Wrinkle In Time

A Wrinkle in Time Madelein L’Engle

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Mrs. Whatsit 2 Mrs. Who 3 Mrs. Which 4 The Black Thing 5 The Tesseract 6 The Happy Medium 7 The Man With Red Eyes 8 The Transparent Column 9 IT 10 Absolute Zero 11 Aunt Beast 12 The Foolish and the Weak

1 Mrs. Whatsit It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on thefoot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground. The house shook. Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook. She wasn't usually afraid of weather. —It's not just the weather, she thought. —It's the weather ontop of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong. School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped down to the lowest section in her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a child with parents as brilliant as yours are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'llhave to stay back next year." During lunch she'd rough-housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg, we aren't grammar-school kids any more. Why do you always act like such a baby?"

And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At thisshe'd thrown die books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye. Sandy and Dennys, her ten-year-old twin brothers, who got home from school an hour earlier than she did, were disgusted. "Let us do the fighting when it's necessary," they told her. —A delinquent, that's what I am, she thoughtgrimly. — That's what they'll be saying next. Not Mother. But Them. Everybody Else. I wish Father— But it was still not possible to think about her father without the danger of tears. Only her mother could talk about him in a natural way, saying, "When your father gets back—" Gets back from where? And when? Surely her mother must know what people were saying, must be aware of the smugly viciousgossip. Surely it must hurt her as it did Meg. But if it did she gave no outward sign. Nothing ruffled the serenity other expression. —Why can't I hide it, too? Meg thought. Why do I always have to show everything? The window rattled madly in the wind, and she pulled the quilt dose about her. Curled up on one of her pillows a gray fluff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head underagain, and went back to sleep. Everybody was asleep. Everybody except Meg. Even

Charles Wallace, the "dumb baby brother," who had an uncanny way of knowing when she was awake and unhappy, and who would come, so many nights, tiptoeing up the attic stairs to her—even Charles Wallace was asleep. How could they sleep? All day on the radio there had been hurricane warnings. How could they leaveher up in the attic in the rickety brass bed, knowing that the roof might be blown right off the house, and she tossed out into the wild night sky to land who knows where? Her shivering grew uncontrollable. —Y asked to have the attic bedroom, she told herself ou savagely. —Mother let you have it because you're the oldest. It’s a privilege, not a punishment. "Not during a hurricane, it isn't aprivilege," she said aloud. She tossed the quilt down on the foot of the bed, and stood up. The kitten stretched luxuriously, and looked up at her with huge, innocent eyes. "Go back to sleep," Meg said. "Just be glad you're a kitten and not a monster like me." She looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible face, baring a mouthful of teeth covered with braces. Automatically she pushed...