"Damn it," Will cursed. "How could it be gone? I hid it so well—in the cabinet, all the way in the back! And look—the plates aren't even shifted!" He kicked the lower cabinet, making the dishes rattle in their places. "Damn it—damn it—damn it!"
Cassandra really looked shocked this time. Lyra could sense her discomfort and led Will away to the living room. "Cursing won't do us any good," she stated sensibly. She was trying to stay stable for Will's sake, even though she felt defeated and worn down past bearing. Her mental state was no better than her body.
"I know." Will looked down at his shoe and kicked the carpet. "But I'm still mad at whoever took it." He looked up. "Do you think that the Magisterium could've done it?"
"Why not? I've seen them do some bad things to me and my father"—her throat felt tight—"Lord Asriel, you know."
They walked back into the kitchen and saw that everyone was looking worried. "Will and I reckon that we should search in my world," Lyra said, biting her bottom lip so hard that it bled. The blood tasted coppery and hot; her lip stung as well. She used her dress sleeve to wipe away the crimson blood. The dress would have to be washed out later on. "But I think we ought to let Serafina get well first, or else."
"What I don't get," Mary sighed and blew out a breath, "is that why they'd take the knife but not the orb."
Lyra, Will, and Mary Malone felt their blood freeze. "Did you forget?" Will said, frustrated. "The knife lets you open into any world of your desire. But we should go now, while they don't know how to use it."
The three other people besides Will were caught in limbo, not able to decide whether to leave Serafina or have one of them stay or all of them stay. If they left Serafina alone, who knew what would happen? If one of them stayed, how would they keep in contact? And if all of them stayed, what were the chances that the Magisterium would stay clueless until they got there? They had three choices, and once they chose one, the other two had to be snuffed out like a candle. Nothing else would exist.
All three shuffled their feet, but Will glared at them, the path cut out for him certain and sure. Life isn't easy, Lyra thought, but Will knows what's better in the long run. But still, what'll happen to Serafina? She closed her eyes to think clearly through the tired muddle of her brain. It was like the alethiometer again.
The alethiometer! She rummaged in her skirt pocket and found it. Thank God that she kept the alethiometer in somewhere so private, no one would think to look. The heavy gold disk weighed heavily on her hand like the choices weighing on her mind. She turned the dial to a dolphin, the globe, and the anchor, which meant that they were unsure to go, whether the Magisterium was going to pose a threat, and the anchor, for hope.
She held the levels in her mind but with consciousness this time, even though it was a little harder. As she held the levels and pressed them down, the larger needle spun. Twice it stopped at the baby, five at the apple, and once at the hourglass with death. The baby meant the future and the apple knowledge, but the hourglass with the death's head meant someone was going to die, and it was quite clear who.
She thrust the alethiometer down, unable to stop a sense of helplessness. Lyra felt numb. "No—Serafina can't die!" she wailed quietly. "She just can't!"
"She can," Will said softly, placing a warm hand on her back. Lyra felt so cold, so lifeless that he took her hand and rubbed it. "The orb's sapping her strength, somehow, somewhere." He turned to Mary. "We need to know where the orb comes from." He felt as helpless as Lyra, but he didn't show it. Show something like weakness, hopelessness at school and you were beaten up for the look in your eyes, so Will had learned to bury it under layers of supposed bravery. "Maybe it's not Serafina. Don't jump to conclusions." He certainly sounded a lot surer than he felt.
"Can you give me a moment to sort this all out?" Mary groaned. They all jumped. She'd not spoken for ten minute straight, and her voice was a little hoarse. She stayed silent again for a few minutes until she cleared her throat. "So, we need to go and find out if the Magisterium has the knife but Serafina can't be left alone. And we need to know if the orb is powerful and where it came from, so that we can return it."
"I'll ask the alethiometer," Lyra offered shakily. She felt scared, a pit in her stomach where her bravery used to be. Her mind threw up images of the symbols until she was so afraid, she sat down on a chair and shook her head. "I can't do it today—I just can't," she almost whispered in a high, thin voice. She had to grip the table to make sure she wasn't lost inside her fear.
"No need to rush," Mary soothed. "I think I'm too tired to make dinner, anyway. Let's just sleep."
Everyone agreed, so they changed into their nightgowns and pajamas (in Will's case) to get ready for sleep. This time, instead of Lyra sleeping with Cassandra, she slept in Will's room.
Will's room was quite different from her room. His room was covered in posters of various rock bands and a couple of trophies, all hard-won by trading with other boys his age. As they both snuggled into his wide bed, Lyra felt his warm, inviting hand curl around her shoulders, and she fell asleep contentedly on his shoulder.
Will wanted nothing more than just one night like this, like a loving husband and wife, perhaps. He sighed, put his head closer to Lyra's, and closed his eyes to the darkness.
Lyra kept seeing the alethiometer, but when she knew she was dreaming, she screamed in her dream. The subtle knife, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter were looming closer to her. Lyra was watching the Lyra in her dream, and she just looked at the horrible scenes. Mrs. Coulter had the knife, and she cut off Lord Asriel's head, Lyra's only father, and cut off Lyra's head, too. The oddest thing was that Lyra felt the knife but no pain. All of a sudden, the alethiometer spun around until it was like having a fever, the images coming closer until they threatened to collapse in grains. The images went back to their normal spots. Around and around they swirled, until apparently the dream Lyra decided she'd had enough and made her wake up.
The real world Lyra woke up, gasping for breath with perspiration on her forehead and finding that she had tears on her face. The dream had been so frightening in such a way, she'd cried in her sleep.
"What's wrong?" Will asked groggily, waking up.
Lyra dug her head into his shoulder. "The alethiometer—Mrs. Coulter—Lord Asriel—the Subtle Knife," she gasped in between sobs. She waited until her breaths had naturally calmed down a little. "This is the real world, is it?" She was so panicked; she felt her face to make sure she was real. She was real, with hot tears of fright streaming down her cheeks. "It's all real—I'm real, everyone's real."
Mary came bursting into the room. "Lyra—I heard you scream. Will?" she said sternly, looking him straight in the eye.
"What?" Will answered innocently. "I didn't do anything. Lyra had a bad dream."
"It was about Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel and the Subtle Knife and the alethiometer," Lyra poured out all in one breath. "Oh, I'm real, am I?" she kept asking. She really couldn't tell if the world was real or not. She touched Will's face and felt a tingle where her fingertips grazed his jawbone.
"Oh, God, I thought that something bad had happened," Mary said, apparently worried. "Look—it's almost dawn, so get up and might as well do you some good to watch the sun rise, watch something to do with nature, not machinery and…well, just go. It'll help, I promise," Mary added when she saw Lyra's dubious blue eyes.
Lyra and Will went outside and breathed in the fresh, crisp cold air in the morning. Lyra welcomed the air especially because the cold was a shock to her senses. The wind whipped her hair while the penetrating cold made her very bones freeze. Pantalaimon and Kirjava, with them all the while but straying about inside the house when Serafina was out in the hospital, came outside and stood by their corporeal half.
Will's skin stood out in goose-bumps at the tranquil morning. He normally didn't like cold weather, but this wasn't half bad. The chill wind was just right to make his body cool and dry, but not enough to make him shiver, unlike the past thirteen bone-marrow-freezing winter. He didn't dare to speak, didn't dare to disturb the majestic quietness of a rising dawn.
The sun came up slowly, first turning the sky gray, and then all of a sudden, it was bursting through the skyscrapers in the distance. Mary lived in a little remote place, but not so remote that they couldn't walk to somewhere in twenty, thirty minutes. The sun was a bursting ball of red, making their skin tinged with a faint crimson, blood-like hue. The cold air and splendid scenery did more than make their breathing even; it made her minds clear and empty, much like a child's mind, without worry and the world's government.
They went back inside before the sun heated the atmosphere because inside had air-conditioning. Mary was already up, making a cup of coffee. "So," Mary yawned, sleepy, "what do we do with Serafina?"
"Go now," Lyra spoke, her voice hoarse. "We should go now while Serafina—"
"Serafina need a person to take care of her…" Mary replied, reluctant of letting the witch be alone.
Will thought of something. "My piano teacher—she can help Serafina, and we've got our mobiles…not that it'd work in other worlds, but it's a start," said he.
"Well, we'll have to warn Serafina—she's conscious and speaking and able to understand us—that your piano teacher is not a witch but a human." Mary ran her hands through her hair, tapped the countertop on which she was leaning against, and adjusted her nightgown.
"Don't you think she'd know already?" Will asked, his voice nearly a whisper. His mum was in the hospital, in some kind of rehabilitation, and it was heart-wrenching for him to acknowledge the fact that his mother was not fit to be a kind and loving parent, hard though she'd tried over the past twelve years. "Besides, I don't want anyone poking their noses into our business. We go to Lyra's world now, and we don't stop for side matters."
"Serafina isn't a side matter!" Lyra asserted forcefully. "Someone's gotta look after her."
"Just my piano teacher…" Will insisted in a strained voice.
"Fine," Lyra decided, petulant and feeling very annoyed all over, as love-struck as she was. "Your piano teacher."
As soon as Will had led his piano teacher to the hospital and explained what was going on, the piano teacher looked shocked. "A witch?" she asked incredulously. "Aren't witches evil?"
"Not this one." Lyra's voice came through clear and quiet. "She's the best person you'd wish for a mother. But please," she implored, "take care of her and contact us. I don't know if Will's mobile will work outside this world, but at least give it a try," she said desperately. "We'll come back as soon as we can," she said in a soothing voice to Serafina.
Serafina, now more flesh-colored and quite conscious, nodded and replied in a weak tone, "I have something for you to keep contact." Out of somewhere she had six necklaces, seemingly made of gold. "If I need assistance, you will feel that the necklace becomes hot, not hot enough to burn but hot." One necklace she looped over her slender neck; the rest she gave to the five people standing around her bedside.
"Thank you," Lyra said. She didn't know how in the world Serafina could keep doing magic, even at one of her weakest points. "We'll come back to you immediately, no matter what happens."
They all left the hospital except for the piano teacher and Serafina, of course. Mary was strolling along in their Oxford at a leisurely pace, so slow that Lyra, Will, and Cassandra had to look behind them to make sure Mary was keeping up.
"What are you worrying about?" Cassandra finally asked when they were five minutes away from Mary's flat.
"Serafina…my papers…" Mary said absentmindedly. She had a frown on her face and a worried expression in her eyes. "Should I just tell the people that I'm researching with that an urgent matter calls me out of United Kingdom for five days?"
"I honestly don't care," Will growled. "We're going to her world tonight, and no doubt about it."
"But how?" Lyra said. "We don't have the knife, we don't know where the openings are, and Serafina's not well enough yet. There are no witches in your world. We're in a dead end."
Will sighed, ran his hand through his blackish-brown hair, and thought about it while they turned into a park in Oxford with a stately-looking church. "Fine," he answered, frustrated. "We'll wait until Serafina's well enough and then we'll go. But I don't know how long it'll take."
"Let me ask the alethiometer." Lyra took it out again, turned it to a globe, a dolphin, and an apple; globe for worlds, dolphin for uncertainty or playfulness, and apple for Serafina—knowledge. The needle swung round, stopping at the globe, the hourglass but not meaning death, and of a woman, which meant Serafina was going to be all right. "She's going to be all right soon," Lyra replied after shaking herself out of her trance.
"When—how—I need to know!" Will exclaimed, kicking a black-iron fence. His toe stung but he didn't care. Serafina was taking too long—the results wouldn't be good—he wanted to scream.
"Wait and see," Mary said cryptically. "We'll go when it's time."
One day passed uneventfully. Two days passed uneventfully. Quite soon a whole week dragged and lagged by their faces. Will was growing irritated, Mary was exhausted from her work, Lyra was troubled and tired to the point of breaking down again—she'd asked the alethiometer but it gave the same response, and Cassandra was just being a "pain in the butt," as Will said.
One night they were sitting on the couch, Cassandra watching television, switching the channels; Will was doing his school worksheets and was stuck on a geometry problem; Lyra was consulting the alethiometer but with her brain falling to pieces of the effort needed to fall into a trance; Mary was sitting with her feet tucked under her, her laptop perched on her knees and she was typing away at it rapidly, pressing the return key of several emails. All of a sudden a thud was in the room, but nothing had happened. "Oh, blackout in someone else's flat," Mary muttered under her breath and sent five more emails, her nimble fingers moving as fast as they could.
All four of them clutched their necklaces: they'd become freezing cold, so they lifted it off their hollow of their necks. "Serafina's ready," Lyra shouted. She didn't know why she said it, but she was almost certain that Serafina was quite well enough.
Mary's flat's door burst open with the sight of a person with mint-green eyes and a regal yet kind and mystical expression.
"Told you she was ready," Lyra boasted. She leapt up from her position, tucked the alethiometer into her pocket and rushed to Serafina. "You're going to take us to the Arctic, are you?' she asked anxiously.
Serafina smiled, much like she'd done before she'd gotten sick. "This time the journey will be swifter. I have three of my sisters along with me, so we are hastening to the North."
Lyra got on Serafina's cloud-pine branch, but before she did so, she grabbed her coat and reminded the others to do so. Pantalaimon crouched on Lyra's shoulder, his weight heavy on her back but he was relatively stable, so long as they didn't do any loop-de-loops in the air or any flips.
They flew swifter and bumpier this time. The wind whipped at her face more fiercely than she was used to, and her eyes streamed with tears to protect from the gusts of cold air. Lyra could see the glinting lights of Will's world gradually fading until there were barely any at all and they were over sea. She had to look back up to the sky, or else she felt like falling. At last she saw, in the surrounding, compressing darkness, the faint outline of trees in the tundra, but they went past those, until they saw discernible white from black. Serafina and her sisters flew about ten more minutes before landing.
Pantalaimon hopped off Serafina's broom, tested his paws on the snow, and gave a howl. Lyra reprimanded, "Pan! Shush!"
Cassandra's daemon, Coppelius, dug his claws into her shoulder until she swept him off. Kirjava jumped off Will's shoulder as he was on the ground.
Mary got off wearily, but Serafina reminded her, "We still have about an hour's walking until we're there, near the thin layer of unknown separating her world from yours."
They trekked on the snow, all tired and hungry, but they made good progress. Serafina flew up into the air, guiding the four humans north. "This is the best part about being a witch," Serafina smiled. "We can fly as high as we want, whenever we want." The tone of her voice meant that she was only stating the fact, not boasting or bragging about it.
Will was the first to see the Aurora this time. He raised his eyes to the sky and saw the curtain of green-crimson-rose drifting and swaying up in the vast firmament. He breathed a sigh of wonder and tugged on Lyra's sleeve. Everybody lifted their eyes to the wonderful sight hanging above them.
"We're near there, only five minutes, so get on the cloud-pine branches again," Serafina called. Everybody scrambled to do so, and when they were done, the witch flew faster and faster than she'd ever done. "We need to be quick about it," she whispered to Lyra, who was sitting behind her. Lyra felt her body resisting to the wind but she held on. Pantalaimon wrapped himself around her neck. All of a sudden, they burst through a layer of unknown, their bodies feeling burst apart by pure, white light, and they were through.
"We're in London!" was the first thing Lyra said after ten minutes of silence and recovering from their shock. "My London." There was something comforting and familiar about returning to where she was born in. She led the way forward, having made many excursions in London and Oxford, though she was more familiar with the latter than the former.
"Magisterium's over there," Lyra pointed to a large, grand and rather lavish building right next to the Royal Arctic Institute. "We're going there first."
