And fighting for control of the grove itself were a score or more Specters, being held back by a ragged band of ghosts. As soon as they saw that little group of trees, Lyra and Will both knew that their daemons were in there, and that if they didn’t reach them soon, they would die. More Specters were arriving there every minute, streaming over the ridge from the right. Will and Lyra could see them very clearly now.
An explosion just over the ridge shook the ground and flung stones and clods of earth high into the air. Lyra cried out, and Will had to clutch his chest.
"Hold on," Iorek growled, and began to charge.
A flare burst high above, and another and another, drifting slowly downward with a magnesium-bright glare. Another shell burst, closer this time, and they felt the shock of the air and a second or two later the sting of earth and stones on their faces. Iorek didn’t falter, but they found it hard to hold on. They couldn’t dig their fingers into his fur—they had to grip the armor between their knees, and his back was so broad that both of them kept slipping.
"Look!" cried Lyra, pointing up as another shell burst nearby.
A dozen witches were making for the flares, carrying thick-leaved, bushy branches, and with them they brushed the glaring lights aside, sweeping them away into the sky beyond. Darkness fell over the grove again, hiding it from the guns.
And now the grove was only a few yards away. Will and Lyra both felt their missing selves close by—an excitement, a wild hope chilled with fear, because the Specters were thick among the trees and they would have to go in directly among them, and the very sight of them evoked that nauseating weakness at the heart.
"They’re afraid of the knife," said a voice beside them, and the bear-king stopped so suddenly that Will and Lyra tumbled off his back.
"Lee!" said Iorek. "Lee, my comrade, I have never seen this before. You are dead—what am I speaking to?"
"Iorek, old feller, you don’t know the half of it. We’ll take over now—the Specters aren’t afraid of bears. Lyra, Will—come this way, and hold up that knife—"
The blue hawk swooped once more to Lyra’s fist, and the gray-haired lady said, "Don’t waste a second—go in and find your daemons and escape! There’s more danger coming."
"Thank you, Lady! Thank you all!" said Lyra, and the hawk took wing.
Will could see Lee Scoresby’s ghost dimly beside them, urging them into the grove, but they had to say farewell to Iorek Byrnison.
"Iorek, my dear, there en’t words—bless you, bless you!"
"Thank you, King Iorek," said Will.
"No time. Go. Go!"
He pushed them away with his armored head. Will plunged after Lee Scoresby’s ghost into the undergrowth, slashing to right and left with the knife. The light here was broken and muted, and the shadows were thick, tangled, confusing.
"Keep close," he called to Lyra, and then cried out as a bramble sliced across his cheek.
All around them there was movement, noise, and struggle. The shadows moved to and fro like branches in a high wind. They might have been ghosts: both children felt the little dashes of cold they knew so well. Then they heard voices all around:
"This way!"
"Over here!"
"Keep going—we’re holding them off!"
"Not far now!"
And then came a cry in a voice that Lyra knew and loved better than any other:
"Oh, come quick! Quick, Lyra!"
"Pan, darling—I’m here—"
She hurled herself into the dark, sobbing and shaking, and Will tore down branches and ivy and slashed at brambles and nettles, while all around them the ghost-voices rose in a clamor of encouragement and warning.
But the Specters had found their target, too, and they pressed in through the snagging tangle of bush and briar and root and branch, meeting no more resistance than smoke. A dozen, a score of the pallid malignities seemed to pour in toward the center of the grove, where John Parry’s ghost marshaled his companions to fight them off.
Will and Lyra were both trembling and weak with fear, exhaustion, nausea, and pain, but giving up was inconceivable. Lyra tore at the brambles with her bare hands, Will slashed and hacked to left and right, as around them the combat of the shadowy beings became more and more savage.
"There!" cried Lee. "See ‘em? By that big rock—"
A wildcat, two wildcats, spitting and hissing and slashing. Both were daemons, and Will felt that if there were time he’d easily be able to tell which was Pantalaimon; but there wasn’t time, because a Specter eased horribly out of the nearest patch of shadow and glided toward the daemons.
Will leapt over the last obstacle, a fallen tree trunk, and plunged the knife into the unresisting shimmer in the air. He felt his arm go numb, but he clenched his teeth as he was clenching his fingers around the hilt, and the pale form seemed to boil away and melt back into the darkness again.
Almost there; and the daemons were mad with fear, because more Specters and still more came pressing through the trees, and only the valiant ghosts were holding them back.
"Can you cut through?" said John Parry’s ghost.
Will held up the knife, and had to stop as a racking bout of nausea shook him from head to toe. There was nothing left in his stomach, and the spasm hurt dreadfully. Lyra beside him was in the same state. Lee’s ghost, seeing why, leapt for the daemons and wrestled with the pale thing that was coming through the rock from behind them.
"Will—please—" said Lyra, gasping.
In went the knife, along, down, back. Lee Scoresby’s ghost looked through and saw a wide, quiet prairie under a brilliant moon, so very like his own homeland that he thought he’d been blessed.
Will leapt across the clearing and seized the nearest daemon while Lyra scooped up the other.
And even in that horrible urgency, even at that moment of utmost peril, each of them felt the same little shock of excitement: for Lyra was holding Will’s daemon, the nameless wildcat, and Will was carrying Pantalaimon.
They tore their glance away from each other’s eyes.
"Good-bye, Mr. Scoresby!" Lyra cried, looking around for him. "I wish—oh, thank you, thank you—good-bye!"
"Good-bye, my dear child—good-bye, Will—go well!"
Lyra scrambled through, but Will stood still and looked into the eyes of his father’s ghost, brilliant in the shadows. Before he left him, there was something he had to say.
Will said to his father’s ghost, "You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn’t argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can’t choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I’m free."
His father’s smile was full of pride and tenderness. "Well done, my boy. Well done indeed," he said.
Will couldn’t see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra.
And now that their purpose was achieved, now the children had found their daemons and escaped, the dead warriors allowed their atoms to relax and drift apart, at long, long last.
Out of the little grove, away from the baffled Specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old companion the armor-clad bear, the last little scrap of the consciousness that had been the aeronaut Lee Scoresby floated upward, just as his great balloon had done so many times. Untroubled by the flares and the bursting shells, deaf to the explosions and the shouts and cries of anger and warning and pain, conscious only of his movement upward, the last of Lee Scoresby passed through the heavy clouds and came out under the brilliant stars, where the atoms of his beloved daemon, Hester, were waiting for him.
Chapter 32. Morning
The wide golden prairie that Lee Scoresby’s ghost had seen briefly through the window was lying quiet under the first sun of morning.
Golden, but also yellow, brown, green, and every one of the million shades between them; and black, in places, in lines and streaks of bright pitch; and silvery, too, where the sun caught the tops of a particular kind of gr
ass just coming into flower; and blue, where a wide lake some way off and a small pond closer by reflected back the wide blue of the sky.
And quiet, but not silent, for a soft breeze rustled the billions of little stems, and a billion insects and other small creatures scraped and hummed and chirruped in the grass, and a bird too high in the blue to be seen sang little looping falls of bell notes now close by, now far off, and never twice the same.
In all that wide landscape the only living things that were silent and still were the boy and the girl lying asleep, back to back, under the shade of an outcrop of rock at the top of a little bluff.
They were so still, so pale, that they might have been dead. Hunger had drawn the skin over their faces, pain had left lines around their eyes, and they were covered in dust and mud and not a little blood. And from the absolute passivity of their limbs, they seemed in the last stages of exhaustion.
Lyra was the first to wake. As the sun moved up the sky, it came past the rock above and touched her hair, and she began to stir, and when the sunlight reached her eyelids, she found herself pulled up from the depths of sleep like a fish, slow and heavy and resistant.
But there was no arguing with the sun, and presently she moved her head and threw her arm across her eyes and murmured: "Pan—Pan…"
Under the shadow of her arm, she opened her eyes and came properly awake. She didn’t move for some time, because her arms and legs were so sore, and every part of her body felt limp with weariness; but still she was awake, and she felt the little breeze and the sun’s warmth, and she heard the little insect scrapings and the bell song of that bird high above. It was all good. She had forgotten how good the world was.
Presently she rolled over and saw Will, still fast asleep. His hand had bled a lot, his shirt was ripped and filthy, his hair was stiff with dust and sweat. She looked at him for a long time, at the little pulse in his throat, at his chest rising and falling slowly, at the delicate shadows his eyelashes made when the sun finally reached them.
He murmured something and stirred. Not wanting to be caught looking at him, she looked the other way at the little grave they’d dug the night before, just a couple of hand spans wide, where the bodies of the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia now lay at rest. There was a flat stone nearby; she got up and prized it loose from the soil, and set it upright at the head of the grave, and then sat up and shaded her eyes to gaze across the plain.
It seemed to stretch forever and ever. It was nowhere entirely flat; gentle undulations and little ridges and gullies varied the surface wherever she looked, and here and there she saw a stand of trees so tall they seemed to be constructed rather than grown. Their straight trunks and dark green canopy seemed to defy distance, being so clearly visible at what must have been many miles away.
Closer, though—in fact, at the foot of the bluff, not more than a hundred yards away—there was a little pond fed by a spring coming out of the rock, and Lyra realized how thirsty she was.
She got up on shaky legs and walked slowly down toward it. The spring gurgled and trickled through mossy rocks, and she dipped her hands in it again and again, washing them clear of the mud and grime before lifting the water to her mouth. It was teeth-achingly cold, and she swallowed it with delight.
The pond was fringed with reeds, where a frog was croaking. It was shallow and warmer than the spring, as she discovered when she took off her shoes and waded into it. She stood for a long time with the sun on her head and her body, relishing the cool mud under her feet and the cold flow of springwater around her calves.
She bent down to dip her face under the water and wet her hair thoroughly, letting it trail out and flicking it back again, stirring it with her fingers to lift all the dust and grime out.
When she felt a little cleaner and her thirst was satisfied, she looked up the slope again, to see that Will was awake. He was sitting with his knees drawn up and his arms across them, looking out across the plain as she’d done, and marveling at the extent of it. And at the light, and at the warmth, and at the quiet.
She climbed slowly back to join him and found him cutting the names of the Gallivespians on the little headstone, and setting it more firmly in the soil.
"Are they…" he said, and she knew he meant the daemons.
"Don’t know. I haven’t seen Pan. I got the feeling he’s not far away, but I don’t know. D’you remember what happened?"
He rubbed his eyes and yawned so deeply she heard little cracking noises in his jaw. Then he blinked and shook his head.
"Not much," he said. "I picked up Pantalaimon and you picked up—the other one and we came through, and it was moonlight everywhere, and I put him down to close the window."
"And your—the other daemon just jumped out of my arms," she said. "And I was trying to see Mr. Scoresby through the window, and Iorek, and to see where Pan had gone, and when I looked around, they just weren’t there."
"It doesn’t feel like when we went into the world of the dead, though. Like when we were really separated."
"No," she agreed. "They’re somewhere near all right. I remember when we were young we used to try and play hide-and-seek, except it never really worked, because I was too big to hide from him and I always used to know exactly where he was, even if he was camouflaged as a moth or something. But this is strange," she said, passing her hands over her head involuntarily as if she were trying to dispel some enchantment. "He en’t here, but I don’t feel torn apart, I feel safe, and I know he is."
"They’re together, I think," Will said.
"Yeah. They must be."
He stood up suddenly.
"Look," he said, "over there…"
He was shading his eyes and pointing. She followed his gaze and saw a distant tremor of movement, quite different from the shimmer of the heat haze.
"Animals?" she said doubtfully.
"And listen," he said, putting his hand behind his ear.
Now he’d pointed it out, she could hear a low, persistent rumble, almost like thunder, a very long way off.
"They’ve disappeared," Will said, pointing.
The little patch of moving shadows had vanished, but the rumble went on for a few moments. Then it became suddenly quieter, though it had been very quiet already. The two of them were still gazing in the same direction, and shortly afterward they saw the movement start up again. And a few moments later came the sound.
"They went behind a ridge or something," said Will. "Are they closer?"
"Can’t really see. Yes, they’re turning, look, they’re coming this way."
"Well, if we have to fight them, I want a drink first," said Will, and he took the rucksack down to the stream, where he drank deep and washed off most of the dirt. His wound had bled a lot. He was a mess; he longed for a hot shower with plenty of soap, and for some clean clothes.
Lyra was watching the… whatever they were; they were very strange.
"Will," she called, "they’re riding on wheels…"
But she said it uncertainly. He climbed back a little way up the slope and shaded his eyes to look. It was possible to see individuals now. The group, or herd, or gang, was about a dozen strong, and they were moving, as Lyra said, on wheels. They looked like a cross between antelopes and motorcycles, but they were stranger than that, even: they had trunks like small elephants.
And they were making for Will and Lyra, with an air of intention. Will took out the knife, but Lyra, sitting on the grass beside him, was already turning the hands of the alethiometer.
It responded quickly, while the creatures were still a few hundred yards away. The needle darted swiftly left and right, and left and left, and Lyra felt her mind dart to the meanings and land on them as lightly as a bird.
"They’re friendly," she said, "it’s all right, Will, they’re looking for us, they knew we were here… And it’s odd, I can’t quite make it out… Dr. Malone?"
She said the name half to herself, because she couldn’t believe Dr. Malone would be in this wo
rld. Still, the alethiometer indicated her clearly, although of course it couldn’t give her name. Lyra put it away and stood up slowly beside Will.
"I think we should go down to them," she said. "They en’t going to hurt us."
Some of them had stopped, waiting. The leader moved ahead a little, trunk raised, and they could see how he propelled himself with powerful backward strokes of his lateral limbs. Some of the creatures had gone to the pond to drink; the others waited, but not with the mild, passive curiosity of cows gathering at a gate. These were individuals, lively with intelligence and purpose. They were people.
Will and Lyra moved down the slope until they were close enough to speak to them. In spite of what Lyra had said, Will kept his hand on the knife.
"I don’t know if you understand me," Lyra said cautiously, "but I know you’re friendly. I think we should—"
The leader moved his trunk and said, "Come see Mary. You ride. We carry. Come see Mary."
"Oh!" she said, and turned to Will, smiling with delight.
Two of the creatures were fitted with bridles and stirrups of braided cord. Not saddles; their diamond-shaped backs turned out to be comfortable enough without them. Lyra had ridden a bear, and Will had ridden a bicycle, but neither had ridden a horse, which was the closest comparison. However, riders of horses are usually in control, and the children soon found that they were not: the reins and the stirrups were there simply to give them something to hold on to and balance with. The creatures themselves made all the decisions.
"Where are—" Will began to say, but had to stop and regain his balance as the creature moved under him.
The group swung around and moved down the slight slope, going slowly through the grass. The movement was humpy, but not uncomfortable, because the creatures had no spine; Will and Lyra felt that they were sitting on chairs with a well-sprung seat.
Soon they came to what they hadn’t seen clearly from the bluff: one of those patches of black or dark brown ground. And they were as surprised to find roads of smooth rock lacing through the prairie as Mary Malone had been sometime before.
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