"It’ll be our great pleasure to accept," said John Faa.
So that evening the people of three worlds sat down together and shared bread and meat and fruit and wine. The gyptians presented their hosts with gifts from all the corners of their world: with crocks of genniver, carvings of walrus ivory, silken tapestries from Turkestan, cups of silver from the mines of Sveden, enameled dishes from Corea.
The mulefa received them with delight, and in return offered objects of their own workmanship: rare vessels of ancient knot wood, lengths of the finest rope and cord, lacquered bowls, and fishing nets so strong and light that even the Fen-dwelling gyptians had never seen the like.
Having shared the feast, the captain thanked his hosts and left to supervise the crew as they took on board the stores and water that they needed, because they meant to sail as soon as morning came. While they were doing that, the old zalif said to his guests:
"A great change has come over everything. And as a token, we have been granted a responsibility. We would like to show you what this means."
So John Faa, Farder Coram, Mary, and Serafina went with them to the place where the land of the dead opened, and where the ghosts were coming out, still in their endless procession. The mulefa were planting a grove around it, because it was a holy place, they said; they would maintain it forever; it was a source of joy.
"Well, this is a mystery," said Farder Coram, "and I’m glad I lived long enough to see it. To go into the dark of death is a thing we all fear; say what we like, we fear it. But if there’s a way out for that part of us that has to go down there, then it makes my heart lighter."
"You’re right, Coram," said John Faa. "I’ve seen a good many folk die; I’ve sent more than a few men down into the dark myself, though it was always in the anger of battle. To know that after a spell in the dark we’ll come out again to a sweet land like this, to be free of the sky like the birds, well, that’s the greatest promise anyone could wish for."
"We must talk to Lyra about this," said Farder Coram, "and learn how it came about and what it means."
Mary found it very hard to say good-bye to Atal and the other mulefa. Before she boarded the ship, they gave her a gift: a lacquer phial containing some of the wheel tree oil, and most precious of all, a little bag of seeds.
They might not grow in your world, Atal said, but if not, you have the oil. Don’t forget us, Mary.
Never, Mary said. Never. If I live as long as the witches and forget everything else, I’ll never forget you and the kindness of your people, Atal.
So the journey home began. The wind was light, the seas were calm, and although they saw the glitter of those great snow white wings more than once, the birds were wary and stayed well clear. Will and Lyra spent every hour together, and for them the two weeks of the voyage passed like the blink of an eyelid.
Xaphania had told Serafina Pekkala that when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, and Lyra’s Oxford and Will’s would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged—although they would never truly touch.
At the moment, however, they were a long way apart—as far as Lyra had had to travel from her Oxford to Cittàgazze. Will’s Oxford was here now, just a knife cut away. It was evening when they arrived, and as the anchor splashed into the water, the late sun lay warmly on the green hills, the terracotta roofs, that elegant and crumbling waterfront, and Will and Lyra’s little cafe. A long search through the captain’s telescope had shown no signs of life whatsoever, but John Faa planned to take half a dozen armed men ashore just in case.
They wouldn’t get in the way, but they were there if they were needed.
They ate a last meal together, watching the darkness fall. Will said goodbye to the captain and his officers, and to John Faa and Farder Coram. He had hardly seemed to be aware of them, and they saw him more clearly than he saw them: they saw someone young, but very strong, and deeply stricken.
Finally Will and Lyra and their daemons, and Mary and Serafina Pekkala, set off through the empty city. And it was empty; the only footfalls and the only shadows were their own. Lyra and Will went ahead, hand in hand, to the place where they had to part, and the women stayed some way behind, talking like sisters.
"Lyra wants to come a little way into my Oxford," Mary said. "She’s got something in mind. She’ll come straight back afterwards."
"What will you do, Mary?"
"Me—go with Will, of course. We’ll go to my flat—my house—tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll go and find out where his mother is, and see what we can do to help her get better. There are so many rules and regulations in my world, Serafina; you have to satisfy the authorities and answer a thousand questions; I’ll help him with all the legal side of things and the social services and housing and all that, and let him concentrate on his mother. He’s a strong boy… But I’ll help him. Besides, I need him. I haven’t got a job anymore, and not much money in the bank, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the police are after me… He’ll be the only person in my whole world that I can talk to about all this."
They walked on through the silent streets, past a square tower with a doorway opening into darkness, past a little cafe where tables stood on the pavement, and out onto a broad boulevard with a line of palm trees in the center.
"This is where I came through," said Mary.
The window Will had first seen in the quiet suburban road in Oxford opened here, and on the Oxford side it was guarded by police—or had been when Mary tricked them into letting her through. She saw Will reach the spot and move his hands deftly in the air, and the window vanished.
"That’ll surprise them next time they look," she said.
It was Lyra’s intention to go into Will and Mary’s Oxford and show Will something before returning with Serafina, and obviously they had to be careful where they cut through; so the women followed on behind, through the moonlit streets of Cittàgazze. On their right a wide and graceful parkland led up to a great house with a classical portico as brilliant as icing sugar under the moon.
"When you told me the shape of my daemon," Mary said, "you said you could teach me how to see him, if we had time… I wish we had."
"Well, we have had time," Serafina said, "and haven’t we been talking? I’ve taught you some witch-lore, which would be forbidden under the old ways in my world. But you are going back to your world, and the old ways have changed. And I, too, have learned much from you. Now then: when you spoke to the Shadows on your computer, you had to hold a special state of mind, didn’t you?"
"Yes… just as Lyra did with the alethiometer. Do you mean if I try that?"
"Not only that, but ordinary seeing at the same time. Try it now."
In Mary’s world they had a kind of picture that looked at first like random dots of color but that, when you looked at it in a certain way, seemed to advance into three dimensions: and there in front of the paper would be a tree, or a face, or something else surprisingly solid that simply wasn’t there before.
What Serafina taught Mary to do now was similar to that. She had to hold on to her normal way of looking while simultaneously slipping into the trancelike open dreaming in which she could see the Shadows. But now she had to hold both ways together, the everyday and the trance, just as you have to look in two directions at once to see the 3-D pictures among the dots.
And just as it happens with the dot pictures, she suddenly got it.
"Ah!" she cried, and reached for Serafina’s arm to steady herself, for there on the iron fence around the parkland sat a bird: glossy black, with red legs and a curved yellow bill: an Alpine chough, just as Serafina had described. It—he—was only a foot or two away, watching her with his head slightly cocked, for all the world as though he was amused.
But she was so surprised that her concentration slipped, and he vanished.
"You’ve done it once, and next time it wi
ll be easier," Serafina said. "When you are in your world, you will learn to see the daemons of other people, too, in the same way. They won’t see yours or Will’s, though, unless you teach them as I’ve taught you."
"Yes… Oh, this is extraordinary. Yes!"
Mary thought: Lyra talked to her daemon, didn’t she? Would she hear this bird as well as see him? She walked on, glowing with anticipation.
Ahead of them Will was cutting a window, and he and Lyra waited for the women to pass through so that he could close it again.
"D’you know where we are?" Will said.
Mary looked around. The road they were in now, in her world, was quiet and tree-lined, with big Victorian houses in shrub-filled gardens.
"Somewhere in north Oxford," Mary said. "Not far from my flat, as a matter of fact, though I don’t know exactly which road this is."
"I want to go to the Botanic Garden," Lyra said.
"All right. I suppose that’s about fifteen minutes’ walk. This way…"
Mary tried the double-seeing again. She found it easier this time, and there was the chough, with her in her own world, perching on a branch that hung low over the pavement. To see what would happen, she held out her hand, and he stepped onto it without hesitation. She felt the slight weight, the tight grip of the claws on her finger, and gently moved him onto her shoulder. He settled into place as if he’d been there all her life.
Well, he has, she thought, and moved on.
There was not much traffic in the High Street, and when they turned down the steps opposite Magdalen College toward the gate of the Botanic Garden, they were completely alone. There was an ornate gateway, with stone seats inside it, and while Mary and Serafina sat there, Will and Lyra climbed over the iron fence into the garden itself. Their daemons slipped through the bars and flowed ahead of them into the garden.
"It’s this way," said Lyra, tugging at Will’s hand.
She led him past a pool with a fountain under a wide-spreading tree, and then struck off to the left between beds of plants toward a huge many-trunked pine. There was a massive stone wall with a doorway in it, and in the farther part of the garden, the trees were younger and the planting less formal. Lyra led him almost to the end of the garden, over a little bridge, to a wooden seat under a spreading, low-branched tree.
"Yes!" she said. "I hoped so much, and here it is, just the same… Will, I used to come here in my Oxford and sit on this exact same bench whenever I wanted to be alone, just me and Pan. What I thought was that if you—maybe just once a year—if we could come here at the same time, just for an hour or something, then we could pretend we were close again—because we would be close, if you sat here and I sat just here in my world…"
"Yes," he said, "as long as I live, I’ll come back. Wherever I am in the world, I’ll come back here—"
"On Midsummer Day," she said. "At midday. As long as I live. As long as I live…"
He found himself unable to see, but he let the hot tears flow and just held her close.
"And if we—later on—" she was whispering shakily, "if we meet someone that we like, and if we marry them, then we must be good to them, and not make comparisons all the time and wish we were married to each other instead… But just keep up this coming here once a year, just for an hour, just to be together…"
They held each other tightly. Minutes passed; a waterbird on the river beside them stirred and called; the occasional car moved over Magdalen Bridge.
Finally they drew apart.
"Well," said Lyra softly.
Everything about her in that moment was soft, and that was one of his favorite memories later on—her tense grace made tender by the dimness, her eyes and hands and especially her lips, infinitely soft. He kissed her again and again, and each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
Heavy and soft with love, they walked back to the gate. Mary and Serafina were waiting.
"Lyra—" Will said.
And she said, "Will."
He cut a window into Cittàgazze. They were deep in the parkland around the great house, not far from the edge of the forest. He stepped through for the last time and looked down over the silent city, the tiled roofs gleaming in the moonlight, the tower above them, the lighted ship waiting out on the still sea.
He turned to Serafina and said as steadily as he could, "Thank you, Serafina Pekkala, for rescuing us at the belvedere, and for everything else. Please be kind to Lyra for as long as she lives. I love her more than anyone has ever been loved."
In answer the witch queen kissed him on both cheeks. Lyra had been whispering to Mary, and then they, too, embraced, and first Mary and then Will stepped through the last window, back into their own world, in the shade of the trees of the Botanic Garden.
Being cheerful starts now, Will thought as hard as he could, but it was like trying to hold a fighting wolf still in his arms when it wanted to claw at his face and tear out his throat; nevertheless, he did it, and he thought no one could see the effort it cost him.
And he knew that Lyra was doing the same, and that the tightness and strain in her smile were the signs of it.
Nevertheless, she smiled.
One last kiss, rushed and clumsy so that they banged cheekbones, and a tear from her eye was transferred to his face; their two daemons kissed farewell, and Pantalaimon flowed over the threshold and up into Lyra’s arms; and then Will began to close the window, and then it was done, the way was closed, Lyra was gone.
"Now—" he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, but having to turn away from Mary all the same, "I’ve got to break the knife."
He searched the air in the familiar way until he found a gap, and tried to bring to mind just what had happened before. He had been about to cut a way out of the cave, and Mrs. Coulter had suddenly and unaccountably reminded him of his mother, and the knife had broken because, he thought, it had at last met something it couldn’t cut, and that was his love for her.
So he tried it now, summoning an image of his mother’s face as he’d last seen her, fearful and distracted in Mrs. Cooper’s little hallway.
But it didn’t work. The knife cut easily through the air and opened into a world where they were having a rainstorm: heavy drops hurtled through, startling them both. He closed it again quickly and stood puzzled for a moment.
His daemon knew what he should do, and said simply, "Lyra."
Of course. He nodded, and with the knife in his right hand, he pressed with his left the spot where her tear still lay on his cheek.
And this time, with a wrenching crack, the knife shattered and the blade fell in pieces to the ground, to glitter on the stones that were still wet with the rain of another universe.
Will knelt to pick them up carefully, Kirjava with her cat eyes helping to find them all.
Mary was shouldering her rucksack.
"Well," she said, "well, listen now, Will. We’ve hardly spoken, you and I… So we’re still strangers, largely. But Serafina Pekkala and I made a promise to each other, and I made a promise to Lyra just now, and even if I hadn’t made any other promises, I’d make a promise to you about the same thing, which is that if you’ll let me, I’ll be your friend for the rest of our lives. We’re both on our own, and I reckon we could both do with that sort of… What I mean to say is, there isn’t anyone else we can talk to about all this, except each other… And we’ve both got to get used to living with our daemons, too… And we’re both in trouble, and if that doesn’t give us something in common, I don’t know what will."
"You’re in trouble?" said Will, looking at her. Her open, friendly, clever face looked back directly.
"Well, I smashed up some property in the lab before I left, and I forged an identity card, and… It’s nothing we can’t deal with. And your trouble—we can deal with that, too. We can find your mother and get her some proper treatment. And if you need somewhere to live, well, if you wouldn’t mind living with me, if we can arrange that, then you won’t have to go into, whatever they call it, into c
are. I mean, we’ll have to decide on a story and stick to it, but we could do that, couldn’t we?"
Mary was a friend. He had a friend. It was true. He’d never thought of that.
"Yes!" he said.
"Well, let’s do it. My flat’s about half a mile away, and you know what I’d like most of all in the world? I’d like a cup of tea. Come on, let’s go and put the kettle on."
Three weeks after the moment Lyra had watched Will’s hand closing his world away forever, she found herself seated once more at that dinner table in Jordan College where she had first fallen under the spell of Mrs. Coulter.
This time it was a smaller party: just herself and the Master and Dame Hannah Relf, the head of St. Sophia’s, one of the women’s colleges. Dame Hannah had been at that first dinner, too, and if Lyra was surprised to see her here now, she greeted her politely, and found that her memory was at fault: for this Dame Hannah was much cleverer, and more interesting, and kindlier by far than the dim and frumpy person she remembered.
All kinds of things had happened while Lyra was away—to Jordan College, to England, to the whole world. It seemed that the power of the Church had increased greatly, and that many brutal laws had been passed, but that the power had waned as quickly as it had grown: upheavals in the Magisterium had toppled the zealots and brought more liberal factions into power. The General Oblation Board had been dissolved; the Consistorial Court of Discipline was confused and leaderless.
And the colleges of Oxford, after a brief and turbulent interlude, were settling back into the calm of scholarship and ritual. Some things had gone: the Master’s valuable collection of silver had been looted; some college servants had vanished. The Master’s manservant, Cousins, was still in place, however, and Lyra had been ready to meet his hostility with defiance, for they had been enemies as long as she could remember. She was quite taken aback when he greeted her so warmly and shook her hand with both of his: was that affection in his voice? Well, he had changed.
During dinner the Master and Dame Hannah talked of what had happened in Lyra’s absence, and she listened in dismay, or sorrow, or wonder. When they withdrew to his sitting room for coffee, the Master said:
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