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What Serafina taught Mary to do now was similar to that. She had to hold on to her normal way of looking while simultaneously slipping into the trancelike open dreaming in which she could see the Shadows. But now she had to hold both ways together, the everyday and the trance, just as you have to look in two directions at once to see the 3-D pictures among the dots.
And just as it happens with the dot pictures, she suddenly got it.
“Ah!” she cried, and reached for Serafina’s arm to steady herself, for there on the iron fence around the parkland sat a bird: glossy black, with red legs and a curved yellow bill: an Alpine chough, just as Serafina had described. It—he—was only a foot or two away, watching her with his head slightly cocked, for all the world as though he was amused.
But she was so surprised that her concentration slipped, and he vanished.
“You’ve done it once, and next time it will be easier,” Serafina said. “When you are in your world, you will learn to see the dæmons of other people, too, in the same way. They won’t see yours or Will’s, though, unless you teach them as I’ve taught you.”
“Yes . . . Oh, this is extraordinary. Yes!”
Mary thought: Lyra talked to her dæmon, didn’t she? Would she hear this bird as well as see him? She walked on, glowing with anticipation.
Ahead of them Will was cutting a window, and he and Lyra waited for the women to pass through so that he could close it again.
“D’you know where we are?” Will said.
Mary looked around. The road they were in now, in her world, was quiet and tree-lined, with big Victorian houses in shrub-filled gardens.
“Somewhere in north Oxford,” Mary said. “Not far from my flat, as a matter of fact, though I don’t know exactly which road this is.”
“I want to go to the Botanic Garden,” Lyra said.
“All right. I suppose that’s about fifteen minutes’ walk. This way . . .”
Mary tried the double-seeing again. She found it easier this time, and there was the chough, with her in her own world, perching on a branch that hung low over the pavement. To see what would happen, she held out her hand, and he stepped onto it without hesitation. She felt the slight weight, the tight grip of the claws on her finger, and gently moved him onto her shoulder. He settled into place as if he’d been there all her life.
Well, he has, she thought, and moved on.
There was not much traffic in the High Street, and when they turned down the steps opposite Magdalen College toward the gate of the Botanic Garden, they were completely alone. There was an ornate gateway, with stone seats inside it, and while Mary and Serafina sat there, Will and Lyra climbed over the iron fence into the garden itself. Their dæmons slipped through the bars and flowed ahead of them into the garden.
“It’s this way,” said Lyra, tugging at Will’s hand.
She led him past a pool with a fountain under a wide-spreading tree, and then struck off to the left between beds of plants toward a huge many-trunked pine. There was a massive stone wall with a doorway in it, and in the farther part of the garden, the trees were younger and the planting less formal. Lyra led him almost to the end of the garden, over a little bridge, to a wooden seat under a spreading, low-branched tree.
“Yes!” she said. “I hoped so much, and here it is, just the same . . . Will, I used to come here in my Oxford and sit on this exact same bench whenever I wanted to be alone, just me and Pan. What I thought was that if you—maybe just once a year—if we could come here at the same time, just for an hour or something, then we could pretend we were close again—because we would be close, if you sat here and I sat just here in my world—”
“Yes,” he said, “as long as I live, I’ll come back. Wherever I am in the world, I’ll come back here—”
“On Midsummer Day,” she said. “At midday. As long as I live. As long as I live . . .”
He found himself unable to see, but he let the hot tears flow and just held her close.
“And if we—later on—” she was whispering shakily, “if we meet someone that we like, and if we marry them, then we must be good to them, and not make comparisons all the time and wish we were married to each other instead . . . But just keep up this coming here once a year, just for an hour, just to be together . . .”
They held each other tightly. Minutes passed; a waterbird on the river beside them stirred and called; the occasional car moved over Magdalen Bridge.
Finally they drew apart.
“Well,” said Lyra softly.
Everything about her in that moment was soft, and that was one of his favorite memories later on—her tense grace made tender by the dimness, her eyes and hands and especially her lips, infinitely soft. He kissed her again and again, and each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
Heavy and soft with love, they walked back to the gate. Mary and Serafina were waiting.
“Lyra—” Will said.
And she said, “Will.”
He cut a window into Cittàgazze. They were deep in the parkland around the great house, not far from the edge of the forest. He stepped through for the last time and looked down over the silent city, the tiled roofs gleaming in the moonlight, the tower above them, the lighted ship waiting out on the still sea.
He turned to Serafina and said as steadily as he could, “Thank you, Serafina Pekkala, for rescuing us at the belvedere, and for everything else. Please be kind to Lyra for as long as she lives. I love her more than anyone has ever been loved.”
In answer the witch queen kissed him on both cheeks. Lyra had been whispering to Mary, and then they, too, embraced, and first Mary and then Will stepped through the last window, back into their own world, in the shade of the trees of the Botanic Garden.
Being cheerful starts now, Will thought as hard as he could, but it was like trying to hold a fighting wolf still in his arms when it wanted to claw at his face and tear out his throat; nevertheless, he did it, and he thought no one could see the effort it cost him.
And he knew that Lyra was doing the same, and that the tightness and strain in her smile were the signs of it.
Nevertheless, she smiled.
One last kiss, rushed and clumsy so that they banged cheekbones, and a tear from her eye was transferred to his face; their two dæmons kissed farewell, and Pantalaimon flowed over the threshold and up into Lyra’s arms; and then Will began to close the window, and then it was done, the way was closed, Lyra was gone.
“Now—” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, but having to turn away from Mary all the same, “I’ve got to break the knife.”
He searched the air in the familiar way until he found a gap, and tried to bring to mind just what had happened before. He had been about to cut a way out of the cave, and Mrs. Coulter had suddenly and unaccountably reminded him of his mother, and the knife had broken because, he thought, it had at last met something it couldn’t cut, and that was his love for her.
So he tried it now, summoning an image of his mother’s face as he’d last seen her, fearful and distracted in Mrs. Cooper’s little hallway.
But it didn’t work. The knife cut easily through the air and opened into a world where they were having a rainstorm: heavy drops hurtled through, startling them both. He closed it again quickly and stood puzzled for a moment.
His dæmon knew what he should do, and said simply, “Lyra.”
Of course. He nodded, and with the knife in his right hand, he pressed with his left the spot where her tear still lay on his cheek.
And this time, with a wrenching crack, the knife shattered and the blade fell in pieces to the ground, to glitter on the stones that were still wet with the rain of another universe.
Will knelt to pick them up carefully, Kirjava with her cat eyes helping to find them all.
Mary was shouldering her rucksack.
“Well,” she said, “well, listen now, Will. We’ve hardly spoken, you and I . . . So we’re still strangers, largely. But Serafina Pekkala and I made a promise to each other, and I made a promise to Lyra just now, and even if I hadn’t made any other promises, I’d make a promise to you about the same thing, which is that if you’ll let me, I’ll be your friend for the rest of our lives. We’re both on our own, and I reckon we could both do with that sort of . . . What I mean to say is, there isn’t anyone else we can talk to about all this, except each other . . . And we’ve both got to get used to living with our dæmons, too . . . And we’re both in trouble, and if that doesn’t give us something in common, I don’t know what will.”
