I re-enter the World of Time

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Little Gidding

We stood, the four of us, on the grass in front of the temple. The sky above us was still dark, and the stars still shone silently down on us, but to the east the merest hint of a glow on the ridge of the hills above us foretold that the new day would not be long in coming.

'Peter,' Lyra said, 'You have a choice to make. You are dead, as you know, and you can choose to accept the Gift of the Dead – to merge with the stream of life and become one with all life, being and thought. But there is another way, thanks to the kindness of my friend Gracious Wings.'

'You see,' said the harpy, 'Time can be regarded in more than one aspect. The first view – and this is how it is usually perceived by mortals – is that Time is a river.' Her wing swept over her head, indicating the Isis as it bubbled past us. 'It starts at birth – its watershed – and ends at the sea, in death. A mortal enters its current and is carried along by it all his life, part of its flow and unable to leave it. That is one way of looking at it. Another view is the one we have now. We are standing by the side of the river, and it is passing us. We can dip into the river, or cross it. We can swim in it. We do not have to stay in one place on the banks of the river, but can go up or downstream as it suits us. That is the viewpoint of the immortals.

'But there is yet another way of looking at Time; a third way. My colleague Griselda has something of yours, which can be returned to you if you wish. It is a book. What, would you say, does a book comprise?'

'Er, pages. Writing. Words.'

'And what do the words tell?'

'A… a story.'

'Yes, Peter. A story. Your book contains your story. But more, your book contains your story in the form of frozen time. Each written page is fixed, each unwritten one waits expectantly, ready to receive the next chapter.'

'So the story of my life cannot be changed, madam?'

'Not changed, no, unless…'

'Unless a new page is substituted for an old one,' said Lyra.

'How do you mean?'

'Your lives have become confused, as you know. The Peter Joyce who should have died in the world of Elizabeth Boreal's triumph lived instead in the world where she and I died. You saw the time-ghosts as the result of living in the wrong world.'

'I don't understand. I thought that I saw them, and not me as a ghost, because I was already dead.'

'That's nearly correct,' said the harpy. 'But you weren't dead. It was just that your deaths had not been fully resolved. But now…'

'Now the story is different,' Lyra said. 'You have died properly – in the fire in the gyptian cottage – in the world that you should have died in to begin with, and the balance has been restored. If you were to return to the world where you and Viola were severed, you would be a real, complete member of that world.'

My heart was blazing with hope. 'You mean that I would be together with Viola again?'

'Yes, you would.'

'Then, what are we waiting for? Let's go!'

'Wait, Peter. I said, you have a choice. If you agree to accept your death now, fully and forever, then bliss will be yours very soon. It will be as I have told you – you will become a living, breathing part of the life of the cosmos. It is an unimaginable state, and one greatly to be desired. You and Viola will be united, not just with one another, but with the hearts, minds and souls of all who have ever lived. This is absolutely certain.'

'Yes… I see.'

'The other way is much less sure. You know of the pains of death.'

'Yes.'

'The situation into which you will be restored is one of very great peril. It is very likely that you will suffer an agonising death almost immediately after you are returned to life. It is quite probable that, even if you live, you will be injured, and quite possibly crippled for the rest of your days. You could be facing a life of great pain and discomfort, years and years of it. Are you prepared to take that chance? Are you prepared to die yet again?'

'Let me think,' I said. I walked away and stood by the side of the river.

Actually, I had practically made my mind up already. To surrender my life now, when only twenty-two years of it had passed, seemed like chickening out, as they say. What was death, after all, but a momentary kindness? But another voice spoke in my mind, an echo, perhaps, of Viola's. Remember Master James, it said. Remember how long he took to die. Remember the pain of it, the indignity. The hospital corridors and the smell of death. We could escape all that. We've earned it.

I helped Master to die well, didn't I?

Yes, but who would help you?

Somebody would, I'm sure.

You know the risks? You know what's going to happen?

Worse things have happened at sea.

Look up to the sky, Peter. They're waiting for us. We could join them now.

The stars were still there, although the rising flush of the dawn was beginning to drown them out. Infinitely remote, infinitely beautiful, infinitely desirable. A part of me yearned to be there now; to plunge into the Dust-Stream and splash among its billows, raising sparks of precious golden fire around my shoulders. But now, knowing that it would wait for me for ever if need be, knowing that my life was not yet fulfilled, knowing that to leave the worlds of life now would be a form of cowardice, I lifted my face to the heavens and said, soon. But not yet.

Isn't that the English way, to defer joy?

'I see that you have decided,' said Gracious Wings on my return.

'I have.'

'Then you must say your goodbyes.'

I stepped forward to the harpy who had interviewed me. 'Madam Griselda. I bid you farewell, until we meet again. Will you wait for me?'

'I will wait.'

'Then we shall meet as friends. Here's my hand.' We shook hands and the harpy returned my exercise book to me, withdrawing with a low bow, which I reciprocated. Lyra came to me next.

'Peter, you will be going with Gracious Wings, so I will say goodbye to you now.'

'Goodbye, Lyra.' I stammered the words.

'You know that it will not be forever.'

'I know.'

'Then kiss me now, and wish me well. And remember our perfect afternoon, and our love beneath the willow trees.'

'I will always remember them.'

We embraced each other, and kissed for the last time. And in the ever-growing light I saw her face, and in it I could see all the Lyras I had ever known; from child to old lady, from girl of ten years to lovely woman of twenty, and finally the Lyra I had first met, serene and confident, dressed in a Jordan College gown of fuligin black, with her hair a golden halo around her head, catching and transforming the light of a cold winter's day.

'And Peter. Don't forget the promise!'

I shook my head, unable to speak, blinded by our shared tears. When I had blinked my eyes clear again, she had gone. Bereft, I turned to Gracious Wings.

'What do I have to do?'

'Stand straight, with your arms held loosely by your side. Do not be alarmed by anything you see, for I shall not let you come to any harm.'

There was danger, then? I did not care. The hollowness inside me – my loss – was a physical force, threatening to leap out and strangle me. I did as I was told.

The harpy stood behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, clutching my body close to hers. I struggled momentarily then, realising what was about to happen, relaxed as best I could. 'Good,' said Gracious Wings, and with a massive thrust from her outstretched wings we leapt into the sky.

The ground fell away from us at dizzying speed. The harpy's arms tightened their grip around me as with every beat of her wings we soared higher and higher. Each upward surge threatened to tear me away from her grasp and I was glad of her strength and power even as I recoiled from the rough, scaly texture of her skin. Again and again and again – ever higher, until I could see the river below me with the stars clearly reflected in its waters, and the small island with the white marble temple on it and, coming quickly into view, the town. A few lights were already showing in the shops and houses and a lorry was crossing the bridge from the Berkshire side, carrying milk, or farmers' produce to market. My stomach lurched, and I was seized by a terrifying sense of vertigo.

Beat, beat, beat. Gracious Wings swept the air past us, her body shielding its rushing force from me. Now we were thousands of feet up in the air and I could see the river as a silver thread, running upstream to Oxford and beyond, and down as far as Maidenhead. The line of the onrushing dawn was clear now, like the shadows that the clouds make on the ground on a blustery summer's day. It was racing across the countryside at tremendous speed. I wondered if there were any clouds in the sky this morning and, if so, whether we would pass through them, and what it would be like. I asked Gracious Wings if she knew.

'It's like fog,' said the harpy. 'Quite dull really, and the air becomes turbulent. You wouldn't like it.'

'Oh,' I said, transfixed by the sight of the world below us. It seemed to me that I could see the whole of Brytain now, and the lands to the north and south, Caledonia and Frankland. They were becoming vague and distant in the morning air, though I found that if I focussed on one particular part of the world it would become visible with the most extraordinary clarity. The crowds crossing the Agincourt Bridge in London, the stallholders setting up in Ludlow market, the children being shooed off to school in Oakingham – I could see them all as clearly as if I had been given a spyglass of the most tremendous power, or a theological marvel from John Parry's world. I changed my viewpoint again and again, fascinated by the vision of endless, busy life that I had been granted. Oxford, New Amsterdam, Moskva. It seemed that no place in the world was out of my reach. My dizziness was subsiding now, as if height, and falling, no longer had the same meaning as they had when we were closer to the ground.

Up, up, ever higher. It struck me that we were reaching the sort of height where the air would begin to run out and I might die of asphyxiation. I estimated that we must be tens, or hundreds of miles high, for I could see the curve of the world on the horizon, and the atmosphere – a silvery haze fading into blackness at the fringes. Looking to one side I saw the stars, needle-sharp points of light, free from the distorting prism of the air. How, I wondered, could the harpy's wings still be working, if there was no air to give them purchase?

'We are breathing, and flying in, the aether now, Peter. We always were, you know.'

So we were. And as the world left us behind, and the stars came to vivid life all around us, I saw that the Urth, which I had thought to be a globe, was in fact a great plain resting, like a diamond in its setting, on the top of a mountain whose immensity I could only guess at. The slopes of this mountain were dark, but I could see them running down into the valley at its feet, where a river ran, speckled with light. And on the other side of the river rose another colossal mountain and, at its peak, sparkled another glittering jewel of sapphire and pearl. 'What is that?' I asked Gracious Wings.

'It is another World of the Dead,' she replied, 'made for another mortal like you. There is one for everybody who has lived, or will ever live. Behold!'

By now our height was so very great that I could see that the mountain we had left, and the one next to it, were part of an endless range of peaks that stretched out for ever in every direction. They resembled a sea, with the crests of its waves sparkling in the sunlight. 'Madam,' I said, though I could hardly speak for wonder and amazement, 'Lyra told me once that the World of the Dead was like a huge prison, under a featureless iron-grey sky. She did not tell me that it was so beautiful.'

'It was not beautiful then. It was a terrible place, a concentration camp for lost souls. It was Lyra who made the difference. It was she who liberated us, and the souls in our care. Did she not tell you?'

'She did. She said it was the most important thing she had ever done.'

'She was right. She took the terror away from death. Not from dying, no, there will always be pain in dying. But death – ah, that is different!' And Gracious Wings, the hideous, deformed harpy, cried out in exultation. 'We are free! All of us!'

'Madam,' I said after a while, when gravity's pull had all but disappeared and only the constant beat of the harpy's wings told me that we were still moving through the heavens, 'Back there, on the island, you spoke of a deeper struggle, and Lyra mentioned some people she called Warriors.'

'She also asked me not to refer to it.'

'You have told me that I may die again very soon.'

'Yes. It is quite likely.'

'So would it hurt if I knew?'

The harpy was silent. Then, shaking her head as if in doubt, 'I will tell you a little, even though they say that a little knowledge is dangerous. You have heard of the War in Heaven?'

'Yes, Gracious Wings.'

'Then you know that Lord Asriel gathered together a Great Alliance of free peoples from the Worlds of Life to do battle against the Authority and his Regent, the corrupt angel known as Metatron.'

'Yes, Lyra told me.'

'You already know far more than most humans, then. Now, Peter, did you notice how all the Worlds of the Dead were joined together, to make one greater world on which they all rested?'

'Yes, madam.'

'The same is true of the worlds of life. Just as the Worlds of the Dead are but different aspects of a greater underlying world, so it is with the Worlds of Life. Behind the variety of their aspects lies one aspect. Behind their differing truths lies one truth.'

'So the worlds are one?'

'You saw Lyra, on the island.'

'She was all of the Lyras in one. She told me that!'

'Then can you doubt what I have told you?'

'No… So, the Warriors?'

'There can be no life without conflict, and even in the world that is all worlds, there is struggle. Beyond that, I must say no more.'

Innumerable wing-beats passed. The great mountain range below us receded slowly into the distance until I could see that even it did not extend forever and that darkness clustered at its far-distant borders. For the first time I began to feel fear. 'Is that the Abyss?' I asked, indicating the boundaries of the slopes.

'Yes,' replied the harpy. I twisted in her grip until I could see her face. It was strained with exertion. 'Is that where we are going? To the Abyss?'

'No, Peter. Look!' I could see pass Gracious Wings' shoulders now and through the constant pulse of her pinions caught sight of a nacreous glow above us, like a layer of cloud in an Urthly sky.

'What is that?' I asked.

'We have left the Worlds of the Dead, and are approaching the Worlds of Life.'

'Are they hills too?'

'Some are. Some are spheres, floating in space. There are many other worlds that are flat, or carried on the back of giant beasts, or which consist solely of interlocking tunnels in hyperspace.'

'What form does my world take?'

'It is a blue-green globe, orbiting an ordinary star at a distance of ninety-three million miles. Other planets orbit the same star, although they are not inhabited – at least not by life as you know it. It is a common enough form of world, or universe.'

That came as a relief – to know that my universe was ordinary. It helped to restore some sense of reality. I turned around again in Gracious Wings' arms. The Worlds of the Dead were now only a faint glimmer of light beneath us and I felt the urge to wave goodbye to them. 'That is good,' said Gracious Wings. 'Now, hold on tight!'

The entire cosmos spun dizzily around us. The harpy did something complicated – a sort of back-flip, I think – and we were now facing in the opposite direction from that we had come from. To my astonishment, my sense of up and down had also rotated, so that the world which now appeared to me was quite definitely below us. Our velocity must have been beyond measurement for, although there must have been uncountable millions of worlds in the cloud-layer which I had seen, it seemed, only a few minutes before, we were already approaching a clearly distinguishable individual world. In appearance, it was not so very different from the world that I had left, clasped in Gracious Wings' arms, so many hours, days, or years before – a pearlescent ball of silver, blue and green, rapidly growing larger until it filled my vision. The pinions swept and lunged in great arcs above our heads. Gracious Wings was working hard now, slowing us down. Would her strength be enough, or was she becoming fatally tired? I had a frantic vision of us crashing into the ground, or burning up in the atmosphere like a shooting star and clung desperately to the harpy's arms. 'Don't worry, Peter,' she said. 'We are almost there. Have you worked out what you are going to do when you arrive?'

'Yes, I think so.'

The outline of the land of Brytain was clearly visible now.

'You are sure?'

'Yes. I think it'll work'

I could see the course of the Isis glinting below me, and the Oxford Canal next to it. The air – the real air, not the aether – was rushing past our linked bodies at incredible speed.

'The very best of luck to you. Do you know…'

'Yes, madam?'

'You deserve it. Beloved of Lyra Silvertongue, our saviour, you deserve good fortune, if anybody does. May the stars shine upon our next meeting!'

Cars and buses were passing up and down the Botley Road. It was a bright and breezy Sunday afternoon.

'Farewell, Gracious Wings!'

'Farewell, Peter!' I felt the harpy's kiss upon my cheek. Then…

I was sitting next to Jim and Carrie on the floor of their sitting-room. Viola was in my arms. I cannot begin to describe the feelings which swept over me when I found myself once more complete and whole – an intact human being once more, and no longer a severed thing. But there was no time yet for us to celebrate our reunion.

'No, Peter Joyce,' said Martin James. 'That is not what I intend at all, although it would certainly fulfil one of my ambitions – to see you dead. Now; let her go!'

I had only seconds in which to act. I prayed that this time I would make the right decisions.