Some Dreams Last Forever
Nothing left in the once beautiful gardens of Jordan College except for the few flower beds housing various species of plants, blossoming luminously in the dark night sky. High above the gardens of the college sat a young woman, on the roof of the great building, with her dæmon scampering around on the dormer window ledge next to her. She looked over and whispered "Hush Pan, there are people sleeping below this roof, you can't make so much noise" and at her words the wild cat dæmon stopped dead next to the window and then began to approach her. She stroked her dæmon for awhile admiring the stars in the sky and the large clock tower that overlooked them. She suddenly stood up and looked right into the open top of the tower and sure enough, she had been right, there was a cloaked figure leaning over the edge, staring right into her eyes. She quickly stooped down and climbed through the window before the person could get a good look at her, but how long had they been there. She didn't see the person's dæmon, if they even had one. The thought remained stuck in her head for the rest of the night; she was virtually restless, managing to catch around an hours sleep before being woken up by a vicious crash coming from outside her window. She pulled back the curtains and saw a golden eagle lying flat on the roof tiles beyond the glass, lifeless. She opened the window and her dæmon, Pantalaimon sped straight over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Directly below he could see a man's body, cloaked, still as a rock, dead.
She went back over to the window sill and looked at Lyra deeply and she felt that something bad had happened. She climbed out on to the roof and looked over the edge and saw the sight that her dæmon had just seen a minute ago. She then realised that it was the person who she had seen staring at her the night before whom she now see had been a man. The eagle suddenly puffed into a mass of gold dust which floated graciously for a moment and then disappeared completely. Lyra wondered who the man was and why he had been up in the clock tower so late at night and also how he managed to get past the night watchman. They two of them climbed back inside and then Lyra pulled out one of the drawers from her bedside table and took out the alethiometer. She flicked the golden lid up and began to twist the three keys that moved the arrows pointing to the selected pictures which outlined the clockwork centre of the compass. She closed her eyes and saw that the man was of another world, another world where they had the same uniforms, the same equipment and most importantly, another world where they had dæmons. Lyra sat on her bed in bewilderment. She had never thought that there could ever be another world which was virtually the same as hers. She tried to clear her head but the same memory of the man standing at the top of the clock tower was stuck in her mind, and there was no chance of getting it out easily.
She went down stairs for breakfast expecting to be welcomed by the usual spread, only to be shocked at the sight of everyone sitting silently in the main hall staring at the stairwell that she had just appeared from. A bearded man walked past her and gave her a look of complete distain. She looked back, wondering what was wrong with everybody, unless. She suddenly realised that the man must have been found outside and for some reason thought she might have something to do with it. She turned back to the stairwell and began to go back up and then she heard a man's voice saying "Stop." She turned back to the stairs after briefly looking round at the group of people once more and went back up to her room. She pondered on the thought of why everybody suspected her; it couldn't possibly be because he had fallen from the roof outside her bedroom window. Then it suddenly dawned on her, the man must have seen her go in through the window and then climbed down the part of the tower that remained higher than the main roof and then silently crept across the roof. He would have been trying to open the window when he fell, was he after the alethiometer, or was it something even more priceless, herself. This though sent a shiver down Lyra's spine and then she lay back on her bed and tried to get some sleep. Several hours later she woke up of her own accord and looked out of the window. The sun was still visible but beginning to frequently hide behind the vast clusters of thick grey clouds, making the light less bright.
She opened her window to let some fresh air in and stood there for a few minutes to think over what had happened and how she was going to deal with the thoughts that were stuck in her mind. The night before, the man was just by himself, but one of her thoughts was, what if there are others, more of them looking for her, all over Oxford. If there were she would have little time to escape. She went over to the chest of drawers at the other side of the room from her bed and pulled out two of them. She then went over to a wardrobe and took out a small rucksack and began to pack the things she thought she would need most to aid her escape. She didn't know where she would go, how far she could get on foot and would she be able to survive. There had always been that feeling in the back of Lyra's mind, what if I don't make it. She waited until the sun had set and the night sky had drawn over the city. She slowly opened her door a few centimetres to make sure that there was no one patrolling the hallways yet. She then crept out and started down the hallway and down the stairs. Half way down the great marble stairwell she stopped suddenly as she had heard someone talking. She knelt down and peered through the gap in the cast iron banister railings.
She had seen the two people before, in the meeting that her father Lord Asriel had hosted, in which she had saved him from being poisoned, they had never mentioned their names before by she had an idea that they were people of some importance to the college. After a few minutes of waiting, Lyra heard the conversation come to an end; she knew that now was the time to make her move. The two men were much too engrossed in bidding each other farewell until the morning that she managed to slip past them very easily. She turned and saw one of them raise his hand and then began to point at the doorway in which she stood, she turned instinctively and began to run at a fast and steady pace out of the college gates, into the main street of Oxford, she knew she was a fair way ahead of them, if they had chosen to chase after her, of which the odds were very high. She carried on running until she reached a rather rural area of the grand city that she knew so well. This small village was much less built up and was surrounded by trees and fields stretching on for miles. She sat down on the nearest wall and took out the alethiometer again. She twisted the keys into the formation of her question and closed her eyes. The answer came to her straight away. The compass had told her to head north and it fitted with the question she had asked. She knew that if there was anywhere she could be safe it would be Svalbard.
She walked into an enclosed group of trees and set up a small tent that would be more or less invisible to the naked eye, even in the day. She crawled in and pulled a sleeping bag out of her rucksack, laid it out flat, got in and began to drift off to sleep. She was harshly woken in the morning by a small branch landing on the top of her tent, startling her. She immediately and got out of the tent. She began to pack everything up but then heard the sound of a twig snapping in the distance. She turned behind one of the trees and peered around the corner. Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder and the sound of a familiar voice saying "Do I know you?"