A Swiftly Tilting Planet (15 page)

“That should teach you something.”

“It does. It teaches me that we have to go to Vespugia to find the connection between Mom O’Keefe and Mad Dog Branzillo.”

The light in Gaudior’s horn flickered rapidly.

“I know—” Charles Wallace stroked the unicorn’s neck. “The Echthroi nearly got us when we were aiming for 1865 in our own Where. Perhaps we have to leave the star-watching rock and aim for 1865 in Patagonia, when the Welsh group arrived there. Perhaps they met Gwydyr’s
descendants. I think we have no choice now except to go to Patagonia.”

“They may attack us again.” Gaudior’s anxious neigh broke into silver shards. “It might be a good idea for you to tie yourself to me. If the Echthroi tear you from my back again, it isn’t likely that I’d be able to catch you a second time.”

Charles Wallace looked all around him, carefully, and saw nothing but the woods, the rock, the valley, the mountains beyond. Then: “I know!” He slid off Gaudior’s back to the rock. “I forgot to bring in the hammock this autumn. Meg usually does it. It’s just a few yards along the path, between two old apple trees. It’s a woven rope one, and it’s hung on good stout laundry rope, from Mortmain’s General Store—Mortmain! Gaudior, do you suppose—”

“We don’t have time for suppositions,” Gaudior warned. “Bind yourself to me.”

Charles Wallace hurried along the path, with the unicorn following, prancing delicately as bare blackberry canes reached across the path and tore at his silver hide.

“Here we are. Mother likes the hammock to be far away from the house so that she can’t possibly hear the telephone.” He started untying one end of the hammock. The branches of the apple trees were bare of leaves, but a few withered apples still clung palely to the topmost branches. The earth around the trees and under
the hammock smelled of cider vinegar and mulching leaves.

“Make haste slowly,” Gaudior advised, as Charles Wallace’s trembling fingers fumbled with the knots. The air was cold, and the unicorn bent his neck so that he could breathe on Charles Wallace’s fingers to warm them. “Think only about untying the knots. The Echthroi are near.”

Warmed by the unicorn’s breath, the boy’s fingers began to lose their stiffness, and he managed to untie the first knot. Two more knots, and one end of the hammock dropped to the leafy ground, and Charles Wallace moved to the second tree, where the hammock seemed even more firmly secured to the gnarled trunk. He worked in silence until the hammock was freed. “Kneel,” he told the unicorn.

Charles Wallace dragged one end of the hammock under the unicorn, so that the heavy webbing was under Gaudior’s great abdomen. With difficulty he managed to fling the rope up over Gaudior’s flanks. He clambered up and bound the rope securely around his waist. “It’s a good thing Mother always uses enough rope for five hammocks.”

Gaudior whickered. “Are you tied on securely?”

“I think so. The twins taught me to make knots.”

“Hold on to my mane, too.”

“I am.”

“I don’t like this,” Gaudior objected. “Are you sure you think we ought to try to go to Patagonia?”

“I think it’s what we have to do.”

“I’m worried.” But Gaudior began to run, until he had gathered enough speed to launch himself.

The attack came almost immediately, Echthroi surrounding boy and unicorn. Charles Wallace’s hands were torn from Gaudior’s mane, but the rope held firm. The breath was buffeted out of him, and his eyelids were sealed tight against his eyes by the blasting wind, but the Echthroi did not succeed in pulling him off Gaudior’s back. The rope strained and groaned, but the knots held.

Gaudior’s breath came in silver streamers. He had folded his wings into his flanks to prevent the Echthroid wind from breaking them. Boy and unicorn were flung through endless time and space.

A cold, stenching wind picked them up and they were flung downward with a violence over which the unicorn had no control. Helplessly they descended toward a vast darkness.

They crashed.

They hit with such impact that Charles Wallace thought fleetingly, just before he lost consciousness, that the Echthroi had flung them onto rock and this was the end.

But the descent continued. Down down into blackness
and cold. No breath. A feeling of strangling, a wild ringing in the ears. Then he seemed to be rising, up, up, and light hit his closed eyes with the force of a blow, and clear cold air rushed into his lungs. He opened his eyes.

It was water and not rock they had been thrown against.

“Gaudior!” he cried, but the unicorn floated limply on the surface of the darkness, half on his side, so that one of Charles Wallace’s legs was still in the water. The boy bent over the great neck. No breath came from the silver nostrils. There was no rise and fall of chest, no beat of heart. “Gaudior!” he cried in anguish. “Don’t be dead! Gaudior!”

Still, the unicorn floated limply, and small waves plashed over his face.

“Gaudior!” With all his strength Charles Wallace beat against the motionless body.—The rune, he thought wildly,—the rune …

But no words came, except the unicorn’s name. “Gaudior! Gaudior!”

A trembling stirred the silver body, and then Gaudior’s breath came roaring out of him like an organ with all the stops pulled out. Charles Wallace sobbed with relief. The unicorn opened eyes which at first were glazed, then cleared and shone like diamonds. He began to tread water. “Where are we?”

Charles Wallace bent over the beautiful body, stroking neck and mane in an ecstasy of relief. “In the middle of an ocean.”

“Which ocean?” Gaudior asked testily.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s your planet. You’re supposed to know.”

“Is it my planet?” Charles Wallace asked. “The Echthroi had us. Are you sure we aren’t in a Projection?”

Unicorn and boy looked around. The water stretched to the horizon on all sides. Above them the sky was clear, with a few small clouds.

“It’s not a Projection.” Gaudior whickered. “But we could be anywhere in Creation, on any planet in any galaxy which has air with oxygen and plenty of water. Does this seem to you like an ordinary earth ocean?” He shook his head, and water sprayed out from his mane. “I am not thinking clearly yet …” He gulped air, then regurgitated a large quantity of salt water. “I have drunk half this ocean.”

“It looks like a regular ocean,” Charles Wallace said tentatively, “and it feels like winter.” His drenched anorak clung to his body in wet folds. His boots were full of water, which sloshed icily against his feet. “Look!” He pointed ahead of them to a large crag of ice protruding from the water. “An iceberg.”

“Which direction is land?”

“Gaudior, if we don’t even know what galaxy or
planet we’re on, how do you expect me to know where land is?”

With difficulty Gaudior stretched his wings to their fullest extent, so that they shed water in great falls that splashed noisily against the waves. His legs churned with a mighty effort to keep afloat.

“Can you fly?” Charles Wallace asked.

“My wings are waterlogged.”

“Can’t you ask the wind where we are?”

A shudder rippled along the unicorn’s flanks. “I’m still half winded—the wind—the wind—we hit water so hard it’s a wonder all our bones aren’t broken. The wind must have cushioned our fall. Are you still tied on?”

“Yes, or I wouldn’t be here. Ask the wind, please.”

“Winded—the wind—the wind—” Again Gaudior shook water from his wings. He opened his mouth in his characteristic gesture of drinking, gulped in the cold, clear breeze, his lips pulled back to reveal the dangerous-looking teeth. He closed his eyes and his long lashes were dark against his skin, which had paled to the color of moonlight. He opened his eyes and spat out a great fountain of water. “Thank the galaxies.”

“Where are we?”

“Your own galaxy, your own solar system, your own planet. Your own Where.”

“You mean this is the place of the star-watching rock? Only it’s covered by an ocean?”

“Yes. And the wind says it’s midsummer.”

Charles Wallace looked at the iceberg. “It’s a good thing it’s summer, or we’d be dead from cold. And summer or no, we’ll die of cold if we don’t get out of water and onto land, and soon.”

Gaudior sighed. “My wings are still heavy with water and my legs are tiring.”

A wave dashed over them. Charles Wallace swallowed a mouthful of salty water and choked, coughing painfully. His lungs ached from the battering of the Echthroid wind and the cold of the sea. He was desperately sleepy. He thought of travelers lost in a blizzard, and how in the end all they wanted was to lie down in the snow and go to sleep, and if they gave in to sleep they would never wake up again. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but it hardly seemed worth the effort.

Gaudior’s legs moved more and more slowly. When the next wave went over them, the unicorn did not kick back up to the surface.

As water and darkness joined to blot out Charles Wallace’s consciousness, he heard a ringing in his ears, and through the ringing a voice calling, “The rune, Chuck! Say it! Say the rune!”

But the weight of the icy water bore him down.

Ananda’s frantic whining roused Meg.

“Say it, Charles!” she cried, sitting bolt-upright.

Ananda whined again, then gave a sharp bark.

“I’m not sure I remember the words—” Meg pressed both hands against the dog, and called out,

The wind lifted and the whitecaps were churned into rolling breakers, and unicorn and boy were raised to the surface of the water and caught in a great curling comber and swept along with it across the icy sea until they were flung onto the white sands of dry land.

EIGHT

The sea with its deepness

Unicorn and boy vomited sea water and struggled to breathe, their lungs paining them as though they were being slashed by knives. They were sheltered from the wind by a cliff of ice onto which the sun was pouring, so that water was streaming down in little rivulets. The warmth of the sun which was melting the ice also melted the chill from their sodden bodies, and began to dry the unicorn’s waterlogged wings. Gradually their blood began to flow normally and they breathed without choking on salt water.

Because he was smaller and lighter (and billions of years younger, Gaudior pointed out later), Charles Wallace recovered first. He managed to wriggle out of the still-soaking anorak and drop it down onto the wet sand. Then with difficulty he kicked off the boots. He looked at the ropes which still bound him to the unicorn; the knots were pulled so tight and the cord was by now so sodden
that it was impossible to untie himself. Exhausted, he bent over Gaudior’s neck and felt the healing sun send its rays deep into his body. Warmed and soothed, his nose pressed against wet unicorn mane, he fell into sleep, a deep, life-renewing sleep.

When he awoke, Gaudior was stretching his wings out to the sun. A few drops of water still clung to them, but the unicorn could flex them with ease.

“Gaudior,” Charles Wallace started, and yawned.

“While you were sleeping,” the unicorn reproved gently, “I have been consulting the wind. Praise the Music that we’re in the When of the melting of the ice or we could not have survived.” He, too, yawned.

“Do unicorns sleep?” Charles Wallace asked.

“I haven’t needed to sleep in aeons.”

“I feel all the better for a nap. Gaudior, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For making you try to get us to Patagonia. If I hadn’t, we might not have been nearly killed by the Echthroi.”

“Apology accepted,” Gaudior said briskly. “Have you learned?”

“I’ve learned that every time I’ve tried to control things we’ve had trouble. I don’t know what we ought to do now, or Where or When we ought to go from here. I just don’t know …”

“I think”—Gaudior turned his great head to look at the boy—“that our next step is to get all these knots untied.”

Charles Wallace ran his fingers along the rope. “The knots are all sort of welded together from wind and water and sun. I can’t possibly untie them.”

Gaudior wriggled against the pressure of the ropes. “They appear to have shrunk. I am very uncomfortable.”

After a futile attempt at what looked like the most pliable of the knots, Charles Wallace gave up. “I’ve got to find something to cut the rope.”

Gaudior trotted slowly up and down the beach. There were shells, but none sharp enough. They saw a few pieces of rotting driftwood, and some iridescent jellyfish and clumps of seaweed. There were no broken bottles or tin cans or other signs of mankind, and while Charles Wallace was usually horrified at human waste and abuse of nature, he would gladly have found a broken beer bottle.

Gaudior turned inland around the edge of the ice cliff, moving up on slipping sand runneled by melting ice. “This is absurd. After all we’ve been through, who would have thought I’d end up like a centaur with you permanently affixed to my back?” But he continued to struggle up until he was standing on the great shoulder of ice.

“Look!” Charles Wallace pointed to a cluster of silvery plants with long spikes which had jagged teeth along the sides. “Do you think you could bite one of those off, so I can saw the rope with it?”

Gaudior splashed through puddles of melted ice, lowered
his head, and bit off one of the spikes as close to the root as his large teeth permitted. Holding it between his teeth he twisted his head around until Charles Wallace, straining until the rope nearly cut off his breath, managed to take it from him.

Gaudior wrinkled his lips in distaste. “It’s repellent. Careful, now. Unicorn’s hide is not as strong as it looks.”

“Stop fidgeting.”

“It itches.” Gaudior flung his head about with uncontrollable and agonized laughter. “Hurry.”

“If I hurry I’ll cut you. It’s coming now.” He moved the plant-saw back and forth with careful concentration, and finally one of the ropes parted. “I’ll have to cut one more, on the other side. The worst is over now.”