I Survey Time Past

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Burnt Norton

For a moment – one blissful moment – the joy that flooded through me at finding that Lyra was alive washed away the hollow emptiness I was suffering from Viola's loss. I sank to my knees at Lyra's feet. She spoke again, sounding as if she wanted to laugh.

'Sit down here, Peter, next to me. People are beginning to stare!'

They certainly were. It can't have been a terribly common sight in the Botanic Garden; a respectable middle-aged woman sitting on a bench surrounded by her belongings, with a young man kneeling in front of her, gazing up into her eyes. Not in daytime, anyway. So I rose to my feet, turned to face out into the Garden, and sat down on the bench by Lyra's side. She leaned towards me and kissed me on the cheek, a warm benediction. 'It really is you, isn't it, Peter?'

'Yes, it's me.' My voice sounded choked and artificial in my ears. It sounded empty, like the voice of a man who was not telling the truth. Although the world around us had returned to normal – the trees swaying, the people walking and chatting among themselves (or looking at Lyra and me), children paying tag around the trees and a blue-coated ice-cream vendor pushing his cart up and down the paths – my own feelings of unreality and detachment had, if anything, grown stronger. Was I really me? No, not really.

'But how did you get here? You can't be here; it's not possible.'

'Lyra, it's you… you're the one who isn't possible. You're…' I couldn't say it: You're dead. So I said the next thing that came into my head, 'You're looking well.'

'Thank you,' Lyra said, shaking her head. I wondered if she, like me, was trying to clear her mind and come to terms with what had happened. She looked closer at me. 'I wish I could say the same for you, Peter. You look terrible.' Trust Lyra to tell the truth.

'I feel terrible. Sorry.'

'Peter, what is it? What's wrong? You look… you look half dead.'

Half dead. That did it. That was the last straw; all that I could take. I cried out aloud in my pain, clasped Lyra to my chest and let my head fall against her shoulder. My tears ran down the back of her frock, staining its material a darker shade of red. Lyra put her arms around me in turn and we held one other close; each hearing the other's heartbeat, each feeling the other's breathing.

Then we separated. Pantalaimon had been sitting in Lyra's lap all this time – as he had when I first saw her – but now he leapt up onto her left shoulder and whispered in her ear. I waited. Lyra listened intently to what her daemon told her. I knew what he was saying. He knew about me – of course he did. He would have known the truth the moment he saw me without Viola. Now Lyra knew too. What would she do?

'Peter?' Lyra's expression had changed and now, instead of radiating gladness, her face had become drawn and pale. There were lines there – of course there were, after all these years – but they were stretched out tight and engraved more deeply into her skin than I remembered. She looked more frightened, too, than I had ever seen her, even when we had confronted Miss Morley with her gun at Cropredy or later in Jordan College.

There was nothing I could say that would do any good. Nothing that I could do that would make any difference – just one thing only, and that only because I found that I could not speak, or express my bereavement in words. I took the grey squirrel from my jacket pocket and placed it in Lyra's lap. Pantalaimon ran back down her arm and nuzzled the animal's nose with his own. He looked up, and he and Lyra spoke to each other, unheard by me. I sat in rigid misery, with my hands resting on my knees. I had never forgotten that Viola and I had been severed; but the fact of it was, for the first time, being passed on to another person. To make it worse, if that were possible, Lyra was the one person whom I had most wanted to find again, though I still did not understand how this reunion could have come to be. Oh, why did she, of all people, have to be the first to learn of my mutilation? I had wanted to find her again, yes, but as a whole person, a human being and not a half-dead monster.

'Oh, Peter. Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry. So very sorry…' Lyra's tears were flowing now, leaving shining trails running down her cheeks.

We walked slowly out of the Botanic Garden, past the clicking turnstile and the money-collector with his leather satchel. Up the High Street, past the Rose Teashop – that hadn't changed, at least – we went, and turned right into Turl Street, just before the Covered Market. We stopped at the porter's lodge of Jordan College and Lyra showed the man behind the glass window her identity card. There was a visitor's book and she had to sign me in. "Peter Jones," she wrote and I signed my false name next to her neat handwriting with an exaggerated flourish. 'Bars at ten, remember, Professor,' said the uniformed guard, putting the book back in its rack. Had I not been feeling so sick at heart I would have expressed my surprise at this heightened security. In the past I had simply walked past the Porter's lodge and waved. I was reminded of the way that Master James and I had been treated at the Boreal Foundation offices at Cropredy all those years before.

I still knew the way to Lyra's rooms. Of course I did. Just the same, I let her lead me across the quadrangles and through the colonnades and passages which led to her Stair.

As we walked from the Botanic Garden to Lyra's rooms, neither of us had said a word to one another. I, because of my continuing horror and shame; she, I thought, because of her disgust. Her study, once we had climbed those silent stairs and Lyra had unlocked her door and let me in, was mercifully unchanged from the day I had first seen it – and the last, when I had found her dead, with her body slumped across her desk and the blood trickling slowly from one ear.

I sat down in the familiar fireside chair and waited while she bustled about in her little kitchen and made us tea. Soon we were sitting just as we had sat so many times before, drinking chai and eating biscuits. Lyra drank, and placed her cup and saucer down on a mahogany table next to her chair.

'Bolvangar,' she said, at last. 'Bolvangar. There were severed adults there, as well as children. They were… like you and… Viola. Not like the children.'

Viola. Lyra had called her Viola, as if my beloved daemon were still with me. Was she mocking me, or offering me hope?

'So much of their life-force was contained in the link between them; the children and their daemons. It was because they weren't Settled. They couldn't be parted without it killing them. Killing them. But it was different for the adults. They could not be killed; there was not enough energy there.'

'Not killed. Just made inhuman,' I croaked. Lyra leaned forward.

'You are not inhuman, Peter. You are very badly hurt, but you are still a person. You are not dead.'

'I'm as good as dead.' Desperation drove me. 'Would you kill me, Lyra? If I asked you, would you kill me? It would not be murder. It would be a blessing, a kindness. Please, if I asked you?'

Lyra sighed deeply. 'I could not do that. Please, you mustn't ask me to kill you. Instead, tell me how you come to be here. You see, Peter, you're not meant to be here, living and breathing. You died, here in my study, seven years ago.'

Seven years ago? None of this was making any sense to me. 'I died? How did I die?'

'You were shot by Miss Morley. She had a gun, a particle weapon, and she was trying to make me give her my alethiometer. You charged at her and she cut you to pieces with the gun. It was just the kind of stupid, brave thing you would have done. So how can you be here now, if you're dead? You're not a ghost, I can see that.'

'No, I'm not a ghost. But Lyra, you're not supposed to be alive either. You died five years ago, or – how long had I been in Jim and Carrie's house? – maybe it was more than that. I found you in here, sitting at your desk. They said it was something in your brain – a blood clot, I think it was.'

'I died?'

'Yes. You were buried in the Botanic Garden. That's why I was looking for a memorial plaque. Your memorial plaque.'

Lyra rested her chin in the palm of her hand. 'So – you think I died, and I think you died, but we're both alive…'

'More or less.'

'More or less. Peter, can you tell me what you've been doing for the past seven years?'

'Er, from the time we went to Will's world, or before then? All of it? Let me think… Do you remember going to Will's world? Where we met John, and Judy and Mary? Arthur went too. Do you remember that?'

Lyra had flinched when I mentioned Arthur Shire's name. Why? 'Yes, I remember that, and attacking the Boreal offices in Cropredy together with the gyptians. Now; do you recall what happened when you came here for your alethiometry lesson, the Saturday after we got back to Oxford? See what you can remember, Peter, and put all your thoughts in order just like I used to tell you. Oh, and I'll take this tray out and get us another cup of tea. Sit tight, I'll be back in a jiffy.'

The Professor was taking charge of her student.

When she returned, laden with tea, cups, plates, biscuits, orange cakes, hot water, milk and a saucer for my grey squirrel to drink from, I was ready. I'm not going to write down everything I told Lyra that evening. It would take far too long and would only repeat what I've already told you in my story. As I sat by the fireplace and related everything that had happened to me over the past seven years since the day that Lyra and I were ambushed by Miss Morley, the light through the window slowly faded and turned red as the sun disappeared behind the trees and buildings on the far side of the quad beyond. At some time, Lyra must have risen to her feet and lit the lamps in the room, but I can't say when. I was too involved in my task.

As I spoke, Lyra listened attentively, interrupting from time to time if I skipped an important event or person. We soon realised that the point at which our two stories diverged was the moment when I, fed up with being the object of Miss Morley's scorn, had charged at her. In my world, mysterious figures had come to my rescue, and reflected the beam from Miss Morley's gun back on herself, killing here. In Lyra's world – the world where I was living (if you could call it that) now – Miss Morley had killed me and there had been no rescue. Just to make it even more confusing, the Lyra whom I had seen when I came to after my rescue had had no recollection of any attack by Miss Morley. That Lyra believed, and it was true in that world, that Miss Morley had been killed a few days earlier, when the gyptians, led by my friend Arthur Shire, had laid siege to the Boreal Foundation offices in Cropredy.

'It's all hopelessly mixed up,' I said. 'I don't understand it.'

Lyra looked into the empty fireplace. 'Tell me again,' she said, 'about Elizabeth.'

'We think,' I said, 'that she was the one who sent the dreams.'

'The dreams?'

'Terrible nightmares. Every night – twice a night, sometimes. They were… indescribably horrible. They seemed to burrow into you, like a worm looking for your soul – looking to find it and eat it and spit it out. I felt… mangled, chewed up. I can't tell you…' (See footnote 1 - CW)

'Why do you think it was Elizabeth that sent them?

'It's what Arthur thought. He had them too, you know, those dreams. It was as if she had wanted to take revenge on everyone who had spoiled her plans. Arthur can see further than we can, can't he?'

'Yes, he can.' Again, that look of sorrow on Lyra's face.

'Anyway, he thought that it was the dreams that killed you.'

'I still can't imagine that.'

'You never had the dreams. They were unimaginable.'

Lyra put her chin in her hand again.

'Did I have a good funeral?'

I laughed. 'It was magnificent! You'd have been proud. The King was there…'

'Alfred? He turned up?'

'Oh, yes. Elizabeth tried to wreck everything by arriving late, but even she couldn't ruin it. I was there, with Jane…'

'Jane?'

'Jane Phipps. She was my girlfriend then. Not now, though.'

'Sorry. Go on.'

'Jane, and Arthur and Harry Owen. Oh, and Adèle Starminster as well.'

'Adèle Starminster? Do I know her?'

'She knows you. She was a journalist on the Chronicle, in my world. She first met you when you were only eleven or twelve, back in London. She nearly went to Bolvangar.'

'Oh, Adèle! Arthur's friend!'

'That's her. Anyway, she was the one who found Elizabeth's things on the shore, when she drowned herself.'

'Elizabeth drowned herself?' Lyra's mouth was a wide O of astonishment.

'Yes, in Eire, two or three months after you died. Arthur knows a lot more than he's saying about that, I'm sure.' (See footnote 2 - CW)

'Yes… Yes, I'm sure he does.' Lyra looked down and stroked Pantalaimon.

'Please, Lyra; I don't understand.'

'What don't you understand?'

'What's wrong with Arthur? Why do you look that way whenever I mention his name?'

Lyra sighed. 'You'll have to know sooner or later. Peter, Arthur's dead. Dead in this world, at least.'

'Dead?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'He can't be! He had a special arrangement with Death. He wasn't ready for it and it wasn't ready for him. That's how you were able to bring him back, after we saved Davey.'

'The boy who was Severed?'

'Yes, in the gyptian refuge. The cottage.'

'So Arthur's still alive, where you were living?'

'Yes. I never dreamed he'd not be alive here. Oh…' I groaned.

'Peter?' Lyra leaned forward. 'What is it?'

'I was just thinking. If Arthur had been alive here he'd have been able to restore V… Viola and me, like he did for Davey and Miranda. I hadn't thought of that until just now, and now,' I choked, 'now it can't happen. Oh Lyra! Arthur's dead, and all I can think of is how it affects me! It's true, what I said – I'm inhuman!' I stood up and walked over to the window. I wanted to open it wide; wide open and throw myself out, only the curtains were drawn and the casements were bolted and so I didn't.

Lyra rose from her chair and came and stood next to me. She put an arm on my shoulder, and oh, the scent of her hair! It brought back to me, as nothing else could have done, the longings I had had, in the old days in the old world when I was just a boy. It overwhelmed me for a moment. I looked out of the window, hoping that my expression had not betrayed me.

'You're hurt, Peter. Very badly hurt. I know how it is to be hurt.'

'Not like this!'

'Yes, Peter. Like this. Pan and I were separated once, in the World of the Dead. It was awful. It hurt us a very great deal. But look!' Lyra smiled lopsidedly and took both my hands in hers. 'We're both still here. Even without Arthur's help, we'll still find a way to bring you and Viola back together.'

I smiled in response – a feeble, pale smile it was – and we returned to the chairs by the fireplace. I took a sip of cold tea.

'How did Arthur die?'

'It was just after Miss Morley had killed you. Arthur had followed you to Jordan, but he'd been held up on the way. I expect he was keeping a look-out for Boreal agents. He came into this room just after Miss Morley shot you. I think that, if he'd been forewarned, he could have disabled Miss Morley, taken her gun and disabled her. As it was, she shot him too. Not through the heart, like you but across the abdomen.

'Peter, don't make me talk about it. Arthur took ages to die. Three weeks of constant pain in the Infirmary, growing weaker and weaker every day. They couldn't stop the infection getting into his blood, they said.'

'So he died of blood poisoning, too. Just like his Maggie.' (See footnote 3 - CW)

'Yes, I suppose so.'

Lyra went on to tell me how, with both Arthur and me dead, the victory of Elizabeth Boreal had been, in this world, complete. The Boreal Foundation had gone from strength to strength, gaining power and influence throughout Brytain, from the westernmost extent of the Nation of Kernow to the Cape of Wrath in the far north of Caledonia. This explained so much of what I had seen in my brief tour of Oxford that afternoon. The autobusses – run by the Boreal Foundation, and painted in the Boreal colours of blue and gold. James and James – bought out by the Boreals. It seemed that Master James had lost heart in the business when I, his heir and successor, was taken from him. The Botanic Garden – privatised and handed over to the Boreal Foundation to operate as a profit centre, making money. And so on, and so on. Jordan College was not immune to this money-canker either. It was expected to operate on a commercial basis now. For example, Lyra's services as an alethiometrist were available, on a consultancy basis at so many hundred pounds per hour, to anyone who wished to hire them.

'That's what Elizabeth was after! The alethiometer!'

'That's what she got, Peter. We are living in hard times, here.'

'Is she here now? Miss Morley, I mean.'

'No. She returned to her world. As far as I know she stayed there, running the Boreal's business interests under the Latrom Holdings name.'

'So she went back. I bet she didn't want to risk getting stuck here and dying of it.'

'I bet she didn't.'

We talked all evening, saying much more than I've got room to put down here, as I mentioned already. Over and over, sharing the old days; when we were younger, and the world less fallen into decay. At last, with the mantel clock having chimed the three-quarters and the hands showed thirteen minutes to ten, Lyra said, 'Peter, I'm going to have to throw you out. The bars, you see.'

'The bars?' I remembered what the security guard – a Boreal employee, as I now knew – had said when we entered Jordan.

'Yes, Peter. No overnight visitors allowed in College. It's immoral.' Lyra grinned. 'Not that some don't try it! But we're all supposed to be celibate here.'

Oh yes. 'I'm sorry, Lyra. Of course I'll go. I'll find a room in an hotel.'

'I suppose that's what you'd better do,' Lyra said.

I stood up. 'I've got no luggage. Will any respectable place take me in?'

'The Feathers Hotel is all right. They're reasonably discreet, so long as you pay up promptly.' Lyra frowned. 'Have you got enough money, Peter?'

I emptied out my pockets. Thirteen shillings and elevenpence-halfpenny. 'No, I don't think so!'

Lyra fetched her purse and gave me five sovereigns. My embarrassment must have showed on my face, for she said, 'Don't worry! Pay me back when you can!'

'Shall I see you tomorrow morning?'

'Yes, that would be best. Where?'

I thought. 'The Rose Tea Shop, on the High Street. Ten o'clock?' Perhaps Carrie would be there.

'That'll do nicely,' Lyra said. 'I'll see you there.'

I was standing by the door, at the top of the Stair. 'Goodnight, Lyra.'

'Goodnight, Peter.' She handed something to me. 'Look, you nearly forgot her!' It was the grey squirrel, who had once been my daemon.

'Thank you.' I put the creature in my jacket pocket.

I had been about to ask Lyra if she would come to the Feathers Hotel and stay the night with me, so I could hold her next to me and bury my face in her hair. My heart was thumping in my chest with nervous anticipation. Maybe she would say yes. Perhaps we would be able to comfort one another. But, no. Not with Viola as she was. Lyra must have read my mind, for she smiled ruefully.

'Oh, Peter. Oh, if only…'

'If only,' I said, the words bitter gall in my mouth.

Lyra reached up to me, and I put my arms around her waist, and we stood in the doorway and kissed briefly. Then we parted, and she went back into her room and closed the door, and I descended the Stair and left the grounds of Jordan College – being careful to sign out at the Porter's Lodge – and found the Feathers Hotel, near the Parks. As Lyra had said, they were glad to give me a place, so long as I paid my two guineas in advance. I climbed the stairs to my hired room, where I lay in a hired bed, and failed to sleep, until the rising sun knocked on the window-pane and told me that it was time to get up and start another half-human day.

Footnote 1 – You can read about the dreams which the vengeful Elizabeth Boreal visited on Lyra, Peter, Will and Arthur in the story The Queen of the Night, available only on my website www.cereswunderkind.net. WARNING! This story is rated NC-17 (UK 18) for extreme unpleasantness.

Footnote 2 – Indeed he does. Read A Gift of Love (here on FF.NET and also at www.cereswunderkind.net) for more about the deaths of Lyra Belacqua and Elizabeth Boreal.

Footnote 3 – There's so much history behind this chapter! The story of how Arthur Shire and Maggie Doyle travelled to Bolvangar and tackled Mrs Coulter on her own ground is told in Jopari's Arthur and Maggie, also at www.cereswunderkind.net.