In The Grove, near Alton, Hants

The Mercedes and the ambulance arrive at The Grove together.  Greaves stops at the front of the house, while the ambulance goes around to the back, where Lizzie accompanies her uncle's body through the double doors which lead to the private rooms.

Will, Kirjava and Giancarlo leave the Mercedes and enter though the front doors of The Grove.   Mary and Will's mother are sitting together in the conservatory at the back of the house.  'It's all right.  It's all going to be all right!'  Will tells them.

He explains to Mary how it is that his terrible burden has passed from him forever, and that the cause of their disagreement is behind them now; and to his mother that they can all go home very soon.  'I thought that it would be awful, giving up the Knife, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  Giancarlo must be the Knife-bearer now,' he says, and the young boy smiles, but says little.  He is anxious to return to his father.

'Well, that's good!' says Elaine Parry brightly. 'You'll both be needing to get back to school!'

Later, Lizzie joins them.  Mary, who did not see her earlier, is startled by her resemblance to Lyra and turns to Will.

'No,' says Will in answer to her unspoken question, 'but I know what you're thinking.  I once thought the same.'  He explains Lizzie's rôle in all that has happened.

'It's funny,' he says.  'I always thought that if the Knife was mended I'd just jump through a window and go straight to Lyra and… and all that.  But now – somehow it's different.  I still want to see her again, more than anything in all the world, but I know I mustn't.  There's Mum, for a start.  I can't leave her alone again.'  He smiles at Elaine Parry who has been listening avidly, but without comprehension, to all that has been said.  'And… Remiel reminded me that I made a promise and…' The others look away while Will composes himself.  'We made a promise, Kirjava and me, and we're going to keep it.  Saying goodbye to Lyra was the hardest thing I've ever done.  I couldn't bear having to do it again.  Neither could she.'

'William,' says Lizzie, 'Giancarlo must take me home very soon now, and I don't think that we shall see each other again.  Is there anything that I can do?  Anything that will help?'

'Yes, there is,' Will answers.  'Can I borrow a pen and some paper?'

'Let's go to the office.'  Lizzie takes him there and he sits at the desk.  He finds a pen and some sheets of headed notepaper in a drawer and starts to write furiously.  Lizzie leaves him there.

An hour later she returns.  Will is sitting in Doctor James's old chair, staring blankly at the door.  On the desk before him is a sealed envelope, addressed to Lyra Silvertongue, Jordan College, Oxford.

Lizzie sees the tears in the corners of Will's eyes and the trails running down his cheeks. She walks around the desk, reaches over to Will where he sits and kisses him tenderly on the lips.

'You'll make sure she gets it?'

'Of course I will.  I wouldn't miss seeing her for anything!  And William…'

'It's Will.  I'm called Will.'

'Sorry – Will.  I just want to say – I've never met anybody as brave as you.  I'll never forget you, as long as I live.'

Will stands up and they embrace.  'I won't forget you either.  For as long as I live.'

Presently, Giancarlo and Remiel join them.  Lizzie presses on the spine of the volume of Egyptian antiquities and the bookcase swings open, revealing the Window Room behind.  Greaves enters the office behind them, with Henry Latrom's body on a hospital trolley.  Giancarlo and Will hold the Knife and together they cut a window into Lyra's world.  It opens out onto another room, the mirror image of this one in a house which occupies the same space on the other side of the window.  Greaves wheels the trolley through, and unseen hands take it from him.  He returns and stands by the door.

'Goodbye Lizzie.'

'Goodbye, Will.'  And they kiss for the last time.

Lizzie passes through the window and Giancarlo, as Will has shown him, pinches it shut.

'Please sir,' says Giancarlo to Greaves.  'Can I go home now?'

In St Sophia's School, Oxford

Dame Hannah Relf and Elizabeth Boreal have an appointment with the Headmistress of St Sophia's School.  She greets them gravely and formally, as is her way, and offers them chai and pastries.  Then she sends a messenger to request Miss Belacqua's presence in her study.

'Please; can I talk to Lyra by myself?' Lizzie asks.  She is apprehensive – how should she best handle this encounter?

Dame Hannah and the Headmistress, who know why Lizzie is here, withdraw, and so it is that Lyra, knocking and entering the Headmistress's study without waiting for an answer, as is the custom at St Sophia's, finds only Lizzie waiting for her, dressed in black crape.  She is dismayed.  Who has died?

'Lyra, please don't be alarmed.  I have wonderful news for you,' Lizzie says, seeing how she has been taken aback by the sight of her mourning clothes.  'My name is Elizabeth.'  She will tell the girl her surname presently.  'Do sit with me in the window, here.  I have some very important things to tell you.'

The two girls sit in the window seat behind the Headmistress's desk.  Lizzie takes an envelope from her purse and hands it to Lyra.

There is a long, long pause while she opens it and reads and re-reads the letter, whose contents only Lyra, Will, Pantalaimon and Kirjava will ever know.

'Is this real?' she asks.

'Yes, it's real. All of it.  All of it is real.'  And as Lizzie tells her story, Lyra's eyes grow wide and her tears mingle freely with her sister's as they hold each other closely, sharing their old griefs and their new joys.

In Crouch End

The Mercedes halts outside Giancarlo's house and the boy stops only long enough to thank Greaves before racing through the front door and up the stairs to his father's room.

'Papa, Papa!'

'Giancarlo, you're back!'

'Papa, I want you to do something for me.  Will you, please?'

'What is it, Giancarlo?'

'Will you come into the garden with me?'

'You know I am too weak, my son.'

'Please, Papa!'

Giancarlo's eyes are shining so brightly, and his face reminds Giovanni so vividly of his lost mother's, that he cannot resist the boy's entreaty.  Leaning on Giancarlo's shoulder, he walks unsteadily down the stairs, though the kitchen door and onto the unkempt lawn at the back off the house.  It is midnight, damp and chilly, the streetlights shrouded in a misty haze.

'Giancarlo, why have you brought me here?  I will die of the cold.'

'Wait, Papa.'

Giancarlo takes the Knife from his coat and easily, confidently, cuts a window in the air.  A warm, scented breeze blows through it, enveloping the boy and his father.  Giovanni stares at his son and, blinking in disbelief, takes his hand and steps over the threshold.  A glimmering golden form extends its right hand and closes the window behind them.

Giovanni Bellini wraps his arms tightly about his son, the child of two worlds, as he looks around himself and cries out aloud for sheer delight.  In the velvet-warm night air, under the bright unwinking stars, they walk at last on the green hills of their home world of Cittagazze.  Soon, when his father is well again, Giancarlo will find the other Exiles, and take them home too.

The Subtle Knife, its blade safely wrapped in cloth, waits patiently in Giancarlo's coat pocket.  It has all the time in the worlds.

"Sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.  Sometimes in doing what you intend you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."

Author's note:

Thank you for reading this far; and special thanks to those readers who followed the story as I wrote it, urging me on and waiting patiently for me to reveal what was hidden and, I hope, explain what needed to be explained.

This is not the end of the story!  It continues in THREADS, also on FF.NET.

Ceres Wunderkind, February 2002