The Amber Spyglass Read online

Chapter 4 Ama And The Bats

 

  Ama, the herdsman's daughter, carried the image of the sleeping girl in her memory: she could not stop thinking about her. She didn't question for a moment the truth of what Mrs. Coulter had told her. Sorcerers existed, beyond a doubt, and it was only too likely that they would cast sleeping spells, and that a mother would care for her daughter in that fierce and tender way. Ama conceived an admiration amounting almost to worship for the beautiful woman in the cave and her enchanted daughter.

  She went as often as she could to the little valley, to run errands for the woman or simply to chatter and listen, for the woman had wonderful tales to tell. Again and again she hoped for a glimpse of the sleeper, but it had only happened once, and she accepted that it would probably never be allowed again.

  And during the time she spent milking the sheep, or carding and spinning their wool, or grinding barley to make bread, she thought incessantly about the spell that must have been cast, and about why it had happened. Mrs. Coulter had never told her, so Ama was free to imagine.

  One day she took some flat bread sweetened with honey; walked the three-hour journey along the trail to Cho-Lung Se, where there was a monastery. By wheedling and patience and by bribing the porter with some of the honey bread, managed to gain an audience with the great healer Pagdzin tulku, who had cured an outbreak of the white fever only the year before, and who was immensely wise.

  Ama entered the great man's cell, bowing very low and offering her remaining honey bread with all the humility she could muster. The monk's bat daemon swooped and darted around her, frightening her own daemon, Kulang, who crept into her hair to hide, but Ama tried to remain still and silent until Pagdzin tulku spoke.

  "Yes, child? Be quick, be quick," he said, his long gray beard wagging with every word.

  In the dimness the beard and his brilliant eyes were most of what she could see of him. His daemon settled on the beam above him, hanging still at last, so she said, "Please, Pagdzin tulku, I want to gain wisdom. I would like to know how to make spells and enchantments. Can you teach me?"

  "No," he said.

  She was expecting that. "Well, could you tell me just one remedy?" she asked humbly.

  "Maybe. But I won't tell you what it is. I can give you the medicine, not tell you the secret. "

  "All right, thank you, that is a great blessing," she said, bowing several times.

  "What is the disease, and who has it?" the old man said.

  "It's a sleeping sickness," Ama explained. "It's come upon the son of my father's cousin. "

  She was being extra clever, she knew, changing the sex of the sufferer, just in case the healer had heard of the woman in the cave.

  "And how old is this boy?"

  "Three years older than me, Pagdzin tulku," she guessed, "so he is twelve years old. He sleeps and sleeps and can't wake up. "

  "Why haven't his parents come to me? Why did they send you?"

  "Because they live far on the other side of my village and they are very poor, Pagdzin tulku. I only heard of my kinsman's illness yesterday and I came at once to seek your advice. "

  "I should see the patient and examine him thoroughly, and inquire into the positions of the planets at the hour when he fell asleep. These things can't be done in a hurry. "

  "Is there no medicine you can give me to take back?"

  The bat daemon fell off her beam and fluttered blackly aside before she hit the floor, darting silently across the room again and again, too quickly for Ama to follow; but the bright eyes of the healer saw exactly where she went, and when she had hung once more upside down on her beam and folded her dark wings around herself, the old man got up and moved around from shelf to shelf and jar to jar and box to box, here tapping out a spoonful of powder, there adding a pinch of herbs, in the order in which the daemon had visited them.

  He tipped all the ingredients into a mortar and ground them up together, muttering a spell as he did so. Then he tapped the pestle on the ringing edge of the mortar, dislodging the final grains, and took a brush and ink and wrote some characters on a sheet of paper. When the ink had dried, he tipped all the powder onto the inscription and folded the paper swiftly into a little square package.

  "Let them brush this powder into the nostrils of the sleeping child a little at a time as he breathes in," he told her, "and he will wake up. It has to be done with great caution. Too much at once and he will choke. Use the softest of brushes. "

  "Thank you, Pagdzin tulku," said Ama, taking the package and placing it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. "I wish I had another honey bread to give you. "

  "One is enough," said the healer. "Now go, and next time you come, tell me the whole truth, not part of it. "

  The girl was abashed, and bowed very low to hide her confusion. She hoped she hadn't given too much away.

  Next evening she hurried to the valley as soon as she could, carrying some sweet rice wrapped in a heart-fruit leaf. She was bursting to tell the woman what she had done, and to give her the medicine and receive her praise and thanks, and eager most of all for the enchanted sleeper to wake and talk to her. They could be friends!

  But as she turned the corner of the path and looked upward, she saw no golden monkey, no patient woman seated at the cave mouth. The place was empty. She ran the last few yards, afraid they had gone forever - but there was the chair the woman sat in, and the cooking equipment, and everything else.

  Ama looked into the darkness farther back in the cave, her heart beating fast. Surely the sleeper hadn't woken already: in the dimness Ama could make out the shape of the sleeping bag, the lighter patch that was the girl's hair, and the curve of her sleeping daemon.

  She crept a little closer. There was no doubt about it - they had gone out and left the enchanted girl alone.

  A thought struck Ama like a musical note: suppose she woke her before the woman returned. . .

  But she had hardly time to feel the thrill of that idea before she heard sounds on the path outside, and in a shiver of guilt she and her daemon darted behind a ridge of rock at the side of the cave. She shouldn't be here. She was spying. It was wrong.

  And now that golden monkey was squatting in the entrance, sniffing and turning his head this way and that. Ama saw him bare his sharp teeth, and felt her own daemon burrow into her clothes, mouse-formed and trembling.

  "What is it?" said the woman's voice, speaking to the monkey, and then the cave darkened as her form came into the entrance. "Has the girl been? Yes - there's the food she left. She shouldn't come in, though. We must arrange a spot on the path for her to leave the food at. "

  Without a glance at the sleeper, the woman stooped to bring the fire to life, and set a pan of water to heat while her daemon crouched nearby watching over the path. From time to time he got up and looked around the cave, and Ama, getting cramped and uncomfortable in her narrow hiding place, wished ardently that she'd waited outside and not gone in. How long was she going to be trapped?

  The woman was mixing some herbs and powders into the heating water. Ama could smell the astringent flavors as they drifted out with the steam. Then came a sound from the back of the cave: the girl was murmuring and stirring. Ama turned her head: she could see the enchanted sleeper moving, tossing from side to side, throwing an arm across her eyes. She was waking!

  And the woman took no notice!

  She heard all right, because she looked up briefly, but she soon turned back to her herbs and the boiling water. She poured the decoction into a beaker and let it stand, and only then turned her full attention to the waking girl.

  Ama could understand none of these words, but she heard them with increasing wonder and suspicion:

  "Hush, dear," the woman said. "Don't worry yourself. You're safe. "

  "Roger," the girl murmured, half-awake. "Serafina! Where's Roger gone. . . Where is he?"

  "No one here but us," her mother said, in a singsong voice, ha
lf-crooning. "Lift yourself and let Mama wash you. . . Up you come, my love. . . "

  Ama watched as the girl, moaning, struggling into wakefulness, tried to push her mother away; and the woman dipped a sponge into the bowl of water and mopped at her daughter's face and body before patting her dry.

  By this time the girl was nearly awake, and the woman had to move more quickly.

  "Where's Serafina? And Will? Help me, help me! I don't want to sleep - No, no! I won't! No!"

  The woman was holding the beaker in one steely-firm hand while her other was trying to lift Lyra's head.

  "Be still, dear - be calm - hush now - drink your tea - "

  But the girl lashed out and nearly spilled the drink, and cried louder:

  "Leave me alone! I want to go! Let me go! Will, Will, help me - oh, help me - "

  The woman was gripping her hair tightly, forcing her head back, cramming the beaker against her mouth.

  "I won't! You dare touch me, and Iorek will tear your head off! Oh, Iorek, where are you? Iorek Byrnison! Help me, Iorek! I won't - I won't - "

  Then, at a word from the woman, the golden monkey sprang on Lyra's daemon, gripping him with hard black fingers. The daemon flicked from shape to shape more quickly than Ama had ever seen a daemon change before: cat-snake-rat-fox-bird-wolf-cheetah-lizard-polecat-

  But the monkey's grip never slackened; and then Pantalaimon became a porcupine.

  The monkey screeched and let go. Three long quills were stuck shivering in his paw. Mrs. Coulter snarled and with her free hand slapped Lyra hard across the face, a vicious backhand crack that threw her flat; and before Lyra could gather her wits, the beaker was at her mouth and she had to swallow or choke.

  Ama wished she could shut her ears: the gulping, crying, coughing, sobbing, pleading, retching was almost too much to hear. But little by little it died away, and only a shaky sob or two came from the girl, who was now sinking once more into sleep - enchanted sleep? Poisoned sleep! Drugged, deceitful sleep! Ama saw a streak of white materialize at the girl's throat as her daemon effortfully changed into a long, sinuous, snowy-furred creature with brilliant black eyes and black-tipped tail, and laid himself alongside her neck.

  And the woman was singing softly, crooning baby songs, smoothing the hair off the girl's brow, patting her hot face dry, humming songs to which even Ama could tell she didn't know the words, because all she could sing was a string of nonsense syllables, la-la-la, ba-ba-boo-boo, her sweet voice mouthing gibberish.

  Eventually that stopped, and then the woman did a curious thing: she took a pair of scissors and trimmed the girl's hair, holding her sleeping head this way and that to see the best effect. She took one dark blond curl and put it in a little gold locket she had around her own neck. Ama could tell why: she was going to work some further magic with it. But the woman held it to her lips first. . . Oh, this was strange.

  The golden monkey drew out the last of the porcupine quills and said something to the woman, who reached up to snatch a roosting bat from the cave ceiling. The little black thing flapped and squealed in a needle-thin voice that pierced Ama from one ear to the other, and then she saw the woman hand the bat to her daemon, and she saw the daemon pull one of the black wings out and out and out till it snapped and broke and hung from a white string of sinew, while the dying bat screamed and its fellows flapped around in anguished puzzlement. Crack - crack - snap - as the golden monkey pulled the little thing apart limb by limb, and the woman lay moodily on her sleeping bag by the fire and slowly ate a bar of chocolate.

  Time passed. Light faded and the moon rose, and the woman and her daemon fell asleep.

  Ama, stiff and painful, crept up from her hiding place and tiptoed out past the sleepers, and didn't make a sound till she was halfway down the path.

  With fear giving her speed, she ran along the narrow trail, her daemon as an owl on silent wings beside her. The clean cold air, the constant motion of the treetops, the brilliance of the moon-painted clouds in the dark sky, and the millions of stars all calmed her a little.

  She stopped in sight of the little huddle of stone houses and her daemon perched on her fist.

  "She lied!" Ama said. "She lied to us! What can we do, Kulang? Can we tell Dada? What can we do?"

  "Don't tell," said her daemon. "More trouble. We've got the medicine. We can wake her. We can go there when the woman's away again, and wake the girl up, and take her away. "

  The thought filled them both with fear. But it had been said, and the little paper package was safe in Ama's pocket, and they knew how to use it. wake up, I can't see her - I think she's close by - she's hurt me - "

  "Oh, Lyra, don't be frightened! If you're frightened, too, I'll go mad - "

  They tried to hold each other tight, but their arms passed through the empty air. Lyra tried to say what she meant, whispering close to his little pale face in the darkness:

  "I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first! I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake. I don't know if this is real or not, even - but I will help you, Roger! I swear I will!"

  "But if you're dreaming, Lyra, you might not believe it when you wake up. That's what I'd do, I'd just think it was only a dream. "

  "No!" she said fiercely, and stamped her foot so hard it even hurt in her dream.