I Perform a Daring Rescue

When lovely woman stoops to folly

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Waste Land

'Peter,' Lyra said, joining me by the kitchen window. 'I brought you this. I was going to leave it with you when I went.'

'Went?'

'Went back to Oxford.' She handed me a small book, bound in brown cloth. 'It's all I had left of you after you died. I've been keeping it safe.'

I knew straight away which book it was. 'My book of stories! The one John gave me!'

'The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky. I was reading it when you turned up in the Garden yesterday.'

'So you were. Lyra…'

'Yes?'

'You won't leave me now, will you?'

'No, Peter.' She gave my hand a squeeze. 'I won't leave you now.' The presence outside regarded us through the window with a steady gaze. It did not move.

* * * *

'It didn't really mean that, did it?' I asked Lyra. 'It didn't really mean I had to be burned to death?'

'You had much rather it didn't, wouldn't you? Not literally burned with fire. So would I, Peter. So would I. But you know,' Lyra sighed, 'that the truth the alethiometer speaks is always absolute. Our interpretations of it may vary, but the alethiometer does not. It is unchanging.

'The symbols it chose – they were primary ones. You know that primary associations are the strongest. Readings become harder and harder to interpret as the meanings slip further away from their first associations into secondary, tertiary and quaternary.'

'Yes, I know. You taught me that.'

'I forgot. You had two more years of study with the other me in the other Oxford. You probably know far more about the alethiometer than I'm giving you credit for. It's hard to keep up sometimes.'

'Yes. But what you're saying is that the alethiometer, and your reading of it, can't possibly be wrong.'

'No, I'm sorry. It can't.'

I had known that all along, of course.

* * * *

I was sitting in my room, reading The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky. It was funny, odd. It didn't feel quite right. Different hands – Lyra's hands – had been handling it for the past seven years. The cover had worn in a different way, a page that I had accidentally torn in my world was intact in this copy, and all the pictures were still covered by their protective rice paper. Lyra had looked after it much better than I had.

All my favourites were there – it was the same book, after all, even if it now existed in a different world. The Ballad of Ruth, Odysseus and the Argive Helen, All the Ways of the Heart, Judas and the Centipede, The God and His Men; I loved them all. I hoped that I would be able to find comfort in its pages, among the people who lived there, even though I was no longer a person myself. 'Oh, Viola,' I said to the squirrel who lay next to me on the bed, 'don't you remember? Don't you?' But she said nothing.

* * * *

I sat at the kitchen table and waited while Lyra stirred a saucepan of tinned soup on the stove. That, and some dry biscuits from a foil-lined barrel, were to be all our supper that night.

'Do you think he wants some?' I said. My Death was invisible now. We had drawn the curtains and closed the shutters so that no light from the hissing spirit lamp should show outside and give away our presence in the cottage. He stood alone in the garden, my nemesis, and bided his time.

'I shouldn't have thought so!' Lyra chuckled. She poured the soup into two mugs and handed one of them over to me. It was thick and steaming, and I was hungry.

'I never could cook,' Lyra said. 'Boil an egg, make some toast, fry some bacon. Make an omelette. That's about it in the culinary department.'

'Neither can I. I can make a sort of stew, I suppose, but it comes out all wrong. The vegetables go all mushy and the meat's grey and tough and it tastes like caoutchuc.'

'Do you brown it first, with onions?'

'What do you mean, brown it?'

'Fry it until it goes brown.'

'No, I don't.'

'You should. Ma Costa always said you should. She said it seals in the juices and the flavour.'

'Oh. I didn't know that.'

* * * *

I lay in bed, unsleeping, in Davey's room. Davey; who had been saved from Severance as I could not be. Davey, who had talked and chattered and asked endless questions until he drove us mad. Davey, who had gone back home to his brothers and sisters in Norwich almost untouched by his experiences. I envied him. I almost hated him.

Wherever Davey was, he was safe. I was safe too, in a way. Safe from doubt. If there had been any uncertainty about what was going to happen to me, I don't suppose that my Death would have been waiting for me nearby. I wondered – suppose I made a definite decision not to seek reunion with Viola. What would happen? Would my Death depart from me? How could I prove that I meant it? Stand up in the Oratory and announce it in front of the congregation? 'I, Peter Joyce, will not kill myself, nor seek my death, so help me God?' And suppose I did that, and then I turned around to find him still there; still standing silently next to me (for I guessed that he would follow me if I tried to escape from the neighbourhood of the cottage), what would I do then?

Why did he not speak to me? Because you haven't spoken to him, came the answer. There was only one way to find out what would happen if I tried to converse with my Death. I gathered up the squirrel, slipped her into my pocket and crept down the stairs to the kitchen. The outside door was locked, but I pulled back the bolts as quietly as I could and opened it. Yes, he was still there; still standing motionless in the middle of the lawn, still facing the house. I walked up to him and, resisting the temptation to pull the hood back over his head so I could look into his eyes, I said, 'Are you my Death, as I believe you to be?'

There was no reply. 'Talk to me!' I said. 'I'm Peter. Peter Joyce. There, now you know who I am. Who are you? You're my Death, aren't you? Am I going to die?'

Nothing. No movement or sound. The air had been quiet up to that point, but as I stepped back, uncertain of what to do or say next, a gentle night-breeze stirred the branches of the trees. I felt it ruffle my hair a little, but the silken gown my Death wore did not move in the slightest. 'Please,' I said. 'Please, say something.'

If he had shaken his head, or shown any sign that he had heard me, or just acknowledged that I existed, I would have kept my temper. As it was, I was tired and anxious and full of fear so I lashed out at him. 'Talk to me, you bastard! Say something! Are you effing deaf or what?'

I seized his left shoulder and tried to shake him into action. I might as well have tried to anbarise a marble statue. The figure was not merely unmoving; it was immovable, solid, rigid, dense and infinitely heavy.

'Bastard, bastard, bastard!' I thumped my Death's shoulder again and again and again, but I only succeeded in bruising my hand.

'Peter!' It was Lyra, dressed in the pyjamas she had brought for me to wear and carrying a lit candle. It illuminated her face with an orange glow, making her appear much younger. She looked like a little girl wearing her older brother's clothes. 'Peter, stop it!'

'He won't say or do anything!' My eyes were wet. 'You try!'

'No, Peter. Leave him alone. Come over here.' Lyra took my hand and led me to the side of the house. She sat down on a makeshift bench – two stacks of bricks and an oak plank – and I sat next to her. 'Look, Peter. Look up.' Lyra blew out the candle and pointed to a patch of open sky, visible between the branches of the trees. I blinked and followed her pointing finger.

The stars. It was a cloudless night and the moon had not yet risen. We were miles from the nearest town or village and there was no artificial light to be seen anywhere. My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. The stars were sharp pinpoints of light, intensely bright against an ebony background. As I looked, they seemed to grow and multiply, until the whole of the sky was filled with stars, silently scattering their seed across the length and breadth of the Universe.

'If you had the right kind of resin,' Lyra said in a dreamy, distant, hushed voice, 'you could make a lens…'

'What kind of resin?'

'It comes from the trees of a certain world. If you had some of that resin, and you moulded it, and polished it, and made a lens out of it, you could use it to make a kind of telescope to watch the heavens.'

'We make them out of brass and crystal. We used to sell them in the shop.'

'Ah, yes,' and Lyra's voice came from a very long way away now, 'but this lens can only be made in a very special place. Peter; if you made such a telescope and looked at the sky through it, do you know what you would see?'

'Stars? Planets? Worlds?'

'Life! Peter, you'd see Life! Angels and golden Dust dwelling in Deep Heaven, sailing between the stars, up there in the spaces between the worlds; joining them, linking them in an eternal communion.'

'The stars talk to each other?'

'They dance! And while they dance, they murmur to one another of their great Purpose; and the air they breathe and the words that are carried on it are made of Dust, Life, Joy and Love.

'Love, Peter! Endless, boundless love. We only have to reach out for it and it can be ours. It is only waiting for us to build our Republic of Heaven and it will join us here on Earth.

'The Republic of Heaven…'

* * * *

Lyra must have brought us an eiderdown from the cottage at some time during the night; for the sun rose on us both the following morning, still sitting on the bench, wrapped in feathered warmth, arms around each other and hands interlinked, breathing softly. Pantalaimon lay next to Viola, and was not ashamed.

* * * *

'Coo-eee! Anybody home?' A hand knocked on the kitchen door. Lyra and I were sitting at the table, eating biscuits and honey. 'Hello!'

Lyra's face fell. 'Oh, damn! Not already! Not so soon!'

The door opened and a woman walked in. I could not see her face and I did not at first recognise her.

'Sorry! Did I disturb you! I say, could you spare me a cup of sugar? I've run a little short.'

I remembered my manners and stood up.

'What a polite young man! Lyra, do introduce me to your friend. I'm longing to meet him.'

Lyra stood up also. 'Elizabeth, this is Peter Joyce. Peter, meet my sister Lady Elizabeth Boreal.'

I was momentarily nonplussed. 'Elizabeth? Here? But… you're dead! Drowned…'

'I'm very much alive, it seems,' the woman drawled. She held out her hand. 'Pleased to meet you, Peter Joyce.'

'My Lady.' I shook her hand and ducked my head a little. Lady Boreal sat down at the table. Now that I could see her face I recognised her. I had seen her once before, at Lyra's funeral; now I saw her close up. She was a few years older than Lyra, wearing clothes that I could tell were very expensive and probably hand-made. An exotic scent hung about her, her hair was immaculately arranged, and her skin, despite her age, seemed to glow from within. My mother would have called her "showy".

'Get us a cup of tea would you, Peter? I'm parched.' Lyra nodded, so I went over to the stove, refilled the kettle and put it on to boil.

'I must say I'm surprised at you, Lyra. It's quite a pleasant surprise, in a way. It makes you look a little more human, dear sister, and not the selfish little prig I thought you'd turned into. Still, who'd have imagined it!'

'Imagined what?'

'That our oh-so-proper Madam Professor Belacqua would have been keeping such a sweet little love-nest out here in the sticks! It's a smashing place, isn't it? Beautiful countryside – I'm quite jealous. Frightfully primitive and rather plain of course but, there again, that suits you, doesn't it?'

'Just as you like, Elizabeth.' Lyra's lips were pressed close together.

Lady Boreal turned in her chair. Her serpent-daemon slithered down her arm and looped himself about her wrist. 'Peter! Let's take a look at you.' I faced her.

'Oh yes. He's a nice boy, isn't he? Gorgeous hair. Look at those arms! Is he very strong, Lyra? Does he rouse you, darling? Does he make you scream, just a little? Oooh – I could fancy a tumble with him myself. Would you mind?'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Don't be ridiculous? My sweet-hearted Lyra, who is being ridiculous? Me, popping in to visit my sister for a nice cup of tea, or a dried-up, middle-aged professor hiding out in a rural slum with a silly little boy whose only virtues seem to be a certain naïve charm, a smattering of manners and the ability to use a camping stove. Is that tea ready yet, Peter?'

'Nearly, Lady Boreal.' I was determined to keep my temper with her. I remembered the encounter Lyra and I had had with Miss Morley and how an impetuous action on my part had led to death for Arthur Shire and me.

Elizabeth turned back to Lyra. 'Tut-tut, Lyra. What would our mutual friend Will Parry say if he knew what you were getting up to behind his back? Where is your great world-saving love now?'

'It is as strong as ever. You know that, Elizabeth.'

'What a lying bitch it is. Lyra-liar. You don't change, do you?'

'I have never lied to you.' Lyra's face was carved from stone. She was immensely beautiful in her anger in a way that Elizabeth Boreal, for all her natural gifts, could never hope to match.

'Anyway. Anyway. I am here because you have absconded with an item of Boreal Foundation property. Where is the alethiometer?'

'It is here, safe with me.'

'Show me!'

Lyra sighed. 'If I must. It is in the other room. Will you wait?'

'Yes, if you leave your gigolo here with me as an assurance of your good conduct. I have men outside, as I expect you are aware.'

Lyra left the room with Pantalaimon on her shoulder. Lady Boreal stood up and inspected me. 'Tell me about yourself, Peter Joyce. Where are you from?'

'Tring, my Lady.'

'Tring?'

'By the Grand Junction canal.'

'Oh! The canal! Are you a gyptian, then?'

'No, my Lady.'

'Oh, good. I detest the gyptians. They smell so.' She put a finger under my chin. Her serpent-daemon's tongue hovered within an inch of my skin. I stood as still as I possibly could.

'No need to be shy, Peter! I'm sure we can get to know each other much better than we do now. Don't you think our daemons would like to become better acquainted? Where is she, now? Do show her to me. What's the dear love's name?'

Trapped! I looked around wildly. Through the window I could see, standing near to my Death but apparently unable to see him, a couple of blue-uniformed men carrying side-arms. Lady Boreal's eyes followed mine. 'Don't worry about them, Peter. They're terribly discreet. They won't butt in on us unless they have to. Now then, let's have a look at her.'

There was nothing I could do. I reached into my pocket and took out the squirrel. As I did do, the pain of our separation, which had been lying dormant while Lyra and I had been close, flared up and I gasped. Elizabeth smiled, not understanding.

'My word! This is exciting! Parander…' Before I could move, the serpent-daemon had seized the squirrel in his coils.

'Let go of him!' Lyra stood in the doorway with the alethiometer in her hand. 'Let go!'

Shock and surprise distorted Elizabeth Boreal's face, robbing it of its beauty. Parander hissed and fled to the safety of his mistress' sleeve. The squirrel fell from my hand.

'My god! What have you got here? Where is his daemon? That is not her!' Elizabeth pointed to the squirrel which was lying, twitching feebly, on the kitchen table. The serpent-daemon had half-strangled her.

Lady Boreal advanced to the doorway. She put both her arms to Lyra's shoulders, knocking Pantalaimon to the floor. 'What is he? Where is he from? I know! You have found a window. This boy is from another world! You have found an open window. Where is it? You will tell me. Where is it?' Her voice was steadily rising in pitch. Lyra kept as calm as she could. I could see her face from my position by the stove. I could tell how hard she was struggling to maintain her self-control.

'There is no window. Peter has not come from another world – not one that you would recognise, anyway.'

'But what about his daemon?'

'You, of all people, should know the answer to that question. She has been severed, as you once severed the daemons of innocent children in a place not five miles from here.'

'The Morley Project?'

'If that is what you called it, yes.'

'But – he's alive!'

'The children died, didn't they? All but one, and he is safe. But Peter was severed less than two days ago, as an adult.'

'Then… what is he here for? Is he one of your research projects?'

'That would be more your speciality, I think, Elizabeth.'

'God. God.' Lady Boreal looked at me again. I was still standing motionless by the stove. 'You've got a man without a… Ugh! It's revolting! You've got a man without a daemon and you're using him for… for your own disgusting purposes. It's… foul. I don't believe it.'

'He is a man without a daemon. He is in terrible pain because of it. But I am not using him for sexual purposes. I am looking for a way to save his life.'

Elizabeth Boreal's face was twisted with anger and disbelief. 'You would say that, wouldn't you! Well, we'll see.' She went to the door. 'You two! In here!' The two Boreal guards came in, their guns at the ready. 'Take this lady and gentleman outside and keep them safe.'

Lyra and I allowed ourselves to be manhandled out of the kitchen and into the garden. We stood on the grass, not far from my Death, who had remained impassive throughout everything that had occurred. Lyra was pale but composed. I struggled briefly, but soon realised it was hopeless. The guard was too strong for me.

'Let go of her,' Lady Boreal said to the man who was holding Lyra. 'Go and find some straw and naphtha. This place is dirty. It stinks. It should be condemned as unfit for human habitation.'

'No!' I cried, but Lyra said, 'It's only a building, Peter. Only bricks and wood and reed-thatch. We don't need it any more. Let them do what they want with it.'

'But what about the gyptians? It belongs to them!'

'Shush, Peter. Shush. It will be all right.'

Lady Boreal was paying us no attention in any case. She showed the guard where to put the wood and straw that he had collected. Under her direction he piled it up in up against the walls of the cottage. When he had done this to Elizabeth's satisfaction he fetched a carboy of naphtha from the shed and sprinkled it over the piles of flammable material.

'That will do, Hitchens. Stand back.' From her shiny, gold-clasped handbag she took out an object that I recognised immediately. My heart sank, though how it could have been possible for it to sink any further I cannot tell. The gun. Every time – at every low point of my life – this gun appeared. Small, made of some slick, black material, powerful, lethal, corrupting. Of course it was Lady Boreal who possessed it in this world of Time.

She lifted it and stabbed at the trigger. A bolt of lightning streaked from the gun's muzzle and splashed against the cottage wall, instantly turning it cherry-red with heat. The spirit-soaked straw and wood burst into flames which licked up the walls until they reached the roof. With a roar the thatch caught fire. The weather had been very dry these last few weeks.

As I stood, held by the firm grasp of my captor, I was filled with a sense of terrible outrage. How dare they! Just because the Boreal Foundation was rich and powerful, how dare they behave as if they owned the country and all the people in it? In my world the power of the Boreals had waned with Elizabeth's death. In fact, despite my own feelings of not belonging there – the appearance of the time-ghosts in particular – my world was a far better place than this one. My survival and Elizabeth's death had made a real difference; and the pain and horror that Lyra and I had suffered from the nightmares that Lady Boreal had sent us had, in some way that I did not fully understand, caused that difference. In this world, the Boreals had had it all their own way, and the result was that life had been diminished for everybody.

The fire had thoroughly taken by now, and was generating a fair amount of heat. My Death still stood in his place on the lawn, as if unaware of the blaze that was forcing the rest of us to step back and hold our hands up in front of our faces to shield them from the glare.

The cottage was burning fiercely. All the things that Lyra and I had brought from Oxford, except the alethiometer, were being destroyed. My spare clothes, my precious book. And then I realised… Viola. The squirrel. I had left her lying on the kitchen table. I could not leave her to die. This makes no sense, I know. That squirrel was not really Viola, my beloved daemon. Whatever it was that had animated the creature with the life which our teachers call transcendent or metaphysical, it was not there now. She was an animal, nothing more and nothing less. Hers was a small life, and no longer connected with mine.

I had asked Lyra if she would kill me if I asked her to, and she had refused. Was I still seeking to embrace my Death? And had I been subconsciously waiting until an opportunity came which would allow me to die without my death lying on her conscience? I still do not know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that my guard had allowed his concentration to wander and that it was easy for me to twist out of his grip and run forward towards the cottage. I ran through my Death – he had become as insubstantial as a cloud – crying, 'Viola, Viola' at the top of my voice. Lyra screamed, 'No, Peter. Stop!'

My clothes were already beginning to smoulder as I crashed through the kitchen door. Orange light flared beyond the window, but the glass was still intact and the room was clear of smoke. 'Viola, Viola!' I cried again, but I could see nothing. The squirrel must have jumped from the table and taken refuge somewhere. Remembering something I had been told about what to do if you were caught in a fire, I threw myself to the floor. I scrabbled over the red quarry tiles, looking for the squirrel under the sink, the dresser, the washtub. Nothing. Wait. The door which led to the hallway was slightly ajar. Lyra couldn't have closed it properly when she returned from her room with the alethiometer. Still prone on the tiles, I opened the door and squirmed through into the hall.

The sound of burning was much louder in there. Although the fire had been started at the back of the cottage the roof had already fallen in and the stairwell was acting like a chimney, sucking in air to feed the flames. The heat was appalling and I quickly realised that I would not be able to stay there long and survive unscathed. 'Viola!' I shouted. 'Viola!' although there was little chance that she would be able to hear me, or understand me if she did. Still no sign of her. It was time, I knew, to make my escape from the inferno. My hair was singeing – I could smell it, choking and acrid in my lungs. One last try, and then I must make for the front door and attempt to get out that way.

'Viola!' Nothing… and then I saw a small grey movement under the open staircase. I lunged forward with my hand held out and caught her. She was trembling with fear, her whiskers shaking violently and her tail curled up against her back.

'Come on now. Let's get out of here!' I said to the squirrel and, getting to my hands and knees and tucking her into my pocket, I made for the front door. But it was then that the staircase collapsed, in a shuddering crash of falling timbers. A gust of fire leapt across the hall towards me and forced its way into my lungs, burning the life out of me from inside. I screamed in fiery agony, breathing flame, and my body arched back, twisted and distorted. My head hit the wall in a flash of vivid pain, and my eyes blinked red, and I heard and saw no more.