I Meet my Death

I had already settled my bill so, once I had eaten my breakfast of lamb cutlets and mushrooms, accompanied with buttered toast and washed down by hot, sweet tea, I was free to leave the Feathers Hotel. The weather was sunny, but cloudy too with the promise of a shower later – in other words, a typical Oxford day – and the air was warm so, with the James and James clock in the hallway standing at half-past eight I made ready to depart. I wanted to get outside.

'Goodbye, sir,' said the young woman on the front desk, taking a furtive look at the grey squirrel in my jacket pocket. 'Can she see all right, stuck in there?' she asked. Her own mouse-daemon was crouching beside her on the top of the desk, looking anxious and tense with his whiskers vibrating and his eyes flicking rapidly from side to side.

'She likes it,' I replied, ignoring the girl's insolence in presuming to comment on the welfare of my daemon. 'Her eyes, you know. It's very bright outside.'

'Oh well, if that's what she wants. Good day to you.'

'Good day,' I said and walked out onto the street, letting the brown-painted front door of the hotel swing to behind me. The Parks were nearby and so, with an hour and a half to kill before I was due to meet Lyra, I found myself a quiet corner and sat down on the grass by the trunk of an oak tree.

It was plain to me now that, just as Miss Morley's false cat-daemon had made me feel sick and upset all those years ago in Cropredy, there were people in this unfamiliar Oxford who were able to tell that there was something wrong with me. How could I possibly continue to live in this way? I would never know when an especially sensitive person might spot me and then; who knew what would happen? The Church might become involved, or the courts. For all I knew, this world had a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Daemons to whom I might be denounced and taken away to be punished for bullying Viola to the extent that she had become catatonic. There had been rumours going the rounds when I was growing up that there were places – asylums – where people and daemons who had in some way grown apart or become no longer known to one another were kept, out of the sight of decent, ordinary folk. Would I end up in one of those establishments, confined to a cell, examined by doctors and put through a futile course of treatment designed to bring Viola and me back together? I knew only one way of achieving our reunion, and that was by the gathering and sharing of Dust, guided by an oracle such as Arthur Shire. That was the way that we had restored Davey and Miranda to one another. But Arthur was dead; and who could take his place?

I took the squirrel out of my pocket and ran my hand down her warm, furry back. Even though she was no longer my beloved Viola, she was still a living creature in my care and I could not bring myself to do her any harm. She sat in the palm of my hand and looked into my face, and I looked down at hers. From a distance we looked like any other normal human-daemon pair and so, I thought, we would be safe for a while. I leaned back against the tree and, tired out, fell asleep at last.

'All right for some!' said the park-keeper, waking me with a jolt.

'Er, sorry, what?' I said, confused and blinking in the daylight.

'Haven't you got a job to go to?'

'No, no, not today. I'm on holiday.'

'On holiday, eh, and letting the day go to waste!'

Oh heck! How long had I been asleep? The shadows of the trees had shortened considerably.

'What time is it?' I asked.

'I didn't think time mattered on holiday!' The park-keeper set down his wheelbarrow and rake and consulted his watch. 'Ten past ten, young man.'

'Thank you, Goodsir,' I said and, jumping to my feet and pocketing the squirrel, I dashed off in the direction of the High Street.

'Some holiday!' came floating over the air behind me.

It was ten-fifteen when I crashed, hot and sweaty, through the street door of The Rose Tea Shop. There was Lyra, sitting at a table by the wall, nursing a cup of kaffee. Another cup stood opposite hers, with a saucer placed on top of it to keep it warm.

'I'm sorry I'm late,' I said, taking the seat opposite her.

'I should hope so! I was just starting to get worried. Did you get into the hotel all right last night?'

'Yes. It was,' I remembered an expression John Parry had used, 'OK.' The Lyra I had known before had liked it.

'OK?'

'Means "All Right".'

'Hmmm. Drink your kaffee, Peter.'

I took a sip. It was luke-warm, which served me right for being late. When I had drunk half the cup and recovered my breath, I looked around the tea shop. It was all very much as it had been in my world – spindly chairs and tables, chromium-plated fittings, green-painted walls – except that Carrie Mason wasn't working there, as I had hoped she might be. I said as much to Lyra.

'A good thing too,' she replied. 'We don't want anybody else recognising you. It could cause difficulties.'

I was beginning to notice more and more the differences between this Lyra and the old Lyra – the one who had died – which was odd when you come to think about it, as this Lyra must have been the one I had met first. I know that's confusing, but take a moment's thought and you'll see what I mean. This Lyra had seen me shot by Miss Morley; the Lyra who lay buried in the Botanic Garden had not. This Lyra was tougher and more down-to-earth than the Lyra I had known. 'Hard times,' she had said the night before, and I could see that she had become a little harder herself, to match them. My Lyra, if I can call her that, had been worn down by bad dreams – as we both had – and had become more spiritual and thoughtful as a result. More tired, too.

Certainly this was the Lyra I needed now; practical and resourceful, used to dealing with difficult questions. I had a difficult question for her now:

'Lyra,' I said, 'what happened to the Severed adults of Bolvangar?'

'Hush! Not so loud!' She looked around. Then in a lowered voice, 'I only know at second hand. The gyptians rescued some of them, along with the children. I believe they were kept in another part of the ship, away from everyone else. Arthur said something about it. He was on the ship too, of course.'

'And after they got back to Brytain?'

'Nobody knows. Peter…'

'Yes?'

'I was thinking; last night after you left. You're different from them.'

'Different? How?'

'They were… resigned to their condition. They didn't seem to care that they had been Severed. Not in the way you care.'

'Perhaps they had got used to it.'

'I don't see how you could get used to something like that.' Lyra's hand unconsciously stroked Pantalaimon's ears.

Neither did I. And yet… you can get used to anything in time. It was certainly true that, now the initial shock of my separation from Viola had receded a little, the strangeness and pain had become a little less as well. Or, to look at it another way, I had not slept last night, but maybe I would be able to sleep tonight, as my body and spirit adapted to my new situation. I told Lyra as much.

'I see,' she said. 'Then we'd better see what we can do to stop you from becoming like they were. Have you finished?'

I drained my cup. 'Yes, I have now.'

'Then be a gentleman and carry that bag for me, would you?' I noticed it for the first time – a brown canvas portmanteau lying on the floor between Lyra's chair and the wall. Lyra stood up and the waitress hurried over with the bill. I paid it, and followed Lyra out of the tea shop and into the High Street, carrying the bag and trying not to let it bang against the door or bump into any of the customers.

'What's in here?' I asked as we strode briskly up the High towards Cornmarket Street.

'The bag? Oh, this and that. A few clothes and things. I was up before you, don't you know, and I didn't spend all morning snoozing in the Parks like you did!'

Lyra laughed, and I laughed with her. This was the Lyra I remembered, all right. This was the Lyra who had kept us going when Davey was intercised and when we thought that Arthur had died. This was the Lyra who never gave up.

'That's more like it,' she said.

Lyra clearly had a plan. I could have asked her what it was, I suppose, but it seemed presumptuous of me, a half-human, to ask a full Professor of Jordan College to explain herself, so I didn't. Instead I walked beside her, carrying her luggage like a porter, and waiting to see what she would do. What she did was to lead us to the autobus station and buy two return tickets to Warwick. She must have looked up the timetable in advance, because there was a 'bus standing waiting for us at one of the stops. We showed our tickets to the driver and took a pair of seats at the back. The 'bus pulled away in a cloud of oily smoke only two minutes after we had boarded it.

'Lyra,' I said, as we rumbled up St Giles, 'why are we taking the 'bus to Warwick? The train's a lot quicker, and I don't think it costs any more.'

'Because we're not going to Warwick,' she replied.

'Oh yes! That makes sense.'

'Don't be cheeky! Look,' and Lyra leaned over to me and spoke quietly, even though there were three rows of empty seats between us and the next passenger and the engine was making a considerable racket, 'Don't you think my sister doesn't keep a close eye on my movements? I'm one of her prime business assets. It'll have been reported to her that I took an autobus to Warwick, accompanied by a strange young man. There will be employees of the Boreal Foundation waiting for us by the gates of the castle, ready to inform Elizabeth by telephone when we get there. If I hadn't timed it right we'd have been followed onto the 'bus. As it is, we've caught her on the hop.'

'You've done this before, haven't you?'

'When I've had to, yes. When I've needed some privacy.'

I looked out of the window. We were travelling along the Banbury Road now, and University Colleges, pubs and shops, houses and gardens were giving way to the fields and trees of the open countryside. Suddenly I realised what Lyra's intentions were. Yes, of course…

'Wait a minute! I know where we're going…'

'Do you? Then keep it to yourself until we get there!'

Lyra had thought of everything, it seemed, including the needs of the animal which nestled in my jacket pocket. She handed me a small packet of cashews and I fed them to the creature as we rode along. She was a pretty thing, I had to admit, and her devotion to me, although a mockery of our previous intimacy, was touching in its own way. When I had been in John Parry's world, he had told me that people there kept animals, not just to work for them, as horses and dogs do in our world, or to kill and eat, like sheep, but also as companions. Pets – that was the word he used.

'It's as if,' he had said, 'the men and women in my world wished they had daemons too. They don't know it consciously, but inside themselves they do, so they adopt animals instead and take them home to live with them.'

'That must be very strange,' I had said. 'To have a daemon that isn't a daemon,' for I understood by then that the people of John's world carried their daemons within themselves.

'The people and the animals sometimes grow very close to each other,' John had said. 'It's not the same thing as having a proper daemon,' and he stroked his Rosalind, 'but it is a little bit like it. There's real love there, they say.'

Real love. The words sounded meaningless to me now. I could not feel real love for this squirrel, knowing how it had been between us before we were Severed. But I held her in my hand, and fed her cashew nuts, and ran my hand down her back as the 'bus bounced and rolled along the narrow country roads to the north of Oxford.

Lyra turned the key in the lock, and stood back from the front door. 'Go on, Peter,' she said. 'Give it a shove!' I dropped the portmanteau to the ground, put my shoulder against the door and pushed hard. It stuck for a few seconds then, with a horrible grating sound it yielded a few inches. I took a step forward and pushed again. The door opened wide enough this time to let Lyra and me pass through and into the hall of the gyptian cottage. A clock stood next to the far wall. It had stopped at ten minutes to two. Lyra took a deep breath.

'Phew! This place could do with a good airing!' She was right. The atmosphere was distinctly musty, as if nobody had opened a window for several weeks. 'We'd better not, though,' she added. 'We might be seen. We'll have to be careful with the fire, too. The smoke from the chimney…'

I understood. We did not want to advertise our presence. As I remembered, this cottage, maintained by the gyptians as a refuge in times of trouble or persecution, was a well-kept secret. It had been a tremendous gesture of trust for Arthur Shire and Harry Owen to let us stay there after we had returned from John Parry's world, all those years ago. I guessed that life had not become any easier for the gyptians since those days.

'I suppose Harry's working for the Boreals now,' I said.

'No! He'd never do that! But he had to sell the boats and join a carrier's firm. He's with Fowler's these days.'

'Do you see him much?'

'No, not much. Now then,' dismissing the subject, 'let's get you and Viola moved in.'

'I'm going to live here?'

'Yes, until we decide what to do with you. You're not safe in Oxford; you know that.'

'No, you're right,'

'So you can stay here for now. Take Davey's old room. I've put some things in the bag, so take it up with you.'

As I walked up the narrow, wood-panelled stairs to the first floor, I was possessed by the sensation that I was stepping into the past. It returned to me as vividly as if I were once more fifteen years old, and seeing Arthur lying dead on the floor by Davey's bed for the very first time. This feeling stayed with me when I entered the room. I put Lyra's bag on the bed and stood to one side of the window and looked out over the garden which was evidently being cared for, as the grass had been mown some time in the last week or two and the flower-beds were well-stocked and free from weeds. I looked down, and remembered how I had crouched by the cottage wall the morning after Arthur's death and seen two aethereal figures float across the lawn, clad in gauzy, flowing garments and fabulously, transparently illuminated by the rising sun.

Who had they been? Why had they been there? And what connection had they had with Arthur's resurrection? No one had ever answered those questions.

The bag contained a pair of pyjamas, some washing things and a spare shirt and pair of trews. I wondered where Lyra had found them. When I returned to the ground floor, I found her in the kitchen, boiling a kettle on a little camping stove.

'Right!' she said. 'Now we can talk some more.'

'Yes. But first – are you sure we weren't seen coming here?'

'No, I can't be sure. The alarm will have been raised in Warwick by now. They won't have thought to check the other 'buses yet. Instead they'll be looking around Warwick or Coventry. If we're lucky, nobody saw us get off in Banbury; or get on the other 'bus – the one that brought us here.'

'So we'll be safe for a few days.'

'You will be. There's plenty of tinned food in the cupboards and the well is just outside the back door, over there. I've got to get back to Oxford soon, maybe tonight. Tomorrow night, at the latest.'

'What'll you say, if they ask you?'

'Oh, that I changed my mind and carried on to Brummagem. I've a friend there who'll cover for me. Don't worry about me, Peter. Let's worry about you.' Pantalaimon winked at me.

We sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, mugs in front of us. 'Now then,' Lyra said, and she took a small velvet bag from her pocket and placed it between us. 'You told me last night that you'd had to pawn the alethiometer in order to save James and James from being repossessed by the Middlewich Bank.'

I had not enjoyed telling Lyra about that. 'Yes. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. I'll tell you why. Do you remember what happened, when you asked the alethiometer what you should do about the shop?'

'Yes – I asked the question, the needle spun, but I didn't follow it properly. I wasn't expecting to get anything out of it, and I didn't.'

'But you saw all its movements, until it stopped?'

'Yes. I just didn't register them in my mind.'

'Oh…OK. Then you went to Mister Hurst's pawnshop and he asked you how his sight might be restored. He was blind, wasn't he?'

'Yes, but his daemon could see. She was his eyes.'

'So you put the question to the alethiometer, and the needle moved. Did you note where it stopped?'

'Yes, I did, very carefully. I didn't want him to think I was a fraud. But I couldn't work out what it was trying to tell me.'

'Right. Peter, do you see what that meant?'

'No. Apart from the fact that I was useless at reading the alethiometer, no.'

Lyra smiled – the broadest, most beautiful smile you ever saw – and her eyes sparkled with mischievous glee. 'Oh, Peter! You silly boy! Isn't it obvious? You asked the alethiometer how to save the shop, and it gave you the best answer it could – pawn me.'

'No, it didn't!'

'Yes, it did. You just didn't realise it consciously. Don't you see? You were reading the alethiometer instinctively, by Grace, just as I did when it first came to me. When you tried to interpret it the hard way, by studying the needle's movements and trying to remember the meanings in the books, you failed; like you did at Mister Hurst's. When you allowed the instrument to speak directly to you, as you did in the Garden, the correct answer came to you straight away, although you didn't realise it. You decided to pawn the alethiometer because, deep inside your mind, you had already understood the truth of what it had told you.

'Peter – you achieved, with an adult, settled daemon, what I could only do before Pan took his grown-up form. You have a great gift – as I suspected all along. You can read the alethiometer by Grace. When you get home–'

When!

'You must do your best to redeem the pledge at Hurst's. You could be the greatest alethiometrist of all some day.'

I pointed to the velvet bag. 'It's in there, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'I don't think I could read it now. Not with Viola the way she is.'

'No, I think you're right. So I'm going to read it for you.' Lyra opened the bag and took the alethiometer out of it.

'Peter, I think you have two problems that we have to solve. The first one is obvious.' I looked at Viola, who was lying on the table, Pantalaimon next to her. 'We have to reunite you and Viola, and we have to do it without Arthur's help.

'The second problem concerns your life in the other world, before you came here. I don't think that having Viola separated from you, however brutally, would have resulting in your appearing in this world if you had been a proper, native inhabitant of the other one. What you told me about your feelings of disconnection and the appearance of the time-ghosts makes that pretty clear.'

'Yes. It was getting worse all the time. I didn't feel as if I belonged there at all.'

'I agree. You told me that you were worried after you were rescued from Miss Morley's attack on you that there had been a mistake of some kind; that you ought to have been killed, or you should come back to life in a different world of Time from the one you actually did wake up in.'

'That's it. I couldn't understand it when the Lyra I knew said that she believed that Miss Morley had been killed the Sunday before, in Cropredy.'

Lyra laughed. 'Mary Malone would have known how to untangle this mess!'

'We talked about Time and event forks on the Bristol Downs, Mary, John and me, while you were with Will…' My voice tailed off.

'Yes. Yes, I'm sure you did.' A pause.

'Right! OK!' Lyra said brightly. 'I think your two problems boil down to just one. We must ask how you and Viola can be joined together again. It may be that you cannot live in the world you came from and must stay here. Or it may be that somehow you will have to return to the Oxford you know, and face Martin James and Elias Cholmondley; or there may be other possibilities that I haven't thought of. I cannot tell – but I must ask you this. Will you abide by whatever truth the oracle comes up with? It may be hard. There may be no answer, or the answer may be one that is impossible to fulfil.'

I did not hesitate. Hesitation would have been fatal. 'Yes, Lyra,' I said. 'I will abide by the alethiometer's decision.'

I was familiar with the use of the oracle. Although Lyra did not read it as she had in her childhood, by instinct, she was so well practised in its mystery that she no longer required the Books in order to interpret its movements. She quickly set the three pointers; to the Bird, for Viola, the Cauldron, for myself considered as a craftsman, and the Sword, for Justice, that we might be brought together again and the balance of the Universe restored. Lyra concentrated on the instrument's dial and the needle sprang to life.

It was not to be expected that I, a man without a daemon, would be able to divine the oracle, and so I did not attempt to do so, merely observing as the needle swung to and fro, to and fro. Even so, it must have been true, what Lyra said about my innate ability to read the alethiometer, for when it finally came to rest I was filled with a great fear, a dreadful foreboding. Lyra's face grew very pale and she covered the instrument's bezel with her right hand. She said nothing.

'Lyra… it's bad news, isn't it? There's no answer, right? I've got to stay here until they find me, and put me away or whatever they do to abominations like me. They'll send me to gaol? Yes? Lyra, please say something!'

For the first time since I had found her in this world of Time, Lyra sounded tired and afraid.

'No, Peter. That is not it at all. There is an answer. The needle stopped on the Sun, the Hourglass and the Candle. In order for you to be reunited with Viola, you must die – die by fire. The presence of the Sun confirms the truth of this divination. There can be no doubt about it. None in the slightest. Oh, Peter! I'm so sorry...' She let her face fall into her hands and wept.

I stood up and crossed the kitchen floor until I was standing by the window. Like the bedroom window upstairs it looked out over a bed of herbs to the lawn beyond. And at last I understood who, or what, the figures were that I had seen walking in the garden that morning seven years ago; for another figure, wearing a hooded cloak of the finest watered indigo silk, stood there now in the full light of the afternoon sun, looking in on me as I was looking out at him. I knew then that the alethiometer had told the truth, nor was Lyra mistaken in her reading of it. I was to die, for there was my Death waiting quietly for me as Lyra's and Arthur's Deaths had once waited for them, as I sat and watched and held a wild magpie in my hand.