Before Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin leave, Happy Medium has one more thing to show them. The children peer inside the crystal ball once more and see the Dark Thing. They want to turn away but Happy Medium insists that they look. As they watch, a bright light shines through the Dark Thing and slowly begins to disintegrate it. The light spreads and a patch of the Dark Thing completely disappears. Happy Medium is ecstatic. She tells them the light can win. But Mrs. Whatsit tempers the mood when she tells them that even though the star won, it lost its life in the battle. Then Mrs. Which says it is time to leave. The group needs to travel farther, this time to Camazotz; the children have no idea where that is.

Suddenly Meg feels herself being swept up into the nothingness. This time, she feels something different. She is surrounded by a clammy coldness unlike the other times she had been dematerialized. Meg wonders if this coldness is part of the Dark Thing, but she has no way of determining this as a fact. When the children are rematerialized, Charles Wallace asks Mrs. Which if they are indeed on Camazotz. Mrs. Which confirms this. She also warns them that the three women will not be able to help them in the remaining part of their journey to save Meg and Charles Wallace’s father. The women will be watching them, but they will not be able to interfere.

Meg wants to know if her father is on this planet. Mrs. Which says he is, but she cannot tell Meg where he is. The children will have to follow clues along the way, using their intuition and intelligence to decipher the information they receive. Mrs. Which says each child has a special gift, and then she identifies the gift of each. She tells Calvin he is good at communications. She tells Meg that her strength is actually her faults, and Meg is dumbfounded. She says Charles Wallace’s special gift is his youthful resilience. She then advises them to always stay together no matter what they do. Then the three women disappear.

Left on their own, the children follow the last bit of advice Mrs. Which offered, which was to head for the town. As they walk along the streets, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace see children playing outside. But what they witness seems very strange. Each of the children is in perfect rhythm with all the other children. Those who are jumping rope touch the ground with their feet at the exact same time. Those who are tossing balls throw them up and catch them again at the same time. Then every front door opens simultaneously as mothers call their children into the houses. Everyone appears to move in a well-synchronized pattern. When Calvin asks any of the strangers a question, the answers he receives sound as if they have been rehearsed. When Charles Wallace attempts to read the people’s minds, he finds no thoughts.