The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

“Will,” she said, “I have come to ask your help.”

“My help? How can I help you?”

“I want you to show me how to close the openings that the knife makes.”

Will swallowed. “I’ll show you,” he said, “and in return, can you help us?”

“Not in the way you want. I can see what you’ve been talking about. Your sorrow has left traces in the air. This is no comfort, but believe me, every single being who knows of your dilemma wishes things could be otherwise; but there are fates that even the most powerful have to submit to. There is nothing I can do to help you change the way things are.”

“Why—” Lyra began, and found her voice weak and trembling—“why can’t I read the alethiometer anymore? Why can’t I even do that? That was the one thing I could do really well, and it’s just not there anymore—it just vanished as if it had never come . . .”

“You read it by grace,” said Xaphania, looking at her, “and you can regain it by work.”

“How long will that take?”

“A lifetime.”

“That long . . .”

“But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you’ve gained it, it will never leave you.”

“You mean a full lifetime, don’t you?” Lyra whispered. “A whole long life? Not . . . not just . . . a few years . . .”

“Yes, I do,” said the angel.

“And must all the windows be closed?” said Will. “Every single one?”

“Understand this,” said Xaphania: “Dust is not a constant. There’s not a fixed quantity that has always been the same. Conscious beings make Dust—they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.

“And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious . . . Then they will renew enough to replace what is lost through one window. So there could be one left open.”

Will trembled with excitement, and his mind leapt to a single point: to a new window in the air between his world and Lyra’s. And it would be their secret, and they could go through whenever they chose, and live for a while in each other’s worlds, not living fully in either, so their dæmons would keep their health; and they could grow up together and maybe, much later on, they might have children, who would be secret citizens of two worlds; and they could bring all the learning of one world into the other, they could do all kinds of good—

But Lyra was shaking her head.

“No,” she said in a quiet wail, “we can’t, Will—”

And he suddenly knew her thought, and in the same anguished tone, he said, “No, the dead—”

“We must leave it open for them! We must!”

“Yes, otherwise . . .”

“And we must make enough Dust for them, Will, and keep the window open—”

She was trembling. She felt very young as he held her to his side.

“And if we do,” he said shakily, “if we live our lives properly and think about them as we do, then there’ll be something to tell the harpies about as well. We’ve got to tell people that, Lyra.”

“The true stories, yes,” she said, “the true stories the harpies want to hear in exchange. Yes. So if people live their whole lives and they’ve got nothing to tell about it when they’ve finished, then they’ll never leave the world of the dead. We’ve got to tell them that, Will.”

“Alone, though . . .”

“Yes,” she said, “alone.”

And at the word alone, Will felt a great wave of rage and despair moving outward from a place deep within him, as if his mind were an ocean that some profound convulsion had disturbed. All his life he’d been alone, and now he must be alone again, and this infinitely precious blessing that had come to him must be taken away almost at once. He felt the wave build higher and steeper to darken the sky, he felt the crest tremble and begin to spill, he felt the great mass crashing down with the whole weight of the ocean behind it against the iron-bound coast of what had to be. And he found himself gasping and shaking and crying aloud with more anger and pain than he had ever felt in his life, and he found Lyra just as helpless in his arms. But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyra’s had moved them a single inch.

How long his rage lasted, he had no idea. But eventually it had to subside, and the ocean was a little calmer after the convulsion. The waters were still agitated, and perhaps they would never be truly calm again, but the great force had gone.

They turned to the angel and saw she had understood, and that she felt as sorrowful as they did. But she could see farther than they could, and there was a calm hope in her expression, too.

Will swallowed hard and said, “All right. I’ll show you how to close a window. But I’ll have to open one first, and make another Specter. I never knew about them, or else I’d have been more careful.”

“We shall take care of the Specters,” said Xaphania.

Will took the knife and faced the sea. To his surprise, his hands were quite steady. He cut a window into his own world, and they found themselves looking at a great factory or chemical plant, where complicated pipe work ran between buildings and storage tanks, where lights glowed at every corner, where wisps of steam rose into the air.

“It’s strange to think that angels don’t know the way to do this,” Will said.

“The knife was a human invention.”

“And you’re going to close them all except one,” Will said. “All except the one from the world of the dead.”

“Yes, that is a promise. But it is conditional, and you know the condition.”

“Yes, we do. Are there many windows to close?”

“Thousands. There is the terrible abyss made by the bomb, and there is the great opening Lord Asriel made out of his own world. They must both be closed, and they will. But there are many smaller openings, too, some deep under the earth, some high in the air, which came about in other ways.”

“Baruch and Balthamos told me that they used openings like that to travel between the worlds. Will angels no longer be able to do that? Will you be confined to one world as we are?”

“No; we have other ways of traveling.”

“The way you have,” Lyra said, “is it possible for us to learn?”

“Yes. You could learn to do it, as Will’s father did. It uses the faculty of what you call imagination. But that does not mean making things up. It is a form of seeing.”

“Not real traveling, then,” said Lyra. “Just pretend . . .”

“No,” said Xaphania, “nothing like pretend. Pretending is easy. This way is hard, but much truer.”

“And is it like the alethiometer?” said Will. “Does it take a whole lifetime to learn?”

“It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for. But you have a friend who has already taken the first steps, and who could help you.”

Will had no idea who that could be, and at that moment he wasn’t in the mood to ask.

“I see,” he said, sighing. “And will we see you again? Will we ever speak to an angel once we go back to our own worlds?”

“I don’t know,” said Xaphania. “But you should not spend your time waiting.”

“And I should break the knife,” said Will.

“Yes.”

While they had been speaking, the window had been open beside them. The lights were glowing in the factory, the work was going on; machines were turning, chemicals were combining, people were producing goods and earning their livings. That was the world where Will belonged.

“Well, I’ll show you what to do,” he said.