A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle [43]
“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 Which 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