It was midsummer. And Will sat on the bench in the botanic garden where, thirty-one years earlier, and in another world, Lyra had set her little hand. "If you sat here and I sat just here in my world-"
How clearly he remembered it.
He had lived and re-lived every moment with her in his memory, so many thousands of times, that he knew he would remember them still as an old man, even once he had forgotten everything else.
And yet, surely, there were moments of their time together that had slipped his mind. Moments when, blinking, he had missed her cocking her head, or brushing her hair back behind her air, or furrowing her brow with concentration. And surely, there were memories he had that he had simply invented. Had her touch really felt like that, on his cheek, in that sheltered glade? He would never know.
Will had come a little early to the botanic garden; Lyra would not be here yet, in her world that was folded neatly over his. And so he let his mind wander, out to the canopy of the tree that stretched in all directions over him.
He recalled a story that his dear friend Mary Malone had told him once, when they had been recounting to each other, once again, every memory that they yet had of their time as explorers of new worlds. She had told him that one afternoon, while climbing one of the great seed pod trees in the world of the Mulefa, and gazing out at the current of Dust from her seat in its branches, she had found herself drifting out of her body, swept along out of the branches and through the air in the great current.
Will didn't know exactly what made him think of this story. But something about it seemed important, in this moment. He tried to imagine how Mary must have felt, what the world below her must have looked like, when she had no physical eyes to see it.
He imagined himself sitting on a branch of of the aspen tree above him. He imagined brushing aside sprigs of verdant green, and peering down at his own physical form seated on the bench, waiting for Lyra.
A strange thing happened to Will, then, although part of him was expecting it, even hoping for it. He could not seem to move his body, could not feel his limbs. He really was seated up above, looking down at himself. He felt a moment of fear, because the sensation was strange. But it also felt natural and automatic, like drifting off to sleep. It occurred to him for a moment that he might be dying. But no, that was not quite it.
He could feel a choice coming to him; a choice to go even deeper into this strange trance, or to wait where he was, and gradually settle back into his body on the ground.
And he chose to sink further into the trance, because somehow, he could feel that it was bringing him closer to Lyra.