#zylle llawcae

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A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Chapter 6 The lightning with its rapid wrath

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index for the Time Quintet, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which I don't know whether to keep the same character tags on these posts, or unique ones.

Charles thanks Meg for the info, and tells Gaudior about it, and how Mrs. O'Keefe must be descended from the author. Gaudior thinks that word makes generations sound like falling.(1) Charles asks to go to 1865.

They make to travel, but there's an Echthroi attack on the wind again, but Gaudior manages to snatch Charles back after he falls off. Charles is worried they might be in the wrong time, but Gaudior says it's more important to go where they're sent on their charged mission than it is to try to control where they go just to look at the things they want to look at. He points to the fact that Charles is still himself and not Within anyone here as proof that his meddling drew the Echthroi and may have compromised the mission. Still, when Charles asks what he should do, Gaudior asks the wind, and guides Charles to where he's supposed to be.

And where Charles ends up is Within another young man, Brandon Llawcae. He's meeting with a young woman, Zylle, who is heavily pregnant. Charles resists integrating, focused too much on why they're in pilgrim times, as he can tell from their language pattern, and what they could possibly learn here, but Gaudior tells him to let go.

Zylle wants Brandon to gather some herbs that her husband fears will have her labeled a witch if found out. Zylle, however, knows that Brandon can keep a secret, since he has a gift of Seeing that the town also can't know about. Zylle knows because her brother Maddok(2) was Brandon's best friend until the settlement got larger, he felt less welcome, and he had more work to do anyway. Brandon and Maddok both miss each other, but will always be friends.

At any rate, Zylle suggests Brandon can tell her what he Sees in reflective surfaces, even as he used to tell Maddok. Brandon says Ritchie, his brother and Zylle's husband, is afraid of the images, even though back in Wales it might be seen as a gift, too.

The last vision Brandon saw was of here (the star watching rock), and a young man (Madoc) who looked a lot like Maddok, but not, somehow. Zylle recognizes her ancestor from description. They finish gathering the herbs, and she lays them out on the rock, and sings under the moonlight to imbue them to give her an easy birthing. The song tells of "blue from a distant eye" coming to save them, and is reminiscent of the song Madoc and Reschal sang.

When they're done, Zylle doesn't take the flowers, saying she wouldn't want the midwife, Goody Adams, to see them when she gives birth tomorrow. On the walk back, she and Brandon talk about how the natives are scorned in the community, and Zylle's people's legend about her ancestor from across the sea. She wonders if her son will be allowed to know her side of his heritage.(3)

They pass by a brook, and at first Brandon sees Zylle with a baby in her arms, with blue eyes with gold behind them. Then, the vision changes: a man, prideful and dark and cruel. Brandon startles out of the vision, and Zylle asks what he saw, so he tells her. She doesn't know what to make of it, but it doesn't sound good. Brandon says before his people got scared of his pictures, they were all good, and now this. Zylle asks to tell her father about this one, he's good at interpreting such things, and Brandon consents.

They get back to the family cabin at the settlement, and go to bed. When Brandon wakes, racist Goody Adams is already there, ordering Goody Llawcae (Brandon's mother) about to prepare for the birth. Goody Llawcae tells Brandon to tend his chores instead of arguing with Goody Adams. He does so, but when he's done, his mother just sends him and Ritchie to help their father instead of helping with the birth (and arguing with Goody Adams). Brandon is mad about it, but Ritchie says, despite her manner, there's been so much less death in childbirth since Goody Adams came.

Eventually they split off to finish their chores, and when Brandon returns again, he sees another vision of a mother and child, like Zylle but somehow not, in a hot country with different clothes than he's used to.(4) He hears a real cry from inside the cabin, which startles him out of the vision, and Goody Llawcae tells him to get his father, to see the child.

After Goody Adams leaves, the whole family gathers around Zylle in the bed she shares with Ritchie. She says Bran's eyes are blue, and should stay that way, if Brandon doesn't mind them using his name. He agrees, honoured. Richard prays, and says Zylle blesses their family by being in it.

As Brandon sets about his evening chores, Maddok comes to see them, and ask if it would be all right for his family to come see the baby. Brandon assures him it is, no matter what anyone else in town says. Maddok also carries a warning, that the town is brewing with talk of witchcraft, especially after Zylle shed no tears while giving birth. He simply asks Brandon to take care of Zylle and protect her and the child.

Zylle's family comes to see her, and after they leave, Brandon is restless, so he's awake to hear his parents telling Ritchie that one of the women passed along a warning, the same one we heard from Maddok. The family is already marked as different, and Zillo told them Brandon had another vision.

At this, Brandon storms out into the main space, and accuses Zylle (still sleeping) of telling them. Richard says no, Brandon said Zylle could tell Zillo, and it was Zillo who told them. Brandon is ashamed of his visions, because his parents wish he didn't have them. Richard feels bad about his son not feeling he could trust his own parents, but says Brandon can't talk about his visions with anyone outside the family right now, with the witchcraft accusations brewing. Then, Richard tells Brandon to go back to bed.

The next evening, Davey Higgins comes by to say that Pastor Mortmain told him he's no longer allowed to be Brandon's friend, because Zylle is bad luck for the village. Davey knows it's nonsense, and asks what Brandon's pictures say. Brandon, feeling guilty, tells him he's too old for such childish nonsense, and walks away.

Maddok comes around to tell Brandon Maddok has been assigned to watch over him. Brandon is afraid, and Maddok wishes it would rain. His weather sense only feels thunder, no rain.

The Llawcae evening prayers are as much about asking for rain as for their faith.

The other children in the settlement won't talk to Brandon anymore, either.

The next evening, Pastor Mortmain comes with his son Duthbert and Goodman Higgins. They ask to see Zylle, to determine if she is Christian or not, to their satisfaction. Zylle had retired, but gets up again and comes to talk to them. She says she accepted Ritchie's beliefs when she married him, but contrary to Pastor Mortmain's interjection, Christianity is not incompatible with her people's beliefs because "Jesus of Nazareth sings the true song."(5)

Pastor Mortmain is horrified at the implication that Jesus sings, but Zylle asks if they don't sing hymns at church. He says that's different, and she doesn't understand. Zylle says that the scripture says God loves everyone, so he must love her people the same as the white people.

Higgins tells her not to blaspheme, but Mortmain cuts to the chase and asks her why she's stopping the rain. She says "our"(6) crops suffer just the same as anyone else's. Duthbert asks her about the cat, but she says her cat doesn't help her fly any more than Pastor Mortmain's, though she says only the most holy of people are granted the ability to fly which undermines her case to the men.

Eventually, Pastor Mortmain says he believes her to be a witch, and that she must die for it, but they will meet in church to decide together. Richard Llawcae asks Goodman Higgins if he really thinks the PotW are evil, but Pastor Mortmain says he's been informed of the stories and finds it uncompelling to suggest they were harmless.

Soon thereafter, a baby dies in the settlement. It's a normal death, as much as any child death can be considered normal, but it's all the pastor needs to convict Zylle. He summons an expert witchfinder, and the town seems to revel in the process. It makes Brandon sick. Even Davey taunts that he could tell Pastor Mortmain that Brandon is a witch, too, if he wanted to, though he backs down when Brandon stares at him after he says it.

Richard and Ritchie refuse to mount a gallows to hang Zylle, even though it means they'll likely be accused too. Richard says another carpenter(6) would not have done it in his place, and he'll follow that one. So, without the expert, the rest of the village assemble a crude one.

Maddok comes again, to ask Brandon to go visit Zillo, who asks Brandon to look for visions about what's to come. Brandon hesitates, given his father's attitudes, but proceeds. He sees the village and the lake as it used to be, and he sees it start to rain. Zillo teaches him "some words"(7) that can be used to save Zylle.

The next day, the men bring Zylle up to be hanged, and when Maddok whispers to him, Brandon recites the rune. At the lightning line, lightning strikes the church, setting it ablaze instantly, and the natives emerge from the forest en masse. Ritchie manages to convince them that, because of Brandon's phrasing, clearly the church was hit as an act of God, because Pastor Mortmain tried to kill an innocent woman. The pastor tells them to stop the natives, and Ritchie shouts, asking why they should show more compassion than Mortmain, but Zylle asks him to remember his own compassion.

Ritchie frees Zylle and they return to Goody Llawcae, who gives Zylle back her baby. Brandon watches his family turn their backs on the church and return to their cabin. As the villagers try weakly to put out the flames, it starts to rain, saving them the trouble. The PotW stand watch as all the people of the settlement returnn to their cabins, and only then leave.

The horror was over, but nothing would ever be the same again.(8)

Brandon and Maddok return to the Llawcae cabin.(9) Ritchie is still angry, but his father hopes it doesn't turn to bitterness, as anger can be spent in time. Ritchie asks where Brandon learned those words, and Brandon admits, it was from Zillo. Zillo, for his part, just says Brandon's a good boy. Richard admits the ways of God are mysterious, but he doesn't need to understand to accept.

As Brandon tries to sleep, he hears Ritchie say he can't live in the settlement anymore, and he and Zylle and the baby will go live back in Wales. Brandon's world is bleak after they leave. One day some time after, Maddok approaches Brandon and says they should be brothers, Zillo is willing to perform the ceremony, and it would unite their peoples. Brandon likes that plan.

=====

(1) I'm sure this is just a very normal thing where, expressions get interpreted differently by people from outside your own culture, you know? But it also feels like L'Engle trying a little too hard to put some clever wordplay in unless it's setting something up specifically to do with a fall of some sort. Do you think it might be setting something up? (2) Not another one! Well, one can suppose that this one's descended from the other, given they're in the same place and later in the timeline. (3) I have some real complicated feelings about the implications of, y'know, all this and all that happens in this whole book about it. It's hard to go into detail about, but, I have Indigenous ancestry, and, literally the forced integration of my ancestors and my people was so brutally effective, families were literally torn apart between the people who wanted to fight for recognition, and the people who believed it was shameful to the family to even suggest they were native, a fight that only finally took place in my parents' and my generations. It's a whole thing and I'd forgotten how much parallel there was in this book. And seeing L'Engle write it but from such a white perspective… I'm probably not having as much grace for the story as I could give it but it also hurts to see her try so hard but still stab a painful spot. Intent only goes so far sometimes. (4) Ancestry playing such a part in the story, who and where do you think this is? (5) Aside from me getting itchy every time L'Engle puts words in the mouth of this tribe she isn't even making clear if she made up or not, framing the truth of the universe as a song and making it known that Jesus was definitely part of it… I'm sure L'Engle had the best and most Christ-like of intentions, but it's so pushy in a way I got real uncomfortable with over the years. (6) Jesus, both literally and as an expression of my frustration. I have such big complicated feelings about this whole chapter, the way it treats the witch hunt era, the way it keeps invoking Jesus, the whole Indigenous thing… This just makes me real tired. (7) The rune, clearly. (8) Isn't that ever the way. (9) And by the way, did you catch that Llawcae is nonsense Welsh and just a letter jumble of Wallace, instead of Charles this time?

[joemerl]

“A Swiftly Tilting Planet” is Awful and I Hate It

I don’t know if anybody cares about my opinions, but I built up a lot of bile reading this book and I have to get rid of it somehow.

Background

For those who don’t know, this is the third book in Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quintet, aka “A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels that you’ve never heard of before.” The series involves a family that goes on Science Fantasy-type adventures with beings sent from a vaguely-defined, vaguely Christian bureaucracy of magical aliens. I’ll discuss the previous books a bit, but the series is pretty episodic so we don’t really need to recap them. 

In this story, the world is about to end because a South American dictator has a nuke. Our protagonist, the psychic teenager Charles Wallace, must work with a time-traveling winged unicorn from space to prevent this catastrophe by entering the minds of people from the past. It is much less interesting than it sounds.

Spoilers to follow.

These One-Dimensional Characters Keep Giving Birth to Themselves Like a Flock of Infuriatingly Dull Phoenixes 

The main plot has Charles Wallace travel to ca. 1170, ca. 1693 (Salem Witch Trials), ca. 1865 and ca. 1930s (or whenever Mrs. O’Keefe would have been a kid), plus the then-present day of 1978. Along the way, he chronicles the histories of several families, which include, by my count, about 30 characters who have only half a dozen different names and two personalities between them. 

The Maddox-Llawcaes: Technically two families, but they keep intermarrying each other to the point where I’m seriously questioning how inbred their modern descendants must be. This family was founded by a bunch of cliché Native Americans (stoic, wise, and otherwise devoid of personality) who married some woke Welshmen, repeatedly over multiple generations. They’re good. 

Gwydyr and his descendants: Distant relatives of the above, but descended from their patriarch’s ~evil~ brother. They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women.

The Mortmains: They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women.

The O’Keefes: They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women. Also, they seem to hate disabled people. 

This is arguably a sex-linked trait; the one female character from an “evil” family seems relatively alright, but when she marries a Maddox-Llawcae she still passes evil on to their descendants. This turns out to be the driving crux of this story: Charles Wallace learns that the dictator is descended from that couple and was corrupted by his ancestress’ ~evil~ genes. To avert the apocalypse, Charles Wallace has to change history so that the Maddox-Llawcae man marries a Maddox-Llawcae woman instead. 

It’s pretty much impossible to interpret this as being about upbringing; it’s about blood. "Gwydyr’s line is tainted,” Charles Wallace says near the end. “There is nothing left but pride and greed for power and revenge.” At another point, a Maddox-Llawcae immediately writes off his unborn half-brother as evil because he has a Mortmain father. And he’s right---Unnamed Mortmain Sibling grows up to be a criminal and dies in jail. Hopefully without managing to pass on his dirty, inferior genes first, amirite? 

It doesn’t help that, even separated by centuries, relatives are often described as looking alike and/or having variations of the same names. Of those 30ish characters in these families we have three Mad(d)o(c)(k)/Madogs, two Gwydyrs, five Rich/Ritchie/Richards, three Bran(don)s, two Matt(hew)s, two Duthbert Mortmains (yeah, because that’s a name you want to keep in circulation for 300 years), and most egregiously of all, four of the main female characters are Zyll, Zylle, Zillah and Zillie. (Technically there are three Zillahs, if you count middle names.)

Obviously, genetic determinism is a questionable moral. It’s also really annoying, because each time period has the same basic characters just going through a variant of the same plot. There is hardly any character development across 800 years of history, and no permanent change from good to bad or vice versa.

In a way, this even ruins the previous books---Calvin O’Keefe became a good guy despite his dysfunctional family, but now I get the feeling that this isn’t supposed to be a testament to his strength as a person, it was just his mom’s Good Maddox Genes breaking through the Evil O’Keefe Heritage. But hey, the focus on Mom O’Keefe was nice in this book, since she’s practically the only one who has an actual character arc. 

Though, as you’ll see below, she was not actually needed for this story at all.

This Universe Has No God, Just a Tyrannical Plot Outline

Charles Wallace is the protagonist of this story, but probably gets mentioned on fewer than half of its pages. Mostly, he’s just psychically possessing people, during which time he does not control them so much as see their lives and...vaguely influence them, sometimes. What I’m saying is, he doesn’t really do much in this story. His grand moment, in the penultimate chapter, is to vaguely influence Matthew Maddox #1 to vaguely influence Rich Llawcae #3 to not to get stabbed by Gwydyr #2. This saves the world, but seems somewhat anticlimactic after 287 pages of build-up.

What’s worse: he actually tried to make this story shorter, and save me so much suffering. Unfortunately, “God” wouldn’t let him. At least, for a certain sense of the word. 

The Time Quintet is sort of like Chronicles of Narnia in that it’s a Christian story, but you have to dig a little beneath the surface to realize that. L’Engle’s beliefs were also more liberal than Lewis’, and in this book they seem almost pantheistic: Charles Wallace’s help seems to come less from a personal deity and more from a sort of implied sentience of the universe itself. This usually comes in the form of “the wind,” which blows him and the unicorn to different time periods at its own whim. 

Charles Wallace’s arc is that he is apparently a control freak, and needs to trust God/the universe to lead him, or something. He figures out early on that the key to everything is in 1865, but the unicorn says that no, we have to let the wind blow us where it wants. Twice he tries to fast-track things, and each time he and the unicorn almost die as a result; thus he learns that no, he should not be relying on his own intelligence or logic, he should just ~go with the flow~ and assume that things will work out. 

So basically, Charles Wallace has been tasked by Vague God to prevent the apocalypse, but he’s not allowed to do anything to actually try to prevent it---he’s basically just pushed into random corners and told to stay quiet, with the hope that his presence will change history through osmosis. I find myself comparing this to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. While I have some criticisms of this subplot, in that book Harry is presented with a choice: do what he thinks will save the world (looking into the Deathly Hallows), or what the Omniscient God Stand-In says will work (finding Voldemort’s Horcruxes). That works well enough, but here, Charles Wallace is given the choice between his own ideas and no actual instructions. He’s told to save the world, and then criticized for trying. 

There’s a part where the Echthroi (demons who want the nuclear apocalypse to happen) try to trick Charles Wallace by preying on his ego. This involves telling him he was selected to save the world because he’s intelligent and psychic and is a generally moral person, all of which is true. He rejects this, as he is supposed to, and at the end of the book notes that the mission did not succeed “because I was intelligent, or brave, or in control,” but because he let the wind guide him. Which just leads me to wonder why he was the one chosen to save humanity, when Vague God could have sent anyone else, or just cut out the middle-man and had a unicorn tell Bran Maddox #3 whom he was supposed to marry. 

But what really makes this intolerable? Charles Wallace was right. The key to everything is in 1865, he eventually gets blown there anyway, and it’s the only place where he concretely needed to do anything. So why the hell did we need 40 awful pages set during the Salem Witch Trials?! To teach us that the Salem Witch Trials were bad? Even the whole part in ca. 1930s was pointless---the only plot-relevant thing that we got there were hints about 1865′s importance, which Charles Wallace had already figured out but was scolded for suggesting. Other than that, these sections were just used to hammer in the idea that Maddox-Llawcaes are always good and the other families are always evil. 

So, my rewrite: Charles Wallace goes to 1170 and sees Madoc and Gwydyr. Then he either a.) figures out the importance of 1865 with his family’s help, as he does in the book, or b.) goes to the 1930s and figures things out from the clues there, while also learning the fairly-interesting-but-technically-irrelevant backstory about Mrs. O’Keefe. Either way, he decides to go to 1865, thus justifying his role as protagonist, and the fact that he is actively trying to save the world is not treated as a moral failing. 

Comparisons to the Previous Books, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love at Bombs

This is my third Madeline L’Engle book, and really, these problems were present in the first two, even if they were less pronounced. Both ended with the protagonist (Charles Wallace’s older sister Meg, who arguably is more important than him in this book, too) saving the day with the Power of Love---meaning that she didn’t so much do anything as feel a certain way. Here, Charles Wallace does even less, just watching other people fall in love while his own character arc is in opposition to the actual plot. 

L’Engle’s strength does not seem to be coherent stories or complex characterization so much as weird, cool ideas---for example, a time-traveling space unicorn. But compared to previous books, this one is pretty down-to-earth; after hitching a ride on said unicorn, Charles Wallace mostly just watches people live fairly typical lives. While A Wrinkle in Time’s��villain, a demonic alien brain, could theoretically wither at the approach of a sibling’s love, it’s harder to imagine a nuclear war being averted by nothing more than some shoehorned character development. 

For the record, I bought the fourth Time Quintet book at the same time as this one. I really, really hope that it’s better, but it will probably be a while before I get to it. 

Other Nitpicks

The whole clue leading to 1865 involves a book written by Matthew Maddox #1, who’s from that time. It’s about time-traveling unicorns and family feuds and the like, the basic idea being that he witnesses Charles Wallace and all the supernatural happenings and writes it down as a novel. Fine, okay, but people who talk about this novel keep emphasizing how revolutionary and amazing it was, which kind of feels like L’Engle just patting herself on the back for this awful, awful story.

At the end of the book, the time-traveling unicorn erases the memories of Charles Wallace and his sister Meg, for...some reason? I honestly don’t know why he did this; the pair knew about supernatural creatures even before this book, and they can still half-remember what happened anyway, so this seems pretty pointless. 

This line, from the 1865 arc: “When the sons of men fight against each other in hardness of heart, why should God not withdraw? Slavery is evil, God knows, but war is evil, too, evil, evil.” Not a bad point, but juxtaposed to the characters’ passivity I can’t help but snark: “Yeah, why can’t people just love at each other and magically fix everything, right?”

I’m Tough But Fair: Some Good Points

There are time-traveling winged unicorns from space. They eat moonlight, drink starlight, and hatch from eggs, as we see on a brief trip to their home planet. So yeah, L’Engle is pretty good at Science Fantasy weirdness.

Honestly, the other filler chapters were pretty good too, if only because they distract from the annoying main story. Even the purple prose about “the harmonies of the universe” are alright sometimes. 

Like I said, Mrs. O’Keefe could have been cut, but her arc, going from innocent little girl to crotchety old lady to redeemed old lady, was a good one. And her brother being named “Chuck,” like Charles Wallace, actually felt like it meant something instead of being yet another case of Generation Xerox. 

Along those lines, I like that the Murrays didn’t turn out to be some distant cousins of the Maddox-Llawcaes. That would have been annoying.

The 1865 arc was easily the best in the book. Even with the blood-based moral alignments, the characters still had actual arcs about overcoming disabilities, PTSD...like, expand this and cut out the stupid Salem Witch Trial arc, which was so, so bad. Also, was I just imagining it, or was Matthew #1 in love with Zillah #1? ‘Cause him arranging for her to marry Bran #3 is even more touching if he did. 

Conclusion

Um...the book sucked. 

I wrote this over three days, and it wound up being more than 2,200 words. Wow.

[iviarellereads]

A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Chapter 9 The rocks with their steepness

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index for the Time Quintet, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which events call for a mild CSA and pretty major domestic abuse warning on this story.

Meg is awakened by the telephone. She's panicked, but hears her father telling Mrs. O'Keefe that someone will pick her up presently. Sandy is aghast that she'd call this late, but Dennys points out she's never called them… ever. Sandy offers to go, so Mr. Murry doesn't have to leave the phone in case the president calls again. Mrs. Murry prepares a snack.

Meg is frustrated that she lost the gist of the kything, so startled by the phone ring.(1) She knows, however, that it's important she sees Mrs. O'Keefe about something. At least with some bread and tea, she can relax a bit.

Shortly, Mrs. O'Keefe arrives with Sandy, cobwebs in her hair and her face smudged. Meg cries out Beezie, and startles her violently. Mrs. O'Keefe asks how Meg knows that name, but Meg continues on that Chuck was her younger brother, and she loved him so much. Mrs. O'Keefe tells her to leave the past in the past. She's been digging in the attic, and finally found the letter, and that Mr. Murry should read it.

The letter is from a Bran Maddox in Vespugia, to a Matthew Maddox here. The twins are startled at the coincidence, having talked with Meg about Matthew. The date lines up, as well: 1865. Mr. Murry reads the letter.

In it, Bran is doing well with the Welsh group, and he met a native man with blue eyes who swore he was descended from, well, a story very like the one we've seen. He doesn't know how his ancestors got to South America, but his mother sang him songs about a Welsh prince. He goes by Gedder, and his sister is Zillie and reminds Bran of his love Zillah though she doesn't have the blue eyes. He asks if Matthew can convince Zillah to come be his wife, or to come and bring her with him.

Mr. Murry is at a loss as to how this can be relevant. Mrs. O'Keefe says he's supposed to be smart. Mrs. Murry says it's strange that they'd have a letter from Vespugia, like that. Meg brings up her maiden name, Maddox, so Bran and Matthew are her forebears. Yes, Mrs. O'Keefe says, Maddoxes and Llawcae's for a long way back in her family.

Dennys puts together that some of her ancestors must have joined that colony, then. Mrs. O'Keefe says that Branzillo being from there, she just knows it's connected: just look at the names, Bran and Zillie and Zillah, together they're almost Branzillo.(2)

Mr. Murry asks if there are other letters. She says there were, once: she and Chuck used to read them and make up more stories. But, she made herself forget when something happened to Chuck, and he couldn't play pretend anymore.

Speaking of Chuck, Mrs. O'Keefe asks where Charles is. Mr. Murry says he went for a walk, about an hour ago. Mrs. O'Keefe says it's rich that people accuse her of not taking care of her kids, when they'd let theirs do that, and him only twelve. Her Chuck needs special care. Dennys offers to go find Charles, but Mr. Murry suggests they have to trust him. Mrs. O'Keefe says she'll stay until she can see Chuck.(3)

Meg excuses herself to go back to bed. Charles is fifteen, but she said Chuck was twelve, when something happened. How old is Chuck in the kythe when Charles is Within him? She goes upstairs, asking them to call her when Charles gets in, and Ananda follows again. She wraps up tight in the covers, feeling cold.

—Those people in the letter must be important, she thought,—and the Bran who wrote the letter, and his sister Gwen. Certainly the name Zillie must have some connection with Madoc’s Zyll, and Ritchie Llawcae’s Zylle, who was nearly burned for witchcraft. —And then, the Matthew he wrote to must be the Matthew Maddox who wrote the books. There’s something in that second book that matters, and the Echthroi don’t want us to know about it. It’s all interconnected, and we still don’t know what the connections mean. —And what happened to Beezie, that she should end up as Mom O’Keefe?(4)

Back in the kythe, Beezie is wondering why her father had to die. Grandma says there's never an answer to that question.

In the aftermath, Mrs. Maddox goes over the accounting ledger, and says she didn't know it was this bad. Chuck crawls into every space he can find looking for hidden treasures, but finds only pennies, some china, and a strongbox. He brings it all downstairs, and breaks open the lock with everyone present. Inside is a sheaf of letters, a bound notebook, and a watercolour sketch of the star watching rock, labeled as by Zillah Llawcae in 1864, at Madrun.

Grandmother reads the first entry in the notebook. It's from a sixteen year old Zillah, yearning for Bran Maddox, who's suffering from what we might call PTSD. Throughout the notebook are more watercolour paintings, and more entries of yearning as Zillah turns seventeen. The letters are from Bran, the top one the one we've already seen.

The china and the old pennies, they sell to an antiques dealer. The notebook, he's not interested in. Mrs. Maddox wishes she could remember to whom her late husband sold his family copy of his ancestor's book.

In the meantime, they make a new cover for the notebook to protect its crumbling binding, and the children read the letters and the notebook to each other and their grandmother. Chuck borrows books from the library about Vespugia to add context. One of the paintings is of Zillah's guess at what Gedder looks like, the man "descended from Madoc's brother."

Beezie takes up babysitting jobs, and grandmother is doing ironing and sewing, leaving less and less time for tales. But, one night, when Chuck gets home to the apartment above the store, his mother is still down in the store, talking to Duthbert Mortmain. Grandmother says he wants to marry her and take over the store for them. The store's in trouble, they're not making enough money, and it may be the only choice she has. And, grandmother wants to be sure that the next generations are taken care of when she dies.

At this, Chuck smells dandelion spore again,(5) and Beezie says grandmother will never die. But, grandmother says it's soon time for her to "go home", to see her Patrick again. Beezie's protest turns to Duthbert himself, surely her mother couldn't love him, and Beezie hates him. Grandmother says hate hurts the hater more than the hated, at which Beezie asks about Branwen, didn't she hate? No, she loved and was betrayed, but she never hated. Beezie asks if she ever loved again, but grandmother has forgotten.

Beezie wonders if they could use the rune against Duthbert, but grandmother cautions that the rune isn't to be used lightly, and this might not be serious enough for it. She says that Beezie will use the rune, but when the time is right. Beezie asks how she'll know the time is right, but grandmother simply says it's not now, because now's the time for bed. On the way, Beezie and Chuck agree they'll never call Mortmain "pa".

Mortmain, being an adult, is fine with them calling him "Mr. Mortmain." He dotes on their mother, though she still doesn't smile. Chuck notes that she doesn't smell of fear, but she also doesn't smell of the early morning sky, more of a dusky evening one.

There's never a sign of Mortmain's temper in the store, but the next spring, he starts to hit his wife, and the children. Beezie has to wear sweaters all year to hide the bruises from his pinching her arms. One of the other kids, Paddy O'Keefe,(6) asks if Mortmain's been after her. Chuck tells him to buzz off, but Paddy says, if Beezie ever needs help, he'll take care of it.

That night, Mortmain really loses his temper. He pinches Beezie's bottom, at which even her mother protests. Grandmother, though, is what tips him over, telling him to take care. He raises a hand to hit her, but Chuck gets in the way and takes the blow, and falls all the way down the stairs.

Chuck lay in a distorted position at the foot of the stairs, looking up at her with eyes that did not see. “Gedder pushed me. He pushed me. Don’t let him marry Gwen. Zillah, don’t let Gedder, don’t let …”

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(1) It's bad enough when it's a dream you want to remember. So much worse when the fate of the world depends on you, I'm sure. (2) It feels a little condescending how big of a deal this is made out to be in the narration. I'm just saying. I didn't need to remember the book to see it and lay it out in the notes. (3) Poor thing has the past and present all mixed up. And she's still so young for that. (4) Well, we get that one here, at least. (5) I think we're supposed to make the leap that dandelion spore -> dandelion clocks -> the passing of time (derogatory). But, I also don't think that's made at all clear by the narrative, and unless you're really looking for it, it's easy to feel it comes out of nowhere. (6) Nice setup. Also, giving her a Paddy to her grandmother's Pat, since the one girl was named for the other.