Read Online A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet) by Madeleine L'Engle - Free Book Online Page B

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 sweat began to gatheron 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 themwas 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 will 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 doesnot 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 of 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