A Swiftly Tilting Planet Read Online Free PDF Page A

wash them half a dozen times, and then they turned out to be beautiful. They must have been from her hope chest, and they had embroidered initials, bMz.”
    “Z and M for what?”
    “I don’t remember …”
    “Think, Meg. Let me try to kythe it.”
    Again she closed her eyes and tried to relax. It was as though too much conscious intensity of thinking made her brain rigid and closed, and if she breathed slowly and deeply it opened up, and memories and thoughts were freed to come to her consciousness where she could share them with Charles Wallace.
    “The M—” she said slowly. “I think it’s Maddox.”
    “Maddox. It’s trying to tell me something, Maddox, but I’m not sure what. Meg, I want you to tell me everything about her you possibly can.”
    “I don’t know much.”
    “Meg—” The pupils of his eyes enlarged so that the iris was only a pale blue ring. “Somehow or other she’s got something to do with Branzillo.”
    “That’s—that’s—”
    “—absurd. That’s what the twins would say. And it is. But she came tonight of all nights, when she’s neverbeen willing to come before. And you heard her say that she didn’t want to come but she felt impelled to. And then she began to remember a rune she hadn’t thought of since she was a child, and she told me to use it to stop Branzillo.”
    “And she said we thought she was crackers.”
    “But she isn’t. Mother and Father know that. And nobody can accuse them of being dimwitted daydreamers. What does the Z stand for?”
    Again Meg shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t even remember if I asked, though I think I must have.”
    “Branwen Maddox. Branwen Z. Maddox.” He rubbed his fingers over his forehead. “Maddox. There’s a clue there.”
    The kitten yawned and went
brrtt
as though they were disturbing it. Meg reached out and gently knuckled its hard little head and then scratched the soft fur under the chin until it started to purr again and slowly closed its eyes.
    “Maddox—it’s in a song, or a ballad, about two brothers fighting, like
Childe Harold
maybe. Or maybe a narrative poem—” He buried his head in his hands. “Why can’t I remember!” he demanded in frustration.
    “Is it that important?”
    “Yes! I don’t know why, but it is. Maddox—fighting his brother and angering the gods …”
    “But, Charles—what does some old story have to do with anything?”
    “It’s a clue. But I can’t get enough … Is it very cold out?”
    Meg looked surprised. “I don’t think so. Why?”
    Charles Wallace gazed out the window. “The snow hasn’t melted, but there isn’t much wind. And I need to listen.”
    “The best listening place is the star-watching rock.”
    He nodded thoughtfully. The large, flattish glacial rock left over from the time when oceans of ice had pushed across the land, and which the family called the star-watching rock because it gave them a complete and unobstructed view of the sky, was indeed a good place to listen. When they lay on it to watch the stars they looked straight across the valleys to the hills. Behind the rock was a small woods. There was no sight of civilization, and little sound. Occasionally they heard the roar of a truck far away on the highway, or a plane tracking across the sky. But mostly it was quiet enough so that all they heard was the natural music of the seasons. Sometimes in the spring Meg thought she could hear the grass grow. In the autumn the tree toads sang back and forth as though they couldn’t bear to let the joys of summer pass. In the winter when the temperature dropped swiftly she was sometimes startled by the sound of ice freezing with asharp cracking noise like a rifle retort. This Thanksgiving night—if nothing more unusual or horrible happened—would be quiet. It was too late in the year for tree toads and locusts and crickets. They might hear a few tired leaves sighing wearily from their branches, or the swoosh of the tall grasses parting as a