I Learn Something of the Mysteries of Time

Now the Great Bear and Pleiades where earth moves
Are drawing up the clouds of human grief,
Breathing solemnity in the deep night.
Who can decipher
In storm or starlight
The written character of a friendly fate -
As the sky turns, the world for us to change?
But if the horoscope's bewildering
Like a flashing turmoil of a shoal of herring,
Who can turn skies back and begin again?

Montague Slater – Peter Grimes (libretto)

We stepped ashore and instantly the punt was whirled away by the current and disappeared from sight. For all I know it sailed all the way down the river Isis to the Pool of London and from there to the great German Ocean. We never saw it again. A short gravel path led from our landing point, through a close-cropped lawn, lined with flowerbeds, to the entrance of the temple and so it seemed natural that we should follow it. Lyra took my hand and led me along the path until we reached the door, which was made of oak; very thick, and richly carved with images of mythical beasts.

'Peter,' she said, 'this is where I have to leave you for a while. Don't be afraid,' she was in her mid-forties now, wearing academic dress of black and white and looking just as she had the day I first met her, 'whatever happens. I will wait for you outside. It is a pleasant evening, and I'd like to sit and watch the swans on the water.'

'What is going to happen to me?'

'You will meet a collector.'

'A collector?' My heart was chilled. 'A collector of what?' I thought that maybe Lyra meant a harvester of souls, or a devil.

'No, Peter. A collector of stories.'

'Lyra? Am I going to Hell? Because of what I did?'

'No, Peter.' And she kissed me on the cheek. 'Did I not say that you were forgiven?' The sun was beginning to set behind the rising ground to the west. The trees on the hilltop were etched into its outline.

'Yes, but…'

'No buts, Peter. Kiss me now.' And I took her in my arms and pressed my lips to hers, and I was fifteen once more and all my hopes and wishes had come true. Oh, how I'd wanted her!

'Go in through the door. Take your book with you. You will be asked to produce it. If you need help, call for me or come out here and find me. I will not be far away.'

I opened the door and walked into the temple. Inside, there was a hall of rich woods and marble, and a ceiling that was cunningly painted to resemble a midnight sky of flying stars and ghostly nebulae, lit by concealed fittings. The impression it gave me was one of great wealth and opulence. At least this was true of the part of the room that was nearest to the entrance; but halfway back into the hall somebody had nailed up a crude wooden partition which had been painted a patchy grey. There was a gap in the middle of it which was covered by a piece of green baize cloth, somewhat frayed at the bottom. On the walls to either side, placed against the murals which an artist of great skill and feeling had painted there, were two rows of hard bentwood chairs, such as you might find in a doctor's or dentist's waiting room. In fact, the only real difference between this place and a doctor's surgery was that there appeared to be no corresponding table laden with out-of-date magazines and comic books to help to pass the time. I wished Lyra had come in with me. I could have held her hand.

I hesitated. Should I sit down on one of the chairs and wait for something to happen, or lift the curtain and find out what lay behind the wooden screen? Simply to wait until I was called – for this was clearly a waiting room – seemed, after my adventures of the past few days, to be rather a weak and feeble thing to do; but I was not sure that to pass uninvited through the barrier might not be seen as arrogance on my part. In the end I compromised. I stood by the curtain and called out, 'Hello! Anybody there?'

Immediately a voice issued from a grille set in the ceiling: 'Kindly take a seat and make yourself comfortable. An agent will be available to see you shortly.' The voice sounded harsh and unwelcoming and I wondered if I had done the right thing so, anxious to appear cooperative, I sat down as I had been ordered.

Time passed. I looked around the room. I got up and walked around the room. I sat down again, and looked around the room again, and tried to calm myself, clutching my exercise book in my hands. Then I got up once more and examined the paintings on the walls, one by one. They were, as I have suggested, all done with extraordinary skill and imagination. The artist had depicted scenes from books I had read – like Graham's Law, or Iron Bulwarks, or The Dursten Tapestry, or The Junior Craftsman's Primer of Patterns For Timely Emulation. The odd thing was that every time I returned to a picture it had changed, and in all the time I spent looking at them I never saw the same image twice.

After a long time, or so it seemed, spent looking at pictures and cooling my heels on the chair the voice emerged again from the grille. 'Next,' it said. Only that. As there had been nobody in the waiting room when I entered it and nobody had entered it since, it was pretty clear that "next" meant me, so I got to my feet and walked over to the baize curtain. As I reached it the voice spoke again. 'Room Four,' it said.

I pulled the curtain aside and went through the gap in the partition. Beyond it, the same cheaply painted wooden walls extended into the invisible distance, interrupted at ten-foot intervals by doors of green metal. Door number four was the second on the right, so I walked up to it and opened it without troubling to knock first. I would soon find out what was going on here.

'Sit down,' said the harpy behind the desk. I did so, shocked into silence at the sight of her. All the questions I had been meaning to ask, and the complaints that had been ready on my lips died stillborn before I could utter them.

If I had been thinking straight, if I had remembered what Lyra had told me about he world of the dead, many years ago when she was still alive in my world, I would have been ready for this moment. Heavens! I'd read Shock-Headed Peter when I was a boy – haven't we all? I knew what a harpy looked like. This parody of womanhood, this agony of distorted flesh. The empty eyes, the odour of decay. As it was, I gagged and retched, and it was only by good fortune that I managed to sit on the offered chair, rather than collapse onto the floor.

The harpy must have become used to this reaction, for she gave no sign that she had noticed it. 'Book?' she said, extending a sharp-taloned claw towards me. I handed the exercise book over to her and she took it in silence, neither acknowledging its receipt nor thanking me for my prompt compliance with her orders.

The stench of rotting flesh was terrible.

'Name?' she said.

'Peter. Peter Joyce,' I gulped in reply.

'Full name?'

'Oh. I'm sorry. Peter Carlton Joyce.'

'Place of birth?'

'Tring.'

'Place of death?'

'Cropredy. Somewhere near there, anyway.'

'Cropredy, Oxfordshire?'

'Yes, madam.'

'Thank you. Just a moment.' The harpy was sitting behind, and partially obscured by, a screen which was made of some beige-coloured material. Resting on the top of the desk in front of her lay a tilted panel, into the upper surface of which were set buttons engraved with the letters of the alphabet. It was something like an autowriter, only without any means of feeding paper into it. Next to it stood a white telephone.

'I need to ask you a few questions, Mister Joyce. Please answer them truthfully, and as promptly and as fully as you can. Any undue delay or failure to furnish the information we require may lead to consequences which may include, but not be limited to, the rejection of your application. Do you understand?'

'Yes, madam.' My application?

'Date of birth?

'Seventh of June, twenty fifteen.'

'Date of death?'

'Er, let's see, um…'

The talons rapped impatiently on the desktop.

'I think it was the fourth of August, twenty thirty-seven.' The harpy entered the date on her autowriter.

'Age at death?'

'Twenty-two.' Couldn't she work that one out for herself?

'Father's name and profession?

'George William Joyce. Ropemaker.'

The harpy looked up from her screen, and her pendulous, scaly breasts grated against the edge of the desk. 'Hemp, or wire?'

'Hemp or wire what?'

'Rope.'

'Er… both, I think.'

Rattle-rattle.

'Mother's maiden name?

'Teresa Jeavons.'

'Siblings?'

'What?'

The harpy leaned across the desk. 'Brothers and sisters. Do you have any brothers or sisters?' You simpleton, she might have added.

'One brother.'

'Name of brother?'

And so on, and so on. Every time I gave an answer, the harpy banged it in on her autowriter. Every time she asked me a question a gust of foul breath blew in my direction. Eventually, after what seemed like many hours, she reached the final question.

'Cause of death?'

'There was a fire. The house fell down – I was caught under the stairs. I was trying to save Viola.' There, I'd said it. I'd named the grey squirrel Viola, as if she had really been my daemon. 'I don't know if I was burned to death or crushed to death. It all went blank.'

'Thank you. Would you wait outside, please?'

I reached across the desk for my book but the harpy, with a rancid flap of her wings, covered it with her left claw.

'Please wait outside,' she repeated.

I wasn't sure whether outside meant the waiting room or the outside of the temple and, to be honest, I didn't much care. I was tired of being treated like a supplicant for alms at the Oratory, so I pushed back my chair with as loud a scrape as I could manage, slammed the door of the cubicle behind me and, pushing my way through the green curtain and stamping across the parquet floor of the waiting room, I emerged into the twilight outside and followed the path to the water's edge.

It was dark and Lyra was nowhere to be seen. I panicked and ran around the edge of the island shouting, 'Lyra, Lyra!' at the top of my voice. On my second orbit, when I was starting to get desperate, Lyra rose from behind a bank of bulrushes. For a moment I thought I saw a shadowy form moving behind her, but when I looked again it had gone.

'Peter,' she said. 'Is everything all right?'

'No, it damn well isn't. I've been sent out here while that bloody harpy in there reads my book.'

'It's her job,' Lyra said mildly. 'I told you that you would meet a collector of stories. She's collecting yours.'

'So why did she have to ask me all those bloody stupid questions? Who am I, who's my brother, where was my Auntie May born, what was my maternal grandmother's maiden name? What's that got to do with anything? And Lyra…'

'Yes, Peter?'

'What's going to happen to me? I don't know. Oh, I wish I did!'

'Sit with me. Come on, down here by the reeds. And look! The stars are coming out – do you see? Do you remember how they blessed us in the cottage garden?'

The Great Bear and the Pleiades. The Summer Triangle. The North Star. All the lights of heaven were turning on above us. I sat with Lyra and watched the stars, and shared her warmth, and kissed her.

'Who are you?' I asked, after a while.

'What a funny question! I'm Lyra Silvertongue.'

'Yes, I know, but which Lyra Silvertongue are you? I've seen you in so many different forms today. Are you the Lyra who died or the Lyra who lived? Are you alive now?'

'You know… you know that you're dead, don't you, Peter?'

'Yes, I know that. I feel as if I've been dying all my life, one way or another.'

'Shush, Peter. You remember we asked the alethiometer how you and Viola could be reunited, and it said you had to die by fire.'

'Yes, and in no time at all I did just that.'

'Well, when you die you enter the World of the Dead. That's where we are now.'

'It's not such a bad place. Quite pleasant, really.' The river chuckled to itself among the rushes.

'It used to be far worse, believe me!'

'Oh yes, I remember what you told me. "Nobody need fear Death any more".'

'No, only the manner of their dying. This is your own personal World of the Dead, Peter, made just for you. From here, once you have told the story of your life, your atoms will begin to drift apart, at first slowly and then more and more quickly until they are one with Viola's atoms; and the atoms of everyone who has ever lived. You will enter the Dust-Stream, Peter, and become part of the breath of the angels and the light of the stars. One day, when the Story of Life has all been told, there will be nothing but Dust and eternal joy for everyone who has ever lived.'

'And that will be the end? The end of everything? The end of Time?'

'No, Peter. It will be just the beginning.'

We sat under the consecrating stars and listened to the wind communing with the reeds.

'Peter Carlton Joyce! Room Four!'

There must have been a speaker grille fitted to the outside of the temple as well as in the waiting room inside, for the metallic voice crackled at full volume across the lawns to the place where Lyra and I were sitting. I stood up.

'This is it, then.'

'This is it.'

I hesitated. 'Would you come in with me this time, please?'

'Yes, Peter, I'll come with you.' Lyra stood up and hand in hand, like children on their first day at school, we walked across the grass to the great portico of the temple, our way lit by stardust. At the door, I turned to face her. 'Please would you kiss me once more? I need your strength so much now.'

'Of course.' And she did, and all my fears fell away from me and dissolved into the ground at my feet.

'And Lyra…'

'Yes?'

'You didn't answer my question. Which Lyra Silvertongue are you?'

'Had you not guessed?' She laughed. 'All of them, of course! All of them!'

I had thought that the harpy's expression was forbidding before, but she had not been angry with me then. Now she was, and all the torments of Hell were massing on her brow.

'Sit down! I will waste no more time with you, Peter Carlton Joyce, until you decide to tell me the truth.'

'I have been telling you the truth, madam.' I remained standing.

'You have not!'

'I have.' Lyra was standing behind me, slightly to my left. The harpy did not appear to have noticed her.

'Have you now? Then tell me once more; how did you die?'

I drew in my breath. 'Lady Boreal's men fired the cottage. They used straw soaked in naphtha. My daemon Viola was trapped inside. I tried to rescue her, but the cottage collapsed on me before we could escape.'

'And that is your story?'

'Yes.'

'And it is true?'

'Yes!'

'There is no need to shout. Tell me then, if the story you have just repeated to me is true, how do you explain this?'

The harpy handed the exercise book over to me, open at the last written page, where I had not been able to read before. I read it now, and as I scanned the lines a succession of feelings – amazement, outrage, despair and, finally, desperate hope – chased each other through my mind. This was a different story altogether.

'Then… then, I shouldn't be here. Look, Lyra, look! That's what I thought was going to happen, but Martin James severed Viola and me before it could. Look!'

I gave the book to Lyra and she read it. Slowly a broad smile spread across her face. 'It does seem that something has gone a little… awry. Madam Harpy?'

The creature twitched, as if taken by surprise. 'Who are you?' she said.

'That you will learn in due course. Meanwhile…'

'Yes?'

'May I borrow your telephone?'

There was no room for us all in the cubicle, so we sat in the waiting room. I arranged the chairs in a rough circle with Lyra and me sitting next to each other on one side of the floor. My harpy sat opposite, facing me and scowling (how could I tell, with that face? But I could) and next to her was the fourth member of our party.

'Lyra Silvertongue,' she said. 'It is indeed a pleasure to see you here, but a surprise too. I had not known that you were so intimately involved with this young man.' Was there a hint of accusation in her voice?

'Gracious Wings.' Lyra bowed in her chair. 'Peter and I have been friends for many years.'

'More than just friends, I think.'

'Yes, much more than that.'

'Good…' Gracious Wings looked closely at me. 'Is there something you would like me to do for him? I understand that there is some slight misunderstanding regarding the manner of his death.'

Lyra sat very upright in her chair. 'Gracious Wings, you saved my life once, in the Abyss.'

'It was the least I could do for you, after what you had done for me and my sisters.'

The harpy I still thought of as mine was looking at us both with new respect in her eyes, but especially at Lyra.

'Much later, you arranged for Arthur Shire to be restored to the worlds of life.'

'He had come to us untimely. We have discretion in such cases, especially where a flaw in base reality is concerned.'

'Put it as you will, you returned him to life as a personal favour to me. I know that and I deeply appreciate it.'

Could a harpy blush?

'Now, in this case, I ask you for one last favour. Third time pays for all, they say.'

'My debt to you is not susceptible to the strictures of mensuration.'

'Your name suits you well, Gracious Wings. I knew that when I named you, but it has become more and more true as time has passed.'

It was the harpy's turn to bow.

'This boy Peter, whom I love, is another whose death is not only untimely but, I suspect, may be an outward manifestation of that deeper struggle to which you just referred, and to which it might be better if we did not refer again.'

Gracious Wings bowed once more.

'His deaths are, and have been, inconsistent. Seven years ago, as he counts time, he was saved from extinction by the Warriors, but awoke in a different world. He has seen the time-ghosts—'

'He has?'

'For at least five years. All that time, he was suffering from feelings of temporal and spatial displacement. He was living in the wrong world, all along. Either he, or it, needed to change.'

I was listening with increasing wonder. 'Wait a minute!' I said. 'Are you saying that you can send me back? Back to the world where Lyra is alive? That's the world I was born in, isn't it?' My heart was thumping in my chest. I had almost forgotten, you see.

'No, not that world.' Lyra touched my arm. 'Viola…'

Yes, of course. I could not live in that world, not without my daemon. Anyway, now I knew what was written in my book.

'A world without you, then.'

'For now. For a while. For a lifetime – for the chance it gives you of building a life well-lived for yourself. For the Republic of Heaven…'

Despairing, I put my head in my hands. 'So we're going to have to say goodbye to each other again. Again! It's all right for you. You've done all this before, with Will!'

'Don't cry, Peter. Please don't cry. Believe me,' she came to me and held both my hands in hers, 'It hurts me just as much, every time I say goodbye to somebody I love. It wrenches my soul every bit as much. Every little bit…'

The moment was near, I knew, when we would have to part until the world of Time came to its end.