Usual disclaimers, and apologies to Philip Pullman for doing anything so ghastly as this to his characters. Thanks to Dave, Danny, Kaisermonkey and Ceres for their encouragement and praise for the last two stories. Hope this one's as good.
Okay, quick recap for those just joining us. In The Silver Bird, Mary Malone devises a means of travelling between worlds safely. However, it requires a great deal of speed. Enter David Marshall-Savage, former naval aviator, Falklands veteran and old buddy of John Parry. In a series of circumstances too complicated to go into in much detail here [you're better off reading the first two stories, really], our heroes end up causing a train wreck, getting mixed up in a war and storming the last redoubt of the Magisterium. Asriel makes a rather brief appearance, but the question of how he escaped certain doom is never properly answered on account of him getting shot within a few paragraphs. Dave, who does most of the narrating, also succeeds in getting off with Elaine.
In The Twisted Cross, Will, Lyra and their comrades do battle with Nazis from another dimension, and also with Mrs Coulter, who is mysteriously not dead either. She eventually gets her comeuppance, but not before she has contrived to get Dave and Elaine killed. This is pretty much where we take up the thread in this concluding installment.
Lee Scroesby approached the hunched figure sitting on a rock by the lakeside, with some trepidation. Whilst he was normally a placid man, when David Marshall-Savage was riled, he didn't go in for half measures. The mess he'd made of Asriel's face bore testimony to this.
"Hey, buddy."
Dave looked up, and smiled slightly. "Hi. Come to commiserate?"
"Yeah, sorta. I mean, that was one hell of a thing to do." The former naval aviator nodded mutely.
"Well, John was there first, even if he DID spend most of their marriage several hundred miles away up some mountain or somewhere. And he always was better looking than me." Instinctively he reached for his inside pocket, but reminded himself that he was now dead and no longer had access to cigarettes. At least Elaine had stopped nagging him about THAT.
Dave seemed rather more cheerful than Lee had anticipated. He idly tossed a stone into the water, thinking. "It'll be a lot more peaceful, anyway," he mused. Lee tried hard not to smile. Elaine Parry's temper had been sufficient to give Marissa Coulter GBH of the earholes earlier that morning. She also had a way of treating Dave as if he was an autistic four year-old. Women had never been the most easily satisfied lifeforms on the face of the earth, in Lee's experience at least, but Elaine was extreme even by his standards. He wondered just how detrimental this would be to Dave's day to day afterlife.
"I probably shouldn't be," Dave admitted, "but quite frankly, I'm just slightly relieved. Eleven years of near-constant nagging, henpecking and browbeating -albeit in an affectionate sort of way... I think- are finally at an end, and John gets to put up with it for a while." He grinned. "I think this is going to be a good laugh."
Lee shook his head. This wasn't the first time he'd seen this kind of thing happen. Even people from cultures which permitted polygamy -Asia, the Middle East, Utah- had their share of soap-opera moments. It all seemed a great deal funnier when it wasn't somebody you'd come to know and like.
The two men were roused from their conversation by a sudden commotion. Two angels had appeared from somewhere. They appeared slightly different, in that they wore black robes instead of the poncy white floaty things that they traditionally wore. The harpies flocked around, raising an almighty commotion, but were knocked aside. The angels landed, snatched Asriel and Marissa Coulter and disappeared.
"What the HELL was that?" Lee yelled.
"Somebody else's problem, that's what," Dave replied, trying to appear nonchalant. It was nothing to do with him. Nothing. He'd done his bit, and got himself killed fighting Nazis from a parallel universe. Will and Lyra could look after it. They'd saved a few universes in their time; surely one or two more wouldn't hurt...?
//Oh, BALLS. Who am I kidding?// Dave sighed mentally. The implications of the suddeen removal of two people from the world of the dead who shouldn't even have been in a position to die in the first place were not lost on him. Nobody had ever figured out how they escaped the Rift into which they had been flung with Metatron, but it seemed a safe bet that he had something to do with this. The upshot of all this was that Metatron was at large, and likely to be embarking on some mad scheme to take over at least one universe.
Dave had a horrible feeling that his chances of Resting In Peace were getting rather slim.
Okay, quick recap for those just joining us. In The Silver Bird, Mary Malone devises a means of travelling between worlds safely. However, it requires a great deal of speed. Enter David Marshall-Savage, former naval aviator, Falklands veteran and old buddy of John Parry. In a series of circumstances too complicated to go into in much detail here [you're better off reading the first two stories, really], our heroes end up causing a train wreck, getting mixed up in a war and storming the last redoubt of the Magisterium. Asriel makes a rather brief appearance, but the question of how he escaped certain doom is never properly answered on account of him getting shot within a few paragraphs. Dave, who does most of the narrating, also succeeds in getting off with Elaine.
In The Twisted Cross, Will, Lyra and their comrades do battle with Nazis from another dimension, and also with Mrs Coulter, who is mysteriously not dead either. She eventually gets her comeuppance, but not before she has contrived to get Dave and Elaine killed. This is pretty much where we take up the thread in this concluding installment.
Lee Scroesby approached the hunched figure sitting on a rock by the lakeside, with some trepidation. Whilst he was normally a placid man, when David Marshall-Savage was riled, he didn't go in for half measures. The mess he'd made of Asriel's face bore testimony to this.
"Hey, buddy."
Dave looked up, and smiled slightly. "Hi. Come to commiserate?"
"Yeah, sorta. I mean, that was one hell of a thing to do." The former naval aviator nodded mutely.
"Well, John was there first, even if he DID spend most of their marriage several hundred miles away up some mountain or somewhere. And he always was better looking than me." Instinctively he reached for his inside pocket, but reminded himself that he was now dead and no longer had access to cigarettes. At least Elaine had stopped nagging him about THAT.
Dave seemed rather more cheerful than Lee had anticipated. He idly tossed a stone into the water, thinking. "It'll be a lot more peaceful, anyway," he mused. Lee tried hard not to smile. Elaine Parry's temper had been sufficient to give Marissa Coulter GBH of the earholes earlier that morning. She also had a way of treating Dave as if he was an autistic four year-old. Women had never been the most easily satisfied lifeforms on the face of the earth, in Lee's experience at least, but Elaine was extreme even by his standards. He wondered just how detrimental this would be to Dave's day to day afterlife.
"I probably shouldn't be," Dave admitted, "but quite frankly, I'm just slightly relieved. Eleven years of near-constant nagging, henpecking and browbeating -albeit in an affectionate sort of way... I think- are finally at an end, and John gets to put up with it for a while." He grinned. "I think this is going to be a good laugh."
Lee shook his head. This wasn't the first time he'd seen this kind of thing happen. Even people from cultures which permitted polygamy -Asia, the Middle East, Utah- had their share of soap-opera moments. It all seemed a great deal funnier when it wasn't somebody you'd come to know and like.
The two men were roused from their conversation by a sudden commotion. Two angels had appeared from somewhere. They appeared slightly different, in that they wore black robes instead of the poncy white floaty things that they traditionally wore. The harpies flocked around, raising an almighty commotion, but were knocked aside. The angels landed, snatched Asriel and Marissa Coulter and disappeared.
"What the HELL was that?" Lee yelled.
"Somebody else's problem, that's what," Dave replied, trying to appear nonchalant. It was nothing to do with him. Nothing. He'd done his bit, and got himself killed fighting Nazis from a parallel universe. Will and Lyra could look after it. They'd saved a few universes in their time; surely one or two more wouldn't hurt...?
//Oh, BALLS. Who am I kidding?// Dave sighed mentally. The implications of the suddeen removal of two people from the world of the dead who shouldn't even have been in a position to die in the first place were not lost on him. Nobody had ever figured out how they escaped the Rift into which they had been flung with Metatron, but it seemed a safe bet that he had something to do with this. The upshot of all this was that Metatron was at large, and likely to be embarking on some mad scheme to take over at least one universe.
Dave had a horrible feeling that his chances of Resting In Peace were getting rather slim.