"Master," said Peter as levelly as he could possibly manage, his body half-shaking with repressed rage as he stood before the Master of Jordan College. "how can you let Mrs. Coulter take Lyra?"
The poor man, appearing twice his already-old age, sighed, looked up at Peter-and then at his side where Susan stood, looking cross and frightened-and replied, "She is her mother, and the child wishes to go with her. I thought perhaps if I could make it so that our dear little Lyra was dissuaded from wanting to leave with a woman she barely knows, I could use that as an excuse of refusal-for the child's own good."
"And?" Susan demanded tersely; Maugrim's body lowered itself, but his head stuck up defiantly.
"And Lyra is nothing but delighted over leaving with Mrs. Coulter, she thinks of nothing but going north-you know that."
"So? You've refused her many things she's wanted before." Peter pointed out, glancing from the Master to the loudly-ticking wall-clock on the far end of the office-room they were standing in.
"Lyra or Mrs. Coulter?" He seemed a bit confused.
"Both," Susan answered for her husband.
"Well, there was a man-god knows how he got into this building, but he did-and he talked to Lyra and asked her how she liked Mrs. Coulter; the child practically sang the woman's praises and prattled on about how excited she was to be an assistant to her."
"What difference does that make?" Peter asked curtly, wishing the Master would grow a spine and stand up for Lyra before it was too late.
His voice shook and his eyes blinked wearily. "My dears, my dears, that man, the chap who spoke to Lyra, though she didn't know it, he was Mrs. Coulter's lawyer."
"What will you say to Lord Asriel when he comes back?" Susan said, taking a step forward. "How will you explain that his daughter is not here?"
"Daughter?" Peter gasped. "Lucy's leaving, too? Over my dead body!"
Susan turned and stared hard at her husband for a moment. "Lucy is Lord Asriel's daughter?" She had known, from talking with Iorek Byrnison, that Lucy was not Peter's real sister by blood, but she hadn't thought about who her father might be; and she certainly never suspected Lord Asriel of all people.
"Um, no." Peter said too quickly, looking puzzled. "I mean, who were you talking about?"
"Lyra," Susan's arched a brow at him.
"Lyra's his niece." Peter said.
Susan chuckled bitterly. "That's what she thinks."
"Lyra's the baby he had with your mother, then." Peter realized, feeling stupid for not piecing it together before. "But what about the Count and Countess Belacqua?"
"Completely made up." the Master told them. "There never were any such people."
"And the surname Belacqua?" Peter pressed.
"Something Lord Asriel came up with," the Master's raven-dæmon cawed sadly.
"But what's this about Lucy?" Susan wanted to know, though it meant going off the subject.
"I'd suspect she was the long-lost child Asriel had by his wife, Lady Sarah." the Master answered before Peter had a chance to.
"Lord Asriel never mentioned a wife." said Susan, feeling worse still about everything that was unfolding before them.
"I heard about her from Farder Coram." Peter explained, hating Lord Asriel for not even mentioning the woman he supposedly was in love with in spite of his cheating on her with Marisa Coulter.
"Well, I didn't see Lord Asriel much growing up," said Susan, getting a little red in the face. "Only once or twice; he and my mother would come out of her room looking very tired-I didn't know what was happening then, I thought they were talking about politics-and that they were worn out from disagreeing about them-until I was a little older and realized what was really going on."
Peter was instantly overcome by a wave of pity for the child-version of Susan; living with that sometimes-sweet, sometimes-cruel mother was bad enough, but to add the fact that she very nearly saw the woman cheating on her father with Asriel, well, he wondered how she had possibly been able to bear it.
"Anyway, I am sorrier than you'll ever be able to understand-and I know, if he ever comes back, Lord Asriel will want my head on a pike-but it's out of my hands now." the Master said, rubbing his temples dejectedly. "Lyra must go with Mrs. Coulter."
"Heaven help her," Susan sigh-murmured, remembering her own glamorous, seemingly perfect childhood, and how it had all come crashing down when she had finally discovered that nearly everything she loved and believed in was a lie.
In the meantime, Lucy and Reepicheep wandered the hallways down towards Peter's dorm, looking forlorn and a bit sullen, both completely at their wits-ends and frustrated beyond all reason. All morning they'd tried to talk Lyra and Pantalaimon out of their resolve to leave with Mrs. Coulter, explaining as much as they dared to about her real nature, but Lyra had been too lost in her day-dreams of the north-and of being an assistant to such an important lady-to pay them any mind.
Lyra had been nothing but deliriously happy and chipper while the house-maids, with a feeling of sadness at losing the child they suddenly found they loved dearly in spite of all the trouble she caused them daily, packed her suitcases and told her to keep safe and warm. Reepicheep's pleadings with Pantalaimon did little good, even he was excited over the notion of it-the first step in becoming an explorer.
So now Lucy was headed to the one person who always knew how to comfort her when she felt desperate, alone, and helpless-her brother. In her stocking-feet (because she was so upset she had forgotten all about her shoes) she half-trotted, half-slid to the dorm's doorway. The door wasn't latched, only shut, and there was no answer when she knocked. By the third try, she figured he wasn't there and that she might as well wait for him-or even Susan who, being such a very motherly person, could often offer comfort as well-to return.
Upon stepping inside, one of the very first things she noticed was the boy asleep in the chair by the fire, his head turned away from her towards it's dim, ember-lit heat, and his white owl-dæmon perched near-by.
"Ella!" Reepicheep cried out, shifting into a brown horned-owl and flying over to his old friend.
"Edmund," Lucy lifted her dress and ran over to the chair, gently shaking his arm.
He looked older, his face leaner and less boyish, his body longer-taller, if he were standing-and his hands larger, but it was still him all the same-the first friend she'd ever made in this world when she had stumbled here from that wardrobe in that other college, the one Lord Digory owned. So naturally, she was nothing short of delighted to see him, but her delight was over-shadowed by the fact that he didn't quite seem himself and when he turned, his eyes still more shut than open, she saw the round, dark bruise and had to bite back a scream. The black eye was worse even than the hurt arm he'd had when she had known him before back in Bolvangar, and she had little doubt as to who had done this.
She stood up at once and made a dash for Peter's bathroom, knowing that she could find a basin, some hot water, a bit of medicine perhaps, and a face-cloth in there. When she came back, finding Edmund still out of it, she got down on her knees next to the chair and slowly started to dap the damp cloth against his injured eye while Reepicheep rubbed his feathers against Ella's as if to comfort her.
To Edmund, the cloth felt warm and soothing, but it also stung slightly and he started to open the other eye all the way to see what was going on. He didn't recognize little Lucy at first, only seeing the small, slim, pale figure of a very young female, clutching a basin in one hand and a cloth in the other, her face hidden by a stream of long reddish-brown hair falling over the side of one shoulder. Without thinking, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he reached up and ran one of his fingers around a lock of it, tentatively twirling it around like a spool of thread.
As he slowly released it, she turned her head and he caught sight of her face for the first time, knowing her for who she was now, knowing her for his old friend, Lucy Pevensie.
"Lucy?" he whispered, his tone somewhere between pleased and a bit distraught.
"You're hurt," Lucy told him as if she thought he somehow was unaware of this fact.
"Yes-but I'm fine." Edmund blurted out, looking around the room, darting the one free eye everywhere at once, not knowing where he was or how he had gotten there.
"You're not fine." Lucy was adamant and sounded a good deal older than her meager twelve years.
"Maybe not," Edmund amended, reaching down and putting his hand on her upper arm. "but, Lucy, it is good to see you again."
Her firmness melted into nothing, a smile replaced her fearful frown, and she pulled the cloth away from his eye so that she could look at all of him, not just one side of his face. "It's good to see you again, too."
Up in the room that had once been Lyra's, then Lyra's and Lucy's, and now would-for a little while-be only Lucy's while Lyra went up north with the kindly noblewoman who needed an assistant, Pantalaimon, in the form of a pine marten, rested on the windowsill, gazing out at the familiar old roof-tops he and his human had always considered their explorer's look-out. It had been their everything for so long that he felt a strange surge of sentimentality towards it as he watched the chimney smoke curl and puff away in the distance.
Then, the scene changed; a pair of well-worn, yet sturdy, leather-hide boots appeared, clicking along the metal planks as they came closer. A knee bent and a head ducked, a hand tapped on the glass as gently as a visitor might knock at a regular door. The beak of a sea-gull dæmon banged lightly against the frame as if to remind Pantalaimon to alert his mistress at once.
"Lyra!" said Pan, calling to his human who sat a few feet away, banging the back of her feet against the side of the chair she was in, day-dreaming about the north.
She spun around and stood up quickly, looking hard at the lean, grown-up, dark-olive, muscular face framed by a shoulder-length mantel of blackish hair peering through the glass at her. It took a moment, but she finally placed him. It was Caspian, a Telmarine Gyptian. She didn't know too much about him-he'd come to these parts quite recently, but she knew enough to find him interesting. The story of his freakish uncle who had delusions of grandeur and dreamed of a human-form dæmon had spread among the Gyptian kids and the college children like wildfire. Everyone under the age of thirteen (and a few older ones who refused to admit that they had listened) knew all about it.
Banging her elbow into the frame by accident from her eagerness to lift the latch and find out what he was doing there, Lyra finally got the window open and let him in.
"Hello, Lyra." he greeted her.
"Caspian," she said back, watching as he looked around her room, seemed to debate taking a seat somewhere, and then chose to keep standing up instead.
"I hear you are going north," he said dryly, as if making small talk for a moment before launching into whatever it was he'd really come to tell her.
"Yes, Mrs. Coulter's taking me." Lyra told him, enjoying the pleasure-filled thrill speaking the words aloud sent up and down her spine.
He sighed and nodded, seeming to have already known that somehow, and then said, "I have to tell you something, it's about Billy Costa."
"He's not mad that I never came with the poisoned gown, is he?" Lyra blurted out anxiously.
"No, I don't think he is," Caspian's face grew grave and sorrowful. "He's missing, Lyra."
Her own face crumbled. "What? But aint that normal? For a Gyptian to wander off for a little while?"
"Not like this," said Caspian, his eyes shifting from her to Pan, his sea-gull letting out a sad high-pitched cry. "Ma Costa's worried sick."
"They'll find him, Gyptians can find anyone." Lyra was sure of it.
"They think he was kidnapped; and there's more, I am sorry."
"What is it?" Lyra felt her heart fly up into her throat and fought the urge to scoop Pantalaimon up into her arms and squeeze him tightly the way an infant might clutch at a stuffed toy.
"Your friend, Roger, was with Billy when he was last seen and no one's been able to find him, either." He sighed deeply and let that sink in.
"Who'sever took Billy, took Roger, too, you mean?" she asked, her head pounding and her hands beginning to grow slippery with sweat-beads.
Caspian nodded. "I thought you would want to know about it before you left."
Lyra blinked, her eyelashes fluttering in pain though they weren't damp with the tears any other child might have shed all at once. Pan climbed up onto the arm of a chair and placed his head on her side comfortingly.
There was a knock at the door, and just as quickly as he had come, Caspian hopped out of the window and disappeared into the Jordan smog. A rather over-weight house-maid came in just in time to see Lyra with a bitter, lost look on her face, closing the window. Assuming the girl was merely saying goodbye to the roof-land she had loved as a child, knowing that perhaps by the time she came back she might be older, a young lady, almost a woman, even, the maid said nothing at all about it, only mentioning quickly that it would soon be time to go and she ought to be ready.
The door opened again and the Master himself, in one of his nicest visiting suits, strolled in, his expression wholly apprehensive. To the maid he said, "Please wait outside by the door, it's very important that I know at once if I was followed."
Startled, the woman bore a goose-like look about her for a moment before obeying and replying, "Oh, yes, Master, right away." The door shut behind her with a light thud.
"I've come to say goodbye to you, Lyra." said the Master, pausing for a moment as if expecting the house-maid to burst back in and announce that he had in fact been followed even all the way to this room.
"Goodbye, Master." Lyra said, feeling unexpectedly torn about parting with him, for he suddenly seemed almost like a grandfather would have seemed to her if she'd known anything at all of grandfathers.
His smile was forced and short lived, but not unkind.
"I-I promise to be very good and behave for Mrs. Coulter," Lyra stammered shakily, thinking that maybe he was worried she would act badly towards the generous noblewoman and shame the college.
"I have something for you, Lyra." With these words he pulled a bolt of black velvet out from under the coat of his suit and handed it to her.
"What is this?" Lyra's eyes glittered, momentarily forgetting about the sad-faced Master, Caspian's visit, and her lost friends.
"It's an alethiometer, also known as a Golden Compass." he explained, watching as she pulled back the velvet, holding the object itself in her hands now. "It was given by Lord Asriel to the college a very long time ago, and now, I'm giving it to you."
She thought not of how heavy it was, only of it's strange beauty, all gold and shimmering, like something out of a story-book. "What's it for?"
"It tells the truth."
Pan, shifting into a black-footed ferret, sniffed at the alethiometer curiously. "How?"
"People are for ever trying to hide the facts, the truths, but this lets you glimpse things as they are-though it cannot easily be read, I'm afraid." The Master watched her almost-quiet fascination as she opened it and examined the crystal-like face and the little pictures all around the edge. "Still, I feel you are meant to have it."
"I'll take good care of it." Lyra promised, already more than half in love with the thing, little as she knew about it. It would not easily be taken from her grip-a fact which made the Master feel both afraid and joyful at the same time.
"One more thing I must make you promise me, child." He got down on his knees and took her hands in his, holding them as tightly as he could without being inappropriate. "You must keep the alethiometer to yourself, do you understand? It is of the utmost importance that Mrs. Coulter does not know you have it, of the utmost importance!"
Lyra blinked at him, confused and dazzled, and amazed and stunned, and broken and whole, and lost and found, and wistful, stubborn and willing all at once.
"Please," he pleaded, his eyes fixed so intently on hers; nearly filling with tears, she thought. "Promise me."
"I promise." she swore.
And she was not lying.
AN: Please leave a review.