Falling Fourward
by Lena
(where four people fall to their deaths and the fifth person pushed the fourth, from various moments in the trilogy suspended in time)
– 1 –
The fall is short and briefly, agonizingly painful – a broken bone or two. Ha! Broken bones, weathered stones, ha!
What's waiting for him at the bottom is worse, bad enough that it stills his racing, disjointed mind.
He can see them now, when just a few months ago they were like thin veils obscuring his vision. In the daylight they are warped shadows, ragged curtains hanging improbably in midair. They slide like oil through the air and each other, interspersing without difficulty. They are the darkness at the end of a collapsed tunnel, no hope. But the darkness at the end of a tunnel is the same darkness on the sides of it so maybe they aren't, maybe they aren't!
They are twisted reflections of angels, those white specks glimpsed briefly in the night sky, like dandruff. But what divine guardian would leave Cittàgazze to its wretched fate? Are they, in the end, better than the Specters?
It's this kind of thinking – the weighing of good and evil and the gray in between – that draws them closer to him, like starving men to a feast. It's as if they can sense his thoughts floating through his head, smell the wafting current of intelligence on the breeze. He giggles and wonders what his brains smell like.
No. Have to stop thinking. Stop-stop-stop, look at the pretty bricks, count them, touch them all and you'll be safe!
Oh, if only he had managed to use the knife, if only he could have caught something invisibly hanging in midair on its perfect, shadow-sharp edge; yes, it was such a pointy knife, a nice, shiny, pointy knife. He had been so desperate he hadn't stopped to ask the old man how to use it, only tied him up and left him to dry, like a giant raisin, ha!
But no, in hindsight, he should have forced him to break into another world. If only he'd stopped to think, he could be safe, away from the Specters, away from the soul eaters ...
His heart fills with regret and despair and not a little bit of insanity as his hands brush against the Torre delgi Angeli, moving over the little designs in the stones, touching the worn-down, winged man-shapes –
– the symbols of angels on the Torre delgi Angeli sparking yet again thoughts of the worthless guardians, the not-so-benevolent creatures that abandoned the city of magpies to its fate ... bene elim, why have you forsaken us?
The oozing shadows move in and begin to feed.
– 2 –
She's falling, falling forever, but her heart is singing and she feels like she's plummeting up, not down.
Metatron's feathers are soft in her hands and she can feel what might be the warm wetness of Asriel's blood trickling into her hair, yet the only thing she can really feel is a huge bursting feeling deep in her heart, as if the dams that have kept her love hidden have finally broken.
The abyss is pitch black and sprinkled with gently drifting Dust, the cliff walls are flashing by in a blur, yet all she can see is that beautiful, angelic face that looks so much like she did when she was younger, with lovely soft hair and those oh-so-believable innocent eyes.
The feeling inside her chest grows more painful as she realizes that she'll never be able to see her again, never be able to apologize, never be able to tell her how proud she is.
She's falling, falling forever, but she knows Lyra will soar to the highest – it's in her blood, after all.
The blood now oozing into her hair and pounding in her ears, the union of herself and the half-conscious man beside her. She will be a queen among women, or a pauper if she wills – Lyra will be whatever she wants, and no one will ever be able to stop her.
Fear is firing her heart now. She feels agony ripping through her as they fall towards something in the abyss, the event horizon after which the swirling golden Dust fails to exist. Metatron is struggling again in earnest, as though he too realizes their doom lies so close, only moments away.
She holds on tighter and the angel spasms and screams, his form flash-fading, dissolving now –
– and she feels it too now, the golden monkey daemon howling and turning to Dust before her eyes, an indescribable torment filling her as her lifelong companion begins to disintegrate. The end of the abyss is close now; she can feel that oily brush of fear and emptiness she attributes to the Specters.
She has time for one last thought before the abyss takes them.
Lyra.
– 3 –
He didn't think this would happen. He never thought it would happen even his wildest imaginings. But the Gobblers had kidnapped him and Lyra had wanted to bring her fancy compass to Lord Asriel, and now they're fighting for their lives on some godforsaken icicle and he wants to go home, back to Oxford where he can be safe.
The sky itself is dancing, folds of iridescence shifting like ladies' gowns in fancy College occasions, but beautiful and clear and free. It's as if Lord Asriel has called it into being by himself, but he didn't know; he had been in too much pain to pay attention.
And Asriel is looking at him with those dreadfully powerful eyes –
(would Asriel make him fall dead and froth at the mouth like Lyra said he'd done to the Tartars?)
– and beckons imperiously, so that he can do nothing but obey in the face of the man's sheer will. He sobs and wails and begs, tears running down his face in freezing-cold rivulets, but his legs obey Lord Asriel and he walks forward regardless. Asriel's sharp eyes pierce his and go straight to his soul and control him.
"No! Run!" screams Lyra, and her daemon leaps and frees Salcilia from the snow leopard's jaws. A surge of energy blazes through his veins – his daemon is free and fighting beside Lyra's, forms flashing and melting and changing every moment; and if Salcilia can fight the snow leopard, he can fight Asriel.
He tears his eyes from Lord Asriel just as Lyra lunges forward and catches his hand in hers. For a moment he feels heat rise in his cheeks, but the next moment he's just as cold as he ever was in the North and he's sure he just imagined it.
They tear away from Lord Asriel and their feet pound into the snow. He's struck with agonizing, heart-deep pain, as if he'd just run straight into a brick wall and kept going. His heart clenches painfully.
Salcilia! There, in the snow leopard's mouth!
The cliff is falling out from under him, snow suddenly becoming frothy and unstable and he stumbles, feeling the rock shifting. The edge is right there and he's going to fall into the freezing black water, but that's not what matters.
What matters is that he's falling away from Salcilia.
His daemon's still caught in the snow leopard's teeth but he's falling now and he can't stop. Every second is pulling the link between him and his daemon tauter and tauter and tauter and he can't stand it; the pain is surely tearing his heart out of his chest –
"LYRA!"
For a moment he sees himself suspended immobile in midair, Lyra's hand in his and snow pouring down around him. He's just reached the limit of his and Salcilia's bond. He feels very clearly a splintering in his heart and a painful snap.
Everything goes dark.
– 4 –
He had only looked at the man for a few seconds, but now, safe and comfortable in this empty city, he thinks about the eternity caught in the span of a heartbeat.
The world seems to begin and end with him, his cat, and the body crumpled at the foot of the stairs.
It wasn't graceful. The man had stumbled backwards, tripped over the cat, then bang-thud-crack and he was down, head twisted at a strange angle. He had seen the surprise in his eyes, the useless flailing of arms attempting to catch hold of the railing.
He thinks about the awful way the man's limbs twitched and feels sick.
The other men will be after him soon, with the police this time. But as long as they don't find the window out of their universe, he'll be safe ...
Past his eyes fly frozen images – flick-flick-flick like the old movies used to be. He sees the man falling down the stairs, slow motion, then the pictures skip forward and he's running past his twitching, crooked body into the night.
I killed him.
The thought is razor-sharp and cuts into his stomach, making it churn. He steels himself and scowls. If they come after me again, I'll kill them too.
But he can't imagine taking someone else's life, can't imagine purposely moving to stop someone's heart. There's difference between stabbing or shooting and just shoving, because he hadn't really meant to kill him ... hadn't he?
The truth is that at that moment he'd wanted nothing more than to injure him before the man hurt him first, even if it meant hurling him down the stairs and making that loud cracking noise.
The truth makes the pit of his stomach fall, and it isn't the sharp, bouncing, slamming fall the man had made. It's like jumping off a cliff. There are no loud cracking noises, just the roaring of wind. But at the bottom there's a shrieking black monster with huge teeth – guilt personified. It roars and reaches for him, watching him fall, knowing he'll fall, but impatiently holding out its claws anyways.
The worst thing is that he feels like he'll never stop falling.
– end –
The plot, characters, and setting of His Dark Materials belongs to Philip Pullman. This, however, belongs to me.
Hope you liked my first foray into the His Dark Materials fandom. If you can spare a moment, please drop a review on your way out! I like knowing if someone's reading (and enjoying) what I'm writing.
Lena