A Swiftly Tilting Planet: Chapters 3–4

Ananda whined softly, an ordinary whine coming from an ordinary dog of questionable antecedents, a mongrel like many in the village.

The glory of the harmony was broken by screeching, by hissing, by laughter which held no merriment but was hideous, horrendous cacophony.

There was no telling which planet, for it was still being formed. Steam boiled upward from its molten surface. Nothing could live in this primordial caldron.

And the boiling, hissing, flaming, steaming, turned to rain, aeons of rain, clouds emptying themselves in continuing torrents of rain which covered the planet with healing darkness, until the clouds were nearly emptied and a dim light came through their veils and touched the water of the ocean so that it gleamed palely, like a great pearl.

The neck swayed sinuously while the little eyes peered about.

Ice moved inexorably across the land.

“It’s a very different When,” Gaudior conceded.

“A far When. We can ride this wind without fear, for here the ancient harmonies are still unbroken. But it may roughen if the When we enter is a dissonant one. Hold on tight. I will be taking you Within.”

“I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.”

A boy sat on an outcropping of rock, whittling a spear with a sharp stone.

Then he turned back to his spear, but his sensitive nostrils quivered almost imperceptibly as he smelled in turn the green of grass, the blue of sky, the red blood of an animal in the forest.

In some strange way, Charles Wallace was the boy on the rock, seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears (never had bird song trilled with such sparkling clarity), smelling through his nose, and kything all that his awakened senses received.

Harcels rose, stretched languorously.

Finna was akin to a dolphin, though not as large, and her skin was an iridescent blue-green.

On the rare occasions when there was a difference of opinion, it was mediated by the Harmonizer, and his judgment was always accepted.

Each person in the tribe knew what he was born to do, and no gift was considered greater or less than another. The Harmonizer held a position no more lofty than the youngest cook just learning to build a fire or clean a fish.

Harcels helped carry him home, and knelt all through the night with the Healer, bringing fresh cool moss to lay against the fevered wound, singing the prayers of healing as each star moved in its own ordained dance across the sky.

Charles Wallace was astride Gaudior’s great neck, looking from within his own eyes at Harcels, Within whom he had known such spontaneity and joy that his own awareness would evermore share in it.

Gaudior blew three iridescent bubbles.

The stench was so abominable that it would have made him loosen his grasp had not the pungent scent of Gaudior’s living flesh saved him as he pressed his face against the silver hide, breathing the strangeness of unicorn sweat.

Gaudior’s bright wings beat painfully against invisible wings of darkness beating at them. The unicorn neighed in anguish, his clear tones lost in the howling of the tempest.

He whinnied with anxiety.

The air was acrid, making them cough.

The heat was intense and he was perspiring profusely under the light anorak, which held in the heat like a furnace.

Both boy and unicorn were convulsed with paroxysms of coughing, but Charles Wallace did not loosen his grasp.

What was left of the face was scabrous and suppurating.

What was left of the face was scabrous and suppurating.

The monster had stopped its ponderous approach and was staring up at the sky, mouth open to catch the falling flakes.

He was hardly aware when Gaudior’s hoofs struck ground and the melody dimmed until it was only a pervasive beauty of background.

She realized that the room was cold, despite the electric heater which augmented the warm air coming up the attic stairs from the radiators below.

It was the same Where as the Where of Harcels, but there were subtle differences, though it was still what Gaudior had called Once Upon a Time and Long Ago, so perhaps men still lived in peace and Charles Wallace would be in no danger.

Madoc rose from the rock and looked to the east, awaiting the sunrise with exalted anticipation.

A lavish chain of flowers was flung over his neck and one shoulder.

“A year ago today, you sang the song in your delirium,” Reschal said, “and it was the child of my old age who found you in the forest.”

When the soothsayer looked into the scrying glass and foretold my father’s death, he saw also that I would live my days far from Gwynedd.

“Old One, even had I the tools to fell the trees for lumber for a new ship, even had my brother and my companions not perished, I would never wish to leave Zyll and my new brethren.”

“They are dead,” Madoc said bleakly.

When I awoke, I took Gwydyr aside and said that I would not stay to watch brother against brother, but that I would go find the land the Wise Ones said was at the farther end of the sea. Gwydyr demurred at first.

Once there were no evil spirits to blight the crops, to bring drought or flood.

His blue eyes, his pale skin, reddened by exposure, his tawny hair, were unlike anything they had ever seen.