Meg finds comfort and unconditional support where she least expects it.

“No!” Mr. Murry said sharply. “Please put [Meg] down.”

A sense of amusement seemed to emanate from the beasts. The tallest, who seemed to be the spokesman, said, “We frighten you?”

“What are you going to do with us?” Mr. Murry asked.

The beast said, “I’m sorry, we communicate better with the other one.” He turned toward Calvin.

[…]

“You, too, are afraid?”

“I’m – not sure.”

“Tell me,” the beast said. “What do you suppose you’d do if three of us suddenly arrived on your home planet.”

“Shoot you, I guess,” Calvin admitted.

“Then isn’t that what we should do with you?”

Calvin’s freckles seemed to deepen, but he answered quietly. “I’d really rather you didn’t. I mean, the earth’s my home, and I’d rather be there than anywhere in the world – I mean, the universe – and I can’t wait to get back, but we make some awful bloopers there.”

Calvin is being very honest (that’s certainly what would happen if they appeared in America, at least), but that’s exactly why Mr. Murry is so afraid – he knows what would happen if the situation were reversed.

One of the other beasts mentions that they might not be used to visitors from other planets on Earth, and that seems to ease the tensions at least a little.

The tall one turned back to Mr. Murry, speaking sternly. “You. The oldest. Man. From where have you come? Now.”

Mr. Murry answered steadily. “From a planet called Camazotz.” There was a mutter from the three beasts. “We do not belong there,” Mr. Murry said, slowly and distinctly. “We were strangers there as we are here. I was a prisoner there, and these children rescued me. My youngest son, my baby, is still there, trapped in the dark mind of IT.”

Meg is still frightened of the beasts, despite the fact that they’ve alleviated her pain.

“We must take this child back with us,” the beast holding her said.

Meg shouted at her father. “Don’t leave me the way you left Charles!” With this burst of terror a spasm of pain wracked her body and she gasped.

“Stop fighting,” the beast told her. “You make it worse. Relax.”

“That’s what IT said,” Meg cried. “Father! Calvin! Help!”

The beast turned toward Calvin and Mr. Murry. “This child is in danger. You must trust us.”

“We have no alternative,” Mr. Murry said. “Can you save her?”

“I think so.”

Eventually, you must stop fighting in order to heal, but Meg is in such a dark place at this point that she can’t even trust her father to make sound decisions for her health.

“This little girl needs prompt and special care. The coldness of the – what is it you call it?”

“The Black Thing?”

“The Black Thing. Yes. The Black Thing burns unless it is counteracted properly.” The three beasts stood around Meg, and it seemed that they were feeling into her with their softly waving tentacles. The movement of the tentacles was as rhythmic and flowing as the dance of an undersea plant, lying there, cradled in the four strange arms, Meg, despite herself, felt a sense of security that was deeper than anything she had known since the days when she lay in her mother’s arms in the old rocking chair and was sung to sleep. With her father’s help she had been able to resist IT. Now she could hold out no longer. She leaned her head against the beast’s chest, and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air.

I hope I don’t smell awful to it, she thought. But then she knew with a deep sense of comfort that even if she did smell awful the beasts would forgive her. As the tall figure cradled her she could feel the frigid stiffness of her body relaxing against it. This bliss could not come to her from a thing like IT. IT could only give pain, never relieve it. The beasts must be good. They had to be good. She sighed deeply, like a very small child, and suddenly she was asleep.

Evidently, they landed on a planet with no darkness in it…but of course, in the real world, good and wholesome things are rarely completely separate from darkness.

“Are you warm and alive again?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” [Meg] struggled to sit up.

“No, lie still, small one. You must not exert yourself as yet. We will have a fur garment for you in a moment, and then we will feed you. You must not even try to feed yourself. You must be as an infant again. The Black Thing does not relinquish its victims willingly.”

“Where are Father and Calvin? Have they gone back for Charles Wallace?”

“They are eating and resting,” the beast said, “and we are trying to learn about each other and see what is best to help you. We feel now that you are not dangerous, and that we will be allowed to help you.”

“Why is it so dark in here?” Meg asked. She tried to look around, but all she could see was shadows. Nevertheless there was a sense of openness, a feel of a gentle breeze moving lightly about, that kept the darkness from being oppressive.

But naturally, on a planet with beings who have no eyes, light would be of little importance.

“We do not know what things look like, as you say,” the beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”

“Oh, no!” Meg cried. “It’s- it’s the most wonderful thing in the world!”

“What a very strange world yours must be!” the beast said, that such a peculiar-seeming thing should be of such importance. Try to tell me, what is this thing called light that you are able to do so little without?”

She proceeds to talk in a circle about light being how you see things, when really, the beast would probably get it at least a little if she mentioned that light and warmth came from the same sources, as they refer to day as the “warmth” and night as the “coolness”.

But then she’s reminded of Charles Wallace and proceeds to panic again.

“Yes, yes, little one, of course we will help you. A meeting is in session right now to study what is best to do. We have never before been able to talk to anyone who managed to escape from a dark planet, so although your father is blaming himself for everything that has happened, we feel that he must be quite an extraordinary person to get out of Camazotz with you at all. But the little boy, and I understand he is a very special, a very important little boy – ah, my child, you must accept that this will not be easy. To go back through the Black Thing, back to Camazotz – I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“But Father left him!” Meg said. “He’s got to bring him back! He can’t just abandon Charles Wallace!”

The beast’s communication suddenly became crisp. “Nobody said anything about abandoning anybody. That is not our way. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want, and we still do not know what to do. And we cannot allow you, in your present state, to do anything that would jeopardize us all. I can see you wish your father to go rushing back to Camazotz, and you could probably make him do this, and then where would we be? No. No. You must wait until you are more calm. Now, my darling, here is a robe for you to keep you warm and comfortable.” Meg felt herself being lifted again, and a soft, light garment was slipped about her. “Don’t worry about your little brother.” The tentacles’ musical words were soft against her. “We would never leave him behind the shadow. But for now, you must relax, you must be happy, you must get well.”

Meg still resents her father for failing to protect her and (more importantly) Charles Wallace, so she’s instead started to attach her hopes to these beasts. Her caretaker probes her mind a bit and settles on a name for her that she and Meg can both agree on: Aunt Beast. And it turns out their planet is called Ixchel, which is in the same solar system as Camazotz, and very fittingly, Ixchel is the Mayan goddess of birthing and healing.

After a good long rest, Meg joins “her father and her Calvin.”

While she had been in Aunt Beast’s arms Meg had felt safe and secure. Now her worries about Charles Wallace and her disappointment in her father’s human fallibility rose like a gorge in her throat.

Mr. Murry and Calvin explain that while the beasts are capable of tessering, they can’t tesser onto a dark planet like Camazotz, and Mr. Murry doubts that he would be able to tesser back himself, considering his track record thus far (they assume that he only stayed in the same solar system because of Mrs Who’s glasses, which are now broken).

“Have you tried to call Mrs Whatsit?” Meg asked.

“Not yet,” her father answered.

“But if you haven’t thought of anything else, it’s the only thing to do! Father, don’t you care about Charles at all!”

At that Aunt Beast stood up, saying, “Child,” in a reproving way. Mr. Murry said nothing, and Meg could see that she had wounded him deeply. She reacted as she would have reacted to Mr. Jenkins. She scowled down at the table, saying, “We’ve got to ask them for help now. You’re just stupid if you think we don’t.”

Aunt Beast spoke to the others. “The child is distraught. Don’t judge her harshly. She was almost taken by the Black Thing. Sometimes we can’t know what spiritual damage it leaves even when physical recovery is complete.”

Meg looked angrily around the table. The beasts sat there, silent, motionless. She felt that she was being measured and found wanting.

Calvin explains to Meg that they’ve been trying to explain to the beasts who the Mrs W’s are, but of course, since they don’t fully know what they are themselves (and they don’t know their true names, if they even have any), they’ve all been failing to convey their meaning. Then Calvin comes up with something.

“Angels!” Calvin shouted suddenly from across the table. “Guardian angels!” There was a moment’s silence, and he shouted again, “Messengers! Messengers of God!”

“I thought for a moment -” Aunt Beast started, then subsided, sighing. “No. It’s not clear enough.”

“How strange it is that they can’t tell us what they themselves seem to know,” a tall, thin beast murmured.

One of Aunt Beast’s tentacled arms went around Meg’s waist again. “They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space.”

That’s the problem with communicating with anyone, really, especially when it’s about something you know relatively little about.

“[WE ARE HERE]!”

Next time: The Foolish and the Weak…