Will gaped. Kirjava blinked, surprised by what Aurora had said.
"Lyra. . .would let herself die to know if I'm alright or not?" Will questioned, unsure.
"Yes. But she doesn't know yet that to read the aleithiometer, she has to let go of the Dust around her. Not yet." Aurora corrected.
"Then when will she know?" Will sounded very worried. The black-haired girl shared his look. Solstice, which had turned into a cat that resembled Kirjava, was weekly attempting to cheer the daemon up, but it received only hostility.
"I'm not sure. But I sense my brother had something to do with it. I have not seen him in nearly two hundred years, but I know he'll try to regain his long lost power. I've been expecting it for a long time. And Lyra has something to do with it."
Kirjava hissed at Solstice, and sent a warning at Will. The boy blinked.
"Hey! How can we trust you?" He suddenly asked in an accusing voice. The girl didn't seem surprised by his reaction. In fact, she looked like she had been expecting it.
"The vision of Lyra that you had in your sleep; it was what I saw. And I see many things. For one, I saw you with Easheatter, and I saw everything you did: your mother, Cittagaze, your father Jopari, The World of the Dead, Metatron, the Authority, Mary Malone and your daemon. Will, if you cannot trust me, when I am trying to save Lyra, then you cannot trust anyone."
There was a silence, and at the same time as Will sighed in defeat, Kirjava let Solstice lick her face with her cat tongue.
Aurora smiled kindly as Equinox, who seemed more distant and cold, also turned into a cat, although larger and stronger, and rubbed his head against Kirjava's.
"Wait. . .'Will realized something, 'Did you know my father?"
Aurora smiled softly. "Yes. He came to Lyra's world as John Parry, became known as Stanislaus Grumman, and was adopted by a tribe who called him Jopari."
"But did you meet him personally?"
"Yes, I did. I came to him to ask about dream recall. He taught me how to see the future in my sleep."
"But. . .if you knew him. . .you could have found a window to let him back into my world. He could have come back. . ." Now Will sounded angry that someone had stopped him from seeing his father sooner in the past.
"I could have, indeed. I even asked him if we wanted to return, after he told me he had a wife and a son in another world. But he himself refused to come back. He said he missed you a lot, and he wished to see you again, but something told him that if he were to leave, he who was a very important piece on the chessboard, would destroy the white side's victory." Aurora said. Will started at her with raised eyebrows.
"I don't see what could have been important about staying there. . ." He nearly snarled. Why the hell was he so angry? Perhaps it was because too many bad things happened in a day's time.
"Oh, but he was important. Imagine: if he had come back, you would not have had those problems with the government, and wouldn't have run away from home. And what would have happened then? You wouldn't have entered Cittagaze, you wouldn't have met Lyra, you wouldn't have gone on a journey to save the world, and you most certainly wouldn't have done everything you did up to now."
Will nodded. He calmed down a bit; Aurora had a point.
"But if he would have come back, he wouldn't have died on that mountain top, when we first met. He would have lived longer. . . ."
"Maybe he would have. . .but everyone has to die, no matter the time it takes. Just like a newborn child can die a day after its birth, or live to ripe old age, your father could have died any time. And if he died on that mountain top, it was his destiny to die there."
Will sighed. "It's not that. . ." She didn't understand.
"I know, Will Parry. You wanted more time with him. But there is no future without sacrifice. If your father would have come back, you would have never left, and millions of innocents would be dead by now. But I mustn't keep you; your mother is worried. She is waiting for you in the kitchen, and you know how scared she can get without you. Remember you are life to her, and she is death without you."
And suddenly, Equinox turned into a huge, half-lion, half-eagle creature called a griffin, and Aurora jumped on his back without another word.
Solstice stayed by Kirjava, watching calmly as his human prepared to leave.
"Solstice will stay with you; she is able to ward off anything that might want to harm you."
"Hey! Wait. . .why would anything want to harm me? And where are you going?" Will ran a few steps after the griffin.
"I have things to take care of in the North." And Aurora flew away without answering Will's other question, black cape flying.
The boy blinked, and turned to his daemon, which sat silently by Solstice.
"Well then. . .Solstice. . .just tell me. . .what would want to 'attack' me?" Will tried to be subtle, but failed miserably.
"It does not matter. For as long as I am with you, it does not matter." The creature answered, speaking out loud this time. Her voice was so kind and soft, defenseless, that Will thought of his mother.
Heart bleeding, worry eating his insides, Will left for home.
(0)
Mrs. Parry was sitting at the kitchen table, just as Aurora said she would. Will timidly walked up to the woman, who looked over at him very simply. She couldn't see the daemons, so the presence of Solstice went by unnoticed.
"Hey mom." Will said, hugging her. His mother might be a bit odd to some; he felt that she was the only one who could really understand him, besides Mary. And sometimes she said such amazing things. . .
"A girl. . .with black hair. She told you something troubling. I feel your heart hurts." Mrs. Parry murmured to her son. He stepped back a bit, watching her in the moonlight. She had never told him how she knew these kinds of things.
"Yeah. . ." Will said awkwardly.
"And there is another daemon with yours. I feel it." The woman nodded, and looked over at Solstice, who was sitting in the shadows. Will had no idea how she knew about daemons, and chose to ignore it.
But Mrs. Parry clicked her tongue softly, and Solstice came running to her. Against all laws of taboo through which a human could not touch the daemon of another, Solstice leaped on Mrs. Parry's lap, and she scratched him. Will, surprised, wondered if Aurora had felt it.
"Mom . . . how come you see daemons?" The boy asked.
There was a pause. "I don't see them. I feel them. It used to scare me, before you had your own daemon. Now I'm not scared." She lifted her hand, and Solstice leaped off her lap.
Will frowned. Mrs. Parry looked over at Will.
"Keep this daemon close. . .it will save your life." She murmured, got up, hugged her stunned son and left.
Will shrugged helplessly, and shared a look with Kirjava, before walking up the stairs to his room.
Before lying down in his bed, he gazed at the leathery case containing Easheatter, and shivered, wondering if the blade had 'used' him to do evil. But Kirjava disagreed with that; after all, he had saved the world, not tried to destroy it.
(0)
Lyra looked at the stars from her window, and ran her fingers in Pan's fur.
She was sitting in the stone opening that was window, one leg hanging in the emptiness, nearly five stories from the ground. Pan was curled against her chest, eyes closed, trying to ignore the height they were at.
'I wish I could read the aleithiometer. . .' Lyra sighed deeply. Pan rubbed his head against her chest, and she kept scratching him softly.
Her eyes closed, and she slowly drifted to sleep on the edge of the window.
In her restless sleep, as she walked the streets of Oxford in her dreams, she kept seeing a man dressed in a black cloak, but he disappeared from sight and reach every time she tried to look at him closer.
And when Lyra woke up the next morning, she had no memory of this dream.
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Not bad, eh? (I GOT REVIEWS! YES! THANK YOU SO MUCH!) Seriously, you don't know how much this means to me. I've been waiting for like forever to get a least one review until one day I went like; if I don't have a least one review, I quit. And I saw I had three! Yippee!