“Where did you go, in your wanderings?” she said.
“Through many worlds,” said Pantalaimon. “Everywhere we found a window, we went through. There are more windows than we thought.”
“And you saw – ”
“Yes,” said Kirjava, “we looked closely, and we saw what was happening.”
“We saw many other things. We met an angel,” said Pantalaimon quickly. “And we saw the world where the little people come from, the Gallivespians. There are big people there, too, who try and kill them.”
They told the witch more of what they’d seen, and they were trying to distract her, and she knew it; but she let them talk, because of the love each one had for the other’s voice.
But eventually they ran out of things to tell her, and they fell silent. The only sound was the gentle, endless whisper of the leaves, until Serafina Pekkala said:
“You have been keeping away from Will and Lyra to punish them. I know why you’re doing that; my Kaisa did just the same after I came through the desolate barrens. But he came to me eventually, because we loved each other still. And they will need you soon to help them do what has to be done next. Because you have to tell them what you know.”
Pantalaimon cried aloud, a pure, cold owl cry, a sound never heard in that world before. In nests and burrows for a long way around, and wherever any small night creature was hunting or grazing or scavenging, a new and unforgettable fear came into being.
Serafina watched from close by, and felt nothing but compassion until she looked at Will’s daemon, Kirjava the nightingale. She remembered talking to the witch Ruta Skadi, who had asked, after seeing Will only once, if Serafina had looked into his eyes; and Serafina had replied that she had not dared to. This little brown bird was radiating an implacable ferocity as palpable as heat, and Serafina was afraid of it.
Finally Pantalaimon’s wild screaming died away, and Kirjava said:
“And we have to tell them.”
“Yes, you do,” said the witch gently.
Gradually the ferocity left the gaze of the little brown bird, and Serafina could look at her again. She saw a desolate sadness in its place.
“There is a ship coming,” Serafina said. “I left it to fly here and find you. I came with the gyptians, all the way from our world. They will be here in another day or so.”
The two birds sat close, and in a moment they had changed their forms, becoming two doves.
Serafina went on: “This may be the last time you fly. I can see a little ahead; I can see that you will both be able to climb this high as long as there are trees this size; but I think you will not be birds when your forms settle. Take in all that you can, and remember it well. I know that you and Lyra and Will are going to think hard and painfully, and I know you will make the best choice. But it is yours to make, and no one else’s.”
They didn’t speak. She took her branch of cloud‑pine and lifted away from the towering treetops, circling high above, feeling on her skin the coolness of the breeze and the tingle of the starlight and the benevolent sifting of that Dust she had never seen.
She flew down to the village once more and went silently into the woman’s house. She knew nothing about Mary except that she came from the same world as Will, and that her part in the events was crucial. Whether she was fierce or friendly, Serafina had no way of telling; but she had to wake Mary up without startling her, and there was a spell for that.
She sat on the floor at the woman’s head and watched through half‑closed eyes, breathing in and out in time with her. Presently her half‑vision began to show her the pale forms that Mary was seeing in her dreams, and she adjusted her mind to resonate with them, as if she were tuning a string. Then with a further effort Serafina herself stepped in among them. Once she was there, she could speak to Mary, and she did so with the instant easy affection that we sometimes feel for people we meet in dreams.
A moment later they were talking together in a murmured rush of which Mary later remembered nothing, and walking through a silly landscape of reed beds and electrical transformers. It was time for Serafina to take charge.
“In a few moments,” she said, “you’ll wake up. Don’t be alarmed. You’ll find me beside you. I’m waking you like this so you’ll know it’s quite safe and there’s nothing to hurt you. And then we can talk properly.”
She withdrew, taking the dream‑Mary with her, until she found herself in the house again, cross‑legged on the earthen floor, with Mary’s eyes glittering as they looked at her.
“You must be the witch,” Mary whispered.
“I am. My name is Serafina Pekkala. What are you called?”
“Mary Malone. I’ve never been woken so quietly. Am I awake?”
“Yes. We must talk together, and dream talk is hard to control, and harder to remember. It’s better to talk awake. Do you prefer to stay inside, or will you walk with me in the moonlight?”
“I’ll come,” said Mary, sitting up and stretching. “Where are the others?”
“Asleep under the tree.”
They moved out of the house and past the tree with its curtain of all‑concealing leaves, and walked down to the river.
Mary watched Serafina Pekkala with a mixture of wariness and admiration: she had never seen a human form so slender and graceful. She seemed younger than Mary herself, though Lyra had said she was hundreds of years old; the only hint of age came in her expression, which was full of a complicated sadness.
They sat on the bank over the silver‑black water, and Serafina told her that she had spoken to the children’s daemons.
“They went looking for them today,” Mary said, “but something else happened. Will’s never seen his daemon. He didn’t know for certain that he had one.”
“Well, he has. And so have you.”
Mary stared at her.
“If you could see him,” Serafina went on, “you would see a black bird with red legs and a bright yellow beak, slightly curved. A bird of the mountains.”
“An Alpine chough… How can you see him?”
“With my eyes half‑closed, I can see him. If we had time, I could teach you to see him, too, and to see the daemons of others in your world. It’s strange for us to think you can’t see them.”
Then she told Mary what she had said to the daemons, and what it meant.
“And the daemons will have to tell them?” Mary said.
“I thought of waking them to tell them myself. I thought of telling you and letting you have the responsibility. But I saw their daemons, and I knew that would be best.”
“They’re in love.”
“I know.”
“They’ve only just discovered it…”
Mary tried to take in all the implications of what Serafina had told her, but it was too hard.
After a minute or so Mary said, “Can you see Dust?”
“No, I’ve never seen it, and until the wars began, we had never heard of it.”
Mary took the spyglass from her pocket and handed it to the witch. Serafina put it to her eye and gasped.
“That is Dust… It’s beautiful!”
“Turn to look back at the shelter tree.”
Serafina did and exclaimed again. “They did this?” she said.
“Something happened today, or yesterday if it’s after midnight,” Mary said, trying to find the words to explain, and remembering her vision of the Dust flow as a great river like the Mississippi. “Something tiny but crucial… If you wanted to divert a mighty river into a different course, and all you had was a single pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this . Something like that happened yesterday. I don’t know what it was. They saw each other differently, or something… Until then, they hadn’t felt like that, but suddenly they did. And then the Dust was attracted to them, very powerfully, and it stopped flowing the other way.”