The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials Page 6

And she took off her crown, and plucked from it one of the little scarlet flowers that, while she wore them, remained as fresh as if they had just been picked.

  “Take this with you,” she said, “and whenever you need my help, hold it in your hand and call to me. I shall hear you, wherever you are.”

  “Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said, surprised. He took the little flower and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket.

  “And we shall call up a wind to help you to Nova Zembla,” Serafina Pekkala told him. “Now, sisters, who would like to speak?”

  The council proper began. The witches were democratic, up to a point; every witch, even the youngest, had the right to speak, but only their queen had the power to decide. The talk lasted all night, with many passionate voices for open war at once, and some others urging caution, and a few, though those were the wisest, suggesting a mission to all the other witch clans to urge them to join together for the first time.

  Ruta Skadi agreed with that, and Serafina sent out messengers at once. As for what they should do immediately, Serafina picked out twenty of her finest fighters and ordered them to prepare to fly north with her, into the new world that Lord Asriel had opened, and search for Lyra.

  “What of you, Queen Ruta Skadi?” Serafina said finally. “What are your plans?”

  “I shall search for Lord Asriel, and learn what he’s doing from his own lips. And it seems that the way he’s gone is northward too. May I come the first part of the journey with you, sister?”

  “You may, and welcome,” said Serafina, who was glad to have her company.

  So they agreed.

  But soon after the council had broken up, an elderly witch came to Serafina Pekkala and said, “You had better listen to what Juta Kamainen has to say, Queen. She’s headstrong, but it might be important.”

  The young witch Juta Kamainen—young by witch standards, that is; she was only just over a hundred years old—was stubborn and embarrassed, and her robin dæmon was agitated, flying from her shoulder to her hand and circling high above her before settling again briefly on her shoulder. The witch’s cheeks were plump and red; she had a vivid and passionate nature. Serafina didn’t know her well.

  “Queen,” said the young witch, unable to stay silent under Serafina’s gaze, “I know the man Stanislaus Grumman. I used to love him. But I hate him now with such a fervor that if I see him, I shall kill him. I would have said nothing, but my sister made me tell you.”

  She glanced with hatred at the elder witch, who returned her look with compassion: she knew about love.

  “Well,” said Serafina, “if he is still alive, he’ll have to stay alive until Mr. Scoresby finds him. You had better come with us into the new world, and then there’ll be no danger of your killing him first. Forget him, Juta Kamainen. Love makes us suffer. But this task of ours is greater than revenge. Remember that.”

  “Yes, Queen,” said the young witch humbly.

  And Serafina Pekkala and her twenty-one companions and Queen Ruta Skadi of Latvia prepared to fly into the new world, where no witch had ever flown before.

  THREE

  A CHILDREN’S WORLD

  Lyra was awake early.

  She’d had a horrible dream: she had been given the vacuum flask she’d seen her father, Lord Asriel, show to the Master and Scholars of Jordan College. When that had really happened, Lyra had been hiding in the wardrobe, and she’d watched as Lord Asriel opened the flask to show the Scholars the severed head of Stanislaus Grumman, the lost explorer; but in her dream, Lyra had to open the flask herself, and she didn’t want to. In fact, she was terrified. But she had to do it, whether she wanted to or not, and she felt her hands weakening with dread as she unclipped the lid and heard the air rush into the frozen chamber. Then she lifted the lid away, nearly choking with fear but knowing she had to—she had to do it. And there was nothing inside. The head had gone. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  But she awoke all the same, crying and sweating, in the hot little bedroom facing the harbor, with the moonlight streaming through the window, and lay in someone else’s bed clutching someone else’s pillow, with the ermine Pantalaimon nuzzling her and making soothing noises. Oh, she was so frightened! And how odd it was, that in real life she had been eager to see the head of Stanislaus Grumman, and had begged Lord Asriel to open the flask again and let her look, and yet in her dream she was so terrified.

  When morning came, she asked the alethiometer what the dream meant, but all it said was, It was a dream about a head.

  She thought of waking the strange boy, but he was so deeply asleep that she decided not to. Instead, she went down to the kitchen and tried to make an omelette, and twenty minutes later she sat down at a table on the pavement and ate the blackened, gritty thing with great pride while the sparrow Pantalaimon pecked at the bits of shell.

  She heard a sound behind her, and there was Will, heavy-eyed with sleep.

  “I can make omelette,” she said. “I’ll make you some if you like.”

  He looked at her plate and said, “No, I’ll have some cereal. There’s still some milk in the fridge that’s all right. They can’t have been gone very long, the people who lived here.”

  She watched him shake corn flakes into a bowl and pour milk on them—something else she’d never seen before.

  He carried the bowl outside and said, “If you don’t come from this world, where’s your world? How did you get here?”

  “Over a bridge. My father made this bridge, and … I followed him across. But he’s gone somewhere else, I don’t know where. I don’t care. But while I was walking across there was so much fog, and I got lost, I think. I walked around in the fog for days just eating berries and stuff I found. Then one day the fog cleared, and we was up on that cliff back there—”

  She gestured behind her. Will looked along the shore, past the lighthouse, and saw the coast rising in a great series of cliffs that disappeared into the haze of the distance.

  “And we saw the town here, and came down, but there was no one here. At least there were things to eat and beds to sleep in. We didn’t know what to do next.”

  “You sure this isn’t another part of your world?”

  “ ’Course. This en’t my world, I know that for certain.”

  Will remembered his own absolute certainty, on seeing the patch of grass through the window in the air, that it wasn’t in his world, and he nodded.

  “So there’s three worlds at least that are joined on,” he said.

  “There’s millions and millions,” Lyra said. “This other dæmon told me. He was a witch’s dæmon. No one can count how many worlds there are, all in the same space, but no one could get from one to another before my father made this bridge.”

  “What about the window I found?”

  “I dunno about that. Maybe all the worlds are starting to move into one another.”

  “And why are you looking for dust?”

  She looked at him coldly. “I might tell you sometime,” she said.

  “All right. But how are you going to look for it?”

  “I’m going to find a Scholar who knows about it.”

  “What, any scholar?”

  “No. An experimental theologian,” she said. “In my Oxford, they were the ones who knew about it. Stands to reason it’ll be the same in your Oxford. I’ll go to Jordan College first, because Jordan had the best ones.”

  “I never heard of experimental theology,” he said.

  “They know all about elementary particles and fundamental forces,” she explained. “And anbaromagnetism, stuff like that. Atomcraft.”

  “What-magnetism?”

  “Anbaromagnetism. Like anbaric. Those lights,” she said, pointing up at the ornamental streetlight. “They’re anbaric.”

  “We call them electric.”

  “Electric … that’s like electrum. That’s a kind of stone, a jewel, made out of gum from trees. There’s insects in it, sometimes.”

  “You mean amber
,” he said, and they both said, “Anbar …”

  And each of them saw their own expression on the other’s face. Will remembered that moment for a long time afterward.

  “Well, electromagnetism,” he went on, looking away. “Sounds like what we call physics, your experimental theology. You want scientists, not theologians.”

  “Ah,” she said warily. “I’ll find ’em.”

  They sat in the wide clear morning, with the sun glittering placidly on the harbor, and each of them might have spoken next, because both of them were burning with questions; but then they heard a voice from farther along the harbor front, toward the casino gardens.

  Both of them looked there, startled. It was a child’s voice, but there was no one in sight.

  Will said to Lyra quietly, “How long did you say you’d been here?”

  “Three days, four—I lost count. I never seen anyone. There’s no one here. I looked almost everywhere.”

  But there was. Two children, one a girl of Lyra’s age and the other a younger boy, came out of one of the streets leading down to the harbor. They were carrying baskets, and both had red hair. They were about a hundred yards away when they saw Will and Lyra at the café table.

  Pantalaimon changed from a goldfinch to a mouse and ran up Lyra’s arm to the pocket of her shirt. He’d seen that these new children were like Will: neither of them had a dæmon visible.

  The two children wandered up and sat at a table nearby.

  “You from Ci’gazze?” the girl said.

  Will shook his head.

  “From Sant’Elia?”

  “No,” said Lyra. “We’re from somewhere else.”

  The girl nodded. This was a reasonable reply.

  “What’s happening?” said Will. “Where are the grownups?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t the Specters come to your city?” she said.

  “No,” Will said. “We just got here. We don’t know about Specters. What is this city called?”

  “Ci’gazze,” the girl said suspiciously. “Cittàgazze, all right.”

  “Cittàgazze,” Lyra repeated. “Ci’gazze. Why do the grownups have to leave?”

  “Because of the Specters,” the girl said with weary scorn. “What’s your name?”

  “Lyra. And he’s Will. What’s yours?”

  “Angelica. My brother is Paolo.”

  “Where’ve you come from?”

  “Up the hills. There was a big fog and storm and everyone was frightened, so we all run up in the hills. Then when the fog cleared, the grownups could see with telescopes that the city was full of Specters, so they couldn’t come back. But the kids, we ain’ afraid of Specters, all right. There’s more kids coming down. They be here later, but we’re first.”

  “Us and Tullio,” said little Paolo proudly.

  “Who’s Tullio?”

  Angelica was cross: Paolo shouldn’t have mentioned him, but the secret was out now.

  “Our big brother,” she said. “He ain’ with us. He’s hiding till he can … He’s just hiding.”

  “He’s gonna get—” Paolo began, but Angelica smacked him hard, and he shut his mouth at once, pressing his quivering lips together.

  “What did you say about the city?” said Will. “It’s full of Specters?”

  “Yeah, Ci’gazze, Sant’Elia, all cities. The Specters go where the people are. Where you from?”

  “Winchester,” said Will.

  “I never heard of it. They ain’ got Specters there?”

  “No. I can’t see any here, either.”

  “ ’Course not!” she crowed. “You ain’ grown up! When we grow up, we see Specters.”

  “I ain’ afraid of Specters, all right,” the little boy said, thrusting forward his grubby chin. “Kill the buggers.”

  “En’t the grownups going to come back at all?” said Lyra.

  “Yeah, in a few days,” said Angelica. “When the Specters go somewhere else. We like it when the Specters come, ’cause we can run about in the city, do what we like, all right.”

  “But what do the grownups think the Specters will do to them?” Will said.

  “Well, when a Specter catch a grownup, that’s bad to see. They eat the life out of them there and then, all right. I don’t want to be grown up, for sure. At first they know it’s happening, and they’re afraid; they cry and cry. They try and look away and pretend it ain’ happening, but it is. It’s too late. And no one ain’ gonna go near them, they on they own. Then they get pale and they stop moving. They still alive, but it’s like they been eaten from inside. You look in they eyes, you see the back of they heads. Ain’ nothing there.”

  The girl turned to her brother and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Me and Paolo’s going to look for ice creams,” she said. “You want to come and find some?”

  “No,” said Will, “we got something else to do.”

  “Good-bye, then,” she said, and Paolo said, “Kill the Specters!”

  “Good-bye,” said Lyra.

  As soon as Angelica and the little boy had vanished, Pantalaimon appeared from Lyra’s pocket, his mouse head ruffled and bright-eyed.

  He said to Will, “They don’t know about this window you found.”

  It was the first time Will had heard him speak, and he was almost more startled by that than by anything else he’d seen so far. Lyra laughed at his astonishment.

  “He—but he spoke! Do all dæmons talk?” Will said.

  “ ’Course they do!” said Lyra. “Did you think he was just a pet?”

  Will rubbed his hair and blinked. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said, addressing Pantalaimon. “You’re right, I think. They don’t know about it.”

  “So we better be careful how we go through,” Pantalaimon said.

  It was strange for only a moment, talking to a mouse. Then it was no more strange than talking into a telephone, because he was really talking to Lyra. But the mouse was separate; there was something of Lyra in his expression, but something else too. It was too hard to work out, when there were so many strange things happening at once. Will tried to bring his thoughts together.

  “You got to find some other clothes first,” he said to Lyra, “before you go into my Oxford.”

  “Why?” she said stubbornly.

  “Because you can’t go and talk to people in my world looking like that; they wouldn’t let you near them. You got to look as if you fit in. You got to go about camouflaged. I know, see. I’ve been doing it for years. You better listen to me or you’ll get caught, and if they find out where you come from, and the window, and everything … Well, this is a good hiding place, this world. See, I’m … I got to hide from some men. This is the best hiding place I could dream of, and I don’t want it found out. So I don’t want you giving it away by looking out of place or as if you don’t belong. I got my own things to do in Oxford, and if you give me away, I’ll kill you.”

  She swallowed. The alethiometer never lied: this boy was a murderer, and if he’d killed before, he could kill her, too. She nodded seriously, and she meant it.

  “All right,” she said.

  Pantalaimon had become a lemur, and was gazing at him with disconcerting wide eyes. Will stared back, and the dæmon became a mouse once more and crept into Lyra’s pocket.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, while we’re here, we’ll pretend to these other kids that we just come from somewhere in their world. It’s good there aren’t any grownups about. We can just come and go and no one’ll notice. But in my world, you got to do as I say. And the first thing is you better wash yourself. You need to look clean, or you’ll stand out. We got to be camouflaged everywhere we go. We got to look as if we belong there so naturally that people don’t even notice us. So go and wash your hair for a start. There’s some shampoo in the bathroom. Then we’ll go and find some different clothes.”

  “I dunno how,” she said. “I never washed my hair. The housekeeper done it at Jordan, and then I
never needed to after that.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to work it out,” he said. “Wash yourself all over. In my world people are clean.”

  “Hmm,” said Lyra, and went upstairs. A ferocious rat face glared at him over her shoulder, but he looked back coldly.

  Part of him wanted to wander about this sunny silent morning exploring the city, and another part trembled with anxiety for his mother, and another part was still numb with shock at the death he’d caused. And overhanging them all was the task he had to do. But it was good to keep busy, so while he waited for Lyra, he cleaned the working surfaces in the kitchen, and washed the floor, and emptied the rubbish into the bin he found in the alley outside.

  Then he took the green leather writing case from his tote bag and looked at it longingly. As soon as he’d shown Lyra how to get through the window into his Oxford, he’d come back and look at what was inside; but in the meanwhile, he tucked it under the mattress of the bed he’d slept in. In this world, it was safe.

  When Lyra came down, clean and wet, they left to look for some clothes for her. They found a department store, shabby like everywhere else, with clothes in styles that looked a little old-fashioned to Will’s eye, but they found Lyra a tartan skirt and a green sleeveless blouse with a pocket for Pantalaimon. She refused to wear jeans, refused even to believe Will when he told her that most girls did.

  “They’re trousers,” she said. “I’m a girl. Don’t be stupid.”

  He shrugged; the tartan skirt looked unremarkable, which was the main thing. Before they left, Will dropped some coins in the till behind the counter.

  “What you doing?” she said.

  “Paying. You have to pay for things. Don’t they pay for things in your world?”

  “They don’t in this one! I bet those other kids en’t paying for a thing.”

  “They might not, but I do.”

  “If you start behaving like a grownup, the Specters’ll get you,” she said, but she didn’t know whether she could tease him yet or whether she should be afraid of him.

  In the daylight, Will could see how ancient the buildings in the heart of the city were, and how near to ruin some of them had come. Holes in the road had not been repaired; windows were broken; plaster was peeling. And yet there had once been a beauty and grandeur about this place. Through carved archways they could see spacious courtyards filled with greenery, and there were great buildings that looked like palaces, for all that the steps were cracked and the doorframes loose from the walls. It looked as if rather than knock a building down and build a new one, the citizens of Ci’gazze preferred to patch it up indefinitely.