A Wind in the Door Read Online Free PDF

finished.
    “Man proposes, God disposes,” Dennys added, not to be outdone.
    The twins held out their plates for more spaghetti, neither one ever having been known to lose his appetite. “Why does Father have to stay a whole week?” Sandy asked.
    “It’s his work, after all,” Dennys said. “Mother, I think you could have put more hot peppers in the sauce.”
    “He’s been away a lot this autumn. He ought to stay home with his family at least some of the time. I think the sauce is okay.”
    “Of course it’s okay. I just like it a little hotter.”
    Meg was not thinking about spaghetti, although she was sprinkling Parmesan over hers. She wondered what their mother would say if Charles Wallace told her about his dragons. If there really were dragons, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in the north pasture, oughtn’t their parents to know?

    Sandy said, “When I grow up I’m going to be a banker and make money. Someone in this family has to stay in the real world.”
    “Not that we don’t think science is the real world, Mother,” Dennys said, “but you and Father aren’t practical scientists, you’re theoretical scientists.”
    Mrs. Murry demurred. “I’m not wholly impractical, you know, Sandy, and neither is your father.”
    “Spending hours and hours peering into your micro-electron microscope, and listening to that micro-sonar whatsit isn’t practical,” Sandy announced.
    “You just look at things nobody else can see,” Dennys added, “and listen to things nobody else can hear, and think about them.”
    Meg defended her mother. “It would be a good idea if more people knew how to think. After Mother thinks about something long enough, then she puts it into practice. Or someone else does.”
    Charles Wallace cocked his head with a pleased look. “Does practical mean that something works out in practice?”
    His mother nodded.
    “So it doesn’t matter if Mother sits and thinks. Or if Father spends weeks over one equation. Even if he writes it on the tablecloth. His equations are practical if someone else makes them work out in practice.” He reached in his pocket, as though in answer to Meg’s
thoughts about the dragons, and drew out a feather, not a bird feather, but a strange glitter catching the light. “All right, my practical brothers, what is this?”
    Sandy, sitting next to Charles Wallace, bent over the dragon feather. “A feather.”
    Dennys got up and went around the table so that he could see. “Let me—”
    Charles Wallace held the feather between them. “What kind is it?”
    “Hey, this is most peculiar!” Sandy touched the base of the feather. “I don’t think it’s from a bird.”
    “Why not?” Charles Wallace asked.
    “The rachis isn’t right.”
    “The what?” Meg asked.
    “The rachis. Sort of part of the quill. The rachis should be hollow, and this is solid, and seems to be metallic. Hey, Charles, where’d you get this thing?”
    Charles Wallace handed the feather to his mother. She looked at it carefully. “Sandy’s right. The rachis isn’t like a bird’s.”
    Dennys said, “Then what—”
    Charles Wallace retrieved the feather and put it back in his pocket. “It was on the ground by the big rocks in the north pasture. Not just this one feather. Quite a few others.”
    Meg suppressed a slightly hysterical giggle. “Charles and I think it may be fewmets.”

    Sandy turned to her with injured dignity. “Fewmets are dragon droppings.”
    Dennys said, “Don’t be silly.” Then, “Do you know what it is, Mother?”
    She shook her head. “What do you think it is, Charles?”
    Charles Wallace, as he occasionally did, retreated into himself. When Meg had decided he wasn’t going to answer at all, he said, “It’s something that’s not in Sandy’s and Dennys’s practical world. When I find out more, I’ll tell you.” He sounded very like their mother.
    “Okay, then.” Dennys had lost interest. He returned to his chair. “Did Father tell