Before you read this, I need to state that do not own Lyra, Will or any of
the other characters in this story. His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass,
The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass and all related characters, concepts,
and commercial offspring are the property of Philip Pullman, Scholastic
Books, Random House Inc, New Line Cinema and all other right-holders. This
is not for profit and is not intended to infringe upon any commercial
endeavours.
A double decker bus full of school children drew up at a bus stop in a quiet suburban area of Oxford. A single boy jumped off. His hair was dark and he looked to be about fifteen years old.
His friends on the top deck of the bus were banging on the windows and as he looked up a ball of screwed up paper hit him on the shoulder. He looked to see who had done it but it was a smiling face and he waved to Liam, the boy who had befriended him when he started at the school nearly two years ago. He waved with his right hand, as he was still reluctant to risk drawing attention to his left.
The bus pulled away, the children on it laughing and joking. It was Friday afternoon. School was over for the week, the exams were over and it was nearly the summer holidays. There was plenty to be happy about.
The boy looked around to see if anyone was watching and undid his school bag. A large cat emerged. If anyone had been watching they would have found it hard to say exactly what colour the cat was. Black? Grey? The cat and boy walked along the street and into another. They crossed the road and walked up the path of the small house, which was their home.
Will Parry let himself in and dumped his school bag in the hall. He didn't bother to call out that he was home because he knew that there was no one else there. Mary had decided that after last Midsummer's day she would go away for the weekend taking his mother with her.
Kirjava bounded up to the window in the front room. She sat on the window ledge viewing the street outside but there was no sign of anyone. She stayed watching for a while and then joined Will in the kitchen.
"All clear as far as I can see," she reported. Will nodded absently.
He was finding it harder to contain his excitement. Tomorrow was THE day. The best day of the year. Midsummer's day. He nearly burned himself on the grill and forced himself to concentrate on cooking. He had already made his plans for tomorrow. What time he was going to get up, which bus he had to catch, where to get something to eat before he went to the botanical gardens. After that he had no idea what he would do. He didn't want to think about anything after the gardens.
"We need to handle it better this year," Kirjava said. Will looked at her this time and then nodded again.
He ate his meal watching television, Mary normally objected to him doing that so he was taking advantage of her not being around. There were some things he could only discuss with her. But. But in some ways life was easier without her. Will felt guilty at that thought. He owed Mary so much. On the other hand.
Returning to his own world had been much easier than Will had dared think. The man he had accidentally killed was a member of the security services who had been conducting an illegal search. The security services had no intention of disclosing what they had been doing to the police and the man's body had been quietly disposed of and the house tidied up and locked. If they were still interested in Will there had been no sign of it.
His mother had been fine. Mrs. Cooper had willingly looked after her until she found out Will had been reported as missing, that was the real reason his photo had been in the papers, not because of the dead security service agent. She had then carried on for a short while before eventually going to the police.
The authorities had not been happy about his re-appearance with Mary Malone, who they wanted to interview regarding the destruction of computer equipment. However, the apparent disappearance of Sir Charles had caused confusion with several government departments wanting to know what had been going on and none of them wanting to take responsibility.
Will and Mary stuck to their basic story that she was an old family friend who had taken Will away to give him a break from looking after his mother. Mary denied all knowledge of the damage at the laboratory or of entering the tent on Sunderland Avenue. The new security guard at the lab had not been seen again. As there was no proof, indeed there seemed to have been no good reason for a policeman to be on guard there at all, Mary could not be charged with anything.
Fortunately Will's mother had several good periods at just the right times for interviews with Social Services and Will was not taken into care. On the surface his Mother appeared normal and he had Mary to help look after her. Given that there were more urgent demands on Social services' time and resources Will was able to quietly slip through the net of bureaucracy.
The move from Winchester to Oxford was his idea. He wanted a fresh start somewhere and if Mary didn't think the continued association with Oxford was a good idea she kept her thoughts to herself.
In many ways it had been good. He had been nervous starting at a new school but he had seen how Lyra had made friends easily and he forced himself to go up to other children in the class and start conversations with them. To his surprise he found his classmates quite happy to include him. Liam, the paper thrower from the bus and the class joker, had involved Will in everything that was going on and to Will's even greater surprise he had found he was popular. With Mary at home to look after his mother it was easier to have friends back to hi house. To his embarrassment several of the girls in the class seemed to like him as well and he found that hard to deal with when his thoughts kept returning to Lyra.
Like Lyra doubts had begun to surface in his mind. His world was not in the same turmoil as hers but he could not see the path he had to take. When he had told Xaphania that he would decide what he would do with his life it had seemed an easy thing to say. Also like Lyra he could not see how he could make any difference to the world. He had considered a life in politics but even if he succeeded Britain seemed to be a fading power in the world.
Unlike Lyra he always had someone to speak to about what had happened but in some ways it made matters worse. Mary had eventually stopped talking about Lyra because of the hurt it so obviously caused him. Last midsummer's day Will had spent the entire afternoon and evening at the botanical gardens until it had closed. He had then wandered the streets, missed his last bus home and eventually arrived back home in the early hours of the morning to find Mary frantic with worry. She had demanded to know where he had been and because of his mood he had exploded, blaming Mary for his separation from Lyra and storming out of the house again.
Of course he had apologized in the morning but Mary secretly started to blame herself and their friendship became strained. Will started to think more and more about the events in the world of the Mulefa and started to come to the same conclusions as Lyra.
Will washed up the dishes and forced himself to do the weekends homework. Kirjava prowled around the house. Halfway through an equation Will wondered what Lyra was doing. Kirjava jumped up onto his desk and looked deep into his eyes.
"I don't know, but I bet she is thinking of you."
Will glanced up to a small cardboard box on a shelf.
"Have you looked at it recently?" asked his daemon, knowing the answer.
Will took the box down and took the lid off the box containing the shards of the subtle knife. He dropped it. Kirjava leaped down from the desk to look inside.
"It can't be," Will gasped. He reached down and took the knife out of the box. It was whole as if it had never been broken. Not like the time after Iorek had repaired it. The handle was still blackened, but the blade! It was as if had never been broken. There were no visible joins. The colours swirled as they had when Will had first looked at the blade. But it was different. The central part appeared to be grained with small serpents, twisting around.
He started to reach out with the blade, to see if he could find still find the snag in order to cut a window into another world.
"What are you doing!" hissed Kirjava.
Will stopped.
" I was just seeing . I just wanted to know if it still worked. If I could still find the edges."
"Sorry. I know you wouldn't cut through really. I was just so shocked. How did you do it?" Kirjava was looking at the blade poised in Will's hand.
Will tried the edge on his desk and had sliced all the way though the wood before he could stop himself.
"How did I do what?" he replied stupidly.
"How did you repair the knife? And how did you keep it from me? Why did you repair it? Oh Will, you know we can't use it. This only makes things worse. It will always be there as a temptation." Kirjava jumped back onto the desk again and stared at him reproachfully.
Will looked stunned.
"I didn't. I didn't do a thing. When I looked at it yesterday it was still in pieces."
They looked at each other. Will shivered.
"The day before I will be as close to Lyra as I ever can be and the knife is whole again."
It was there. The temptation. The thought crept into Will's mind.
"I could cut a small window. Just big enough to look through and see her. We could talk through it. It wouldn't need to be very big. We could touch ."
He knew he could not. Small gap or large Xaphania had told them it would create another spectre. But another thought followed the first one.
"Xaphania said 'we shall take care of the spectres', she let you cut three windows after you knew about it creating the spectres. They must have been able to deal with them so why not one more window?"
It was very quiet. There was no traffic passing by in the street outside. There was nothing to make a noise. But it seemed to Will that he could not hear because of the pounding in his head.
"How could we have been so stupid? Oh Lyra, I think we have been . I could have opened up a window whenever we needed to move from one world to another. It needn't have been often. Weren't we worth that much?"
"Will, we agreed to live apart, to have our full lives to build the republic of heaven." Kirjava pleaded. " It may not be as simple as you think. We don't know what she meant by 'dealing with the spectres'"
Will tried to calm down, he felt betrayed, but he knew Kirjava was right. He had to think about this properly and not just react. He started breathing deeply, trying to relax. Mary had talked to him about her out-of- body experience when she was high up on the platform in the tree and they had practiced meditating together.
Will lay down on his bed and tried now. Kirjava curled up next to him purring and trying to help him. Gently he fell asleep.
It seemed like only minutes later that Will opened his eyes to see sunshine flooding through the window. His eyes flew to his clock but it was all right, he had plenty of time. He was still wearing yesterday's clothes and was determined to be looking his best even if Lyra wasn't going to actually see him. The doubts of last night raised their heads again. He pushed them to one side, showered, got dressed and had his breakfast. He checked he had everything he needed and went to the door. He hesitated and went up to his room and picked up the knife. He put it in its sheaf and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. It felt strange there but he couldn't attach it to his belt and wear it openly.
He smiled to himself and pulled a small blue rucksack out of a cupboard. Mary had got it for him for when they had all gone out walking together. He put the knife in it and slipped it onto his back.
"Why are you bringing it?" asked Kirjava suspiciously. "We agreed to think about this."
"I need to know it's safe," replied Will keeping his tone as even as possible.
At eleven O'clock he walked into the botanical gardens and headed for their place. He wanted to be in plenty of time to make sure he could get his place on the bench. He dreaded getting there to find someone else already sat there.
He crossed the bridge near the end of the garden and looked at the bench. Someone was sitting on it.
"Don't worry," Kirjava soothed him. There is more than enough time. She probably won't stay there for long. Will knew she was right but he wanted everything to be perfect.
The girl on the bench was getting up, however, and Will breathed a sigh of relief. The girl was running now and Will noticed something bounding along at her feet. It was only as she threw herself into his arms that he realized the animal was a pine-marten.
"Will!" the girl breathed in his ear as she hugged him to her.
A double decker bus full of school children drew up at a bus stop in a quiet suburban area of Oxford. A single boy jumped off. His hair was dark and he looked to be about fifteen years old.
His friends on the top deck of the bus were banging on the windows and as he looked up a ball of screwed up paper hit him on the shoulder. He looked to see who had done it but it was a smiling face and he waved to Liam, the boy who had befriended him when he started at the school nearly two years ago. He waved with his right hand, as he was still reluctant to risk drawing attention to his left.
The bus pulled away, the children on it laughing and joking. It was Friday afternoon. School was over for the week, the exams were over and it was nearly the summer holidays. There was plenty to be happy about.
The boy looked around to see if anyone was watching and undid his school bag. A large cat emerged. If anyone had been watching they would have found it hard to say exactly what colour the cat was. Black? Grey? The cat and boy walked along the street and into another. They crossed the road and walked up the path of the small house, which was their home.
Will Parry let himself in and dumped his school bag in the hall. He didn't bother to call out that he was home because he knew that there was no one else there. Mary had decided that after last Midsummer's day she would go away for the weekend taking his mother with her.
Kirjava bounded up to the window in the front room. She sat on the window ledge viewing the street outside but there was no sign of anyone. She stayed watching for a while and then joined Will in the kitchen.
"All clear as far as I can see," she reported. Will nodded absently.
He was finding it harder to contain his excitement. Tomorrow was THE day. The best day of the year. Midsummer's day. He nearly burned himself on the grill and forced himself to concentrate on cooking. He had already made his plans for tomorrow. What time he was going to get up, which bus he had to catch, where to get something to eat before he went to the botanical gardens. After that he had no idea what he would do. He didn't want to think about anything after the gardens.
"We need to handle it better this year," Kirjava said. Will looked at her this time and then nodded again.
He ate his meal watching television, Mary normally objected to him doing that so he was taking advantage of her not being around. There were some things he could only discuss with her. But. But in some ways life was easier without her. Will felt guilty at that thought. He owed Mary so much. On the other hand.
Returning to his own world had been much easier than Will had dared think. The man he had accidentally killed was a member of the security services who had been conducting an illegal search. The security services had no intention of disclosing what they had been doing to the police and the man's body had been quietly disposed of and the house tidied up and locked. If they were still interested in Will there had been no sign of it.
His mother had been fine. Mrs. Cooper had willingly looked after her until she found out Will had been reported as missing, that was the real reason his photo had been in the papers, not because of the dead security service agent. She had then carried on for a short while before eventually going to the police.
The authorities had not been happy about his re-appearance with Mary Malone, who they wanted to interview regarding the destruction of computer equipment. However, the apparent disappearance of Sir Charles had caused confusion with several government departments wanting to know what had been going on and none of them wanting to take responsibility.
Will and Mary stuck to their basic story that she was an old family friend who had taken Will away to give him a break from looking after his mother. Mary denied all knowledge of the damage at the laboratory or of entering the tent on Sunderland Avenue. The new security guard at the lab had not been seen again. As there was no proof, indeed there seemed to have been no good reason for a policeman to be on guard there at all, Mary could not be charged with anything.
Fortunately Will's mother had several good periods at just the right times for interviews with Social Services and Will was not taken into care. On the surface his Mother appeared normal and he had Mary to help look after her. Given that there were more urgent demands on Social services' time and resources Will was able to quietly slip through the net of bureaucracy.
The move from Winchester to Oxford was his idea. He wanted a fresh start somewhere and if Mary didn't think the continued association with Oxford was a good idea she kept her thoughts to herself.
In many ways it had been good. He had been nervous starting at a new school but he had seen how Lyra had made friends easily and he forced himself to go up to other children in the class and start conversations with them. To his surprise he found his classmates quite happy to include him. Liam, the paper thrower from the bus and the class joker, had involved Will in everything that was going on and to Will's even greater surprise he had found he was popular. With Mary at home to look after his mother it was easier to have friends back to hi house. To his embarrassment several of the girls in the class seemed to like him as well and he found that hard to deal with when his thoughts kept returning to Lyra.
Like Lyra doubts had begun to surface in his mind. His world was not in the same turmoil as hers but he could not see the path he had to take. When he had told Xaphania that he would decide what he would do with his life it had seemed an easy thing to say. Also like Lyra he could not see how he could make any difference to the world. He had considered a life in politics but even if he succeeded Britain seemed to be a fading power in the world.
Unlike Lyra he always had someone to speak to about what had happened but in some ways it made matters worse. Mary had eventually stopped talking about Lyra because of the hurt it so obviously caused him. Last midsummer's day Will had spent the entire afternoon and evening at the botanical gardens until it had closed. He had then wandered the streets, missed his last bus home and eventually arrived back home in the early hours of the morning to find Mary frantic with worry. She had demanded to know where he had been and because of his mood he had exploded, blaming Mary for his separation from Lyra and storming out of the house again.
Of course he had apologized in the morning but Mary secretly started to blame herself and their friendship became strained. Will started to think more and more about the events in the world of the Mulefa and started to come to the same conclusions as Lyra.
Will washed up the dishes and forced himself to do the weekends homework. Kirjava prowled around the house. Halfway through an equation Will wondered what Lyra was doing. Kirjava jumped up onto his desk and looked deep into his eyes.
"I don't know, but I bet she is thinking of you."
Will glanced up to a small cardboard box on a shelf.
"Have you looked at it recently?" asked his daemon, knowing the answer.
Will took the box down and took the lid off the box containing the shards of the subtle knife. He dropped it. Kirjava leaped down from the desk to look inside.
"It can't be," Will gasped. He reached down and took the knife out of the box. It was whole as if it had never been broken. Not like the time after Iorek had repaired it. The handle was still blackened, but the blade! It was as if had never been broken. There were no visible joins. The colours swirled as they had when Will had first looked at the blade. But it was different. The central part appeared to be grained with small serpents, twisting around.
He started to reach out with the blade, to see if he could find still find the snag in order to cut a window into another world.
"What are you doing!" hissed Kirjava.
Will stopped.
" I was just seeing . I just wanted to know if it still worked. If I could still find the edges."
"Sorry. I know you wouldn't cut through really. I was just so shocked. How did you do it?" Kirjava was looking at the blade poised in Will's hand.
Will tried the edge on his desk and had sliced all the way though the wood before he could stop himself.
"How did I do what?" he replied stupidly.
"How did you repair the knife? And how did you keep it from me? Why did you repair it? Oh Will, you know we can't use it. This only makes things worse. It will always be there as a temptation." Kirjava jumped back onto the desk again and stared at him reproachfully.
Will looked stunned.
"I didn't. I didn't do a thing. When I looked at it yesterday it was still in pieces."
They looked at each other. Will shivered.
"The day before I will be as close to Lyra as I ever can be and the knife is whole again."
It was there. The temptation. The thought crept into Will's mind.
"I could cut a small window. Just big enough to look through and see her. We could talk through it. It wouldn't need to be very big. We could touch ."
He knew he could not. Small gap or large Xaphania had told them it would create another spectre. But another thought followed the first one.
"Xaphania said 'we shall take care of the spectres', she let you cut three windows after you knew about it creating the spectres. They must have been able to deal with them so why not one more window?"
It was very quiet. There was no traffic passing by in the street outside. There was nothing to make a noise. But it seemed to Will that he could not hear because of the pounding in his head.
"How could we have been so stupid? Oh Lyra, I think we have been . I could have opened up a window whenever we needed to move from one world to another. It needn't have been often. Weren't we worth that much?"
"Will, we agreed to live apart, to have our full lives to build the republic of heaven." Kirjava pleaded. " It may not be as simple as you think. We don't know what she meant by 'dealing with the spectres'"
Will tried to calm down, he felt betrayed, but he knew Kirjava was right. He had to think about this properly and not just react. He started breathing deeply, trying to relax. Mary had talked to him about her out-of- body experience when she was high up on the platform in the tree and they had practiced meditating together.
Will lay down on his bed and tried now. Kirjava curled up next to him purring and trying to help him. Gently he fell asleep.
It seemed like only minutes later that Will opened his eyes to see sunshine flooding through the window. His eyes flew to his clock but it was all right, he had plenty of time. He was still wearing yesterday's clothes and was determined to be looking his best even if Lyra wasn't going to actually see him. The doubts of last night raised their heads again. He pushed them to one side, showered, got dressed and had his breakfast. He checked he had everything he needed and went to the door. He hesitated and went up to his room and picked up the knife. He put it in its sheaf and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. It felt strange there but he couldn't attach it to his belt and wear it openly.
He smiled to himself and pulled a small blue rucksack out of a cupboard. Mary had got it for him for when they had all gone out walking together. He put the knife in it and slipped it onto his back.
"Why are you bringing it?" asked Kirjava suspiciously. "We agreed to think about this."
"I need to know it's safe," replied Will keeping his tone as even as possible.
At eleven O'clock he walked into the botanical gardens and headed for their place. He wanted to be in plenty of time to make sure he could get his place on the bench. He dreaded getting there to find someone else already sat there.
He crossed the bridge near the end of the garden and looked at the bench. Someone was sitting on it.
"Don't worry," Kirjava soothed him. There is more than enough time. She probably won't stay there for long. Will knew she was right but he wanted everything to be perfect.
The girl on the bench was getting up, however, and Will breathed a sigh of relief. The girl was running now and Will noticed something bounding along at her feet. It was only as she threw herself into his arms that he realized the animal was a pine-marten.
"Will!" the girl breathed in his ear as she hugged him to her.