A Swiftly Tilting Planet (11 page)

The attack, just as they went through a shower of stars, was completely unexpected. A freezing gust blasted the wind on which they were riding, taking away Charles Wallace’s breath. His knuckles whitened as he clenched the mane, which seemed to strengthen into steel wire to help him hold his grasp. He had a horrible sense of Gaudior battling with a darkness which was like an antiunicorn,
a flailing of negative wings and iron hoofs. The silver mane was torn from his hands as he was assailed by the horrible stench which accompanied Echthroi. Dark wings beat him from the unicorn’s back and he felt the burning cold of outer space. This was more horrible than any Projection. His lungs cracked for lack of air. He would become a burnt-out body, a satellite circling forever the nearest sun …

A powerful wrench, and air rushed into his battered lungs. He felt a sharp tug at the nape of his neck, and the blue anorak tightened against his throat. The agonizing stench was gone and he was surrounded by the scent of unicorn breath, smelling of stars and frost. Gaudior was carrying him in his mouth, great ivory teeth clamped on the strong stuff of the anorak.

Gaudior’s iridescent wings beat against the dark. Charles Wallace held his breath. If Gaudior dropped him, the Echthroi would be waiting. His armpits were cut from the pulling of the anorak, but he knew that he must not struggle. Gaudior’s breath gusted painfully from between clenched teeth.

Then the silver hoofs touched stone, and they were safely at the star-watching rock. Gaudior opened his teeth and dropped the boy. For the first moments Charles Wallace was so weak that he collapsed onto the rock. Then he struggled to his feet, still trembling from the
near disaster. He stretched his arms to ease his sore armpits and shoulders. Gaudior was breathing in great, panting gusts, his flanks heaving.

The soft breeze around them filled and healed their seared lungs.

Gaudior rolled his lips, and took a deep draught of clear air. Then he bent down and nuzzled Charles Wallace in the first gesture of affection he had shown. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get away. The Echthroi are enraged that the wind managed to send you Within Madoc, and they’re trying to stop you from going Within anyone else.”

Charles Wallace stroked the unicorn’s muzzle. “You saved me. I’d be tumbling in outer space forever if you hadn’t grabbed my anorak.”

“It was one chance in a million,” Gaudior admitted. “And the wind helped me.”

Charles Wallace reached up to put his arms around Gaudior’s curving neck. “Even with help, it wasn’t easy. Thank you.”

Gaudior made a unicorn shrug; his curly beard quivered. “Unicorns find it embarrassing to be thanked. Please desist.”

It was a hot, midsummer’s day, with thunderheads massed on the horizon. The lake was gone, and the familiar valley stretched to the hills. The woods were a forest
of mighty elms and towering oaks and hemlock. In the far distance was what looked like a cluster of log cabins.

“I don’t think this looks like 1865,” he told Gaudior.

“You’d know more about that than I would. I didn’t have much opportunity to learn earth’s history. I never expected this assignment.”

“But, Gaudior, we have to know When we are.”

“Why?”

Charles Wallace tried to quell his impatience, which was all the sharper after the terror of the attack. “If there’s a Might-Have-Been we’re supposed to discover, we have to know When it is, don’t we?”

Gaudior’s own impatience was manifested by prancing. “Why? We don’t have to know everything. We have a charge laid on us, and we have to follow where it leads. You’ve been so busy trying to do the leading that we almost got taken by the Echthroi.”

Charles Wallace said nothing.

“Perhaps,” Gaudior granted grudgingly, “it wasn’t entirely your fault. But I think we should not try to control the Whens and the Wheres, but should go Where we’re sent. And what with all that contretemps with the Echthroi, you’re still in your own body, and you’re supposed to be Within.”

“Oh. What should I do?”

Gaudior blew mightily through flared nostrils. “I will
have to ask the wind.” And he raised his head and opened his jaws. Charles Wallace waited anxiously until the unicorn lowered his head and raised one wing, stretching it to its full span. “Step close to me,” he ordered.

Charles Wallace moved under the wing and leaned against Gaudior’s flank. “Did the wind say When we are?”

“You make too many demands,” Gaudior chided, and folded his wing until Charles Wallace felt smothered. Gasping for breath, he tried to push his way out into the air, but the wing held him firmly, and at last his struggling ceased.

When he opened his eyes the day had vanished, and trees and rock were bathed in moonlight.

He was Within. Lying on the rock, looking up at the moon-bathed sky. Only the most brilliant stars could compete with the silver light. Around him the sounds of summer sang sweetly. A mourning dove complained from her place deep in the darkest shadows. A grandfather frog boomed his bull-call. A pure trilling of bird song made him sit up and call out in greeting, “Zylle!”

A young woman stepped out from the shadows of the forest. She was tall and slender, except for her belly, which was heavy with child. “Thanks for meeting me, Brandon.”

Charles Wallace-within-Brandon Llawcae gave her a swift hug. “Anything I do with you is fun, Zylle.”

Again, as when he was Within Harcels, he was younger than fifteen, perhaps eleven or twelve, still very much a child, an eager, intelligent, loving child.

In the moonlight she smiled at him. “The herbs I need to ease the birthing of my babe are found only when the moon is full, and only here. Ritchie fears it would offend Goody Adams, did she know.”

Goody, short for Goodwife. That’s what the Pilgrims said, instead of Mrs. This was definitely not 1865, then. More than a century earlier, perhaps even two centuries. Brandon Llawcae must be the son of early settlers …

“Let yourself go,” Gaudior knelled. “Let yourself be Brandon.”

“But why are we here?” Charles Wallace demurred. “What can we learn here?”

“Stop asking questions.”

“But I don’t want to waste time …” Charles Wallace said anxiously.

Gaudior whickered irritably. “You are here, and you are in Brandon. Let go.”

Let go.

Be Brandon.

Be.

“So,” Zylle continued, “it is best that Ritchie not know, either. I can always trust you, Brandon. You don’t open
your mouth and spill everything out when to do so would bring no good.”

Brandon ducked his head shyly, then looked swiftly up at Zylle’s eyes, which were a startling blue in her brown face. “I have learned from the People of the Wind that ’tis no harm to hold a secret in the heart.”

Zylle sighed. “No, it is no harm. But it grieves me that you and I may not share our gifts with those we love.”

“My pictures.” Brandon nodded. “My parents want me to try not to see my pictures.”

“Among my people,” Zylle said, “you would be known as a Seer, and you would be having the training in prayer and trusting that would keep your gift very close to the gods, from whom the gift comes. My father had hoped that Maddok might have the gift, because it is rare to have two with blue eyes in one generation. But my little brother’s gift is to know about weather, when to plant and when to harvest, and that is a good gift, and a needed one.”

“I miss Maddok.” Bran scowled down at the rock. “He never comes to the settlement any more.”

Zylle placed her hand lightly on his shoulder. “It’s different in the settlement now that there are more families. Maddok no longer feels welcome.”

“I welcome him!”

“He knows that. And he misses you, too. But it isn’t only that the settlement is larger. Maddok is older, and
has to do more work at home. But he will always be your friend.”

“And I’ll always be his. Always.”

“Your pictures—” Zylle looked at him intently. “Are you able to stop seeing them?”

“Not always. When I look at something that holds a reflection, sometimes the pictures come, whether I will or no. But I try not to ask them to come.”

“When you see your pictures, it is all right to tell me what you see, the way you used to tell Maddok.”

“Ritchie is afraid of them.”

She pressed his shoulder gently. “Life has been nothing but hard work for Ritchie, with no time for seeing pictures or dreaming dreams. Your mother tells me that in Wales there are people who are gifted with the second sight, and that these people may be feared for their gift but they are not frowned on.”

“Ritchie says I would be frowned on. It is different here than in Wales. Especially since Pastor Mortmain came and built the church and scowled whenever Maddok visited the settlement or I went to the Indian compound.”

“Pastor Mortmain would try to separate the white people from the Indians.”

“But
why?
” Brandon demanded. “We were friends.”

“And still are,” Zylle assured him. “When did you last see a picture?”

“Tonight,” he told her. “I saw the reflection of a candle on the side of the copper kettle Mother had just polished, and I saw a picture of here, this very place, but the rock was much higher, and there”—he pointed to the valley—“it was all a lake, with the sun sparkling on the water.”

She looked at him wonderingly. “My father, Zillo, says that the valley was once a lake bed.”

“And I saw Maddok—at least, it wasn’t Maddok, because he was older, and his skin was fair, but he looked so like Maddok, at first I thought it was.”

“The legend,” she murmured. “Oh, Brandon, I feel we are very close, you and I. Perhaps it is having to keep our gifts hidden that brings us added closeness.” While they were talking she had been gathering a small plant that grew between the grasses. She held the blossoms out to the moonlight. “I know where to find the healing herbs, herbs that will keep babies from choking to death in the winter, or from dying of the summer sickness when the weather is hot and heavy as it is now. But your mother warns me that I must not offer these gifts; they would not be well received. But for myself, and the birthing of Ritchie’s and my baby, I will not be without the herbs which will help give me a good birthing and a fine child.” She began to spread the delicate blossoms on the rock. As the moonlight touched them, petals and leaf
alike appeared to glow with inner silver. Zylle looked up at the moon and sang,

Then she knelt and breathed in the fragrance of the blossoms, took them up in her hands, and pressed them against her forehead, her lips, her breasts, against the roundness of her belly.

Brandon asked, “Do we take the flowers home with us?”

“I would not want Goody Adams to see them.”

“When Ritchie and I were born, there wasn’t a midwife in the settlement.”

“Goody Adams is a fine midwife,” Zylle assured him. “Had she been here, your mother might not have lost
those little ones between you and Ritchie. But she would not approve of what I have just done. We will leave the birthing flowers here for the birds and moon and the wind. They have already given me their help.”

“When—oh, Zylle, do you know when the baby will come?”

“Tomorrow.” She stood. “It’s time we went home. I would not want Ritchie to wake and find me not beside him.”

Brandon reached for her long, cool fingers. “It was the best day in the world when Ritchie married you.”

She smiled swiftly, concealing a shadow of worry in her eyes. “The people of the settlement look with suspicion on an Indian in their midst, and a blue-eyed Indian at that.”

“If they’d only listen to our story that comes from Wales, and to your story—”

She pressed his fingers. “Ritchie warns me not to talk about our legend of the white man who came to us in the days when there were only Indians on this continent.”

“Long ago?”

“Long, long ago. He came from across the sea, from a land at the other end of the world, and he was a brave man, and true, who lusted neither after power nor after land. My little brother is named after him.”

“And the song?” Brandon asked.

“It’s old, very old, the prayer for a blue-eyed baby to keep the strength of the prince from over the sea within the Wind People, and the words may have changed over the years. And I have changed, for I have made my life with the white people, as the Golden Prince made his with the Wind People. For love he stayed with the princess of a strange land, and made her ways his ways. For love I leave my people and stay with Ritchie, and my love is deep, deep, for me to be able to leave my home. I sing the prayer because it is in my blood, and must be sung; and yet I wonder if my child will be allowed to know the Indian half of himself?”

“He?”

“It will be a boy.”

“How do you know?”

“The trees have told me in the turning of their leaves under the moonlight. I would like a girl baby, but Ritchie will be pleased to have a son.”

The footpath through the grasses led them to a brook, which caught the light of the moon and glimmered in the shifting shadows of the leaves. The brook was spanned by a natural stone bridge, and here Zylle paused, looking down at the water.

Brandon, too, looked at their reflections shifting and shimmering as the wind stirred the leaves. While he looked at Zylle’s reflection, the water stirring her mouth
into a tender smile, he saw, too, a baby held close in her arms, a black-haired, blue-eyed baby with gold behind its eyes.

Then, while he gazed, the eyes changed in the child and turned sullen, and the face was no longer the face of a baby but the face of a man, and he could not see Zylle anywhere. The man wore a strange-looking uniform with many medals, and his jowls were dark, jutting pridefully. He was thinking to himself, and he was thinking cruel thoughts, vindictive thoughts, and then Brandon saw fire, raging fire.