Chapter 3: Burglars
Three days ago, Will had stood outside of the small apartment and waved Mary off. She had gone to a Job interview in Geneva, invited by her former colleague, Oliver Payne. Dr. Payne had found out that Lord Boreal, or Sir Charles as he had called himself in this world had been a miser and a very untrustworthy man, and so had praised Mary for what she did and invited her to come and work with him. So she had gone, leaving Will alone in the flat with his mother. On the very first morning that she was gone he had received a phone call. It rang shrill and high pitched in the depressing silence that enveloped the stuffy, carpeted room and it had startled him when he had heard it, bringing him out of his thoughts. He picked it up tentatively and spoke a few words of little meaning, as he always did.
The answer that came brought out of his reverie and made him step over to the window and peer out, suspiciously. "Hello William," the voice said in a smooth, accented voice, "I want to talk to you about a certain trip your father made a few years back, I'm a journalist and I'm just collecting information on this subject."
Will took a long time to answer, the voice instantly reminded him of the tall, blond man whom he had run away from. After killing his partner, Will had run away from his house, taking some letters of his fathers with him, 'And that was when this whole affair had started' he thought 'right after that, under the hornbeam trees' and it was this thought that kept him from slamming the phone down and phoning Mary straight away. "Mmm?" he said into the receiver, trying to sound bored.
"Well, boy" The voice continued in it's half-patronising tone which Will found annoying "There's no need to be blunt with you, we know there was a portal into another World somewhere in Oxford, and yes," he said in response to Will's involuntary gasp "We know you went through it with a girl who called herself Lizzie Brooks. What you may not know, is that this portal has strangely disappeared. Now we were trying to examine this portal, to make it safe for others to pass through, but alas, now we cannot."
"What do you want me to do about it?" asked Will, his voice shaking with rage 'Trying to make it safe?' They would have used it to kill people, and cause a war or create weapons!
"Well my boy," the voice continued "As it happens, we ran into an acquaintance of yours, right before he 'disappeared'" the blond man put extra emphasis on this word and Will felt that he knew what had really happened. "He said that only children can enter this world, and as far as we know, you and the girl Lizzie are the only ones who know, and any other child would tell their friends and thus, the secret would be revealed. We want you to come with us to the North Pole, where we believe your father had the location of another portal. According to an Eskimo friend of ours, we have reason to believe that this portal has not yet been closed and we wish to-" The blond man's voice was cut off as Will slammed down the phone.
Of course! Why had he not thought of it before? The portal in the Arctic, which was mentioned in the letters from his father could be a possibility. Will dashed into his small room and grabbed the papers from under his mattress. He then dashed back down the corridor and into the living room where he picked up the phone and dialled Mary's number. She must have been on the plane, or something, but it was her answer phone. He left a message saying that he had found a possible entry to a different world and to contact him as soon as possible. The next day she had phoned him back and expressed a huge excitement at the prospect. She had instructed him to go to the town and buy equipment and suitable provisions for the North. She also told him that she would return in a few days, to get ready for the trip.
The next two days Will spent in the town centre of Oxford, buying coats and thermal clothes. He was in the exploring shops, buying maps of the area and then he took everything back to Mary's flat to study the maps and to try on all the clothes. When he got back however, he got a nasty surprise. The front door was open and his mother was sitting at the table crying. He dashed in, dumping the bags on the floor by the door to his bedroom. Will rushed over to her, calming and soothing her and she began to calm down.
"Mum, you have to tell me exactly what happened," he said, expecting a burbling reply of which he could make little sense, but she gave every detail well and coherently.
"The men ... came back, and they ... threatened to kill me if ... I didn't tell them ... where your fathers letters ... were hidden." She said, between sobs. Will was feeling cold fear, not just normal fear, he had dealt with that before, but mind numbing fear, paralysing fear. He managed to nod and his mother went on. "I had to tell them Will, darling, I had to." Will found himself standing beside his chest in his room, Kirjava moving silently and jerkily, like himself and slowly opening the shattered lid of the silver ornate box where he put the letters when he went out. Inside there were nine pieces of metal and a wooden hilt, the remains of the subtle knife. Nothing else, no letters, no leather case, nothing else. Will was lost, stuck in the wrong Oxford forever.
Chapter 4:The Voyage
Lyra sat in the semi-dark, trying to make her eyes come into focus. The dim form of Farder Coram sat opposite her and she could just see, if she craned her neck, the bank of the canal with it's trees and houses rushing past, as if it was late for an urgent appointment. The sounds of the Tartars had died away and gradually more trees replaced the thinning buildings and then there were no more at all. Pantalaimon lay curled up round her neck, snoozing in the cool cabin.
Suddenly John Faa burst through the door at the end of the narrow room, bringing a rush of air right through the boat, ruffling the fur of the cat dæmon who was sat next to Farder Coram's hand
"Lyra! Child, it's so good to see you!" boomed John Faa and sharp anbaric light flared into being as he clicked a switch, shrugging his heavy cloak onto a chair.
"Lord Faa!" Lyra said, beaming as she rushed up to him and hugged his mighty form. He chuckled and peeled her off.
"Now Lyra, this isn't a 'fun' trip," he said, his smile fading "It's very serious, now sit down, we must tell you all about the situation." Lyra obediently sat on the edge of the bench, straightening her hair after the 'collision' with Lord Faa. She was just about to ask what the problems were when Farder Coram cut in.
"Hush Child," he said, and as he moved into the light, she was startled how old and frail he looked, much older than she remembered him and John Faa was growing grey hair as well. "Lyra we do not wish you to know this, but it appears that we can do nothing about it. The spectres are pouring into this world Lyra, through the hole your father made in the fabric of the sky. They are consuming everything in their path, not only human life but animal and plant life aswell, they are leaving behind a barren wasteland in which not even the bears can live in. The witches have named you Eve, mother of all and they demand that you are taken to their council. Serafina came to tell me in person, and I believe she spoke to you too" Lyra nodded confirmation "She has now gone back to the North, to help her Sisters defend their beloved Lake Enara. They need you Lyra." Lyra stood up and walked slowly out on deck. She climbed up onto the roof and sat with her feet dangling over the edge.
"What'll we do Pan?" she asked
"Help Serafina of course" he replied
"Yes but it all sounds so, well, so impossible, me and you against the whole of the spectre army"
Pantalaimon said nothing, and she knew this was because he was afraid, just as she was, not afraid of death, because it was worse than that, and in death, she would see Will again. But getting attacked by a spectre, that was worse than death, that was eternal torment, being constantly oblivious to everything around you.
She looked up at the stars, as she had done on her last day in Cittagazze, and the constellations were the same. There was that funny shaped frying pan, the slightly unbalanced square, and than the arrow pointing to the hourglass, the symbol of life, her astronomy teacher had told her. 'Will will be living under these very same stars, perhaps he's even looking at them now.' she thought. She wanted to stay out there all night, lying on the roof of the boat, with Pantalaimon curled around her neck, but she shivered in the cool night air, and trudged inside, spirits low.
They sailed for days, and after the first day they met up with a few more canal boats, among them the Costas and Lyra crossed stayed with them, as John Faa's boat was the council boat. Apparently the Gyptians were gathering together in the biggest gathering since Lord Asriel, granting the Gyptians rights of passage in the Fens, passed the waterway laws. Once or twice she felt that she wanted to get the althiometer out of her pack and ask it about Will and also about the witches, but she didn't because she thought knew what she would find. "Will is in his own world, he misses you. The witches are fighting a losing battle" She only knew what the signs for this were because she had received that answer so many times on the boat, she had memorised it. "Anyway," she thought, "I don't feel like doing hard work now, and reading the althiometer is so much hard work." So she sat down on the bench, waiting for Ma Costa to call her for supper.
Supper was freshly caught eels and a very tasty vegetable, which was slightly crunchy and had a reddish tinge to the underside of the 'leaves' (Lyra could think of no better way to describe them). When the supper was finished, Tony Costa went through to get the beds ready and Lyra was left with Ma Costa.
"Lyra," she began and Lyra looked up into her tanned face and her bright blue eyes. "Lord Faa has told me to give you this," she held out a small black object, "Heavens knows what it is or where it comes from, he just handed it over to me and told me to give it to you when no-one else was around. So here you are." She held out the object and Lyra gingerly took it. It had stirred a memory in the back of her mind, a memory that she had had just a few days before and once again, she tried to grasp it.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, Serafina had given her something like it, if only she could remember where she had seen it before. But then Tony Costa came back in and announced that the beds were ready and it was pushed from her mind as she stumbled through the door. She hadn't realised how tired she was. She clambered into the narrow bunk, put her mysterious item underneath her pillow and fell asleep instantly, Pantalaimon curled around her neck, as always.
The first thing that she remembered about the dream was the rolling hills, stretching away forever, it seemed, but there was something wrong with them that she couldn't quite place, it was as if she was looking through some stained glass, giving everything a half-shimmering appearance and giving it a bluish hint, like it was dusk. But there was no sun to be visible in the reddening sky and there was no birds singing, no breeze swaying the trees, no nothing, it was as if time stood still.
Suddenly she was up on the highest hill, looking down over the land from an outcropping of rock. She turned and found that the rock that she was standing on angled downwards, straight into the rock of the hill. She didn't take any steps, but she was floating down the slope, towards some great stone doors, intricately carved with pictures of angels and other beings. Directly in the centre was what looked like a castle, but made into a fortress, with gun turrets and gatehouses. It was unmistakeably the clouded mountain; residence of the Almighty, God, the same God Lyra's parents had dragged down into the abyss. But Lyra knew nothing of that, and then she was through the doors, coming into a huge domed room with nothing on the roof except blackness. She knew without having to look behind her that the great doors had swung shut and had disappeared.
Suddenly she was plunged into Darkness, nothing was there and for one terrifying moment she thought she had gone blind. But then a gleam of light began to emanate from the ceiling, illuminating the room in the soft glow of starlight, made blue-grey by the dream's strange sheen. Then the whole night sky illuminated before her, all the constellations, everything, except one. Orion, the mighty warrior was missing, leaving a black space where he should have been.
Lyra was then intensely aware of another presence beside her and as she swirled to look, the night sky above her vanished, plunging the room into what should have been darkness, but a cold, dark light was coming from the ragged figure next to her. She could feel the evil emanating from his form, and he spoke, chilling words that made Lyra shiver, he said:
"Eve, Mother of All, the time has come for my revenge. Oh yes, I know who your parents were, and I know how they died, oh yes," He cackled, a hideous screeching noise that froze Lyra's feet to the floor, she couldn't take her eyes off his hideously mutated face. "I can enter your dreams, Lyra, an unusual gift you gave me, left it on the Oxford roads you did, so eager were you to get to your ship," He sneered cruelly because it was obvious from the look on her face that Lyra had no idea what he was talking about. Suddenly he became serious. "I will have my revenge Lyra, on you and that snivelling dæmon of yours, I disposed of your parents already, but I will not bow down to the Prophecy of men! Never! I will change the future, and I will rule the World again, Lyra. I Will Have Revenge!" He vanished and Lyra was enveloped in Fire, Blue fire, but still she could feel the scorching of her skin, as every nerve cried out against this torture. As the echoing of the ragged man's last words died away, she screamed in pain.
Three days ago, Will had stood outside of the small apartment and waved Mary off. She had gone to a Job interview in Geneva, invited by her former colleague, Oliver Payne. Dr. Payne had found out that Lord Boreal, or Sir Charles as he had called himself in this world had been a miser and a very untrustworthy man, and so had praised Mary for what she did and invited her to come and work with him. So she had gone, leaving Will alone in the flat with his mother. On the very first morning that she was gone he had received a phone call. It rang shrill and high pitched in the depressing silence that enveloped the stuffy, carpeted room and it had startled him when he had heard it, bringing him out of his thoughts. He picked it up tentatively and spoke a few words of little meaning, as he always did.
The answer that came brought out of his reverie and made him step over to the window and peer out, suspiciously. "Hello William," the voice said in a smooth, accented voice, "I want to talk to you about a certain trip your father made a few years back, I'm a journalist and I'm just collecting information on this subject."
Will took a long time to answer, the voice instantly reminded him of the tall, blond man whom he had run away from. After killing his partner, Will had run away from his house, taking some letters of his fathers with him, 'And that was when this whole affair had started' he thought 'right after that, under the hornbeam trees' and it was this thought that kept him from slamming the phone down and phoning Mary straight away. "Mmm?" he said into the receiver, trying to sound bored.
"Well, boy" The voice continued in it's half-patronising tone which Will found annoying "There's no need to be blunt with you, we know there was a portal into another World somewhere in Oxford, and yes," he said in response to Will's involuntary gasp "We know you went through it with a girl who called herself Lizzie Brooks. What you may not know, is that this portal has strangely disappeared. Now we were trying to examine this portal, to make it safe for others to pass through, but alas, now we cannot."
"What do you want me to do about it?" asked Will, his voice shaking with rage 'Trying to make it safe?' They would have used it to kill people, and cause a war or create weapons!
"Well my boy," the voice continued "As it happens, we ran into an acquaintance of yours, right before he 'disappeared'" the blond man put extra emphasis on this word and Will felt that he knew what had really happened. "He said that only children can enter this world, and as far as we know, you and the girl Lizzie are the only ones who know, and any other child would tell their friends and thus, the secret would be revealed. We want you to come with us to the North Pole, where we believe your father had the location of another portal. According to an Eskimo friend of ours, we have reason to believe that this portal has not yet been closed and we wish to-" The blond man's voice was cut off as Will slammed down the phone.
Of course! Why had he not thought of it before? The portal in the Arctic, which was mentioned in the letters from his father could be a possibility. Will dashed into his small room and grabbed the papers from under his mattress. He then dashed back down the corridor and into the living room where he picked up the phone and dialled Mary's number. She must have been on the plane, or something, but it was her answer phone. He left a message saying that he had found a possible entry to a different world and to contact him as soon as possible. The next day she had phoned him back and expressed a huge excitement at the prospect. She had instructed him to go to the town and buy equipment and suitable provisions for the North. She also told him that she would return in a few days, to get ready for the trip.
The next two days Will spent in the town centre of Oxford, buying coats and thermal clothes. He was in the exploring shops, buying maps of the area and then he took everything back to Mary's flat to study the maps and to try on all the clothes. When he got back however, he got a nasty surprise. The front door was open and his mother was sitting at the table crying. He dashed in, dumping the bags on the floor by the door to his bedroom. Will rushed over to her, calming and soothing her and she began to calm down.
"Mum, you have to tell me exactly what happened," he said, expecting a burbling reply of which he could make little sense, but she gave every detail well and coherently.
"The men ... came back, and they ... threatened to kill me if ... I didn't tell them ... where your fathers letters ... were hidden." She said, between sobs. Will was feeling cold fear, not just normal fear, he had dealt with that before, but mind numbing fear, paralysing fear. He managed to nod and his mother went on. "I had to tell them Will, darling, I had to." Will found himself standing beside his chest in his room, Kirjava moving silently and jerkily, like himself and slowly opening the shattered lid of the silver ornate box where he put the letters when he went out. Inside there were nine pieces of metal and a wooden hilt, the remains of the subtle knife. Nothing else, no letters, no leather case, nothing else. Will was lost, stuck in the wrong Oxford forever.
Chapter 4:The Voyage
Lyra sat in the semi-dark, trying to make her eyes come into focus. The dim form of Farder Coram sat opposite her and she could just see, if she craned her neck, the bank of the canal with it's trees and houses rushing past, as if it was late for an urgent appointment. The sounds of the Tartars had died away and gradually more trees replaced the thinning buildings and then there were no more at all. Pantalaimon lay curled up round her neck, snoozing in the cool cabin.
Suddenly John Faa burst through the door at the end of the narrow room, bringing a rush of air right through the boat, ruffling the fur of the cat dæmon who was sat next to Farder Coram's hand
"Lyra! Child, it's so good to see you!" boomed John Faa and sharp anbaric light flared into being as he clicked a switch, shrugging his heavy cloak onto a chair.
"Lord Faa!" Lyra said, beaming as she rushed up to him and hugged his mighty form. He chuckled and peeled her off.
"Now Lyra, this isn't a 'fun' trip," he said, his smile fading "It's very serious, now sit down, we must tell you all about the situation." Lyra obediently sat on the edge of the bench, straightening her hair after the 'collision' with Lord Faa. She was just about to ask what the problems were when Farder Coram cut in.
"Hush Child," he said, and as he moved into the light, she was startled how old and frail he looked, much older than she remembered him and John Faa was growing grey hair as well. "Lyra we do not wish you to know this, but it appears that we can do nothing about it. The spectres are pouring into this world Lyra, through the hole your father made in the fabric of the sky. They are consuming everything in their path, not only human life but animal and plant life aswell, they are leaving behind a barren wasteland in which not even the bears can live in. The witches have named you Eve, mother of all and they demand that you are taken to their council. Serafina came to tell me in person, and I believe she spoke to you too" Lyra nodded confirmation "She has now gone back to the North, to help her Sisters defend their beloved Lake Enara. They need you Lyra." Lyra stood up and walked slowly out on deck. She climbed up onto the roof and sat with her feet dangling over the edge.
"What'll we do Pan?" she asked
"Help Serafina of course" he replied
"Yes but it all sounds so, well, so impossible, me and you against the whole of the spectre army"
Pantalaimon said nothing, and she knew this was because he was afraid, just as she was, not afraid of death, because it was worse than that, and in death, she would see Will again. But getting attacked by a spectre, that was worse than death, that was eternal torment, being constantly oblivious to everything around you.
She looked up at the stars, as she had done on her last day in Cittagazze, and the constellations were the same. There was that funny shaped frying pan, the slightly unbalanced square, and than the arrow pointing to the hourglass, the symbol of life, her astronomy teacher had told her. 'Will will be living under these very same stars, perhaps he's even looking at them now.' she thought. She wanted to stay out there all night, lying on the roof of the boat, with Pantalaimon curled around her neck, but she shivered in the cool night air, and trudged inside, spirits low.
They sailed for days, and after the first day they met up with a few more canal boats, among them the Costas and Lyra crossed stayed with them, as John Faa's boat was the council boat. Apparently the Gyptians were gathering together in the biggest gathering since Lord Asriel, granting the Gyptians rights of passage in the Fens, passed the waterway laws. Once or twice she felt that she wanted to get the althiometer out of her pack and ask it about Will and also about the witches, but she didn't because she thought knew what she would find. "Will is in his own world, he misses you. The witches are fighting a losing battle" She only knew what the signs for this were because she had received that answer so many times on the boat, she had memorised it. "Anyway," she thought, "I don't feel like doing hard work now, and reading the althiometer is so much hard work." So she sat down on the bench, waiting for Ma Costa to call her for supper.
Supper was freshly caught eels and a very tasty vegetable, which was slightly crunchy and had a reddish tinge to the underside of the 'leaves' (Lyra could think of no better way to describe them). When the supper was finished, Tony Costa went through to get the beds ready and Lyra was left with Ma Costa.
"Lyra," she began and Lyra looked up into her tanned face and her bright blue eyes. "Lord Faa has told me to give you this," she held out a small black object, "Heavens knows what it is or where it comes from, he just handed it over to me and told me to give it to you when no-one else was around. So here you are." She held out the object and Lyra gingerly took it. It had stirred a memory in the back of her mind, a memory that she had had just a few days before and once again, she tried to grasp it.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, Serafina had given her something like it, if only she could remember where she had seen it before. But then Tony Costa came back in and announced that the beds were ready and it was pushed from her mind as she stumbled through the door. She hadn't realised how tired she was. She clambered into the narrow bunk, put her mysterious item underneath her pillow and fell asleep instantly, Pantalaimon curled around her neck, as always.
The first thing that she remembered about the dream was the rolling hills, stretching away forever, it seemed, but there was something wrong with them that she couldn't quite place, it was as if she was looking through some stained glass, giving everything a half-shimmering appearance and giving it a bluish hint, like it was dusk. But there was no sun to be visible in the reddening sky and there was no birds singing, no breeze swaying the trees, no nothing, it was as if time stood still.
Suddenly she was up on the highest hill, looking down over the land from an outcropping of rock. She turned and found that the rock that she was standing on angled downwards, straight into the rock of the hill. She didn't take any steps, but she was floating down the slope, towards some great stone doors, intricately carved with pictures of angels and other beings. Directly in the centre was what looked like a castle, but made into a fortress, with gun turrets and gatehouses. It was unmistakeably the clouded mountain; residence of the Almighty, God, the same God Lyra's parents had dragged down into the abyss. But Lyra knew nothing of that, and then she was through the doors, coming into a huge domed room with nothing on the roof except blackness. She knew without having to look behind her that the great doors had swung shut and had disappeared.
Suddenly she was plunged into Darkness, nothing was there and for one terrifying moment she thought she had gone blind. But then a gleam of light began to emanate from the ceiling, illuminating the room in the soft glow of starlight, made blue-grey by the dream's strange sheen. Then the whole night sky illuminated before her, all the constellations, everything, except one. Orion, the mighty warrior was missing, leaving a black space where he should have been.
Lyra was then intensely aware of another presence beside her and as she swirled to look, the night sky above her vanished, plunging the room into what should have been darkness, but a cold, dark light was coming from the ragged figure next to her. She could feel the evil emanating from his form, and he spoke, chilling words that made Lyra shiver, he said:
"Eve, Mother of All, the time has come for my revenge. Oh yes, I know who your parents were, and I know how they died, oh yes," He cackled, a hideous screeching noise that froze Lyra's feet to the floor, she couldn't take her eyes off his hideously mutated face. "I can enter your dreams, Lyra, an unusual gift you gave me, left it on the Oxford roads you did, so eager were you to get to your ship," He sneered cruelly because it was obvious from the look on her face that Lyra had no idea what he was talking about. Suddenly he became serious. "I will have my revenge Lyra, on you and that snivelling dæmon of yours, I disposed of your parents already, but I will not bow down to the Prophecy of men! Never! I will change the future, and I will rule the World again, Lyra. I Will Have Revenge!" He vanished and Lyra was enveloped in Fire, Blue fire, but still she could feel the scorching of her skin, as every nerve cried out against this torture. As the echoing of the ragged man's last words died away, she screamed in pain.