She’s getting the dinner. Be careful, and good luck.’

Mrs Frisby first pushed the packet up through the hole. Then, as quietly as she could, grasping both sides, she pulled herself up and into the kitchen.

It was light there. But Mr Ages had not been joking when he said the ceiling was low. There was less than an inch between the floor and the bottom of the cabinet, so that she could not walk properly but had to flatten herself out and crawl. She did, a few steps, and discovered that she was trembling. ‘Stay calm,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t get panicky, or you’ll do something foolish and spoil everything.’ Thus admonished, she crept forward again until she was near the edge of the cabinet. She stopped.

From there she could see out into the kitchen fairly well. Straight across from her stood a big white gas stove, and in front of it, putting the lid on a pot, was Mrs Fitzgibbon. Because the edge of the cabinet was so low, Mrs Frisby could not see her head, but only up to her shoulders.

‘There,’ Mrs Fitzgibbon said, as if to herself. ‘The stew is done, the bread’s in the oven, the table is set.’

Where was the cat’s bowl? Mrs Frisby looked to her right as Mr Ages had said. There it was, blue, with words inscribed around the side. Yet something was wrong. It was not two feet from the cabinet, but more like four or five. In the corner, where it should have been, rose four round wooden legs. She realized that she was looking at the bottom of a kitchen stool.

No matter, she thought. The extra distance is just a couple of feet. Mr Ages had not mentioned a stool, but perhaps they moved it around. She crawled to her right as close to the bowl as she could get without showing herself, and tore open the package.

Just as she did this Mrs Fitzgibbon walked over from the stove. Her hand appeared, picked up the

bowl, and Mrs Frisby heard it thump on the counter over her head. A cutting sound — a tin opener — the scrape of a spoon, and the bowl was back on the floor. The strong fishy smell of catfood. Mrs Fitzgibbon walked away.

Now.

Mrs Frisby moved swiftly out into the room, across the open floor, holding the powder, her eyes intent only on the bowl. She was no longer trembling. She poured in the powder, which instantly dissolved in the moist catfood. Still clutching the paper, she turned and sped towards the cabinet.

With a bang, the lights went dim. The ceiling, which had somehow become curved, was filled with little round moons. Mrs Frisby kept running, and her face struck a cold, hard wall of metal.

A voice shouted:

‘Mother! Don’t let Dragon in yet. I’ve caught a mouse.’

Billy, the young Fitzgibbon son, had been sitting on the kitchen stool, his feet up on the rung, eating berries from a colander. The colander, upside down, was now over Mrs Frisby.

Seven Dead Rats

 

From a birdcage, Mrs Frisby watched the Fitzgibbons eat dinner. There was dinner for her, too — breadcrumbs, cheese, and bits of carrot — on the floor of the cage, along with a small bowl of water. The cage had been occupied until a few months before by a yellow canary named Porgy, who had lived in it for five years and then died of old age.

To get her out from under the colander, Billy had slid a piece of cardboard beneath it, pinching her foot sharply in the process, so that it hurt when she walked. She had been transferred first to a shoebox.

‘Can I keep it?’ Billy had asked his mother. ‘What for? It’s just a field mouse.’

‘For a pet. I like it.’ Billy had tried to look at Mrs Frisby through some holes he had punched in the top of the box, but it was dark inside.

‘I suppose so. For a few days. You’ll have to feed it.’

‘I think I’ll put it in Porgy’s cage. I can’t see it in this box. It must be hungry. It was trying to eat Dragon’s food. Dumb mouse. It might have been killed.’

No one had noticed the small torn piece of paper at first; then Mrs Fitzgibbon had absently picked it up and tossed it into the wastebasket.

A few days! Mrs Frisby felt sick. And after a few days — then what? Would they let her go? Or would Billy plead for a few more? But even if they did set her free — her children were alone; the rats were coming tonight to move her house. Why had Billy picked today, of all days, to sit on the stool? She had not the heart to eat the food that lay on the cage floor. She felt like weeping.

Paul came in for dinner, followed by his father. He looked at her in the cage. ‘Why don’t you let it go?’ he said to Billy. ‘Poor little thing. It’s scared to death.’ ‘No it’s not. It’s just not used to the cage.’

‘I bet it will die.’ ‘I bet it won’t.’

‘You can’t just put wild animals in cages. You have to catch them when they’re babies.’ ‘They do it in zoos.’

‘Yes, but they know more about it. Anyway, a lot of those die, too.’

‘It’s strange that it was in here at all,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘I haven’t seen any signs of mice. I didn’t think we had any.’

They sat at the table, and Mrs Fitzgibbon served the stew. It was a long, square-cut farm table, big enough to feed, besides the family, the four hired hands who would be working with Mr Fitzgibbon during the planting and harvesting. The Fitzgibbons sat together around one end of it.

Mrs Frisby’s cage hung from a metal stand in the corner on the opposite side of the room, quite high up, so that the floor where she crouched was above their heads. She could watch them, looking down; but if she retreated to the far side of the cage, they could not see her, nor she them. She kept hoping that Paul would resume the argument with Billy and win it, or at least convince Mr or Mrs Fitzgibbon that they should let her go.

But Paul was now busy eating. So, moving quietly, she crept to the back of the cage. There was a sliding door halfway up the side, which Billy had lifted to put her in. Remembering Nicodemus’s story, she looked at it, wondering if she could climb to it, if she could get it open if she did. Not now, but later, when they had left the kitchen. Maybe. But it looked quite big and heavy.

She thought about her children again. Surely, when Justin had waited a little longer, he would realize that something had gone wrong. He would go and talk to them. But what could he tell them? ‘Children, your mother went into the kitchen with Dragon and she hasn’t come out.’ No. But whatever he said, they would be dreadfully frightened and worried. Poor Cynthia! Poor Timothy — poor all of them.

She had one small satisfaction. Dragon, who had been admitted after she was safely caged, had eaten his bowl of catfood greedily, sleeping powder and all, purring as he licked the last scraps from the bottom.

Billy was looking at the cage.

‘There,’ he cried. ‘It walked. I saw it. I told you it was all right.’ He started up from his chair. ‘Billy, stay in your place and eat your stew,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘The mouse can wait.’

‘Speaking of mice,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon, who had driven to town that afternoon, ‘there was quite a stir today at Henderson’s hardware store.’

‘About mice?’

‘No, but nearly. About rats. I went in to order the new linchpin, and there was quite a group there, talking about an odd thing that had happened.

‘It seems that six or seven rats got themselves electrocuted there a few days ago. Very strange. Henderson sells motors — he has a whole shelf of them. The rats, for some reason, had got on the shelf. He says it looked as if they were fooling with one of the motors, trying to move it.’

‘That’s a new one,’ said Paul. ‘Rats stealing motors.’

‘They weren’t really, of course. Anyway, it happened during the night; when he — Henderson — came into the shop in the morning, he tried to turn on the lights, and the fuse was blown. He found the rats all grouped around the motor. It had been left plugged in, though it was turned off. They must have been gnawing at the insulation for some reason — at least that’s what he thinks. They caused a short circuit, and all bunched together like that, the current went through them and killed the lot.’

‘Pretty good kind of a rat trap, I’d say,’ Mrs Fitzgibbon remarked.

Mrs Frisby was now listening to the conversation very closely. Dragon had stretched out on the floor, looking drowsy.

‘Wait,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘That’s only the beginning. It seems that the local weekly was hard up for news. They heard about it and sent their reporter over.’

‘Fred Smith,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon.

‘Yes. Fred wrote a little article about it, with a headline, MECHANIZED RATS INVADE HARDWARE STORE. Something like that. Well, it attracted more attention than he expected. The next thing they knew, believe it or not, the federal government got into it. They sent a squad over there from the Public Health Service with a truckload of equipment.’

‘Just on account of seven rats?’ said Billy. ‘They should send the truck over here. We’ve got more than that.’

‘That’s just what I said,’ Mr Fitzgibbon went on. ‘And do you know? They’re going to. I was joking, of course, but the man in charge of the group didn’t take it as a joke at all. He wanted to know where the farm was, how far away, how many acres, what I raised, how many rats I thought there were. He acted really interested. It seems they wanted to examine the dead rats at Henderson’s, but they couldn’t. He’d already sent them to the town dump, and they were incinerated.’

‘I never heard of such a thing,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘All that fuss over a few dead rats.’ ‘I have,’ said Paul. ‘And I bet I know what they’re after.’

‘What?’

‘They think the rats have rabies. They don’t like to say so because it makes people panicky.’ ‘What’s rabies?’ asked Billy.

‘A disease,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘A very bad one, spread by animals. You know, Paul, I think you’re probably right. That would explain why the Public Health Service is in it. Epidemic control. Anyway, they’re planning to check on the rats all over this area.’

‘Don’t you remember,’ Paul said, ‘a few years ago when everybody had to lock up their dogs? And some people were shooting every dog they saw. That’s why they keep it quiet until they’re sure.

‘And another thing. They taught us in the vet course in school that when an animal starts acting strange, it may be a sign of rabies. Well, chewing electric wires — that’s strange enough.’

‘And they think some rats here might be infected?’ Mrs Fitzgibbon sounded worried. ‘I suppose they must,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon, ‘though they never mentioned rabies at all.’ ‘When are they coming?’

‘Day after tomorrow. Saturday morning. The man in charge, a Doctor somebody, said they had some more checking to do in town tomorrow. They’re coming with an extermination truck — cyanide gas, I think.’

‘I can tell them where to look,’ Paul said. ‘Me too,’ said Billy. ‘Under the rosebush.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘In fact, they’ll probably want to bulldoze that bush out of there. I can do that with the big tractor.’

‘Bulldoze my rosebush?’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon indignantly. ‘They will not!’

‘Look at it this way,’ her husband said. ‘I’ve got to get rid of those rats anyway. I’d already decided to; they’re stealing too much feed — seeds, too, more all the time. If I paid an exterminator to do it, he’d charge a couple of hundred dollars. If the government will do it free, why shouldn’t we let them?’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon, still not soothed, ‘then you can spend the money to buy me some new rosebushes.’

‘That’s just what I had in mind,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon with a smile. ‘And maybe some lilacs, too.’ Mrs Fitzgibbon had always wanted a lilac bush; they were her favourite shrubs.

Mrs Frisby did not believe at all that it was rabies the men were looking for. She wished Mr Fitzgibbon had been able to remember the name of the ‘Doctor somebody’. And now she had another urgent reason to get out of the cage. Somehow, she had to warn Nicodemus.

Dragon slept on the kitchen floor.

Escape

 

At ten by the kitchen clock, the Fitzgibbons went to bed. Dragon was put out, the doors locked, the lights turned off. The first of these things was done by Billy, on instruction from his mother, not without some difficulty. He opened the door.

‘Come on, Dragon. Out.’ ‘He won’t get up.’

‘I never saw such a lazy cat. He gets worse every day.’

Finally Dragon, protesting with only the sleepiest of whines, was picked up and deposited on the back porch. He scarcely opened his eyes.

By that time it was dark. Mrs Frisby waited a few minutes until she was sure they were really gone and until her eyes adjusted so she could see the bars of her cage. They were vertical bars, smooth and no thicker than match sticks, which made them slippery to climb, but by turning more or less sideways, she was able to grip them fairly well. She inched her way up to the sliding door and tried to lift it.

She could tell from the first pull that it was no use. The door was stiff and it was heavy, and she could not get a good enough grip on either it or the cage wall to exert much pressure. Still she kept trying, first lifting on the middle of the door, then on one corner, then another, straining every muscle. In half an hour she admitted defeat, at least for the moment, and climbed back down to the bottom of the cage. She sat there, shaking from the effort, and thought.

Somehow, she had to get out. Her children, even now, would be alone in the dark house, alone at night for the first time. Martin and Teresa would be trying to reassure the younger ones; yet they themselves would be sadly frightened. What would they think? Since she had not told them about Dragon and the sleeping powder, she hoped that perhaps they would decide she had, for some reason, stayed with the rats.

But at eleven, which could not be far off (she could not read the kitchen clock in the dark), the rats would arrive to move the house. Or would they, knowing — since Justin must have told them — that she had not come out of the kitchen? She thought they would. She hoped they would, and that Justin would go with them and talk to the children and try to calm their fear. There was something about Justin, a kind of easy confidence, that would help them.

She no longer had any doubt, of course, that the rats could move her house. It was a generous thing to do, especially at a time when they were hurrying so in their Plan, their own move. And they had no idea yet of how little time they really had, of the new danger that crowded upon them. If she could only get out! She would run and warn them, and it might still not be too late.

She thought: It’s a good plan and a brave one. It would be the first time in all the world that intelligent beings, besides men, had ever tried to start a real civilization of their own. They ought to have a chance. It was not right that they should be killed at the last minute. Or captured. Could it be that they — the men who were coming — were somehow connected with Nimh? Or was it more likely, as Paul had guessed, that they were only worried about rabies? She decided it didn’t really matter. The result would be the same. The day after next the truck would come with its poison gas and that would be the end of all their plans. Unless they could be warned. Wearily, she got up to climb the wall and try the door again.

She heard a noise.

It was in the kitchen, near her cage, a small scuffling on the hard linoleum floor.

‘Now what kind of a bird can that be, with no wings?’ It was Justin’s voice, very soft, and he was laughing. ‘Justin!’

‘I thought you might like to come home. Your children are asking after you.’ ‘Are they all right?’

‘They’re fine. They were worried, but I told them I’d bring you back. They seemed to believe me.’ ‘But how did you know …?’

‘That you were here? You forget. I was waiting just under the cabinet. I heard what happened. I felt like biting Billy full of holes. But as soon as I heard that you were safely in the cage, I went and told the children you were all right, but that you’d be a little late. I didn’t tell them exactly why.

‘Now, let’s get you out.’

‘I tried. I couldn’t open the door.’

‘I’ll get it open. I brought along a few tools — burglar’s tools, you might say — in my back pack.

Should I climb up the stand? No. It looks slippery. I think I’ll try the curtain.’

And in a matter of seconds Justin had swarmed up a window curtain a foot away, and she heard a thump as he leaped and landed on top of the cage, which swayed under the impact. The noise was slight, but they both listened intently for a moment to see if it produced another, from upstairs. All quiet.

‘Now let me look at that door.’ Justin climbed easily down the side of the cage. ‘Oh, I hope you can get it open.’

‘I can,’ Justin said, examining it, ‘easily enough. But I don’t think I will.’ ‘Why not?’

‘Because you couldn’t,’ Justin said, ‘and they’ll know that. So they won’t be curious, let’s make it open itself. As I expected, it doesn’t have real hinges.’ He had pulled a small metal bar out of his back pack, and was working as he talked. ‘Just little wire rings. Cheap, flimsy things. They’re always coming apart.’ As he said that, one of them came apart; the door sagged and hung crazily by one corner. ‘There, you see? You couldn’t help it if they put you in a defective cage. Come on out.’

Mrs Frisby climbed through and stood with Justin on the top of the cage.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we shinny down the stand like a fireman’s pole. You go out the way you came in

 

• under the cabinet and through the hole. I’ll go out the way I came in — through the attic. I’ll meet you outside.’

 

‘Justin,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘there’s something I’ve got to tell you, something I learned …’

‘Wait till we’re out,’ said Justin. ‘We’ve got to hurry. You see, we’re having a little trouble moving your cement block.’ He was off, running silently into the front of the house, from which the stairway led up two flights to the attic.

Mrs Frisby crawled under the cabinet, searched in total darkness for the small hole, and finally felt one foot slip down. She dropped through. The square opening in the foundation was easier to find, it glowed palely ahead of her, lit with moonlight.

Justin was waiting for her as she came out of the corner of the screen. The night was warm, and a half-moon shone on the farmyard.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘what was it you wanted to tell me?’ He spoke seriously; he had heard the urgency in her voice. They hurried towards the garden, rounding the back porch. There, a dark heap in the moonlight, lay Dragon, no threat to anyone tonight.

‘Some exterminators are coming to poison all of you.’ Mrs Frisby told him, as briefly as she could, of the conversation she had heard at the Fitzgibbons’ dinner table.

‘Seven rats,’ Justin said. ‘Rabies. It might be. But I’ll bet it was Jenner. When are the men supposed to come?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

To her surprise, Justin stopped. He looked at her in admiration.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I had a feeling the first time I clapped eyes on you that you’d bring us good luck.’

‘Good luck!’ She was amazed.

‘Oh, it’s bad news. It’s serious. We’ll have to change our plans, and quickly. But think how much worse it would be if you hadn’t overheard it. We wouldn’t have had a chance.’

They came into the garden.

‘Is Nicodemus here?’ Mrs Frisby asked.

‘No. In a few minutes I’ll go and tell him. But first we need your help to get started moving your house.’

‘My help? What can I do?’

‘You can talk to your neighbour. She seems to think we’re stealing your cement block. She bit Arthur in the leg.’

At one end of the big stone in the middle of the garden, ten rats were digging briskly, using scoops that looked more like teaspoons than shovels, piling the earth neatly beside a hole already almost big enough to hold Mrs Frisby’s house.

But on the other side of the stone there was an impasse.

Here another ten rats stood, baffled, in a semicircle. Behind them they had deposited a jumble of equipment: odd-shaped metal bars, pulleys, wooden structures that looked like ladders, other pieces of wood that resembled small logs. But between the rats and Mrs Frisby’s front door stood a small, defiant figure. The rats, looking enormous by comparison, remained a respectful distance away from her.

‘Why,’ said Mrs Frisby to Justin, ‘it’s the shrew!’ ‘Yes,’ said Justin, ‘and acting shrewish.’

One of the rats was speaking. Mrs Frisby recognized Arthur.

‘… but I told you, ma’am, we do have Mrs Frisby’s permission. She wants us to move her house.

Ask the children. Call them out.’

‘Don’t tell me that. What have you done with Mrs Frisby? It’s a good thing the children haven’t heard you. They’d be frightened half to death! If Mrs Frisby wanted you to move her house, she’d be here.’

‘It’s all right,’ called Mrs Frisby, running forward. ‘I’m here.’

‘Mrs Frisby!’ said the shrew. ‘You’re just in time. I heard a noise, and came out and found these --

creatures — trying to dig up your house.’

‘I tried to explain it to her,’ said Arthur. ‘But she won’t believe me.’

‘I certainly won’t,’ said the shrew. ‘He said you asked him to dig up your house. Thieving rats!’ ‘It’s true,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘I did ask them, and they said they would. It’s very kind of them.’ ‘Kind?’ said the shrew, ‘Great hulking beasts. What do you mean?’

It took several more minutes of reassurance by Mrs Frisby before the shrew grudgingly moved aside, still muttering warnings. ‘I wouldn’t trust them. How do you know they’ll do what they say?’ That, of course, Mrs Frisby could not explain to her.

The rats now commenced to dig busily at the dirt on top of and around Mrs Frisby’s cement block. Justin said: ‘I’ve got to go and talk to Nicodemus. You’d better get the children out.’ Mrs Frisby

hurried into her house.

She found them waiting in the living room, unaware of the small crisis that had been taking place outside. As Justin had said, they did not seem worried.

‘We were scared at first,’ Teresa said. ‘But then one of the rats came to see us. He couldn’t come in, but he called to us, and we came out, Martin and I. He said his name was Justin. Have you met him? He’s very nice.’

‘I’ve met him,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘Now we’d better go outside. They’re getting ready to move the house.’

‘I’m ready,’ said Timothy. ‘I’m all wrapped up like a scarecrow.’

Martin and Teresa had taken pieces of warm cloth from the bed and tied them around him. Mrs Frisby could not see him in the dark, but when she touched him she found they had even tied a piece like a bonnet around his head and ears.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘And we’re lucky — it’s a warm night, and dry.’

They went up the small tunnel to the garden and watched in the moonlight from a hillock a few feet away. The rats had finished digging the new hole, and all twenty of them were working near the house. It was a sight to see.

As soon as the earth had been cleared from the top and sides of the cement block, so that it lay fully exposed in its hole, all of the rats turned to the pile of equipment. Under Arthur’s direction the ladder-like structures became a scaffolding — four small towers standing one near each corner of the block. Across the tops of these the rats fastened strong, light bars of metal, probably, Mrs Frisby thought, from the Toy Tinker’s truck.

From these bars they now hung pulleys wound with strong, thin cord, and at the ends of the cords they fastened hooks, which they slipped into the oval-shaped holes in the block and pulled taut. Five strong rats stood by each cord. One of them, Mrs Frisby noticed, was bigger than the rest: her friend Brutus.

‘Heave!’ called Arthur.

The twenty rats strained on the cords, and the block rose an inch. Each rat stepped back a pace. ‘Heave!’ Another inch.

Slowly, the heavy block rose from the hole until it hung two inches above level ground. ‘Steady,’ said Arthur. ‘Get the rollers.’

Eight rats, two from each group, ran to the round pieces of wood Mrs Frisby had noticed earlier; these resembled sawed-up pieces of broom handle, each about a foot long.

Two rats to a roller, they slipped four of these under the cement block so that they lay athwart the hole, like bars across a window.

‘Lower away,’ said Arthur, and the cement block came to rest gently on the rollers. ‘Let’s see how it rolls.’

They slipped the ropes free of the pulleys and re-hooked two of them to the front of the block. Nine rats now manned each rope; two stayed behind, watching the rollers.

‘Heave!’

The rollers turned and the heavy block slid forward easily, like a truck on wheels, in the direction of the new hole. When it moved off the hindmost of the rollers, as it did every few inches, the two rats in the rear would quickly pick that one up and replace it under the front of the block.

Almost like a game of leap-frog, Mrs Frisby thought. But a well-rehearsed game; the rats had planned carefully; they knew exactly what they were doing; they moved with precision and never wasted a motion.

Within a very few minutes the first of the rollers lay across the new hole; then the second, and finally all four. The block was poised and in position; the hole was exactly the right size and shape. The rats had even dug out a new pantry-hole in one corner, and carved out the small tunnel that would connect the two rooms of the house.

The towers and the pulleys were put up again, and the whole process of lifting and lowering was done in reverse; the rollers were pulled away and the block was eased slowly into its new home.

‘It’s done!’ cried Mrs Frisby. She felt like applauding.

‘Not quite yet,’ said Arthur over his shoulder. To the other rats he said: ‘Get the shovels and the backpacks.’

Pausing a moment to rest, he explained to Mrs Frisby: ‘We’re going to cover it with turf, and then we’ve got to fill up the old hole with the dirt from the new one, or Mr Fitzgibbon will wonder who’s been digging up his garden. Also, we’ve still to dig you an entrance hole.’

In her excitement Mrs Frisby had forgotten this small detail. She could not get into her house. Now she watched in awe as Arthur and Brutus, using two small, sharp, long-handled shovels, dug the narrow tunnel down to her living room. It took them somewhat less than five minutes. It had taken her all day to dig the other one.

‘Now,’ said Arthur, ‘you can put your children to bed. We’ll take care of the rest.’

At the Meeting

 

Mrs Frisby slept well and soundly, the day just finished having been the longest and hardest she had ever known.

She awoke in the morning with a smile. Her house was warm, and it was safe at last. Her children slept peacefully beside her; Timothy’s breathing was quiet and easy. They could stay in the house, now, as long as they needed to. On some warm day later in the spring, when Timothy was strong again, they would move to the summer house down by the brook. Another nice thing, she thought — when they left the house she would close up the entrance tunnel so that no one could find it; undisturbed by the plough, it would be ready and waiting for them in the fall. It could be theirs forever, thanks to the rats.

The rats! In her half-dreaming state she had forgotten. They were in terrible danger. What would they do? She felt as if she ought to go and offer to help them. But help how? She could think of nothing she could do.

At that moment she heard a voice calling her name from above. ‘Mrs Frisby.’

She left the bed and went to the bottom of the entrance hole. ‘Yes? Who’s calling?’

‘It’s me, Brutus. Can you come up?’

Mrs Frisby climbed up and out of her front door, blinking in the early morning sunlight, ‘Nicodemus wants to know if you can come with me. He’s having a meeting.’

‘Just let me wake the children and tell them.’

Two minutes later she was walking with Brutus towards the rosebush. ‘What does Nicodemus want?’

‘It’s about the men. Justin told us last night. Nicodemus thinks they may be from Nimh. He wants to ask you more about what Mr Fitzgibbon said.’

That morning there were two rats on sentry duty — one just inside the entrance to the rosebush, watching Mr Fitzgibbon’s house, another at the arch where Brutus had stood. All the rest were gathered in the large assembly room Mrs Frisby had seen when she got out of the lift. Nicodemus, Justin, Arthur and two other rats sat on the raised platform at the end. The rest sat facing them, filling every square inch of floor space except for an aisle up the centre.

Mrs Frisby had never seen so many rats. Even the young ones were present; she spotted Isabella, staring up at the platform with wide, round eyes. Some of the mothers held small babies at their sides. Most of them looked anxious; there was an air of tension, but none of panic.

Brutus led her up the centre aisle to the raised platform. There was a table on it, covered with papers, and one vacant space, where a chair had been placed for Mrs Frisby. The rats waited in complete silence while she sat down.

Then Nicodemus said, quite formally: ‘Justin has told us all that happened. Mrs Frisby, it seems you have more than repaid us for the help we gave you in moving your house. Just as your husband did once, you have saved us from a disaster: Death or capture — we do not yet know which.’

Justin gave her a wink. ‘Mrs Frisby had a taste of capture herself last night.’

‘Would you tell us, as well as you can remember it, word for word what Mr Fitzgibbon said — about the rats, about the men who were at the store?’

‘As well as I can remember it.’ Mrs Frisby’s voice sounded small in the big room. ‘Mr Fitzgibbon

said a strange thing had happened in the hardware store — Henderson’s, he called it.’

Her memory was good; she had listened with great care to what Mr Fitzgibbon had said, and she was able to recall the whole conversation word for word. The rats sat quietly while she told it.

Then Nicodemus went back over it, asking questions.

‘You say that Mr Fitzgibbon said six or seven rats. Did he ever say which number it really was?’ ‘No, I don’t think he paid much attention to the number.’

‘Jenner’s group was seven,’ said Justin. ‘But it could be a coincidence.’

‘Did he say how far away the town was where this happened? Or did he name it?’ ‘No. But it must not be very far. He’d been there and back that day.’

‘Did anyone see his car go out?’ Nicodemus asked the others. ‘I heard it,’ Brutus said. ‘I was on duty. It went after lunch.’

‘And he was back by dinner. But which direction? If we knew, we might send someone. You see,’ Nicodemus explained to Mrs Frisby, ‘we need to know who those men are. If they’re from Nimh, things are much worse for us.’

‘We’d never make it,’ said Arthur. ‘Driving at, say, forty or fifty miles an hour, Mr Fitzgibbon might have gone fifteen or twenty miles in any direction, and returned easily the same afternoon. On the map’ — there was a road map on the table — ‘you can see it could have been any one of half a dozen small towns. And each of them might have a hardware store.

‘You’re right, of course,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Without the name, that idea is hopeless.’ He turned back to Mrs Frisby. ‘Mr Fitzgibbon said the rats were grouped around the motor “as if trying to move it”?’

‘That’s what he said the store owner told him. He didn’t see it himself.’ ‘And that the motor was plugged in.’

‘“Had been left plugged in”,’ Mrs Frisby quoted. ‘But we don’t know who plugged it in.’

‘I got the impression,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘from the way he said it, that the storeowner had left it plugged in. But I’m not sure.’

‘That would make sense,’ Arthur said. ‘If it was Jenner, and if they had plugged it in themselves, they’d have known better than to try to move it. So they must not have realized. It was probably pretty dark in the store.’

‘Poor Jenner,’ said Nicodemus. ‘I wish he had stayed with us.’

‘It will be poor us,’ said one of the rats at the table (Mrs Frisby did not know his name), ‘if we don’t get on with this.’

‘He did not mention the doctor’s name,’ Nicodemus said. ‘Did he say even a word about what he looked like?’

‘No.’

‘Did he describe the truck at all?’

‘No. Only that it was full of equipment.’

‘Are you sure about the headlines in the local paper: “Mechanized Rats Invade Hardware Store”?’ ‘I’m sure that’s what Mr Fitzgibbon said it was. But I don’t think he saw it. He didn’t say so.’

‘In a way, that’s the most puzzling thing about the whole story,’ Nicodemus said, ‘Why is that?’ asked Justin.

‘Because the headline doesn’t really fit the facts. You don’t call a bunch of dead rats mechanized just because you find them on a shelf near a motor.’

‘Maybe not,’ said the nameless rat. ‘But then why did the newspaper say that?’

‘I’m wondering,’ Nicodemus said, ‘if perhaps there wasn’t more to the story. Some stronger reason to think they were really taking the motor away, or that they knew how to use it.’

‘Maybe some other motors had been stolen,’ Justin said. ‘Or some tools. That would make them seem mechanized.’

‘It would,’ said Nicodemus. ‘And it would explain what the doctor meant when he said they had more checking to do in the town.’

‘They’re looking for the things that were missing,’ Arthur said, sounding suddenly worried. ‘They’re looking for Jenner’s headquarters. And if they find it …’

‘We’re just guessing, of course,’ Nicodemus said. ‘But it’s a possibility.’ ‘And a bad one.’

‘It means,’ Nicodemus continued, ‘that we have no choice. We’ve got to assume they’re from Nimh. We’ve also got to assume that by now they may have found Jenner’s headquarters — whatever cave or cavern they were using.’

‘And,’ said Justin, ‘that now they’re looking for us.’

‘Why for us?’ asked one of the rats. ‘Why wouldn’t they think Jenner’s group are the only ones?’ ‘They might,’ Nicodemus admitted, ‘but I don’t think so. After all, they know that there were

twenty of us originally. Why should there be only seven now? And we already know that they’re coming out here — in quite a hurry at that. So if they’re from Nimh, obviously they are looking for us.’

‘I think,’ said Arthur, ‘that we’ve got to make some plans, and quickly.’

‘I agree,’ said Nicodemus. ‘It’s a new situation, and a tricky one. We won’t be able to do everything we hoped to. There isn’t time. And somehow we have to convince the exterminators, when they come, that we aren’t more of the mechanized rats they’re looking for.

‘We won’t be able to move any more food to Thorn Valley,’ Nicodemus continued. ‘We’ll have to get along on what we’ve already got stored there — about an eighteen-month supply, if we’re careful. The seeds, I believe, are already moved.’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘The last load went yesterday.’

‘So with luck, we’ll have our own first crops this summer and autumn.

‘We won’t have time to destroy the motors, or the books, or the furniture as we planned. Instead, we’ll move everything to the cave. And then we’ll seal off all the entrances to the cave as if it had never existed.’

‘That can be done,’ Arthur said.

‘But there’s more. We’ve got to pull all the wires and lights from the tunnel — they’re likely to dig it up. And the carpet. We’ve got to tear down the arch.

‘Then, when all that’s done, when everything is hidden in the cave, we’ll fill in the stairway and the lift shaft. We’ll seal off everything except the upper storage room and the tunnels leading in the front and out of the back.

‘When they dig, let them find that room. It’s as big as an ordinary rat hole.

‘Justin, tonight, take a group of a dozen or so. Go to the Fitzgibbons’ dustbin. Bring back a load of the worst-smelling rubbish you can find. The storage room is going to become an ordinary, typical rat hole, not in the least mechanized or civilized.’

Nicodemus turned to Arthur: ‘What do you think?’

‘I think we can do it all. We won’t get much sleep, though.’

Justin said: ‘But there’s one more thing. Won’t they think it’s odd — especially if they’re from Nimh — finding just an empty hole?’

Nicodemus said: ‘I was coming to that.’ He sounded suddenly very tired. ‘Tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, the main group leaves for Thorn Valley. But some of us will have to stay behind. As Justin says, if they find just an empty hole, they’re sure to be suspicious, and they’ll keep on digging. So when they come with their gas truck, they’ve got to find some rats here. A rear guard. I’d say at least ten.’

 

Mrs Frisby walked slowly home, keeping to the edge of the woods, keeping out of sight.

Justin had instantly volunteered for the rear guard. Brutus was second, and behind him, eight more; there were fifty more waiting behind them. ‘Enough, enough,’ said Nicodemus. Isabella, in tears, had run forward. ‘I want to stay, please,’ she had pleaded, looking despairingly at Justin. ‘No children,’ said Nicodemus, and her mother led her away, still weeping.

Those ten, the ten who would remain, did not face certain death, nor certain capture. The exterminators (they presumed) would make noise, especially if they cleared away the rosebush. The rats would be alerted. When the men pumped gas (as expected) into the hole, the pump would also make a noise; the air below would move as the gas flowed in. When they felt that, the rats would scramble out of the back exit, past the sealed-off cave, emerge as noisily as possible in the blackberry bramble — indeed, show themselves — and dash off into the woods.

‘But won’t they block the rear exit?’ ‘Or put a net over it?’

‘We’ll give them another exit to block,’ Arthur had said cryptically. ‘One that’s easier to find.’

 

‘Mother, why are you so quiet?’ asked Teresa. They were sitting down to dinner for the first time in their newly moved house. ‘You seem sad.’

‘I suppose I am,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘Because the rats are all going away.’

‘But that’s no reason. It’s true, they moved our house, and that was nice of them. But we didn’t really know them.’

‘I was getting to know them pretty well.’ ‘Where are they going?’ Cynthia asked. ‘To a new home, a long way away.’ ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

‘Will you go to see them off?’ ‘I think I will.’

‘But why are they moving away?’ asked Timothy.

‘Because they want to,’ said Mrs Frisby. Someday soon she would tell them the whole story. But not that night.

The Doctor

 

The next morning Mr Fitzgibbon started the larger of his two tractors, the huge one he kept in the barn, the one that pulled the combine in the autumn harvest. With help from Paul and Billy he bolted the big bulldozer blade to the front of it, rumbled it up through the barnyard gate and stopped it near the rosebush.

‘We’ll wait until they come,’ he said, turning off the engine.

 

Mrs Frisby could not bear to watch; and yet, even more, she could not bear not to watch. She knew there was nothing to be gained by it, nothing she could do. Yet how could she stay at home when the ten rats, including Justin and Brutus, were waiting bravely underground? She could not.

She thought at first of her watch-hole in the corner post. Then she decided against it. Nearer to the rosebush, on the edge of the woods, stood a hickory tree, its scaly bark like a ladder inviting her to climb. Ten feet up on this tree a large branch jutted straight out. On this branch, up close to the trunk, she had a vantage point from which, herself unseen, she could look down on the rosebush and also see into the woods to a blackberry bramble where, though she had never been in it, she was sure the rats’ rear exit must be hidden. She settled down to wait. It was a chilly morning, with a damp breeze and a grey mist that blew by in patches.

Somewhere near the middle of the morning a square white truck came into the driveway. It went first to the house. A man in a white coverall uniform climbed out and knocked on the Fitzgibbons’ door; it was too far away for Mrs Frisby to hear the knock, or to hear what the man said when Mrs Fitzgibbon came out on the porch. But ten seconds later Billy ran from the house to the barn, where Mr Fitzgibbon was working. The man returned to the truck and waited, standing outside the open cab door. Through the windscreen she could see that two more men sat in the front seat, and that one of them wore horn-rimmed glasses.

Now Mr Fitzgibbon approached the truck, Billy dancing beside him, apparently in some excitement. There was a conference, none of which Mrs Frisby could hear, accompanied by gestures towards the rosebush and the waiting bulldozer. The man in white climbed back into the driver’s seat and drove the truck across the grass. He backed it up beside the bulldozer, stopping perhaps ten feet from the bush. Mrs Frisby stared at it. If there was anything printed on it, it must be on the other side, away from her. Then the three men climbed out, and she could hear what they said.

‘It’s a big one, all right,’ said one of the men. ‘And look at those thorns. It’s hard to see how even a rat could get in there.’

The man in the horn-rims walked around the edge of the bush, examining it closely. He bent over. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘There’s the entrance hole, very neatly hidden. And look behind it — a path

leading in.’

He turned to Mr Fitzgibbon, who had walked up with Billy.

‘You were right. You’ll need to bulldoze it. It would take us all day to hack our way in there. But cut it off just at the surface if you can. If you dig too deep and open the hole, they’ll get away.’

He added: ‘You’d better tell the boy to keep back. We’ll be using cyanide, and it’s dangerous.’

Billy, after some argument, was dispatched to the back porch, where Mrs Fitzgibbon was also watching.

One of the men had walked around to the far side of the bush, the side near Mrs Frisby’s tree. ‘Doc,’ he called, ‘here’s another entrance in the bush, and there’s a hole just inside it.’

‘Doc’ was the man in the horn-rims. He was a doctor, Mrs Frisby thought; Doctor Somebody. He was in charge.

‘Can you get at it?’ he asked. ‘Not very well. Too many thorns.’

The man who was a doctor walked around and looked at it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Anyway, that would be the escape hatch. We’ll find the main hole nearer the middle of the bush.’

He turned to Mr Fitzgibbon, who had mounted the tractor. ‘Okay,’ said the doctor. ‘Can you push it that way — away from the shed?’

Mr Fitzgibbon nodded, and the motor started with a roar. He pulled a lever and flexed the heavy steel blade up and down, bringing the bottom edge to rest just even with the ground. The blade was fully eight feet across. He pulled another lever; the wheels, with tyres as tall as windows, dug in and the blade scraped forward.

The bush fought back, then yielded angrily, snapping and crackling before the inexorable thrust of steel. A single sweep, and a third of it lay, a writhing heap of thorns, in a pile twenty feet away. The ground trembled under the wheels, and Mrs Frisby thought of the ten rats huddled below. Supposing the weight collapsed the earth, caved in the storage room and trapped them? Another sweep, and a third. Only a thorny stubble now stood where the bush had been. On the porch Mrs Fitzgibbon covered her eyes with her hands, and Billy cheered in excitement,

Plainly exposed were two holes — simple, round rat holes. There was no trace of the small mound nor the elegant arched entrance. Arthur had done his work thoroughly. Mrs Frisby wondered for a moment at the second hole. Then she remembered his saying: ‘We’ll give them another rear exit to block.’ Of course! They had dug another hole, most likely, she thought, just a dummy, leading nowhere.

The men in the white suits went into action. The back doors of the truck were opened and a long, flexible pipe unrolled. It looked like a fire hose, except that at the end, instead of a nozzle, there was a round plunger like a big rubber ball cut in half. One of the men donned a mask with a glass visor and a tube that ran to a pack on his back. A gas mask.

The masked man pulled the hose over to the centre rat hole and pressed the plunger over it, covering it completely.

From the back of the truck the other two took a large box made of wood and wire, almost a yard wide, and placed it over the second hole. It was a cage, but half of its bottom was a trapdoor, neatly mounted on hinges. This they raised, placing the open part directly over the opening in the earth. Then they backed away, one of them holding a trip cord which would close the trapdoor after the rats were inside.

‘All set?’ The doctor called to the man in the mask. The mask nodded.

‘Keep back, now,’ said the doctor to Mr Fitzgibbon, who had left his tractor to watch. He walked to the truck, reached inside, and turned a switch. Mrs Frisby heard the soft throb of a pump.

Now.

She turned and watched the blackberry bramble in the woods. Would they hear the pump? Where were they? Oh, let them come out. Almost a minute passed. The men in white watched the trap. Nothing moved.

Then she saw it. Behind the bramble, half-hidden by a swirl of mist, a grey-brown shape, a rat, shaking earth from his ears. Another. Then three more. They huddled in silence, waiting. More. How many? Ten? Seven. Only seven. Where were the other three? Still they waited.

Then, as if by agreement, they stopped waiting. They ran. All seven of them, not back into the woods to safety, but out of the woods, towards the stubble of the rosebush, towards the men. At the edge of the bush, they stopped as if in confusion, ran to the left, ran to the right, then fled back into the woods again. Now they were out of sight of the men, but not of Mrs Frisby. Instantly they regrouped behind the blackberry bramble and charged out again — but this time in smaller numbers: first two, then three, then two again. She saw what they were up to. They were not in the least confused; they were making seven rats look like twenty rats, or forty, a steady stream of them. In the mist, in the hectic turning, running, turning, hiding, she could not tell whether or not she recognized any of them.

The men shouted:

‘Look at that!’

‘A pack of them!’ ‘How did they get out?’ ‘Get the nets!’

The doctor turned off the pump; the man with the hose pulled off his mask. As a new wave of rats danced along the edge of the clearing all three men ran to the truck and from it pulled long-handled nets.

But Mrs Frisby, up on her branch, was staring at the blackberry bush again. She saw something that all of the others, including the rats, did not see. An eighth rat had come out. He emerged running, but then he stumbled; he got up and ran again, this time more slowly, circling vaguely to the right. He did not seem to know where he was going. He reached a sparse thicket of saplings almost out of her sight, and there, abruptly, he fell over on his side and lay still.

Meanwhile all three men, holding their nets low, ran across the stubble towards the parade of rats. But as they approached the parade it vanished; the rats, their purpose accomplished, melted into the misty woods, and this time they did not reappear. Mrs Frisby watched them as they loped away swiftly in single file and disappeared from her view, back into the deep forest and up the mountainside. The rear guard was gone, bound for Thorn Valley.

But the eighth rat still lay unmoving among the saplings. And two had never come out at all. ‘They’re gone,’ said the man who had worn the mask. ‘They fooled us.’

‘What happened?’ asked Mr Fitzgibbon, standing near the truck.

‘Simple enough,’ said the doctor. ‘They had two escape holes, and they used the other one.’ He walked back to the blackberry bramble and bent down, kicking the branches aside with his foot. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Quite a long tunnel. One of the longest I’ve seen.’

To the other two men he said: ‘Get the pick and the shovels.’

For half an hour they dug, laying open a narrow trench along the tunnel. From her angle of view in the tree, Mrs Frisby could see only the top of this trench, and not down into the bottom. Still she watched, saying to herself, perhaps, after all, there were only eight, maybe they decided that eight would be enough.

Then one of the shovels broke through into air; they had come to the rats’ storage room.

‘There’s two of them,’ said one of the men, and her heart sank. Who were they? She wanted to run and look, but she did not dare.

‘Careful,’ said the doctor. ‘There may still be some gas in there. Let the wind blow it out.’ ‘Phew,’ said one of the men. ‘That’s not gas, that’s garbage.’

‘Open it up a little more,’ said the doctor.

One of the men wielded his shovel for another minute, and then the doctor peered in.

‘Garbage,’ he said. ‘Last night’s dinner. Garbage and two dead rats.’ Mrs Frisby thought: He

sounds disappointed.

‘Only two?’ said Mr Fitzgibbon.

‘Yes. It’s easy to see what happened. In a hole this size there would have been a couple of dozen at least. But these two must have been up at the front, near the tunnel. They got a whiff of the gas, and it killed them. But before they died, they must have warned the others. So the rest ran out.’

‘Warned them?’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘Could they do that?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘They’re intelligent animals. ‘Some can do a great deal more than that.’ But he did not elaborate; instead he turned to one of the men. ‘We might as well take these two back with us.’

From the truck the man produced a white paper sack and a pair of plastic gloves. He pulled the gloves on, reached into the hole and placed the two dead rats into the sack. He did this with his back to Mrs Frisby, so that she never got even a glimpse of them.

‘All right,’ said the doctor. ‘Let’s close it up.’ They shovelled the earth back into the trench and returned to the truck.

‘You’ll let me know if they have rabies?’ said Mr Fitzgibbon.

‘Rabies?’ said the doctor. ‘Yes, of course. But I doubt it. They look perfectly healthy.’

Perfectly healthy, thought Mrs Frisby sadly, except for being dead. She looked into the woods, over towards the saplings where the other rat lay. Was he, too, now dead? To her surprise, she saw that he was moving. Or was he? In the mist it was hard to tell. But something had moved.

After the truck had left Mr Fitzgibbon stood looking at the ruin of the rosebush. He seemed vaguely puzzled and disappointed; he must be wondering, she thought, whether it had been worth it, just to exterminate two rats. He had no way of knowing, of course, that all the rest were also gone and would not return, that his grain loft was safe. In a moment he turned and walked to the house.

As soon as he was safely gone Mrs Frisby scurried down from her tree and into the woods. On the ground she could no longer see the rat or the thicket where he lay, but she knew the direction, and she ran. Around a stump, over a mound of leaves, past a cedar tree — there were the saplings, and there lay the rat, still on his side.

It was Brutus. Beside him, futilely trying to move him, stood Mr Ages. She reached him, breathless from her run.

‘Is he dead?’

‘No. He’s unconscious, but he’s alive and breathing. I think he’ll revive if I can just get him to swallow this.’ Mr Ages indicated a small corked bottle, no bigger than a thimble, on the ground beside them.

‘What is it?’

‘An antidote for the poison. We thought this might happen, so we got it ready last night. He got just a little of the gas, made it this far, and then collapsed. Help me lift his head.’

Mr Ages had been unable to lift Brutus’s head and the bottle at the same time. Now, with Mrs Frisby’s help, he forced open Brutus’s mouth and poured in just a few drops of the smokey liquid the bottle contained. In a few seconds Brutus made a gulping noise, swallowed hard, and spoke.

‘It’s dark,’ he said. ‘I can’t see. ‘Open your eyes,’ said Mr Ages.

Brutus opened them and looked around. ‘I’m out,’ he said. ‘How did I get here?’ ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘No. Wait. Yes. I was in the hole. I smelled gas, an awful, choking, sweet smell. I tried to run, but I

stumbled over somebody lying on the floor, and I fell down. I must have breathed some of the gas. I couldn’t get up.’

‘And then?’

‘I heard the others running past me. I couldn’t see them. It was darker than night. Then one of them ran into me, and stopped. He pulled me up, and I tried to run again. But I was too dizzy. I kept falling. The other one helped me up again, and I went a few steps more. He kept pulling me, and then pushing, and somehow, finally, I got to the end of the tunnel. I saw daylight, and the air smelled better. But there was nobody else there; I thought the others must have left. So I ran a little farther, and that’s all I remember.’

Mrs Frisby said: ‘What about the one who helped you?’

‘I don’t know who it was. I couldn’t see, and he didn’t speak at all. I suppose he was trying to hold his breath.

‘When we got near the end, and I could see daylight, he gave me one last shove towards it, and then he turned back.’

‘He went back?’

‘Yes. You see, there was still one rat back in there — the one I stumbled over. I think he went back to help that one.’

‘Whoever he was,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘he never came out. He died in there.’ ‘Whoever he was,’ said Mr Ages, ‘he was brave.’

Epilogue

 

A few days later, early in the morning, the plough came through the garden. Mrs Frisby heard the chug of the tractor and the soft scrape of the steel against the earth. She watched from just inside her front door, fearfully at first, but then with growing confidence. The owl and the rats had calculated wisely, and the nearest furrow was more than two feet from her house.

Behind the plough, in the moist and shining soil, the rudely upturned red-brown earthworms writhed in a frenzy to rebury themselves; hopping along each furrow a flock of spring robins tried to catch them before they slid from sight. And when the ploughing was done and the worms had all disappeared, either eaten or safely underground, Mr Fitzgibbon came back with the harrow, breaking down the furrows, and turned them all up again. It was a good day for the robins.

After the harrow, for the next two days came the Fitzgibbons themselves, all four of them with hoes and bags of seeds, planting lettuce, beans, spinach, potatoes, corn and asparagus. Mrs Frisby and her family kept out of sight. Thoughtfully, Brutus and Arthur had dug their doorway behind a tuft of grass, so that not even Billy noticed it.

Brutus and Arthur. Mrs Frisby did not suppose she would ever see either of them again, nor Nicodemus, nor any of the others. Brutus, after swallowing Mr Ages’ medicine and resting for half an hour, had gone on his way into the forest to join the colony in Thorn Valley. There was no talk of their coming back, unless their attempt to grow their own food should fail — and she did not believe that would happen; they were too smart. And even if they did fail, they would probably not come back to Mr Fitzgibbon’s farm.

She thought that it would be pleasant to visit them and see their new home, their small lake and their crops growing. But she had no idea where the valley was, and it would be, in any case, too long a journey for her and the children. So she could only wonder about them: Were they, at that moment, like the Fitzgibbons, planting seeds behind their own plough? Some (like Isabella’s mother) might grumble about the hardness of the new life they had chosen. Yet the story of what had happened to Jenner and his friends (if it was Jenner and his friends), to say nothing of the destruction of their own home, would surely help to convince them that Nicodemus’s ideas were right.

The Fitzgibbons finished their planting, and for a week or two all was quiet. But it would not stay that way. The crops would appear, the asparagus was ready to sprout, and for the rest of the spring and summer the garden would be too busy a place for mice to live in comfortably.

So on a day in May as warm as summer, early in the morning, Mrs Frisby and her children laid a patchwork of sticks, grass and leaves over the top of the entrance to their cement block house, and then carefully scraped earth over it so that it would not show. With luck, they would not have to dig a new one in the autumn.

They walked to their summer house, taking half a day to do it, strolling slowly and enjoying the fine weather, stopping on the way to eat some new spring leaves of field cress, some young greens and a crisp, spicy mushroom that had sprouted by the edge of the woods. For their main course, a little farther on, there was a whole field of winter wheat, its kernels newly ripe and soft.

As they approached the brook, towards the big tree in the hollow of whose roots they would make their summer home, the children ran ahead, shouting and laughing. Timothy ran with them, and Mrs Frisby was glad to see that he showed no trace of his sickness. It was an exciting time for them. In the garden they were always alone with themselves, but along the bank of the brook in summer lived five other mice families, all with children. Within a few minutes of arrival, her four had gone with a group

of the others down to the water to see the tadpoles swim.

Mrs Frisby set about the job of tidying up the house, which had acquired a carpet of dead leaves during the winter, and then bringing in a pile of soft green moss to serve as bedding for them all. The house was a roomy chamber with a pleasant, earthy smell. Its floor was hard-packed earth, and its wooden roof was an arched intertwining of roots, above which rose the tree itself, an oak.

On her way to get the moss she saw one of her neighbours, a lady named Janice who, like herself, had four children. Janice ran over to talk to her.

‘You’re so late getting here,’ she said. ‘We all thought something must have happened to you.’ ‘No,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘we’re all fine.’

‘But don’t you live in the garden?’ Janice persisted. ‘I should have thought you’d be afraid of the ploughing.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Mrs Frisby explained, ‘they didn’t plough the particular spot in the garden where we live. It’s behind a boulder.’

‘You were lucky.’

‘That’s true.’ More than that Mrs Frisby did not tell; she had agreed to keep a secret, and she would do as she had said.

Still, she thought after quite a long deliberation, it was probably all right to tell her children, first making them promise to keep it secret. They were, after all, the children of Jonathan Frisby. For all she knew, and for all Nicodemus knew, they were likely to turn out to be quite different from other mice, and they had a right to know the reason.

The following evening, therefore, when they had finished an early supper, she gathered them around her.

‘Children, I have a story to tell you. A long one.’ ‘Oh, good!’ cried Cynthia. ‘What kind of a story?’ ‘A true one. About your father, and about the rats.’

‘How can it be about Father and the rats?’ Teresa asked. ‘Because he was a friend of theirs.’

‘He was?’ said Martin incredulously. ‘I never knew that.’ ‘It was mostly before you were born.’

To everyone’s surprise, Timothy said, ‘I thought he might be. I think Mr Ages was, too.’ ‘How did you know that?’

‘I didn’t know it. I just thought it. A couple of times I saw Mr Ages leaving their rosebush. And I knew that Father used to visit him a lot. But I never saw him near the rosebush.’

Probably, Mrs Frisby thought, because he would have been careful always to leave through the blackberry bramble, just so we would not see him.

They sat down outside the entrance to the house, and beginning at the beginning, with her first visit to the rats, she told them all that she had seen and done, and all that Nicodemus had told her. It took a long time to tell it, and as she talked the sun sank low, turning the sky red and lighting the tops of the mountains, beyond which, somewhere, the rats of Nimh were living.

The children’s eyes grew round when she told them about the escape from Nimh, and even rounder when she described her own capture and escape from the birdcage. But in the end the eyes of Teresa and Cynthia were filled with tears, and Martin and Timothy looked sad.

Teresa said: ‘But Mother, that’s terrible. It must have been Justin. He saved Brutus and then went back. And he was so nice.’

Mrs Frisby said: ‘It may have been Justin. We can’t be sure. It could have been one of the others.’

Martin said: ‘I’m going to find out. I’m going to go to the Thorn Valley, somehow, someday.’ ‘But it’s too far. And you don’t know where it is.’

‘No. But I’ll bet Jeremy knows. Remember, he told you the rats had a clearing back in the hills. That must be in Thorn Valley.’ He thought about this for a minute. Then he added: ‘He might even fly me there on his back, the way he did you.’

‘But we don’t know where Jeremy is, either. We don’t see the crows down here,’ Mrs Frisby reminded him.

‘No, but in the autumn, when we go back to the garden — I could find him then. If I got something shiny and put it out in the sun, he’d come to get it.’ Martin was growing excited at his idea. ‘Oh, Mother, may I?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt that the rats will want visitors from the outside.’

‘They wouldn’t mind. After all, you helped them, and so did Father. And I wouldn’t do any harm.’ ‘It’s not something we have to decide tonight,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘I’ll think about it. And now it’s

late. It’s time for bed.’

The sun had set. They went into the house and lay down on the soft moss Mrs Frisby had placed on the floor of their room under the roots. Outside, the brook swam quietly through the woods, and up above them the warm wind blew through the newly opened leaves of the big oak tree. They went to sleep.

Afterword

 

Poor Rats! They must be the least popular of all animals, both in real life and as characters in fiction. So how the American author Robert O’Brien came to adopt them as the heroes of his book is best explained in his own words:

‘It happened that a friend of mine was seriously ill and was sent to the NIH (National Institute of Health) for treatment. He was required to take a daily walk, so when I visited him a few times we walked together around the NIH grounds — numerous buildings set in a park.

‘One large, low building was unlike the rest, and when we asked, we were told that it was the animal production laboratory, where rats, mice, rabbits and guinea pigs are raised for use in scientific tests. The attendant we talked to said that though they had no trouble with the other animals, the rats somehow managed to get out of their cages at times. He added that when energy and intelligence were required in a test, the scientist much preferred ‘wild rats’ over the docile laboratory-bred variety. I am quite sure it was this conversation that put The Rats of NIMH into the back of my head — where they stayed for several years before emerging as a story.’

But however energetic and intelligent, there is still a problem in making rats the heroes of any story. Twitching noses, yellow teeth and rapid darting movements can be very alarming at first glance, although tame white rats have often been much loved pets. Wild rats also carry diseases, and have been blamed for spreading the Plague that once wiped out so many families in Europe. Although — as Nicodemus points out — rats ‘never spread as many diseases as people do themselves’, they are still feared as well as hated for their habit of stealing food.

In Robert O’Brien’s story, rats have a much better image. Instead of behaving like rodents, they speak English, get married, have human names, and sit down on benches in order to read books. When young Isabella comes into a room, she is carrying a pencil and ‘Looking at some papers as she walked’. This is no hurrying, scurrying rat: the picture is closer to an attractive, educated young woman. Just as Anna Sewell’s noble horse character Black Beauty talks like a sensitive young Victorian, Robert O’Brien’s rats come over as decent, family-loving humans in rat disguise. It is easy for us to side with them in their tussle against their worst oppressors: human beings in their own skins. Readers often enjoy books that show the human race in an unflattering light. We always learn something from such fiction, ending up with a better view of our own faults as seen from the point of view of smaller beings. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH also teaches us to be more tolerant of other forms of life on this small planet: a lesson even more relevant now than it was in 1971, when the book first came out. All creatures play a part in our environment: scavengers such as vultures and jackals who, like rats, are also often given bad parts in stories, in fact have an important job to do clearing up

after other animals.

We also know how clever and ruthless humans are when pursuing their own ends. Any animal that still manages to give us a good fight cannot help winning our respect, So the rats’ escape from the laboratory and Mrs Frisby’s last-minute rescue from her cage are both nail-bitingly tense, given the odds against them. No one grudges the rats their happy ending, finally escaping from an experimenter who simply wants to use them for cold-blooded scientific research. It may still be difficult for most of us to change our minds permanently about rats after finishing this story. But no reader will ever feel the same about field-mice again, having come across such a great-hearted little creature as Mrs Frisby herself.

It is always sad when a good story ends, especially when there are still some details that remain

unclear. Which rats did not finally make it and how successful was the new civilization at Thorn Valley? Fortunately, two sequels are available, answering these and other questions and written by the author’s daughter Jane Conly, so readers can discover more about Justin, Brutus, Timothy Frisby and Jeremy the crow. This means there are still plenty of exciting adventures to come, again often to do with the continual struggle between animals and humans for the world’s remaining resources, so vital for all forms of life.

 

Nicholas Tucker

Some other Puffin Modern Classics

THE BORROWERS

Mary Norton

CARRIE’S WAR

Nina Bawden

CHARLOTTE’S WEB

E. B. White

THE  CHILDREN OF  GREEN KNOWE

Lucy Boston

THE  DARK IS RISING

Susan Cooper

THE FRIENDS

Rosa Guy

THE  MOUSE AND HIS CHILD

Russell Hoban

THE  SILVER SWORD

Ian Serraillier

SMITH

Leon Garfield

STIG OF THE DUMP

Clive King

THE TURBULENT TERM OF  TYKE  TILER

Gene Kemp

TOM’S  MIDNIGHT GARDEN

Philippa Pearce

WATERSHIP  DOWN

Richard Adams

-

RAGGEDY ANN
STORIES

Written & Illustrated by

JOHNNY GRUELLE

---

PREFACE AND DEDICATION

As I write this, I have before me on my desk, propped up against the telephone, an old rag doll. Dear old Raggedy Ann!

The same Raggedy Ann with which my mother played when a child.

There she sits, a trifle loppy and loose-jointed, looking me squarely in the face in a straightforward, honest manner, a twinkle where her shoe-button eyes reflect the electric light.

Evidently Raggedy has been to a "tea party" today, for her face is covered with chocolate.

She smiles happily and continuously.

True, she has been nibbled by mice, who have made nests out of the soft cotton with which she has been stuffed, but Raggedy smiled just as broadly when the mice nibbled at her, for her smile is painted on.

What adventures you must have had, Raggedy!

What joy and happiness you have brought into this world!

And no matter what treatment you have received, how patient you have been!

What lessons of kindness and fortitude you might teach could you but talk; you with your wisdom of fifty-nine years. No wonder Rag Dolls are the best beloved! You are so kindly, so patient, so lovable.

The more you become torn, tattered and loose-jointed, Rag Dolls, the more you are loved by children.

Who knows but that Fairyland is filled with old, lovable Rag Dolls—soft, loppy Rag Dolls who ride through all the wonders of Fairyland in the crook of dimpled arms, snuggling close to childish breasts within which beat hearts filled with eternal sunshine.

So, to the millions of children and grown-ups who have loved a Rag Doll, I dedicate these stories of Raggedy Ann.

---

INTRODUCTION

Marcella liked to play up in the attic at Grandma's quaint old house, 'way out in the country, for there were so many old forgotten things to find up there.

One day when Marcella was up in the attic and had played with the old spinning wheel until she had grown tired of it, she curled up on an old horse-hair sofa to rest.

"I wonder what is in that barrel, 'way back in the corner?" she thought, as she jumped from the sofa and climbed over two dusty trunks to the barrel standing back under the eaves.

It was quite dark back there, so when Marcella had pulled a large bundle of things from the barrel she took them over to the dormer window where she could see better. There was a funny little bonnet with long white ribbons. Marcella put it on.

In an old leather bag she found a number of tin-types of queer looking men and women in old-fashioned clothes. And there was one picture of a very pretty little girl with long curls tied tightly back from her forehead and wearing a long dress and queer pantaloons which reached to her shoe-tops. And then out of the heap she pulled an old rag doll with only one shoe-button eye and a painted nose and a smiling mouth. Her dress was of soft material, blue with pretty little flowers and dots all over it.

Forgetting everything else in the happiness of her find, Marcella caught up the rag doll and ran downstairs to show it to Grandma.

"Well! Well! Where did you find it?" Grandma cried. "It's old Raggedy Ann!" she went on as she hugged the doll to her breast. "I had forgotten her. She has been in the attic for fifty years, I guess! Well! Well! Dear old Raggedy Ann! I will sew another button on her right away!" and Grandma went to the machine drawer and got her needle and thread.

Marcella watched the sewing while Grandma told how she had played with Raggedy Ann when she was a little girl.

"Now!" Grandma laughed, "Raggedy Ann, you have two fine shoe-button eyes and with them you can see the changes that have taken place in the world while you have been shut up so long in the attic! For, Raggedy Ann, you have a new playmate and mistress now, and I hope you both will have as much happiness together as you and I used to have!"

Then Grandma gave Raggedy Ann to Marcella, saying very seriously, "Marcella, let me introduce my very dear friend, Raggedy Ann. Raggedy, this is my grand-daughter, Marcella!" And Grandma gave the doll a twitch with her fingers in such a way that the rag doll nodded her head to Marcella.

"Oh, Grandma! Thank you ever and ever so much!" Marcella cried as she gave Grandma a hug and kiss. "Raggedy Ann and I will have just loads of fun."

And this is how Raggedy Ann joined the doll family at Marcella's house, where she began the adventures of Raggedy Ann, told in the following stories.

Contents

RAGGEDY ANN LEARNS A LESSON

One day the dolls were left all to themselves.

Their little mistress had placed them all around the room and told them to be nice children while she was away.

And there they sat and never even so much as wiggled a finger, until their mistress had left the room.

Then the soldier dolly turned his head and solemnly winked at Raggedy Ann.

And when the front gate clicked and the dollies knew they were alone in the house, they all scrambled to their feet.

"Now let's have a good time!" cried the tin soldier. "Let's all go in search of something to eat!"

"Yes! Let's all go in search of something to eat!" cried all the other dollies.

"When Mistress had me out playing with her this morning," said Raggedy Ann, "she carried me by a door near the back of the house and I smelled something which smelled as if it would taste delicious!"

"Then you lead the way, Raggedy Ann!" cried the French dolly.

"I think it would be a good plan to elect Raggedy Ann as our leader on this expedition!" said the Indian doll.

At this all the other dolls clapped their hands together and shouted, "Hurrah! Raggedy Ann will be our leader."

So Raggedy Ann, very proud indeed to have the confidence and love of all the other dollies, said that she would be very glad to be their leader.

"Follow me!" she cried as her wobbly legs carried her across the floor at a lively pace.

The other dollies followed, racing about the house until they came to the pantry door. "This is the place!" cried Raggedy Ann, and sure enough, all the dollies smelled something which they knew must be very good to eat.

But none of the dollies was tall enough to open the door and, although they pushed and pulled with all their might, the door remained tightly closed.

The dollies were talking and pulling and pushing and every once in a while one would fall over and the others would step on her in their efforts to open the door. Finally Raggedy Ann drew away from the others and sat down on the floor.

When the other dollies discovered Raggedy Ann sitting there, running her rag hands through her yarn hair, they knew she was thinking.

"Sh! Sh!" they said to each other and quietly went over near Raggedy Ann and sat down in front of her.

"There must be a way to get inside," said Raggedy Ann.

"Raggedy says there must be a way to get inside!" cried all the dolls.

"I can't seem to think clearly to-day," said Raggedy Ann. "It feels as if my head were ripped."

At this the French doll ran to Raggedy Ann and took off her bonnet. "Yes, there is a rip in your head, Raggedy!" she said and pulled a pin from her skirt and pinned up Raggedy's head. "It's not a very neat job, for I got some puckers in it!" she said.

"Oh that is ever so much better!" cried Raggedy Ann. "Now I can think quite clearly."

"Now Raggedy can think quite clearly!" cried all the dolls.

"My thoughts must have leaked out the rip before!" said Raggedy Ann.

"They must have leaked out before, dear Raggedy!" cried all the other dolls.

"Now that I can think so clearly," said Raggedy Ann, "I think the door must be locked and to get in we must unlock it!"

"That will be easy!" said the Dutch doll who says "Mamma" when he is tipped backward and forward, "For we will have the brave tin soldier shoot the key out of the lock!"

"I can easily do that!" cried the tin soldier, as he raised his gun.

"Oh, Raggedy Ann!" cried the French dolly. "Please do not let him shoot!"

"No!" said Raggedy Ann. "We must think of a quieter way!"

After thinking quite hard for a moment, Raggedy Ann jumped up and said: "I have it!" And she caught up the Jumping Jack and held him up to the door; then Jack slid up his stick and unlocked the door.

Then the dollies all pushed and the door swung open.

My! Such a scramble! The dolls piled over one another in their desire to be the first at the goodies.

They swarmed upon the pantry shelves and in their eagerness spilled a pitcher of cream which ran all over the French dolly's dress.

The Indian doll found some corn bread and dipping it in the molasses he sat down for a good feast.

A jar of raspberry jam was overturned and the dollies ate of this until their faces were all purple.

The tin soldier fell from the shelf three times and bent one of his tin legs, but he scrambled right back up again.

Never had the dolls had so much fun and excitement, and they had all eaten their fill when they heard the click of the front gate.

They did not take time to climb from the shelves, but all rolled or jumped off to the floor and scrambled back to their room as fast as they could run, leaving a trail of bread crumbs and jam along the way.

Just as their mistress came into the room the dolls dropped in whatever positions they happened to be in.

"This is funny!" cried Mistress. "They were all left sitting in their places around the room! I wonder if Fido has been shaking them up!" Then she saw Raggedy Ann's face and picked her up. "Why Raggedy Ann, you are all sticky! I do believe you are covered with jam!" and Mistress tasted Raggedy Ann's hand. "Yes! It's JAM! Shame on you, Raggedy Ann! You've been in the pantry and all the others, too!" and with this the dolls' mistress dropped Raggedy Ann on the floor and left the room.

When she came back she had on an apron and her sleeves were rolled up.

She picked up all the sticky dolls and putting them in a basket she carried them out under the apple tree in the garden.

There she had placed her little tub and wringer and she took the dolls one at a time, and scrubbed them with a scrubbing brush and soused them up and down and this way and that in the soap suds until they were clean.

Then she hung them all out on the clothes-line in the sunshine to dry.

There the dolls hung all day, swinging and twisting about as the breeze swayed the clothes-line.

"I do believe she scrubbed my face so hard she wore off my smile!" said Raggedy Ann, after an hour of silence.

"No, it is still there!" said the tin solder, as the wind twisted him around so he could see Raggedy. "But I do believe my arms will never work without squeaking, they feel so rusted," he added.

Just then the wind twisted the little Dutch doll and loosened his clothes-pin, so that he fell to the grass below with a sawdusty bump and as he rolled over he said, "Mamma!" in a squeaky voice.

Late in the afternoon the back door opened and the little mistress came out with a table and chairs. After setting the table she took all the dolls from the line and placed them about the table.

They had lemonade with grape jelly in it, which made it a beautiful lavender color, and little "Baby-teeny-weeny-cookies" with powdered sugar on them.

After this lovely dinner, the dollies were taken in the house, where they had their hair brushed and nice clean nighties put on.

Then they were placed in their beds and Mistress kissed each one good night and tiptoed from the room.

All the dolls lay as still as mice for a few minutes, then Raggedy Ann raised up on her cotton-stuffed elbows and said: "I have been thinking!"

"Sh!" said all the other dollies, "Raggedy has been thinking!"

"Yes," said Raggedy Ann, "I have been thinking; our mistress gave us the nice dinner out under the trees to teach us a lesson. She wished us to know that we could have had all the goodies we wished, whenever we wished, if we had behaved ourselves. And our lesson was that we must never take without asking what we could always have for the asking! So let us all remember and try never again to do anything which might cause those who love us any unhappiness!"

"Let us all remember," chimed all the other dollies.

And Raggedy Ann, with a merry twinkle in her shoe-button eyes, lay back in her little bed, her cotton head filled with thoughts of love and happiness.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE WASHING

"Why, Dinah! How could you!"

Mamma looked out of the window and saw Marcella run up to Dinah and take something out of her hand and then put her head in her arm and commence crying.

"What is the trouble, Dear?" Mamma asked, as she came out the door and knelt beside the little figure shaking with sobs.

Marcella held out Raggedy Ann. But such a comical looking Raggedy Ann!

Mamma had to smile in spite of her sympathy, for Raggedy Ann looked ridiculous!

Dinah's big eyes rolled out in a troubled manner, for Marcella had snatched Raggedy Ann from Dinah's hand as she cried, "Why, Dinah! How could you?"

Dinah could not quite understand and, as she dearly loved Marcella, she was troubled.

Raggedy Ann was not in the least downhearted and while she felt she must look very funny she continued to smile, but with a more expansive smile than ever before.

Raggedy Ann knew just how it all happened and her remaining shoe-button eye twinkled.

She remembered that morning when Marcella came to the nursery to take the nighties from the dolls and dress them she had been cross.

Raggedy Ann thought at the time "Perhaps she had climbed out of bed backwards!" For Marcella complained to each doll as she dressed them.

And when it came Raggedy's time to be dressed, Marcella was very cross for she had scratched her finger on a pin when dressing the French doll.

So, when Marcella heard the little girl next door calling to her, she ran out of the nursery and gave Raggedy Ann a toss from her as she ran.

Now it happened Raggedy lit in the clothes hamper and there she lay all doubled up in a knot.

A few minutes afterwards Dinah came through the hall with an armful of clothes and piled them in the hamper on top of Raggedy Ann.

Then Dinah carried the hamper out in back of the house where she did the washing.

Dinah dumped all the clothes into the boiler and poured water on them.

The boiler was then placed upon the stove.

When the water began to get warm, Raggedy Ann wiggled around and climbed up amongst the clothes to the top of the boiler to peek out. There was too much steam and she could see nothing. For that matter, Dinah could not see Raggedy Ann, either, on account of the steam.

So Dinah, using an old broom handle, stirred the clothes in the boiler and the clothes and Raggedy Ann were stirred and whirled around until all were thoroughly boiled.

When Dinah took the clothes a piece at a time from the boiler and scrubbed them, she finally came upon Raggedy Ann.

Now Dinah did not know but that Marcella had placed Raggedy in the clothes hamper to be washed, so she soaped Raggedy well and scrubbed her up and down over the rough wash-board.

Two buttons from the back of Raggedy's dress came off and one of Raggedy Ann's shoe-button eyes was loosened as Dinah gave her face a final scrub.

Then Dinah put Raggedy Ann's feet in the wringer and turned the crank. It was hard work getting Raggedy through the wringer, but Dinah was very strong. And of course it happened! Raggedy Ann came through as flat as a pancake.

It was just then, that Marcella returned and saw Raggedy.

"Why, Dinah! How could you!" Marcella had sobbed as she snatched the flattened Raggedy Ann from the bewildered Dinah's hand.

Mamma patted Marcella's hand and soon coaxed her to quit sobbing.

When Dinah explained that the first she knew of Raggedy being in the wash was when she took her from the boiler, Marcella began crying again.

"It was all my fault, Mamma!" she cried. "I remember now that I threw dear old Raggedy Ann from me as I ran out the door and she must have fallen in the clothes hamper! Oh dear! Oh dear!" and she hugged Raggedy Ann tight.

Mamma did not tell Marcella that she had been cross and naughty for she knew Marcella felt very sorry. Instead Mamma put her arms around her and said,

"Just see how Raggedy Ann takes it! She doesn't seem to be unhappy!"

And when Marcella brushed her tears away and looked at Raggedy Ann, flat as a pancake and with a cheery smile upon her painted face, she had to laugh. And Mamma and Dinah had to laugh, too, for Raggedy Ann's smile was almost twice as broad as it had been before.

"Just let me hang Miss Raggedy on the line in the bright sunshine for half an hour," said Dinah, "and you won't know her when she comes off!"

So Raggedy Ann was pinned to the clothes-line, out in the bright sunshine, where she swayed and twisted in the breeze and listened to the chatter of the robins in a nearby tree.

Every once in a while Dinah went out and rolled and patted Raggedy until her cotton stuffing was soft and dry and fluffy and her head and arms and legs were nice and round again.

Then she took Raggedy Ann into the house and showed Marcella and Mamma how clean and sweet she was.

Marcella took Raggedy Ann right up to the nursery and told all the dolls just what had happened and how sorry she was that she had been so cross and peevish when she dressed them. And while the dolls said never a word they looked at their little mistress with love in their eyes as she sat in the little red rocking chair and held Raggedy Ann tightly in her arms.

And Raggedy Ann's remaining shoe-button eye looked up at her little mistress in rather a saucy manner, but upon her face was the same old smile of happiness, good humor and love.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE KITE

Raggedy Ann watched with interest the preparations.

A number of sticks were being fastened together with strings and covered with light cloth.

Raggedy Ann heard some of the boys talk of "The Kite," so Raggedy Ann knew this must be a kite.

When a tail had been fastened to the kite and a large ball of heavy twine tied to the front, one of the boys held the kite up in the air and another boy walked off, unwinding the ball of twine.

There was a nice breeze blowing, so the boy with the twine called, "Let 'er go" and started running.

Marcella held Raggedy up so that she could watch the kite sail through the air.

How nicely it climbed! But suddenly the kite acted strangely, and as all the children shouted advice to the boy with the ball of twine, the kite began darting this way and that, and finally making four or five loop-the-loops, it crashed to the ground.

"It needs more tail on it!" one boy shouted.

Then the children asked each other where they might get more rags to fasten to the tail of the kite.

"Let's tie Raggedy Ann to the tail!" suggested Marcella. "I know she would enjoy a trip 'way up in the sky!"

The boys all shouted with delight at this new suggestion. So Raggedy Ann was tied to the tail of the kite.

This time the kite rose straight in the air and remained steady. The boy with the ball of twine unwound it until the kite and Raggedy Ann were 'way, 'way up and far away. How Raggedy Ann enjoyed being up there! She could see for miles and miles! And how tiny the children looked!

Suddenly a great puff of wind came and carried Raggedy Ann streaming 'way out behind the kite! She could hear the wind singing on the twine as the strain increased.

Suddenly Raggedy Ann felt something rip. It was the rag to which she was tied. As each puff of wind caught her the rip widened.

When Marcella watched Raggedy Ann rise high above the field, she wondered how much Raggedy Ann enjoyed it, and wished that she, too, might have gone along. But after the kite had been up in the air for five or ten minutes, Marcella grew restless. Kites were rather tiresome. There was more fun in tea parties out under the apple tree.

"Will you please pull down the kite now?" she asked the boy with the twine. "I want Raggedy Ann."

"Let her ride up there!" the boy replied. "We'll bring her home when we pull down the kite! We're going to get another ball of twine and let her go higher!"

Marcella did not like to leave Raggedy Ann with the boys, so she sat down upon the ground to wait until they pulled down the kite.

But while Marcella watched Raggedy Ann, a dot in the sky, she could not see the wind ripping the rag to which Raggedy was tied.

Suddenly the rag parted and Raggedy Ann went sailing away as the wind caught in her skirts.

Marcella jumped from the ground, too surprised to say anything. The kite, released from the weight of Raggedy Ann began darting and swooping to the ground.

"We'll get her for you!" some of the boys said when they saw Marcella's troubled face, and they started running in the direction Raggedy Ann had fallen. Marcella and the other girls ran with them. They ran, and they ran, and they ran, and at last they found the kite upon the ground with one of the sticks broken, but they could not find Raggedy Ann anywhere.

"She must have fallen almost in your yard!" a boy said to Marcella, "for the kite was directly over here when the doll fell!"

Marcella was heartbroken. She went in the house and lay on the bed. Mamma went out with the children and tried to find Raggedy Ann, but Raggedy Ann was nowhere to be seen.

When Daddy came home in the evening he tried to find Raggedy, but met with no success. Marcella had eaten hardly any dinner, nor could she be comforted by Mamma or Daddy. The other dolls in the nursery lay forgotten and were not put to bed that night, for Marcella lay and sobbed and tossed about her bed.

Finally she said a little prayer for Raggedy Ann, and went to sleep. And as she slept Marcella dreamed that the fairies came and took Raggedy Ann with them to fairyland for a visit, and then sent Raggedy Ann home to her. She awakened with a cry. Of course Mamma came to her bed right away and said that Daddy would offer a reward in the morning for the return of Raggedy.

"It was all my fault, Mamma!" Marcella said. "I should not have offered the boys dear old Raggedy Ann to tie on the tail of the kite! But I just know the fairies will send her back."

Mamma took her in her arms and soothed her with cheering words, although she felt indeed that Raggedy Ann was truly lost and would never be found again.

Now, where do you suppose Raggedy Ann was all this time?

When Raggedy Ann dropped from the kite, the wind caught in her skirts and carried her along until she fell in the fork of the large elm tree directly over Marcella's house. When Raggedy Ann fell with a thud, face up in the fork of the tree, two robins who had a nest near by flew chattering away.

Presently the robins returned and quarreled at Raggedy Ann for laying so close to their nest, but Raggedy Ann only smiled at them and did not move.

When the robins quieted down and quit their quarreling, one of them hopped up closer to Raggedy Ann in order to investigate.

It was Mamma Robin. She called to Daddy Robin and told him to come. "See the nice yarn! We could use it to line the nest with," she said.

So the robins hopped closer to Raggedy Ann and asked if they might have some of her yarn hair to line their nest. Raggedy Ann smiled at them. So the two robins pulled and tugged at Raggedy Ann's yarn hair until they had enough to line their nest nice and soft.

Evening came and the robins sang their good night songs, and Raggedy Ann watched the stars come out, twinkle all night and disappear in the morning light. In the morning the robins again pulled yarn from Raggedy Ann's head, and loosened her so she could peep over the side of the limb, and when the sun came up Raggedy Ann saw she was in the trees in her own yard.

Now before she could eat any breakfast, Marcella started out to find Raggedy Ann. And, it was Marcella herself who found her. And this is how she did it.

Mamma Robin had seen Marcella with Raggedy Ann out in the yard many times, so she began calling "Cheery! Cheery!" and Daddy Robin started calling "Cheery! Cheery! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheerily Cheerily! Cheery! Cheery!" And Marcella looking up into the tree above the house to see the robins, discovered Raggedy Ann peeping over the limb at her.

Oh, how her heart beat with happiness. "Here is Raggedy Ann," she shouted.

And Mamma and Daddy came out and saw Raggedy smiling at them, and Daddy got the clothes prop and climbed out of the attic window and poked Raggedy Ann out of the tree and she fell right into Marcella's arms where she was hugged in a tight embrace.

"You'll never go up on a kite again, Raggedy Ann!" said Marcella, "for I felt so lost without you. I will never let you leave me again."

So Raggedy Ann went into the house and had breakfast with her little mistress and Mamma and Daddy smiled at each other when they peeped through the door into the breakfast room, for Raggedy Ann's smile was wide and very yellow. Marcella, her heart full of happiness, was feeding Raggedy Ann part of her egg.

---

RAGGEDY ANN RESCUES FIDO

It was almost midnight and the dolls were asleep in their beds; all except Raggedy Ann.

Raggedy lay there, her shoe-button eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Every once in a while Raggedy Ann ran her rag hand up through her yarn hair. She was thinking.

When she had thought for a long, long time, Raggedy Ann raised herself on her wabbly elbows and said, "I've thought it all out."

At this the other dolls shook each other and raised up saying, "Listen! Raggedy has thought it all out!"

"Tell us what you have been thinking, dear Raggedy," said the tin soldier. "We hope they were pleasant thoughts."

"Not very pleasant thoughts!" said Raggedy, as she brushed a tear from her shoe-button eyes. "You haven't seen Fido all day, have you?"

"Not since early this morning," the French dolly said.

"It has troubled me," said Raggedy, "and if my head was not stuffed with lovely new white cotton, I am sure it would have ached with the worry! When Mistress took me into the living-room this afternoon she was crying, and I heard her mamma say, 'We will find him! He is sure to come home soon!' and I knew they were talking of Fido! He must be lost!"

The tin soldier jumped out of bed and ran over to Fido's basket, his tin feet clicking on the floor as he went. "He is not here," he said.

"When I was sitting in the window about noon-time," said the Indian doll, "I saw Fido and a yellow scraggly dog playing out on the lawn and they ran out through a hole in the fence!"

"That was Priscilla's dog, Peterkins!" said the French doll.

"I know poor Mistress is very sad on account of Fido," said the Dutch doll, "because I was in the dining-room at supper-time and I heard her daddy tell her to eat her supper and he would go out and find Fido; but I had forgotten all about it until now."

"That is the trouble with all of us except Raggedy Ann!" cried the little penny doll, in a squeaky voice, "She has to think for all of us!"

"I think it would be a good plan for us to show our love for Mistress and try and find Fido!" exclaimed Raggedy.

"It is a good plan, Raggedy Ann!" cried all the dolls. "Tell us how to start about it."

"Well, first let us go out upon the lawn and see if we can track the dogs!" said Raggedy.

"I can track them easily!" the Indian doll said, "for Indians are good at trailing things!"

"Then let us waste no more time in talking!" said Raggedy Ann, as she jumped from bed, followed by the rest.

The nursery window was open, so the dolls helped each other up on the sill and then jumped to the soft grass below. They fell in all sorts of queer attitudes, but of course the fall did not hurt them.

At the hole in the fence the Indian doll picked up the trail of the two dogs, and the dolls, stringing out behind, followed him until they came to Peterkins' house. Peterkins was surprised to see the strange little figures in white nighties come stringing up the path to the dog house.

Peterkins was too large to sleep in the nursery, so he had a nice cozy dog-house under the grape arbor.

"Come in," Peterkins said when he saw and recognized the dolls, so all the dollies went into Peterkins' house and sat about while Raggedy told him why they had come.

"It has worried me, too!" said Peterkins, "but I had no way of telling your mistress where Fido was, for she cannot understand dog language! For you see," Peterkins continued, "Fido and I were having the grandest romp over in the park when a great big man with a funny thing on the end of a stick came running towards us. We barked at him and Fido thought he was trying to play with us and went up too close and do you know, that wicked man caught Fido in the thing at the end of the stick and carried him to a wagon and dumped him in with a lot of other dogs!"

"The Dog Catcher!" cried Raggedy Ann.

"Yes!" said Peterkins, as he wiped his eyes with his paws. "It was the dog catcher! For I followed the wagon at a distance and I saw him put all the dogs into a big wire pen, so that none could get out!"

"Then you know the way there, Peterkins?" asked Raggedy Ann.

"Yes, I can find it easily," Peterkins said.

"Then show us the way!" Raggedy Ann cried, "for we must try to rescue Fido."

So Peterkins led the way up alleys and across streets, the dolls all pattering along behind him. It was a strange procession. Once a strange dog ran out at them, but Peterkins told him to mind his own business and the strange dog returned to his own yard.

At last they came to the dog catcher's place. Some of the dogs in the pen were barking at the moon and others were whining and crying.

There was Fido, all covered with mud, and his pretty red ribbon dragging on the ground. My, but he was glad to see the dolls and Peterkins! All the dogs came to the side of the pen and twisted their heads from side to side, gazing in wonder at the queer figures of the dolls.

"We will try and let you out," said Raggedy Ann.

At this all the dogs barked joyfully.

Then Raggedy Ann, the other dolls and Peterkins went to the gate.

The catch was too high for Raggedy Ann to reach, but Peterkins held Raggedy Ann in his mouth and stood up on his hind legs so that she could raise the catch.

When the catch was raised, the dogs were so anxious to get out they pushed and jumped against the gate so hard it flew open, knocking Peterkins and Raggedy Ann into the mud. Such a yapping and barking was never heard in the neighborhood as when the dogs swarmed out of the enclosure, jumping over one another and scrambling about in the mad rush out the gate.

Fido picked himself up from where he had been rolled by the large dogs and helped Raggedy Ann to her feet. He, Peterkins, and all the dolls ran after the pack of dogs, turning the corner just as the dog catcher came running out of the house in his nightgown to see what was causing the trouble.

He stopped in astonishment when he saw the string of dolls in white nighties pattering down the alley, for he could not imagine what they were.

Well, you may be sure the dolls thanked Peterkins for his kind assistance and they and Fido ran on home, for a faint light was beginning to show in the east where the sun was getting ready to come up.

When they got to their own home they found an old chair out in the yard and after a great deal of work they finally dragged it to the window and thus managed to get into the nursery again.

Fido was very grateful to Raggedy Ann and the other dolls and before he went to his basket he gave them each a lick on the cheek.

The dolls lost no time in scrambling into bed and pulling up the covers, for they were very sleepy, but just as they were dozing off, Raggedy Ann raised herself and said, "If my legs and arms were not stuffed with nice clean cotton I feel sure they would ache, but being stuffed with nice clean white cotton, they do not ache and I could not feel happier if my body were stuffed with sunshine, for I know how pleased and happy Mistress will be in the morning when she discovers Fido asleep in his own little basket, safe and sound at home."

And as the dollies by this time were all asleep, Raggedy Ann pulled the sheet up to her chin and smiled so hard she ripped two stitches out of the back of her rag head.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE PAINTER

When housecleaning time came around, Mistress' mamma decided that she would have the nursery repainted and new paper put upon the walls. That was why all the dolls happened to be laid helter-skelter upon one of the high shelves.

Mistress had been in to look at them and wished to put them to bed, but as the painters were coming again in the early morning, Mamma thought it best that their beds be piled in the closet.

So the dolls' beds were piled into the closet, one on top of another and the dolls were placed upon the high shelf.

When all was quiet that night, Raggedy Ann who was on the bottom of the pile of dolls spoke softly and asked the others if they would mind moving along the shelf.

"The cotton in my body is getting mashed as flat as a pancake!" said Raggedy Ann. And although the tin soldier was piled so that his foot was pressed into Raggedy's face, she still wore her customary smile.

So the dolls began moving off to one side until Raggedy Ann was free to sit up.

"Ah, that's a great deal better!" she said, stretching her arms and legs to get the kinks out of them, and patting her dress into shape.

"Well, I'll be glad when morning comes!" she said finally, "for I know Mistress will take us out in the yard and play with us under the trees."

So the dolls sat and talked until daylight, when the painters came to work.

One of the painters, a young fellow, seeing the dolls, reached up and took Raggedy Ann down from the shelf.

"Look at this rag doll, Jim," he said to one of the other painters, "She's a daisy," and he took Raggedy Ann by the hands and danced with her while he whistled a lively tune. Raggedy Ann's heels hit the floor thumpity-thump and she enjoyed it immensely.

The other dolls sat upon the shelf and looked straight before them, for it would never do to let grown-up men know that dolls were really alive.

"Better put her back upon the shelf," said one of the other men. "You'll have the little girl after you! The chances are that she likes that old rag doll better than any of the others!"

But the young painter twisted Raggedy Ann into funny attitudes and laughed and laughed as she looped about. Finally he got to tossing her up in the air and catching her. This was great fun for Raggedy and as she sailed up by the shelf the dolls all smiled at her, for it pleased them whenever Raggedy Ann was happy.

But the young fellow threw Raggedy Ann up into the air once too often and when she came down he failed to catch her and she came down splash, head first into a bucket of oily paint.

"I told you!" said the older painter, "and now you are in for it!"

"My goodness! I didn't mean to do it!" said the young fellow, "What had I better do with her?"

"Better put her back on the shelf!" replied the other.

So Raggedy was placed back upon the shelf and the paint ran from her head and trickled down upon her dress.

After breakfast, Mistress came into the nursery and saw Raggedy all covered with paint and she began crying.

The young painter felt sorry and told her how it had happened.

"If you will let me," he said, "I will take her home with me and will clean her up tonight and will bring her back day after tomorrow."

So Raggedy was wrapped in a newspaper that evening and carried away.

All the dolls felt sad that night without Raggedy Ann near them.

"Poor Raggedy! I could have cried when I saw her all covered with paint!" said the French doll.

"She didn't look like our dear old Raggedy Ann at all!" said the tin soldier, who wiped the tears from his eyes so that they would not run down on his arms and rust them.

"The paint covered her lovely smile and nose and you could not see the laughter in her shoe-button eyes!" said the Indian doll.

And so the dolls talked that night and the next. But in the daytime when the painters were there, they kept very quiet.

The second day Raggedy was brought home and the dolls were all anxious for night to come so that they could see and talk with Raggedy Ann.

At last the painters left and the house was quiet, for Mistress had been in and placed Raggedy on the shelf with the other dolls.

"Tell us all about it, Raggedy dear!" the dolls cried.

"Oh I am so glad I fell in the paint!" cried Raggedy, after she had hugged all the dolls, "For I have had the happiest time. The painter took me home and told his Mamma how I happened to be covered with paint and she was very sorry. She took a rag and wiped off my shoe-button eyes and then I saw that she was a very pretty, sweet-faced lady and she got some cleaner and wiped off most of the paint on my face.

"But you know," Raggedy continued, "the paint had soaked through my rag head and had made the cotton inside all sticky and soggy and I could not think clearly. And my yarn hair was all matted with paint.

"So the kind lady took off my yarn hair and cut the stitches out of my head, and took out all the painty cotton.

"It was a great relief, although it felt queer at first and my thoughts seemed scattered.

"She left me in her work-basket that night and hung me out upon the clothes-line the next morning when she had washed the last of the paint off.

"And while I hung out on the clothes-line, what do you think?"

"We could never guess!" all the dolls cried.

"Why a dear little Jenny Wren came and picked enough cotton out of me to make a cute little cuddly nest in the grape arbor!"

"Wasn't that sweet!" cried all the dolls.

"Yes indeed it was!" replied Raggedy Ann, "It made me very happy. Then when the lady took me in the house again she stuffed me with lovely nice new cotton, all the way from my knees up and sewed me up and put new yarn on my head for hair and—and—and it's a secret!" said Raggedy Ann.

"Oh tell us the secret!" cried all the dolls, as they pressed closer to Raggedy. "Well, I know you will not tell anyone who would not be glad to know about it, so I will tell you the secret and why I am wearing my smile a trifle broader!" said Raggedy Ann.

The dolls all said that Raggedy Ann's smile was indeed a quarter of an inch wider on each side.

"When the dear lady put the new white cotton in my body," said Raggedy Ann "she went to the cupboard and came back with a paper bag. And she took from the bag ten or fifteen little candy hearts with mottos on them and she hunted through the candy hearts until she found a beautiful red one which she sewed up in me with the cotton! So that is the secret, and that is why I am so happy! Feel here," said Raggedy Ann. All the dolls could feel Raggedy Ann's beautiful new candy heart and they were very happy for her.

After all had hugged each other good night and had cuddled up for the night, the tin soldier asked, "Did you have a chance to see what the motto on your new candy heart was, Raggedy Ann?"

"Oh yes," replied Raggedy Ann, "I was so happy I forgot to tell you. It had printed upon it in nice blue letters, 'I LOVE YOU.'"

---

RAGGEDY ANN'S TRIP ON THE RIVER

When Marcella had a tea party out in the orchard, of course all of the dolls were invited. Raggedy Ann, the tin soldier, the Indian doll and all the others—even the four little penny dolls in the spool box. After a lovely tea party with ginger cookies and milk, of course the dolls were very sleepy, at least Marcella thought so, so she took all except Raggedy Ann into the house and put them to bed for the afternoon nap. Then Marcella told Raggedy Ann to stay there and watch the things.

As there was nothing else to do, Raggedy Ann waited for Marcella to return. And as she watched the little ants eating cookie crumbs Marcella had thrown to them, she heard all of a sudden the patter of puppy feet behind her. It was Fido.

The puppy dog ran up to Raggedy Ann and twisted his head about as he looked at her. Then he put his front feet out and barked in Raggedy Ann's face. Raggedy Ann tried to look very stern, but she could not hide the broad smile painted on her face.

"Oh, you want to play, do you?" the puppy dog barked, as he jumped at Raggedy Ann and then jumped back again.

The more Raggedy Ann smiled, the livelier Fido's antics became, until finally he caught the end of her dress and dragged her about.

This was great fun for the puppy dog, but Raggedy Ann did not enjoy it. She kicked and twisted as much as she could, but the puppy dog thought Raggedy was playing.

He ran out the garden gate and down the path across the meadow, every once in a while stopping and pretending he was very angry. When he pretended this, Fido would give Raggedy Ann a great shaking, making her yarn head hit the ground "ratty-tat-tat." Then he would give his head a toss and send Raggedy Ann high in the air where she would turn over two or three times before she reached the ground.

By this time, she had lost her apron and now some of her yarn hair was coming loose.

As Fido neared the brook, another puppy dog came running across the foot-bridge to meet him. "What have you there, Fido?" said the new puppy dog as he bounced up to Raggedy Ann.

"This is Raggedy Ann," answered Fido. "She and I are having a lovely time playing."

You see, Fido really thought Raggedy enjoyed being tossed around and whirled high up in the air. But of course she didn't. However, the game didn't last much longer. As Raggedy Ann hit the ground the new puppy dog caught her dress and ran with her across the bridge, Fido barking close behind him.

In the center of the bridge, Fido caught up with the new puppy dog and they had a lively tug-of-war with Raggedy Ann stretched between then. As they pulled and tugged and flopped Raggedy Ann about, somehow she fell over the side of the bridge into the water.

The puppy dogs were surprised, and Fido was very sorry indeed, for he remembered how good Raggedy Ann had been to him and how she had rescued him from the dog-pound. But the current carried Raggedy Ann right along and all Fido could do was to run along the bank and bark.

Now, you would have thought Raggedy Ann would sink, but no, she floated nicely, for she was stuffed with clean white cotton and the water didn't soak through very quickly.

After a while, the strange puppy and Fido grew tired of running along the bank and the strange puppy scampered home over the meadow, with his tail carried gaily over his back as if he had nothing to be ashamed of. But Fido walked home very sorry indeed. His little heart was broken to think that he had caused Raggedy Ann to be drowned.

But Raggedy Ann didn't drown—not a bit of it. In fact, she even went to sleep on the brook, for the motion of the current was very soothing as it carried her along—just like being rocked by Marcella.

So, sleeping peacefully, Raggedy Ann drifted along with the current until she came to a pool where she lodged against a large stone.

Raggedy Ann tried to climb upon the stone, but by this time the water had thoroughly soaked through Raggedy Ann's nice, clean, white cotton stuffing and she was so heavy she could not climb.

So there she had to stay until Marcella and Daddy came along and found her.

You see, they had been looking for her. They had found pieces of her apron all along the path and across the meadow where Fido and the strange puppy dog had shaken them from Raggedy Ann. So they followed the brook until they found her.

When Daddy fished Raggedy Ann from the water, Marcella hugged her so tightly to her breast the water ran from Raggedy Ann and dripped all over Marcella's apron. But Marcella was so glad to find Raggedy Ann again she didn't mind it a bit. She just hurried home and took off all of Raggedy Ann's wet clothes and placed her on a little red chair in front of the oven door, and then brought all of the other dolls in and read a fairy tale to them while Raggedy Ann steamed and dried.

When Raggedy Ann was thoroughly dry, Mamma said she thought the cake must be finished and she took from the oven a lovely chocolate cake and gave Marcella a large piece to have another tea party with.

That night when all the house was asleep, Raggedy Ann raised up in bed and said to the dolls who were still awake, "I am so happy I do not feel a bit sleepy. Do you know, I believe the water soaked me so thoroughly my candy heart must have melted and filled my whole body, and I do not feel the least bit angry with Fido for playing with me so roughly!"

So all the other dolls were happy, too, for happiness is very easy to catch when we love one another and are sweet all through.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE STRANGE DOLLS

Raggedy Ann lay just as Marcella had dropped her—all sprawled out with her rag arms and legs twisted in ungraceful attitudes.

Her yarn hair was twisted and lay partly over her face, hiding one of her shoe-button eyes.

Raggedy gave no sign that she had heard, but lay there smiling at the ceiling.

Perhaps Raggedy Ann knew that what the new dolls said was true.

But sometimes the truth may hurt and this may have been the reason Raggedy Ann lay there so still.

"Did you ever see such an ungainly creature!"

"I do believe it has shoe buttons for eyes!"

"And yarn hair!"

"Mercy, did you ever see such feet!"

The Dutch doll rolled off the doll sofa and said "Mamma" in his quavery voice, he was so surprised at hearing anyone speak so of beloved Raggedy Ann—dear Raggedy Ann, she of the candy heart, whom all the dolls loved.

Uncle Clem was also very much surprised and offended. He walked up in front of the two new dolls and looked them sternly in the eyes, but he could think of nothing to say so he pulled at his yarn mustache.

Marcella had only received the two new dolls that morning. They had come in the morning mail and were presents from an aunt.

Marcella had named the two new dolls Annabel-Lee and Thomas, after her aunt and uncle.

Annabel-Lee and Thomas were beautiful dolls and must have cost heaps and heaps of shiny pennies, for both were handsomely dressed and had real hair!

Annabel's hair was of a lovely shade of auburn and Thomas' was golden yellow.

Annabel was dressed in soft, lace-covered silk and upon her head she wore a beautiful hat with long silk ribbons tied in a neat bow-knot beneath her dimpled chin.

Thomas was dressed in an Oliver Twist suit of dark velvet with a lace collar. Both he and Annabel wore lovely black slippers and short stockings.

They were sitting upon two of the little red doll chairs where Marcella had placed them and where they could see the other dolls.

When Uncle Clem walked in front of them and pulled his mustache they laughed outright. "Tee-Hee-Hee!" they snickered, "He has holes in his knees!"

Quite true. Uncle Clem was made of worsted and the moths had eaten his knees and part of his kiltie. He had a kiltie, you see, for Uncle Clem was a Scotch doll.

Uncle Clem shook, but he felt so hurt he could think of nothing to say.

He walked over and sat down beside Raggedy Ann and brushed her yarn hair away from her shoe-button eye.

The tin soldier went over and sat beside them.

"Don't you mind what they say, Raggedy!" he said, "They do not know you as we do!"

"We don't care to know her!" said Annabel-Lee as she primped her dress, "She looks like a scarecrow!"

"And the Soldier must have been made with a can opener!" laughed Thomas.

"You should be ashamed of yourselves!" said the French dolly, as she stood before Annabel and Thomas, "You will make all of us sorry that you have joined our family if you continue to poke fun at us and look down upon us. We are all happy here together and share in each others' adventures and happiness."

Now, that night Marcella did not undress the two new dolls, for she had no nighties for them, so she let them sit up in the two little red doll chairs so they would not muss their clothes. "I will make nighties for you tomorrow!" she said as she kissed them good night. Then she went over and gave Raggedy Ann a good night hug. "Take good care of all my children, Raggedy!" she said as she went out.

Annabel and Thomas whispered together, "Perhaps we have been too hasty in our judgment!" said Annabel-Lee. "This Raggedy Ann seems to be a favorite with the mistress and with all the dolls!"

"There must be a reason!" replied Thomas, "I am beginning to feel sorry that we spoke of her looks. One really cannot help one's looks after all."

Now, Annabel-Lee and Thomas were very tired after their long journey and soon they fell asleep and forgot all about the other dolls.

When they were sound asleep, Raggedy Ann slipped quietly from her bed and awakened the tin soldier and Uncle Clem and the three tiptoed to the two beautiful new dolls.

They lifted them gently so as not to awaken them and carried them to Raggedy Ann's bed.

Raggedy Ann tucked them in snugly and lay down upon the hard floor.

The tin soldier and Uncle Clem both tried to coax Raggedy Ann into accepting their bed (they slept together), but Raggedy Ann would not hear of it.

"I am stuffed with nice soft cotton and the hard floor does not bother me at all!" said Raggedy.

At daybreak the next morning Annabel and Thomas awakened to find themselves in Raggedy Ann's bed and as they raised up and looked at each other each knew how ashamed the other felt, for they knew Raggedy Ann had generously given them her bed.

There Raggedy Ann lay; all sprawled out upon the hard floor, her rag arms and legs twisted in ungraceful attitudes.

"How good and honest she looks!" said Annabel. "It must be her shoe-button eyes!"

"How nicely her yarn hair falls in loops over her face!" exclaimed Thomas, "I did not notice how pleasant her face looked last night!"

"The others seem to love her ever and ever so much!" mused Annabel. "It must be because she is so kind."

Both new dolls were silent for a while, thinking deeply.

"How do you feel?" Thomas finally asked.

"Very much ashamed of myself!" answered Annabel, "And you, Thomas?"

"As soon as Raggedy Ann awakens, I shall tell her just how much ashamed I am of myself and if she can, I want her to forgive me!" Thomas said.

"The more I look at her, the better I like her!" said Annabel.

"I am going to kiss her!" said Thomas.

"You'll awaken her if you do!" said Annabel.

But Thomas climbed out of bed and kissed Raggedy Ann on her painted cheek and smoothed her yarn hair from her rag forehead.

And Annabel-Lee climbed out of bed, too, and kissed Raggedy Ann.

Then Thomas and Annabel-Lee gently carried Raggedy Ann and put her in her own bed and tenderly tucked her in, and then took their seats in the two little red chairs.

After a while Annabel said softly to Thomas, "I feel ever and ever so much better and happier!"

"So do I!" Thomas replied. "It's like a whole lot of sunshine coming into a dark room, and I shall always try to keep it there!"

Fido had one fuzzy white ear sticking up over the edge of his basket and he gave his tail a few thumps against his pillow.

Raggedy Ann lay quietly in bed where Thomas and Annabel had tucked her. And as she smiled at the ceiling, her candy heart (with "I LOVE YOU" written on it) thrilled with contentment, for, as you have probably guessed, Raggedy Ann had not been asleep at all!

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE KITTENS

Raggedy Ann had been away all day.

Marcella had come early in the morning and dressed all the dolls and placed them about the nursery.

Some of the dolls had been put in the little red chairs around the little doll table. There was nothing to eat upon the table except a turkey, a fried egg and an apple, all made of plaster of paris and painted in natural colors. The little teapot and other doll dishes were empty, but Marcella had told them to enjoy their dinner while she was away.

The French dolly had been given a seat upon the doll sofa and Uncle Clem had been placed at the piano.

Marcella picked up Raggedy Ann and carried her out of the nursery when she left, telling the dolls to "be real good children, while Mamma is away!"

When the door closed, the tin soldier winked at the Dutch-boy doll and handed the imitation turkey to the penny dolls. "Have some nice turkey?" he asked.

"No thank you!" the penny dolls said in little penny-doll, squeaky voices, "We have had all we can eat!"

"Shall I play you a tune?" asked Uncle Clem of the French doll.

At this all the dolls laughed, for Uncle Clem could not begin to play any tune. Raggedy Ann was the only doll who had ever taken lessons, and she could play Peter-Peter-Pumpkin-Eater with one hand.

In fact, Marcella had almost worn out Raggedy Ann's right hand teaching it to her.

"Play something lively!" said the French doll, as she giggled behind her hand, so Uncle Clem began hammering the eight keys on the toy piano with all his might until a noise was heard upon the stairs.

Quick as a wink, all the dolls took the same positions in which they had been placed by Marcella, for they did not wish really truly people to know that they could move about.

But it was only Fido. He put his nose in the door and looked around.

All the dolls at the table looked steadily at the painted food, and Uncle Clem leaned upon the piano keys looking just as unconcerned as when he had been placed there.

Then Fido pushed the door open and came into the nursery wagging his tail.

He walked over to the table and sniffed, in hopes Marcella had given the dolls real food and that some would still be left.

"Where's Raggedy Ann?" Fido asked, when he had satisfied himself that there was no food.

"Mistress took Raggedy Ann and went somewhere!" all the dolls answered in chorus.

"I've found something I must tell Raggedy Ann about!" said Fido, as he scratched his ear.

"Is it a secret?" asked the penny dolls.

"Secret nothing," replied Fido, "It's kittens!"

"How lovely!" cried all the dolls, "Really live kittens?"

"Really live kittens!" replied Fido, "Three little tiny ones, out in the barn!"

"Oh, I wish Raggedy Ann was here!" cried the French doll. "She would know what to do about it!"

"That's why I wanted to see her," said Fido, as he thumped his tail on the floor, "I did not know there were any kittens and I went into the barn to hunt for mice and the first thing I knew Mamma Cat came bouncing right at me with her eyes looking green! I tell you I hurried out of there!"

"How did you know there were any kittens then?" asked Uncle Clem.

"I waited around the barn until Mamma Cat went up to the house and then I slipped into the barn again, for I knew there must be something inside or she would not have jumped at me that way! We are always very friendly, you know." Fido continued. "And what was my surprise to find three tiny little kittens in an old basket, 'way back in a dark corner!"

"Go get them, Fido, and bring them up so we can see them!" said the tin soldier.

"Not me!" said Fido, "If I had a suit of tin clothes on like you have I might do it, but you know cats can scratch very hard if they want to!"

"We will tell Raggedy when she comes in!" said the French doll, and then Fido went out to play with a neighbor dog.

So when Raggedy Ann had been returned to the nursery the dolls could hardly wait until Marcella had put on their nighties and left them for the night.

Then they told Raggedy Ann all about the kittens.

Raggedy Ann jumped from her bed and ran over to Fido's basket; he wasn't there.

Then Raggedy suggested that all the dolls go out to the barn and see the kittens. This they did easily, for the window was open and it was but a short jump to the ground.

They found Fido out near the barn watching a hole.

"I was afraid something might disturb them," he said, "for Mamma Cat went away about an hour ago."

All the dolls, with Raggedy Ann in the lead, crawled through the hole and ran to the basket.

Just as Raggedy Ann started to pick up one of the kittens there was a lot of howling and yelping and Fido came bounding through the hole with Mamma Cat behind him. When Mamma Cat caught up with Fido he would yelp.

When Fido and Mamma Cat had circled the barn two or three times Fido managed to find the hole and escape to the yard; then Mamma Cat came over to the basket and saw all the dolls.

"I'm s'prised at you, Mamma Cat!" said Raggedy Ann, "Fido has been watching your kittens for an hour while you were away. He wouldn't hurt them for anything!"

"I'm sorry, then," said Mamma Cat.

"You must trust Fido, Mamma Cat!" said Raggedy Ann, "because he loves you and anyone who loves you can be trusted!"

"That's so!" replied Mamma Cat. "Cats love mice, too, and I wish the mice trusted us more!"

The dolls all laughed at this joke.

"Have you told the folks up at the house about your dear little kittens?" Raggedy Ann asked.

"Oh, my, no!" exclaimed Mamma Cat. "At the last place I lived the people found out about my kittens and do you know, all the kittens disappeared! I intend keeping this a secret!"

"But all the folks at this house are very kindly people and would dearly love your kittens!" cried all the dolls.

"Let's take them right up to the nursery!" said Raggedy Ann, "And Mistress can find them there in the morning!"

"How lovely!" said all the dolls in chorus. "Do, Mamma Cat! Raggedy Ann knows, for she is stuffed with nice clean white cotton and is very wise!"

So after a great deal of persuasion, Mamma Cat finally consented. Raggedy Ann took two of the kittens and carried them to the house while Mamma Cat carried the other.

Raggedy Ann wanted to give the kittens her bed, but Fido, who was anxious to prove his affection, insisted that Mamma Cat and the kittens should have his nice soft basket.

The dolls could hardly sleep that night; they were so anxious to see what Mistress would say when she found the dear little kittens in the morning.

Raggedy Ann did not sleep a wink, for she shared her bed with Fido and he kept her awake whispering to her.

In the morning when Marcella came to the nursery, the first thing she saw was the three little kittens.

She cried out in delight and carried them all down to show to Mamma and Daddy. Mamma Cat went trailing along, arching her back and purring with pride as she rubbed against all the chairs and doors.

Mamma and Daddy said the kittens could stay in the nursery and belong to Marcella, so Marcella took them back to Fido's basket while she hunted names for them out of a fairy tale book.

Marcella finally decided upon three names; Prince Charming for the white kitty, Cinderella for the Maltese and Princess Golden for the kitty with the yellow stripes.

So that is how the three little kittens came to live in the nursery.

And it all turned out just as Raggedy Ann had said, for her head was stuffed with clean white cotton, and she could think exceedingly wise thoughts.

And Mamma Cat found out that Fido was a very good friend, too. She grew to trust him so much she would even let him help wash the kittens' faces.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE FAIRIES' GIFT

All the dolls were tucked snugly in their little doll-beds for the night and the large house was very still.

Every once in a while Fido would raise one ear and partly open one eye, for his keen dog sense seemed to tell him that something was about to happen.

Finally he opened both eyes, sniffed into the air and, getting out of his basket and shaking himself, he trotted across the nursery to Raggedy Ann's bed.

Fido put his cold nose in Raggedy Ann's neck. She raised her head from the little pillow.

"Oh! It's you, Fido!" said Raggedy Ann. "I dreamed the tin soldier put an icicle down my neck!"

"I can't sleep," Fido told Raggedy Ann. "I feel that something is about to happen!"

"You have been eating too many bones lately, Fido, and they keep you awake," Raggedy replied.

"No, it isn't that. I haven't had any bones since the folks had beef last Sunday. It isn't that. Listen, Raggedy!"

Raggedy Ann listened.

There was a murmur as if someone were singing, far away.

"What is it?" asked Fido.

"Sh!" cautioned Raggedy Ann, "It's music."

It was indeed music, the most beautiful music Raggedy Ann had ever heard.

It grew louder, but still seemed to be far away.

Raggedy Ann and Fido could hear it distinctly and it sounded as if hundreds of voices were singing in unison.

"Please don't howl, Fido," Raggedy Ann said as she put her two rag arms around the dog's nose. Fido usually "sang" when he heard music.

But Fido did not sing this time; he was filled with wonder. It seemed as if something very nice was going to happen.

Raggedy Ann sat upright in bed. The room was flooded with a strange, beautiful light and the music came floating in through the nursery window.

Raggedy Ann hopped from her bed and ran across the floor, trailing the bed clothes behind her. Fido followed close behind and together they looked out the window across the flower garden.

There among the flowers were hundreds of tiny beings, some playing on tiny reed instruments and flower horns, while others sang. This was the strange, wonderful music Raggedy and Fido had heard.

"It's the Fairies!" said Raggedy Ann. "To your basket quick, Fido! They are coming this way!" And Raggedy Ann ran back to her bed, with the bed clothes trailing behind her.

Fido gave three jumps and he was in his basket, pretending he was sound asleep, but one little black eye was peeping through a chink in the side.

Raggedy jumped into her bed and pulled the covers to her chin, but lay so that her shoe-button eyes could see towards the window.

Little Fairy forms radiant as silver came flitting into the nursery, singing in far away voices. They carried a little bundle. A beautiful light came from this bundle, and to Raggedy Ann and Fido it seemed like sunshine and moonshine mixed. It was a soft mellow light, just the sort of light you would expect to accompany Fairy Folk.

As Raggedy watched, her candy heart went pitty-pat against her cotton stuffing, for she saw a tiny pink foot sticking out of the bundle of light.

The Fairy troop sailed across the nursery and through the door with their bundle and Raggedy Ann and Fido listened to their far away music as they went down the hall.

Presently the Fairies returned without the bundle and disappeared through the nursery window.

Raggedy Ann and Fido again ran to the window and saw the Fairy troop dancing among the flowers.

The light from the bundle still hung about the nursery and a strange lovely perfume floated about.

When the Fairies' music ceased and they had flown away, Raggedy Ann and Fido returned to Raggedy's bed to think it all out.

When old Mister Sun peeped over the garden wall and into the nursery, and the other dolls awakened, Raggedy Ann and Fido were still puzzled.

"What is it, Raggedy Ann?" asked the tin soldier and Uncle Clem, in one voice.

Before Raggedy Ann could answer, Marcella came running into the nursery, gathered up all the dolls in her arms, and ran down the hall, Fido jumping beside her and barking shrilly.

"Be quiet!" Marcella said to Fido, "It's asleep and you might awaken it!"

Mamma helped Marcella arrange all the dolls in a circle around the bed so that they could all see what was in the bundle.

Mamma gently pulled back the soft covering and the dolls saw a tiny little fist as pink as coral, a soft little face with a cunning tiny pink nose, and a little head as bald as the French dolly's when her hair came off.

My, how the dollies all chattered when they were once again left alone in the nursery!

"A dear cuddly baby brother for Mistress!" said Uncle Clem.

"A beautiful bundle of love and Fairy Sunshine for everybody in the house!" said Raggedy Ann, as she went to the toy piano and joyously played "Peter-Peter-Pumpkin-Eater" with one rag hand.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE CHICKENS

When Marcella was called into the house she left Raggedy sitting on the chicken yard fence. "Now you sit quietly and do not stir," Marcella told Raggedy Ann, "If you move you may fall and hurt yourself!"

So, Raggedy Ann sat quietly, just as Marcella told her, but she smiled at the chickens for she had fallen time and again and it had never hurt her in the least. She was stuffed with nice soft cotton, you see.

So, there she sat until a tiny little humming-bird, in search of flower honey hummed close to Raggedy Ann's head and hovered near the tall Hollyhocks.

Raggedy Ann turned her rag head to see the humming-bird and lost her balance--plump! she went, down amongst the chickens.

The chickens scattered in all directions, all except Old Ironsides, the rooster.

He ruffled his neck feathers and put his head down close to the ground, making a queer whistling noise as he looked fiercely at Raggedy Ann.

But Raggedy Ann only smiled at Old Ironsides, the rooster, and ran her rag hand through her yarn hair for she did not fear him.

And then something strange happened, for when she made this motion the old rooster jumped up in the air and kicked his feet out in front, knocking Raggedy Ann over and over.

When Raggedy Ann stopped rolling she waved her apron at the rooster and cried, "Shoo!" but instead of "shooing," Old Ironsides upset her again.

Now, two old hens who had been watching the rooster jump at Raggedy ran up and as one old hen placed herself before the rooster, the other old hen caught hold of Raggedy's apron and dragged her into the chicken-coop.

It was dark inside and Raggedy could not tell what was going on as she felt herself being pulled up over the nests.

But, finally Raggedy could sit up, for the old hen had quit pulling her, and as her shoe-button eyes were very good, she soon made out the shape of the old hen in front of her.

"My! that's the hardest work I have done in a long time!" said the old hen, when she could catch her breath. "I was afraid Mr. Rooster would tear your dress and apron!"

"That was a queer game he was playing, Mrs. Hen," said Raggedy Ann.

The old hen chuckled 'way down in her throat, "Gracious me! He wasn't playing a game, he was fighting you!"

"Fighting!" cried Raggedy Ann in surprise.

"Oh yes, indeed!" the old hen answered, "Old Ironsides, the rooster, thought you intended to harm some of the children chickens and he was fighting you!"

"I am sorry that I fell inside the pen, I wouldn't harm anything," Raggedy Ann said.

"If we tell you a secret you must promise not to tell your mistress!" said the old hens.

"I promise! Cross my candy heart!" said Raggedy Ann.

Then the two old hens took Raggedy Ann 'way back in the farthest corner of the chicken coop. There, in back of a box, they had built two nests and each old hen had ten eggs in her nest.

"If your folks hear of it they will take the eggs!" said the hens, "and then we could not raise our families!"

Raggedy Ann felt the eggs and they were nice and warm.

"We just left the nests when you fell into the pen!" explained the old hens.

"But how can the eggs grow if you sit upon them?" said Raggedy. "If Fido sits on any of the garden, the plants will not grow, Mistress says!"

"Eggs are different!" one old hen explained. "In order to make the eggs hatch properly, we must sit on them three weeks and not let them get cold at any time!"

"And at the end of the three weeks do the eggs sprout?" asked Raggedy Ann.

"You must be thinking of eggplant!" cried one old hen. "These eggs hatch at the end of three weeks—they don't sprout—and then we have a lovely family of soft downy chickies; little puff balls that we can cuddle under our wings and love dearly!"

"Have you been sitting upon the eggs very long?" Raggedy asked.

"Neither one of us has kept track of the time," said one hen. "So we do not know! You see, we never leave the nests only just once in a while to get a drink and to eat a little. So we can hardly tell when it is day and when it is night."

"We were going out to get a drink when you fell in the pen!" said one old hen. "Now we will have to sit upon the eggs and warm them up again!"

The two old hens spread their feathers and nestled down upon the nests.

"When you get them good and warm, I would be glad to sit upon the eggs to keep them warm until you get something to eat and drink!" said Raggedy. So the two old hens walked out of the coop to finish their meal which had been interrupted by Raggedy's fall and while they were gone, Raggedy Ann sat quietly upon the warm eggs. Suddenly down beneath her she heard something go, "Pick, pick!" "I hope it isn't a mouse!" Raggedy Ann said to herself, when she felt something move. "I wish the old hens would come back." But when they came back and saw the puzzled expression on her face, they cried, "What is it?"

Raggedy Ann got to her feet and looked down and there were several little fluffy, cuddly baby chickies, round as little puff-balls.

"Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!" they cried when Raggedy stepped out of the nest.

"Baby Chicks!" Raggedy cried, as she stooped and picked up one of the little puff-balls. "They want to be cuddled!"

The two old hens, their eyes shining with happiness, got upon the nests and spread out their soft warm feathers, "The other eggs will hatch soon!" said they.

So, for several days Raggedy helped the two hens hatch out the rest of the chickies and just as they finished, Marcella came inside looking around.

"How in the world did you get in here, Raggedy Ann?" she cried. "I have been looking all about for you! Did the chickens drag you in here?"

Both old hens down behind the box clucked softly to the chickies beneath them and Marcella overheard them.

She lifted the box away and gave a little squeal of surprise and happiness.

"Oh you dear old Hennypennies!" she cried, lifting both old hens from their nests. "You have hidden your nests away back here and now you have one, two, three, four—twenty chickies!" and as she counted them, Marcella placed them in her apron; then catching up Raggedy Ann, she placed her over the new little chickies.

"Come on, old Hennypennies!" she said, and went out of the coop with the two old hens clucking at her heels.

Marcella called Daddy and Daddy rolled two barrels out under one of the trees and made a nice bed in each. Then he nailed slats across the front, leaving a place for a door. Each Hennypennie was then given ten little chickies and shut up in the barrel. And all the dolls were happy when they heard of Raggedy's adventure and they did not have to wait long before they were all taken out to see the new chickies.

---

RAGGEDY ANN AND THE MOUSE

Jeanette was a new wax doll, and like Henny, the Dutch doll, she could say "Mamma" when anyone tipped her backward or forward. She had lovely golden brown curls of real hair. It could be combed and braided, or curled or fluffed without tangling, and Raggedy Ann was very proud when Jeanette came to live with the dolls.

But now Raggedy Ann was very angry—in fact, Raggedy Ann had just ripped two stitches out of the top of her head when she took her rag hands and pulled her rag face down into a frown (but when she let go of the frown her face stretched right back into her usual cheery smile).

And you would have been angry, too, for something had happened to Jeanette.

Something or someone had stolen into the nursery that night when the dolls were asleep and nibbled all the wax from Jeanette's beautiful face—and now all her beauty was gone!

"It really is a shame!" said Raggedy Ann as she put her arms about Jeanette.

"Something must be done about it!" said the French doll as she stamped her little foot.

"If I catch the culprit, I will—well, I don't know what I will do with him!" said the tin soldier, who could be very fierce at times, although he was seldom cross.

"Here is the hole he came from!" cried Uncle Clem from the other end of the nursery. "Come, see!"

All the dolls ran to where Uncle Clem was, down on his hands and knees.

"This must be the place!" said Raggedy Ann. "We will plug up the hole with something, so he will not come out again!"

The dolls hunted around and brought rags and pieces of paper and pushed them into the mouse's doorway.

"I thought I heard nibbling last night," one of the penny dolls said. "You know I begged for an extra piece of pie last evening, when Mistress had me at the table and it kept me awake!"

While the dolls were talking, Marcella ran down-stairs with Jeanette and told Daddy and Mamma, who came up-stairs with Marcella and hunted around until they discovered the mouse's doorway.

"Oh, why couldn't it have chewed on me?" Raggedy Ann asked herself when she saw Marcella's sorrowful face, for Raggedy Ann was never selfish.

"Daddy will take Jeanette down-town with him and have her fixed up as good as new," said Mamma, so Jeanette was wrapped in soft tissue paper and taken away.

Later in the day Marcella came bouncing into the nursery with a surprise for the dolls. It was a dear fuzzy little kitten.

Marcella introduced the kitten to all the dolls.

"Her name is Boots, because she has four little white feet!" said Marcella. So Boots, the happy little creature, played with the penny dolls, scraping them over the floor and peeping out from behind chairs and pouncing upon them as if they were mice and the penny dolls enjoyed it hugely.

When Marcella was not in the nursery, Raggedy Ann wrestled with Boots and they would roll over and over upon the floor, Boots with her front feet around Raggedy Ann's neck and kicking with her hind feet.

Then Boots would arch her back and pretend she was very angry and walk sideways until she was close to Raggedy. Then she would jump at her and over and over they would roll, their heads hitting the floor bumpity-bump.

Boots slept in the nursery that night and was lonely for her Mamma, for it was the first time she had been away from home.

Even though her bed was right on top of Raggedy Ann, she could not sleep. But Raggedy Ann was very glad to have Boots sleep with her, even if she was heavy, and when Boots began crying for her Mamma, Raggedy Ann comforted her and soon Boots went to sleep.

One day Jeanette came home. She had a new coating of wax on her face and she was as beautiful as ever.

Now, by this time Boots was one of the family and did not cry at night. Besides Boots was told of the mouse in the corner and how he had eaten Jeanette's wax, so she promised to sleep with one eye open.

Late that night when Boots was the only one awake, out popped a tiny mouse from the hole. Boots jumped after the mouse, and hit against the toy piano and made the keys tinkle so loudly it awakened the dolls.

They ran over to where Boots sat growling with the tiny mouse in her mouth.

My! how the mouse was squeaking!

Raggedy Ann did not like to hear it squeak, but she did not wish Jeanette to have her wax face chewed again, either.

So, Raggedy Ann said to the tiny little mouse, "You should have known better than to come here when Boots is with us. Why don't you go out in the barn and live where you will not destroy anything of value?"

"I did not know!" squeaked the little mouse, "This is the first time I have ever been here!"

"Aren't you the little mouse who nibbled Jeanette's wax face?" Raggedy Ann asked.

"No!" the little mouse answered. "I was visiting the mice inside the walls and wandered out here to pick up cake crumbs! I have three little baby mice at home down in the barn. I have never nibbled at anyone's wax face!"

"Are you a Mamma mouse?" Uncle Clem asked.

"Yes!" the little mouse squeaked, "and if the kitten will let me go I will run right home to my children and never return again!"

"Let her go, Boots!" the dolls all cried, "She has three little baby mice at home! Please let her go!"

"No, sir!" Boots growled, "This is the first mouse I have ever caught and I will eat her!" At this the little Mamma mouse began squeaking louder than ever.

"If you do not let the Mamma mouse go, Boots, I shall not play with you again!" said Raggedy Ann.

"Raggedy will not play with Boots again!" said all of the dolls in an awed tone. Not to have Raggedy play with them would have been sad, indeed.

But Boots only growled.

The dolls drew to one side, where Raggedy Ann and Uncle Clem whispered together.

And while they whispered Boots would let the little Mamma mouse run a piece, then she would catch it again and box it about between her paws.

This she did until the poor little Mamma mouse grew so tired it could scarcely run away from Boots.

Boots would let it get almost to the hole in the wall before she would catch it, for she knew it would not escape her.

As she watched the little mouse crawling towards the hole scarcely able to move, Raggedy Ann could not keep the tears from her shoe-button eyes.

Finally as Boots started to spring after the little mouse again, Raggedy Ann threw her rag arms around the kitten's neck. "Run, Mamma mouse!" Raggedy Ann cried, as Boots whirled her over and over.

Uncle Clem ran and pushed the Mamma mouse into the hole and then she was gone.

When Raggedy Ann took her arms from around Boots, the kitten was very angry. She laid her ears back and scratched Raggedy Ann with her claws.

But Raggedy Ann only smiled—it did not hurt her a bit for Raggedy was sewed together with a needle and thread and if that did not hurt, how could the scratch of a kitten? Finally Boots felt ashamed of herself and went over and lay down by the hole in the wall in hopes the mouse would return, but the mouse never returned. Even then Mamma mouse was out in the barn with her children, warning them to beware of kittens and cats.

Raggedy Ann and all the dolls then went to bed and Raggedy had just dozed off to sleep when she felt something jump upon her bed. It was Boots. She felt a warm little pink tongue caress her rag cheek. Raggedy Ann smiled happily to herself, for Boots had curled up on top of Raggedy Ann and was purring herself to sleep.

Then Raggedy Ann knew she had been forgiven for rescuing the Mamma mouse and she smiled herself to sleep and dreamed happily of tomorrow.

---

RAGGEDY ANN'S NEW SISTERS

Marcella was having a tea party up in the nursery when Daddy called to her, so she left the dollies sitting around the tiny table and ran down stairs carrying Raggedy Ann with her.

Mama, Daddy and a strange man were talking in the living room and Daddy introduced Marcella to the stranger.

The stranger was a large man with kindly eyes and a cheery smile, as pleasant as Raggedy Ann's.

He took Marcella upon his knee and ran his fingers through her curls as he talked to Daddy and Mamma, so, of course, Raggedy Ann liked him from the beginning. "I have two little girls," he told Marcella. "Their names are Virginia and Doris, and one time when we were at the sea-shore they were playing in the sand and they covered up Freddy, Doris' boy-doll in the sand. They were playing that Freddy was in bathing and that he wanted to be covered with the clean white sand, just as the other bathers did. And when they had covered Freddy they took their little pails and shovels and went farther down the beach to play and forgot all about Freddy.

"Now when it came time for us to go home, Virginia and Doris remembered Freddy and ran down to get him, but the tide had come in and Freddy was 'way out under the water and they could not find him. Virginia and Doris were very sad and they talked of Freddy all the way home."

"It was too bad they forgot Freddy," said Marcella.

"Yes, indeed it was!" the new friend replied as he took Raggedy Ann up and made her dance on Marcella's knee. "But it turned out all right after all, for do you know what happened to Freddy?"

"No, what did happen to him?" Marcella asked.

"Well, first of all, when Freddy was covered with the sand, he enjoyed it immensely. And he did not mind it so much when the tide came up over him, for he felt Virginia and Doris would return and get him.

"But presently Freddy felt the sand above him move as if someone was digging him out. Soon his head was uncovered and he could look right up through the pretty green water, and what do you think was happening? The Tide Fairies were uncovering Freddy!

"When he was completely uncovered, the Tide Fairies swam with Freddy 'way out to the Undertow Fairies. The Undertow Fairies took Freddy and swam with him 'way out to the Roller Fairies. The Roller Fairies carried Freddy up to the surface and tossed him up to the Spray Fairies who carried him to the Wind Fairies."

"And the Wind Fairies?" Marcella asked breathlessly.

"The Wind Fairies carried Freddy right to our garden and there Virginia and Doris found him, none the worse for his wonderful adventure!"

"Freddy must have enjoyed it and your little girls must have been very glad to get Freddy back again!" said Marcella. "Raggedy Ann went up in the air on the tail of a kite one day and fell and was lost, so now I am very careful with her!"

"Would you let me take Raggedy Ann for a few days?" asked the new friend.

Marcella was silent. She liked the stranger friend, but she did not wish to lose Raggedy Ann.

"I will promise to take very good care of her and return her to you in a week. Will you let her go with me, Marcella?"

Marcella finally agreed and when the stranger friend left, he placed Raggedy Ann in his grip.

"It is lonely without Raggedy Ann!" said the dollies each night.

"We miss her happy painted smile and her cheery ways!" they said.

And so the week dragged by....

But, my! What a chatter there was in the nursery the first night after Raggedy Ann returned. All the dolls were so anxious to hug Raggedy Ann they could scarcely wait until Marcella had left them alone.

When they had squeezed Raggedy Ann almost out of shape and she had smoothed out her yarn hair, patted her apron out and felt her shoe-button eyes to see if they were still there, she said, "Well, what have you been doing? Tell me all the news!"

"Oh we have just had the usual tea parties and games!" said the tin soldier. "Tell us about yourself, Raggedy dear, we have missed you so much!"

"Yes! Tell us where you have been and what you have done, Raggedy!" all the dolls cried.

But Raggedy Ann just then noticed that one of the penny dolls had a hand missing.

"How did this happen?" she asked as she picked up the doll.

"I fell off the table and lit upon the tin soldier last night when we were playing. But don't mind a little thing like that, Raggedy Ann," replied the penny doll. "Tell us of yourself! Have you had a nice time?"

"I shall not tell a thing until your hand is mended!" Raggedy Ann said.

So the Indian ran and brought a bottle of glue. "Where's the hand?" Raggedy asked.

"In my pocket," the penny doll answered.

When Raggedy Ann had glued the penny doll's hand in place and wrapped a rag around it to hold it until the glue dried, she said, "When I tell you of this wonderful adventure, I know you will all feel very happy. It has made me almost burst my stitches with joy."

The dolls all sat upon the floor around Raggedy Ann, the tin soldier with his arm over her shoulder.

"Well, first when I left," said Raggedy Ann, "I was placed in the Stranger Friend's grip. It was rather stuffy in there, but I did not mind it; in fact I believe I must have fallen asleep, for when I awakened I saw the Stranger Friend's hand reaching into the grip. Then he lifted me from the grip and danced me upon his knee. 'What do you think of her?' he asked to three other men sitting nearby.

"I was so interested in looking out of the window I did not pay any attention to what they said, for we were on a train and the scenery was just flying by! Then I was put back in the grip.

"When next I was taken from the grip I was in a large, clean, light room and there were many, many girls all dressed in white aprons.

"The stranger friend showed me to another man and to the girls who took off my clothes, cut my seams and took out my cotton. And what do you think! They found my lovely candy heart had not melted at all as I thought. Then they laid me on a table and marked all around my outside edges with a pencil on clean white cloth, and then the girls re-stuffed me and dressed me.

"I stayed in the clean big light room for two or three days and nights and watched my Sisters grow from pieces of cloth into rag dolls just like myself!"

"Your SISTERS!" the dolls all exclaimed in astonishment, "What do you mean, Raggedy?"

"I mean," said Raggedy Ann, "that the Stranger Friend had borrowed me from Marcella so that he could have patterns made from me. And before I left the big clean white room there where hundreds of rag dolls so like me you would not have been able to tell us apart."

"We could have told you by your happy smile!" cried the French dolly.

"But all of my sister dolls have smiles just like mine!" replied Raggedy Ann.

"And shoe-button eyes?" the dolls all asked.

"Yes, shoe-button eyes!" Raggedy Ann replied.

"I would tell you from the others by your dress, Raggedy Ann," said the French doll, "Your dress is fifty years old! I could tell you by that!"

"But my new sister rag dolls have dresses just like mine, for the Stranger Friend had cloth made especially for them exactly like mine."

"I know how we could tell you from the other rag dolls, even if you all look exactly alike!" said the Indian doll, who had been thinking for a long time.

"How?" asked Raggedy Ann with a laugh.

"By feeling your candy heart! If the doll has a candy heart then it is you, Raggedy Ann!"

Raggedy Ann laughed, "I am so glad you all love me as you do, but I am sure you would not be able to tell me from my new sisters, except that I am more worn, for each new rag doll has a candy heart, and on it is written, 'I love you' just as is written on my own candy heart."

"And there are hundreds and hundreds of the new rag dolls?" asked the little penny dolls.

"Hundreds and hundreds of them, all named Raggedy Ann," replied Raggedy.

"Then," said the penny dolls, "we are indeed happy and proud for you! For wherever one of the new Raggedy Ann dolls goes there will go with it the love and happiness that you give to others."

 

• Wrinkle in Time
  

 

OTHER NOVELS IN THE TIME QUINTET

An Acceptable Time

 

Many Waters

 

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

 

A Wind in the Door

 

• Wrinkle in Time

 

 

MADELEINE

 

L’ENGLE

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

Square Fish

 

An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers

 

A WRINKLE IN TIME.

 

Copyright © 1962 by Crosswicks, Ltd.

 

An Appreciation Copyright © 2007 by Anna Quindlen.

 

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

L’Engle, Madeleine.

 

A wrinkle in time.

 

1. cm.

 

Summary: Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly

 

strangers and a search for Meg’s father, who has disappeared while engaged

 

in secret work for the government.

 

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36755-8

 

ISBN-10: 0-312-36755-4

 

[1. Science fiction.] I. Title.

 

PZ7.L5385 Wr 1962

 

62-7203

 

Originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

 

Book design by Jennifer Browne

 

First Square Fish Mass Market Edition: May 2007

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Charles Wadsworth Camp

 

and

 

Wallace Collin Franklin

Contents

 

An Appreciation by Anna Quindlen

 

1 Mrs Whatsit

 

2 Mrs Who

 

3 Mrs Which

 

4 The Black Thing

 

5 The Tesseract

 

6 The Happy Medium

 

7 The Man with Red Eyes

 

8 The Transparent Column

 

9 IT

 

10 Absolute Zero

 

11 Aunt Beast

 

12 The Foolish and the Weak

 

Go Fish:Questions for the Author

 

Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech:The Expanding Universe

An Appreciation

 

BY ANNA QUINDLEN

The most memorable books from our childhoods are those that make us feel less alone, convince us that our own foibles and quirks are both as individual as a finger-print and as universal as an open hand. That’s why I still have the copy of A Wrinkle in Time that was given to me when I was twelve years old. It long ago lost its dust jacket, the fabric binding is loose and water-stained, and the soft and loopy signature on its inside cover bears little resemblance to the way I sign my name today. The girl who first owned it has grown up and changed, but the book she loved, though battered, is still magical.

 

Its heroine is someone who feels very much alone indeed. Meg Murry has braces, glasses, and flyaway hair. She can’t seem to get anything right in school, where everyone thinks she is strange and stupid. And she runs up against some real nastiness at a young age in the form of all those snide looks and comments about her father, a scientist who seems to have mysteriously vanished—or, town gossip has it, run off with another woman.

 

But Meg doesn’t know real evil until she sets out on a journey to find her father and bring him home, along with her little brother, Charles Wallace, and a boy named Calvin. As they transcend time, space, and the limitations of their own minds, they get help from individuals of great goodness: Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Which, Mrs Who, the Happy Medium, and Aunt Beast. But the climax of thei journey is a showdown with IT, the cold and calculating disembodied intelligence that has cast a black shadow over the universe in its quest to make everyone behave and believe the same.

 

If that sounds like science fiction, it’s because that’s one way to describe the story. Or perhaps you could call it the fiction of science. The action of the book, the search for Meg and Charles Wallace’s missing father, relies on something called a tesseract, which is a way to travel through time and space using a fifth dimension. Although there’s even a little illustration to make it easier to visualize, I still am not certain I do. Of course, Meg, who is so bright she can do square roots in her head, doesn’ entirely understand it either. “For just a moment I got it!” she says. “I can’t possibly explain it now, but for a second I saw it!”

 

The truth is, I’m not a fan of science fiction, and my math and physics gene has always been weak. But there’s plenty in the book for those of us predisposed toward the humanities as well. Mrs Who, who remedies her language deficit by using the words of others to explain herself, quotes Dante, Euripides, and Cervantes, to name just a few. When Meg is trying to keep IT from invading her brain she realizes the multiplication tables are too rote to do the trick and instead shouts out the opening of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” IT retorts that that’s the point: “Everybody exactly alike.” Meg replies triumphantly, “No! Like and equal are not the same thing at all!”

 

Madeline L’Engle published Wrinkle in 1962, after it was rejected by dozens of publishers. And her description of the tyranny of conformity clearly reflects that time. The identical houses outside which identical children bounce balls and jump rope in mindless unison evoke the fear so many Americans had of Communist regimes that enshrined the interests of state-mandated order over the rights of the individual. “Why do you think we have wars at home?” Charles Wallace asks his sister,

channeling the mind of IT. “Why do you think people get confused and unhappy? Because they all live their own separate individual lives.” He tells Meg what she already knows from her own everyday battles: “Differences create problems.”

 

But while L’Engle’s story may have originally been inspired by the gray sameness of those Communist countries, it still feels completely contemporary today, except maybe for Meg’s desire for a typewriter to get around her dreadful penmanship. The Murry home is fractured by Mr. Murry’s mysterious absence and Meg’s “mother sleeping alone in the great double bed” Calvin may look like a golden boy, but his family barely notices he’s alive. Even more timeless is the sense Meg has of herself as someone who doesn’t fit in, who does “everything wrong.” Conformity knows no time or place; it is the struggle all of us face, to be ourselves despite the overwhelming pressure to be like everyone else. Perhaps one of the most compelling and moving descriptions of that internal battle comes near the end of the book, when Mrs Whatsit tells the children that life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

 

On its surface this is a book about three children who fight an evil force threatening their planet. But it is really about a more primal battle all human beings face, to respect, defend, and love themselves. When Meg pulls the ultimate weapon from her emotional arsenal to fight, for her little brother and for good, it is a great moment, not just for her, but for every reader who has ever felt overlooked, confused, alone. It has been more than four decades since I first read A Wrinkle in Time. If I could tesser, perhaps in some different time and place I would find a Meg Murry just my age, a grown woman with an astonishing brain, a good heart, and a unique perspective on how our differences are what makes life worth living. Oh, how I would like to meet her!

ONE

Mrs Whatsit

 

It was a dark and stormy night.

 

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.

 

The house shook.

 

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

 

She wasn’t usually afraid of weather.—It’s not just the weather, she thought.—It’s the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.

 

School. School was all wrong. She’d been dropped down to the lowest section in her grade. Tha morning one of her teachers had said crossly, “Really, Meg, I don’t understand how a child with parents as brilliant as yours are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don’t manage to do a little better you’ll have to stay back next year.”

 

During lunch she’d rough-housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, “After all, Meg, we aren’t grammar-school kids anymore. Why do you always act like such a baby?”

 

And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her “dumb baby brother.” At this she’d thrown the books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye.

 

Sandy and Dennys, her ten-year-old twin brothers, who got home from school an hour earlier than she did, were disgusted. “Let us do the fighting when it’s necessary,” they told her.

 

—A delinquent, that’s what I am, she thought grimly.—That’s what they’ll be saying next. Not Mother. But Them. Everybody Else. I wish Father--

 

But it was still not possible to think about her father without the danger of tears. Only her mother could talk about him in a natural way, saying, “When your father gets back—”

 

Gets back from where? And when? Surely her mother must know what people were saying, must be aware of the smugly vicious gossip. Surely it must hurt her as it did Meg. But if it did she gave no outward sign. Nothing ruffled the serenity of her expression.

 

—Why can’t I hide it, too? Meg thought. Why do I always have to show everything?

 

The window rattled madly in the wind, and she pulled the quilt close about her. Curled up on one of her pillows a gray fluff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head under again, and went back to sleep.

 

Everybody was asleep. Everybody except Meg. Even Charles Wallace, the “dumb baby brother,” who had an uncanny way of knowing when she was awake and unhappy, and who would come, so many nights, tiptoeing up the attic stairs to her—even Charles Wallace was asleep.

 

How could they sleep? All day on the radio there had been hurricane warnings. How could they leave her up in the attic in the rickety brass bed, knowing that the roof might be blown right off the

house, and she tossed out into the wild night sky to land who knows where?

 

Her shivering grew uncontrollable.

 

—You asked to have the attic bedroom, she told herself savagely.—Mother let you have it because you’re the oldest. It’s a privilege, not a punishment.

 

“Not during a hurricane, it isn’t a privilege,” she said aloud. She tossed the quilt down on the foot of the bed, and stood up. The kitten stretched luxuriously, and looked up at her with huge, innocent eyes.

 

“Go back to sleep,” Meg said. “Just be glad you’re a kitten and not a monster like me.” She looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible face, baring a mouthful of teeth covered with braces. Automatically she pushed her glasses into position, ran her fingers through her mouse-brown hair, so that it stood wildly on end, and let out a sigh almost as noisy as the wind.

 

The wide wooden floorboards were cold against her feet. Wind blew in the crevices about the window frame, in spite of the protection the storm sash was supposed to offer. She could hear wind howling in the chimneys. From all the way downstairs she could hear Fortinbras, the big black dog, starting to bark. He must be frightened, too. What was he barking at? Fortinbras never barked withou reason.

 

Suddenly she remembered that when she had gone to the post office to pick up the mail she’d heard about a tramp who was supposed to have stolen twelve sheets from Mrs. Buncombe, the constable’s wife. They hadn’t caught him, and maybe he was heading for the Murrys’ house right now, isolated on a back road as it was; and this time maybe he’d be after more than sheets. Meg hadn’t paid much attention to the talk about the tramp at the time, because the postmistress, with a sugary smile, had asked if she’d heard from her father lately.

 

She left her little room and made her way through the shadows of the main attic, bumping against the ping-pong table.—Now I’ll have a bruise on my hip on top of everything else, she thought.

 

Next she walked into her old dolls’ house, Charles Wallace’s rocking horse, the twins’ electric trains. “Why must everything happen to me?” She demanded of a large teddy bear.

 

At the foot of the attic stairs she stood still and listened. Not a sound from Charles Wallace’s room on the right. On the left, in her parents’ room, not a rustle from her mother sleeping alone in the great double bed. She tiptoed down the hall and into the twins’ room, pushing again at her glasses as though they could help her to see better in the dark. Dennys was snoring. Sandy murmured something about baseball and subsided. The twins didn’t have any problems. They weren’t great students, but they weren’t bad ones, either. They were perfectly content with a succession of B’s and an occasional A or C. They were strong and fast runners and good at games, and when cracks were made about anybody in the Murry family, they weren’t made about Sandy and Dennys.

 

She left the twins’ room and went on downstairs, avoiding the creaking seventh step. Fortinbras had stopped barking. It wasn’t the tramp this time, then. Fort would go on barking if anybody was around.

—But suppose the tramp does come? Suppose he has a knife? Nobody lives near enough to hear if we screamed and screamed and screamed. Nobody’d care, anyhow.

 

—I’ll make myself some cocoa, she decided.—That’ll cheer me up, and if the roof blows off at least I won’t go off with it.

 

In the kitchen a light was already on, and Charles Wallace was sitting at the table drinking milk and eating bread and jam. He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six inches above the

floor.

 

“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

 

From under the table where he was lying at Charles Wallace’s feet, hoping for a crumb or two, Fortinbras raised his slender dark head in greeting to Meg, and his tail thumped against the floor. Fortinbras had arrived on their doorstep, a half-grown puppy, scrawny and abandoned, one winter night. He was, Meg’s father had decided, part Llewellyn setter and part greyhound, and he had a slender, dark beauty that was all his own.

 

“Why didn’t you come up to the attic?” Meg asked her brother, speaking as though he were at least her own age. “I’ve been scared stiff.”

 

“Too windy up in that attic of yours,” the little boy said. “I knew you’d be down. I put some milk on the stove for you. It ought to be hot by now.”

 

How did Charles Wallace always know about her? How could he always tell? He never knew—or seemed to care—what Dennys or Sandy were thinking. It was his mother’s mind, and Meg’s, that he probed with frightening accuracy.

 

Was it because people were a little afraid of him that they whispered about the Murrys’ youngest child, who was rumored to be not quite bright? “I’ve heard that clever people often have subnormal children,” Meg had once overheard. “The two boys seem to be nice, regular children, but that unattractive girl and the baby boy certainly aren’t all there.”

 

It was true that Charles Wallace seldom spoke when anybody was around, so that many people thought he’d never learned to talk. And it was true that he hadn’t talked at all until he was almost four. Meg would turn white with fury when people looked at him and clucked, shaking their heads sadly.

“Don’t worry about Charles Wallace, Meg,” her father had once told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. “There’s nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time.”

 

“I don’t want him to grow up to be dumb like me,” Meg had said.

 

“Oh, my darling, you’re not dumb,” her father answered. “You’re like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn’t happen to be the usual pace.”

 

“How do you know?” Meg had demanded. “How do you know I’m not dumb? Isn’t it just because you love me?”

 

“I love you, but that’s not what tells me. Mother and I’ve given you a number of tests, you know.” Yes, that was true. Meg had realized that some of the “games” her parents played with her were

tests of some kind, and that there had been more for her and Charles Wallace than for the twins. “IQ tests, you mean?”

 

“Yes, some of them.”

 

“Is my IQ okay?”

 

“More than okay.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“That I’m not going to tell you. But it assures me that both you and Charles Wallace will be able to do pretty much whatever you like when you grow up to yourselves. You just wait till Charles Wallace starts to talk. You’ll see.”

 

How right he had been about that, though he himself had left before Charles Wallace began to speak, suddenly, with none of the usual baby preliminaries, using entire sentences. How proud he would have been!

“You’d better check the milk,” Charles Wallace said to Meg now, his diction clearer and cleaner than that of most five-year-olds. “You know you don’t like it when it gets a skin on top.”

 

“You put in more than twice enough milk.” Meg peered into the saucepan.

 

Charles Wallace nodded serenely. “I thought Mother might like some.”

 

“I might like what?” a voice said, and there was their mother standing in the doorway.

 

“Cocoa,” Charles Wallace said. “Would you like a liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwich? I’ll be happy to make you one.”

 

“That would be lovely,” Mrs. Murry said, “but I can make it myself if you’re busy.”

 

“No trouble at all.” Charles Wallace slid down from his chair and trotted over to the refrigerator, his pajamaed feet padding softly as a kitten’s. “How about you, Meg?” he asked. “Sandwich?”

 

“Yes, please,” she said. “But not liverwurst. Do we have any tomatoes?”

 

Charles Wallace peered into the crisper. “One. All right if I use it on Meg, Mother?”

 

“To what better use could it be put?” Mrs. Murry smiled. “But not so loud, please, Charles. That is unless you want the twins downstairs, too.”

 

“Let’s be exclusive,” Charles Wallace said. “That’s my new word for the day. Impressive, isn’t it?”

 

“Prodigious,” Mrs. Murry said. “Meg, come let me look at that bruise.”

 

Meg knelt at her mother’s feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan; geraniums bloomed on the window sills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The curtains, red, with a blue and green geometrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry’s chair Fortinbras let out a contented sigh.

 

Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg’s bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry’s flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg’s outrageous plainness. Meg’s hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.

 

“You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?” Mrs. Murry asked. “A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn. That’s a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave you. By the way, shortly after you’d gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly you’d hurt him. I told her that since he’s a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complaining. But she seemed to think it was all your fault.”

 

“I suppose that depends on how you look at it,” Meg said. “Usually no matter what happens people think it’s my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I’m sorry I tried to fight him. It’s jus been an awful week. And I’m full of bad feeling.”

 

Mrs. Murry stroked Meg’s shaggy head. “Do you know why?”

 

“I hate being an oddball,” Meg said. “It’s hard on Sandy and Dennys, too. I don’t know if they’re

really like everybody else, or if they’re just able to pretend they are. I try to pretend, but it isn’t any help.”

 

“You’re much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren’t,” Mrs. Murry said. “I’m sorry, Meglet. Maybe if Father were here he could help you, but I don’t think I can do anythin till you’ve managed to plow through some more time. Then things will be easier for you. But that isn’t much help right now, is it?”

 

“Maybe if I weren’t so repulsive-looking—maybe if I were pretty like you—”

 

“Mother’s not a bit pretty; she’s beautiful,” Charles Wallace announced, slicing liverwurst. “Therefore I bet she was awful at your age.”

 

“How right you are,” Mrs. Murry said. “Just give yourself time, Meg.” “Lettuce on your sandwich, Mother?” Charles Wallace asked. “No, thanks.”

 

He cut the sandwich into sections, put it on a plate, and set it in front of his mother. “Yours’ll be along in just a minute, Meg. I think I’ll talk to Mrs Whatsit about you.”

 

“Who’s Mrs Whatsit?” Meg asked.

 

“I think I want to be exclusive about her for a while,” Charles Wallace said. “Onion salt?” “Yes, please.”

 

“What’s Mrs Whatsit stand for?” Mrs. Murry asked.

 

“That’s her name,” Charles Wallace answered. “You know the old shingled house back in the woods that the kids won’t go near because they say it’s haunted? That’s where they live.”

 

“They?”

 

“Mrs Whatsit and her two friends. I was out with Fortinbras a couple of days ago—you and the twins were at school, Meg. We like to walk in the woods, and suddenly he took off after a squirrel and I took off after him and we ended up by the haunted house, so I met them by accident, as you might say.”

 

“But nobody lives there,” Meg said.

 

“Mrs Whatsit and her friends do. They’re very enjoyable.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” Mrs. Murry asked. “And you know you’re not supposed to go off our property without permission, Charles.”

 

“I know,” Charles said. “That’s one reason I didn’t tell you. I just rushed off after Fortinbras without thinking. And then I decided, well, I’d better save them for an emergency, anyhow.”

 

A fresh gust of wind took the house and shook it, and suddenly the rain began to lash against the windows.

 

“I don’t think I like this wind,” Meg said nervously.

 

“We’ll lose some shingles off the roof, that’s certain,” Mrs. Murry said. “But this house has stood for almost two hundred years and I think it will last a little longer, Meg. There’s been many a high wind up on this hill.”

 

“But this is a hurricane!” Meg wailed. “The radio kept saying it was a hurricane!” “It’s October,” Mrs. Murry told her. “There’ve been storms in October before.”

As Charles Wallace gave Meg her sandwich Fortinbras came out from under the table. He gave a long, low growl, and they could see the dark fur slowly rising on his back. Meg felt her own skin prickle.

 

“What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

Fortinbras stared at the door that opened into Mrs. Murry’s laboratory which was in the old stone dairy right off the kitchen. Beyond the lab a pantry led outdoors, though Mrs. Murry had done her bes to train the family to come into the house through the garage door or the front door and not through her lab. But it was the lab door and not the garage door toward which Fortinbras was growling.

 

“You didn’t leave any nasty-smelling chemicals cooking over a Bunsen burner, did you, Mother?” Charles Wallace asked.

 

Mrs. Murray stood up. “No. But I think I’d better go see what’s upsetting Fort, anyhow.” “It’s the tramp, I’m sure it’s the tramp,” Meg said nervously. “What tramp?” Charles Wallace asked.

 

“They were saying at the post office this afternoon that a tramp stole all Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets.” “We’d better sit on the pillow cases, then,” Mrs. Murry said lightly. “I don’t think even a tramp

would be out on a night like this, Meg.”

 

“But that’s probably why he is out,” Meg wailed, “trying to find a place not to be out.” “In which case I’ll offer him the barn till morning.” Mrs. Murry went briskly to the door. “I’ll go with you.” Meg’s voice was shrill.

 

“No, Meg, you stay with Charles and eat your sandwich.”

 

“Eat!” Meg exclaimed as Mrs. Murry went out through the lab. “How does she expect me to eat?” “Mother can take care of herself,” Charles said. “Physically, that is.” But he sat in his father’s chair

at the table and his legs kicked at the rungs; and Charles Wallace, unlike most small children, had the ability to sit still.

 

After a few moments that seemed like forever to Meg, Mrs. Murry came back in, holding the doo open for—was it the tramp? It seemed small for Meg’s idea of a tramp. The age or sex was impossible to tell, for it was completely bundled up in clothes. Several scarves of assorted colors were tied about the head, and a man’s felt hat perched atop. A shocking pink stole was knotted about a rough overcoat, and black rubber boots covered the feet.

 

“Mrs Whatsit,” Charles said suspiciously, “what are you doing here? And at this time of night, too?”

 

“Now don’t you be worried, my honey.” A voice emerged from among turned-up coat collar, stole, scarves, and hat, a voice like an unoiled gate, but somehow not unpleasant.

 

“Mrs—uh—Whatsit—says she lost her way,” Mrs. Murry said. “Would you care for some hot chocolate, Mrs Whatsit?”

 

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Mrs Whatsit answered, taking off the hat and the stole. “It isn’t so much that lost my way as that I got blown off course. And when I realized that I was at little Charles Wallace’s house I thought I’d just come in and rest a bit before proceeding on my way.”

 

“How did you know this was Charles Wallace’s house?” Meg asked.

 

“By the smell.” Mrs Whatsit untied a blue and green paisley scarf, a red and yellow flowered print a gold Liberty print, a red and black bandanna. Under all this a sparse quantity of grayish hair was tied in a small but tidy knot on top of her head. Her eyes were bright, her nose a round, soft blob, her mouth puckered like an autumn apple. “My, but it’s lovely and warm in here,” she said.

 

“Do sit down.” Mrs. Murry indicated a chair. “Would you like a sandwich, Mrs Whatsit? I’ve had liverwurst and cream cheese; Charles has had bread and jam; and Meg, lettuce and tomato.”

 

“Now, let me see,” Mrs Whatsit pondered. “I’m passionately fond of Russian caviar.”

 

“You peeked!” Charles cried indignantly. “We’re saving that for Mother’s birthday and you can’t

have any!”

 

Mrs Whatsit gave a deep and pathetic sigh.

 

“No,” Charles said. “Now, you mustn’t give in to her, Mother, or I shall be very angry. How about tuna-fish salad?”

 

“All right,” Mrs Whatsit said meekly.

 

“I’ll fix it,” Meg offered, going to the pantry for a can of tuna fish.

 

—For crying out loud, she thought,—this old woman comes barging in on us in the middle of the night and Mother takes it as though there weren’t anything peculiar about it at all. I’ll bet she is the tramp. I’ll bet she did steal those sheets. And she’s certainly no one Charles Wallace ought to be friends with, especially when he won’t even talk to ordinary people.

 

“I’ve only been in the neighborhood a short time,” Mrs Whatsit was saying as Meg switched off the pantry light and came back into the kitchen with the tuna fish, “and I didn’t think I was going to like the neighbors at all until dear little Charles came over with his dog.”

 

“Mrs Whatsit,” Charles Wallace demanded severely, “why did you take Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets?”

 

“Well, I needed them, Charles dear.”

 

“You must return them at once.”

 

“But Charles, dear, I can’t. I’ve used them.”

 

“It was very wrong of you,” Charles Wallace scolded. “If you needed sheets that badly you should have asked me.”

 

Mrs Whatsit shook her head and clucked. “You can’t spare any sheets. Mrs. Buncombe can.”

 

Meg cut up some celery and mixed it in with the tuna. After a moment’s hesitation she opened the refrigerator door and brought out a jar of little sweet pickles.—Though why I’m doing it for her I don’t know, she thought, as she cut them up.—I don’t trust her one bit.

 

“Tell your sister I’m all right,” Mrs Whatsit said to Charles. “Tell her my intentions are good.” “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Charles intoned.

 

“My, but isn’t he cunning.” Mrs Whatsit beamed at him fondly. “It’s lucky he has someone to understand him.”

 

“But I’m afraid he doesn’t,” Mrs. Murry said. “None of us is quite up to Charles.”

 

“But at least you aren’t trying to squash him down.” Mrs Whatsit nodded her head vigorously. “You’re letting him be himself.”

 

“Here’s your sandwich,” Meg said, bringing it to Mrs Whatsit.

 

“Do you mind if I take off my boots before I eat?” Mrs Whatsit asked, picking up the sandwic nevertheless. “Listen.” She moved her feet up and down in her boots, and they could hear water squelching. “My toes are ever so damp. The trouble is that these boots are a mite too tight for me, and I never can take them off by myself.”

 

“I’ll help you,” Charles offered.

 

“Not you. You’re not strong enough.”

 

“I’ll help.” Mrs. Murry squatted at Mrs Whatsit’s feet, yanking on one slick boot. When the boot came off it came suddenly. Mrs. Murry sat down with a thump. Mrs Whatsit went tumbling backward with the chair onto the floor, sandwich held high in one old claw. Water poured out of the boot and ran over the floor and the big braided rug.

 

“Oh, dearie me,” Mrs Whatsit said, lying on her back in the overturned chair, her feet in the air, one in a red and white striped sock, the other still booted.

Mrs. Murry got to her feet. “Are you all right, Mrs Whatsit?”

 

“If you have some liniment I’ll put it on my dignity,” Mrs Whatsit said, still supine. “I think it’s sprained. A little oil of cloves mixed well with garlic is rather good.” And she took a large bite of sandwich.

 

“Do please get up,” Charles said. “I don’t like to see you lying there that way. You’re carrying things too far.”

 

“Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?” But Mrs Whatsit scrambled up righted the chair, and then sat back down on the floor, the booted foot stuck out in front of her, and took another bite. She moved with great agility for such an old woman. At least Meg was reasonably sure that she was an old woman, and a very old woman at that.

 

Mrs Whatsit, her mouth full, ordered Mrs. Murry, “Now pull while I’m already down.”

 

Quite calmly, as though this old woman and her boots were nothing out of the ordinary, Mrs. Murry pulled until the second boot relinquished the foot. This foot was covered with a blue and gray Argyle sock, and Mrs Whatsit sat there, wriggling her toes, contentedly finishing her sandwich before scrambling to her feet. “Ah,” she said, “that’s ever so much better,” and took both boots and shook them out over the sink. “My stomach is full and I’m warm inside and out and it’s time I went home.”

 

“Don’t you think you’d better stay till morning?” Mrs. Murry asked.

 

“Oh, thank you, dearie, but there’s so much to do I just can’t waste time sitting around frivoling.” “It’s much too wild a night to travel in.”

 

“Wild nights are my glory,” Mrs Whatsit said. “I just got caught in a down draft and blown off course.”

 

“Well, at least till your socks are dry—”

 

“Wet socks don’t bother me. I just didn’t like the water squishing around in my boots. Now don’t worry about me, lamb.” (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) “I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”

 

Mrs. Murry went very white and with one hand reached backward and clutched at a chair for support. Her voice trembled. “What did you say?”

 

Mrs Whatsit tugged at her second boot. “I said,” she grunted, shoving her foot down in, “that there is”—shove—“such a thing”—shove—“as a tesseract.” Her foot went down into the boot, and grabbing shawls, scarves, and hat, she hustled out the door. Mrs. Murry stayed very still, making no move to help the old woman. As the door opened, Fortinbras streaked in, panting, wet and shiny as a seal. He looked at Mrs. Murry and whined.

 

The door slammed.

 

“Mother, what’s the matter!” Meg cried. “What did she say? What is it?”

 

“The tesseract—” Mrs. Murry whispered. “What did she mean? How could she have known?”

TWO

Mrs Who

 

When Meg woke to the jangling of her alarm clock the wind was still blowing but the sun was shining; the worst of the storm was over. She sat up in bed, shaking her head to clear it.

 

It must have been a dream. She’d been frightened by the storm and worried about the tramp so she’d just dreamed about going down to the kitchen and seeing Mrs Whatsit and having her mother get all frightened and upset by that word—what was it? Tess—tess something.

 

She dressed hurriedly, picked up the kitten still curled up on the bed, and dumped it unceremoniously on the floor. The kitten yawned, stretched, gave a piteous miaow, trotted out of the attic and down the stairs. Meg made her bed and hurried after it. In the kitchen her mother was making French toast and the twins were already at the table. The kitten was lapping milk out of a saucer.

“Where’s Charles?” Meg asked.

 

“Still asleep. We had rather an interrupted night, if you remember.” “I hoped it was a dream,” Meg said.

 

Her mother carefully turned over four slices of French toast, then said in a steady voice, “No, Meg Don’t hope it was a dream. I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be. I’m sorry I showed you I was upset. Your father and I used to have a joke about tesseract.”

 

“What is a tesseract?” Meg asked.

 

“It’s a concept.” Mrs. Murry handed the twins the syrup. “I’ll try to explain it to you later. There isn’t time before school.”

 

“I don’t see why you didn’t wake us up,” Dennys said. “It’s a gyp we missed out on all the fun.” “You’ll be a lot more awake in school today than I will.” Meg took her French toast to the table. “Who cares,” Sandy said. “If you’re going to let old tramps come into the house in the middle of the

night, Mother, you ought to have Den and me around to protect you.” “After all, Father would expect us to,” Dennys added.

 

“We know you have a great mind and all, Mother,” Sandy said, “but you don’t have much sense. And certainly Meg and Charles don’t.”

 

“I know. We’re morons.” Meg was bitter.

 

“I wish you wouldn’t be such a dope, Meg. Syrup, please.” Sandy reached across the table. “You don’t have to take everything so personally. Use a happy medium, for heaven’s sake. You just goof around in school and look out the window and don’t pay any attention.”

 

“You just make things harder for yourself,” Dennys said. “And Charles Wallace is going to have an awful time next year when he starts school. We know he’s bright, but he’s so funny when he’s around other people, and they’re so used to thinking he’s dumb, I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. Sandy and I’ll sock anybody who picks on him, but that’s about all we can do.”

 

“Let’s not worry about next year till we get through this one,” Mrs. Murry said. “More French toast boys?”

 

At school Meg was tired and her eyelids sagged and her mind wandered. In social studies she was

asked to name the principal imports and exports of Nicaragua, and though she had looked them up dutifully the evening before, now she could remember none of them. The teacher was sarcastic, the rest of the class laughed, and she flung herself down in her seat in a fury. “Who cares about the imports and exports of Nicaragua, anyhow?” she muttered.

 

“If you’re going to be rude, Margaret, you may leave the room,” the teacher said.

 

“Okay, I will.” Meg flounced out.

 

During study hall the principal sent for her. “What seems to be the problem now, Meg?” he asked, pleasantly enough.

 

Meg looked sulkily down at the floor. “Nothing, Mr. Jenkins.” “Miss Porter tells me you were inexcusably rude.” Meg shrugged.

 

“Don’t you realize that you just make everything harder for yourself by your attitude?” the principal asked. “Now, Meg, I’m convinced that you can do the work and keep up with your grade if you will apply yourself, but some of your teachers are not. You’re going to have to do something about yourself. Nobody can do it for you.” Meg was silent. “Well? What about it, Meg?”

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Meg said.

 

“You could do your homework, for one thing. Wouldn’t your mother help you?” “If I asked her to.”

 

“Meg, is something troubling you? Are you unhappy at home?” Mr. Jenkins asked.

 

At last Meg looked at him, pushing at her glasses in a characteristic gesture. “Everything’s fine at home.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it. But I know it must be hard on you to have your father away.” Meg eyed the principal warily, and ran her tongue over the barbed line of her braces. “Have you had any news from him lately?”

 

Meg was sure it was not only imagination that made her feel that behind Mr. Jenkins’ surface concern was a gleam of avid curiosity. Wouldn’t he like to know! she thought. And if I knew anything he’s the last person I’d tell. Well, one of the last.

 

The postmistress must know that it was almost a year now since the last letter, and heaven knows how many people she’d told, or what unkind guesses she’d made about the reason for the long silence.

 

Mr. Jenkins waited for an answer, but Meg only shrugged.

 

“Just what was your father’s line of business?” Mr. Jenkins asked. “Some kind of scientist, wasn’ he?”

 

“He is a physicist.” Meg bared her teeth to reveal the two ferocious lines of braces. “Meg, don’t you think you’d make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?”

“I do face facts,” Meg said. “They’re lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.” “Then why don’t you face facts about your father?” “You leave my father out of it!” Meg shouted.

 

“Stop bellowing,” Mr. Jenkins said sharply. “Do you want the entire school to hear you?” “So what?” Meg demanded. “I’m not ashamed of anything I’m saying. Are you?”

Mr. Jenkins sighed. “Do you enjoy being the most belligerent, uncooperative child in school?”

 

Meg ignored this. She leaned over the desk toward the principal. “Mr. Jenkins, you’ve met my mother, haven’t you? You can’t accuse her of not facing facts, can you? She’s a scientist. She has

doctors’ degrees in both biology and bacteriology. Her business is facts. When she tells me that my father isn’t coming home, I’ll believe it. As long as she says Father is coming home, then I’ll believe that.”

 

Mr. Jenkins sighed again. “No doubt your mother wants to believe that your father is coming home, Meg. Very well, I can’t do anything else with you. Go on back to study hall. Try to be a little less antagonistic. Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable.”

 

When Meg got home from school her mother was in the lab, the twins were at Little League, and Charles Wallace, the kitten, and Fortinbras were waiting for her. Fortinbras jumped up, put his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss, and the kitten rushed to his empty saucer and mewed loudly.

 

“Come on,” Charles Wallace said. “Let’s go.”

 

“Where?” Meg asked. “I’m hungry, Charles. I don’t want to go anywhere till I’ve had something t eat.” She was still sore from the interview with Mr. Jenkins, and her voice sounded cross. Charles Wallace looked at her thoughtfully as she went to the refrigerator and gave the kitten some milk, then drank a mugful herself.

 

He handed her a paper bag. “Here’s a sandwich and some cookies and an apple. I thought we’d better go see Mrs Whatsit.”

 

“Oh, golly,” Meg said. “Why, Charles?”

 

“You’re still uneasy about her, aren’t you?” Charles asked.

 

“Well, yes.”

 

“Don’t be. She’s all right. I promise you. She’s on our side.” “How do you know?”

 

“Meg,” he said impatiently. “I know.”

 

“But why should we go see her now?”

 

“I want to find out more about that tesseract thing. Didn’t you see how it upset Mother? You know when Mother can’t control the way she feels, when she lets us see she’s upset, then it’s something big.”

 

Meg thought for a moment. “Okay, let’s go. But let’s take Fortinbras with us.” “Well, of course. He needs the exercise.”

 

They set off, Fortinbras rushing ahead, then doubling back to the two children, then leaping off again. The Murrys lived about four miles out of the village. Behind the house was a pine woods and it was through this that Charles Wallace took Meg.

 

“Charles, you know she’s going to get in awful trouble—Mrs Whatsit, I mean—if they find ou she’s broken into the haunted house. And taking Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets and everything. They could send her to jail.”

 

“One of the reasons I want to go over this afternoon is to warn them.” “Them?”

 

“I told you she was there with her two friends. I’m not even sure it was Mrs Whatsit herself who took the sheets, though I wouldn’t put it past her.”

 

“But what would she want all those sheets for?”

 

“I intend to ask her,” Charles Wallace said, “and to tell them they’d better be more careful. I don’t really think they’ll let anybody find them, but I just thought we ought to mention the possibility.

Sometimes during vacations some of the boys go out there looking for thrills, but I don’t think anybody’s apt to right now, what with basketball and everything.”

 

They walked in silence for a moment through the fragrant woods, the rusty pine needles gentle under their feet. Up above them the wind made music in the branches. Charles Wallace slipped his hand confidingly in Meg’s, and the sweet, little-boy gesture warmed her so that she felt the tense knot inside her begin to loosen. Charles loves me at any rate, she thought.

 

“School awful again today?” he asked after a while.

 

“Yes. I got sent to Mr. Jenkins. He made snide remarks about Father.” Charles Wallace nodded sagely. “I know.” “How do you know?”

 

Charles Wallace shook his head. “I can’t quite explain. You tell me, that’s all.” “But I never say anything. You just seem to know.” “Everything about you tells me,” Charles said.

 

“How about the twins?” Meg asked. “Do you know about them, too?”

 

“I suppose I could if I wanted to. If they needed me. But it’s sort of tiring, so I just concentrate o you and Mother.”

 

“You mean you read our minds?”

 

Charles Wallace looked troubled. “I don’t think it’s that. It’s being able to understand a sort of language, like sometimes if I concentrate very hard I can understand the wind talking with the trees. You tell me, you see, sort of inad—inadvertently. That’s a good word, isn’t it? I got Mother to look it up in the dictionary for me this morning. I really must learn to read, except I’m afraid it will make it awfully hard for me in school next year if I already know things. I think it will be better if people go on thinking I’m not very bright. They won’t hate me quite so much.”

 

Ahead of them Fortinbras started barking loudly, the warning bay that usually told them that a car was coming up the road or that someone was at the door.

 

“Somebody’s here,” Charles Wallace said sharply. “Somebody’s hanging around the house. Come on.” He started to run, his short legs straining. At the edge of the woods Fortinbras stood in front of a boy, barking furiously.

 

As they came panting up the boy said, “For crying out loud, call off your dog.” “Who is he?” Charles Wallace asked Meg.

 

“Calvin O’Keefe. He’s in Regional, but he’s older than I am. He’s a big bug.” “It’s all right, fella. I’m not going to hurt you,” the boy said to Fortinbras.

“Sit, Fort,” Charles Wallace commanded, and Fortinbras dropped to his haunches in front of the boy, a low growl still pulsing in his dark throat.

 

“Okay.” Charles Wallace put his hands on his hips. “Now tell us what you’re doing here.”

 

“I might ask the same of you,” the boy said with some indignation. “Aren’t you two of the Murry kids? This isn’t your property, is it?” He started to move, but Fortinbras’s growl grew louder and he stopped.

 

“Tell me about him, Meg,” Charles Wallace demanded.

 

“What would I know about him?” Meg asked. “He’s a couple of grades above me, and he’s on the basketball team.”

 

“Just because I’m tall.” Calvin sounded a little embarrassed. Tall he certainly was, and skinny. His bony wrists stuck out of the sleeves of his blue sweater; his worn corduroy trousers were three inches

too short. He had orange hair that needed cutting and the appropriate freckles to go with it. His eyes were an oddly bright blue.

 

“Tell us what you’re doing here,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“What is this? The third degree? Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be the moron?”

 

Meg flushed with rage, but Charles Wallace answered placidly, “That’s right. If you want me to call my dog off you’d better give.”

 

“Most peculiar moron I’ve ever met,” Calvin said. “I just came to get away from my family.” Charles Wallace nodded. “What kind of family?”

 

“They all have runny noses. I’m third from the top of eleven kids. I’m a sport.” At that Charles Wallace grinned widely. “So ’m I.” “I don’t mean like in baseball,” Calvin said.

 

“Neither do I.”

 

“I mean like in biology,” Calvin said suspiciously.

 

“A change in gene,” Charles Wallace quoted, “resulting in the appearance in the offspring of a character which is not present in the parents but which is potentially transmissible to its offspring.”

 

“What gives around here?” Calvin asked. “I was told you couldn’t talk.”

 

“Thinking I’m a moron gives people something to feel smug about,” Charles Wallace said. “Why should I disillusion them? How old are you, Cal?”

 

“Fourteen.”

 

“What grade?”

 

“Junior. Eleventh. I’m bright. Listen, did anybody ask you to come here this afternoon?”

 

Charles Wallace, holding Fort by the collar, looked at Calvin suspiciously. “What do you mean, asked?”

 

Calvin shrugged. “You still don’t trust me, do you?” “I don’t distrust you,” Charles Wallace said. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here, then?”

 

“Fort and Meg and I decided to go for a walk. We often do in the afternoon.” Calvin dug his hands down in his pockets. “You’re holding out on me.” “So ’re you,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“Okay, old sport,” Calvin said, “I’ll tell you this much. Sometimes I get a feeling about things. You might call it a compulsion. Do you know what compulsion means?”

 

“Constraint. Obligation. Because one is compelled. Not a very good definition, but it’s the Concise Oxford.”

 

“Okay, okay,” Calvin sighed. “I must remember I’m preconditioned in my concept of your mentality.”

 

Meg sat down on the coarse grass at the edge of the woods. Fort gently twisted his collar out of Charles Wallace’s hands and came over to Meg, lying down beside her and putting his head in her lap.

 

Calvin tried now politely to direct his words toward Meg as well as Charles Wallace, “When I ge this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can’t explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn’t happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I mus come over to the haunted house. That’s all I know, kid. I’m not holding anything back. Maybe it’s

because I’m supposed to meet you. You tell me.”

 

Charles Wallace looked at Calvin probingly for a moment; then an almost glazed look came into his eyes, and he seemed to be thinking at him. Calvin stood very still, and waited.

 

At last Charles Wallace said. “Okay. I believe you. But I can’t tell you. I think I’d like to trust you Maybe you’d better come home with us and have dinner.”

 

“Well, sure, but—what would your mother say to that?” Calvin asked.

 

“She’d be delighted. Mother’s all right. She’s not one of us. But she’s all right.” “What about Meg?”

 

“Meg has it tough,” Charles Wallace said. “She’s not really one thing or the other.”

 

“What do you mean, one of us?” Meg demanded. “What do you mean I’m not one thing or the other?”

 

“Not now, Meg,” Charles Wallace said. “Slowly. I’ll tell you about it later.” He looked at Calvin then seemed to make a quick decision. “Okay, let’s take him to meet Mrs Whatsit. If he’s not okay she’ll know.” He started off on his short legs toward the dilapidated old house.

 

The haunted house was half in the shadows of the clump of elms in which it stood. The elms were almost bare, now, and the ground around the house was yellow with damp leaves. The late afternoon light had a greenish cast which the blank windows reflected in a sinister way. An unhinged shutter thumped. Something else creaked. Meg did not wonder that the house had a reputation for being haunted.

 

A board was nailed across the front door, but Charles Wallace led the way around to the back. The door there appeared to be nailed shut, too, but Charles Wallace knocked, and the door swung slowly outward, creaking on rusty hinges. Up in one of the elms an old black crow gave its raucous cry, and a woodpecker went into a wild rat-a-tat-tat. A large gray rat scuttled around the corner of the house and Meg let out a stifled shriek.

 

“They get a lot of fun out of using all the typical props,” Charles Wallace said in a reassuring voice. “Come on. Follow me.”

 

Calvin put a strong hand to Meg’s elbow, and Fort pressed against her leg. Happiness at their concern was so strong in her that her panic fled, and she followed Charles Wallace into the dark recesses of the house without fear.

 

They entered into a sort of kitchen. There was a huge fireplace with a big black pot hanging over a merry fire. Why had there been no smoke visible from the chimney? Something in the pot was bubbling, and it smelled more like one of Mrs. Murry’s chemical messes than something to eat. In a dilapidated Boston rocker sat a plump little woman. She wasn’t Mrs Whatsit, so she must, Me decided, be one of Mrs Whatsit’s two friends. She wore enormous spectacles, twice as thick and twice as large as Meg’s, and she was sewing busily, with rapid jabbing stitches, on a sheet. Several other sheets lay on the dusty floor.

 

Charles Wallace went up to her. “I really don’t think you ought to have taken Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets without consulting me,” he said, as cross and bossy as only a very small boy can be. “What on earth do you want them for?”

 

The plump little woman beamed at him. “Why, Charlsie, my pet! Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.”

 

“But that’s not appropriate at all,” Charles said crossly.

 

“Your mother would find it so.” A smile seemed to gleam through the roundness of spectacles.

“I’m not talking about my mother’s feelings about my father,” Charles Wallace scolded. “I’m talking about Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets.”

 

The little woman sighed. The enormous glasses caught the light again and shone like an owl’s eyes. “In case we need ghosts, of course,” she said. “I should think you’d have guessed. If we have to frighten anybody away Whatsit thought we ought to do it appropriately. That’s why it’s so much fun to stay in a haunted house. But we really didn’t mean you to know about the sheets. Auf frischer Tat ertappt. German. In flagrante delicto. Latin. Caught in the act. English. As I was saying—”

 

But Charles Wallace held up his hand in a peremptory gesture. “Mrs Who, do you know this boy?” Calvin bowed. “Good afternoon, Ma’am. I didn’t quite catch your name.”

 

“Mrs Who will do,” the woman said. “He wasn’t my idea, Charlsie, but I think he’s a good one.” “Where’s Mrs Whatsit?” Charles asked.

 

“She’s busy. It’s getting near time, Charlsie, getting near time. Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. Seneca. Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable. And he’s a very good man, Charlsie, darling, but right now he needs our help.”

 

“Who?” Meg demanded.

 

“And little Megsie! Lovely to meet you, sweetheart. Your father, of course. Now go home, loves. The time is not yet ripe. Don’t worry, we won’t go without you. Get plenty of food and rest. Feed Calvin up. Now, off with you! Justitiae soror fides. Latin again, of course. Faith is the sister of justice. Trust in us! Now, shoo!” And she fluttered up from her chair and pushed them out the door with surprising power.

 

“Charles,” Meg said. “I don’t understand.”

 

Charles took her by the hand and dragged her away from the house. Fortinbras ran on ahead, and Calvin was close behind them. “No,” he said, “I don’t either, yet. Not quite. I’ll tell you what I know as soon as I can. But you saw Fort, didn’t you? Not a growl. Not a quiver. Just as though ther weren’t anything strange about it. So you know it’s okay. Look, do me a favor, both of you. Let’s not talk about it till we’ve had something to eat. I need fuel so I can sort things out and assimilate them properly.”

 

“Lead on, moron,” Calvin cried gaily. “I’ve never even seen your house, and I have the funnies feeling that for the first time in my life I’m going home!”

THREE

Mrs Which

 

In the forest evening was already beginning to fall, and they walked in silence. Charles and Fortinbras gamboled on ahead. Calvin walked with Meg, his fingers barely touching her arm in a protective gesture.

 

This has been the most impossible, the most confusing afternoon of my life, she thought, yet I don’t feel confused or upset anymore; I only feel happy. Why?

 

“Maybe we weren’t meant to meet before this,” Calvin said. “I mean, I knew who you were i school and everything, but I didn’t know you. But I’m glad we’ve met now, Meg. We’re going to be friends, you know.”

 

“I’m glad, too,” Meg whispered, and they were silent again.

 

When they got back to the house Mrs. Murry was still in the lab. She was watching a pale blue fluid move slowly through a tube from a beaker to a retort. Over a Bunsen burner bubbled a big, earthenware dish of stew. “Don’t tell Sandy and Dennys I’m cooking out here,” she said. “They’re always suspicious that a few chemicals may get in with the meat, but I had an experiment I wanted to stay with.”

 

“This is Calvin O’Keefe, Mother,” Meg said. “Is there enough for him, too? It smells super.” “Hello, Calvin.” Mrs. Murry shook hands with him. “Nice to meet you. We aren’t having anything

but stew tonight, but it’s a good thick one.”

 

“Sounds wonderful to me,” Calvin said. “May I use your phone so my mother’ll know where I am?” “Of course. Show him where it is, will you, please, Meg? I won’t ask you to use the one out here, i

you don’t mind. I’d like to finish up this experiment.”

 

Meg led the way into the house. Charles Wallace and Fortinbras had gone off. Outdoors she could hear Sandy and Dennys hammering at the fort they were building up in one of the maples. “This way.” Meg went through the kitchen and into the living room.

 

“I don’t know why I call her when I don’t come home,” Calvin said, his voice bitter. “She wouldn’ notice.” He sighed and dialed. “Ma?” he said. “Oh, Hinky. Tell Ma I won’t be home till late. Now don’t forget. I don’t want to be locked out again.” He hung up, looked at Meg. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

 

She smiled rather wryly. “Not most of the time.”

 

“A mother like that! A house like this! Gee, your mother’s gorgeous! You should see my mother. She had all her upper teeth out and Pop got her a plate but she won’t wear it, and most days she doesn’t even comb her hair. Not that it makes much difference when she does.” He clenched his fists. “But I love her. That’s the funny part of it. I love them all, and they don’t give a hoot about me. Maybe that’s why I call when I’m not going to be home. Because I care. Nobody else does. You don’t know how lucky you are to be loved.”

 

Meg said in a startled way, “I guess I never thought of that. I guess I just took it for granted.” Calvin looked somber; then his enormous smile lit up his face again. “Things are going to happen,

 

Meg! Good things! I feel it!” He began wandering, still slowly, around the pleasant, if shabby, living room. He stopped before a picture on the piano of a small group of men standing together on a beach.

“Who’s this?”

 

“Oh, a bunch of scientists.”

 

“Where?”

 

Meg went over to the picture. “Cape Canaveral. This one’s Father.”

 

“Which?”

 

“Here.”

 

“The one with glasses?”

 

“Yup. The one who needs a haircut.” Meg giggled, forgetting her worries in her pleasure at showing Calvin the picture. “His hair’s sort of the same color as mine, and he keeps forgetting to have it cut. Mother usually ends up doing it for him—she bought clippers and stuff—because he won’t take the time to go to the barber.”

 

Calvin studied the picture. “I like him,” he announced judiciously. “Looks kind of like Charles Wallace, doesn’t he?”

 

Meg laughed again. “When Charles was a baby he looked exactly like Father. It was really funny.”

 

Calvin continued to look at the picture. “He’s not handsome or anything. But I like him.”

 

Meg was indignant. “He is too handsome.”

 

Calvin shook his head. “Nah. He’s tall and skinny like me.”

 

“Well, I think you’re handsome,” Meg said. “Father’s eyes are kind of like yours, too. You know. Really blue. Only you don’t notice his as much because of the glasses.”

 

“Where is he now?”

 

Meg stiffened. But she didn’t have to answer because the door from lab to kitchen slammed, and Mrs. Murry came in, carrying a dish of stew. “Now,” she called, “I’ll finish this up properly on the stove. Have you done your homework, Meg?”

 

“Not quite,” Meg said, going back into the kitchen.

 

“Then I’m sure Calvin won’t mind if you finish before dinner.”

 

“Sure, go ahead.” Calvin fished in his pocket and pulled out a wad of folded paper. “As a matter of fact I have some junk of mine to finish up. Math. That’s one thing I have a hard time keeping up in. I’m okay on anything to do with words, but I don’t do as well with numbers.”

 

Mrs. Murry smiled. “Why don’t you get Meg to help you?” “But, see, I’m several grades above Meg.”

 

“Try asking her to help you with your math, anyhow,” Mrs. Murry suggested.

 

“Well, sure,” Calvin said. “Here. But it’s pretty complicated.”

 

Meg smoothed out the paper and studied it. “Do they care how you do it?” she asked. “I mean, can you work it out your own way?”

 

“Well, sure, as long as I understand and get the answers right.”

 

“Well, we have to do it their way. Now look, Calvin, don’t you see how much easier it would be if you did it this way?” Her pencil flew over the paper.

 

“Hey!” Calvin said. “Hey! I think I get it. Show me once more on another one.”

 

Again Meg’s pencil was busy. “All you have to remember is that every ordinary fraction can be converted into an infinite periodic decimal fraction. See? So 3/7 is 0.428571.”

 

“This is the craziest family.” Calvin grinned at her. “I suppose I should stop being surprised by now, but you’re supposed to be dumb in school, always being called up on the carpet.”

 

“Oh, I am.”

“The trouble with Meg and math,” Mrs. Murry said briskly, “is that Meg and her father used to pla with numbers and Meg learned far too many shortcuts. So when they want her to do problems the long way around at school she gets sullen and stubborn and sets up a fine mental block for herself.”

 

“Are there any more morons like Meg and Charles around?” Calvin asked. “If so, I should mee more of them.”

 

“It might also help if Meg’s handwriting were legible,” Mrs. Murry said. “With a good deal o difficulty I can usually decipher it, but I doubt very much if her teachers can, or are willing to take the time. I’m planning on giving her a typewriter for Christmas. That may be a help.”

 

“If I get anything right nobody’ll believe it’s me,” Meg said.

 

“What’s a megaparsec?” Calvin asked.

 

“One of Father’s nicknames for me,” Meg said. “It’s also 3.26 million light years.” “What’s E = mc2?”

“Einstein’s equation.”

 

“What’s E stand for?”

 

“Energy.”

 

“m?”

 

“Mass.”

“c2?”

 

“The square of the velocity of light in centimeters per second.” “By what countries is Peru bounded?”

 

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I think it’s in South America somewhere.” “What’s the capital of New York?” “Well, New York City, of course!”

 

“Who wrote Boswell’s Life of Johnson?”

 

“Oh, Calvin, I’m not any good at English.”

 

Calvin groaned and turned to Mrs. Murry. “I see what you mean. Her I wouldn’t want to teach.” “She’s a little one-sided, I grant you,” Mrs. Murry said, “though I blame her father and myself fo

 

that. She still enjoys playing with her dolls’ house, though.” “Mother!” Meg shrieked in agony.

 

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Murry said swiftly. “But I’m sure Calvin understands what I mean.” With a sudden enthusiastic gesture Calvin flung his arms out wide, as though he were embracing

Meg and her mother, the whole house. “How did all this happen? Isn’t it wonderful? I feel as though were just being born! I’m not alone anymore! Do you realize what that means to me?”

 

“But you’re good at basketball and things,” Meg protested. “You’re good in school. Everybody likes you.”

 

“For all the most unimportant reasons,” Calvin said. “There hasn’t been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, I can hold mysel down, but it isn’t me.”

 

Meg took a batch of forks from the drawer and turned them over and over, looking at them. “I’m all confused again.”

 

“Oh, so ’m I,” Calvin said gaily. “But now at least I know we’re going somewhere.”

 

Meg was pleased and a little surprised when the twins were excited at having Calvin for supper.

They knew more about his athletic record and were far more impressed by it than she. Calvin ate five bowls of stew, three saucers of Jello, and a dozen cookies, and then Charles Wallace insisted that Calvin take him up to bed and read to him. The twins, who had finished their homework, were allowed to watch half an hour ofTV. Meg helped her mother with the dishes and then sat at the table and struggled with her homework. But she could not concentrate.

 

“Mother, are you upset?” she asked suddenly.

 

Mrs. Murry looked up from a copy of an English scientific magazine through which she was leafing For a moment she did not speak. Then, “Yes.”

 

“Why?”

 

Again Mrs. Murry paused. She held her hands out and looked at them. They were long and strong and beautiful. She touched with the fingers of her right hand the broad gold band on the third finger of her left hand. “I’m still quite a young woman, you know,” she said finally, “though I realize that that’s difficult for you children to conceive. And I’m still very much in love with your father. I miss him quite dreadfully.”

 

“And you think all this has something to do with Father?”

 

“I think it must have.”

 

“But what?”

 

“That I don’t know. But it seems the only explanation.” “Do you think things always have an explanation?”

“Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we’re not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”

 

“I like to understand things,” Meg said.

 

“We all do. But it isn’t always possible.”

 

“Charles Wallace understands more than the rest of us, doesn’t he?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I suppose because he’s—well, because he’s different, Meg.” “Different how?”

 

“I’m not quite sure. You know yourself he’s not like anybody else.” “No. And I wouldn’t want him to be,” Meg said defensively.

“Wanting doesn’t have anything to do with it. Charles Wallace is what he is. Different. New.” “New?”

 

“Yes. That’s what your father and I feel.”

 

Meg twisted her pencil so hard that it broke. She laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m really not being destructive. I’m just trying to get things straight.”

 

“I know.”

 

“But Charles Wallace doesn’t look different from anybody else.”

 

“No, Meg, but people are more than just the way they look. Charles Wallace’s difference isn’t physical. It’s in essence.”

 

Meg sighed heavily, took off her glasses and twirled them, put them back on again. “Well, I know Charles Wallace is different, and I know he’s something more. I guess I’ll just have to accept it without understanding it.”

Mrs. Murry smiled at her. “Maybe that’s really the point I was trying to put across.” “Yah,” Meg said dubiously.

 

Her mother smiled again. “Maybe that’s why our visitor last night didn’t surprise me. Maybe that’s why I’m able to have a—a willing suspension of disbelief. Because of Charles Wallace.”

 

“Are you like Charles?” Meg asked.

 

“I? Heavens no. I’m blessed with more brains and opportunities than many people, but there’s nothing about me that breaks out of the ordinary mold.”

 

“Your looks do,” Meg said.

 

Mrs. Murry laughed. “You just haven’t had enough basis for comparison, Meg. I’m very ordinary, really.”

 

Calvin O’Keefe, coming in then, said, “Ha ha.”

 

“Charles all settled?” Mrs. Murry asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“What did you read to him?”

 

“Genesis. His choice. By the way, what kind of an experiment were you working on this afternoon, Mrs. Murry?”

 

“Oh, something my husband and I were cooking up together. I don’t want to be too far behind him when he gets back.”

 

“Mother,” Meg pursued. “Charles says I’m not one thing or the other, not flesh nor fowl nor good red herring.”

 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Calvin said, “you’re Meg, aren’t you? Come on and let’s go for a walk.” But Meg was still not satisfied. “And what do you make of Calvin?” she demanded of her mother. Mrs. Murry laughed. “I don’t want to make anything of Calvin. I like him very much, and I’m

delighted he’s found his way here.”

 

“Mother, you were going to tell me about a tesseract.”

 

“Yes.” A troubled look came into Mrs. Murry’s eyes. “But not now, Meg. Not now. Go on out for that walk with Calvin. I’m going up to kiss Charles and then I have to see that the twins get to bed.”

 

Outdoors the grass was wet with dew. The moon was halfway up and dimmed the stars for a great arc. Calvin reached out and took Meg’s hand with a gesture as simple and friendly as Charles Wallace’s. “Were you upsetting your mother?” he asked gently.

 

“I don’t think I was. But she’s upset.”

 

“What about?”

 

“Father.”

 

Calvin led Meg across the lawn. The shadows of the trees were long and twisted and there was a heavy, sweet, autumnal smell to the air. Meg stumbled as the land sloped suddenly downhill, but Calvin’s strong hand steadied her. They walked carefully across the twins’ vegetable garden, picking their way through rows of cabbages, beets, broccoli, pumpkins. Looming on their left were the tall stalks of corn. Ahead of them was a small apple orchard bounded by a stone wall, and beyond this the woods through which they had walked that afternoon. Calvin led the way to the wall, and then sat there, his red hair shining silver in the moonlight, his body dappled with patterns from the tangle of branches. He reached up, pulled an apple off a gnarled limb, and handed it to Meg, then picked one for himself. “Tell me about your father.”

 

“He’s a physicist.”

“Sure, we all know that. And he’s supposed to have left your mother and gone off with some dame.” Meg jerked up from the stone on which she was perched, but Calvin grabbed her by the wrist and

 

pulled her back down. “Hold it, kid. I didn’t say anything you hadn’t heard already, did I?” “No,” Meg said, but continued to pull away. “Let me go.”

 

“Come on, calm down. You know it isn’t true, I know it isn’t true. And how anybody after one look at your mother could believe any man would leave her for another woman just shows how far jealousy will make people go. Right?”

 

“I guess so,” Meg said, but her happiness had fled and she was back in a morass of anger and resentment.

 

“Look, dope.” Calvin shook her gently. “I just want to get things straight, sort of sort out the fact from fiction. Your father’s a physicist. That’s a fact, yes?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“He’s a Ph.D. several times over.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Most of the time he works alone but some of the time he was at the Institute for Higher Learning i Princeton. Correct?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then he did some work for the government, didn’t he?” “Yes.”

 

“You take it from there. That’s all I know.”

 

“That’s about all I know, too,” Meg said. “Maybe Mother knows more. I don’t know. What he did was—well, it was what they call Classified.”

 

“Top Secret, you mean?”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“And you don’t even have any idea what it was about?”

 

Meg shook her head. “No. Not really. Just an idea because of where he was.” “Well, where?”

 

“Out in New Mexico for a while; we were with him there; and then he was in Florida at Cap Canaveral, and we were with him there, too. And then he was going to be traveling a lot, so we came here.”

 

“You’d always had this house?”

 

“Yes. But we used to live in it just in the summer.” “And you don’t know where your father was sent?”

“No. At first we got lots of letters. Mother and Father always wrote each other every day. I think Mother still writes him every night. Every once in a while the postmistress makes some kind of a crack about all her letters.”

 

“I suppose they think she’s pursuing him or something,” Calvin said, rather bitterly. “They can’t understand plain, ordinary love when they see it. Well, go on. What happened next?”

 

“Nothing happened,” Meg said. “That’s the trouble.” “Well, what about your father’s letters?” “They just stopped coming.”

 

“You haven’t heard anything at all?”

 

“No,” Meg said. “Nothing.” Her voice was heavy with misery.

Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.

 

At last Calvin spoke in a dry, unemotional voice, not looking at Meg. “Do you think he could be dead?”

 

Again Meg leaped up, and again Calvin pulled her down. “No! They’d have told us if he wer dead! There’s always a telegram or something. They always tell you!”

 

“What do they tell you?”

 

Meg choked down a sob, managed to speak over it. “Oh, Calvin, Mother’s tried and tried to find out. She’s been down to Washington and everything. And all they’ll say is that he’s on a secret and dangerous mission, and she can be very proud of him, but he won’t be able to—to communicate with us for a while. And they’ll give us news as soon as they have it.”

 

“Meg, don’t get mad, but do you think maybe they don’t know?”

 

A slow tear trickled down Meg’s cheek. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

 

“Why don’t you cry?” Calvin asked gently. “You’re just crazy about your father, aren’t you? Go ahead and cry. It’ll do you good.”

 

Meg’s voice came out trembling over tears. “I cry much too much. I should be like Mother. I should be able to control myself.”

 

“Your mother’s a completely different person and she’s a lot older than you are.” “I wish I were a different person,” Meg said shakily. “I hate myself.”

 

Calvin reached over and took off her glasses. Then he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped her tears. This gesture of tenderness undid her completely, and she put her head down on her knees and sobbed. Calvin sat quietly beside her, every once in a while patting her head. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed finally. “I’m terribly sorry. Now you’ll hate me.”

 

“Oh, Meg, you are a moron,” Calvin said. “Don’t you know you’re the nicest thing that’s happened to me in a long time?”

 

Meg raised her head, and moonlight shone on her tearstained face; without the glasses her eyes were unexpectedly beautiful. “If Charles Wallace is a sport, I think I’m a biological mistake.” Moonlight flashed against her braces as she spoke.

 

Now she was waiting to be contradicted. But Calvin said, “Do you know that this is the first time I’ve seen you without your glasses?”

 

“I’m blind as a bat without them. I’m near-sighted, like Father.”

 

“Well, you know what, you’ve got dream-boat eyes,” Calvin said. “Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don’t think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have.”

 

Meg smiled with pleasure. She could feel herself blushing and she wondered if the blush would be visible in the moonlight.

 

“Okay, hold it, you two,” came a voice out of the shadows. Charles Wallace stepped into the moonlight. “I wasn’t spying on you,” he said quickly, “and I hate to break things up, but this is it, kids, this is it!” His voice quivered with excitement.

 

“This is what?” Calvin asked.

 

“We’re going.”

 

“Going? Where?” Meg reached out and instinctively grabbed for Calvin’s hand.

 

“I don’t know exactly,” Charles Wallace said. “But I think it’s to find Father.”

 

Suddenly two eyes seemed to spring at them out of the darkness; it was the moonlight striking on

Mrs Who’s glasses. She was standing next to Charles Wallace, and how she had managed to appear where a moment ago there had been nothing but flickering shadows in the moonlight Meg had no idea. She heard a sound behind her and turned around. There was Mrs Whatsit scrambling over the wall.

 

“My, but I wish there were no wind,” Mrs Whatsit said plaintively. “It’s so difficult with all these clothes.” She wore her outfit of the night before, rubber boots and all, with the addition of one of Mrs. Buncombe’s sheets which she had draped over her. As she slid off the wall the sheet caught in a low branch and came off. The felt hat slipped over both eyes, and another branch plucked at the pink stole. “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I shall never learn to manage.”

 

Mrs Who wafted over to her, tiny feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground, the lenses of her glasses glittering. “Come t’è picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!” With a clawlike hand she pushed the hat up on Mrs Whatsit’s forehead, untangled the stole from the tree, and with a deft gesture took the sheet and folded it.

 

“Oh, thank you,” Mrs Whatsit said. “You’re so clever!”

 

“Un asno viejo sabe más que un potro. A. Perez. An old ass knows more than a young colt.” “Just because you’re a paltry few billion years—” Mrs Whatsit was starting indignantly, when a

 

sharp, strange voice cut in.

 

“Alll rrightt, girrllss. Thiss iss nno ttime forr bbickkerring.” “It’s Mrs Which,” Charles Wallace said.

 

There was a faint gust of wind, the leaves shivered in it, the patterns of moonlight shifted, and in a circle of silver something shimmered, quivered, and the voice said, “I ddo nott thinkk I willl matterrialize commpletely. I ffindd itt verry ttirinngg, andd wee hhave mmuch ttoo ddoo.”

FOUR

The Black Thing

 

The trees were lashed into a violent frenzy. Meg screamed and clutched at Calvin, and Mrs Which’s authoritative voice called out, “Qquiett, chilldd!”

 

Did a shadow fall across the moon or did the moon simply go out, extinguished as abruptly and completely as a candle? There was still the sound of leaves, a terrified, terrifying rushing. All light was gone. Darkness was complete. Suddenly the wind was gone, and all sound. Meg felt that Calvi was being torn from her. When she reached for him her fingers touched nothing.

 

She screamed out, “Charles!” and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know. The word was flung back down her throat and she choked on it.

 

She was completely alone.

 

She had lost the protection of Calvin’s hand. Charles was nowhere, either to save or to turn to. She was alone in a fragment of nothingness. No light, no sound, no feeling. Where was her body? She tried to move in her panic, but there was nothing to move. Just as light and sound had vanished, she was gone, too. The corporeal Meg simply was not.

 

Then she felt her limbs again. Her legs and arms were tingling faintly, as though they had been asleep. She blinked her eyes rapidly, but though she herself was somehow back, nothing else was. It was not as simple as darkness, or absence of light. Darkness has a tangible quality; it can be moved through and felt; in darkness you can bark your shins; the world of things still exists around you. She was lost in a horrifying void.

 

It was the same way with the silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.

 

Suddenly she was aware of her heart beating rapidly within the cage of her ribs. Had it stopped before? What had made it start again? The tingling in her arms and legs grew stronger, and suddenly she felt movement. This movement, she felt, must be the turning of the earth, rotating on its axis, traveling its elliptic course about the sun. And this feeling of moving with the earth was somewhat like the feeling of being in the ocean, out in the ocean beyond this rising and falling of the breakers, lying on the moving water, pulsing gently with the swells, and feeling the gentle, inexorable tug of the moon.

 

I am asleep; I am dreaming, she thought. I’m having a nightmare. I want to wake up. Let me wak up.

 

“Well!” Charles Wallace’s voice said. “That was quite a trip! I do think you might have warned us.”

 

Light began to pulse and quiver. Meg blinked and shoved shakily at her glasses and there was Charles Wallace standing indignantly in front of her, his hands on his hips. “Meg!” he shouted. “Calvin! Where are you?”

 

She saw Charles, she heard him, but she could not go to him. She could not shove through the strange, trembling light to meet him.

 

Calvin’s voice came as though it were pushing through a cloud. “Well, just give me time, will you? I’m older than you are.”

Meg gasped. It wasn’t that Calvin wasn’t there and then that he was. It wasn’t that part of him came first and then the rest of him followed, like a hand and then an arm, an eye and then a nose. It was a sort of shimmering, a looking at Calvin through water, through smoke, through fire, and then there he was, solid and reassuring.

 

“Meg!” Charles Wallace’s voice came. “Meg! Calvin, where’s Meg?”

 

“I’m right here,” she tried to say, but her voice seemed to be caught at its source.

 

“Meg!” Calvin cried, and he turned around, looking about wildly.

 

“Mrs Which, you haven’t left Meg behind, have you?” Charles Wallace shouted.

 

“If you’ve hurt Meg, any of you—” Calvin started, but suddenly Meg felt a violent push and a shattering as though she had been thrust through a wall of glass.

 

“Oh, there you are!” Charles Wallace said, and rushed over to her and hugged her.

 

“But where am I?” Meg asked breathlessly, relieved to hear that her voice was now coming out of her in more or less a normal way.

 

She looked around rather wildly. They were standing in a sunlit field, and the air about them was moving with the delicious fragrance that comes only on the rarest of spring days when the sun’s touch is gentle and the apple blossoms are just beginning to unfold. She pushed her glasses up on her nose to reassure herself that what she was seeing was real.

 

They had left the silver glint of a biting autumn evening; and now around them everything was golden with light. The grasses of the field were a tender new green, and scattered about were tiny, multicolored flowers. Meg turned slowly to face a mountain reaching so high into the sky that its peak was lost in a crown of puffy white clouds. From the trees at the base of the mountain came a sudden singing of birds. There was an air of such ineffable peace and joy all around her that her heart’s wild thumping slowed.

 

“When shall we three meet again,

 

In thunder, lightning, or in rain,”

 

came Mrs Who’s voice. Suddenly the three of them were there, Mrs Whatsit with her pink stole askew; Mrs Who with her spectacles gleaming; and Mrs Which still little more than a shimmer Delicate, multicolored butterflies were fluttering about them, as though in greeting.

 

Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who began to giggle, and they giggled until it seemed that, whatever thei private joke was, they would fall down with the wild fun of it. The shimmer seemed to be laughing, too. It became vaguely darker and more solid; and then there appeared a figure in a black robe and a black peaked hat, beady eyes, a beaked nose, and long gray hair; one bony claw clutched a broomstick.

 

“Wwell, jusstt ttoo kkeepp yyou girrlls happpy,” the strange voice said, and Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who fell into each other’s arms in gales of laughter.

 

“If you ladies have had your fun I think you should tell Calvin and Meg a little more about all this,” Charles Wallace said coldly. “You scared Meg half out of her wits, whisking her off this way without any warning.”

 

“Finxerunt animi, raro et perpauca loquentis,” Mrs Who intoned. “Horace. To action little, less to words inclined.”

 

“Mrs Who, I wish you’d stop quoting!” Charles Wallace sounded very annoyed.

Mrs Whatsit adjusted her stole. “But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps he if she can quote instead of working out words of her own.”

 

“Anndd wee mussttn’tt looose ourr sensses of hummorr,” Mrs Which said. “Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt a llittlle lligghtly.”

 

“But that’s going to be hard for Meg,” Mrs Whatsit said. “It’s going to be hard for her to realize tha we are serious.”

 

“What about me?” Calvin asked.

 

“The life of your father isn’t at stake,” Mrs Whatsit told him.

 

“What about Charles Wallace, then?”

 

Mrs Whatsit’s unoiled-door-hinge voice was warm with affection and pride. “Charles Wallace knows. Charles Wallace knows that it’s far more than just the life of his father. Charles Wallace knows what’s at stake.”

 

“But remember,” Mrs Who said,  Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”

 

“Where are we now, and how did we get here?” Calvin asked.

 

“Uriel, the third planet of the star Malak in the spiral nebula Messier 101.” “This I’m supposed to believe?” Calvin asked indignantly. “Aas yyou llike,” Mrs Which said coldly.

 

For some reason Meg felt that Mrs Which, despite her looks and ephemeral broomstick, was someone in whom one could put complete trust. “It doesn’t seem any more peculiar than anything else that’s happened.”

 

“Well, then, someone just tell me how we got here!” Calvin’s voice was still angry and his freckles seemed to stand out on his face. “Even traveling at the speed of light it would take us years and years to get here.”

 

“Oh, we don’t travel at the speed of anything,” Mrs Whatsit explained earnestly. “We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle.”

 

“Clear as mud,” Calvin said.

 

Tesser, Meg thought. Could that have anything to do with Mother’s tesseract?

 

She was about to ask when Mrs Which started to speak, and one did not interrupt when Mrs Whic was speaking. “Mrs Whatsit iss yyoungg andd nnaïve.”

 

“She keeps thinking she can explain things in words,” Mrs Who said. “Qui plus sait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

 

“But she has to use words for Meg and Calvin,” Charles reminded Mrs Who. “If you brought the along, they have a right to know what’s going on.”

 

Meg went up to Mrs Which. In the intensity of her question she had forgotten all about the tesseract “Is my father here?”

 

Mrs Which shook her head. “Nnott heeere, Megg. Llett Mrs Whatsitt expllainn. Shee isss yyoung annd thee llanguage of worrds iss eeasierr fforr hherr thann itt iss fforr Mrs Whoo andd mee.”

 

“We stopped here,” Mrs Whatsit explained, “more or less to catch our breaths. And to give you a chance to know what you’re up against.”

 

“But what about Father?” Meg asked. “Is he all right?”

 

“For the moment, love, yes. He’s one of the reasons we’re here. But you see, he’s only one.” “Well, where is he? Please take me to him!”

“We can’t, not yet,” Charles said. “You have to be patient, Meg.”

 

“But I’m not patient!” Meg cried passionately. “I’ve never been patient!”

 

Mrs Who’s glasses shone at her gently. “If you want to help your father then you must learn patience. Vitam impendere vero. To stake one’s life for the truth. That is what we must do.”

 

“That is what your father is doing.” Mrs Whatsit nodded, her voice, like Mrs Who’s, very serious very solemn. Then she smiled her radiant smile. “Now! Why don’t you three children wander around and Charles can explain things a little. You’re perfectly safe on Uriel. That’s why we stopped here to rest.”

 

“But aren’t you coming with us?” Meg asked fearfully.

 

There was silence for a moment. Then Mrs Which raised her authoritative hand. “Sshoww themm, she said to Mrs Whatsit, and at something in her voice Meg felt prickles of apprehension.

 

“Now?” Mrs Whatsit asked, her creaky voice rising to a squeak. Whatever it was Mrs Whic wanted them to see, it was something that made Mrs Whatsit uncomfortable, too.

 

“Nnoww,” Mrs Which said. “Tthey mmay aas welll knoww.” “Should—should I change?” Mrs Whatsit asked. “Bbetter.”

 

“I hope it won’t upset the children too much,” Mrs Whatsit murmured, as though to herself.

 

“Should I change, too?” Mrs Who asked. “Oh, but I’ve hadfun in these clothes. But I’ll have to admit Mrs Whatsit is the best at it. Das Werk lobt den Meister. German. The work proves the craftsman. Shall I transform now, too?”

 

Mrs Which shook her head. “Nnott yett. Nnott heere. Yyou mmay wwaitt.”

 

“Now, don’t be frightened, loves,” Mrs Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description. Outwardly Mrs Whatsit was surely no longer a Mrs Whatsit. She was a marble white body with powerful flanks something like a horse but at the same time completely unlike a horse, for from the magnificently modeled back sprang a nobly formed torso, arms, and a head resembling a man’s, but a man with a perfection of dignity and virtue, an exaltation of joy such as Meg had never before seen. No, she thought, it’s not like a Greek centaur. Not in the least.

 

From the shoulders slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry.

 

Calvin fell to his knees.

 

“No,” Mrs Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs Whatsit’s voice. “Not to me, Calvin. Neve to me. Stand up.”

 

“Ccarrry themm,” Mrs Which commanded.

 

With a gesture both delicate and strong Mrs Whatsit knelt in front of the children, stretching her wings wide and holding them steady, but quivering. “Onto my back, now,” the new voice said.

 

The children took hesitant steps toward the beautiful creature.

 

“But what do we call you now?” Calvin asked.

 

“Oh, my dears,” came the new voice, a rich voice with the warmth of a woodwind, the clarity of a trumpet, the mystery of an English horn. “You can’t go on changing my name each time I metamorphose. And I’ve had such pleasure being Mrs Whatsit I think you’d better keep to that.” She

he? it? smiled at them, and the radiance of the smile was as tangible as a soft breeze, as directly warming as the rays of the sun.

 

“Come.” Charles Wallace clambered up.

 

Meg and Calvin followed him, Meg sitting between the two boys. A tremor went through the great wings and then Mrs Whatsit lifted and they were moving through the air.

 

Meg soon found that there was no need to cling to Charles Wallace or Calvin. The great creature’s flight was serenely smooth. The boys were eagerly looking around the landscape.

 

“Look.” Charles Wallace pointed. “The mountains are so tall that you can’t see where they end.” Meg looked upward and indeed the mountains seemed to be reaching into infinity.

 

They left the fertile fields and flew across a great plateau of granite-like rock shaped into enormous monoliths. These had a definite, rhythmic form, but they were not statues; they were like nothing Meg had ever seen before, and she wondered if they had been made by wind and weather, by the formation of this earth, or if they were a creation of beings like the one on which she rode.

 

They left the great granite plain and flew over a garden even more beautiful than anything in a dream. In it were gathered many of the creatures like the one Mrs Whatsit had become, some lying among the flowers, some swimming in a broad, crystal river that flowed through the garden, some flying in what Meg was sure must be a kind of dance, moving in and out above the trees. They were making music, music that came not only from their throats but from the movement of their great wings as well.

 

“What are they singing?” Meg asked excitedly.

 

Mrs Whatsit shook her beautiful head. “It won’t go into your words: I can’t possibly transfer it to your words. Are you getting any of it, Charles?”

 

Charles Wallace sat very still on the broad back, on his face an intently listening look, the look he had when he delved into Meg or his mother. “A little. Just a very little. But I think I could get more i time.”

 

“Yes. You could learn it, Charles. But there isn’t time. We can only stay here long enough to rest up and make a few preparations.”

 

Meg hardly listened to her. “I want to know what they’re saying! I want to know what it means.” “Try, Charles,” Mrs Whatsit urged. “Try to translate. You can let yourself go, now. You don’t have

to hold back.”

 

“But I can’t!” Charles Wallace cried in an anguished voice. “I don’t know enough! Not yet!” “Then try to work with me and I’ll see if I can’t verbalize it a little for them.” Charles Wallace got his look of probing, of listening.

 

I know that look! Meg thought suddenly. Now I think I know what it means! Because I’ve had i myself, sometimes, doing math with Father, when a problem is just about to come clear--

 

Mrs Whatsit seemed to be listening to Charles’s thoughts. “Well, yes, that’s an idea. I can try. Too bad you don’t really know it so you can give it to me direct, Charles. It’s so much more work this way.”

 

“Don’t be lazy,” Charles said.

 

Mrs Whatsit did not take offense. She explained, “Oh, it’s my favorite kind of work, Charles. That’s why they chose me to go along, even though I’m so much younger. It’s my one real talent. But it takes a tremendous amount of energy, and we’re going to need every ounce of energy for what’s ahead of us. But I’ll try. For Calvin and Meg I’lltry.” She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving;

only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. “Listen, then,” Mrs Whatsit said. The resonan voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them: “Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord!”

 

Throughout her entire body Meg felt a pulse of joy such as she had never known before. Calvin’s hand reached out; he did not clasp her hand in his; he moved his fingers so that they were barely touching hers, but joy flowed through them, back and forth between them, around them and about them and inside them.

 

When Mrs Whatsit sighed it seemed completely incomprehensible that through this bliss could come the faintest whisper of doubt.

 

“We must go now, children.” Mrs Whatsit’s voice was deep with sadness, and Meg could not understand. Raising her head, Mrs Whatsit gave a call that seemed to be a command, and one of the creatures flying above the trees nearest them raised its head to listen, and then flew off and picked three flowers from a tree growing near the river and brought them over. “Each of you take one,” Mrs Whatsit said. “I’ll tell you how to use them later.”

 

As Meg took her flower she realized that it was not a single blossom, but hundreds of tiny flowerets forming a kind of hollow bell.

 

“Where are we going?” Calvin asked.

 

“Up.”

 

The wings moved steadily, swiftly. The garden was left behind, the stretch of granite, the mighty shapes, and then Mrs Whatsit was flying upward, climbing steadily up, up. Below them the trees o the mountain dwindled, became sparse, were replaced by bushes and then small, dry grasses, and then vegetation ceased entirely and there were only rocks, points and peaks of rock, sharp and dangerous. “Hold on tight,” Mrs Whatsit said. “Don’t slip.”

 

Meg felt Calvin’s arm circle her waist in a secure hold.

 

Still they moved upward.

 

Now they were in clouds. They could see nothing but drifting whiteness, and the moisture clung to them and condensed in icy droplets. As Meg shivered, Calvin’s grip tightened. In front of her Charles Wallace sat quietly. Once he turned just long enough to give her a swift glance of tenderness and concern. But Meg felt as each moment passed that he was growing farther and farther away, that he was becoming less and less her adored baby brother and more and more one with whatever kind of being Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which in actuality were.

 

Abruptly they burst out of the clouds into a shaft of light. Below them there were still rocks; above them the rocks continued to reach up into the sky, but now, though it seemed miles upward, Meg could see where the mountain at last came to an end.

 

Mrs Whatsit continued to climb, her wings straining a little. Meg felt her heart racing; cold swea began to gather on her face and her lips felt as though they were turning blue. She began to gasp.

 

“All right, children, use your flowers now,” Mrs Whatsit said. “The atmosphere will continue to get thinner from now on. Hold the flowers up to your face and breathe through them and they will give you enough oxygen. It won’t be as much as you’re used to, but it will be enough.”

 

Meg had almost forgotten the flowers, and was grateful to realize that she was still clasping them,

that she hadn’t let them fall from her fingers. She pressed her face into the blossoms and breathed deeply.

 

Calvin still held her with one arm, but he, too, held the flowers to his face.

 

Charles Wallace moved the hand with the flowers slowly, almost as though he were in a dream. Mrs Whatsit’s wings strained against the thinness of the atmosphere. The summit was only a little

 

way above them, and then they were there. Mrs Whatsit came to rest on a small plateau of smooth silvery rock. There ahead of them was a great white disk.

 

“One of Uriel’s moons,” Mrs Whatsit told them, her mighty voice faintly breathless. “Oh, it’s beautiful!” Meg cried. “It’s beautiful!”

 

The silver light from the enormous moon poured over them, blending with the golden quality of the day, flowing over the children, over Mrs Whatsit, over the mountain peak.

 

“Now we will turn around,” Mrs Whatsit said, and at the quality of her voice, Meg was afraid again.

 

But when they turned she saw nothing. Ahead of them was the thin clear blue of sky; below them the rocks thrusting out of the shifting sea of white clouds.

 

“Now we will wait,” Mrs Whatsit said, “for sunset and moonset.” Almost as she spoke the light began to deepen, to darken. “I want to watch the moon set,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“No, child. Do not turn around, any of you. Face out toward the dark. What I have to show you wil be more visible then. Look ahead, straight ahead, as far as you can possibly look.”

 

Meg’s eyes ached from the strain of looking and seeing nothing. Then, above the clouds which encircled the mountain, she seemed to see a shadow, a faint thing of darkness so far off that she was scarcely sure she was really seeing it.

 

Charles Wallace said, “What’s that?”

 

“That sort of shadow out there,” Calvin gestured. “What is it? I don’t like it.” “Watch,” Mrs Whatsit commanded.

 

It was a shadow, nothing but a shadow. It was not even as tangible as a cloud. Was it cast by something? Or was it a Thing in itself?

 

The sky darkened. The gold left the light and they were surrounded by blue, blue deepening until where there had been nothing but the evening sky there was now a faint pulse of star, and then another and another and another. There were more stars than Meg had ever seen before.

 

“The atmosphere is so thin here,” Mrs Whatsit said as though in answer to her unasked question “that it does not obscure your vision as it would at home. Now look. Look straight ahead.”

 

Meg looked. The dark shadow was still there. It had not lessened or dispersed with the coming o night. And where the shadow was the stars were not visible.

 

What could there be about a shadow that was so terrible that she knew that there had never been before or ever would be again, anything that would chill her with a fear that was beyond shuddering, beyond crying or screaming, beyond the possibility of comfort?

 

Meg’s hand holding the blossoms slowly dropped and it seemed as though a knife gashed through her lungs. She gasped, but there was no air for her to breathe. Darkness glazed her eyes and mind, but as she started to fall into unconsciousness her head dropped down into the flowers which she was still clutching; and as she inhaled the fragrance of their purity her mind and body revived, and she sat up again.

The shadow was still there, dark and dreadful.

 

Calvin held her hand strongly in his, but she felt neither strength nor reassurance in his touch.

 

Beside her a tremor went through Charles Wallace, but he sat very still.

 

He shouldn’t be seeing this, Meg thought. This is too much for so little a boy, no matter how different and extraordinary a little boy.

 

Calvin turned, rejecting the dark Thing that blotted out the light of the stars. “Make it go away, Mrs Whatsit,” he whispered. “Make it go away. It’s evil.”

 

Slowly the great creature turned around so that the shadow was behind them, so that they saw only the stars unobscured, the soft throb of starlight on the mountain, the descending circle of the great moon swiftly slipping over the horizon. Then, without a word from Mrs Whatsit, they were traveling downward, down, down. When they reached the corona of clouds Mrs Whatsit said, “You can breathe without the flowers now, my children.”

 

Silence again. Not a word. It was as though the shadow had somehow reached out with its dark power and touched them so that they were incapable of speech. When they got back to the flowery field, bathed now in starlight, and moonlight from another, smaller, yellower, rising moon, a little of the tenseness went out of their bodies, and they realized that the body of the beautiful creature on which they rode had been as rigid as theirs.

 

With a graceful gesture it dropped to the ground and folded its great wings. Charles Wallace was the first to slide off. “Mrs Who! Mrs Which!” he called, and there was an immediate quivering in the air. Mrs Who’s familiar glasses gleamed at them. Mrs Which appeared, too; but, as she had told the children, it was difficult for her to materialize completely, and though there was the robe and peaked hat, Meg could look through them to mountain and stars. She slid off Mrs Whatsit’s back and walked rather unsteadily after the long ride, over to Mrs Which.

 

“That dark Thing we saw,” she said. “Is that what my father is fighting?”

FIVE

The Tesseract

 

“Yes,” Mrs Which said. “Hhee iss beehindd thee ddarrkness, sso thatt eevenn wee cannott seee hhimm.”

 

Meg began to cry, to sob aloud. Through her tears she could see Charles Wallace standing there, very small, very white. Calvin put his arms around her, but she shuddered and broke away, sobbing wildly. Then she was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words.

 

“My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brought you here if there were no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it. Your father needs help, he needs courage, and for his children he may be able to do what he cannot do for himself.”

 

“Nnow,” Mrs Which said. “Arre wee rreaddy?”

 

“Where are we going?” Calvin asked.

 

Again Meg felt an actual physical tingling of fear as Mrs Which spoke.

 

“Wwee musstt ggo bbehindd thee sshaddow.”

 

“But we will not do it all at once,” Mrs Whatsit comforted them. “We will do it in short stages.” She looked at Meg. “Now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again. Do you understand?”

 

“No,” Meg said flatly.

 

Mrs Whatsit sighed. “Explanations are not easy when they are about things for which your civilization still has no words. Calvin talked about traveling at the speed of light. You understand that, little Meg?”

 

“Yes,” Meg nodded.

 

“That, of course, is the impractical, long way around. We have learned to take shortcuts wherever possible.”

 

“Sort of like in math?” Meg asked.

 

“Like in math.” Mrs Whatsit looked over at Mrs Who. “Take your skirt and show them.”

 

“La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia. Spanish, my dears. Cervantes. Experience is the mother of knowledge.” Mrs Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight.

 

“You see,” Mrs Whatsit said, “if a very small insect were to move from the section of skirt in Mrs Who’s right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across.”

Swiftly Mrs Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together.

“Now, you see,” Mrs Whatsit said, “he would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel.”

Charles Wallace accepted the explanation serenely. Even Calvin did not seem perturbed. “Oh, dear,” Meg sighed. “I guess I am a moron. I just don’t get it.”

 

“That is because you think of space only in three dimensions,” Mrs Whatsit told her. “We travel in the fifth dimension. This is something you can understand, Meg. Don’t be afraid to try. Was your mother able to explain a tesseract to you?”

 

“Well, she never did,” Meg said. “She got so upset about it. Why, Mrs Whatsit? She said it had something to do with her and Father.”

 

“It was a concept they were playing with,” Mrs Whatsit said, “going beyond the fourth dimension to the fifth. Did your mother explain it to you, Charles?”

 

“Well, yes.” Charles looked a little embarrassed. “Please don’t be hurt, Meg. I just kept at her while you were at school till I got it out of her.”

 

Meg sighed. “Just explain it to me.”

 

“Okay,” Charles said. “What is the first dimension?” “Well—a line:——————” “Okay. And the second dimension?”

 

“Well, you’d square the line. A flat square would be in the second dimension.” “And the third?”

“Well, you’d square the second dimension. Then the square wouldn’t be flat anymore. It would have a bottom, and sides, and a top.”

 

“And the fourth?”

 

“Well, I guess if you want to put it into mathematical terms you’d square the square. But you can’t take a pencil and draw it the way you can the first three. I know it’s got something to do with Einstein and time. I guess maybe you could call the fourth dimension Time.”

“That’s right,” Charles said. “Good girl. Okay, then, for the fifth dimension you’d square the fourth,

wouldn’t you?”

 

“I guess so.”

 

“Well, the fifth dimension’s a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

 

For a brief, illuminating second Meg’s face had the listening, probing expression that was so often seen on Charles’s. “I see!” she cried. “I got it! For just a moment I got it! I can’t possibly explain i now, but there for a second I saw it!” She turned excitedly to Calvin. “Did you get it?”

 

He nodded. “Enough. I don’t understand it the way Charles Wallace does, but enough to get the idea.”

 

“Sso nnow wee ggo,” Mrs Which said. “Tthere iss nott all thee ttime inn tthe worrlld.” “Could we hold hands?” Meg asked.

 

Calvin took her hand and held it tightly in his.

 

“You can try,” Mrs Whatsit said, “though I’m not sure how it will work. You see, though we travel together, we travel alone. We will go first and take you afterward in the backwash. That may be easier for you.” As she spoke the great white body began to waver, the wings to disolve into mist. Mrs Who seemed to evaporate until there was nothing but the glasses, and then the glasses, too, disappeared. It reminded Meg of the Cheshire Cat.

 

—I’ve often seen a face without glasses, she thought;—but glasses without a face! I wonder if I go that way, too. First me and then my glasses?

 

She looked over at Mrs Which. Mrs Which was there and then she wasn’t.

 

There was a gust of wind and a great thrust and a sharp shattering as she was shoved through— what? Then darkness; silence; nothingness. If Calvin was still holding her hand she could not feel it But this time she was prepared for the sudden and complete dissolution of her body. When she felt the tingling coming back to her fingertips she knew that this journey was almost over and she could feel again the pressure of Calvin’s hand about hers.

 

Without warning, coming as a complete and unexpected shock, she felt a pressure she had never imagined, as though she were being completely flattened out by an enormous steam roller. This was far worse than the nothingness had been; while she was nothing there was no need to breathe, but now her lungs were squeezed together so that although she was dying for want of air there was no way for her lungs to expand and contract, to take in the air that she must have to stay alive. This was completely different from the thinning of atmosphere when they flew up the mountain and she had had to put the flowers to her face to breathe. She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can’t gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.

 

But then she seemed to hear a voice, or if not a voice, at least words, words flattened out like printed words on paper, “Oh, no! We can’t stop here! This is a two-dimensional planet and the children can’t manage here!”

 

She was whizzed into nothingness again, and nothingness was wonderful. She did not mind that she could not feel Calvin’s hand, that she could not see or feel or be. The relief from the intolerable pressure was all she needed.

 

Then the tingling began to come back to her fingers, her toes; she could feel Calvin holding her

tightly. Her heart beat regularly; blood coursed through her veins. Whatever had happened, whatever mistake had been made, it was over now. She thought she heard Charles Wallace saying, his words round and full as spoken words ought to be, “Really, Mrs Which, you might have killed us!”

 

This time she was pushed out of the frightening fifth dimension with a sudden, immediate jerk. There she was, herself again, standing with Calvin beside her, holding onto her hand for dear life, and Charles Wallace in front of her, looking indignant. Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which were no visible, but she knew that they were there; the fact of their presence was strong about her.

 

“Cchilldrenn, I appolloggize,” came Mrs Which’s voice.

 

“Now, Charles, calm down,” Mrs Whatsit said, appearing not as the great and beautiful beast she had been when they last saw her, but in her familiar wild garb of shawls and scarves and the old tramp’s coat and hat. “You know how difficult it is for her to materialize. If you are not substantial yourself it’s very difficult to realize how limiting protoplasm is.”

 

“I ammm ssorry,” Mrs Which’s voice came again; but there was more than a hint of amusement in

 

it.

 

“It is not funny.” Charles Wallace gave a childish stamp of his foot.

 

Mrs Who’s glasses shone out, and the rest of her appeared more slowly behind them. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” She smiled broadly. “Prospero in The Tempest. I do like that play.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose?” Charles demanded.

 

“Oh, my darling, of course not,” Mrs Whatsit said quickly. “It was just a very understandable mistake. It’s very difficult for Mrs Which to think in a corporeal way. She wouldn’t hurt you deliberately; you know that. And it’s really a very pleasant little planet, and rather amusing to be flat. We always enjoy our visits there.”

 

“Where are we now, then?” Charles Wallace demanded. “And why?”

 

“In Orion’s belt. We have a friend here, and we want you to have a look at your own planet.” “When are we going home?” Meg asked anxiously. “What about Mother? What about the twins?

 

They’ll be terribly worried about us. When we didn’t come in at bedtime—well, Mother must be frantic by now. She and the twins and Fort will have been looking and looking for us, and of course we aren’t there to be found!”

 

“Now, don’t worry, my pet,” Mrs Whatsit said cheerfully. “We took care of that before we left. Your mother has had enough to worry her with you and Charles to cope with, and not knowing about your father, without our adding to her anxieties. We took a time wrinkle as well as a space wrinkle. It’s very easy to do if you just know how.”

 

“What do you mean?” Meg asked plaintively. “Please, Mrs Whatsit, it’s all so confusing.”

 

“Just relax and don’t worry over things that needn’t trouble you,” Mrs Whatsit said. “We made a nice, tidy little time tesser, and unless something goes terribly wrong we’ll have you back about five minutes before you left, so there’ll be time to spare and nobody’ll ever need to know you were gone at all, though of course you’ll be telling your mother, dear lamb that she is. And if something goes terribly wrong it won’t matter whether we ever get back at all.”

 

“Ddon’tt ffrrightenn themm,” Mrs Which’s voice came. “Aare yyou llosingg ffaith?” “Oh, no. No, I’m not.”

 

But Meg thought her voice sounded a little faint.

 

“I hope this is a nice planet,” Calvin said. “We can’t see much of it. Does it ever clear up?”

 

Meg looked around her, realizing that she had been so breathless from the journey and the stop on

the two-dimensional planet that she had not noticed her surroundings. And perhaps this was not very surprising, for the main thing about the surroundings was exactly that they were unnoticeable. They seemed to be standing on some kind of nondescript, flat surface. The air around them was gray. It was not exactly fog, but she could see nothing through it. Visibility was limited to the nicely definite bodies of Charles Wallace and Calvin, the rather unbelievable bodies of Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who and a faint occasional glimmer that was Mrs Which.

 

“Come, children,” Mrs Whatsit said. “We don’t have far to go, and we might as well walk. It will do you good to stretch your legs a little.”

 

As they moved through the grayness Meg caught an occasional glimpse of slaglike rocks, but there were no traces of trees or bushes, nothing but flat ground under their feet, no sign of any vegetation at all.

 

Finally, ahead of them there loomed what seemed to be a hill of stone. As they approached it Meg could see that there was an entrance that led into a deep, dark cavern. “Are we going in there?” she asked nervously.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” Mrs Whatsit said. “It’s easier for the Happy Medium to work within. Oh, you’l like her, children. She’s very jolly. If ever I saw her looking unhappy I would be very depressed myself. As long as she can laugh I’m sure everything is going to come out right in the end.”

 

“Mmrs. Whattsitt,” came Mrs Which’s voice severely, “jusstt beccause yyou arre verry youngg iss nno exxcuse forr tallkingg tooo muchh.”

 

Mrs Whatsit looked hurt, but she subsided.

 

“Just how old are you?” Calvin asked her.

 

“Just a moment,” Mrs Whatsit murmured, and appeared to calculate rapidly upon her fingers. She nodded triumphantly. “Exactly 2,379,152,497 years, 8 months, and 3 days. That is according to your calendar, of course, which even you know isn’t very accurate.” She leaned closer to Meg and Calvin and whispered, “It was really a very great honor for me to be chosen for this mission. It’s just because of my verbalizing and materializing so well, you know. But of course we can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts. And I make far too many mistakes. That’s why Mrs Who and I enjoyed seeing Mrs Which make a mistake when she tried to land you on a two dimensional planet. It was that we were laughing at, not at you. She was laughing at herself, you see. She’s really terribly nice to us younger ones.”

 

Meg was listening with such interest to what Mrs Whatsit was saying that she hardly noticed when they went into the cave; the transition from the grayness of outside to the grayness of inside was almost unnoticeable. She saw a flickering light ahead of them, ahead and down, and it was toward this that they went. As they drew closer she realized that it was a fire.

 

“It gets very cold in here,” Mrs Whatsit said, “so we asked her to have a good bonfire going for you.”

 

As they approached the fire they could see a dark shadow against it, and as they went closer still they could see that the shadow was a woman. She wore a turban of beautiful pale mauve silk, and a long, flowing, purple satin gown. In her hands was a crystal ball into which she was gazing raptly. She did not appear to see the children, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which, but continued to star into the crystal ball; and as she stared she began to laugh; and she laughed and laughed at whatever it was that she was seeing.

 

Mrs Which’s voice rang out clear and strong, echoing against the walls of the cavern, and the words

fell with a sonorous clang.

 

“WWEE ARRE HHERRE!”

 

The woman looked up from the ball, and when she saw them she got up and curtsied deeply. Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who dropped small curtsies in return, and the shimmer seemed to bow slightly.

 

“Oh, Medium, dear,” Mrs Whatsit said, “these are the children. Charles Wallace Murry.” Charles Wallace bowed. “Margaret Murry.” Meg felt that if Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who had curtsied, she ought to, also; so she did, rather awkwardly. “And Calvin O’Keefe.” Calvin bobbed his head. “We wan them to see their home planet,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. “Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?”

 

Again Mrs Which’s voice reverberated through the cave. “Therre willl nno llonggerr bee sso manyy pplleasanntt thinggss too llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddoo ssomethingg abboutt thee unnppleassanntt oness.”

 

The Medium sighed and held the ball high.

 

“Look, children,” Mrs Whatsit said. “Look into it well.”

 

“Que la terre est petite à qui la voit des cieux! Delille. How small is the earth to him who looks from heaven,” Mrs Who intoned musically.

 

Meg looked into the crystal ball, at first with caution, then with increasing eagerness, as she seemed to see an enormous sweep of dark and empty space, and then galaxies swinging across it. Finally they seemed to move in closer on one of the galaxies.

 

“Your own Milky Way,” Mrs Whatsit whispered to Meg.

 

They were headed directly toward the center of the galaxy; then they moved off to one side; stars seemed to be rushing at them. Meg flung her arm up over her face as though to ward off the blow.

 

“Llookk!” Mrs Which commanded.

 

Meg dropped her arm. They seemed to be moving in toward a planet. She thought she could make out polar ice caps. Everything seemed sparkling clear.

 

“No, no, Medium dear, that’s Mars,” Mrs Whatsit reproved gently.

 

“Do I have to?” the Medium asked.

 

“NNOWW!” Mrs Which commanded.

 

The bright planet moved out of their vision. For a moment there was the darkness of space; then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear. It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books.

 

“Is it because of our atmosphere that we can’t see properly?” she asked anxiously.

 

“Nno, Mmegg, yyou knnoww thatt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere,” Mrs Which said. “Yyo mmusstt bee brrave.”

 

“It’s the Thing!” Charles Wallace cried. “It’s the Dark Thing we saw from the mountain peak on Uriel when we were riding on Mrs Whatsit’s back!”

 

“Did it just come?” Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth. “Did it just come while we’ve been gone?”

 

Mrs Which’s voice seemed very tired. “Ttell herr,” she said to Mrs Whatsit.

 

Mrs Whatsit sighed. “No, Meg. It hasn’t just come. It has been there for a great many years. That i why your planet is such a troubled one.”

“But why—” Calvin started to ask, his voice croaking hoarsely.

 

Mrs Whatsit raised her hand to silence him. “We showed you the Dark Thing on Uriel first—oh, fo many reasons. First, because the atmosphere on the mountain peaks there is so clear and thin you could see it for what it is. And we thought it would be easier for you to understand it if you saw it— well, someplace else first, not your own earth.”

 

“I hate it!” Charles Wallace cried passionately. “I hate the Dark Thing!”

 

Mrs Whatsit nodded. “Yes, Charles dear. We all do. That’s another reason we wanted to prepare you on Uriel. We thought it would be too frightening for you to see it first of all about your own, beloved world.”

 

“But what is it?” Calvin demanded. “We know that it’s evil, but what is it?”

 

“Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!” Mrs Which’s voice rang out. “Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers o Ddarrkknesss!”

 

“But what’s going to happen?” Meg’s voice trembled. “Oh, please, Mrs Which, tell us what’s going to happen!”

 

“Wee wwill cconnttinnue tto ffightt!”

 

Something in Mrs Which’s voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs Which with pride and confidence.

“And we’re not alone, you know, children,” came Mrs Whatsit, the comforter. “All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it’s a grand and exciting battle. I know it’s hard for you to understand about size, how there’s very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won’t seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it’s a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it’s done so well.”

 

“Who have our fighters been?” Calvin asked.

 

“Oh, you must know them, dear,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

Mrs Who’s spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

 

“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”

 

“Of course!” Mrs Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists They’ve been lights for us to see by.”

 

“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”

 

“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie an Einstein!”

 

Now Calvin’s voice rang with confidence. “And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha an Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!”

 

“Now you, Meg,” Mrs Whatsit ordered.

 

“Oh, Euclid, I suppose.” Meg was in such an agony of impatience that her voice grated irritably “And Copernicus. But what about Father? Please, what about Father?”

 

“Wee aarre ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr,” Mrs Which said.

 

“But where is he?” Meg went over to Mrs Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.

 

Mrs Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. “On a planet that has given in. So yo must prepare to be very strong.”

All traces of cheer had left the Happy Medium’s face. She sat holding the great ball, looking down at the shadowed earth, and a slow tear coursed down her cheek. “I can’t stand it any longer,” she sobbed. “Watch now, children, watch!”

SIX

The Happy Medium

 

Again they focused their eyes on the crystal ball. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again.

 

“Watch!” the Medium told them.

 

The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to comfort them?

 

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where i touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing ha vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.

 

“You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!”

 

Mrs Whatsit sighed, a sigh so sad that Meg wanted to put her arms around her and comfort her.

 

“Tell us exactly what happened, then, please,” Charles Wallace said in a small voice.

 

“It was a star,” Mrs Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”

 

Mrs Which spoke again. Her voice sounded tired, and they knew that speaking was a tremendous effort for her. “Itt wass nnott sso llongg aggo fforr yyou, wwass itt?” she asked gently.

 

Mrs Whatsit shook her head.

 

Charles Wallace went up to Mrs Whatsit. “I see. Now I understand. You were a star, once, weren’t you?”

 

Mrs Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded. “And you did—you did what that star just did?”

 

With her face still covered, Mrs Whatsit nodded again.

 

Charles Wallace looked at her, very solemnly. “I should like to kiss you.”

 

Mrs Whatsit took her hands down from her face and pulled Charles Wallace to her in a quick embrace. He put his arms about her neck, pressed his cheek against hers, and then kissed her.

 

Meg felt that she would have liked to kiss Mrs Whatsit, too, but that after Charles Wallace, anything that she or Calvin did or said would be anticlimax. She contented herself with looking at Mrs Whatsit. Even though she was used to Mrs Whatsit’s odd getup (and the very oddness of it was wha made her seem so comforting), she realized with a fresh shock that it was not Mrs Whatsit herself that she was seeing at all. The complete, the true Mrs Whatsit, Meg realized, was beyond huma understanding. What she saw was only the game Mrs Whatsit was playing; it was an amusing and charming game, a game full of both laughter and comfort, but it was only the tiniest facet of all the things Mrs Whatsit could be.

 

“I didn’t mean to tell you,” Mrs Whatsit faltered. “I didn’t mean ever to let you know. But, oh, m dears, I did so love being a star!”

 

“Yyouu arre sstill verry yyoungg,” Mrs Which said, her voice faintly chiding.

The Medium sat looking happily at the star-filled sky in her ball, smiling and nodding and chuckling gently. But Meg noticed that her eyes were drooping, and suddenly her head fell forward and she gave a faint snore.

 

“Poor thing,” Mrs Whatsit said, “we’ve worn her out. It’s very hard work for her.”

 

“Please, Mrs Whatsit,” Meg asked, “what happens now? Why are we here? What do we do next Where is Father? When are we going to him?” She clasped her hands pleadingly.

 

“One thing at a time, love!” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

Mrs Who cut in. “As paredes tem ouvidos. That’s Portuguese. Walls have ears.” “Yes, let us go outside,” Mrs Whatsit said. “Come, we’ll let her sleep.”

 

But as they turned to go, the Medium jerked her head up and smiled at them radiantly. “You weren’t going to go without saying good-bye to me, were you?” she asked.

 

“We thought we’d just let you sleep, dear.” Mrs Whatsit patted the Medium’s shoulder. “We worked you terribly hard and we know you must be very tired.”

 

“But I was going to give you some ambrosia or nectar or at least some tea—”

 

At this Meg realized that she was hungry. How much time had passed since they had had their bowls of stew? she wondered.

 

But Mrs Whatsit said, “Oh, thank you, dear, but I think we’d better be going.”

 

“They don’t need to eat, you know,” Charles Wallace whispered to Meg. “At least not food, the way we do. Eating’s just a game with them. As soon as we get organized again I’d better remind them that they’ll have to feed us sooner or later.”

 

The Medium smiled and nodded. “It does seem as though I should be able to do somethingnice for you, after having had to show those poor children such horrid things. Would they like to see their mother before they go?”

 

“Could we see Father?” Meg asked eagerly.

 

“Nno,” Mrs Which said. “Wwee aare ggoingg tto yourr ffatherr, Mmegg. Doo nnott bbe immpatientt.”

 

“But she could see her mother, couldn’t she?” the Medium wheedled.

 

“Oh, why not,” Mrs Whatsit put in. “It won’t take long and it can’t do any harm.” “And Calvin, too?” Meg asked. “Could he see his mother, too?”

 

Calvin touched Meg in a quick gesture, and whether it was of thanks or apprehension she was not sure.

 

“I tthinkk itt iss a misstake.” Mrs Which was disapproving. “Bbutt ssince yyou hhave menttionedd itt I ssupposse yyouu musstt ggo aheadd.”

 

“I hate it when she gets cross,” Mrs Whatsit said, glancing over at Mrs Which, “and the trouble is she always seems to be right. But I really don’t see how it could hurt, and it might make you all feel better. Go on, Medium dear.”

 

The Medium, smiling and humming softly, turned the crystal ball a little between her hands. Stars, comets, planets, flashed across the sky, and then the earth came into view again, the darkened earth, closer, closer, till it filled the globe, and they had somehow gone through the darkness until the soft white of clouds and the gentle outline of continents shone clearly.

 

“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 wis 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-bye 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. “You’ve got a lot to learn, my boy,” she told him.

 

“Now, good-bye, Medium dear, and many thanks,” Mrs Whatsit said. “I dare say we’ll 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 o 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-bye, 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 trave through it to get to her father?

 

There was the by-now-familiar tingling in 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 i

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!”

 

“Yes,” 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 hests, 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. “Allwissend bin ich nicht; doch viel 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.

 

“Tto alll tthreee off yyou I ggive mmy ccommandd,” Mrs Which said. “Ggo ddownn innttoo tthe ttownn. Ggo ttogetherr. Ddoo nnott llett tthemm ssepparate yyou. Bbee sstrongg.” There was a flicker and then it vanished. Meg shivered.

 

Mrs Whatsit must have seen the shiver, for she patted Meg on the shoulder. Then she turned to Calvin. “Take care of Meg.”

 

“I can take care of Meg,” Charles Wallace said rather sharply. “I always have.”

 

Mrs Whatsit looked at Charles Wallace, and the creaky voice seemed somehow both to soften and to deepen at the same time. “Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.”

 

At the tone of Mrs Whatsit’s voice, both warning and frightening, Meg shivered again. And Charles Wallace butted up against Mrs Whatsit in the way he often did with his mother, whispering, “Now I

think I know what you meant about being afraid.”

 

“Only a fool is not afraid,” Mrs Whatsit told him. “Now go.” And where she had been there was only sky and grasses and a small rock.

 

“Come on,” Meg said impatiently. “Come on, let’s go!” She was completely unaware that her voice was trembling like an aspen leaf. She took Charles Wallace and Calvin each by the hand and started down the hill.

 

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.

 

“Look!” Charles Wallace said suddenly. “They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.”

 

This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like th paths. Like the flowers.

 

Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them.

 

“How can they do it?” Meg asked wonderingly. “We couldn’t do it that way if we tried. What does it mean?”

 

“Let’s go back.” Calvin’s voice was urgent.

 

“Back?” Charles Wallace asked. “Where?”

 

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Back to the hill. Back to Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who and Mrs Which. don’t like this.”

 

“But they aren’t there. Do you think they’d come to us if we turned back now?” “I don’t like it,” Calvin said again.

 

“Come on.” Impatience made Meg squeak. “You know we can’t go back. Mrs Whatsit said to go into the town.” She started on down the street, and the two boys followed her. The houses, all identical, continued, as far as the eye could reach.

 

Then, all at once, they saw the same thing, and stopped to watch. In front of one of the houses stood a little boy with a ball, and he was bouncing it. But he bounced it rather badly and with no particular rhythm, sometimes dropping it and running after it with awkward, furtive leaps, sometimes throwing it up into the air and trying to catch it. The door of his house opened and out ran one of the mother figures. She looked wildly up and down the street, saw the children and put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a scream, grabbed the little boy and rushed indoors with him. The ball dropped from

his fingers and rolled out into the street.

 

Charles Wallace ran after it and picked it up, holding it out for Meg and Calvin to see. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary, brown rubber ball.

 

“Let’s take it in to him and see what happens,” Charles Wallace suggested.

 

Meg pulled at him. “Mrs Whatsit said for us to go on into the town.”

 

“Well, we are in the town, aren’t we? The outskirts anyhow. I want to know more about this. I have a hunch it may help us later. You go on if you don’t want to come with me.”

 

“No,” Calvin said firmly. “We’re going to stay together. Mrs Whatsit said we weren’t to let them separate us. But I’m with you on this. Let’s knock and see what happens.”

 

They went up the path to the house, Meg reluctant, eager to get on into the town. “Let’s hurry,” she begged, “please! Don’t you want to find Father?”

 

“Yes,” Charles Wallace said, “but not blindly. How can we help him if we don’t know what we’re up against? And it’s obvious we’ve been brought here to help him, not just to find him.” He walked briskly up the steps and knocked at the door. They waited. Nothing happened. Then Charles Wallace saw a bell, and this he rang. They could hear the bell buzzing in the house, and the sound of it echoed down the street. After a moment the mother figure opened the door. All up and down the street other doors opened, but only a crack, and eyes peered toward the three children and the woman looking fearfully out the door at them.

 

“What do you want?” she asked. “It isn’t paper time yet; we’ve had milk time; we’ve had this month’s Puller Prush Person; and I’ve given my Decency Donations regularly. All my papers are i order.”

 

“I think your little boy dropped his ball,” Charles Wallace said, holding it out.

 

The woman pushed the ball away. “Oh, no! The children in our section never drop balls! They’re all perfectly trained. We haven’t had an Aberration for three years.”

 

All up and down the block, heads nodded in agreement.

 

Charles Wallace moved closer to the woman and looked past her into the house. Behind her in the shadows he could see the little boy, who must have been about his own age.

 

“You can’t come in,” the woman said. “You haven’t shown me any papers. I don’t have to let you in if you haven’t any papers.”

 

Charles Wallace held the ball out beyond the woman so that the little boy could see it. Quick as a flash the boy leaped forward and grabbed the ball from Charles Wallace’s hand, then darted back into the shadows. The woman went very white, opened her mouth as though to say something, then slammed the door in their faces instead. All up and down the street doors slammed.

 

“What are they afraid of?” Charles Wallace asked. “What’s the matter with them?” “Don’t you know?” Meg asked him. “Don’t you know what all this is about, Charles?”

“Not yet,” Charles Wallace said. “Not even an inkling. And I’m trying. But I didn’t get throug anywhere. Not even a chink. Let’s go.” He stumped down the steps.

 

After several blocks the houses gave way to apartment buildings; at least Meg felt sure that that was what they must be. They were fairly tall, rectangular buildings, absolutely plain, each window, each entrance exactly like every other. Then, coming toward them down the street, was a boy about Calvin’s age riding a machine that was something like a combination of a bicycle and a motorcycle. It had the slimness and lightness of a bicycle, and yet as the foot pedals turned they seemed to generate an unseen source of power, so that the boy could pedal very slowly and yet move along the street

quite swiftly. As he reached each entrance he thrust one hand into a bag he wore slung over his shoulder, pulled out a roll of papers, and tossed it into the entrance. It might have been Dennys or Sandy or any one of hundreds of boys with a newspaper route in any one of hundreds of towns back home, and yet, as with the children playing ball and jumping rope, there was something wrong about it. The rhythm of the gesture never varied. The paper flew in identically the same arc at each doorway, landed in identically the same spot. It was impossible for anybody to throw with such consistent perfection.

 

Calvin whistled. “I wonder if they play baseball here?”

 

As the boy saw them he slowed down on his machine and stopped, his hand arrested as it was about to plunge into the paper bag. “What are you kids doing out on the street?” he demanded. “Only route boys are allowed out now, you know that.”

 

“No, we don’t know it,” Charles Wallace said. “We’re strangers here. How about telling us something about this place?”

 

“You mean you’ve had your entrance papers processed and everything?” the boy asked. “You must have if you’re here,” he answered himself. “And what are you doing here if you don’t know about us?”

 

“You tell me,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“Are you examiners?” the boy asked a little anxiously. “Everybody knows our city has the best Central Intelligence Center on the planet. Our production levels are the highest. Our factories neve close; our machines never stop rolling. Added to this we have five poets, one musician, three artists, and six sculptors, all perfectly channeled.”

 

“What are you quoting from?” Charles Wallace asked.

 

“The Manual, of course,” the boy said. “We are the most oriented city on the planet. There has been no trouble of any kind for centuries. All Camazotz knows our record. That is why we are the capital city of Camazotz. That is why CENTRAL Central Intelligence is located here. That is why IT make ITs home here.” There was something about the way he said “IT” that made a shiver run up and down Meg’s spine.

 

But Charles Wallace asked briskly, “Where is this Central Intelligence Center of yours?” “CENTRAL Central,” the boy corrected. “Just keep going and you can’t miss it. Youare strangers,

aren’t you! What are you doing here?”

 

“Are you supposed to ask questions?” Charles Wallace demanded severely.

 

The boy went white, just as the woman had. “I humbly beg your pardon. I must continue my route now or I will have to talk my timing into the explainer.” And he shot off down the street on his machine.

 

Charles Wallace stared after him. “What is it?” he asked Meg and Calvin. “There was somethin funny about the way he talked, as though—well, as though he weren’t really doing the talking. Know what I mean?”

 

Calvin nodded, thoughtfully. “Funny is right. Funny peculiar. Not only the way he talked, either. The whole thing smells.”

 

“Come on.” Meg pulled at them. How many times was it she had urged them on? “Let’s go find Father. He’ll be able to explain it all to us.”

 

They walked on. After several more blocks they began to see other people, grown-up people, not children, walking up and down and across the streets. These people ignored the children entirely,

seeming to be completely intent on their own business. Some of them went into the apartment buildings. Most of them were heading in the same direction as the children. As these people came to the main street from the side streets they would swing around the corners with an odd, automatic stride, as though they were so deep in their own problems and the route was so familiar that they didn’t have to pay any attention to where they were going.

 

After a while the apartment buildings gave way to what must have been office buildings, great stern structures with enormous entrances. Men and women with briefcases poured in and out.

 

Charles Wallace went up to one of the women, saying politely, “Excuse me, but could you please tell me—” But she hardly glanced at him as she continued on her way.

 

“Look.” Meg pointed. Ahead of them, across a square, was the largest building they had ever seen, higher than the Empire State Building, and almost as long as it was high.

 

“This must be it,” Charles Wallace said, “their CENTRAL Central Intelligence or whatever it is Let’s go on.”

 

“But if Father’s in some kind of trouble with this planet,” Meg objected, “isn’t that exactly where we shouldn’t go?”

 

“Well, how do you propose finding him?” Charles Wallace demanded.

 

“I certainly wouldn’t ask there!”

 

“I didn’t say anything about asking. But we aren’t going to have the faintest idea where or how to begin to look for him until we find out something more about this place, and I have a hunch that that’s the place to start. If you have a better idea, Meg, why of course just say so.”

 

“Oh, get down off your high horse,” Meg said crossly. “Let’s go to your old CENTRAL Centra Intelligence and get it over with.”

 

“I think we ought to have passports or something,” Calvin suggested. “This is much more than leaving America to go to Europe. And that boy and the woman both seemed to care so much about having things in proper order. We certainly haven’t got any papers in proper order.”

 

“If we needed passports or papers Mrs Whatsit would have told us so,” Charles Wallace said. Calvin put his hands on his hips and looked down at Charles Wallace. “Now look here, old sport. I

love those three old girls just as much as you do, but I’m not sure they know everything.” “They know a lot more than we do.”

 

“Granted. But you know Mrs Whatsit talked about having been a star. I wouldn’t think that being a star would give her much practice in knowing about people. When she tried to be a person she came pretty close to goofing it up. There was never anybody on land or sea like Mrs Whatsit the way she got herself up.”

 

“She was just having fun,” Charles said. “If she’d wanted to look like you or Meg I’m sure sh could have.”

 

Calvin shook his head. “I’m not so sure. And these people seem to be people, if you know what I mean. They aren’t like us, I grant you that, there’s something very off-beat about them. But they’re lots more like ordinary people than the ones on Uriel.”

 

“Do you suppose they’re robots?” Meg suggested.

 

Charles Wallace shook his head. “No. That boy who dropped the ball wasn’t any robot. And I don’ think the rest of them are, either. Let me listen for a minute.”

 

They stood very still, side by side, in the shadow of one of the big office buildings. Six large doors kept swinging open, shut, open, shut, as people went in and out, in and out, looking straight ahead,

straight ahead, paying no attention to the children whatsoever, whatsoever. Charles wore his listening, probing look. “They’re not robots,” he said suddenly and definitely. “I’m not sure what they are, but they’re not robots. I can feel minds there. I can’t get at them at all, but I can feel them sort o pulsing. Let me try a minute more.”

 

The three of them stood there very quietly. The doors kept opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and the stiff people hurried in and out, in and out, walking jerkily like figures in an old silent movie. Then, abruptly, the stream of movement thinned. There were only a few people and these moved more rapidly, as if the film had been sped up. One white-faced man in a dark suit looked directly at the children, said, “Oh, dear, I shall be late,” and flickered into the building.

 

“He’s like the white rabbit,” Meg giggled nervously.

 

“I’m scared,” Charles said. “I can’t reach them at all. I’m completely shut out.” “We have to find Father—” Meg started again.

 

“Meg—” Charles Wallace’s eyes were wide and frightened. “I’m not sure I’ll even know Father. It’s been so long, and I was only a baby—”

 

Meg’s reassurance came quickly. “You’ll know him! Of course you’ll know him! The way you’d know me even without looking because I’m always there for you, you can always reach in—”

 

“Yes.” Charles punched one small fist into an open palm with a gesture of great decision. “Let’s go to CENTRAL Central Intelligence.”

 

Calvin reached out and caught both Charles and Meg by the arm. “You remember when we met, you asked me why I was there? And I told you it was because I had a compulsion, a feeling I just had to come to that particular place at that particular moment?”

 

“Yes, sure.”

 

“I’ve got another feeling. Not the same kind, a different one, a feeling that if we go into that building we’re going into terrible danger.”

 

SEVEN

The Man

 

with Red Eyes

 

“We knew we were going to be in danger,” Charles Wallace said. “Mrs Whatsit told us that.”

 

“Yes, and she told us that it was going to be worse for you than for Meg and me, and that you must be careful. You stay right here with Meg, old sport, and let me go in and case the joint and then report to you.”

 

“No,” Charles Wallace said firmly. “She told us to stay together. She told us not to go off by ourselves.”

 

“She told you not to go off by yourself. I’m the oldest and I should go in first.”

 

“No.” Meg’s voice was flat. “Charles is right, Cal. We have to stay together. Suppose you didn’t come out and we had to go in after you? Unh-unh. Come on. But let’s hold hands if you don’t mind.”

Holding hands, they crossed the square. The huge CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building had only one door, but it was an enormous one, at least two stories high and wider than a room, made of a dull, bronzelike material.

 

“Do we just knock?” Meg giggled.

 

Calvin studied the door. “There isn’t any handle or knob or latch or anything. Maybe there’s another way to get in.”

 

“Let’s try knocking anyhow,” Charles said. He raised his hand, but before he touched the door it slid up from the top and to each side, splitting into three sections that had been completely invisible a moment before. The startled children looked into a great entrance hall of dull, greeny marble. Marble benches lined three of the walls. People were sitting there like statues. The green of the marble reflecting on their faces made them look bilious. They turned their heads as the door opened, saw the children, looked away again.

 

“Come on,” Charles said, and, still holding hands, they stepped in. As they crossed the threshold the door shut silently behind them. Meg looked at Calvin and Charles and they, like the waiting people, were a sickly green.

 

The children went up to the blank fourth wall. It seemed unsubstantial, as though one might almost be able to walk through it. Charles put out his hand. “It’s solid, and icy cold.”

 

Calvin touched it, too. “Ugh.”

 

Meg’s left hand was held by Charles, her right by Calvin, and she had no desire to let go either of them to touch the wall.

 

“Let’s ask somebody something.” Charles led them over to one of the benches. “Er, could you tell us what’s the procedure around here?” he asked one of the men. The men all wore nondescript business suits, and though their features were as different one from the other as the features of men on earth, there was also a sameness to them.

 

—Like the sameness of people riding in a subway, Meg thought.—Only on a subway every once in a while there’s somebody different and here there isn’t.

 

The man looked at the children warily. “The procedure for what?” “How do we see whoever’s in authority?” Charles asked.

“You present your papers to the A machine. You ought to know that,” the man said severely.

 

“Where is the A machine?” Calvin asked.

 

The man pointed to the blank wall.

 

“But there isn’t a door or anything,” Calvin said. “How do we get in?”

 

“You put your S papers in the B slot,” the man said. “Why are you asking me these stupid questions? Do you think I don’t know the answers? You’d better not play any games around here or you’ll have to go through the Process machine again and you don’t want to do that.”

 

“We’re strangers here,” Calvin said. “That’s why we don’t know about things. Please tell us, sir, who you are and what you do.”

 

“I run a number-one spelling machine on the second-grade level.” “But what are you doing here now?” Charles Wallace asked.

“I am here to report that one of my letters is jamming, and until it can be properly oiled by an F Grade oiler there is danger of jammed minds.”

 

“Strawberry jam or raspberry?” Charles Wallace murmured. Calvin looked down at Charles and shook his head warningly. Meg gave the little boy’s hand a slight, understanding pressure. Charles Wallace, she was quite sure, was not trying to be rude or funny; it was his way of whistling in the dark.

 

The man looked at Charles sharply. “I think I shall have to report you. I’m fond of children, due to the nature of my work and I don’t like to get them in trouble, but rather than run the risk myself of reprocessing I must report you.”

 

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Charles said. “Who do you report us to?” “To whom do I report you.”

 

“Well, to whom, then. I’m not on the second-grade level yet.”

 

—I wish he wouldn’t act so sure of himself, Meg thought, looking anxiously at Charles and holding his hand more and more tightly until he wriggled his fingers in protest. That’s what Mrs Whatsit said he had to watch, being proud.—Don’t, please don’t, she thought hard at Charles Wallace. She wondered if Calvin realized that a lot of the arrogance was bravado.

 

The man stood up, moving jerkily as though he had been sitting for a long time. “I hope he isn’t too hard on you,” he murmured as he led the children toward the empty fourth wall. “But I’ve been reprocessed once and that was more than enough. And I don’t want to get sent to IT. I’ve never been sent to IT and I can’t risk having that happen.”

 

There was IT again. What was this IT?

 

The man took from his pocket a folder filled with papers of every color. He shuffled through them carefully, finally withdrawing one. “I’ve had several reports to make lately. I shall have to ask for a requisition for more A-21 cards.” He took the card and put it against the wall. It slid through the marble, as though it were being sucked in, and disappeared. “You may be detained for a few days,” the man said, “but I’m sure they won’t be too hard on you because of your youth. Just relax and don’t fight and it will all be much easier for you.” He went back to his seat, leaving the children standing and staring at the blank wall.

 

And suddenly the wall was no longer there and they were looking into an enormous room lined with machines. They were not unlike the great computing machines Meg had seen in her science books and that she knew her father sometimes worked with. Some did not seem to be in use; in others lights were flickering on and off. In one machine a long tape was being eaten; in another a series of dot-

dashes were being punched. Several white-robed attendants were moving about, tending the machines. If they saw the children they gave no sign.

 

Calvin muttered something.

 

“What?” Meg asked him.

 

“There is nothing to fear except fear itself,” Calvin said. “I’m quoting. Like Mrs Who. Meg, I’ scared stiff.”

 

“So ’m I.” Meg held his hand more tightly. “Come on.”

 

They stepped into the room with the machines. In spite of the enormous width of the room it was even longer than it was wide. Perspective made the long rows of machines seem almost to meet. The children walked down the center of the room, keeping as far from the machines as possible.

 

“Though I don’t suppose they’re radioactive or anything,” Charles Wallace said, “or that they’re going to reach out and grab us and chew us up.”

 

After they had walked for what seemed like miles, they could see that the enormous room did have an end, and that at the end there was something.

 

Charles Wallace said suddenly, and his voice held panic, “Don’t let go my hands! Hold me tight! He’s trying to get at me!”

 

“Who?” Meg squeaked.

 

“I don’t know. But he’s trying to get in at me! I can feel him!” “Let’s go back.” Calvin started to pull away.

 

“No,” Charles Wallace said. “I have to go on. We have to make decisions, and we can’t make them if they’re based on fear.” His voice sounded old and strange and remote. Meg, clasping his small hand tightly, could feel it sweating in hers.

 

As they approached the end of the room their steps slowed. Before them was a platform. On the platform was a chair, and on the chair was a man.

 

What was there about him that seemed to contain all the coldness and darkness they had felt as they plunged through the Black Thing on their way to this planet?

 

“I have been waiting for you, my dears,” the man said. His voice was kind and gentle, not at all the cold and frightening voice Meg had expected. It took her a moment to realize that though the voice came from the man, he had not opened his mouth or moved his lips at all, that no real words had been spoken to fall upon her ears, that he had somehow communicated directly into their brains.

“But how does it happen that there are three of you?” the man asked.

 

Charles Wallace spoke with harsh boldness, but Meg could feel him trembling. “Oh, Calvin jus came along for the ride.”

 

“Oh, he did, did he?” For a moment there was a sharpness to the voice that spoke inside their minds. Then it relaxed and became soothing again. “I hope that it has been a pleasant one so far.”

 

“Very educational,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“Let Calvin speak for himself,” the man ordered.

 

Calvin growled, his lips tight, his body rigid. “I have nothing to say.”

 

Meg stared at the man in horrified fascination. His eyes were bright and had a reddish glow. Above his head was a light, and it glowed in the same manner as the eyes, pulsing, throbbing, in steady rhythm.

 

Charles Wallace shut his eyes tightly. “Close your eyes,” he said to Meg and Calvin. “Don’t look a the light. Don’t look at his eyes. He’ll hypnotize you.”

“Clever, aren’t you? Focusing your eyes would, of course, help,” the soothing voice went on, “but there are other ways, my little man. Oh, yes, there are other ways.”

 

“If you try it on me I shall kick you!” Charles Wallace said. It was the first time Meg had ever heard Charles Wallace suggesting violence.

 

“Oh, will you, indeed, my little man?” The thought was tolerant, amused, but four men in dark smocks appeared and flanked the children.

 

“Now, my dears,” the words continued, “I shall of course have no need of recourse to violence, but I thought perhaps it would save you pain if I showed you at once that it would do you no good to try to oppose me. You see, what you will soon realize is that there is no need to fight me. Not only is there no need, but you will not have the slightest desire to do so. For why should you wish to fight someone who is here only to save you pain and trouble? For you, as well as for the rest of all the happy, useful people on this planet, I, in my own strength, am willing to assume all the pain, all the responsibility, all the burdens of thought and decision.”

 

“We will make our own decisions, thank you,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“But of course. And our decisions will be one, yours and mine. Don’t you see how much better, how much easier for you that is? Let me show you. Let us say the multiplication table together.”

 

“No,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“Once one is one. Once two is two. Once three is three.”

 

“Mary had a little lamb!” Charles Wallace shouted. “Its fleece was white as snow!” “Once four is four. Once five is five. Once six is six.”

 

“And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go!” “Once seven is seven. Once eight is eight. Once nine is nine.” “Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her—” “Once ten is ten. Once eleven is eleven. Once twelve is twelve.”

The number words pounded insistently against Meg’s brain. They seemed to be boring their way into her skull.

 

“Twice one is two. Twice two is four. Twice three is six.”

 

Calvin’s voice came out in an angry shout. “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

 

“Twice four is eight. Twice five is ten. Twice six is twelve.”

 

“Father!” Meg screamed. “Father!” The scream, half involuntary, jerked her mind back out o darkness.

 

The words of the multiplication table seemed to break up into laughter. “Splendid! Splendid! You have passed your preliminary tests with flying colors.”

 

“You didn’t think we were as easy as all that, falling for that old stuff, did you?” Charles Wallace demanded.

 

“Ah, I hoped not. I most sincerely hoped not. But after all you are very young and ver impressionable, and the younger the better, my little man. The younger the better.”

 

Meg looked up at the fiery eyes, at the light pulsing above them, and then away. She tried looking at the mouth, at the thin, almost colorless lips, and this was more possible, even though she had to look obliquely, so that she was not sure exactly what the face really looked like, whether it was young or old, cruel or kind, human or alien.

“If you please,” she said, trying to sound calm and brave. “The only reason we are here is because we think our father is here. Can you tell us where to find him?”

 

“Ah, your father!” There seemed to be a great chortling of delight. “Ah, yes, your father! It is no can I, you know, young lady, but will I?”

 

“Will you, then?”

 

“That depends on a number of things. Why do you want your father?”

 

“Didn’t you ever have a father yourself?” Meg demanded. “You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.”

 

“Ah, but he hasn’t been acting very like a father, lately, has he? Abandoning his wife and his four little children to go gallivanting off on wild adventures of his own.”

 

“He was working for the government. He’d never have left us otherwise. And we want to see him, please. Right now.”

 

“My, but the little miss is impatient! Patience, patience, young lady.”

 

Meg did not tell the man on the chair that patience was not one of her virtues.

 

“And by the way, my children,” he continued blandly, “you don’t need to vocalize verbally with me, you know. I can understand you quite as well as you can understand me.”

 

Charles Wallace put his hands on his hips defiantly. “The spoken word is one of the triumphs of man,” he proclaimed, “and I intend to continue using it, particularly with people I don’t trust.” But his voice was shaking. Charles Wallace, who even as an infant had seldom cried, was near tears.

 

“And you don’t trust me?”

 

“What reason have you given us to trust you?”

 

“What cause have I given you for distrust?” The thin lips curled slightly.

 

Suddenly Charles Wallace darted forward and hit the man as hard as he could, which was fairly hard, as he had had a good deal of coaching from the twins.

 

“Charles!” Meg screamed.

 

The men in dark smocks moved smoothly but with swiftness to Charles. The man in the chair casually raised one finger, and the men dropped back.

 

“Hold it—” Calvin whispered, and together he and Meg darted forward and grabbed Charles Wallace, pulling him back from the platform.

 

The man gave a wince and the thought of his voice was a little breathless, as though Charles Wallace’s punch had succeeded in winding him. “May I ask why you did that?”

 

“Because you aren’t you,” Charles Wallace said. “I’m not sure what you are, but you”—he pointed to the man on the chair—“aren’t what’s talking to us. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t think you were real. I thought perhaps you were a robot, because I don’t feel anything coming directly from you. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it’s coming through you. It isn’t you.”

 

“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” the thought asked, and Meg had an uncomfortable feeling that she detected a snarl.

 

“It’s not that I’m smart,” Charles Wallace said, and again Meg could feel the palm of his hand sweating inside hers.

 

“Try to find out who I am, then,” the thought probed.

 

“I have been trying,” Charles Wallace said, his voice high and troubled.

 

“Look into my eyes. Look deep within them and I will tell you.”

 

Charles Wallace looked quickly at Meg and Calvin, then said, as though to himself, “I have to,” and

focused his clear blue eyes on the red ones of the man in the chair. Meg looked not at the man but at her brother. After a moment it seemed that his eyes were no longer focusing. The pupils grew smaller and smaller, as though he were looking into an intensely bright light, until they seemed to close entirely, until his eyes were nothing but an opaque blue. He slipped his hands out of Meg’s and Calvin’s and started walking slowly toward the man on the chair.

 

“No!” Meg screamed. “No!”

 

But Charles Wallace continued his slow walk forward, and she knew that he had not heard her.

 

“No!” she screamed again, and ran after him. With her inefficient flying tackle she landed on him.

 

She was so much larger than he that he fell sprawling, hitting his head a sharp crack against the marble floor. She knelt by him, sobbing. After a moment of lying there as though he had been knocked out by the blow, he opened his eyes, shook his head, and sat up. Slowly the pupils of his eyes dilated until they were back to normal, and the blood came back to his white cheeks.

 

The man on the chair spoke directly into Meg’s mind, and now there was a distinct menace to the words. “I am not pleased,” he said to her. “I could very easily lose patience with you, and that, for your information, young lady, would not be good for your father. If you have the slightest desire to see your father again, you had better cooperate.”

 

Meg reacted as she sometimes reacted to Mr. Jenkins at school. She scowled down at the ground in sullen fury. “It might help if you gave us something to eat,” she complained. “We’re all starved. If you’re going to be horrible to us you might as well give us full stomachs first.”

 

Again the thoughts coming at her broke into laughter. “Isn’t she the funny girl, though! It’s lucky for you that you amuse me, my dear, or I shouldn’t be so easy on you. The boys I find not nearly so diverting. Ah, well. Now, tell me, young lady, if I feed you will you stop interfering with me?”

 

“No,” Meg said.

 

“Starvation does work wonders, of course,” the man told her. “I hate to use such primitive methods on you, but of course you realize that you force them on me.”

 

“I wouldn’t eat your old food, anyhow.” Meg was still all churned up and angry as though she were in Mr. Jenkins’ office. “I wouldn’t trust it.”

 

“Of course our food, being synthetic, is not superior to your messes of beans and bacon and so forth, but I assure you that it’s far more nourishing, and though it has no taste of its own, a slight conditioning is all that is necessary to give you the illusion that you are eating a roast turkey dinner.”

“If I ate now I’d throw up, anyhow,” Meg said.

 

Still holding Meg’s and Calvin’s hands, Charles Wallace stepped forward. “Okay, what next?” he asked the man on the chair. “We’ve had enough of these preliminaries. Let’s get on with it.”

 

“That’s exactly what we were doing,” the man said, “until your sister interfered by practically giving you a brain concussion. Shall we try again?”

 

“No!” Meg cried. “No, Charles. Please. Let me do it. Or Calvin.”

 

“But it is only the little boy whose neurological system is complex enough. If you tried to conduct the necessary neurons your brains would explode.”

 

“And Charles’s wouldn’t?”

 

“I think not.”

 

“But there’s a possibility?”

 

“There’s always a possibility.”

 

“Then he mustn’t do it.”

“I think you will have to grant him the right to make his own decisions.”

 

But Meg, with the dogged tenacity that had so often caused her trouble, continued. “You mean Calvin and I can’t know who you really are?”

 

“Oh, no, I didn’t say that. You can’t know it in the same way, nor is it as important to me to have you know. Ah, here we are!” From somewhere in the shadows appeared four more men in dark smocks carrying a table. It was covered with a white cloth, like the tables used by Room Service in hotels, and held a metal hot box containing something that smelled delicious, something that smelled like a turkey dinner.

 

There’s something phoney in the whole setup, Meg thought. There is definitely something rotten in the state of Camazotz.

 

Again the thoughts seemed to break into laughter. “Of course it doesn’t really smell, but isn’t it as good as though it really did?”

 

“I don’t smell anything,” Charles Wallace said.

 

“I know, young man, and think how much you’re missing. This will all taste to you as though you were eating sand. But I suggest that you force it down. I would rather not have your decisions come from the weakness of an empty stomach.”

 

The table was set up in front of them, and the dark-smocked men heaped their plates with turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy and little green peas with big yellow blobs of butter melting in them and cranberries and sweet potatoes topped with gooey browned marshmallows and olives and celery and rosebud radishes and--

 

Meg felt her stomach rumbling loudly. The saliva came to her mouth.

 

“Oh, Jeeminy—” Calvin mumbled.

 

Chairs appeared and the four men who had provided the feast slid back into the shadows.

 

Charles Wallace freed his hands from Meg and Calvin and plunked himself down on one of the chairs.

 

“Come on,” he said. “If it’s poisoned it’s poisoned, but I don’t think it is.” Calvin sat down. Meg continued to stand indecisively.

 

Calvin took a bite. He chewed. He swallowed. He looked at Meg. “If this isn’t real, it’s the bes imitation you’ll ever get.”

 

Charles Wallace took a bite, made a face, and spit out his mouthful. “It’s unfair!” he shouted at the man.

 

Laughter again. “Go on, little fellow. Eat.”

 

Meg sighed and sat. “I don’t think we should eat this stuff, but if you’re going to, I’d better, too.” She took a mouthful. “It tastes all right. Try some of mine, Charles.” She held out a forkful of turkey.

Charles Wallace took it, made another face, but managed to swallow. “Still tastes like sand,” he said. He looked at the man. “Why?”

 

“You know perfectly well why. You’ve shut your mind entirely to me. The other two can’t. I can get

 

in through the chinks. Not all the way in, but enough to give them a turkey dinner. You see, I’m really

 

just a kind, jolly old gentleman.”

 

“Ha,” Charles Wallace said.

 

The man lifted his lips into a smile, and his smile was the most horrible thing Meg had ever seen. “Why don’t you trust me, Charles? Why don’t you trust me enough to come in and find out what I am? I am peace and utter rest. I am freedom from all responsibility. To come in to me is the last difficult

decision you need ever make.”

 

“If I come in can I get out again?” Charles Wallace asked.

 

“But of course, if you want to. But I don’t think you will want to.”

 

“If I come—not to stay, you understand—just to find out about you, will you tell us where Father is?”

 

“Yes. That is a promise. And I don’t make promises lightly.” “Can I speak to Meg and Calvin alone, without your listening in?” “No.”

 

Charles shrugged. “Listen,” he said to Meg and Calvin. “I have to find out what he really is. You know that. I’m going to try to hold back. I’m going to try to keep part of myself out. You mustn’t stop me this time, Meg.”

 

“But you won’t be able to, Charles! He’s stronger than you are! You know that!” “I have to try.”

 

“But Mrs Whatsit warned you!”

 

“I have to try. For Father, Meg. Please. I want—I want to know my father—” For a moment his lip trembled. Then he was back in control. “But it isn’t only Father, Meg. You know that, now. It’s the Black Thing. We have to do what Mrs Which sent us to do.”

 

“Calvin—” Meg begged.

 

But Calvin shook his head. “He’s right, Meg. And we’ll be with him, no matter what happens.” “But what’s going to happen?” Meg cried.

 

Charles Wallace looked up at the man. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

 

Now the red eyes and the light above seemed to bore into Charles, and again the pupils of the little boy’s eyes contracted. When the final point of black was lost in blue he turned away from the red eyes, looked at Meg, and smiled sweetly, but the smile was not Charles Wallace’s smile.

 

“Come on, Meg, eat this delicious food that has been prepared for us,” he said.

 

Meg snatched Charles Wallace’s plate and threw it on the floor, so that the dinner splashed about and the plate broke into fragments. “No!” She cried, her voice rising shrilly. “No! No! No!”

 

From the shadows came one of the dark-smocked men and put another plate in front of Charles Wallace, and he began to eat eagerly. “What’s wrong, Meg?” Charles Wallace asked. “Why are you being so belligerent and uncooperative?” The voice was Charles Wallace’s voice, and yet it was different, too, somehow flattened out, almost as a voice might have sounded on the two-dimensional planet.

 

Meg grabbed wildly at Calvin, shrieking, “That isn’t Charles! Charles is gone!”

 

EIGHT

The

 

Transparent Column

 

Charles Wallace sat there tucking away turkey and dressing as though it were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He was dressed like Charles Wallace; he looked like Charles Wallace; he had the same sandy brown hair, the same face that had not yet lost its baby roundness. Only the eyes were different, for the black was still swallowed up in blue. But it was far more than this that made Meg feel that Charles Wallace was gone, that the little boy in his place was only a copy of Charles Wallace, only a doll.

 

She fought down a sob. “Where is he?” she demanded of the man with red eyes. “What have you done with him? Where is Charles Wallace?”

 

“But my dear child, you are hysterical,” the man thought at her. “He is right there, before you, well and happy. Completely well and happy for the first time in his life. And he is finishing his dinner, which you also would be wise to do.”

 

“You know it isn’t Charles!” Meg shouted. “You’ve got him somehow.”

 

“Hush, Meg. There’s no use trying to talk to him,” Calvin said, speaking in a low voice into her ear. “What we have to do is hold Charles Wallace tight. He’s there, somewhere, underneath, and we mustn’t let them take him away from us. Help me hold him, Meg. Don’t lose control of yourself. Not now. You’ve got to help me hold Charles!” He took the little boy firmly by one arm.

 

Fighting down her hysteria, Meg took Charles’s other arm and held it tightly.

 

“You’re hurting me, Meg!” Charles said sharply. “Let me go!”

 

“No,” Meg said grimly.

 

“We’ve been all wrong.” Charles Wallace’s voice, Meg thought, might have been a recording. There was a canned quality to it. “He isn’t an enemy at all. He’s our friend.”

 

“Nuts,” Calvin said rudely.

 

“You don’t understand, Calvin,” Charles Wallace said. “Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Whic have confused us. They’re the ones who are really our enemies. We never should have trusted them for a minute.” He spoke in his calmest, most reasonable voice, the voice which infuriated the twins. He seemed to be looking directly at Calvin as he spoke, and yet Meg was sure that the bland blue eyes could not see, and that someone, something else was looking at Calvin through Charles.

 

Now the cold, strange eyes turned to her. “Meg, let go. I will explain it all to you, but you must let go.”

 

“No.” Meg gritted her teeth. She did not release her grasp, and Charles Wallace began to pull away with a power that was not his own, and her own spindly strength was no match against it. “Calvin!” she gasped as Charles Wallace wrenched his arm from her and stood up.

 

Calvin the athlete, Calvin the boy who split firewood and brought it in for his mother, whose muscles were strong and controlled, let go Charles Wallace’s wrist and tackled him as though he were a football. Meg, in her panic and rage, darted at the man on the chair, intending to hit him as Charles Wallace had done, but the black-smocked men were too quick for her, and one of them held her with her arms pinioned behind her back.

“Calvin, I advise you to let me go,” came Charles Wallace’s voice from under Calvin.

 

Calvin, his face screwed up with grim determination, did not relax his hold. The man with red eyes nodded and three of the men moved in on Calvin (at least it took three of them), pried him loose, and held him as Meg was being held.

 

“Mrs Whatsit!” Meg called despairingly. “Oh, Mrs Whatsit!” But Mrs Whatsit did not come.

 

“Meg,” Charles Wallace said. “Meg, just listen to me.” “Okay, I’m listening.”

 

“We’ve been all wrong, I told you; we haven’t understood. We’ve been fighting our friend, and Father’s friend.”

 

“If Father tells me he’s our friend maybe I’ll believe it. Maybe. Unless he’s got Father—under— under a spell, or whatever it is, like you.”

 

“This isn’t a fairy tale. Spells indeed,” Charles Wallace said. “Meg, you’ve got to stop fighting and relax. Relax and be happy. Oh, Meg, if you’d just relax you’d realize that all our troubles are over. You don’t understand what a wonderful place we’ve come to. You see, on this planet everything is in perfect order because everybody has learned to relax, to give in, to submit. All you have to do is look quietly and steadily into the eyes of our good friend here, for he is our friend, dear sister, and he will take you in as he has taken me.”

 

“Taken you in is right!” Meg said. “You know you’re not you. You know you’ve never in your life called me dear sister.”

 

“Shut up a minute, Meg,” Calvin whispered to her. He looked up at the man with red eyes. “Okay have your henchmen let us go and stop talking to us through Charles. We know it’s you talking, or whatever’s talking through you. Anyhow, we know you have Charles hypnotized.”

 

“A most primitive way of putting it,” the man with red eyes murmured. He gestured slightly with one finger, and Meg and Calvin were released.

 

“Thanks,” Calvin said wryly. “Now, if you are our friend, will you tell us who—or what—you are?”

 

“It is not necessary for you to know who I am. I am the Prime Coordinator, that is all you need to know.”

 

“But you’re being spoken through, aren’t you, just like Charles Wallace? Are you hypnotized, too?” “I told you that was too primitive a word, without the correct connotations.” “Is it you who are going to take us to Mr. Murry?”

 

“No. It is not necessary, nor is it possible, for me to leave here. Charles Wallace will conduct you.”

 

“Charles Wallace?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“When?”

 

“Now.” The man with red eyes made the frightening grimace that passed for his smile. “Yes, I think it might as well be now.”

 

Charles Wallace gave a slight jerk of his head, saying, “Come,” and started to walk in a strange, gliding, mechanical manner. Calvin followed him. Meg hesitated, looking from the man with red eyes to Charles and Calvin. She wanted to reach out and grab Calvin’s hand, but it seemed that ever since they had begun their journeyings she had been looking for a hand to hold, so she stuffed her fists into

her pockets and walked along behind the two boys.—I’ve got to be brave, she said to herself.—I will be.

 

They moved down a long, white, and seemingly endless corridor. Charles Wallace continued the jerky rhythm of his walk and did not once look back to see if they were with him.

 

Suddenly Meg broke into a run and caught up with Calvin. “Cal,” she said, “listen. Quick Remember Mrs Whatsit said your gift was communication and that was what she was giving you We’ve been trying to fight Charles physically, and that isn’t any good. Can’t you try to communicate with him? Can’t you try to get in to him?”

 

“Golly day, you’re right.” Calvin’s face lit up with hope, and his eyes, which had been somber, regained their usual sparkle. “I’ve been in such a swivet—It may not do any good, but at least I can try.” They quickened their pace until they were level with Charles Wallace. Calvin reached out for his arm, but Charles flung it off.

 

“Leave me alone,” he snarled.

 

“I’m not going to hurt you, old sport,” Calvin said. “I’m just trying to be friendly. Let’s make it up, hunh?”

 

“You mean you’re coming around?” Charles Wallace asked.

 

“Sure,” Calvin’s voice was coaxing. “We’re reasonable people, after all. Just look at me for a minute, Charlibus.”

 

Charles Wallace stopped and turned slowly to look at Calvin with his cold, vacant eyes. Calvin looked back, and Meg could feel the intensity of his concentration. An enormous shudder shook Charles Wallace. For a brief flash his eyes seemed to see. Then his whole body twirled wildly, and went rigid. He started his marionette’s walk again. “I should have known better,” he said. “If you want to see Murry you’d better come with me and not try any more hanky-panky.”

 

“Is that what you call your father—Murry?” Calvin asked. Meg could see that he was angry and upset at his near success.

 

“Father? What is a father?” Charles Wallace intoned. “Merely another misconception. If you fee the need of a father, then I would suggest that you turn to IT.”

 

IT again.

 

“Who’s this IT?” Meg asked.

 

“All in good time,” Charles Wallace said. “You’re not ready for IT yet. First of all I will tell you something about this beautiful, enlightened planet of Camazotz.” His voice took on the dry, pedantic tones of Mr. Jenkins. “Perhaps you do not realize that on Camazotz we have conquered all illness, all deformity—”

 

“We?” Calvin interrupted.

 

Charles continued as though he had not heard. And of course he hadn’t, Meg thought. “We let no one suffer. It is so much kinder simply to annihilate anyone who is ill. Nobody has weeks and weeks of runny noses and sore throats. Rather than endure such discomfort they are simply put to sleep.”

“You mean they’re put to sleep while they have a cold, or that they’re murdered?” Calvin demanded.

 

“Murder is a most primitive word,” Charles Wallace said. “There is no such thing as murder on Camazotz. IT takes care of all such things.” He moved jerkily to the wall of the corridor, stood still for a moment, then raised his hand. The wall flickered, quivered, grew transparent. Charles Wallace walked through it, beckoned to Meg and Calvin, and they followed. They were in a small, square

room from which radiated a dull, sulphurous light. There was something ominous to Meg in the very compactness of the room, as though the walls, the ceiling, the floor might move together and crush anybody rash enough to enter.

 

“How did you do that?” Calvin asked Charles.

 

“Do what?”

 

“Make the wall—open—like that.”

 

“I merely rearranged the atoms,” Charles Wallace said loftily. “You’ve studied atoms in school, haven’t you?”

 

“Sure, but—”

 

“Then you know enough to know that matter isn’t solid, don’t you? That you, Calvin, consist mostly of empty space? That if all the matter in you came together you’d be the size of the head of a pin? That’s plain scientific fact, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes, but—”

 

“So I simply pushed the atoms aside and we walked through the space between them.”

 

Meg’s stomach seemed to drop, and she realized that the square box in which they stood must be an elevator and that they had started to move upward with great speed. The yellow light lit up their faces, and the pale blue of Charles’s eyes absorbed the yellow and turned green.

 

Calvin licked his lips. “Where are we going?”

 

“Up.” Charles continued his lecture. “On Camazotz we are all happy because we are all alike Differences create problems. You know that, don’t you, dear sister?”

 

“No,” Meg said.

 

“Oh, yes, you do. You’ve seen at home how true it is. You know that’s the reason you’re not happy at school. Because you’re different.”

 

“I’m different, and I’m happy,” Calvin said.

 

“But you pretend that you aren’t different.”

 

“I’m different, and I like being different.” Calvin’s voice was unnaturally loud.

 

“Maybe I don’t like being different,” Meg said, “but I don’t want to be like everybody else, either.” Charles Wallace raised his hand and the motion of the square box ceased and one of the walls seemed to disappear. Charles stepped out, Meg and Calvin following him, Calvin just barely makin

 

it before the wall came into being again, and they could no longer see where the opening had been.

 

“You wanted Calvin to get left behind, didn’t you?” Meg said.

 

“I am merely trying to teach you to stay on your toes. I warn you, if I have any more trouble from either of you, I shall have to take you to IT.”

 

As the word IT fell from Charles’s lips, again Meg felt as though she had been touched by something slimy and horrible. “So what is this IT?” she asked.

 

“You might call IT the Boss.” Then Charles Wallace giggled, a giggle that was the most sinister sound Meg had ever heard. “IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist.”

 

Meg spoke coldly, to cover her fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“That’s s-a-d-i-s-t, not s-a-d-d-e-s-t, you know,” Charles Wallace said, and giggled again. “Lots of people don’t pronounce it correctly.”

 

“Well, I don’t care,” Meg said defiantly. “I don’t ever want to see IT, and that’s that.”

 

Charles Wallace’s strange, monotonous voice ground against her ears. “Meg, you’re supposed to have some mind. Why do you think we have wars at home? Why do you think people get confused and

unhappy? Because they all live their own, separate, individual lives. I’ve been trying to explain to you in the simplest possible way that on Camazotz individuals have been done away with. Camazotz is ONE mind. It’s IT. And that’s why everybody’s so happy and efficient. That’s what old witches like Mrs Whatsit don’t want to have happen at home.”

 

“She’s not a witch,” Meg interrupted.

 

“No?”

 

“No,” Calvin said. “You know she’s not. You know that’s just their game. Their way, maybe, of laughing in the dark.”

 

“In the dark is correct,” Charles continued. “They want us to go on being confused instead o properly organized.”

 

Meg shook her head violently. “No!” she shouted. “I know our world isn’t perfect, Charles, but it’s better than this. This isn’t the only alternative! It can’t be!”

 

“Nobody suffers here,” Charles intoned. “Nobody is ever unhappy.”

 

“But nobody’s ever happy, either,” Meg said earnestly. “Maybe if you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t known how to be happy. Calvin, I want to go home.”

 

“We can’t leave Charles,” Calvin told her, “and we can’t go before we’ve found your father. You know that. But you’re right, Meg, and Mrs Which is right. This is Evil.”

 

Charles Wallace shook his head, and scorn and disapproval seemed to emanate from him. “Come. We’re wasting time.” He moved rapidly down the corridor, but continued to speak. “How dreadful it is to be low, individual organisms. Tch-tch-tch.” His pace quickened from step to step, his short legs flashing, so that Meg and Calvin almost had to run to keep up with him. “Now see this,” he said. He raised his hand and suddenly they could see through one of the walls into a small room. In the room a little boy was bouncing a ball. He was bouncing it in rhythm, and the walls of his little cell seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the ball. And each time the ball bounced he screamed as though he were in pain.

 

“That’s the little boy we saw this afternoon,” Calvin said sharply, “the little boy who wasn’t bouncing the ball like the others.”

 

Charles Wallace giggled again. “Yes. Every once in a while there’s a little trouble with cooperation, but it’s easily taken care of. After today he’ll never desire to deviate again. Ah, here we are.”

 

He moved rapidly down the corridor and again held up his hand to make the wall transparent. They

 

looked into another small room or cell. In the center of it was a large, round, transparent column, and

 

inside this column was a man.

 

“FATHER!” Meg screamed.

NINE

IT

 

Meg rushed at the man imprisoned in the column, but as she reached what seemed to be the open door she was hurled back as though she had crashed into a brick wall.

 

Calvin caught her. “It’s just transparent like glass this time,” he told her. “We can’t go through it.” Meg was so sick and dizzy from the impact that she could not answer. For a moment she was afraid

that she would throw up or faint. Charles Wallace laughed again, the laugh that was not his own, and it was this that saved her, for once more anger overcame her pain and fear. Charles Wallace, her own real, dear Charles Wallace, never laughed at her when she hurt herself. Instead, his arms would go quickly around her neck and he would press his soft cheek against hers in loving comfort. But the demon Charles Wallace snickered. She turned away from him and looked again at the man in the column.

 

“Oh, Father—” she whispered longingly, but the man in the column did not move to look at her. The horn-rimmed glasses, which always seemed so much a part of him, were gone, and the expression of his eyes was turned inward, as though he were deep in thought. He had grown a beard, and the silky brown was shot with gray. His hair, too, had not been cut. It wasn’t just the overlong hair of the man in the snapshot at Cape Canaveral; it was pushed back from his high forehead and fell softly almost to his shoulders, so that he looked like someone in another century, or a shipwrecked sailor. But there was no question, despite the change in him, that he was her father, her own beloved father.

 

“My, he looks a mess, doesn’t he?” Charles Wallace said, and sniggered.

 

Meg swung on him with sick rage. “Charles, that’s Father! Father!”

 

“So what?”

 

Meg turned away from him and held out her arms to the man in the column.

 

“He doesn’t see us, Meg,” Calvin said gently.

 

“Why? Why?”

 

“I think it’s sort of like those little peepholes they have in apartments, in the front doors,” Calvin explained. “You know. From inside you can look through and see everything. And from outside you can’t see anything at all. We can see him, but he can’t see us.”

 

“Charles!” Meg pleaded. “Let me in to Father!”

 

“Why?” Charles asked placidly.

 

Meg remembered that when they were in the room with the man with red eyes she had knocked Charles Wallace back into himself when she tackled him and his head cracked the floor; so she hurled herself at him. But before she could reach him his fist shot out and punched her hard in the stomach. She gasped for breath. Sickly, she turned away from her brother, back to the transparent wall. There was the cell, there was the column with her father inside. Although she could see him, although she was almost close enough to touch him, he seemed farther away than he had been when she had pointed him out to Calvin in the picture on the piano. He stood there quietly as though frozen in a column of ice, an expression of suffering and endurance on his face that pierced into her heart like an arrow.

 

“You say you want to help Father?” Charles Wallace’s voice came form behind her, with no emotion whatsoever.

“Yes. Don’t you?” Meg demanded, swinging around and glaring at him.

 

“But of course. That is why we are here.”

 

“Then what do we do?” Meg tried to keep the franticness out of her voice, trying to sound as drained of feeling as Charles, but nevertheless ending on a squeak.

 

“You must do as I have done, and go in to IT,” Charles said.

 

“No.”

 

“I can see you don’t really want to save Father.”

 

“How will my being a zombie save Father?”

 

“You will just have to take my word for it, Margaret,” came the cold, flat voice from Charles Wallace. “IT wants you and IT will get you. Don’t forget that I, too, am part of IT, now. You know I wouldn’t have done IT if IT weren’t the right thing to do.”

 

“Calvin,” Meg asked in agony, “will it really save Father?”

 

But Calvin was paying no attention to her. He seemed to be concentrating with all his power on Charles Wallace. He stared into the pale blue that was all that was left of Charles Wallace’s eyes. “And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate/To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands . . . /she did confine thee . . . into a cloven pine—” he whispered, and Meg recognized Mrs Who’s words to him.

 

For a moment Charles Wallace seemed to listen. Then he shrugged and turned away. Calvin followed him, trying to keep his eyes focused on Charles’s. “If you want a witch, Charles,” he said, “IT’s the witch. Not our ladies. Good thing I had The Tempest at school this year, isn’t it, Charles? It was the witch who put Ariel in the cloven pine, wasn’t it?”

 

Charles Wallace’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Stop staring at me.”

 

Breathing quickly with excitement, Calvin continued to pin Charles Wallace with his stare. “You’re like Ariel in the cloven pine, Charles. And I can let you out. Look at me, Charles. Come back to us.”

Again the shudder went through Charles Wallace.

 

Calvin’s intense voice hit at him. “Come back, Charles. Come back to us.”

 

Again Charles shuddered. And then it was as though an invisible hand had smacked against his chest and knocked him to the ground, and the stare with which Calvin had held him was broken. Charles sat there on the floor of the corridor whimpering, not a small boy’s sound, but a fearful, animal noise.

 

“Calvin.” Meg turned on him, clasping her hands intensely. “Try to get to Father.”

 

Calvin shook his head. “Charles almost came out. I almost did it. He almost came back to us.”

 

“Try Father,” Meg said again.

 

“How?”

 

“Your cloven pine thing. Isn’t Father imprisoned in a cloven pine even more than Charles? Look a him, in that column there. Get him out, Calvin.”

 

Calvin spoke in an exhausted way. “Meg. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get in. Meg they’re asking too much of us.”

 

“Mrs Who’s spectacles!” Meg said suddenly. Mrs Who had told her to use them only as a las resort, and surely that was now. She reached into her pocket and the spectacles were there, cool and light and comforting. With trembling fingers she pulled them out.

 

“Give me those spectacles!” Charles Wallace’s voice came in a harsh command, and he scrambled up off the floor and ran at her.

 

She barely had time to snatch off her own glasses and put on Mrs Who’s, and, as it was, one

earpiece dropped down her cheek and they barely stayed on her nose. As Charles Wallace lunged at her she flung herself against the transparent door and she was through it. She was in the cell with the imprisoning column that held her father. With trembling fingers she straightened Mrs Who’s glasses and put her own in her pocket.

 

“Give them to me,” came Charles Wallace’s menacing voice, and he was in the cell with her, with Calvin on the outside pounding frantically to get in.

 

Meg kicked at Charles Wallace and ran at the column. She felt as though she were going through something dark and cold. But she was through. “Father!” she cried. And she was in his arms.

 

This was the moment for which she had been waiting, not only since Mrs Which whisked them of on their journeys, but during the long months and years before, when the letters had stopped coming, when people made remarks about Charles Wallace, when Mrs. Murry showed a rare flash of loneliness or grief. This was the moment that meant that now and forever everything would be all right.

 

As she pressed against her father all was forgotten except joy. There was only the peace and comfort of leaning against him, the wonder of the protecting circle of his arms, the feeling of complete reassurance and safety that his presence always gave her.

 

Her voice broke on a happy sob. “Oh, Father! Oh, Father!”

 

“Meg!” he cried in glad surprise. “Meg, what are you doing here? Where’s your mother? Where are the boys?”

 

She looked out of the column, and there was Charles Wallace in the cell, an alien expression distorting his face. She turned back to her father. There was no more time for greeting, for joy, for explanations. “We have to go to Charles Wallace,” she said, her words tense. “Quickly.”

 

Her father’s hands were moving gropingly over her face, and as she felt the touch of his strong, gentle fingers, she realized with a flooding of horror that she could see him, that she could see Charles in the cell and Calvin in the corridor, but her father could not see them, could not see her. She looked at him in panic, but his eyes were the same steady blue that she remembered. She moved her hand brusquely across his line of vision, but he did not blink.

 

“Father!” she cried. “Father! Can’t you see me?”

 

His arms went around her again in a comforting, reassuring gesture. “No, Meg.”

 

“But, Father, I can see you—” Her voice trailed off. Suddenly she shoved Mrs Who’s glasses dow her nose and peered over them, and immediately she was in complete and utter darkness. She snatched them off her face and thrust them at her father. “Here.”

 

His fingers closed about the spectacles. “Darling,” he said, “I’m afraid your glasses won’t help.” “But they’re Mrs Who’s, they aren’t mine,” she explained, not realizing that her words would sound

like gibberish to him. “Please try them, Father. Please!” She waited while she felt him fumbling in the dark. “Can you see now?” she asked. “Can you see now, Father?”

 

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. The wall is transparent, now. How extraordinary! I could almost see the atoms rearranging!” His voice had its old, familiar sound of excitement and discovery. It was the way he sounded sometimes when he came home from his laboratory after a good day and began to tell his wife about his work. Then he cried out, “Charles! Charles Wallace!” And then, “Meg, what’s happened to him? What’s wrong? That is Charles, isn’t it?”

 

“IT has him, Father,” she explained tensely. “He’s gone into IT. Father, we have to help him.”

 

For a long moment Mr. Murry was silent. The silence was filled with the words he was thinking

and would not speak out loud to his daughter. Then he said, “Meg, I’m in prison here. I have been for —”

 

“Father, these walls. You can go through them. I came through the column to get in to you. It was Mrs Who’s glasses.”

 

Mr. Murry did not stop to ask who Mrs Who was. He slapped his hand against the translucen column. “It seems solid enough.”

 

“But I got in,” Meg repeated. “I’m here. Maybe the glasses help the atoms rearrange. Try it Father.”

 

She waited, breathlessly, and after a moment she realized that she was alone in the column. She put out her hands in the darkness and felt its smooth surface curving about her on all sides. She seemed utterly alone, the silence and darkness impenetrable forever. She fought down panic until she heard her father’s voice coming to her very faintly.

 

“I’m coming back in for you, Meg.”

 

It was almost a tangible feeling as the atoms of the strange material seemed to part to let him through to her. In their beach house at Cape Canaveral there had been a curtain between dining and living room made of long strands of rice. It looked like a solid curtain, but you could walk right through it. At first Meg had flinched each time she came up to the curtain; but gradually she got used to it and would go running right through, leaving the long strands of rice swinging behind her. Perhaps the atoms of these walls were arranged in somewhat the same fashion.

 

“Put your arms around my neck, Meg,” Mr. Murry said. “Hold on to me tightly. Close your eyes and don’t be afraid.” He picked her up and she wrapped her long legs around his waist and clung to his neck. With Mrs Who’s spectacles on she had felt only a faint darkness and coldness as she moved through the column. Without the glasses she felt the same awful clamminess she had felt when they tessered through the outer darkness of Camazotz. Whatever the Black Thing was to which Camazot had submitted, it was within as well as without the planet. For a moment it seemed that the chill darkness would tear her from her father’s arms. She tried to scream, but within that icy horror no sound was possible. Her father’s arms tightened about her, and she clung to his neck in a strangle hold, but she was no longer lost in panic. She knew that if her father could not get her through the wall he would stay with her rather than leave her; she knew that she was safe as long as she was in his arms.

 

Then they were outside. The column rose up in the middle of the room, crystal clear and empty.

 

Meg blinked at the blurred figures of Charles and her father, and wondered why they did not clear.

 

Then she grabbed her own glasses out of her pocket and put them on, and her myopic eyes were able to focus.

 

Charles Wallace was tapping one foot impatiently against the floor. “IT is not pleased,” he said. “IT is not pleased at all.”

 

Mr. Murry released Meg and knelt in front of the little boy. “Charles,” his voice was tender. “Charles Wallace.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I’m your father, Charles. Look at me.”

 

The pale blue eyes seemed to focus on Mr. Murry’s face. “Hi, Pop,” came an insolent voice. “That isn’t Charles!” Meg cried. “Oh, Father, Charles isn’t like that. IT has him.” “Yes.” Mr. Murry sounded tired. “I see.” He held his arms out. “Charles. Come here.”

Father will make it all right, Meg thought. Everything will be all right now.

 

Charles did not move toward the outstretched arms. He stood a few feet away from his father, and he did not look at him.

 

“Look at me,” Mr. Murry commanded.

 

“No.”

 

Mr. Murry’s voice became harsh. “When you speak to me you will say ‘No, Father,’ or ‘No, sir.’ ” “Come off it, Pop,” came the cold voice from Charles Wallace—Charles Wallace who, outside

 

Camazotz, had been strange, had been different, but never rude. “You’re not the boss around here.” Meg could see Calvin pounding again on the glass wall. “Calvin!” she called.

 

“He can’t hear you,” Charles said. He made a horrible face at Calvin, and then he thumbed his nose.

 

“Who’s Calvin?” Mr. Murry asked.

 

“He’s—” Meg started, but Charles Wallace cut her short.

 

“You’ll have to defer your explanations. Let’s go.”

 

“Go where?”

 

“To IT.”

 

“No,” Mr. Murry said. “You can’t take Meg there.” “Oh, can’t I!”

 

“No, you cannot. You’re my son, Charles, and I’m afraid you will have to do as I say.”

 

“But he isn’t Charles!” Meg cried in anguish. Why didn’t her father understand? “Charles is nothin like that, Father! You know he’s nothing like that!”

 

“He was only a baby when I left,” Mr. Murry said heavily.

 

“Father, it’s IT talking through Charles. IT isn’t Charles. He’s—he’s bewitched.”

 

“Fairy tales again,” Charles said.

 

“You know IT, Father?” Meg asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Have you seen IT?”

 

“Yes, Meg.” Again his voice sounded exhausted. “Yes. I have.” He turned to Charles. “You know she wouldn’t be able to hold out.”

 

“Exactly,” Charles said.

 

“Father, you can’t talk to him as though he were Charles! Ask Calvin! Calvin will tell you.”

 

“Come along,” Charles Wallace said. “We must go.” He held up his hand carelessly and walked out of the cell, and there was nothing for Meg and Mr. Murry to do but to follow.

 

As they stepped into the corridor Meg caught at her father’s sleeve. “Calvin, here’s Father!” Calvin turned anxiously toward them. His freckles and his hair stood out brilliantly against his

 

white face.

 

“Make your introductions later,” Charles Wallace said. “IT does not like to be kept waiting.” He walked down the corridor, his gait seeming to get more jerky with each step. The others followed, walking rapidly to keep up.

 

“Does your father know about the Mrs W’s?” Calvin asked Meg.

 

“There hasn’t been time for anything. Everything’s awful.” Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg’s stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be all right. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything.

And instead of this happy and expected outcome, they seemed to be encountering all kinds of new troubles.

 

“He doesn’t understand about Charles,” she whispered to Calvin, looking unhappily at her father’s back as he walked behind the little boy.

 

“Where are we going?” Calvin asked.

 

“To IT. Calvin, I don’t want to go! I can’t!” She stopped, but Charles continued his jerky pace. “We can’t leave Charles,” Calvin said. “They wouldn’t like it.” “Who wouldn’t?”

 

“Mrs Whatsit & Co.”

 

“But they’ve betrayed us! They brought us here to this terrible place and abandoned us!”

 

Calvin looked at her in surprise. “You sit down and give up if you like,” he said. “I’m sticking with Charles.” He ran to keep up with Charles Wallace and Mr. Murry.

 

“I didn’t mean—” Meg started, and pounded after them.

 

Just as she caught up with them Charles Wallace stopped and raised his hand, and there was the elevator again, its yellow light sinister. Meg felt her stomach jerk as the swift descent began. They were silent until the motion stopped, silent as they followed Charles Wallace through long corridors and out into the street. The CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building loomed up, stark and angula behind them.

 

—Do something, Meg implored her father silently.—Do something. Help. Save us.

 

They turned a corner, and at the end of the street was a strange, domelike building. Its walls glowed with a flicker of violet flame. Its silvery roof pulsed with ominous light. The light was neither warm nor cold, but it seemed to reach out and touch them. This, Meg was sure, must be where IT was waiting for them.

 

They moved down the street, more slowly now, and as they came closer to the domed building the violet flickering seemed to reach out, to envelop them, to suck them in: they were inside.

 

Meg could feel a rhythmical pulsing. It was a pulsing not only about her, but in her as well, as though the rhythm of her heart and lungs was no longer her own but was being worked by some outside force. The closest she had come to the feeling before was when she had been practicing artificial respiration with Girl Scouts, and the leader, an immensely powerful woman, had been working on Meg, intoning OUT goes the bad air, IN comes the good! while her heavy hands pressed released, pressed, released.

 

Meg gasped, trying to breathe at her own normal rate, but the inexorable beat within and without continued. For a moment she could neither move nor look around to see what was happening to the others. She simply had to stand there, trying to balance herself into the artificial rhythm of her heart and lungs. Her eyes seemed to swim in a sea of red.

 

Then things began to clear, and she could breathe without gasping like a beached fish, and she could look about the great, circular, domed building. It was completely empty except for the pulse, which seemed a tangible thing, and a round dais exactly in the center. On the dais lay—what? Meg could not tell, and yet she knew that it was from this that the rhythm came. She stepped forward tentatively. She felt that she was beyond fear now. Charles Wallace was no longer Charles Wallace. Her father had been found but he had not made everything all right. Instead everything was worse than ever, and her adored father was bearded and thin and white and not omnipotent after all. No matter what happened next, things could be no more terrible or frightening than they already were.

Oh, couldn’t they?

 

As she continued to step slowly forward, at last she realized what the Thing on the dais was.

 

IT was a brain.

 

A disembodied brain. An oversized brain, just enough larger than normal to be completely revolting and terrifying. A living brain. A brain that pulsed and quivered, that seized and commanded. No wonder the brain was called IT. IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating than anything she had ever imagined with her conscious mind, or that had ever tormented her in her most terrible nightmares.

 

But as she had felt she was beyond fear, so now she was beyond screaming.

 

She looked at Charles Wallace, and he stood there, turned toward IT, his jaw hanging slightly loose; and his vacant blue eyes slowly twirled.

 

Oh, yes, things could always be worse. These twirling eyes within Charles Wallace’s soft round face made Meg icy cold inside and out.

 

She looked away from Charles Wallace and at her father. Her father stood there with Mrs Who’s glasses still perched on his nose—did he remember that he had them on?—and he shouted to Calvin. “Don’t give in!”

 

“I won’t! Help Meg!” Calvin yelled back. It was absolutely silent within the dome, and yet Me realized that the only way to speak was to shout with all the power possible. For everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned, was the rhythm, and as it continued to control the systole and diastole of her heart, the intake and outlet of her breath, the red miasma began to creep before her eyes again, and she was afraid that she was going to lose consciousness, and if she did that she would be completely in the power of IT.

 

Mrs Whatsit had said, “Meg, I give you your faults.”

 

What were her greatest faults? Anger, impatience, stubbornness. Yes, it was to her faults that she turned to save herself now.

 

With an immense effort she tried to breathe against the rhythm of IT. But ITs power was too strong. Each time she managed to take a breath out of rhythm an iron hand seemed to squeeze her heart and lungs.

 

Then she remembered that when they had been standing before the man with red eyes, and the man with red eyes had been intoning the multiplication table at them, Charles Wallace had fought against his power by shouting out nursery rhymes, and Calvin by the Gettysburg Address.

 

“Georgie, porgie, pudding and pie,” she yelled. “Kissed the girls and made them cry.” That was no good. It was too easy for nursery rhymes to fall into the rhythm of IT.

 

She didn’t know the Gettysburg Address. How did the Declaration of Independence begin? She ha memorized it only that winter, not because she was required to at school, but simply because she liked it.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident!” she shouted, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

As she cried out the words she felt a mind moving in on her own, felt IT seizing, squeezing her brain. Then she realized that Charles Wallace was speaking, or being spoken through by IT.

 

“But that’s exactly what we have on Camazotz. Complete equality. Everybody exactly alike.”

 

For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then came a moment of blazing truth. “No!” she

cried triumphantly. “Like and equal are not the same thing at all!” “Good girl, Meg!” her father shouted at her.

 

But Charles Wallace continued as though there had been no interruption. “In Camazotz all are equal. In Camazotz everybody is the same as everybody else,” but he gave her no argument, provided no answer, and she held on to her moment of revelation.

 

Like and equal are two entirely different things.

 

For the moment she had escaped from the power of IT.

 

But how?

 

She knew that her own puny little brain was no match for this great, bodiless, pulsing, writhing mass on the round dais. She shuddered as she looked at IT. In the lab at school there was a human brain preserved in formaldehyde, and the seniors preparing for college had to take it out and look at it and study it. Meg had felt that when that day came she would never be able to endure it. But now she thought that if only she had a dissecting knife she would slash at IT, cutting ruthlessly through cerebrum, cerebellum.

 

Words spoke within her, directly this time, not through Charles. “Don’t you realize that if you destroy me, you also destroy your little brother?”

 

If that great brain were cut, were crushed, would every mind under ITs control on Camazotz die, too? Charles Wallace and the man with red eyes and the man who ran the number-one spelling machine on the second-grade level and all the children playing ball and skipping rope and all the mothers and all the men and women going in and out of the buildings? Was their life completely dependent on IT? Were they beyond all possibility of salvation?

 

She felt the brain reaching at her again as she let her stubborn control slip. Red fog glazed her eyes. Faintly she heard her father’s voice, though she knew he was shouting at the top of his lungs. “The

periodic table of elements, Meg! Say it!”

 

A picture flashed into her mind of winter evenings spent sitting before the open fire and studying with her father. “Hydrogen. Helium,” she started obediently. Keep them in their proper atomic order. What next. She knew it. Yes. “Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine.” Sh shouted the words at her father, turned away from IT. “Neon. Sodium. Magnesium. Aluminum. Silicon. Phosphorus.”

 

“Too rhythmical,” her father shouted. “What’s the square root of five?”

 

For a moment she was able to concentrate. Rack your brains yourself, Meg. Don’t let IT rack them “The square root of five is 2.236,” she cried triumphantly, “because 2.236 times 2.236 equals 5!”

“What’s the square root of seven?”

 

“The square root of seven is—” She broke off. She wasn’t holding out. IT was getting at her, and she couldn’t concentrate, not even on math, and soon she, too, would be absorbed in IT, she would be an IT.

 

“Tesser, sir!” she heard Calvin’s voice through the red darkness. “Tesser!”

 

She felt her father grab her by the wrist, there was a terrible jerk that seemed to break every bone in her body, then the dark nothing of tessering.

 

If tessering with Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had been a strange and fearful experience it was nothing like tessering with her father. After all, Mrs Which was experienced at it, and Mr. Murry—how did he know anything about it at all? Meg felt that she was being torn apart by a whirlwind. She was lost in an agony of pain that finally dissolved into the darkness of complete

unconsciousness.

TEN

Absolute Zero

 

The first sign of returning consciousness was cold. Then sound. She was aware of voices that seemed to be traveling through her across an arctic waste. Slowly the icy sounds cleared and she realized that the voices belonged to her father and Calvin. She did not hear Charles Wallace. She tried to open her eyes but the lids would not move. She tried to sit up, but she could not stir. She struggled to turn over, to move her hands, her feet, but nothing happened. She knew that she had a body, but it was as lifeless as marble.

 

She heard Calvin’s frozen voice: “Her heart is beating so slowly—”

 

Her father’s voice: “But it’s beating. She’s alive.”

 

“Barely.”

 

“We couldn’t find a heartbeat at all at first. We thought she was dead.” “Yes.”

 

“And then we could feel her heart, very faintly, the beats very far apart. And then it got stronger. So all we have to do is wait.” Her father’s words sounded brittle in her ears, as though they were being chipped out of ice.

 

Calvin: “Yes. You’re right, sir.”

 

She wanted to call out to them. “I’m alive! I’m very much alive! Only I’ve been turned to stone.” But she could not call out anymore than she could move.

 

Calvin’s voice again. “Anyhow you got her away from IT. You got us both away and we couldn’t have gone on holding out. IT’s so much more powerful and strong than—How did we stay out, sir? How did we manage as long as we did?”

 

Her father: “Because IT’s completely unused to being refused. That’s the only reason I could keep from being absorbed, too. No mind has tried to hold out against IT for so many thousands of centuries that certain centers have become soft and atrophied through lack of use. If you hadn’t come to me when you did I’m not sure how much longer I would have lasted. I was on the point of giving in.”

Calvin: “Oh, no, sir—”

 

Her father: “Yes. Nothing seemed important anymore but rest, and of course IT offered me complete rest. I had almost come to the conclusion that I was wrong to fight, that IT was right after all, and everything I believed in most passionately was nothing but a madman’s dream. But then you and Meg came in to me, broke through my prison, and hope and faith returned.”

 

Calvin: “Sir, why were you on Camazotz at all? Was there a particular reason for going there?”

 

Her father, with a frigid laugh: “Going to Camazotz was a complete accident. I never intended even to leave our own solar system. I was heading for Mars. Tessering is even more complicated than we had expected.”

 

Calvin: “Sir, how was IT able to get Charles Wallace before it got Meg and me?”

 

Her father: “From what you’ve told me it’s because Charles Wallace thought he could deliberately go into IT and return. He trusted too much to his own strength—listen!—I think the heartbeat is getting stronger!”

 

His words no longer sounded to her quite as frozen. Was it his words that were ice, or her ears?

Why did she hear only her father and Calvin? Why didn’t Charles Wallace speak?

 

Silence. A long silence. Then Calvin’s voice again: “Can’t we do anything? Can’t we look for help? Do we just have to go on waiting?”

 

Her father: “We can’t leave her. And we must stay together. We must not be afraid to take time.”

 

Calvin: “You mean we were? We rushed into things on Camazotz too fast, and Charles Wallace rushed in too fast, and that’s why he got caught?”

 

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know enough yet. Time is different on Camazotz, anyhow. Our time inadequate though it is, at least is straightforward. It may not be even fully one-dimensional, because it can’t move back and forth on its line, only ahead; but at least it’s consistent in its direction. Time on Camazotz seems to be inverted, turned in on itself. So I have no idea whether I was imprisoned in tha column for centuries or only for minutes.” Silence for a moment. Then her father’s voice again. “I think I feel a pulse in her wrist now.”

 

Meg could not feel his fingers against her wrist. She could not feel her wrist at all. Her body was still stone, but her mind was beginning to be capable of movement. She tried desperately to make some kind of a sound, a signal to them, but nothing happened.

 

Their voices started again. Calvin: “About your project, sir. Were you on it alone?”

 

Her father: “Oh, no. There were half a dozen of us working on it and I daresay a number of others we don’t know about. Certainly we weren’t the only nation to investigate along that line. It’s not really a new idea. But we did try very hard not to let it be known abroad that we were trying to make it practicable.”

 

“Did you come to Camazotz alone? Or were there others with you?”

 

“I came alone. You see, Calvin, there was no way to try it out ahead with rats or monkeys or dogs. And we had no idea whether it would really work or whether it would be complete bodily disintegration. Playing with time and space is a dangerous game.”

 

“But why you, sir?”

 

“I wasn’t the first. We drew straws, and I was second.” “What happened to the first man?”

 

“We don’t—look! Did her eyelids move?” Silence. Then: “No. It was only a shadow.” But I did blink, Meg tried to tell them. I’m sure I did. And I can hear you! Do something!

But there was only another long silence, during which perhaps they were looking at her, watching for another shadow, another flicker. Then she heard her father’s voice again, quiet, a little warmer, more like his own voice. “We drew straws, and I was second. We know Hank went. We saw him go. We saw him vanish right in front of the rest of us. He was there and then he wasn’t. We were to wait for a year for his return or for some message. We waited. Nothing.”

 

Calvin, his voice cracking: “Jeepers, sir. You must have been in sort of a flap.”

 

Her father: “Yes. It’s a frightening as well as an exciting thing to discover that matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. We can know this, but it’s far more than we can understand with our puny little brains. I think you will be able to comprehend far more than I. And Charles Wallace even more than you.”

 

“Yes, but what happened, please, sir, after the first man?”

 

Meg could hear her father sigh. “Then it was my turn. I went. And here I am. A wiser and a humbler man. I’m sure I haven’t been gone two years. Now that you’ve come I have some hope that I may b able to return in time. One thing I have to tell the others is that we know nothing.”

Calvin: “What do you mean, sir?”

 

Her father: “Just what I say. We’re children playing with dynamite. In our mad rush we’ve plunged into this before—”

 

With a desperate effort Meg made a sound. It wasn’t a very loud sound, but it was a sound. Mr. Murry stopped. “Hush. Listen.”

 

Meg made a strange, croaking noise. She found that she could pull open her eyelids. They fel heavier than marble but she managed to raise them. Her father and Calvin were hovering over her. She did not see Charles Wallace. Where was he?

 

She was lying in an open field of what looked like rusty, stubby grass. She blinked, slowly, and with difficulty.

 

“Meg,” her father said. “Meg. Are you all right?”

 

Her tongue felt like a stone tongue in her mouth, but she managed to croak, “I can’t move.”

 

“Try,” Calvin urged. He sounded now as though he were very angry with her. “Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your fingers.”

 

“I can’t. Where’s Charles Wallace?” Her words were blunted by the stone tongue. Perhaps they could not understand her, for there was no answer.

 

“We were knocked out for a minute, too,” Calvin was saying. “You’ll be all right, Meg. Don’t get panicky.” He was crouched over her, and though his voice continued to sound cross he was peering at her with anxious eyes. She knew that she must still have her glasses on because she could see him clearly, his freckles, his stubby black lashes, the bright blue of his eyes.

 

Her father was kneeling on her other side. The round lenses of Mrs Who’s glasses still blurred his eyes. He took one of her hands and rubbed it between his. “Can you feel my fingers?” He sounded quite calm, as though there were nothing extraordinary in having her completely paralyzed. At the quiet of his voice she felt calmer. Then she saw that there were great drops of sweat standing out on his forehead, and she noticed vaguely that the gentle breeze that touched her cheeks was cool. At first his words had been frozen and now the wind was mild: was it icy cold here or warm? “Can you feel my fingers?” he asked again.

 

Yes, now she could feel a pressure against her wrist, but she could not nod. “Where’s Charles Wallace?” Her words were a little less blurred. Her tongue, her lips were beginning to feel cold and numb, as though she had been given a massive dose of novocaine at the dentist’s. She realized with a start that her body and limbs were cold, that not only was she not warm, she was frozen from head to toe, and it was this that had made her father’s words seem like ice, that had paralyzed her.

 

“I’m frozen—” she said faintly. Camazotz hadn’t been this cold, a cold that cut deeper than the wind on the bitterest of winter days at home. She was away from IT, but this unexplained iciness was almost as bad. Her father had not saved her.

 

Now she was able to look around a little, and everything she could see was rusty and gray. There were trees edging the field in which she lay, and their leaves were the same brown as the grass. There were plants that might have been flowers, except that they were dull and gray. In contrast to the drabness of color, to the cold that numbed her, the air was filled with a delicate, springlike fragrance, almost imperceptible as it blew softly against her face. She looked at her father and Calvin. They were both in their shirt sleeves and they looked perfectly comfortable. It was she, wrapped in their clothes, who was frozen too solid even to shiver.

 

“Why am I so cold?” she asked. “Where’s Charles Wallace?” They did not answer. “Father, where

are we?”

 

Mr. Murry looked at her soberly. “I don’t know, Meg. I don’t tesser very well. I must have overshot, somehow. We’re not on Camazotz. I don’t know where we are. I think you’re so cold because we went through the Black Thing, and I thought for a moment it was going to tear you away from me.”

 

“Is this a dark planet?” Slowly her tongue was beginning to thaw; her words were less blurred. “I don’t think so,” Mr. Murry said, “but I know so little about anything that I can’t be sure.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to tesser, then.” She had never spoken to her father in this way before.

 

The words seemed hardly to be hers.

 

Calvin looked at her, shaking his head. “It was the only thing to do. At least it got us off Camazotz.” “Why did we go without Charles Wallace? Did we just leave him there?” The words that were no

really hers came out cold and accusing.

 

“We didn’t ‘just leave him,’ ” her father said. “Remember that the human brain is a very delicate organism, and it can be easily damaged.”

 

“See, Meg,” Calvin crouched over her, tense and worried, “if your father had tried to yank Charles away when he tessered us, and if IT had kept grabbing hold of Charles, it might have been too much for him, and we’d have lost him forever. And we had to do something right then.”

 

“Why?”

 

“IT was taking us. You and I were slipping, and if your father had gone on trying to help us he wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer, either.”

 

“You told him to tesser,” Meg charged Calvin.

 

“There isn’t any question of blame,” Mr. Murry cut in severely. “Can you move yet?”

 

All Meg’s faults were uppermost in her now, and they were no longer helping her. “No! And you’d better take me back to Camazotz and Charles Wallace quickly. You’re supposed to be able to help!” Disappointment was as dark and corrosive in her as the Black Thing. The ugly words tumbled from her cold lips even as she herself could not believe that it was to her father, her beloved, longed-for father, that she was talking to in this way. If her tears had not still been frozen they would have gushed from her eyes.

 

She had found her father and he had not made everything all right. Everything kept getting worse and worse. If the long search for her father was ended, and he wasn’t able to overcome all their difficulties, there was nothing to guarantee that it would all come out right in the end. There was nothing left to hope for. She was frozen, and Charles Wallace was being devoured by IT, and her omnipotent father was doing nothing. She teetered on the seesaw of love and hate, and the Black Thing pushed her down into hate. “You don’t even know where we are!” she cried out at her father. “We’ll never see Mother or the twins again! We don’t know where earth is! Or even where Camazotz is! We’re lost out in space! What are you going to do!” She did not realize that she was as much in the power of the Black Thing as Charles Wallace.

 

Mr. Murry bent over her, massaging her cold fingers. She could not see his face. “My daughter, I am not a Mrs Whatsit, a Mrs Who, or a Mrs Which. Yes, Calvin has told me everything he could. I am human being, and a very fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

 

“The Black Thing!” Meg cried out at him. “Why did you let it almost get me?”

“You’ve never tessered as well as the rest of us,” Calvin reminded her. “It never bothered Charles and me as much as it did you.”

 

“He shouldn’t have taken me, then,” Meg said, “until he learned to do it better.”

 

Neither her father nor Calvin spoke. Her father continued his gentle massage. Her fingers came back to life with tingling pain. “You’re hurting me!”

 

“Then you’re feeling again,” her father said quietly. “I’m afraid it is going to hurt, Meg.”

 

The piercing pain moved slowly up her arms, began in her toes and legs. She started to cry out against her father when Calvin exclaimed, “Look!”

 

Coming toward them, moving in silence across the brown grass, were three figures. What were they?

 

On Uriel there had been the magnificent creatures. On Camazotz the inhabitants had at least resembled people. What were these three strange things approaching?

 

They were the same dull gray color as the flowers. If they hadn’t walked upright they would have seemed like animals. They moved directly toward the three human beings. They had four arms and far more than five fingers to each hand, and the fingers were not fingers, but long waving tentacles. They had heads, and they had faces. But where the faces of the creatures on Uriel had seemed far more than human faces, these seemed far less. Where the features would normally be there were several indentations, and in place of ears and hair were more tentacles. They were tall, Meg realized as they came closer, far taller than any man. They had no eyes. Just soft indentations.

 

Meg’s rigid, frozen body tried to shudder with terror, but instead of the shudder all that came was pain. She moaned.

 

The Things stood over them. They appeared to be looking down at them, except that they had no eyes with which to see. Mr. Murry continued to kneel by Meg, massaging her.

 

He’s killed us, bringing us here, Meg thought. I’ll never see Charles Wallace again, or Mother, or the twins. . . .

 

Calvin rose to his feet. He bowed to the beasts as though they could see him. He said, “How do yo do, sir—ma’am—?”

 

“Who are you?” the tallest of the beasts said. His voice was neither hostile nor welcoming, and it came not from the mouthlike indentation in the furry face, but from the waving tentacles.

 

—They’ll eat us, Meg thought wildly.—They’re making me hurt. My toes—my fingers—I hurt. . . .

 

Calvin answered the beast’s question. “We’re—we’re from earth. I’m not sure how we got here. We’ve had an accident. Meg—this girl—is—is paralyzed. She can’t move. She’s terribly cold. We think that’s why she can’t move.”

 

One of them came up to Meg and squatted down on its huge haunches beside her, and she felt utter loathing and revulsion as it reached out a tentacle to touch her face.

 

But with the tentacle came the same delicate fragrance that moved across her with the breeze, and she felt a soft, tingling warmth go all through her that momentarily assuaged her pain. She felt suddenly sleepy.

 

I must look as strange to it as it looks to me, she thought drowsily, and then realized with a shock that of course the beast couldn’t see her at all. Nevertheless a reassuring sense of safety flowed through her with the warmth which continued to seep deep into her as the beast touched her. Then it picked her up, cradling her in two of its four arms.

 

Mr. Murry stood up quickly. “What are you doing?”

“Taking the child.”

ELEVEN

Aunt Beast

 

“No!” Mr. Murry said sharply. “Please put her down.”

 

A sense of amusement seemed to emanate from the beasts. The tallest, who seemed to be the spokesman, said, “We frighten you?”

 

“What are you going to do with us?” Mr. Murry asked.

 

The beast said, “I’m sorry, we communicate better with the other one.” He turned toward Calvin “Who are you?”

 

“I’m Calvin O’Keefe.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I’m a boy. A—a young man.”

 

“You, too, are afraid?”

 

“I’m—not sure.”

 

“Tell me,” the beast said. “What do you suppose you’d do if three of us suddenly arrived on your home planet.”

 

“Shoot you, I guess,” Calvin admitted.

 

“Then isn’t that what we should do with you?”

 

Calvin’s freckles seemed to deepen, but he answered quietly. “I’d really rather you didn’t. I mean, the earth’s my home, and I’d rather be there than anywhere in the world—I mean, the universe—and I can’t wait to get back, but we make some awful bloopers there.”

 

The smallest beast, the one holding Meg, said, “And perhaps they aren’t used to visitors from other planets.”

 

“Used to it!” Calvin exclaimed. “We’ve never had any, as far as I know.” “Why?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The middle beast, a tremor of trepidation in his words, said, “You aren’t from a dark planet, are you?”

 

“No.” Calvin shook his head firmly, though the beast couldn’t see him. “We’re—we’re shadowed. But we’re fighting the shadow.”

 

The beast holding Meg questioned, “You three are fighting?” “Yes,” Calvin answered. “Now that we know about it.”

The tall one turned back to Mr. Murry, speaking sternly. “You. The oldest. Man. From where have you come? Now.”

 

Mr. Murry answered steadily. “From a planet called Camazotz.” There was a mutter from the three beasts. “We do not belong there,” Mr. Murry said, slowly and distinctly. “We were strangers there as we are here. I was a prisoner there, and these children rescued me. My youngest son, my baby, is still there, trapped in the dark mind of IT.”

 

Meg tried to twist around in the beast’s arms to glare at her father and Calvin. Why were they being so frank? Weren’t they aware of the danger? But again her anger dissolved as the gentle warmth from the tentacles flowed through her. She realized that she could move her fingers and toes with

comparative freedom, and the pain was no longer so acute.

 

“We must take this child back with us,” the beast holding her said.

 

Meg shouted at her father. “Don’t leave me the way you left Charles!” With this burst of terror a spasm of pain wracked her body and she gasped.

 

“Stop fighting,” the beast told her. “You make it worse. Relax.” “That’s what IT said,” Meg cried. “Father! Calvin! Help!”

The beast turned toward Calvin and Mr. Murry. “This child is in danger. You must trust us.” “We have no alternative,” Mr. Murry said. “Can you save her?” “I think so.”

 

“May I stay with her?”

 

“No. But you will not be far away. We feel that you are hungry, tired, that you would like to bathe and rest. And this little—what is the word?” the beast cocked its tentacles at Calvin.

 

“Girl,” Calvin said.

 

“This little girl needs prompt and special care. The coldness of the—what is it you call it?” “The Black Thing?”

 

“The Black Thing. Yes. The Black Thing burns unless it is counteracted properly.” The three beasts stood around Meg, and it seemed that they were feeling into her with their softly waving tentacles. The movement of the tentacles was as rhythmic and flowing as the dance of an undersea plant, and lying there, cradled in the four strange arms, Meg, despite herself, felt a sense of security that was deeper than anything she had known since the days when she lay in her mother’s arms in the old rocking chair and was sung to sleep. With her father’s help she had been able to resist IT. Now she could hold out no longer. She leaned her head against the beast’s chest, and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air.

 

I hope I don’t smell awful to it, she thought. But then she knew with a deep sense of comfort tha even if she did smell awful the beasts would forgive her. As the tall figure cradled her she could feel the frigid stiffness of her body relaxing against it. This bliss could not come to her from a thing like IT. IT could only give pain, never relieve it. The beasts must be good. They had to be good. She sighed deeply, like a very small child, and suddenly she was asleep.

 

When she came to herself again there was in the back of her mind a memory of pain, of agonizing pain. But the pain was over now and her body was lapped in comfort. She was lying on something wonderfully soft in an enclosed chamber. It was dark. All she could see were occasional tall moving shadows which she realized were beasts walking about. She had been stripped of her clothes, and something warm and pungent was gently being rubbed into her body. She sighed and stretched and discovered that she could stretch. She could move again, she was no longer paralyzed, and her body was bathed in waves of warmth. Her father had not saved her; the beasts had.

 

“So you are awake, little one?” The words came gently to her ears. “What a funny little tadpole you are! Is the pain gone now?”

 

“All gone.”

 

“Are you warm and alive again?”

 

“Yes, I’m fine.” She struggled to sit up.

 

“No, lie still, small one. You must not exert yourself as yet. We will have a fur garment for you in a moment, and then we will feed you. You must not even try to feed yourself. You must be as an infant

again. The Black Thing does not relinquish its victims willingly.”

 

“Where are Father and Calvin? Have they gone back for Charles Wallace?”

 

“They are eating and resting,” the beast said, “and we are trying to learn about each other and see what is best to help you. We feel now that you are not dangerous, and that we will be allowed to help you.”

 

“Why is it so dark in here?” Meg asked. She tried to look around, but all she could see was shadows. Nevertheless there was a sense of openness, a feel of a gentle breeze moving lightly about, that kept the darkness from being oppressive.

 

Perplexity came to her from the beast. “What is this dark? What is this light? We do not understand. Your father and the boy, Calvin, have asked this, too. They say that it is night now on our planet, and that they cannot see. They have told us that our atmosphere is what they call opaque, so that the stars are not visible, and then they were surprised that we know stars, that we know their music and the movements of their dance far better than beings like you who spend hours studying them through what you call telescopes. We do not understand what this means, to see.”

 

“Well, it’s what things look like,” Meg said helplessly.

 

“We do not know what things look like, as you say,” the beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”

 

“Oh, no!” Meg cried. “It’s—it’s the most wonderful thing in the world!”

 

“What a very strange world yours must be!” the beast said, “that such a peculiar-seeming thing should be of such importance. Try to tell me, what is this thing called light that you are able to do so little without?”

 

“Well, we can’t see without it,” Meg said, realizing that she was completely unable to explain vision and light and dark. How can you explain sight on a world where no one has ever seen and where there is no need of eyes? “Well, on this planet,” she fumbled, “you have a sun, don’t you?”

 

“A most wonderful sun, from which comes our warmth, and the rays which give us our flowers, our food, our music, and all the things which make life and growth.”

 

“Well,” Meg said, “when we are turned toward the sun—our earth, our planet, I mean, toward our sun—we receive its light. And when we’re turned away from it, it is night. And if we want to see we have to use artificial lights.”

 

“Artificial lights,” the beast sighed. “How very complicated life on your planet must be. Later on you must try to explain some more to me.”

 

“All right,” Meg promised, and yet she knew that to try to explain anything that could be seen with the eyes would be impossible, because the beasts in some way saw, knew, understood, far more completely than she, or her parents, or Calvin, or even Charles Wallace.

 

“Charles Wallace!” she cried. “What are they doing about Charles Wallace? We don’t know what IT’s doing to him or making him do. Please, oh, please, help us!”

 

“Yes, yes, little one, of course we will help you. A meeting is in session right now to study what is best to do. We have never before been able to talk to anyone who has managed to escape from a dark planet, so although your father is blaming himself for everything that has happened, we feel that he must be quite an extraordinary person to get out of Camazotz with you at all. But the little boy, and I understand that he is a very special, a very important little boy—ah, my child, you must accept that this will not be easy. To go back through the Black Thing, back to Camazotz—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“But Father left him!” Meg said. “He’s got to bring him back! He can’t just abandon Charle Wallace!”

 

The beast’s communication suddenly became crisp. “Nobody said anything about abandoning anybody. That is not our way. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want, and we still do not know what to do. And we cannot allow you, in your present state, to do anything that would jeopardize us all. I can see that you wish your father to go rushing back to Camazotz, and you could probably make him do this, and then where would we be? No. No. You must wait until you are more calm. Now, my darling, here is a robe for you to keep you warm and comfortable.” Meg felt herself being lifted again, and a soft, light garment was slipped about her. “Don’t worry about your little brother.” The tentacles’ musical words were soft against her. “We would never leave him behind the shadow. But for now you must relax, you must be happy, you must get well.”

 

The gentle words, the feeling that this beast would be able to love her no matter what she said or did, lapped Meg in warmth and peace. She felt a delicate touch of tentacle to her cheek, as tender as her mother’s kiss.

 

“It is so long since my own small ones were grown and gone,” the beast said. “You are so tiny and vulnerable. Now I will feed you. You must eat slowly and quietly. I know that you are half starved, that you have been without food far too long, but you must not rush things or you will not get well.”

Something completely and indescribably and incredibly delicious was put to Meg’s lips, and she swallowed gratefully. With each swallow she felt strength returning to her body, and she realized that she had had nothing to eat since the horrible fake turkey dinner on Camazotz which she had barely tasted. How long ago was her mother’s stew? Time no longer had any meaning.

 

“How long does night last here?” she murmured sleepily. “It will be day again, won’t it?”

 

“Hush,” the beast said. “Eat, small one. During the coolness, which is now, we sleep. And, when you waken, there will be warmth again and many things to do. You must eat now, and sleep, and I will stay with you.”

 

“What should I call you, please?” Meg asked.

 

“Well, now. First, try not to say any words for just a moment. Think within your own mind. Think of all the things you call people, different kinds of people.”

 

While Meg thought, the beast murmured to her gently. “No, mother is a special, a one-name; and a father you have here. Not just friend, nor teacher, nor brother, nor sister. What is acquaintance? What a funny, hard word. Aunt. Maybe. Yes, perhaps that will do. And you think of such odd words about me. Thing, and monster! Monster, what a horrid sort of word. I really do not think I am a monster. Beast. That will do. Aunt Beast.”

 

“Aunt Beast,” Meg murmured sleepily, and laughed.

 

“Have I said something funny?” Aunt Beast asked in surprise. “Isn’t Aunt Beast all right?” “Aunt Beast is lovely,” Meg said. “Please sing to me, Aunt Beast.”

 

If it was impossible to describe sight to Aunt Beast, it would be even more impossible to describe the singing of Aunt Beast to a human being. It was a music even more glorious than the music of the singing creatures on Uriel. It was a music more tangible than form or sight. It had essence and structure. It supported Meg more firmly than the arms of Aunt Beast. It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was

real.

 

Meg did not know when she fell asleep within the body of the music. When she wakened Aunt Beast was asleep, too, the softness of her furry, faceless head drooping. Night had gone and a dull gray light filled the room. But she realized now that here on this planet there was no need for color, that the grays and browns merging into each other were not what the beasts knew, and that what she, herself, saw was only the smallest fraction of what the planet was really like. It was she who was limited by her senses, not the blind beasts, for they must have senses of which she could not even dream.

 

She stirred slightly, and Aunt Beast bent over her immediately, “What a lovely sleep, my darling. Do you feel all right?”

 

“I feel wonderful,” Meg said. “Aunt Beast, what is this planet called?”

 

“Oh, dear,” Aunt Beast sighed. “I find it not easy at all to put things the way your mind shapes them. You call where you came from Camazotz?”

 

“Well, it’s where we came from, but it’s not our planet.”

 

“You can call us Ixchel, I guess,” Aunt Beast told her. “We share the same sun as lost Camazotz, but that, give thanks, is all we share.”

 

“Are you fighting the Black Thing?” Meg asked.

 

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Beast replied. “In doing that we can never relax. We are the called according to His purpose, and whom He calls, them He also justifies. Of course we have help, and without help i would be much more difficult.”

 

“Who helps you?” Meg asked.

 

“Oh, dear, it is so difficult to explain things to you, small one. And I know now that it is not just because you are a child. The other two are as hard to reach into as you are. What can I tell you tha will mean anything to you? Good helps us, the stars help us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us. Oh, my child, I cannot explain! This is something you just have to know or no know.”

 

“But—”

 

“We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.”

 

“Aunt Beast, do you know Mrs Whatsit?” Meg asked with a sudden flooding of hope.

 

“Mrs Whatsit?” Aunt Beast was puzzled. “Oh, child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the effect of extreme complication.” Her four arms, tentacles waving, were outflung in a gesture of helplessness. “Would you like me to take you to your father and your Calvin?”

“Oh, yes, please!”

 

“Let us go, then. They are waiting for you to make plans. And we thought you would enjoy eating— what is it you call it? oh, yes, breakfast—together. You will be too warm in that heavy fur, now. I will dress you in something lighter, and then we will go.”

 

As though Meg were a baby, Aunt Beast bathed and dressed her, and this new garment, though it was made of a pale fur, was lighter than the lightest summer clothes on earth. Aunt Beast put one tentacled arm about Meg’s waist and led her through long, dim corridors in which she could see only shadows, and shadows of shadows, until they reached a large, columned chamber. Shafts of light came in from an open skylight and converged about a huge, round, stone table. Here were seated several of the great beasts, and Calvin and Mr. Murry, on a stone bench that circled the table.

Because the beasts were so tall, even Mr. Murry’s feet did not touch the ground, and lanky Calvin’s long legs dangled as though he were Charles Wallace. The hall was partially enclosed by vaulted arches leading to long, paved walks. There were no empty walls, no covering roofs, so that although the light was dull in comparison to earth’s sunlight, Meg had no feeling of dark or of chill. As Aunt Beast led Meg in, Mr. Murry slid down from the bench and hurried to her, putting his arms about her tenderly.

 

“They promised us you were all right,” he said.

 

While she had been in Aunt Beast’s arms Meg had felt safe and secure. Now her worries abou Charles Wallace and her disappointment in her father’s human fallibility rose like gorge in her throat.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, looking not at Calvin or her father, but at the beasts, for it was to them she turned now for help. It seemed to her that neither her father nor Calvin were properly concerned about Charles Wallace.

 

“Meg!” Calvin said gaily. “You’ve never tasted such food in your life! Come and eat!”

 

Aunt Beast lifted Meg up onto the bench and sat down beside her, then heaped a plate with food, strange fruits and breads that tasted unlike anything Meg had ever eaten. Everything was dull and colorless and unappetizing to look at, and at first, even remembering the meal Aunt Beast had fed her the night before, Meg hesitated to taste, but once she had managed the first bite she ate eagerly; it seemed that she would never have her fill again.

 

The others waited until she slowed down. Then Mr. Murry said gravely, “We were trying to work out a plan to rescue Charles Wallace. Since I made such a mistake in tessering away from IT, we feel that it would not be wise for me to try to get back to Camazotz, even alone. If I missed the mark again I could easily get lost and wander forever from galaxy to galaxy, and that would be small help to anyone, least of all to Charles Wallace.”

 

Such a wave of despondency came over Meg that she was no longer able to eat.

 

“Our friends here,” he continued, “feel that it was only the fact that I still wore the glasses your Mrs Who gave you that kept me within this solar system. Here are the glasses, Meg. But I am afraid tha the virtue has gone from them and now they are only glass. Perhaps they were meant to help only once and only on Camazotz. Perhaps it was going through the Black Thing that did it.” He pushed th glasses across the table at her.

 

“These people know about tessering,” Calvin gestured at the circle of great beasts, “but they can’t do it onto a dark planet.”

 

“Have you tried to call Mrs Whatsit?” Meg asked.

 

“Not yet,” her father answered.

 

“But if you haven’t thought of anything else, it’s the only thing to do! Father, don’t you care about Charles at all!”

 

At that Aunt Beast stood up, saying, “Child,” in a reproving way. Mr. Murry said nothing, and Me could see that she had wounded him deeply. She reacted as she would have reacted to Mr. Jenkins. She scowled down at the table, saying, “We’ve got to ask them for help now. You’re just stupid if you think we don’t.”

 

Aunt Beast spoke to the others. “The child is distraught. Don’t judge her harshly. She was almos taken by the Black Thing. Sometimes we can’t know what spiritual damage it leaves even when physical recovery is complete.”

 

Meg looked angrily around the table. The beasts sat there, silent, motionless. She felt that she was

being measured and found wanting.

 

Calvin swung away from her and hunched himself up. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that we’ve been trying to tell them about our ladies? What do you think we’ve been up to all this time? Just stuffing our faces? Okay, you have a shot at it.”

 

“Yes. Try, child.” Aunt Beast seated herself again, and pulled Meg up beside her. “But I do not understand this feeling of anger I sense in you. What is it about? There is blame going on, and guilt Why?”

 

“Aunt Beast, don’t you know?”

 

“No,” Aunt Beast said. “But this is not telling me about—whoever they are you want us to know. Try.”

 

Meg tried. Blunderingly. Fumblingly. At first she described Mrs Whatsit and her man’s coat and multicolored shawls and scarves. Mrs Who and her white robes and shimmering spectacles, Mrs Which in her peaked cap and black gown quivering in and out of body. Then she realized that this was absurd. She was describing them only to herself. This wasn’t Mrs Whatsit or Mrs Who or Mrs Which. She might as well have described Mrs Whatsit as she was when she took on the form of a flying creature of Uriel.

 

“Don’t try to use words,” Aunt Beast said soothingly. “You’re just fighting yourself and me. Think about what they are. This look doesn’t help us at all.”

 

Meg tried again, but she could not get a visual concept out of her mind. She tried to think of Mrs Whatsit explaining tessering. She tried to think of them in terms of mathematics. Every once in a while she thought she felt a flicker of understanding from Aunt Beast or one of the others, but most of the time all that emanated from them was gentle puzzlement.

 

“Angels!” Calvin shouted suddenly from across the table. “Guardian angels!” There was a moment’s silence, and he shouted again, his face tense with concentration, “Messengers! Messengers of God!”

 

“I thought for a moment—” Aunt Beast started, then subsided, sighing. “No. It’s not clear enough.” “How strange it is that they can’t tell us what they themselves seem to know,” a tall, thin beast

murmured.

 

One of Aunt Beast’s tentacled arms went around Meg’s waist again. “They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space.”

 

“Oh,” the thin beast said. “Aren’t they lonely?”

 

Suddenly a thundering voice reverberated throughout the great hall:

 

“WWEEE ARRE HHERRE!”

TWELVE

The Foolish and the Weak

 

Meg could see nothing, but she felt her heart pounding with hope. With one accord all the beasts rose to their feet, turned toward one of the arched openings, and bowed their heads and tentacles in greeting. Mrs Whatsit appeared, standing between two columns. Beside her came Mrs Who, behin them a quivering of light. The three of them were somehow not quite the same as they had been when Meg had first seen them. Their outlines seemed blurred; colors ran together as in a wet water color painting. But they were there; they were recognizable; they were themselves.

 

Meg pulled herself away from Aunt Beast, jumped to the floor, and rushed at Mrs Whatsit. But Mr Whatsit held up a warning hand and Meg realized that she was not completely materialized, that she was light and not substance, and embracing her now would have been like trying to hug a sunbeam.

“We had to hurry so there wasn’t quite time. . . . You wanted us?” Mrs Whatsit asked.

 

The tallest of the beasts bowed again and took a step away from the table and toward Mrs Whatsit “It is a question of the little boy.”

 

“Father left him!” Meg cried. “He left him on Camazotz!”

 

Appallingly, Mrs Whatsit’s voice was cold. “And what do you expect us to do?”

 

Meg pressed her knuckles against her teeth so that her braces cut her skin. Then she flung out her arms pleadingly. “But it’s Charles Wallace! IT has him, Mrs Whatsit! Save him, please save him!”

 

“You know that we can do nothing on Camazotz,” Mrs Whatsit said, her voice still cold.

 

“You mean you’ll let Charles be caught by IT forever?” Meg’s voice rose shrilly.

 

“Did I say that?”

 

“But we can’t do anything! You know we can’t! We tried! Mrs Whatsit, you have to save him!” “Meg, this is not our way,” Mrs Whatsit said sadly. “I thought you would know that this is not our

way.”

 

Mr. Murry took a step forward and bowed, and to Meg’s amazement the three ladies bowed back to him. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

“It’s Father, you know it’s Father.” Meg’s angry impatience grew. “Father—Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which.”

 

“I’m very glad to—” Mr. Murry mumbled, then went on, “I’m sorry, my glasses are broken, and I can’t see you very well.”

 

“It’s not necessary to see us,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

“If you could teach me enough more about the tesseract so that I could get back to Camazotz—” “Wwhatt tthenn?” came Mrs Which’s surprising voice. “I will try to take my child away from IT.”

 

“Annd yyou kknoww tthatt yyou wwill nnott ssucceeedd?” “There’s nothing left except to try.”

 

Mrs Whatsit spoke gently. “I’m sorry. We cannot allow you to go.” “Then let me,” Calvin suggested. “I almost got him away before.”

Mrs Whatsit shook her head. “No, Calvin. Charles has gone even deeper into IT. You will not be permitted to throw yourself in with him, for that, you must realize, is what would happen.”

There was a long silence. All the soft rays filtering into the great hall seemed to concentrate on Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and the faint light that must be Mrs Which. No one spoke. One of the beasts move a tendril slowly back and forth across the stone tabletop. At last Meg could stand it no longer and she cried out despairingly, “Then what are you going to do? Are you just going to throw Charles away?”

 

Mrs Which’s voice rolled formidably across the hall. “Ssilencce, cchilldd!”

 

But Meg could not be silent. She pressed closely against Aunt Beast, but Aunt Beast did not put th protecting tentacles around her. “I can’t go!” Meg cried. “I can’t! You know I can’t!”

 

“Ddidd annybbodyy asskk yyou ttoo?” The grim voice made Meg’s skin prickle into gooseflesh. She burst into tears. She started beating at Aunt Beast like a small child having a tantrum. Her tears

rained down her face and spattered Aunt Beast’s fur. Aunt Beast stood quietly against the assault. “All right, I’ll go!” Meg sobbed. “I know you want me to go!”

 

“We want nothing from you that you do without grace,” Mrs Whatsit said, “or that you do without understanding.”

 

Meg’s tears stopped as abruptly as they had started. “But I do understand.” She felt tired and unexpectedly peaceful. Now the coldness that, under Aunt Beast’s ministrations, had left her body had also left her mind. She looked toward her father and her confused anger was gone and she felt only love and pride. She smiled at him, asking forgiveness, and then pressed up against Aunt Beast. This time Aunt Beast’s arm went around her.

 

Mrs Which’s voice was grave. “Wwhatt ddoo yyou unndderrsstanndd?”

 

“That it has to be me. It can’t be anyone else. I don’t understand Charles, but he understands me. I’m the one who’s closest to him. Father’s been away for so long, since Charles Wallace was a baby. They don’t know each other. And Calvin’s only known Charles for such a little time. If it had been longer then he would have been the one, but—oh, I see, I see, I understand, it has to be me. There isn’t anyone else.”

 

Mr. Murry, who had been sitting, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his fists, rose. “I will not allow it!”

 

“Wwhyy?” Mrs Which demanded.

 

“Look, I don’t know what or who you are, and at this point I don’t care. I will not allow m daughter to go alone into this danger.”

 

“Wwhyy?”

 

“You know what the outcome will probably be! And she’s weak, now, weaker than she was before. She was almost killed by the Black Thing. I fail to understand how you can even consider such a thing.”

 

Calvin jumped down. “Maybe IT’s right about you! Or maybe you’re in league with IT. I’m the one to go if anybody goes! Why did you bring me along at all? To take care of Meg! You said so yourself!”

 

“But you have done that,” Mrs Whatsit assured him.

 

“I haven’t done anything!” Calvin shouted. “You can’t send Meg! I won’t allow it! I’ll put my foo down! I won’t permit it!”

 

“Don’t you see that you’re making something that is already hard for Meg even harder?” Mrs Whatsit asked him.

 

Aunt Beast turned tentacles toward Mrs Whatsit. “Is she strong enough to tesser again? You know what she has been through.”

“If Which takes her she can manage,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

“If it will help I could go too, and hold her.” Aunt Beast’s arm around Meg tightened.

 

“Oh, Aunt Beast—” Meg started.

 

But Mrs Whatsit cut her off. “No.”

 

“I was afraid not,” Aunt Beast said humbly. “I just wanted you to know that I would.” “Mrs—uh—Whatsit.” Mr. Murry frowned and pushed his hair back from his face. Then he shoved

 

with his middle finger at his nose as though he were trying to get spectacles closer to his eyes. “Are you remembering that she is only a child?”

 

“And she’s backward,” Calvin bellowed.

 

“I resent that,” Meg said hotly, hoping that indignation would control her trembling. “I’m better than you at math and you know it.”

 

“Do you have the courage to go alone?” Mrs Whatsit asked her.

 

Meg’s voice was flat. “No. But it doesn’t matter.” She turned to her father and Calvin. “You know it’s the only thing to do. You know they’d never send me alone if—”

 

“How do we know they’re not in league with IT?” Mr. Murry demanded.

 

“Father!”

 

“No, Meg,” Mrs Whatsit said. “I do not blame your father for being angry and suspicious an frightened. And I cannot pretend that we are doing anything but sending you into the gravest kind of danger. I have to acknowledge quite openly that it may be a fatal danger. I know this. But I do not believe it. And the Happy Medium doesn’t believe it, either.”

 

“Can’t she see what’s going to happen?” Calvin asked.

 

“Oh, not in this kind of thing.” Mrs Whatsit sounded surprised at his question. “If we knew ahead o time what was going to happen we’d be—we’d be like the people on Camazotz, with no lives of our own, with everything all planned and done for us. How can I explain it to you? Oh, I know. In you language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet.”

 

“Yes, yes,” Calvin said impatiently. “What’s that got to do with the Happy Medium?”

 

“Kindly pay me the courtesy of listening to me.” Mrs Whatsit’s voice was stern, and for a moment Calvin stopped pawing the ground like a nervous colt. “It is a very strict form of poetry, is it not?”

“Yes.”

 

“There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?”

 

“Yes.” Calvin nodded.

 

“And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?”

 

“No.”

 

“But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants, doesn’t he?”

 

“Yes.” Calvin nodded again.

 

“So,” Mrs Whatsit said.

 

“So what?”

 

“Oh, do not be stupid, boy!” Mrs Whatsit scolded. “You know perfectly well what I am driving at!” “You mean you’re comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?”

 

“Yes.” Mrs Whatsit said. “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

“Please,” Meg said. “Please. If I’ve got to go I want to go and get it over with. Each minute you pu it off makes it harder.”

 

“Sshee iss rrightt,” boomed Mrs Which’s voice. “Itt iss ttime.”

 

“You may say good-bye.” Mrs Whatsit was giving her not permission, but a command.

 

Meg curtsied clumsily to the beasts. “Thank you all. Very much. I know you saved my life.” She did not add what she could not help thinking: Saved it for what? So that IT could get me?

 

She put her arms about Aunt Beast, pressed up against the soft, fragrant fur. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I love you.”

 

“And I, you, little one.” Aunt Beast pressed gentle tendrils against Meg’s face.

 

“Cal—” Meg said, holding out her hand.

 

Calvin came to her and took her hand, then drew her roughly to him and kissed her. He didn’t say anything, and he turned away before he had a chance to see the surprised happiness that brightened Meg’s eyes.

 

At last she turned to her father. “I’m—I’m sorry, Father.”

 

He took both her hands in his, bent down to her with his short-sighted eyes. “Sorry for what, Megatron?”

 

Tears almost came to her eyes at the gentle use of the old nickname. “I wanted you to do it all for me. I wanted everything to be all easy and simple. . . . So I tried to pretend that it was all your faul . . . because I was scared, and I didn’t want to have to do anything myself—”

 

“But I wanted to do it for you,” Mr. Murry said. “That’s what every parent wants.” He looked into her dark, frightened eyes. “I won’t let you go, Meg. I am going.”

 

“No.” Mrs Whatsit’s voice was sterner than Meg had ever heard it. “You are going to allow Meg the privilege of accepting this danger. You are a wise man, Mr. Murry. You are going to let her go.”

 

Mr. Murry sighed. He drew Meg close to him. “Little Megaparsec. Don’t be afraid to be afraid. W will try to have courage for you. That is all we can do. Your mother—”

 

“Mother was always shoving me out in the world,” Meg said. “She’d want me to do this. You know she would. Tell her—” she started, choked, then held up her head and said, “No. Never mind. I’ll tell her myself.”

 

“Good girl. Of course you will.”

 

Now Meg walked slowly around the great table to where Mrs Whatsit was still poised between the columns. “Are you going with me?”

 

“No. Only Mrs Which.”

 

“The Black Thing—” Fear made her voice tremble. “When Father tessered me through it, it almos got me.”

 

“Your father is singularly inexperienced,” Mrs Whatsit said, “though a fine man, and worth teaching. At the moment he still treats tessering as though he were working with a machine. We will not let the Black Thing get you. I don’t think.”

 

This was not exactly comforting.

 

The momentary vision and faith that had come to Meg dwindled. “But suppose I can’t get Charle Wallace away from IT—”

 

“Stop.” Mrs Whatsit held up her hand. “We gave you gifts the last time we took you to Camazotz We will not let you go empty-handed this time. But what we can give you now is nothing you can touch with your hands. I give you my love, Meg. Never forget that. My love always.”

Mrs Who, eyes shining behind spectacles, beamed at Meg. Meg felt in her blazer pocket and handed back the spectacles she had used on Camazotz.

 

“Your father is right,” Mrs Who took the spectacles and hid them somewhere in the folds of her robes. “The virtue is gone from them. And what I have to give you this time you must try to understand not word by word, but in a flash, as you understand the tesseract. Listen, Meg. Listen well. The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.” She paused, and then she said, “May the right prevail.” Her spectacles seemed to flicker. Behind her, through her, one of the columns became visible. There was a final gleam from the glasses, and she was gone. Meg looked nervously to where Mrs Whatsit had been standing before Mrs Who spoke. But Mrs Whatsit was no longer there.

 

“No!” Mr. Murry cried, and stepped toward Meg.

 

Mrs Which’s voice came through her shimmer. “I ccannnott hholldd yyourr hanndd, chilldd.” Immediately Meg was swept into darkness, into nothingness, and then into the icy devouring cold of

the Black Thing. Mrs Which won’t let it get me, she thought over and over while the cold of the Blac Thing seemed to crunch at her bones.

 

Then they were through it, and she was standing breathlessly on her feet on the same hill on which they had first landed on Camazotz. She was cold and a little numb, but no worse than she had often been in the winter in the country when she had spent an afternoon skating on the pond. She looked around. She was completely alone. Her heart began to pound.

 

Then, seeming to echo from all around her, came Mrs Which’s unforgettable voice. “I hhave nnott ggivenn yyou mmyy ggifftt. Yyou hhave ssomethinngg thatt ITT hhass nnott. Thiss ssomethinngg iss yyourr onlly wweapponn. Bbutt yyou mmusstt ffinndd itt fforr yyourrssellff.” Then the voice ceased, and Meg knew that she was alone.

 

She walked slowly down the hill, her heart thumping painfully against her ribs. There below her was the same row of identical houses they had seen before, and beyond these the linear buildings of the city. She walked along the quiet street. It was dark and the street was deserted. No children playing ball or skipping rope. No mother figures at the doors. No father figures returning from work. In the same window of each house was a light, and as Meg walked down the street all the lights were extinguished simultaneously. Was it because of her presence, or was it simply that it was time for lights out?

 

She felt numb, beyond rage or disappointment or even fear. She put one foot ahead of the other with precise regularity, not allowing her pace to lag. She was not thinking; she was not planning; she was simply walking slowly but steadily toward the city and the domed building where IT lay.

 

Now she approached the outlying buildings of the city. In each of them was a vertical line of light, but it was a dim, eerie light, not the warm light of stairways in cities at home. And there were no isolated brightly lit windows where someone was working late, or an office was being cleaned. Out of each building came one man, perhaps a watchman, and each man started walking the width of the building. They appeared not to see her. At any rate they paid no attention to her whatsoever, and she went on past them.

What have I got that IT hasn’t got? she thought suddenly. What have I possibly got?

 

Now she was walking by the tallest of the business buildings. More dim vertical lines of light. The walls glowed slightly to give a faint illumination to the streets. CENTRAL Central Intelligence wa ahead of her. Was the man with red eyes still sitting there? Or was he allowed to go to bed? But this was not where she must go, though the man with red eyes seemed the kind old gentleman he claimed to be when compared with IT. But he was no longer of any consequence in the search for Charles Wallace. She must go directly to IT.

 

IT isn’t used to being resisted. Father said that’s how he managed, and how Calvin and I managed as long as we did. Father saved me then. There’s nobody here to save me now. I have to do it myself. I have to resist IT by myself. Is that what I have that IT hasn’t got? No, I’m sure IT can resist. IT jus isn’t used to having other people resist.

 

CENTRAL Central Intelligence blocked with its huge rectangle the end of the square. She turned t walk around it, and almost imperceptibly her steps slowed.

 

It was not far to the great dome which housed IT.

 

I’m going to Charles Wallace. That’s what’s important. That’s what I have to think of. I wish I could feel numb again the way I did at first. Suppose IT has him somewhere else? Suppose he isn’ there?

 

I have to go there first, anyhow. That’s the only way I can find out.

 

Her steps got slower and slower as she passed the great bronzed doors, the huge slabs of the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building, as she finally saw ahead of her the strange, light, pulsin dome of IT.

 

Father said it was all right for me to be afraid. He said to go ahead and be afraid. And Mrs Who said—I don’t understand what she said but I think it was meant to make me not hate being only me, and me being the way I am. And Mrs Whatsit said to remember that she loves me. That’s what I have to think about. Not about being afraid. Or not as smart as IT. Mrs Whatsit loves me. That’s quite something, to be loved by someone like Mrs Whatsit.

 

She was there.

 

No matter how slowly her feet had taken her at the end, they had taken her there.

 

Directly ahead of her was the circular building, its walls glowing with violet flame, its silvery roof pulsing with a light that seemed to Meg to be insane. Again she could feel the light, neither warm nor cold, but reaching out to touch her, pulling her toward IT.

 

There was a sudden sucking, and she was within.

 

It was as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She gasped for breath, for breath in her own rhythm, not the permeating pulsing of IT. She could feel the inexorable beat within her body, controlling her heart, her lungs.

 

But not herself. Not Meg. It did not quite have her.

 

She blinked her eyes rapidly and against the rhythm until the redness before them cleared and she could see. There was the brain, there was IT, lying pulsing and quivering on the dais, soft and exposed and nauseating. Charles Wallace was crouched beside IT, his eyes still slowly twirling, his jaw still slack, as she had seen him before, with a tic in his forehead reiterating the revolting rhythm of IT.

 

As she saw him it was again as though she had been punched in the stomach, for she had to realize afresh that she was seeing Charles, and yet it was not Charles at all. Where was Charles Wallace, her

own beloved Charles Wallace?

 

What is it I have got that IT hasn’t got?

 

“You have nothing that IT hasn’t got,” Charles Wallace said coldly. “How nice to have you back, dear sister. We have been waiting for you. We knew that Mrs Whatsit would send you. She is our friend, you know.”

 

For an appalling moment Meg believed, and in that moment she felt her brain being gathered up into IT.

 

“No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “No! You lie!” For a moment she was free from ITs clutches again. As long as I can stay angry enough IT can’t get me.

 

Is that what I have that IT doesn’t have?

 

“Nonsense,” Charles Wallace said. “You have nothing that IT doesn’t have.”

 

“You’re lying,” she replied, and she felt only anger toward this boy who was not Charles Wallace at all. No, it was not anger, it was loathing; it was hatred, sheer and unadulterated, and as she became lost in hatred she also began to be lost in IT. The red miasma swam before her eyes; her stomach churned in ITs rhythm. Her body trembled with the strength of her hatred and the strength of IT.

With the last vestige of consciousness she jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing that IT didn’t have. IT knew all about hate.

 

“You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs Whatsit!” she screamed.

 

“Mrs Whatsit hates you,” Charles Wallace said.

 

And that was where IT made ITs fatal mistake, for as Meg said, automatically, “Mrs Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,” suddenly she knew.

 

She knew!

 

Love.

 

That was what she had that IT did not have.

 

She had Mrs Whatsit’s love, and her father’s, and her mother’s, and the real Charles Wallace’s love, and the twins’, and Aunt Beast’s.

 

And she had her love for them.

 

But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?

 

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could no withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was not too much to ask of her, but she could not do it.

 

But she could love Charles Wallace.

 

She could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace.

 

Her own Charles Wallace, the real Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to Camazotz, to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable.

 

She could love Charles Wallace.

 

Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.

 

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.

 

Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace

at all. She was able to look and love.

 

I love you. Charles Wallace, you are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you. I love you.

 

Slowly his mouth closed. Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in the forehead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced toward her.

 

“I love you!” she cried. “I love you, Charles! I love you!” Then suddenly he was running, pelting he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs. “Meg! Meg! Meg!”

 

“I love you, Charles!” she cried again, her sobs almost as loud as his, her tears mingling with his. “I love you!

 

I love you! I love you!”

 

A whirl of darkness. An icy cold blast. An angry, resentful howl that seemed to tear through her. Darkness again. Through the darkness to save her came a sense of Mrs Whatsit’s presence, so that she knew it could not be IT who now had her in its clutches.

 

And then the feel of earth beneath her, of something in her arms, and she was rolling over on the sweet smelling autumnal earth, and Charles Wallace was crying out, “Meg! Oh, Meg!”

 

Now she was hugging him close to her, and his little arms were clasped tightly about her neck.

 

“Meg, you saved me! You saved me!” he said over and over.

 

“Meg!” came a call, and there were her father and Calvin hurrying through the darkness toward them.

 

Still holding Charles she struggled to stand up and look around. “Father! Cal! Where are we?” Charles Wallace, holding her hand tightly, was looking around, too, and suddenly he laughed, his

 

own, sweet, contagious laugh. “In the twins’ vegetable garden! And we landed in the broccoli!”

 

Meg began to laugh, too, at the same time that she was trying to hug her father, to hug Calvin, and

 

not to let go of Charles Wallace for one second.

 

“Meg, you did it!” Calvin shouted. “You saved Charles!”

 

“I’m very proud of you, my daughter.” Mr. Murry kissed her gravely, then turned toward the house.

 

“Now I must go in to Mother.” Meg could tell that he was trying to control his anxiety and eagerness.

 

“Look!” she pointed to the house, and there were the twins and Mrs. Murry walking toward them through the long, wet grass.

 

“First thing tomorrow I must get some new glasses,” Mr. Murry said, squinting in the moonlight and then starting to run toward his wife.

 

Dennys’s voice came crossly over the lawn. “Hey, Meg, it’s bedtime.” Sandy suddenly yelled, “Father!”

 

Mr. Murry was running across the lawn, Mrs. Murry running toward him, and they were in each other’s arms, and then there was a tremendous happy jumble of arms and legs and hugging, the older Murrys and Meg and Charles Wallace and the twins, and Calvin grinning by them until Meg reached out and pulled him in and Mrs. Murry gave him a special hug all of his own. They were talking and laughing all at once, when they were startled by a crash, and Fortinbras, who could bear being left out of the happiness not one second longer, catapulted his sleek black body right through the screened door to the kitchen. He dashed across the lawn to join in the joy, and almost knocked them all over with the exuberance of his greeting.

 

Meg knew all at once that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which must be near, because all throug her she felt a flooding of joy and of love that was even greater and deeper than the joy and love which

were already there.

 

She stopped laughing and listened, and Charles listened, too. “Hush.”

 

Then there was a whirring, and Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which were standing in front o them, and the joy and love were so tangible that Meg felt that if she only knew where to reach she could touch it with her bare hands.

 

Mrs Whatsit said breathlessly, “Oh, my darlings, I’m sorry we don’t have time to say good-bye to you properly. You see, we have to—”

 

But they never learned what it was that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had to do, for ther was a gust of wind, and they were gone.

 

What did you want to be when you grew up?

 

A writer.

 

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

 

Right away. As soon as I was able to articulate, I knew I wanted to be a writer. And I read. I adored Emily of New Moon and some of the other L. M. Montgomery books and they impelled me because loved them.

 

When did you start to write?

 

When I was five, I wrote a story about a little “gurl.”

 

What was the first writing you had published?

 

When I was a child, a poem in CHILD LIFE. It was all about a lonely house and was ver sentimental.

Where do you write your books?

 

Anywhere. I write in longhand first, and then type it. My first typewriter was my father’s pre–World War One machine. It was the one he took with him to the war. It had certainly been around the world.

 

What is the best advice you have ever received about writing?

 

To just write.

 

What’s your first childhood memory?

 

One early memory I have is going down to Florida for a couple of weeks in the summertime to visi my grandmother. The house was in the middle of a swamp, surrounded by alligators. I don’t like alligators, but there they were, and I was afraid of them.

 

What is your favorite childhood memory?

 

Being in my room.

 

As a young person, whom did you look up to most?

 

My mother. She was a storyteller and I loved her stories. And she loved music and records. We played duets together on the piano.

 

What was your worst subject in school?

Math and Latin. I didn’t like the Latin teacher.

 

What was your best subject in school?

 

English.

 

What activities did you participate in at school?

 

I was president of the student government in boarding school and editor of a literary magazine, and also belonged to the drama club.

 

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

 

Night owl.

 

What was your first job?

 

Working for the actress Eva La Gallienne, right after college.

 

What is your idea of the best meal ever?

 

Cream of Wheat. I eat it with a spoon. I love it with butter and brown sugar.

 

Which do you like better: cats or dogs?

 

I like them both. I once had a wonderful dog named Touche. She was a silver medium-sized poodle, and quite beautiful. I wasn’t allowed to take her on the subway, and I couldn’t afford to get a taxi, so I put her around my neck, like a stole. And she pretended she was a stole. She was an actor.

 

What do you value most in your friends?

 

Love.

 

What is your favorite song?

 

“Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”

 

What time of the year do you like best?

 

I suppose autumn. I love the changing of the leaves. I love the autumn goldenrod, the Queen Anne’s lace.

 

What was the original title of A Wrinkle in Time?

 

“Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.”

 

How did you get the idea for A Wrinkle in Time?

 

We were living in the country with our three kids on this dairy farm. I started reading what Einstein wrote about time. And I used a lot of those principles to make a universe that was creative and yet believable.

 

How hard was it to get A A Wrinkle in Time published?

 

I was kept hanging for two years. Over and over again I received nothing more than the formal printed rejection slip. Eventually, after twenty-six rejections, I called my agent and said, “Send it back. It’s too different. Nobody’s going to publish it.” He sent it back, but a few days later a friend of

my mother’s insisted that I meet John Farrar, the publisher. He liked the manuscript, and eventually decided to publish it. My first editor was Hal Vursell.

 

Which of your characters is most like you?

 

None of them. They’re all wiser than I am.

NEWBERY MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

The Expanding Universe

August 1963

 

For a writer of fiction to have to sit down and write a speech, especially a speech in which she must try to express her gratitude for one of the greatest honors of her life, is as difficult a task as she can face. She can no longer hide behind the printed page and let her characters speak for her; she must stand up in front of an illustrious group of librarians, editors, publishers, writers, feeling naked, the way one sometimes does in a dream. What then, does she say? Should she merely tell a series of anecdotes about her life and how she happened to write this book? Or should she try to be profound and write a speech that will go down in the pages of history, comparable only to the Gettysburg Address? Should she stick to platitudes that will offend no one and say nothing? Perhaps she tries all of these several times and then tears them up, knowing that if she doesn’t, her husband will do it for her, and decides simply to say some of the things she feels deeply about.

 

I can’t tell you anything about children’s books that you don’t already know. I’m not teaching you; you’re teaching me. All I can tell you is how Ruth Gagliardo’s telephone call about the Newbery Medal has affected me over the past few years.

 

One of my greatest treasures is the letter Mr. Melcher wrote me, one of the last letters he wrote, talking about the medal and saying he had just read A Wrinkle in Time and had been excited about it. This was one of the qualities that made him what he was: the ability to be excited. Bertha Mahony Miller, in her article “Frederic G. Melcher—A Twentieth Century John Newbery,” says that “Th bookstore’s stock trade is . . . explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly. . . .” I like here to think of another Fred, the eminent British scientist Fred Hoyle, and his theory of the universe, in which matter is continuously being created, with the universe expanding but not dissipating. As island galaxies rush away from each other into eternity, new clouds of gas are condensing into new galaxies. As old stars die, new stars are being born. Mr. Melcher lived in this universe of continuous creation and expansion. It would be impossible to overestimate his influence on books, particularly children’s books; impossible to overestimate his influence on the people who read books, write them, get enthusiastic about them. We are all here tonight because of his vision, and we would be less than fair to his memory if we didn’t resolve to keep alive his excitement and his ability to grow, to change, to expand.

 

I am of the first generation to profit by Mr. Melcher’s excitement, having been born shortly before he established the Newbery Award, and growing up with most of these books on my shelves. I learned about mankind from Hendrik Willem van Loon; I traveled with Dr. Dolittle, created by a ma I called Hug Lofting; Will James taught me about the West with Smoky; in boarding school I grabbe Invincible Louisa the moment it came into the library because Louisa May Alcott had the same birthday that I have, and the same ambitions. And now to be a very small link in the long chain of those writers, of the men and women who led me into the expanding universe, is both an honor and a responsibility. It is an honor for which I am deeply grateful to Mr. Melcher and to those of you who

decided A Wrinkle in Time was worthy of it.

 

The responsibility has caused me to think seriously during these past months on the subject of vocation, the responsibility added to the fact that I’m working now on a movie scenario about a Portuguese nun who lived in the mid-1600s, had no vocation, was seduced and then betrayed by a French soldier of fortune, and, in the end, through suffering, came into a true vocation. I believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religious order. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher’s excitement in leading young people into an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today, our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe that we can help our children avoid by providing them with “explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.”

 

So how do we do it? We can’t just sit down at our typewriters and turn out explosive material. I took a course in college on Chaucer, one of the most explosive, imaginative, and far-reaching in influence of all writers. And I’ll never forget going to the final exam and being asked why Chaucer used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote in a white heat of fury, “I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn’t the way people write.”

 

I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately. Do I mean, then, that an author should sit around like a phony Zen Buddhist in his pad, drinkin endless cups of espresso coffee and waiting for inspiration to descend upon him? That isn’t the way the writer works, either. I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the typewriter. I know what he meant. Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade, they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, of revelation, does come. This is the moment when a writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to

 

communicate to others.

 

A writer of fantasy, fairy tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider. I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’t possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was onl after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.

 

Very few children have any problem with the world of the imagination; it’s their own world, the world of their daily life, and it’s our loss that so many of us grow out of it. Probably this group here tonight is the least grown-out-of-it group that could be gathered together in one place, simply by the nature of our work. We, too, can understand how Alice could walk through the mirror into the country on the other side; how often have our children almost done this themselves? And we all understand princesses, of course. Haven’t we all been badly bruised by peas? And what about the princess who spat forth toads and snakes whenever she opened her mouth to speak, and the other whose lips issued forth pieces of pure gold? We all have had days when everything we’ve said has seemed to turn to toads. The days of gold, alas, don’t come nearly as often.

What a child doesn’t realize until he is grown is that in responding to fantasy, fairy tale, and myth he is responding to what Erich Fromm calls the one universal language, the one and only language in the world that cuts across all barriers of time, place, race, and culture. Many Newbery books are from this realm, beginning with Dr. Dolittle; books on Hindu myth, Chinese folklore, the life of Buddha tales of American Indians, books that lead our children beyond all boundaries and into the one language of all mankind.

 

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. . . . The extraordinary, the marvelous thing about Genesis is not how unscientific it is, but how amazingly accurate it is. How could the ancient Israelites have known the exact order of an evolution that wasn’t to be formulated for thousands of years? Here is a truth that cuts across barriers of time and space.

 

But almost all of the best children’s books do this, not only an Alice in Wonderland, a Wind in the Willows, a Princess and the Goblin. Even the most straightforward tales say far more than they seem to mean on the surface. Little Women, The Secret Garden, Huckleberry Finn—how much more there is in them than we realize at a first reading. They partake of the universal language, and this is why we turn to them again and again when we are children, and still again when we have grown up.

 

Up on the summit of Mohawk Mountain in northwest Connecticut is a large flat rock that holds the heat of the sun long after the last of the late sunset has left the sky. We take our picnic up there and then lie on the rock and watch the stars, one pulsing slowly into the deepening blue, and then another and another and another, until the sky is full of them.

 

A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

THE L’ENGLE CAST OF CHARACTERS

Books featuring the Murry-O’Keefes:

A Wrinkle in Time (WT)

 

A Wind in the Door (WD)

 

A Swiftly Tilting Planet (STP)

 

Many Waters (MW)

The Arm of the Starfish (AS)

 

Dragons in the Waters (DW)

 

A House Like a Lotus (HL)

 

An Acceptable Time (AT)

Books featuring the Austins:

Meet the Austins (MA)

The Young Unicorns (YU)

 

The Moon by Night (MN)

A Ring of Endless Light (REL)

 

The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas (TDC)

Troubling a Star (TS)