Free A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle Page A

slim chance it had not been a dream, she had promised the cherubim that she would come to him before breakfast.
    Had it not been for the horrible moments with Mr. Jenkins screeching across the sky, she would not have wanted it to be a dream. She desperately wanted Blajeny to be real, to take care of everything. But the unreality of Mr. Jenkins, who had always been disagreeably predictable, was far more difficult for her to accept than the Teacher, or even a cherubim who looked like a drive of dragons.
    She dressed hurriedly, putting on her kilt and a clean blouse. She tiptoed downstairs as quietly and carefully as she had the night before, through the kitchen and into the pantry, where she put on her heaviest jacket, and a multicolored knitted tam o’shanter, one of her mother’s rare successful ventures into domesticity.
    This time no wind blew, no doors slammed. She turned on the flashlight to guide her. It was a still, chill pre-dawn. The grass was white with spider-web tracings of dew and light frost. A thin vapor moved delicately across the lawn. The mountains were curtained by ground fog, although in the sky she could see stars. She ran across the garden, looking warily about her. But there was no Mr. Jenkins, of course there was no Mr. Jenkins. At the stone wall she looked carefully for Louise, but there was no sign of the big snake. She
crossed the orchard, climbed the wall again—still no Louise, it was much too early and much too cold for snakes, anyhow—and ran across the north pasture, past the two glacial rocks, and to the star-watching rock.
    There was nothing there except the mist whirling gently in the faint breeze.
    So it had all been a dream.
    Then the mist seemed to solidify, to become moving wings, eyes opening and shutting, tiny flickers of fire, small puffs of misty smoke …
    “You’re real,” she said loudly. “You’re not something I dreamed after all.”
    Proginoskes delicately stretched one huge wing skywards, then folded it. “I have been told that human beings seldom dream about cherubim. Thank you for being prompt. It is in the nature of cherubim to dislike tardiness.”
    Meg sighed, in resignation, in fear, and, surprisingly, in relief. “Okay, Progo, I guess you’re not a figment of my imagination. What do we do now? I’ve got just about an hour before breakfast.”
    “Are you hungry?”
    “No, I’m much too excited to be hungry, but if I don’t turn up on time, it won’t go down very well if I explain that I was late because I was talking with a cherubim. My mother doesn’t like tardiness, either.”

    Proginoskes said, “Much can be accomplished in an hour. We have to find out what our first ordeal is.”
    “Don’t you know?”
    “Why would I know?”
    “You’re a cherubim.”
    “Even a cherubim has limits. When three ordeals are planned, then nobody knows ahead of time what they are; even the Teacher may not know.”
    “Then what do we do? How do we find out?”
    Proginoskes waved several wings slowly back and forth in thought, which would have felt very pleasant on a hot day, but which, on a cold morning, made Meg turn up the collar of her jacket. The cherubim did not notice; he continued waving and thinking. Then she could feel his words moving slowly, tentatively, within her mind. “If you’ve been assigned to me, I suppose you must be some kind of a Namer, too, even if a primitive one.”
    “A what?”
    “A Namer. For instance, the last time I was with a Teacher—or at school, as you call it—my assignment was to memorize the names of the stars.”
    “Which stars?”
    “All of them.”
    “You mean all the stars, in all the galaxies?”
    “Yes. If he calls for one of them, someone has to know which one he means. Anyhow, they like it; there
aren’t many who know them all by name, and if your name isn’t known, then it’s a very lonely feeling.”
    “Am I supposed to learn the names of all the stars, too?” It was an appalling thought.
    “Good