Eighteen.
He's about to rise from the bench when he sees her.
Pale blue eyes, wide and bright. Tawny hair catching the sun, highlighted, a braid woven into one side. A face, somewhat longer than he remembered and the slightest bit paler and just breathtakingly beautiful, with an expression of naked disbelief and joy, parted lips so close he could lean forward and —
She's gone.
He blinks.
The space next to him is empty. No Lyra.
"Kirjava? Did you see…?"
His daemon says nothing. She's just as stunned as he is. It's that, more than anything, that convinces him he isn't mad.
But no. She's another part of him. Is that how it works? It's certainly seemed like that, these last few years. Or was she a complement to his soul? If only he could ask Pan and Lyra… "I'm not mad, am I? I mean, would you be able to tell if I were, like would there be a difference in how we react? I know Lyra could say…"
His heart hammers. He tries to slow his breathing, tries to calm himself, but he can't even get close. Is he going crazy? The way his mother sometimes looks at him with bright eyes, smiles lucidly, and calls him 'John'?
How can he bring Lyra back? How did she get here — or did he just go there? What's the difference right now?
Kirjava holds his eyes. When her words come after a minute of silence, they're slow, and he can hear his own yearning mirrored. "Even if she and Pan were here, or if you and I were there, or…no. I don't think…the angels were going to close all the windows and doors, and if they didn't we'd probably know."
"Couldn't —"
"Will, she's gone."
Right.
It hits him hard: not the unfairness of their separation after all they'd been through and wanted, but the cruelly tantalizing image after he thought he'd accepted the loss. That hurts the most — the upending of the hard decision they'd made together. It grows into a set of emotions he didn't quite get around to feeling the first time, something that manifests itself in slamming knuckles, quickly bloody, again and again into the nearby black pine, containing his howls in his own mind.
Fury.
His anger doesn't last long, though, and he collapses on the bench in sweat and tears. He's sitting in a college garden, alone but for the daemon by his side, and the person he longed for and desired was sitting in the same college garden somewhere else. Close, but so far away that there doesn't yet exist a unit of measurement to describe the distance, that the mathematics required to even begin to comprehend it are still in the loony theoretical stage.
At least Lyra's still there, untouched by her world's Magisterium, easing a fear Will had long ago buried. If they haven't punished her yet she'll be just fine, probably going on to live a long and fulfilling life.
But to him, she'll never be more than a memory.
If he squeezes his hands tight enough, nails gouging into his palms, he can distract himself from the loss that grips his heart anew.
Thirty-nine.
In one way, at least, fate is still on his side.
One of the worst winters in living memory had dumped over 90 centimeters on London, burying cars and streets in silent drifts. Well into April the snows had fallen, and even now the sky was more often shrouded than clear. The few May Day celebrations were bleak. It's almost as if whatever fate controlled his life had a hand in the weather, too, or vice versa. Payback for fighting against heavenly creatures.
But against the odds, his and Lyra's bench is still there. If a bit the worse for wear.
Gravity is twice as strong as usual when he sits. He imagines he's being melodramatic — he's been across the multiverse, he knows that his problems are just a drop in a very large ocean — but as he leans back, it crosses his mind that the rest of the world is just as turbulent. It's not just his world. London's, England's. With the conflicts breaking out worldwide, most far beyond the Channel but some reaching his country's shores, probably a whole lot of other people's. Entire countries', even.
Doesn't make his life easier.
And all he can think of are his mother's funeral a month ago, how terribly he misses her. How long he had been missing her before she died, her mind gone well before her body. The pain she obviously felt. The medical expenses piling up — they don't give discounts to doctors, apparently — for the experimental treatments he sought. How much he railed at the doctors for failing, how often he's been in their shoes. Kirjava hit him with the shame afterward.
The shouting match that had ended when Mary…Dr. Malone, now…stormed out, calling him a lot of very colorful insults. Deserved or not, he doesn't know how to reconcile.
Receiving the final text from Sarah, short, curt. Going to their house and finding her things gone, along with a number of the keepsakes and treasures they'd bought together. Knowing that the divorce will haunt him for months, the only relief that even if it's messy enough to take twice that long, at least they won't be speaking to each other again.
A brutal car accident. He remembers the first time Lyra encountered a car in his world, this world, how quickly she'd recovered. Obviously she was hardier than he is. Eight months later, his knee still hurts enough to force a limp.
Depression constantly smothers him, bringing with it the type of regret that endlessly feeds itself. Wishing he'd kept with the research, working in his spare time as Dr. Malone's assistant to understand why bodies from one world might deteriorate in another. Wondering how they'd never found it, why he'd stopped — this had affected his father — but his thoughts chase themselves in circles too often for him to find an answer.
When did he lay down and decide that he and his best friend would never see each other again?
And then —
"It's still impossible."
Two minutes past noon.
A tentative breath of thick, warm air settles on his hand. Will flicks his fingers idly to dispel the eerie sensation.
Sunlight beats down through the trees.
The weight of the breeze. Just on his hand.
A surprised yelp gives to a satisfied purr, and Will turns to Kirjava in time to see her settle at his feet, curled up. Leaving space for someone who isn't there. Or for something he can't see.
He looks back to his hand, tentatively brushing the pressure that now seems so. Maybe he's just imagining that it's a woman's hand, its size and shape but the touch intimately familiar.
After all the things in his life he's shed lately, how likely is it that he's returning to this now?
Doesn't matter. Either way, it's a lifeline.
He doesn't feel the hour pass. Doesn't see the strolling professors, the inquisitive college students who stare at him, the visitors who murmur about who he thinks he is to sit on this particular bench. With eyes closed he feels the presence of his friend from another world.
The ghosts of Lyra's fingers linger for a long time. The sun is low in the trees when her touch finally fades and the aching drain of loneliness returns. He is, once again, alone.
"I'm here, you know."
Will winces. Even with everything else, being an ass to his daemon is his worst mistake. "Yeah. I know. Kirjava —"
She puts a single claw on his thigh, stopping his words in their tracks. "I know what you're thinking."
He shakes his head. "I want to say it anyway. I was…I mean, I…you know…"
Even after twenty-six years, the sound of Kirjava's condescending sniff makes him jump. "Usually I'd ask if a cat has your tongue, but since it's always me I have to wonder this time."
Will hesitates, then smiles wistfully. Chills run once again along his palm, his knuckles, his wrist — every spot Lyra's fingers (he had not imagined it) had touched. "I'm no Silvertongue, that's for sure."
The daemon lifts her chin. Her eyes, for the first time in a while, are gentle. "Correct."
"I'm sorry, Kirjava. Really. For…well, all of the last few years."
Kirjava rolls her shoulders, her best approximation of a human shrug. It's a casual gesture, but Will can sense the beginnings of more than a truce in her mood. "You and I…are complementary parts, Will. If I truly couldn't stand it — couldn't understand it, even feel it myself — I'd have left you for good." She rolls her head. "Of course, I guess I did leave, didn't I? Never told you where I went, either. Would you like to hear about it?"
"Maybe later." Will takes a deep breath, flexing his empty fingers. "I have a date at six."
Kirjava looks askance at him. Her measured voice disguises a ferocious bite. "If I don't like her, I'm kicking her out. I won't let it drag on. Not again."
Will's grin is devoid of humor. He doesn't hold the collapse of his marriage against Kirjava, who'd been pushing him to leave for years, who'd only come back several months ago from her year-long absence. How can he? What he and Sarah had could've ended for any of a hundred different reasons, none of which had to do with Kirjava's infectious brooding. His daemon just saw the signs before he did.
"Not that long," he deadpans. "I'd probably get kicked out first."
When Will rises to his feet, he's surprised to find that he does so with ease, even if his knee makes a loud crack. Kirjava snickers, whether at his words or his knee he can't say. It's short and barbed, but it's the first laugh she's given him in over a year, and it makes Will's heart soar. But no time to dwell on it or celebrate, much as he'd like to. He has a date across town with an architect named Eugenia, and he can't be late.
Eighty-three.
His breath comes and goes in a slow, laborious wheeze. It's been like that since autumn, when a stroke put him in the hospital for three months, and Will knows he'll never really recover. Retired he may be, but he can still diagnose himself. His mind is still sharp, mostly. Enough to put a few finishing touches on his last discoveries, anyway.
It's because of the stroke that his family has joined him this year.
Every second step sends a shiver through the metal in his knee, a replacement for creaky bones that had long lost their cartilage. Turned out he'd needed it for years by the time Gen finally browbeat him into seeing a surgeon. He had to admit, it certainly felt better than feeling his knee scrape against itself, but Will had never gotten used to the odd sensation of having something so artificial inside him. It felt wrong, somehow, even with the incredible advances in prosthetics that the new millennium had brought, even if Kirjava never seemed to mind.
In eighty years, he'd never once considered replacing his two missing fingers.
He has to pause twice, once at the entrance to the gardens and once at the wall, to catch his breath. Both times, his son and grandchildren crowd around him, asking "Are you well?" Gen, however stays back, knowing that he wants to do this alone. That he would be here without them if he could.
Seeing the bench as he crosses the little wooden bridge brings a smile to his wrinkled face.
Every summer, for as long as I live. Will coughs, a hacking, wet cough from deep in his lungs. And so he has, but this time is different. His body is failing even if his mind is sharp, and another year feels beyond his frail heart. Even now, though he's peacefully resting, its thump is erratic.
This will be the last time.
Bracing himself, he lowers his body to the bench, his grandchildren holding his arms to steady him. It occurs to Will that he's never told them why he comes here every Midsummer. Nor does their father, Will's son, know. Only Gen knows, bless her. He was luckier than lucky to find a partner who heard his reasons and understood, or at least said she did. Who treated Kirjava as a companion, never once outwardly disturbed by the fact that the ageless cat seemed as savvy and aware as any human in the room. Whom even a guarded Mary, who'd passed away more than twelve years ago, had accepted as confidant.
Who, unless he misses his guess, has her own secret story to tell him when they return home.
Kirjava presses her aging body playfully against his shin. "To think, we never asked."
Will chuckles, casting a fond gaze at his wife. Their eyes meet, a weighty exchange of seconds that leaves her smiling.
His hearing is failing, so he checks his watch rather than wait for the bells. A minute before noon.
"We never spoke again, did we?" Will asks the air beside him. He tries to imagine what Lyra must look like now, but all he can summon is a vague impression. Still, it's enough. "I can't imagine how we would have done so." At the ripe old age of eighty-three, she is a commanding sight, an elegant (yet mischievous too, always devious) presence that none can ignore.
Or would she still be eighty-two, today?
He's forgotten so much.
"I miss you, Lyra."
I miss you too, Will.
Then, Huh. Do you think this works? That I can hear your thoughts?
"Lyra would ask that," Kirjava says slyly, leaping gently onto Will's lap, careful to avoid his stiff knees. He can feel something else in her mind, though. A sense of held breath, of alert waiting.
I wonder...
Will's smile is full of wistful relief, relaxing his weary muscles and aching bones even as the thoughts squeeze his heart. Lyra would ask that. "You're the one with the alethiometer. You tell me."
He pictures Lyra pondering. A hint of something light, almost hope, enters his frail chest. Give me a moment. It's still harder than it was when you last saw me do it.
Will nods. Even after studying for decades, it must take more effort than her graceful reading as a child. Of course.
A minute later. Hearts and minds that move together, angles between stars - no, universes, though it could be heavens -
In English.
Lyra, rolling her eyes. Sorry. I'm not used to explaining while still figuring out the answer. But…in theory…maybe.
A pause. Will peers at the gardens in front of him. Looks like he's finally cracked after all. He always wondered if he'd go crazy, in the end. So…this really is you?
Does it matter? I'm here, you're somewhere around here. Wherever any of that 'here' actually is. At least I think you are.
A quick laugh. So it is her. Or if it isn't, and he is making up both sides of the conversation, then he is right anyway, because who's to tell him otherwise? It's his mind, after all. It hardly matters. Regardless, he'll find out soon enough.
It'll make for a good tale, when he dies.
Kirjava rubs herself against him, curling her body around his abdomen, and Will's heart tightens again, beating dangerously fast. Wherever daemons go when humans pass, it's not where he'll be going. He'll be separated from Kirjava.
"Don't." Her voice is a low command, scolding. "This is your time with Lyra. I have the rest of your life to spend with you."
Lyra's voice cuts into his thoughts. She's right. Spend time with me instead.
No need to butt in on my conversation, Silvertongue.
Pan told me to. His words, not mine. He's changed with the years, tends to get his way a lot more.
Will laughs again, drawing benign smiles from his family. I'm sure he's your polar opposite.
I'm sure I don't know what you mean.
This time, he stays longer than an hour. They don't talk about the lives they've had. There'll be plenty of time for that when they've died and gone to the world of the dead, when they get to tell the harpy — her name is Gracious Wings, Will, I hope you remember because you know she will — their stories. He talks with Lyra as if they haven't missed a day. As if they've been right there at each other's sides the whole time, and not just once a year.
When the sun begins to set, the conversation reaches a comfortable lull. The air in the Botanic Garden is fresh. A light breeze carries the scent of black pine. Will breathes it in as deeply as he can, feeling the gravity of this final meeting, wanting it to last forever, knowing that it will.
His thoughts, cast out to a hope beyond a hope. Lyra?
Her voice, thick with emotion, with depth that makes his old heart painfully race. Will.
Together. Until we meet again.
They did, of course. But they're saving that story for when they get there.