A Swiftly Tilting Planet (16 page)

But when a second rope was severed, Charles Wallace was still bound to the unicorn, and the plant was limp and useless. “Can you bite off another spike?”

Gaudior bit and grimaced. “Nothing really has to taste that disagreeable. But then, I am not accustomed to any food except starlight and moonlight.”

At last the ropes were off boy and beast, and Charles Wallace slid to the surface of the ice cliff. Gaudior was attacked by a fit of sneezing, and the last of the sea water flooded from his nose and mouth. Charles Wallace looked at the unicorn and drew in his breath in horror. Where the lines of rope had crossed the flanks there were red welts, shocking against the silver hide. The entire
abdominal area, where the webbed hammock had rubbed, was raw and oozing blood. The water which had flooded from Gaudior’s nostrils was pinkish.

The unicorn in turn inspected the boy. “You’re a mess,” he stated flatly. “You can’t possibly go Within in this condition. You’d only hurt your host.”

“You’re a mess, too,” Charles Wallace replied. He looked at his hands, and the palms were as raw as Gaudior’s belly. Where the anorak and his shirt had slipped, the rope had cut into his waist as it had cut Gaudior’s flanks.

“And you have two black eyes,” the unicorn informed him. “It’s a wonder you can see at all.”

Charles Wallace squinted, first with one eye, then the other. “Things are a little blurry,” he confessed.

Gaudior shook a few last drops from his wings. “We can’t stay here, and you can’t go Within now, that’s obvious.”

Charles Wallace looked at the sun, which was moving toward the west. “It’s going to be cold when the sun goes down. And there doesn’t seem to be any sign of life. And nothing to eat.”

Gaudior folded his wings across his eyes and appeared to contemplate. Then he returned the wings to the bleeding flanks. “I don’t understand earth time.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Time is of the essence, we both know that. And yet it will take weeks, if not months, for us to heal.”

When the unicorn stared at him as though expecting a response, Charles Wallace looked down at a puddle in the ice. “I don’t have any suggestions.”

“We’re both exhausted. The one place I can take you without fear of Echthroi is my home. No mortal has ever been there, and I am not sure I should bring you, but it’s the only way I see open to us.” The unicorn flung back his mane so that it brushed against the boy’s bruised face with a silver coolness. “I have become very fond of you, in spite of all your foolishness.”

Charles Wallace hugged the unicorn. “I have become fond of you, too.”

Joints creaking painfully, Gaudior knelt. The boy clambered up, wincing as he inevitably touched the red welts which marred the flanks. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Gaudior neighed softly. “I know you don’t.”

The boy was so exhausted that he was scarcely aware of their flight. Stars and time swirled about him, and his lids began to droop.

“Wake up!” Gaudior ordered, and he opened his eyes to a world of starlit loveliness. The blurring of his vision had cleared, and he looked in awe at a land of snow and ice; he felt no cold, only the tenderness of a soft breeze
which touched his cuts and bruises with healing gentleness. In the violet sky hung a sickle moon, and a smaller, higher moon, nearly full. Mountains heaved snow-clad shoulders skyward. Between the ribs of one of the foothills he saw what appeared to be a pile of enormous eggs.

Gaudior followed his gaze. “The hatching grounds. It has been seen by no other human eyes.”

“I didn’t know unicorns came from eggs,” the boy said wonderingly.

“Not all of us do,” Gaudior replied casually. “Only the time travelers.” He took in great draughts of moonlight, then asked, “Aren’t you thirsty?”

Charles Wallace’s lips were cracked and sore. His mouth was parched. He looked longingly at the moonlight and tentatively opened his mouth to it. He felt a cool and healing touch on his lips, but when he tried to swallow he choked.

“I forgot,” Gaudior said. “You’re human. In my excitement at being home it slipped my mind.” He cantered off to one of the foothills and returned with a long blue-green icicle held carefully in his teeth. “Suck it slowly. It may sting at first, but it has healing properties.”

The cool drops trickled gently down the boy’s parched throat, like rays of moonlight, and at the same time that they cooled the burning, they warmed his cold body. He gave his entire concentration to the moonsicle, and
when he had finished the last healing drops he turned to thank Gaudior.

The unicorn was rolling in the snow, his legs up in the air, rolling and rolling, a humming of sheer pleasure coming from his throat. Then he stood up and shook himself, flinging splashes of snow in all directions. The red welts were gone; his hide was smooth and glistening perfection. He looked at the sore places on Charles Wallace’s waist and hands. “Roll, the way I did,” he ordered.

Charles Wallace threw himself into the snow, which was like no other snow he had ever felt; each flake was separate and tingly; it was cool but not chilling, and he felt healing move not only over the rope burns but deep within his sore muscles. He rolled over and over, laughing with delight. Then came a moment when he knew that he was completely healed, and he jumped up. “Gaudior, where is everybody? all the other unicorns?”

“Only the time travelers come to the hatching grounds, and during the passage of the small moon they can be about other business, for the small moon casts its warmth on the eggs. I brought you here, to this place, and at this moon, so we’d be alone.”

“But why should we be alone?”

“If the others saw you they’d fear for their eggs.”

Charles Wallace’s head came barely halfway up the unicorn’s haunches. “Creatures your size would be afraid of me?”

“Size is immaterial. There are tiny viruses which are deadly.”

“Couldn’t you tell them I’m not a virus and I’m not deadly?”

Gaudior blew out a gust of air. “Some of them think mankind
is
deadly.”

Charles Wallace, too, sighed, and did not reply. Gaudior nuzzled his shoulder. “Those of us who have been around the galaxies know that such thinking is foolish. It’s always easy to blame others. And I have learned, being with you, that many of my preconceptions about mortals were wrong. Are you ready?”

Charles Wallace held out his hands to the unicorn. “Couldn’t I see one of the eggs hatch?”

“They won’t be ready until the rising of the third moon, unless …” Gaudior moved closer to the clutch, each egg almost as long as the boy was tall. “Wait—” The unicorn trotted to the great globular heap, which shone with inner luminosity, like giant moonstones. Gaudior bent his curved neck so that his mane brushed softly over the surface of the shells. With his upper teeth he tapped gently on one, listening, ears cocked, the short ear-hairs standing up and quivering like antennae. After a moment he moved on to another shell, and then another, with unhurried patience, until he tapped on one shell twice, thrice, then drew back and nodded at the boy.

This egg appeared to have rolled slightly apart from the others, and as Charles Wallace watched, it quivered, and rolled even farther away. From inside the shell came a sound of tapping, and the egg began to glow. The tapping accelerated and the shell grew so bright the boy could scarcely look at it. A sharp cracking, and a flash of brilliance as the horn thrust up and out into the pearly air, followed by a head with the silver mane clinging damply to neck and forehead. Dark silver-lashed eyes opened slowly, and the baby unicorn looked around, its eyes reflecting the light of the moons as it gazed on its fresh new environment. Then it wriggled and cracked the rest of the shell. As fragments of shell fell onto the snowy ground they broke into thousands of flakes, and the shell became one with the snow.

The baby unicorn stood on new and wobbly legs, neighing a soft moonbeam sound until it gained its balance. It stood barely as tall as Charles Wallace, testing one forehoof, then the other, and kicking out its hind legs. As Charles Wallace watched, lost in delight, the baby unicorn danced under the light of the two moons.

Then it saw Gaudior, and came prancing over to the big unicorn; by slightly lowering the horn it could have run right under the full-grown beast.

Gaudior nuzzled the little one’s head just below the horn. Again the baby pranced with pleasure, and Gaudior began to dance with it, leading the fledgling in steps
ever more and more intricate. When the baby began to tire, Gaudior slowed the steps of the dance and raised his head to the sickle moon, drew back his lips in an exaggerated gesture, and gulped moonlight.

As the baby had been following Gaudior in the steps of the dance, so it imitated him now, eagerly trying to drink moonlight, the rays dribbling from its young and inexperienced lips and breaking like crystal on the snow. Again it tried, looking at Gaudior, until it was thirstily and tidily swallowing the light as it was tipped out from the curve of the moon.

Gaudior turned to the nearly full moon, and again with exaggerated gestures taught the little one to drink. When its flanks were quivering with fullness, Gaudior turned to the nearest star, and showed it the pleasures of finishing a meal by quenching its thirst with starlight. The little one sipped contentedly, then closed its mouth with its tiny, diamond-like teeth, and, replete, leaned against Gaudior.

Only then did it notice Charles Wallace. With a leap of startlement, it landed on all four spindly legs, squealed in terror and galloped away, tail streaming silver behind it.

Charles Wallace watched the little creature disappear over the horizon. “I’m sorry I frightened it. Will it be all right?”

Gaudior nodded reassuringly. “It’s gone in the direction of the Mothers. They’ll tell it you’re only a bad
dream it had coming out of the shell, and it’ll forget all about you.” He knelt.

Reluctantly Charles Wallace mounted and sat astride the great neck. Holding on to a handful of mane, he looked about at the wild and peaceful landscape. “I don’t want to leave.”

“You human beings tend to want good things to last forever. They don’t. Not while we’re in time. Do you have any instructions for me?”

“I’m through with instructions. I don’t even have any suggestions.”

“We’ll go Where and When the wind decides to take us, then?”

“What about Echthroi?” Charles Wallace asked fearfully.

“Because we’re journeying from the home place the wind should be unmolested, as it was when we came here. After that we’ll see. We’ve been in a very deep sea, and I never thought we’d get out of it. Try not to be afraid. The wind will give us all the help it can.” The wings stretched to their full span and Gaudior flew up between the two moons, and away from the unicorn hatching grounds.

Meg sighed with delight.

“Oh, Ananda, Ananda, that was the most beautiful kythe! How I wish Charles Wallace could have stayed there longer, where he’s safe …”

Ananda whined softly.

“I know. He has to leave. But the Echthroi are after him, and I feel so helpless …”

Ananda looked up at Meg, and the tufts of darker fur above the eyes lifted.

Meg scratched the dog between the ears. “We did send him the rune when he was in the Ice Age sea, and the wind came to help.” Anxiously she placed her hand on Ananda, and closed her eyes, concentrating.

She saw the star-watching rock, and two children, a girl and a boy, perhaps thirteen and eleven, the girl the elder. The boy looked very much like a modern Brandon Llawcae, a Brandon in blue jeans and T-shirt—so it was definitely not 1865.

Charles Wallace was Within the boy, whose name was not Brandon.

Chuck.

Mrs. O’Keefe had called Charles Wallace
Chuck
.

Chuck was someone Mrs. O’Keefe knew. Someone Mrs. O’Keefe had said was not an idiot.

Now he was with a girl, yes, and someone else, an old woman. Chuck Maddox, and his sister, Beezie, and their grandmother. They were laughing, and blowing dandelion clocks, counting the breaths it took for the lacy white spores to leave the green stem.

Beezie Maddox had golden hair and bright blue eyes and a merry laugh. Chuck was more muted, his hair a
soft brown, his eyes blue-grey. He smiled more often than laughed. He was so much like Brandon that Meg was sure he must be a direct descendant.

“Ananda, why am I so terribly frightened for him?” Meg asked.

“Let’s blow dandelion clocks,” Beezie had suggested.

“Not around the store you don’t,” their father had said. “I’ll not have my patch of lawn seeded with more dandelion spore than blows here on its own.”

So Chuck and Beezie and the grandmother came on a Sunday afternoon, across the brook, along to the flat rock. In the distance they could hear the sound of trucks on the highway, although they could not see them. Occasionally a plane tracked across the sky. Otherwise, there was nothing to remind them of civilization, and this was one of the things Chuck liked best about crossing the brook and walking through the woods to the rock.

Beezie handed him a dandelion. “Blow.”

Chuck did not much like the smell of the spore; it was heavy and rank, and he wrinkled his nose with distaste.

“It doesn’t smell all that bad to me,” Beezie said. “When I squish the stem it smells green, that’s all.”

The grandmother held the snowy fronds to her nose. “When you’re old, nothing smells the way it used to.” She blew, and the white snowflakes of her dandelion flew in all directions, drifting on the wind.

Chuck and his sister had to blow several times before the clock told its time. The grandmother, who was quickly out of breath, and who had pressed her hand against her heart as she struggled up the fern-bordered path from the brook, blew lightly, and all the spores flew from the stem, danced in the sunny air, and slowly settled.

Chuck looked at Beezie, and Beezie looked at Chuck.

“Grandma, Beezie and I huff and puff and you blow no stronger than a whisper and it all blows away.”

“Maybe you blow too hard. And when you ask the time, you mustn’t fear the answer.”

Chuck looked at the bare green stem in his grandmother’s fingers. “I blew four times, and it isn’t nearly four yet. What time does your dandelion tell, Grandma?”