The mulefa were full of gratitude. They never entered the water themselves, and only fished from the bank, taking care to keep their feet and wheels dry. Mary felt she had done something useful for them at last.
Later that night, after a scanty meal of sweet roots, they told her why they had been so anxious about the wheels. There had once been a time when the seedpods were plentiful, and when the world was rich and full of life, and the mulefa lived with their trees in perpetual joy. But something bad had happened many years ago – some virtue had gone out of the world – because despite every effort and all the love and attention the mulefa could give them, the wheel‑pod trees were dying.
Chapter 11. The Dragonflies
Ama climbed the path to the cave, bread and milk in the bag on her back, a heavy puzzlement in her heart. How in the world could she ever manage to reach the sleeping girl?
She came to the rock where the woman had told her to leave the food. She put it down, but she didn’t go straight home; she climbed a little farther, up past the cave and through the thick rhododendrons, and farther up still to where the trees thinned out and the rainbows began.
There she and her daemon played a game: they climbed up over the rock shelves and around the little green‑white cataracts, past the whirlpools and through the spectrum tinted spray, until her hair and her eyelids and his squirrel fur were beaded all over with a million tiny pearls of moisture. The game was to get to the top without wiping your eyes, despite the temptation, and soon the sunlight sparkled and fractured into red, yellow, green, blue, and all the colors in between, but she mustn’t brush her hand across to see better until she got right to the top, or the game would be lost.
Kulang, her daemon, sprang to a rock near the top of the little waterfall, and she knew he’d turn at once to make sure she didn’t brush the moisture off her eyelashes – except that he didn’t.
Instead, he clung there, gazing forward.
Ama wiped her eyes, because the game was canceled by the surprise her daemon was feeling. As she pulled herself up to look over the edge, she gasped and fell still, because looking down at her was the face of a creature she had never seen before: a bear, but immense, terrifying, four times the size of the brown bears in the forest, and ivory white, with a black nose and black eyes and claws the length of daggers. He was only an arm’s length away. She could see every separate hair on his head.
“Who’s that?” said the voice of a boy, and while Ama couldn’t understand the words, she caught the sense easily enough.
After a moment the boy appeared next to the bear: fierce‑looking, with frowning eyes and a jutting jaw. And was that a daemon beside him, bird‑shaped? But such a strange bird: unlike any she’d seen before. It flew to Kulang and spoke briefly: Friends. We shan’t hurt you .
The great white bear hadn’t moved at all.
“Come up,” said the boy, and again her daemon made sense of it for her.
Watching the bear with superstitious awe, Ama scrambled up beside the little waterfall and stood shyly on the rocks. Kulang became a butterfly and settled for a moment on her cheek, but left it to flutter around the other daemon, who sat still on the boy’s hand.
“Will,” said the boy, pointing to himself.
She responded, “Ama.” Now that she could see him properly, she was frightened of the boy almost more than the bear: he had a horrible wound: two of his fingers were missing. She felt dizzy when she saw it.
The bear turned away along the milky stream and lay down in the water, as if to cool himself. The boy’s daemon took to the air and fluttered with Kulang among the rainbows, and slowly they began to understand each other.
And what should they turn out to be looking for but a cave, with a girl asleep?
The words tumbled out of her in response: “I know where it is! And she’s being kept asleep by a woman who says she is her mother, but no mother would be so cruel, would she? She makes her drink something to keep her asleep, but I have some herbs to make her wake up, if only I could get to her!”
Will could only shake his head and wait for Balthamos to translate. It took more than a minute.
“Iorek,” he called, and the bear lumbered along the bed of the stream, licking his chops, for he had just swallowed a fish, “Iorek,” Will said, “this girl is saying she knows where Lyra is. I’ll go with her to look, while you stay here and watch.”
Iorek Byrnison, foursquare in the stream, nodded silently. Will hid his rucksack and buckled on the knife before clambering down through the rainbows with Ama. The mist that filled the air was icy. He had to brush his eyes and peer through the dazzle to see where it was safe to put his feet.
When they reached the foot of the falls, Ama indicated that they should go carefully and make no noise, and Will walked behind her down the slope, between mossy rocks and great gnarled pine trunks where the dappled light danced intensely green and a billion tiny insects scraped and sang. Down they went, and farther down, and still the sunlight followed them, deep into the valley, while overhead the branches tossed unceasingly in the bright sky.
Then Ama halted. Will drew himself behind the massive bole of a cedar, and looked where she was pointing. Through a tangle of leaves and branches, he saw the side of a cliff, rising up to the right, and partway up –
“Mrs. Coulter,” he whispered, and his heart was beating fast.
The woman appeared from behind the rock and shook out a thick‑leaved branch before dropping it and brushing her hands together. Had she been sweeping the floor? Her sleeves were rolled, and her hair was bound up with a scarf. Will could never have imagined her looking so domestic.
But then there was a flash of gold, and that vicious monkey appeared, leaping up to her shoulder. As if they suspected something, they looked all around, and suddenly Mrs. Coulter didn’t look domestic at all.
Ama was whispering urgently: she was afraid of the golden monkey daemon; he liked to tear the wings off bats while they were still alive.
“Is there anyone else with her?” Will said. “No soldiers, or anyone like that?”
Ama didn’t know. She had never seen soldiers, but people did talk about strange and frightening men, or they might be ghosts, seen on the mountainsides at night… But there had always been ghosts in the mountains, everyone knew that. So they might not have anything to do with the woman.
Well, thought Will, if Lyra’s in the cave and Mrs. Coulter doesn’t leave it, I’ll have to go and pay a call.
He said, “What is this drug you have? What do you have to do with it to wake her up?”
Ama explained.
“And where is it now?”
In her home, she said. Hidden away.
“All right. Wait here and don’t come near. When you see her, you mustn’t say that you know me. You’ve never seen me, or the bear. When do you next bring her food?”
Half an hour before sunset, Ama’s daemon said.
“Bring the medicine with you then,” said Will. “I’ll meet you here.”
She watched with great unease as he set off along the path. Surely he didn’t believe what she had just told him about the monkey daemon, or he wouldn’t walk so recklessly up to the cave.
Actually, Will felt very nervous. All his senses seemed to be clarified, so that he was aware of the tiniest insects drifting in the sun shafts and the rustle of every leaf and the movement of the clouds above, even though his eyes never left the cave mouth.