The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

They looked down. On the horizon there was the blue gleam of the sea. A broad, slow-moving river wound through rich grassland in the middle distance, and at the foot of the long slope, among copses of small trees and rows of vegetables, stood a village of thatched houses. More creatures like these moved about among the houses, or tended crops, or worked among the trees.

“Now ride again,” said the leader.

There wasn’t far to go. Will and Lyra climbed up once more, and the other creatures looked closely at their balance and checked the stirrups with their trunks, as if to make sure they were safe.

Then they set off, beating the road with their lateral limbs, and urging themselves forward down the slope until they were moving at a terrific pace. Will and Lyra clung tight with hands and knees. They felt the air whip past their faces, flinging their hair back and pressing on their eyeballs. The thundering of the wheels, the rush of the grassland on either side, the sure and powerful lean into the broad curve ahead, the clearheaded rapture of speed—the creatures loved this, and Will and Lyra felt their joy and laughed in happy response.

They stopped in the center of the village, and the others, who had seen them coming, gathered around raising their trunks and speaking words of welcome.

And then Lyra cried, “Dr. Malone!”

Mary had come out of one of the huts, her faded blue shirt, her stocky figure, her warm, ruddy cheeks both strange and familiar.

Lyra ran and embraced her, and the woman hugged her tight, and Will stood back, careful and doubtful.

Mary kissed Lyra warmly and then came forward to welcome Will. And then came a curious little mental dance of sympathy and awkwardness, which took place in a second or less.

Moved by compassion for the state they were in, Mary first meant to embrace him as well as Lyra. But Mary was grown up, and Will was nearly grown, and she could see that that kind of response would have made a child of him, because while she might have embraced a child, she would never have done that to a man she didn’t know; so she drew back mentally, wanting above all to honor this friend of Lyra’s and not cause him to lose face.

So instead she held out her hand and he shook it, and a current of understanding and respect passed between them, so powerful that it became liking at once and each of them felt that they had made a lifelong friend, as indeed they had.

“This is Will,” said Lyra, “he’s from your world—remember, I told you about him—”

“I’m Mary Malone,” she said, “and you’re hungry, the pair of you, you look half-starved.”

She turned to the creature by her side and spoke some of those singing, hooting sounds, moving her arm as she did so.

At once the creatures moved away, and some of them brought cushions and rugs from the nearest house and laid them on the firm soil under a tree nearby, whose dense leaves and low-hanging branches gave a cool and fragrant shade.

And as soon as they were comfortable, their hosts brought smooth wooden bowls brimming with milk, which had a faint lemony astringency and was wonderfully refreshing; and small nuts like hazels, but with a richer buttery taste; and salad plucked fresh from the soil, sharp, peppery leaves mingled with soft, thick ones that oozed a creamy sap, and little cherry-sized roots tasting like sweet carrots.

But they couldn’t eat much. It was too rich. Will wanted to do justice to their generosity, but the only thing he could easily swallow, apart from the drink, was some flat, slightly scorched floury bread like chapatis or tortillas. It was plain and nourishing, and that was all Will could cope with. Lyra tried some of everything, but like Will she soon found that a little was quite enough.

Mary managed to avoid asking any questions. These two had passed through an experience that had marked them deeply; they didn’t want to talk about it yet.

So she answered their questions about the mulefa, and told them briefly how she had arrived in this world; and then she left them under the shade of the tree, because she could see their eyelids drooping and their heads nodding.

“You don’t have to do anything now but sleep,” she said.

The afternoon air was warm and still, and the shade of the tree was drowsy and murmurous with crickets. Less than five minutes after they’d swallowed the last of the drink, both Will and Lyra were fast asleep.

They are of two sexes? said Atal, surprised. But how can you tell?

It’s easy, said Mary. Their bodies are different shapes. They move differently.

They are not much smaller than you. But they have less sraf. When will that come to them?

I don’t know, Mary said. I suppose sometime soon. I don’t know when it happens to us.

No wheels, said Atal sympathetically.

They were weeding the vegetable garden. Mary had made a hoe to save having to bend down; Atal used her trunk, so their conversation was intermittent.

But you knew they were coming, said Atal.

Yes.

Was it the sticks that told you?

No, said Mary, blushing. She was a scientist; it was bad enough to have to admit to consulting the I Ching, but this was even more embarrassing. It was a night picture, she confessed.

The mulefa had no single word for dream. They dreamed vividly, though, and took their dreams very seriously.

You don’t like night pictures, Atal said.

Yes, I do. But I didn’t believe them until now. I saw the boy and the girl so clearly, and a voice told me to prepare for them.

What sort of voice? How did it speak if you couldn’t see it?

It was hard for Atal to imagine speech without the trunk movements that clarified and defined it. She’d stopped in the middle of a row of beans and faced Mary with fascinated curiosity.

Well, I did see it, said Mary. It was a woman, or a female wise one, like us, like my people. But very old and yet not old at all.

Wise one was what the mulefa called their leaders. She saw that Atal was looking intensely interested.

How could she be old and also not old? said Atal.

It is a make-like, said Mary.

Atal swung her trunk, reassured.

Mary went on as best she could: She told me that I should expect the children, and when they would appear, and where. But not why. I must just look after them.

They are hurt and tired, said Atal. Will they stop the sraf leaving?

Mary looked up uneasily. She knew without having to check through the spyglass that the shadow particles were streaming away faster than ever.

I hope so, she said. But I don’t know how.

In the early evening, when the cooking fires were lit and the first stars were coming out, a group of strangers arrived. Mary was washing; she heard the thunder of their wheels and the agitated murmur of their talk, and hurried out of her house, drying herself.

Will and Lyra had been asleep all afternoon, and they were just stirring now, hearing the noise. Lyra sat up groggily to see Mary talking to five or six of the mulefa, who were surrounding her, clearly excited; but whether they were angry or joyful, she couldn’t tell.

Mary saw her and broke away.

“Lyra,” she said, “something’s happened—they’ve found something they can’t explain and it’s . . . I don’t know what it is . . . I’ve got to go and look. It’s an hour or so away. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Help yourself to anything you need from my house—I can’t stop, they’re too anxious—”

“All right,” said Lyra, still dazed from her long sleep.

Mary looked under the tree. Will was rubbing his eyes.

“I really won’t be too long,” she said. “Atal will stay with you.”

The leader was impatient. Mary swiftly threw her bridle and stirrups over his back, excusing herself for being clumsy, and mounted at once. They wheeled and turned and drove away into the dusk.

They set off in a new direction, along the ridge above the coast to the north. Mary had never ridden in the dark before, and she found the speed even more alarming than by day. As they climbed, she could see the glitter of the moon on the sea far off to the left, and its silver-sepia light seemed to envelop her in a cool, skeptical wonder. The wonder was in her, and the skepticism was in the world, and the coolness was in both.

She looked up from time to time and touched the spyglass in her pocket, but she couldn’t use it till they’d stopped moving. And these mulefa were moving urgently, with the air of not wanting to stop for anything. After an hour’s hard riding they swung inland, leaving the stone road and moving slowly along a trail of beaten earth that ran between knee-high grass past a stand of wheel trees and up toward a ridge. The landscape glowed under the moon: wide, bare hills with occasional little gullies, where streams trickled down among the trees that clustered there.