It's Not Worth It
Chapter 4 - Through the Blizzard
- - - -
Roger and Ryan woke up the next morning to a stream of rare Northern sunlight pouring through the window of their inn. Roger groaned and rolled over sleepily, but Ryan leaped out of his bed and shook Roger awake.
"What, what is it?" he groaned sleepily, propping himself up on one elbow.
"Get up, today's the day we have to set off for that witches' place," replied Ryan. "I hope my daemon's something cool..."
"What time is it?" Roger grunted.
"Almost 10:00, at home, but I don't know what time in this world."
"Probably about the same here," said Roger, "so we should be going. It'll be a good walk to the middle of those mountains." They quietly packed their things, placed Matt back on the stretcher, and set off to the northeast.
- - - -
Will and Lyra raced back home to their house, a few blocks from the botanical gardens, to think about what they had heard.
"Maybe we have to go back to our worlds," said Lyra. "All the people with the Driftbreeze...and I never knew...but I could never really let you go, Will, you know that, we can still visit each other on the bench..."
"No!" cried Will. "I already lost you once, now nothing will make me leave you. D'you think I could bear it, being your husband for so long, then having to let you go again? It was hard enough last time, but I can't do it again."
"Will, you're not even thinking about all those poor people that lost their daemons to the Drifts! I want to spend time with you just as much as you want to spend time with me, but it would be so hard, living our lives knowing we're causing so much pain!" Lyra exclaimed.
"We couldn't do it in our separate worlds though! Build the Republic of Heaven, I mean. We would be too busy grieving over each other to even think about it."
"Maybe you're right, maybe we could build the Republic together, produce enough Dust to help stop the Driftbreeze...but I dunno if I could do it, Will, I really don't."
Will wordlessly slid into bed, not even looking at Lyra, and soon after fell asleep.
- - - -
The map that Jule had given them proved very useful to Roger and Ryan. Without it, they wouldn't have known which way to go, as they didn't have a compass, and snow showers were beginning to decrease their visibility. They had made it past the outskirts of the town, giving them plenty of time to think as they began to scale the mountains.
Roger missed Kyle, Jason, and Matt. Even though Matt was right there, he missed his company. But most of all, he missed his family. He had left them behind in Redwood, California, in his world, and now with just the company of Ryan he felt lonely. Climbing the desolate mountaintop, with no towns or anything in sight—it felt like Roger and his companions were the only people left in the world.
He was jarred out of his thoughts by Ryan, who was beginning to speculate on what kind of daemons that they and people they know might have. "You never know until you actually see them," he said. "Most people would think that they have a lion or something for a daemon and instead have it turn out to be a mouse."
Roger laughed halfheartedly. "But most people in our world have lost touch with their daemons. All those terrorist attacks...those people have probably never even thought about their soul or their conscience, ever."
"I guess you're right," said Ryan. "So what do you think our daemons will be like?"
"Who knows?" replied Roger. "I'm just hoping that mine will like me, or maybe know something that would help us find the cause of star sickness..."
"Your daemon IS you," Ryan pointed out obviously. "So of course it will like you, and I don't think it will know anything you don't."
"Still, maybe I know something that I don't know I know...you know?"
"I know," said Ryan, and they both had a good laugh. "Seriously, though, d'you think that people's daemons are really like them? I bet Mrs. Biddy's would be a lemming, she'd jump off a cliff if someone told her to."
"Or maybe one of those birds that fly into windshields, or something that stupid."
They had just begun to laugh when suddenly Matt began to stir. Instantly they dropped the stretcher into the snow and kneeled down by his side.
"Go on, wake up," Roger urged. Matt let out a sleepy groan and then sat up in the stretcher.
"Stand up, see how you're doing," he said, and Matt did so. "Man, you should never sleep again," Roger joked, "you were asleep for weeks!"
"I—will—never—sleep—again," Matt replied in a monotonous, indifferent voice.
"Oh, right," said Roger angrily, when Ryan asked what was wrong. "I should have told you earlier—star sickness kills a person's daemon, or at least puts it into a deep sleep. And without his daemon, Matt won't really have any free will."
Ryan's expression registered shock, then acceptance. "So everyone who came down with star sickness...will be like this? Like Kyle, and those other kids?"
"Yeah," said Roger sadly. "That's what we've got to do, see if we can fix this—problem—and hope that by stopping Dust leaking out of the worlds, we can stop everyone in the world from looking like this."
"Damn," uttered Ryan, "That might even be worse than just blacking out, imagine if someone was able to use the people who were sick—make them do whatever they were told, even commit crimes..."
"Hadn't thought of that," admitted Roger. "We better hurry, before something like this destroys our world." He told Matt to follow him, and they all walked in silence for a while—Matt's out of apathy, Ryan and Roger's out of thoughtfulness—until they had reached the top of the mountain.
Looking down, Ryan and Roger gasped at what they saw.
All around them, especially near the mountains, snow flurries were just beginning. But inside the walled-off area they saw stretched out in the huge valley below them, a seemingly endless blizzard was falling. A dark power seemed to emanate from the place, and Roger and Ryan felt a part of them rebel against entering this place. But the moment passed, and they gathered the courage to hike down the mountainside and into the unholy place where no non-witch had ever gone before, nor wanted to.
Roger and Ryan walked up to the walled-off area uneasily, unsure of what they would find. However, as they came over the last ridge and the area began to flatten out, they could see that there was a gate where they could enter it. They walked up to the gate.
Suddenly, Roger felt a sudden urge to turn around, leave the place immediately. Physical and spiritual pain, the shaman Jule had said. Those words flashed through Roger's mind, and he couldn't escape their horror—
Before he had realized it, Roger had turned around and begun to walk away. He caught himself and looked over at Ryan, who was struggling to regain control of himself as well.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, fine," replied Ryan. "But what—"
"Something doesn't want us to go in there," whispered Roger. "But Jule said we had to, so—"
Ryan had begun to walk away again, and Roger had to grab his friend to keep him from leaving him standing there, in front of that dark, endless snowy plain.
"Thanks," said Ryan. "Yeah, we need to find our daemons, no matter what! For all those people with star sickness, right? For Jason and Kyle!"
With that thought to sustain them, they were able to approach the gate. A huge gust of wind kicked up, trying to blow them away, but they stood strong, and grabbed on to the gate. They creaked it open slowly, then stepped into the unholy place.
- - - -
Suddenly, the gate slammed behind them. They were trapped! And Roger felt a horror, something was definitely wrong. He felt a yanking at his ribs, a sudden empty spot where something that should have been there wasn't, though he figured that all his body parts were still there.
And then the wave of mental anguish rushed over him. He felt as though his whole family had died, and he had caused it—
No, something even worse. A terrible emptiness, a terrible loneliness, like he was the only person on Earth, and somehow didn't even have himself for company...
And then a feeling of wrongness came over him. Something was out in the open, something that had been hidden for years, it was like all his secrets had been told to the whole world...
His soul! His daemon, the thing that kept him alive, the thing that Matt had lost to star sickness, it was gone!
And then he realized the horror of what he had just done, and he screamed out loud.
But the sudden, unexpected noise jarred him back to reality, and he was suddenly back standing in front of the gate, inside the forbidden place, and now he understood.
Physical and spiritual pain...
If he thought he had felt pain before, it was nothing compared to what he felt now. Something was in horrible pain, something he didn't even know he had, and he felt that dying would have been better than what lay ahead of him. He had done everything wrong in the world, and worse—he had broken the bond between himself and his daemon, something that could never be done. And now he would pay for it.
Jule knew, he realized in a burst of fury. He knew, the monster, the jackass, he sent us here, he knew we would go through this, thought it would be worth it, to save the world—but right now, it didn't feel like he would go through such terrible things even to prevent star sickness from claiming everyone...
No daemons could ever go here, Philip had said aboard the ship. In passing through the gate, he had been ripped from his daemon, but now she was visible, yet separate somehow. Once he passed through the other side of this horrible place, the test would be over, and he would regain his daemon.
He focused on that, and looked over at Ryan. He was lying in the snow, not even screaming or crying, just understanding, as Roger had.
Then he looked at Matt, and was surprised at what he found. Matt was screaming out loud—the first thing he had done for himself since he had passed out on Halloween, months ago. Roger was thinking, hard—the jolt when his daemon was separated from him must have awakened her, somehow. And now Matt's free will would come back, hopefully. He would be just like Roger or Ryan, their daemons gone, but still alive, and as long as their daemons were conscious their free will remained.
So he sat and waited for Ryan and Matt to regain themselves. Ryan got up, slowly, and nodded to Roger. "Let's go."
"Wait, I think Matt's snapping out of it," said Roger.
And Matt got up a few minutes later, shaking his head.
"Roger? Ryan? What happened, man?" he asked curiously.
"You...got star sickness," said Ryan hesitantly.
"What? Then how come I'm okay? What happened to me?"
"You were like a zombie, Matt," replied Roger slowly. "You had no free will, and that's what star sickness does to its victims, once they wake up."
"What?" asked Matt. "How come I don't remember any of this?"
"You seemed like you didn't care about anything...you just did what you were told. And unless we stop this star sickness somehow, everyone will be like this eventually."
"I had no idea—we better go," said Matt. "But...where are we going?"
"Out of this place, to find our daemons—that's like our souls, the physical representation of them, anyway. But they're all animals, in this world."
"This world?" gasped Matt. "Man, how long was I sleeping?"
"Right, you know that prank we were going to pull, on Mrs. Biddy?"
"Yeah, I remember that," said Matt.
"Well, we took her into the forest, and you had the map," said Roger. "But you blacked out, and we lost the map. So we found a window, in midair, and in opened into this world, and everyone here has a daemon."
"So we're supposed to find these demon-thingies here?"
"Yeah, that's what that old man told us, Jule." Roger responded. "We met him in the city we came into. And he's the town leader, a shaman, he can tell the future, and he said—here he took a deep breath—he said that I'm kind of like the chosen one. And I have to save the world from this star sickness. Wow, that sounds like a load of crap when you just say it like that, but you have to believe me, Ryan was there too, he'll tell you."
"No, I believe you," said Matt. "So, how long will it take us to get through here?"
"I dunno," said Roger. "But listen, we were all separated from our daemons as we came through that gate—he pointed at a spot in the snow, then slowly lowered his finger—can't see it now, but our daemons were ripped from our bodies. So this will be pretty hard on us, not just because it's cold, but because we lost our souls."
"Geez," said Matt. "Well, let's get walking."
And so the three friends continued their journey through the endless blizzard, stopping occasionally to rest or eat from their food packs. They had to eat snow to get enough water, and it was hard going the first day, but after they stopped and got a good night's rest, they seemed okay.
On they went. The second day Matt and Roger both got frostbite—Matt on his toe, Roger on his pinkie finger—but there was nothing they could do about it now, and they didn't really care about that anyway, just that they had lost their daemons. They stopped constantly, and would break down, moaning about how wrong what they had done was, and how if they could they would go back and never go through that window in Redwood, California, in Roger's world, they would, but they couldn't change that.
A few days later, they had almost adjusted to the endless snow, and even broke down less frequently. But one thing they couldn't get used to was the loneliness—without even their daemons, that tiny voice of reason in their head, they felt like they were the only people on a wasted Earth.
Finally, on the seventh day, Ryan just fell down out of exhaustion. He had to be carried along, as they had left the stretcher Matt was on back by the gate, and it was even harder work walking through the snow carrying their friend along. They checked him for star sickness, but he muttered every now and then and showed signs of life. Besides, in this place without daemons, was it even possible to get star sickness?
- - - -
On the thirteenth day, Roger and Matt woke up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. Roger felt like nothing but sleep, but Matt said, "Hang on a second, it's gotta be something," and walked west in the direction of the mountains they were surrounded by.
Ryan had almost fallen asleep again when he heard the avalanche.
It started as a low rumbling in the distance. Then suddenly, Roger, looking up at the mountains, could see a huge sheet of ice and snow fall down the mountain. It seemed to happen in slow motion; there was no predicting it.
"Matt!" Roger called, but Matt was either too far away to hear his call or not even conscious.
"Matt!" he called again, and ran in the direction of the now complete avalanche.
He was shocked to hear a shouting noise from the sky. When he looked up, he saw the witches.
There were maybe hundreds of them, flying all together in the sky over the place where Roger and his friends were merely trespassers. When Jule had talked about this place being known to witches, he didn't even notice, or maybe he figured that Jule was maybe just a little crazy and was picturing things.
He rubbed his eyes and looked up at the sky again, but there was no mistaking it, those were witches. He moved forward in the snow, in the direction of the now complete avalanche.
Hoping and praying that he hadn't lost his friend, he looked all around, even dug a little in the fresh snow, but he soon realized that his search was fruitless. His friend would either live, or he would die, but Roger couldn't find him.
Oh no, first my daemon, then Ryan, now Matt, Roger thought. He shook his head and told himself to be practical. To get out of this place he would have to use his brain. He walked back to their sleeping spot (which was only a few feet behind him), grabbed Matt's and his food bags, lifted Ryan up on his back, and continued on into the snow.
A few hours on (or maybe minutes, Roger couldn't tell) the blizzard lifted slightly, and Roger thought that, just for an instant, he had found the exit. The blizzard kicked up again, and as Roger walked in the direction that he had seen the sunlight poking through the clouds, there was no doubt about it, the exit was right ahead of him!
Roger jumped for joy and swung his fist around in the air, then grabbed Ryan and the food and ran for the exit.
But suddenly he felt the cold on his skin, inside him, everywhere, and then his head was spinning.
Exhaustion, he thought, not now, please not now...
He could see the light in front of him now; it bathed the land in front of him in brightness, so it seemed like a holy land in front of him. But at the same time, he felt his body weakening even more...
He saw the break in the wall, and was just beginning to move toward it, when suddenly the cold overtook him. He fell down on the ground in front of him, unconscious, and Ryan and the food bags fell to the snow.
- - - -
Roger was sitting in a large building, of ancient architecture. He looked around curiously, noticing the large dinner table set out in front of him.
"You're not taking this seriously," whispered his daemon. "Behave yourself."
His daemon, in the form of a moth, moved ahead to look out for anyone coming.
All clear, Pantalaimon thought to him, and the words rang out in his mind as clearly as if they had been spoken., Suddenly he was looking through the eyes of a young girl, and she was moving forward into a smaller room, lit by a fireplace, with glasses of wine set out on a table in the middle.
The Retiring Room, he knew, somehow.
Lyra went to hide, in a small cupboard facing a large projection screen, and waited.
"Has Lord Asriel arrived yet?" asked a booming voice.
"No, Master. No word from the aerodock, either." The Butler, a voice said in his head, as if narrating the situation to him.
Roger, through Lyra's eyes, watched the Butler leave with a bow, and the Master look around suspiciously before pouring the contents of a small container into Lord Asriel's wine.
Lyra whispered, "Did
FLASH
Roger was in a smaller room in the same building as before, and again the voice in his mind told him where he was, in the Master's study.
"Good girl. Come in quickly. We haven't got long," said the Master, and Lyra entered the room.
"Aren't I going after all?" Lyra asked.
"Yes. I can't prevent it," said the Master. "Lyra, I'm going to give you something, and you must promise to keep it private. Will you swear to that?
"Yes," Lyra said.
Roger watched the Master move to his desk and take out a small...something, wrapped in some kind of cloth. The Master unfolded the cloth, and Roger was very surprised when he saw it was made of gold and crystal. It looked like a huge compass.
"What is it?" Lyra asked.
"It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. It would be better if Mrs. Coutler didn't know about it. Your uncle—"
"But what does it do?"
"It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to
FLASH
Roger was aboard a ship. An old man sat next to Lyra, the alethiometer was laid out across Lyra's lap.
"What's Mrs. Coulter doing now?" asked the old man. Farder Coram, he knew. "Tell me what you're doing."
"Well, the Madonna is Mrs. Coulter, and I think my mother when I put the hand there, and the ant is busy—that's easy, that's the top meaning; and the hourglass has got time in it's meanings, and partway down there's now, and I just fix my mind on it.
Roger realized what was happening—Lyra was learning to use the alethiometer.
Farder Coram said, "And
FLASH
Under a silver guillotine! They were going to cut Pan away! And Roger felt and sympathized with Lyra as she fought, kicked and bit, to prevent, or at least delay, that horrible moment. They caught her, forced her into a cage, Pantalaimon into another...they were about to be separated, they relived every moment they spent together...
FLASH
On top of some cliffs, watching the Aurora. Roger heard her crying for her friend, who was also named Roger.
A man was fiddling with some instruments, complicated ones—but Roger recognized the silver guillotine, and again felt Lyra's pain as she watched her best friend fall to his death...
The Aurora above them, flashing. Roger could almost see a city there...and suddenly there was an explosion, and the city was right there...
FLASH
Atop a tower, fighting for a knife. A boy named Will grabbed another man's hair, to keep him from seizing the knife...Will pulled as hard as he could, and Roger knew, beyond a doubt, that Tullio could not get that knife. Will grabbed a rope, wrapped it around his left hand, and continued fighting Tullio, hoping for an opening. He found it, managed to get between Tullio and the sun, so that his antagonist was blinded. Will kicked him in the knee, and they fought hard, but not prettily. Will kicked the knife away from Tullio's outstretched hand, and the knife sank through the floor like it was butter.
FLASH
He was shaking, everything was shaking! He felt himself awakening, and he knew he couldn't lose those dreams. He had been so close to figuring out what he had to do, he couldn't wake up now!
He finally gave up and opened his eyes to find Matt standing over him.
