I liked Stranger things season one, though looking back ten years later you could see the rot that would take root.
I felt that each season was worse than the last and I was annoyed when they adopted Vecna, who was just an iconic D&D villain.
But I am really honestly angry that they co-opted A Wrinkle in Time too.
Looking back, Madeleine L'Engle really was a huge influence on me. Forever Fallen has a nod to A Wrinkle in Time (“And yet often it is the weak things of the world that confound the mighty") and one of my stories from the Lovecraftzinene of my stories from the Lovecraftzine features The Echthros Club. Most specifically, her views on Christianity inform how I'm writing one character in my current project. ("All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.)
Recent events had caused me to think about A Wind in the Door, the direct sequel to Wrinkle, and I'll get to them at the end of this post, because the context that surrounds them has spoilers for the climax. In fact, this whole post has a bunch of spoilers, so if you haven't read A Wind in the Door, you've been warned.
I'll sometimes say that the first Star Wars movie is the only one that doesn't take place in the Star Wars universe. It has that early installment weirdness and the conventions hadn't yet become codified. The same is kind of true for A Wrinkle in Time. It's one of the greatest children's books ever written, but it doesn't quite fit in with the other four in the series.
A Wind in the Door asks the question, "What if an angel was a drive of dragons and also Frasier Crane?"
 |
| "I'm listening." |
Okay, maybe that's a little harsh on Proginoskes. He's slightly snobby at first, but is mostly a supporting albeit alien presence. I was probably thinking of Sporos, who is super-douchey for a lot of the book.
At one point he's like, “All I want to do,” he was murmuring to himself, “is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars . . .” and I'm like, "Bro, I know that feeling."
But I'm getting ahead of things. This book takes place shortly after the first. Charles Wallace is now enrolled in kindergarten and having significant trouble adjusting because, well...
Meg is off at high school this year and can't help him, though she's very concerned about his welfare, even to the point of slipping off her bus and sneaking into the elementary school to confront the principal Mister Jenkins, with whom she had had her own run-ins.
She gets home from school, and Charles Wallace tells her about dragons in the twins' vegetable garden. She delays responding by making herself a liverwurst and cream cheese sandwich. The Murrays and their liverwurst sandwiches! Her mom ate one in the first book. I don't know if they were more common 50 years ago, or if this was a favorite of L'Engle who brought it into her own writing or what. All I know is that I won't be buying the Wrinkle in Time cookbook.
So they go out to look and find some weird feathers and Charles Wallace mentions that there may be something wrong with his mitochondria (The powerhouse of the cell) and that's making him sick. I think the farandola/mitochondria parts are the weakest parts of the book, tbh. L'Engle wrote that she knew that Proginoskes and the Three Mister Jenkins would be part of the story, but had trouble developing it beyond that until a physician friend (the inspiration for Doctor Louise, I'm certain) gave her some articles about mitochondria.
On one hand, I like it when authors do this. It's one of the things I really enjoy about Roger Zelazny's writing. "Hey, I'm really excited about learning this thing and I want to share it with you through this story!" (And, in the purest sense, is what my writing here is all about, come to think of it.) On the other, since it was a later addition to the story, the mitochondria stuff feels less fully developed than those previously mentioned elements.
Anyway, the siblings go out again and meet Proginoskes and his Teacher Blajeny. Proginoskes is a cherubim, all eyes and wings.
Charles Wallace’s drive of dragons was a single creature, although Meg was not at all surprised that Charles Wallace had confused this fierce, wild being with dragons. She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing, looking at her, looking at Charles Wallace and Calvin and the strange tall man. And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it could certainly start a grass fire if it weren’t careful. Meg did not wonder that Charles Wallace had not approached it.
Blajeny informs them that they will have to pass three trials. The first is to identify the Echthroi Mister Jenkins. You see, two of them have taken his form, and Meg has to identify the real one.
The Echthroi are the source of all that is evil in the universe. Proginoskes says humans would consider them fallen angels. He is a Namer, recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of entities by recognizing the beauty of their truest, most perfect self, and the Echthroi are Un-Namers, who would make everything into nothing, "Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate."
I like this scene a lot. Meg watches and listens. One Mister Jenkins in compassionate, promising Charles Wallace the care and protection he needs to thrive. Another is strong and decisive. The third is scared and confused and wants to know when this whole thing is going to be over. That, of course is the real one.
Meg remembers a story from Calvin, which allows her to love Mr. Jenkins enough to Name him.
“When I started seventh grade and went over to Regional, my mother ought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost her a dollar which was more than she could spare, and they were women’s Oxford’s, the kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could am my feet in, and went to school. The kids knew me to well to make remarks in my presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he’d noticed I’d outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair that he thought would fit me. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he hadn’t gone out and bought them for me…I’ll never forget that he gave me the first decent pair of shoes ever had."
I just love that story of decency. He's a good character. After Meg Names him, he joins them on their journey, even though it would have been easier to return to his "safe life as a failure."
As an aside, I think I'd be annoyed at Meg if I had to deal with her every day. Look, I love that character, but she must be exhausting. She's impatient and hot-headed, in need of constant reassurance and her breath probably smells like liverwurst, but she's wonderful because of it and no less deserving of love. And the same is true of Mr. Jenkins. He's an adult, he's had to compromise, and he's compromised when he should have stood firm. He feels that he's too old for the world he finds himself in, but he perseveres.
They shrink down to visit one of Charles Wallace's mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) and the second test is to convince Sporos, a farandola, to put aside childish things and mature.
Sporos is a fucking dickhead. He almost throws in with the Echthroi, but they convince him to Deepen at the last possible moment. Also, the Echthroi are still using Mr Jenkins' form to walk around and be evil, sometimes in a giant-size and it must be a sobering experience for him.
He rescues Meg, but leaves himself vulnerable to possession by the Echthroi. The third task is to save him, which is achieved when all of those assembled use their own light to fill in the emptiness of the Echthroi.
Cold.
Cold beyond snow and ice and falling mercury.
Cold beyond the absolute zero of outer space.
Cold pulverizing her into nothingness.
Cold and pain.
She struggled.
You are not to X me, Echthroi. I fill you.
Cold.
Darkness.
Emptiness.
Nothing.
Naught.
Nought.
Echth
XThen
Prognoskes.
A great cry. A tempest of wind. A lightning flash of fire across the cold, breaking, burning the cold and pain.
Prognoskes Xing.
Wings. All the wings. Stretched to their fullest span.
Eyes. All the eyes opening and closing, opening, dimming—
Oh, no—
Going out—
No—
Flame. Smoke. Feathers flying. Prognoskes flinging his great cherubic self into the void of the Echthroi who were Xing Mr. Jenkins and Calvin and Meg—
and Charles Wallace.
Wings and flame and wind, a great howling of all the hurricanes in the world meeting and battling—
And that brings me to my point way at the beginning of this post. I was thinking about the series with the dissolution of the corporation for public broadcasting.
Proginoskes chooses to erase himself from existence rather than allow the Echthroi to do it to him. And CPB said they did pretty much the same thing, dissolving the organization entirely rather than allow it to be suborned
"What, nephew", said the king,
"is the wind in that door?"
