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nose. “What should I do, then?”
    “We’re in it together.” Gaudior knelt delicately and indicated that Charles Wallace was to climb up onto his back. Even with the unicorn kneeling, it was with difficulty that the boy clambered up and sat astride, up toward the great neck, so that he could hold on to thesilver mane. He pressed his feet in their rubber boots as tightly as he could against the unicorn’s flanks.
    Gaudior asked, “Have you ridden the wind before?”
    “No.”
    “We have to be careful of Echthroi,” Gaudior warned. “They try to ride the wind and throw us off course.”
    “Echthroi—” Charles Wallace’s eyes clouded. “That means
the enemy
.”
    “Echthroi,” Gaudior repeated. “The ancient enemy. He who distorted the harmony, and who has gathered an army of destroyers. They are everywhere in the universe.”
    Charles Wallace felt a ripple of cold move along his spine.
    “Hold my mane,” the unicorn advised. “There’s always the possibility of encountering an Echthros, and if we do, it’ll try to unseat you.”
    Charles Wallace’s knuckles whitened as he clutched the heavy mane. The unicorn began to run, skimming over the tops of the grasses, up, over the hills, flinging himself onto the wind and riding with it, up, up, over the stars …

THREE
    The sun with its brightness
     
    In her attic bedroom Meg regarded Ananda, who thumped her massive tail in a friendly manner. “What’s this about?” Meg demanded.
    Ananda merely thudded again, waking the kitten, who gave a halfhearted
brrtt
and stalked across the pillow.
    Meg looked at her battered alarm clock, which stood in its familiar place on the bookcase. The hands did not seem to have moved. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t understand.”
    Ananda whined softly, an ordinary whine coming from an ordinary dog of questionable antecedents, a mongrel like many in the village.
    “Gaudior,” Meg murmured. “More joyful. That’s a good name for a unicorn.
Gaudior, Ananda
: that joy without which the universe will fall apart and collapse. Has the world lost its joy? Is that why we’re in such a mess?” She stroked Ananda thoughtfully, then held up the handwhich had been pressing against the dog’s flank. It glowed with radiant warmth. “I told Charles Wallace I’m out of practice in kything. Maybe I’ve been settling for the grownup world. How did you know we needed you, Ananda? And when I touch you I can kythe even more deeply than I’ve ever done before.” She put her hand back on the comfortable flank and closed her eyes, shivering with the strain of concentration.
    She saw neither Charles Wallace nor the unicorn. She saw neither the familiar earth with the star-watching rock, the woods, the hills, nor the night sky with its countless galaxies. She saw nothing. Nothing. There was no wind to ride or be blown by.
    Nothing was. She was not. There was no dark. There was no light. No sight nor sound nor touch nor smell nor taste. No sleeping nor waking. No dreaming, no knowing.
    Nothing.
    And then a surge of joy.
    All senses alive and awake and filled with joy.
    Darkness was, and darkness was good. As was light.
    Light and darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm.
    The morning stars sang together and the ancient harmonies were new and it was good. It was very good.
    And then a dazzling star turned its back on the dark, and it swallowed the dark, and in swallowing the dark it became the dark, and there was something wrong with the dark, as there was something wrong with the light. And it was not good. The glory of the harmony was broken by screeching, by hissing, by laughter which held no merriment but was hideous, horrendous cacophony.
    With a strange certainty Meg knew that she was experiencing what Charles Wallace was experiencing. She saw neither Charles Wallace nor the unicorn, but she knew through Charles Wallace’s knowing.
    The