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“Yeah,” she said, “well, I couldn’t have done it without Will. That’s Will over there, and that’s the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia. There’s so much to tell you, Roger . . .”
“Who’s Will? Where’s he come from?”
Lyra began to explain, quite unaware of how her voice changed, how she sat up straighter, and how even her eyes looked different when she told the story of her meeting with Will and the fight for the subtle knife. How could she have known? But Roger noticed, with the sad, voiceless envy of the unchanging dead.
Meanwhile, Will and the Gallivespians were a little way off, talking quietly.
“What are you going to do, you and the girl?” said Tialys.
“Open this world and let the ghosts out. That’s what I’ve got the knife for.”
He had never seen such astonishment on any faces, let alone those of people whose good opinion he valued. He’d acquired a great respect for these two. They sat silent for a few moments, and then Tialys said:
“This will undo everything. It’s the greatest blow you could strike. The Authority will be powerless after this.”
“How would they ever suspect it?” said the Lady. “It’ll come at them out of nowhere!”
“And what then?” Tialys asked Will.
“What then? Well, then we’ll have to get out ourselves, and find our dæmons, I suppose. Don’t think of then. It’s enough to think of now. I haven’t said anything to the ghosts, in case . . . in case it doesn’t work. So don’t you say anything, either. Now I’m going to find a world I can open, and those harpies are watching. So if you want to help, you can go and distract them while I do that.”
Instantly the Gallivespians urged their dragonflies up into the murk overhead, where the harpies were as thick as blowflies. Will watched the great insects charging fearlessly up at them, for all the world as if the harpies were flies and they could snap them up in their jaws, big as they were. He thought how much the brilliant creatures would love it when the sky was open and they could skim about over bright water again.
Then he took up the knife. And instantly there came back the words the harpies had thrown at him—taunts about his mother—and he stopped. He put the knife down, trying to clear his mind.
He tried again, with the same result. He could hear them clamoring above, despite the ferocity of the Gallivespians; there were so many of them that two fliers alone could do little to stop them.
Well, this was what it was going to be like. It wasn’t going to get any easier. So Will let his mind relax and become disengaged, and just sat there with the knife held loosely until he was ready again.
This time the knife cut straight into the air—and met rock. He had opened a window in this world into the underground of another. He closed it up and tried again.
And the same thing happened, though he knew it was a different world. He’d opened windows before to find himself above the ground of another world, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to find he was underground for a change, but it was disconcerting.
Next time he felt carefully in the way he’d learned, letting the tip search for the resonance that revealed a world where the ground was in the same place. But the touch was wrong wherever he felt. There was no world anywhere he could open into; everywhere he touched, it was solid rock.
Lyra had sensed that something was wrong, and she jumped up from her close conversation with Roger’s ghost to hurry to Will’s side.
“What is it?” she said quietly.
He told her, and added, “We’re going to have to move somewhere else before I can find a world we can open into. And those harpies aren’t going to let us. Have you told the ghosts what we were planning?”
“No. Only Roger, and I told him to keep it quiet. He’ll do whatever I tell him. Oh, Will, I’m scared, I’m so scared. We might not ever get out. Suppose we get stuck here forever?”
“The knife can cut through rock. If we need to, we’ll just cut a tunnel. It’ll take a long time, and I hope we won’t have to, but we could. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Course we could.”
But she thought he looked so ill, with his face drawn in pain and with dark rings around his eyes, and his hand was shaking, and his fingers were bleeding again; he looked as sick as she felt. They couldn’t go on much longer without their dæmons. She felt her own ghost quail in her body, and hugged her arms tightly, aching for Pan.
Meanwhile, the ghosts were pressing close, poor things, and the children especially couldn’t leave Lyra alone.
“Please,” said one girl, “you won’t forget us when you go back, will you?”
“No,” said Lyra, “never.”
“You’ll tell them about us?”
“I promise. What’s your name?”
But the poor girl was embarrassed and ashamed: she’d forgotten. She turned away, hiding her face, and a boy said:
“It’s better to forget, I reckon. I’ve forgotten mine. Some en’t been here long, and they still know who they are. There’s some kids been here thousands of years. They’re no older than us, and they’ve forgotten a whole lot. Except the sunshine. No one forgets that. And the wind.”
“Yeah,” said another, “tell us about that!”
And more and more of them clamored for Lyra to tell them about the things they remembered, the sun and the wind and the sky, and the things they’d forgotten, such as how to play; and she turned to Will and whispered, “What should I do, Will?”
“Tell them.”
“I’m scared. After what happened back there—the harpies—”
“Tell them the truth. We’ll keep the harpies off.”
She looked at him doubtfully. In fact, she felt sick with apprehension. She turned back to the ghosts, who were thronging closer and closer.
“Please!” they were whispering. “You’ve just come from the world! Tell us, tell us! Tell us about the world!”
There was a tree not far away—just a dead trunk with its bone white branches thrusting into the chilly gray air—and because Lyra was feeling weak, and because she didn’t think she could walk and talk at the same time, she made for that so as to have somewhere to sit. The crowd of ghosts jostled and shuffled aside to make room.
When she and Will were nearly at the tree, Tialys landed on Will’s hand and indicated that he should bend his head to listen.
“They’re coming back,” he said quietly, “those harpies. More and more of them. Have your knife ready. The Lady and I will hold them off as long as we can, but you might need to fight.”
Without worrying Lyra, Will loosened the knife in its sheath and kept his hand close to it. Tialys took off again, and then Lyra reached the tree and sat down on one of the thick roots.
So many dead figures clustered around, pressing hopefully, wide-eyed, that Will had to make them keep back and leave room; but he let Roger stay close, because he was gazing at Lyra, listening with a passion.
And Lyra began to talk about the world she knew.
She told them the story of how she and Roger had climbed over Jordan College roof and found the rook with the broken leg, and how they had looked after it until it was ready to fly again; and how they had explored the wine cellars, all thick with dust and cobwebs, and drunk some canary, or it might have been Tokay, she couldn’t tell, and how drunk they had been. And Roger’s ghost listened, proud and desperate, nodding and whispering, “Yes, yes! That’s just what happened, that’s true all right!”
Then she told them all about the great battle between the Oxford townies and the clayburners.
First she described the claybeds, making sure she got in everything she could remember, the wide ocher-colored washing pits, the dragline, the kilns like great brick beehives. She told them about the willow trees along the river’s edge, with their leaves all silvery underneath; and she told how when the sun shone for more than a couple of days, the clay began to split up into great handsome plates, with deep cracks between, and how it felt to squish your fingers into the cracks and slowly lever up a dried plate of mud, trying to keep it as big as you could without breaking it. Underneath it was still wet, ideal for throwing at people.
And she described the smells around the place, the smoke from the kilns, the rotten-leaf-mold smell of the river when the wind was in the southwest, the warm smell of the baking potatoes the clayburners used to eat; and the sound of the water slipping slickly over the sluices and into the washing pits; and the slow, thick suck as you tried to pull your foot out of the ground; and the heavy, wet slap of the gate paddles in the clay-thick water.
