“He’s probably just a traveler and he found a window and wandered through from somewhere else,” Lyra said when Mary had finished. “Like Will’s father did. There’s bound to be all kinds of openings now. Anyway, if he just turned around and left, he can’t have meant to do anything bad, can he?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t like it. And I’m worried about you going off on your own – or I would be if I didn’t know you’d already done far more dangerous things than that. Oh, I don’t know. But please be careful. Please look all around. At least out on the prairie you can see someone coming from a long way off…”
“If we do, we can escape straight away into another world, so he won’t be able to hurt us,” Will said.
They were determined to go, and Mary was reluctant to argue.
“At least,” she said, “promise that you won’t go in among the trees. If that man is still around, he might be hiding in a wood or a grove and you wouldn’t see him in time to escape.”
“We promise,” said Lyra.
“Well, I’ll pack you some food in case you’re out all day.”
Mary took some flat bread and cheese and some sweet, thirst‑quenching red fruits, wrapped them in a cloth, and tied a cord around it for one of them to carry over a shoulder.
“Good hunting,” she said as they left. “Please take care.”
She was still anxious. She stood watching them all the way to the foot of the slope.
“I wonder why she’s so sad,” Will said as he and Lyra climbed the road up to the ridge.
“She’s probably wondering if she’ll ever go home again,” said Lyra. “And if her laboratory’ll still be hers when she does. And maybe she’s sad about the man she was in love with.”
“Mmm,” said Will. “D’you think we’ll ever go home?”
“Dunno. I don’t suppose I’ve got a home anyway. They probably couldn’t have me back at Jordan College, and I can’t live with the bears or the witches. Maybe I could live with the gyptians. I wouldn’t mind that, if they’d have me.”
“What about Lord Asriel’s world? Wouldn’t you want to live there?”
“It’s going to fail, remember,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because of what your father’s ghost said, just before we came out. About daemons, and how they can only live for a long time if they stay in their own world. But probably Lord Asriel, I mean my father, couldn’t have thought about that, because no one knew enough about other worlds when he started… All that,” she said wonderingly, “all that bravery and skill… All that, all wasted! All for nothing!”
They climbed on, finding the going easy on the rock road, and when they reached the top of the ridge, they stopped and looked back.
“Will,” she said, “supposing we don’t find them?”
“I’m sure we will. What I’m wondering is what my daemon will be like.”
“You saw her. And I picked her up,” Lyra said, blushing, because of course it was a gross violation of manners to touch something so private as someone else’s daemon. It was forbidden not only by politeness, but by something deeper than that – something like shame. A quick glance at Will’s warm cheeks showed that he knew that just as well as she did.
They walked on side-by-side, suddenly shy with each other. But Will, not put off by being shy, said, “When does your daemon stop changing shape?”
“About… I suppose about our age, or a bit older. Maybe more sometimes. We used to talk about Pan settling, him and me. We used to wonder what he’d be – ”
“Don’t people have any idea?”
“Not when they’re young. As you grow up you start thinking, well, they might be this or they might be that… And usually they end up something that fits. I mean something like your real nature. Like if your daemon’s a dog, that means you like doing what you’re told, and knowing who’s boss, and following orders, and pleasing people who are in charge. A lot of servants are people whose daemons are dogs. So it helps to know what you’re like and to find what you’d be good at. How do people in your world know what they’re like?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know much about my world. All I know is keeping secret and quiet and hidden, so I don’t know much about… grownups, and friends. Or lovers. I think it’d be difficult having a daemon because everybody would know so much about you just by looking. I like to keep secret and stay out of sight.”
“Then maybe your daemon’d be an animal that’s good at hiding. Or one of those animals that looks like another, a butterfly that looks like a wasp, for disguise. They must have creatures like that in your world, because we have, and we’re so much alike.”
They walked on together in a friendly silence. All around them the wide, clear morning lay limpid in the hollows and pearly blue in the warm air above. As far as the eye could see, the great savanna rolled, brown, gold, buff‑green, shimmering toward the horizon, and empty. They might have been the only people in the world.
“But it’s not empty really,” Lyra said.
“You mean that man?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. I can see shadows in the grass… maybe birds,” Will said.
He was following the little darting movements here and there. He found it easier to see the shadows if he didn’t look at them. They were more willing to show themselves to the corners of his eye, and when he said so to Lyra, she said, “It’s negative capability.”
“What’s that?”
“The poet Keats said it first. Dr. Malone knows. It’s how I read the alethiometer. It’s how you use the knife, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. But I was just thinking that they might be the daemons.”
“So was I, but…”
She put her finger to her lips. He nodded.
“Look,” he said, “there’s one of those fallen trees.”
It was Mary’s climbing tree. They went up to it carefully, keeping an eye on the grove in case another one should fall. In the calm morning, with only a faint breeze stirring the leaves, it seemed impossible that a mighty thing like this should ever topple, but here it was.
The vast trunk, supported in the grove by its torn‑up roots and out on the grass by the mass of branches, was high above their heads. Some of those branches, crushed and broken, were themselves as big around as the biggest trees Will had ever seen; the crown of the tree, tight‑packed with boughs that still looked sturdy, leaves that were still green, towered like a ruined palace into the mild air.
Suddenly Lyra gripped Will’s arm.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Don’t look. I’m sure they’re up there. I saw something move and I swear it was Pan…”
Her hand was warm. He was more aware of that than of the great mass of leaves and branches above them. Pretending to gaze vacantly at the horizon, he let his attention wander upward into the confused mass of green, brown, and blue, and there – she was right! – there was a something that was not the tree. And beside it, another.
“Walk away,” Will said under his breath. “We’ll go somewhere else and see if they follow us.”
“Suppose they don’t… But yes, all right,” Lyra whispered back.
They pretended to look all around; they set their hands on one of the branches resting on the ground, as if they were intending to climb; they pretended to change their minds, by shaking their heads and walking away.
“I wish we could look behind,” Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away.
“Just go on walking. They can see us, and they won’t get lost. They’ll come to us when they want to.”
They stepped off the black road and into the knee‑high grass, swishing their legs through the stems, watching the insects hovering, darting, fluttering, skimming, hearing the million‑voiced chorus chirrup and scrape.
“What are you going to do, Will?” Lyra said quietly after they’d walked some way in silence.
“Well, I’ve got to go home,” he said.
She thought he sounded unsure, though. She hoped he sounded unsure.