The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

They climbed on, finding the going easy on the rock road, and when they reached the top of the ridge, they stopped and looked back.

“Will,” she said, “supposing we don’t find them?”

“I’m sure we will. What I’m wondering is what my dæmon will be like.”

“You saw her. And I picked her up,” Lyra said, blushing, because of course it was a gross violation of manners to touch something so private as someone else’s dæmon. It was forbidden not only by politeness, but by something deeper than that—something like shame. A quick glance at Will’s warm cheeks showed that he knew that just as well as she did.

They walked on side by side, suddenly shy with each other. But Will, not put off by being shy, said, “When does your dæmon stop changing shape?”

“About . . . I suppose about our age, or a bit older. Maybe more sometimes. We used to talk about Pan settling, him and me. We used to wonder what he’d be—”

“Don’t people have any idea?”

“Not when they’re young. As you grow up you start thinking, well, they might be this or they might be that . . . And usually they end up something that fits. I mean something like your real nature. Like if your dæmon’s a dog, that means you like doing what you’re told, and knowing who’s boss, and following orders, and pleasing people who are in charge. A lot of servants are people whose dæmons are dogs. So it helps to know what you’re like and to find what you’d be good at. How do people in your world know what they’re like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about my world. All I know is keeping secret and quiet and hidden, so I don’t know much about . . . grownups, and friends. Or lovers. I think it’d be difficult having a dæmon because everybody would know so much about you just by looking. I like to keep secret and stay out of sight.”

“Then maybe your dæmon’d be an animal that’s good at hiding. Or one of those animals that looks like another—a butterfly that looks like a wasp, for disguise. They must have creatures like that in your world, because we have, and we’re so much alike.”

They walked on together in a friendly silence. All around them the wide, clear morning lay limpid in the hollows and pearly blue in the warm air above. As far as the eye could see, the great savanna rolled, brown, gold, buff-green, shimmering toward the horizon, and empty. They might have been the only people in the world.

“But it’s not empty really,” Lyra said.

“You mean that man?”

“No. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I can see shadows in the grass . . . maybe birds,” Will said.

He was following the little darting movements here and there. He found it easier to see the shadows if he didn’t look at them. They were more willing to show themselves to the corners of his eye, and when he said so to Lyra, she said, “It’s negative capability.”

“What’s that?”

“The poet Keats said it first. Dr. Malone knows. It’s how I read the alethiometer. It’s how you use the knife, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. But I was just thinking that they might be the dæmons.”

“So was I, but . . .”

She put her finger to her lips. He nodded.

“Look,” he said, “there’s one of those fallen trees.”

It was Mary’s climbing tree. They went up to it carefully, keeping an eye on the grove in case another one should fall. In the calm morning, with only a faint breeze stirring the leaves, it seemed impossible that a mighty thing like this should ever topple, but here it was.

The vast trunk, supported in the grove by its torn-up roots and out on the grass by the mass of branches, was high above their heads. Some of those branches, crushed and broken, were themselves as big around as the biggest trees Will had ever seen; the crown of the tree, tight-packed with boughs that still looked sturdy, leaves that were still green, towered like a ruined palace into the mild air.

Suddenly Lyra gripped Will’s arm.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Don’t look. I’m sure they’re up there. I saw something move and I swear it was Pan . . .”

Her hand was warm. He was more aware of that than of the great mass of leaves and branches above them. Pretending to gaze vacantly at the horizon, he let his attention wander upward into the confused mass of green, brown, and blue, and there—she was right!—there was a something that was not the tree. And beside it, another.

“Walk away,” Will said under his breath. “We’ll go somewhere else and see if they follow us.”

“Suppose they don’t . . . But yes, all right,” Lyra whispered back.

They pretended to look all around; they set their hands on one of the branches resting on the ground, as if they were intending to climb; they pretended to change their minds, by shaking their heads and walking away.

“I wish we could look behind,” Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away.

“Just go on walking. They can see us, and they won’t get lost. They’ll come to us when they want to.”

They stepped off the black road and into the knee-high grass, swishing their legs through the stems, watching the insects hovering, darting, fluttering, skimming, hearing the million-voiced chorus chirrup and scrape.

“What are you going to do, Will?” Lyra said quietly after they’d walked some way in silence.

“Well, I’ve got to go home,” he said.

She thought he sounded unsure, though. She hoped he sounded unsure.

“But they might still be after you,” she said. “Those men.”

“We’ve seen worse than them, after all.”

“Yes, I suppose . . . But I wanted to show you Jordan College, and the Fens. I wanted us to . . .”

“Yeah,” he said, “and I wanted . . . It would be good to go to Cittàgazze again, even. It was a beautiful place, and if the Specters are all gone . . . But there’s my mother. I’ve got to go back and look after her. I just left her with Mrs. Cooper, and it’s not fair on either of them.”

“But it’s not fair on you to have to do that.”

“No,” he said, “but that’s a different sort of not fair. That’s just like an earthquake or a rainstorm. It might not be fair, but no one’s to blame. But if I just leave my mother with an old lady who isn’t very well herself, then that’s a different kind of not fair. That would be wrong. I’ve just got to go home. But probably it’s going to be difficult to go back as we were. Probably the secret’s out now. I don’t suppose Mrs. Cooper will have been able to look after her, not if my mother’s in one of those times when she gets frightened of things. So she’s probably had to get help, and when I go back, I’ll be made to go into some kind of institution.”

“No! Like an orphanage?”

“I think that’s what they do. I just don’t know. I’ll hate it.”

“You could escape with the knife, Will! You could come to my world!”

“I still belong there, where I can be with her. When I’m grown up I’ll be able to look after her properly, in my own house. No one can interfere then.”

“D’you think you’ll get married?”

He was quiet for a long time. She knew he was thinking, though.

“I can’t see that far ahead,” he said. “It would have to be someone who understands about . . . I don’t think there’s anyone like that in my world. Would you get married?”

“Me too,” she said. “Not to anyone in my world, I shouldn’t think.”

They walked on steadily, wandering toward the horizon. They had all the time in the world: all the time the world had.

After a while Lyra said, “You will keep the knife, won’t you? So you could visit my world?”

“Of course. I certainly wouldn’t give it to anyone else, ever.”

“Don’t look—” she said, not altering her pace. “There they are again. On the left.”

“They are following us,” said Will, delighted.

“Shh!”

“I thought they would. Okay, we’ll just pretend now, we’ll just wander along as if we’re looking for them, and we’ll look in all sorts of stupid places.”