«Lyra, who is this?» Kaisa said.
«It's Will. He's coming with us —»
«Why are the Specters avoiding you?» The goose daemon was speaking directly to Will.
By this time Will was hardly surprised by anything, and he said, «I don't know. We can't see them. No, wait!» And he stood up, struck by a thought. «Where are they now?» he said. «Where's the nearest one?»
«Ten paces away, down the slope,» said the daemon. «They don't want to come any closer, that's obvious.»
Will took out the knife and looked in that direction, and he heard the daemon hiss with surprise.
But Will couldn't do what he intended, because at the same moment a witch landed her branch on the grass beside him. He was taken aback not so much by her flying as by her astounding gracefulness, the fierce, cold, lovely clarity of her gaze, and by the pale bare limbs, so youthful, and yet so far from being young.
«Your name is Will?» she said.
«Yes, but —»
«Why are the Specters afraid of you?»
«Because of the knife. Where's the nearest one? Tell me! I want to kill it!»
But Lyra came running before the witch could answer.
«Serafina Pekkala!» she cried, and she threw her arms around the witch and hugged her so tightly that the witch laughed out loud, and kissed the top of her head. «Oh, Serafina, where did you come from like that? We were — those kids — they were kids, and they were going to kill us — did you see them? We thought we were going to die and — oh, I'm so glad you came! I thought I'd never see you again!»
Serafina Pekkala looked over Lyra's head to where the Specters were obviously clustering a little way off, and then looked at Will.
«Now listen,» she said. «There's a cave in these woods not far away. Head up the slope and then along the ridge to the left. The Specters won't follow — they don't see us while we're in the air, and they're afraid of you. We'll meet you there. It's a half-hour's walk.»
And she leaped into the air again. Will shaded his eyes to watch her and the other ragged, elegant figures wheel in the air and dart up over the trees.
«Oh, Will, we'll be safe now! It'll be all right now that Serafina Pekkala's here!» said Lyra. «I never thought I'd see her again. She came just at the right time, didn't she? Just like before, at Bolvangar….»
Chattering happily, as if she'd already forgotten the fight, she led the way up the slope toward the forest. Will followed in silence. His hand was throbbing badly, and with each throb a little more blood was leaving him. He held it up across his chest and tried not to think about it.
It took not half an hour but an hour and three quarters, because Will had to stop and rest several times. When they reached the cave, they found a fire, a rabbit roasting, and Serafina Pekkala stirring something in a small iron pot.
«Let me see your wound» was the first thing she said to Will, and he dumbly held out his hand.
Pantalaimon, cat-formed, watched curiously, but Will looked away. He didn't like the sight of his mutilated fingers.
The witches spoke softly to each other, and then Serafina Pekkala said, «What weapon made this wound?»
Will reached for the knife and handed it to her silently. Her companions looked at it with wonder and suspicion, for they had never seen such a blade before, with such an edge on it.
«This will need more than herbs to heal. It will need a spell,» said Serafina Pekkala. «Very well, we'll prepare one. It will be ready when the moon rises. In the meantime, you shall sleep.»
She gave him a little horn cup containing a hot potion whose bitterness was moderated by honey, and presently he lay back and fell deeply asleep. The witch covered him with leaves and turned to Lyra, who was still gnawing the rabbit.
«Now, Lyra,» she said. «Tell me who this boy is, and what you know about this world, and about this knife of his.»
So Lyra took a deep breath and began.
Twelve
Screen Language
«Tell me again,» said Dr. Oliver Payne, in the little laboratory overlooking the park. «Either I didn't hear you, or you're talking nonsense. A child from another world?»
«That's what she said. All right, it's nonsense, but listen to it, Oliver, will you?» said Dr. Mary Malone. «She knew about Shadows. She calls them — it — she calls it Dust, but it's the same thing. It's our shadow particles. And I'm telling you, when she was wearing the electrodes linking her to the Cave, there was the most extraordinary display on the screen: pictures, symbols …. She had an instrument too, a sort of compass thing made of gold, with different symbols all around the rim. And she said she could read that in the same way, and she knew about the state of mind, too — she knew it intimately.»
It was midmorning. Lyra's Scholar, Dr. Malone, was red-eyed from lack of sleep, and her colleague, who'd just returned from Geneva, was impatient to hear more, and skeptical, and preoccupied.
«And the point was, Oliver, she was communicating with them. They are conscious. And they can respond. And you remember your skulls? Well, she told me about some skulls in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. She'd found out with her compass thing that they were much older than the museum said, and there were Shadows —»
«Wait a minute. Give me some sort of structure here. What are you saying? You saying she's confirmed what we know already, or that she's telling us something new?»
«Both. I don't know. But suppose something happened thirty, forty thousand years ago. There were shadow particles around before then, obviously — they've been around since the Big Bang — but there was no physical way of amplifying their effects at our level, the anthropic level. The level of human beings. And then something happened, I can't imagine what, but it involved evolution. Hence your skulls — remember? No Shadows before that time, lots afterward? And the skulls the child found in the museum, that she tested with her compass thing. She told me the same thing. What I'm saying is that around that time, the human brain became the ideal vehicle for this amplification process. Suddenly we became conscious.»
Dr. Payne tilted his plastic mug and drank the last of his coffee.
«Why should it happen particularly at that time?» he said. «Why suddenly thirty-five thousand years ago?»
«Oh, who can say? We're not paleontologists. I don't know, Oliver, I'm just speculating. Don't you think it's at least possible?»
«And this policeman. Tell me about him.»
Dr. Malone rubbed her eyes. «His name is Walters,» she said. «He said he was from the Special Branch. I thought that was politics or something?»
«Terrorism, subversion, intelligence… all that. Go on. What did he want? Why did he come here?»
«Because of the girl. He said he was looking for a boy of about the same age — he didn't tell me why — and this boy had been seen in the company of the girl who came here. But he had something else in mind as well, Oliver. He knew about the research. He even asked —»
The telephone rang. She broke off, shrugging, and Dr. Payne answered it. He spoke briefly, put it down, and said, «We've got a visitor.»
«Who?»
«Not a name I know. Sir Somebody Something. Listen, Mary, I'm off, you realize that, don't you?»
«They offered you the job.»
«Yes. I've got to take it. You must see that.»
«Well, that's the end of this, then.»
He spread his hands helplessly, and said, «To be frank… I can't see any point in the sort of stuff you've just been talking about. Children from another world and fossil Shadows…. It's all too crazy. I just can't get involved. I've got a career, Mary.»