The bad boys are a bad omen
In The Moon By Night, Vicky Austin and her
family stay in a series of camping grounds as they travel across the USA.
There are some unpleasant incidents during
these stopovers. The first one happens just before Zachary Grey comes into
Vicky’s life, and it could be interpreted as a bad omen.
Vicky feels edgy and rather scared when they
arrive at one campsite, and these feelings are soon justified. As Vicky and her
family are eating a meal, a car drives by very fast. It passes them again, and one
of the occupants throws a glass bottle out of the window; it hits the side of
the Austins' station wagon, shattering with a sound like a bomb going off. The
car comes back again, and a gang of young ‘hoods’ gets out. One of them is
wearing black trousers and a black leather jacket, a cheap copy of what Zachary
Grey often wears.
Vicky’s father gets rid of them, but not long
afterwards the Austins hear a vehicle approaching and are afraid that the gang
of thugs is returning. This time, it is Zachary Grey and his parents. This is
Zachary’s first appearance in Vicky’s life.
The black bear is a bad sign
I described Vicky’s symbolic encounter with a
skunk and its connection with a letter from Zachary in the first article; this
time around I noticed an incident involving a black bear.
Soon after meeting Zachary for the first
time, Vicky walks around the campsite with him and hears his cynical and
pessimistic philosophy of life. Later that evening, while walking back from the
wash-room, she sees something dark behind her. At first she thinks it is one of
the gang, but then realises that it is an animal, probably a bear. Her family
don’t believe that she saw a bear.
Twice during the night they are wakened by a
loud crash: something keeps knocking their ice-box over. In the morning they
see large paw marks everywhere. The ranger tells them that it was a black bear
and it was looking for food.
The strawberry jam is a symbol
Trouble happens even when Zachary is not
around. At another campsite, when their mother says that the meal is ready Vicky’s
younger sister rushes up and accidentally knocks the food box over. A full,
king-size glass jar of strawberry jam is smashed and the jam gets everywhere
and ruins many things.
Possible portents, signs and omens
When unpleasant incidents happen, I look for
possible causes, clues or connections. Being in contact with an energy vampire
or someone who is surrounded by bad energy is always a possibility.
I see the first incident as a warning of what
is to come and the second as a sign of what Vicky has become involved with.
Zachary is going to give the Austin family some horrible shocks in his desperate
search for something to live off and for.
As for the strawberry jam, people sometimes have
accidents after being in the company of an energy vampire. Also, people like
Zachary can remotely influence people and events once a connection has been
created; he was always on Vicky’s mind.
Perhaps this was just an accident; perhaps it
was symbolic of bloodshed or a broken heart. Two incidents involving smashed
glass seem symbolic of the effect that Zachary will later have on Vicky.
There is much irony here in that Vicky is very
interested in omens. She says this about a stage in their journey when Zachary
is not around:
“One funny thing was that every day we would
see at least one white horse, starting with the one Rob won Animal Rummy with
the first day. It began to be a good luck sign with us, to see a white horse,
though I think I took it more seriously than the others, dope that I am. I wish
I didn't worry so much about omens and things. ..”
-From The Moon By Night
She also mentions good omens when the sun
comes out just as they arrive at a campsite and when the rain stops.
This makes it strange that Vicky didn’t take
the three incidents as bad omens. This blindness to warning signals is common
in victims of energy vampires.
The two faces of Zachary Grey
There is something strange about Zachary
Grey. The expression ‘two sides of the same coin’ describes him very well.
Much of the time he presents a very superior
image: rich, glamorous, sophisticated, dominant, arrogant, controlling and unassailable. However, sometimes this goes into reverse: he seems lost and
frightened, needy and apologetic.
He is completely unpredictable; he goes in
for lightning switches from one extreme to the other.
In A Ring of Endless Light, he tells Vicky
that she is all that stands between him and chaos. She is his reason to live.
This desperation and investing of everything
in one outcome is something I have read about in other people of interest.
There is a big anomaly here: if they are so
superior, if their power, money, philosophy of life, abilities, learning and
esoteric knowledge etc. lift them far above the herd, at least in their
opinion, why do they feel and behave like this? Why are they overwhelmed with
the idea that they are and have nothing without this one thing?
In A House like a lotus Zachary Grey says,
“If you have enough power and enough money, nothing else matters.”
He has plenty of money; if he becomes a
lawyer as planned it will put him on the way to getting much more, and probably
power too. So what’s his problem?
This is a key point. It is as if they sense
that they have gained the whole world but lost their souls; they are damned,
doomed and disconnected; they are prisoners and hostages; they are desperate
for someone or something to save them.
Light and dark power networks
Polly O’Keefe, who replaces Vicky Austin as
Zachary Grey’s target, has a strange and symbolic dream:
“Whether it was strain from the swim, or from
something in the warm drink, she moved immediately into dreaming. In her sleep
she was the center of a bright web of lines, lines joining the stars and yet
reaching to the earth, from her grandparents’ home to the star-watching rock to
the low hills to the snow-capped mountains, lines of light touching Bishop
Colubra and Karralys, Tav and Cub, Anaral and Klep, and all the lines touched
her and warmed her. Lines of power…Benign power.
Then the dream shifted, became nightmare. The
lines were those of a spiderweb, and in the center Zachary was trapped like a
fly. He was struggling convulsively and ineffectually, and the spider threw
more threads to tie him down. Zachary’s screams as the spider approached cut
across her dream. She woke up with a jerk.”
-From An Acceptable Time
This dream seems a little contrived, but it
is a good way of illustrating the point that Madeleine L’Engle wanted to make.
She was very interested in the battle between the forces of darkness and the
forces of light.
Angels and demons
There is a scene in A Ring of Endless Light
in which Vicky’s grandfather’s mind wanders into the past. He thinks about his
studies and talks about fallen angels. He says that they take many forms,
including demonic possession. He then asks her whether she has heard from ‘dark
Zachary’!
Dark angels are mentioned in An Acceptable
Time as being separators and responsible for much damage.
Stella Gibbons said that fallen angels are more
appealing to the eye than risen ones.
Connections
I was reminded of Zachary Grey recently while
reading about the occultist Esmé Scarron in Stella Gibbons’s The Shadow of a
Sorcerer - and vice versa.
I will cover some of the similarities in Part
II of the article about Scarron.
