Chapter III: Unexpected Help

"Friends will be friends

When you're in need of love they give you care and attention

Friends will be friends

When you're through with life and all hope is gone

Hold out your hand, 'cause right in the end

Friends will be friends."

- Queen, "Friends will be Friends"

Lyra also awoke screaming, but quickly quieted down when she remembered where she was. Her scream awoke some of the other girls in the sleeping hall, but she told them that she was just having a bad dream, and they soon got back to sleep. Lyra was glad that they didn't see her tears in the darkness.

"Pan," she whispered so that the other girls would not hear. "Pan, are you there?"

"Of course I am," came the answer.

"Did you also…?"

"Yes. Yes, I also saw the dream."

"It was real, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Pantalaimon replied. "It really was them, wasn't it? Will and Kirjava?"

"We had contact," Lyra said. "He misses me just as much as I miss him! Oh, Pan, I must find a way to get to him! I must!"

"We must!" Pan said. "Tomorrow we will make up a plan! Using the Knife can't be the only way to travel the worlds. Your father found a way, and we will also find one!"

"I hope so," Lyra said. Having Pan by her side made her relax, and soon they were both falling asleep once more.

"What? Read the alethiometre for you?" Dame Hannah looked at Lyra. "Lyra, you are here to learn to do it for yourself. I cannot pick up the alethiometre and read it every time someone wants to know something! It is not a toy."

"I know, Dame Hannah," Lyra said. She was at Dame Hannah's office, trying to look as pitiful and sad as she could. "I used to know how to read the alethiometre, remember? I know what it is and what it can do. I don't know what else to do!"

"And now you want me to read it?" Dame Hannah's voice was dry. "To find something out about some boy you fancy?"

"I don't fancy him, Dame Hannah. I love him, and he loves me," Lyra couldn't keep the defiance in her from tainting her voice. Dame Hannah lifted an eyebrow.

"Young girls like you often talk about love, without really knowing what they are talking about," she said. "I am sure it is just ordinary affection, you will forget about him soon."

"Oh yeah?" Lyra said, and this time her voice was filled to the brim with defiance. "Well, I haven't seen him for two years and I still can't get him out of my head, no matter how much I try! I dreamt about him last night and woke up screaming! How is that for affection!" She suddenly realised that she had overdone it, and quickly took a more humble tone. "Dame Hannah, I realise that what I am asking sounds silly and foolish, but I have to know how to contact him! I have to find a way or I will loose my mind! Please! Just this once!"

Dame Hannah looked at her for a short while, examing her. "Why come to me? I'm not the only one in this institution who can read the alethiometre."

"Because you are the best," Lyra said truthfully.

"You really are serious about this, aren't you?" Dame Hannah asked.

"Ask the alethiometre," Lyra said. "Then you'll know how serious I am."

Dame Hannah sighed. "I'll take your word for it. Does anyone of the other girls know anything about this?"

"No," Lyra said. "I am here by myself. Nobody knows about this except me. And Pan, of course."

"Then it will stay between us. I do not want any girls running around here asking me more foolish questions."

"Deal," Lyra said and felt that tingling feeling in her abdomen that appears when you see that your crazy, half-baked plan is working after all.

Dame Hannah picked up a bag made out of black velvet and opened it. From within it she took a golden object that looked a bit like a compass. Lyra recognised it as an alethiometre, a Truthsayer. She had one of her own, and throughout her adventure with Will and the others she had had the gift to read it perfectly. She had now lost that gift, but still had the alethiometre and had vowed to learn how to use it again if it so would take her entire life. Unfortunately, she wasn't prepared to wait a lifetime to see Will again, and that was why she had come to see Dame Hannah.

"Now then," the older woman said and prepared to turn the small knobs on the device. "What do you want me to ask it?"

"Ask it if Will is all right," Lyra said.

Dame Hannah turned the wheels. She frowned. "He is not in any danger, but he is in great pain."

"Ask it if there is any way for me to go to him," Lyra said.

Dame Hannah twisted the small wheels and focussed. Yet again she frowned. "It just says "Find the House of A Thousand Doors"."

"The House of A Thousand Doors?" Lyra repeated. "What on Earth is that?"

"I don't know," Dame Hannah said. "The answer is very complex, I would need to consult my books to find out exactly what it means."

"You have already done enough," Lyra assured her. "Dame Hannah, I don't know how to thank you."

"Just keep this to yourself and don't go out on some wild adventure before you know what you are looking for," Dame Hannah replied. "Now go, you will be late for class."

Lyra thanked her again and hurried out the door.

"The House of A Thousand Doors," she said to Pan. "Oh, Pan! There is a way!"

"Don't get too agitated!" Pantalaimon said. "We might not even be able to find it!"

"We must be able to find it," Lyra said. "Or the alethiometre wouldn't tell us to look for it! Pan, don't you see? There is a chance! There is actually a chance!"

Since that day, Lyra spent every waking moment looking for the mysterious House of A Thousand Doors. It proved to be more difficult then she had originally expected. No matter how long she sat with her nose in old books at St. Sophia's great library, or even if she went to Jordan to consult their collections of scrolls and tooms she could find anything that mentioned such a place. Dame Hannah did indeed consult her books, but could only make out that the House of A Thousand Doors was hidden well, only a few people in the world knew about it and that it was, in fact, not really a house at all. Exactly what it was, she could not say. All of this made it even harder for Lyra to find it, and finally she felt ready to give up.

"It's no use, Pan," she said after reading through yet another dusty old book finding absolutely nothing of interest. "There is nothing in this one about the House of A Thousand Doors. If I didn't know that the alethiometre always tells the truth, I would doubt it even existed."

"We can't give up now!" Pan said. "Not when we know there is a way! Then we would have to go through life knowing there is a way to find them."

"You're right!" Lyra said. "That would be worse then before!"

She got up, returned the book to the librarian and left the library.

"So now what?" Pantalaimon asked.

"I don't know, Pan," Lyra sighed. "I need to think."

"Then let's go to the Thinking Place," he said.

"You read my mind, Pan, you read my mind."

The bridge was ancient, made out of withered stone, crossing a large creek not far from Jordan College. Lyra couldn't remember when she first had found her Thinking Place, under the bridge on the thin piece of land close to the torn stone base. Old hollys and thin willows grew on both sides of the creek, and the only sounds she could hear while sitting there was the wind playing in the branches of the willows and the hollys, and the sound of the water passing by along with the song of occasional birds or the buzzing of dragonflies during the summer. Lyra had always found the place to be almost unearthly serene, and she had always gone there when she needed some time alone to think.

"This is the first time I've been here since I came back to Oxford," Lyra told Pan. "I had almost forgotten how beautiful it is here. I remember it allot bigger, though."

"It was two more then years since then," Pantalaimon reminded her. "You have grown allot since then."

"Yeah, becoming a "young woman" and all of that," Lyra said dryly. "I don't feel any more grown at all."

"Perhaps because you did most of that growth during our adventures?" Pan suggested. Lyra nodded, and Pan could see that her thoughts shifted towards Will once again.

"So, what do we know for now?" she finally said.

"We need to find a place called the House of A Thousand Doors," Pan said. "Trouble is, no one has even heard about it and we cannot find anything in the libraries of neither St. Sophia nor Jordan College."

"What's the use to have the greatest university in the whole of Brytannia if you can't find a lousy house?" Lyra asked and threw a pebble into the water.

"Remember what Dame Hannah said, it's not a real house."

"I don't care what it is," Lyra said. "If it really has a thousand doors it has to be huge! Somebody must have heard about it!"

She tossed another pebble into the stream.

"You know, Pantalaimon, I am getting firmly sick of this," she then said.

"The alethiometre never said it would be easy to find," Pan said and tried to sound comforting. "Remember what they say; "Everything worth having is worth fighting for"."

Lyra frowned. It sounded very much like something Xaphania had said when explaining why she and Will couldn't be together. "I have done my deal of fighting, Pan. Why can't something, just for once, be eas…" she grew silent, staring at the sky. "Well, I'll be!"

"What?" Pan asked and followed her eyes.

High in the sky two figures came flying. It was two birds… No, one bird! A large goose, flying right next to…

"A witch!" Pan said.

"It's Serafina Pekkala!" Lyra cried, suddenly overwhelmed with joy. "Oh, Pan! She is coming! Serafina is coming to help us!"

Lyra got to her feet and started waving. Soon her friend had made a sudden dive and swooped down beneath the holly branches. Demonstrating their great skill at flying Serafina Pekkala and her dæmon Kaisa glided above the creek and gently landed next to Lyra and Pan. Before Serafina even had the time to get off her cloud pine branch Lyra had embraced her as hard as she could. "Serafina Pekkala! I am so glad to see you!"

"I am glad to see you too, child," Serafina said and laughed. "Please, let me get off this branch before you squeeze the life out of me."

Lyra let go and the witch who got off the branch and looked at her with her emerald-green eyes. "You have grown since last, Lyra, you are not a child at all."

"You still look the same," Lyra said. "Have you come to help me?"

"Yes," Serafina nodded. "Many nights ago I was floating among the dreamlands, when a cry of desperation reached me. I did not know what had happened, but I knew that it was your Cry, Lyra. I raced her as soon as I could, fearing that you might be in grave danger. Fortunately, I was wrong, for I see now that you are perfectly fine."

"I'm not in danger," Lyra said. "But I wouldn't say I'm perfectly fine, either."

"Tell me what troubles you," Serafina said. "Then I will see what I can do to aid you."

Lyra told her about how much she missed Will and the wonderful yet still terrible dream. Serafina nodded when she reached that part of the story, but said nothing.

"And then I managed to convince Dame Hannah to read the alethiometre for me, since I can't do it myself yet," Lyra finished. "I asked how to get to Will, and it told me to look for the House of a Thousand Doors, whatever that means. Do you have any idea what it was talking about?"

Serafina was quiet for a short while. "There is a legend among us witches, about a place that is not a place," she then said. "Called the House of Doors. Only a few chosen ones had access to The House, and those could walk the Roads that would take them anywhere they wanted to go."

"Then that's exactly what I've been looking for!" Lyra said. "Serafina, can you tell me more about this House?"

"Perhaps," Serafina's eyes suddenly became narrow. "But first I need to ask you if you know what you are getting yourself into. Last time you ventured into something like this…"

"…I meet Will," Lyra cut in. "And I saved the universe and changed death. Don't try to tell me it wasn't worth the danger."

"True," Serafina said. "But that was for the good of the worlds. This is different. You do this for your own good."

"And for Will," Lyra said. "Serafina Pekkala, are you telling me that you will not help me? Fine! Then I will find someone else who can tell me about the House, or I will find another way. I'm on the right track now, I know it! I will find a way to Will's world, and you cannot stop me."

Serafina smiled. "Of course not. How could I ever stop you, Lyra? Very well, I am convinced, I will tell you what I know."

"Oh, thank you!" Lyra said enthusiastically. She didn't know what made her happiest, the fact that she would learn more about the House or the fact that her friend was on her side. She knew in her heart that it would have been much harder to go through with this without the blessing of the elder witch.

"I confess that I do not know much about the House of Doors," Serafina continued. "It is all legends and fairy tales. But there is one witch, in Lapland, who was old when I was just a girl. She knows secrets about this world not even I dare guess. Maybe, just maybe, she can tell you what you need to know."

"Does that mean we are going to Lapland?" Lyra could feel the old urge for adventure and discovery rising inside her. Living at St. Sophia for two years had been interesting, she would never have thought that there could be so much knowledge to be learned in the world, but she realised now that her time in school actually was rather boring in comparison to fighting with armoured bears and flying with witches in the cold lands of the North.

"I will speak to your headmistress," Serafina said. "If I convince her, we can leave tonight."

In a sudden attack of emotion Lyra gave Serafina a tight hug. "I love you, Serafina Pekkala," she whispered. "You are the best friend a girl could wish for."

Serafina smiled. Lyra had, without knowing it, just rid the witch of the last of her doubt regarding helping Lyra. Now she did not care if so the skies fell to the Earth. She would help Lyra, no matter what.

Note: Now things are getting moving! Next, off to ol'Sweden! :)