A Wrinkle in Time Quintet by Madeleine L'Engle

frantic by now. She and the twins and Fort will have been looking and looking for us, and of course we aren’t there to be found!”
    “Now, don’t worry, my pet,” Mrs Whatsit said cheerfully. “We took care of that before we left. Your mother has had enough to worry her with you and Charlesto cope with, and not knowing about your father, without our adding to her anxieties. We took a time wrinkle as well as a space wrinkle. It’s very easy to do if you just know how.”
    “What do you mean?” Meg asked plaintively. “Please, Mrs Whatsit, it’s all so confusing.”
    “Just relax and don’t worry over things that needn’t trouble you,” Mrs Whatsit said. “We made a nice, tidy little time tesser,and unless something goes terribly wrong we’ll have you back about five minutes before you left, so there’ll be time to spare and nobody’ll ever need to know you were gone at all, though of course you’ll be telling your mother,dear lamb that she is. And if something goes terribly wrong it won’t matter whether we ever get back at all.”
    “Ddon’tt ffrrightenn themm,” Mrs Which’s voice came. “Aareyyou llosingg ffaith?”
    “Oh, no. No, I’m not.”
    But Meg thought her voice sounded a little faint.
    “I hope
this
is a nice planet,” Calvin said. “We can’t
see
much of it. Does it ever clear up?”
    Meg looked around her, realizing that she had been so breathless from the journey and the stop on the two-dimensional planet that she had not noticed her surroundings. And perhaps this was not very surprising,for the main thing about the surroundings was exactly that they
were
unnoticeable. They seemed to be standing on some kind of nondescript, flat surface. The air around them was gray. It was not exactly fog, but she could see nothing through it. Visibility was limited to the nicely definite bodies of Charles Wallace and Calvin, the rather unbelievable bodies of Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who, and a faintoccasional glimmer that was Mrs Which.
    “Come, children,” Mrs Whatsit said. “We don’t have far to go, and we might as well walk. It will do you good to stretch your legs a little.”
    As they moved through the grayness Meg caught an occasional glimpse of slaglike rocks, but there were no traces of trees or bushes, nothing but flat ground under their feet, no sign of any vegetation at all.
    Finally,ahead of them there loomed what seemed to be a hill of stone. As they approached it Meg could see thatthere was an entrance that led into a deep, dark cavern. “Are we going in there?” she asked nervously.
    “Don’t be afraid,” Mrs Whatsit said. “It’s easier for the Happy Medium to work within. Oh, you’ll like her, children. She’s very jolly. If ever I saw her looking unhappy I would be very depressedmyself. As long as she can laugh I’m sure everything is going to come out right in the end.”
    “Mmrs. Whattsitt,” came Mrs Which’s voice severely, “jusstt beccause yyou arre verry youngg iss nno exxcuse forr tallkingg tooo muchh.”
    Mrs Whatsit looked hurt, but she subsided.
    “Just how old
are
you?” Calvin asked her.
    “Just a moment,” Mrs Whatsit murmured, and appeared to calculate rapidly uponher fingers. She nodded triumphantly. “Exactly 2,379,152,497 years, 8 months, and 3 days. That is according to
your
calendar, of course, which even you know isn’t very accurate.” She leaned closer to Meg and Calvin and whispered, “It was really a
very
great honor for me to be chosen for this mission. It’s just because of my verbalizing and materializing so well, you know. But of course we can’ttake any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts. And I make far too many mistakes. That’s why Mrs Who and I enjoyed seeing Mrs Which make a mistake when she tried to land you on a two-dimensional planet. It was
that
we were laughing at, not at you. She was laughing at herself, you see. She’s really terribly nice to us younger ones.”
    Meg was listening with