It's Not Worth It

Chapter 8 – Resolution

- - - -

"Her hands were resting on his glossy fur. Somewhere in the garden a nightingale was singing, and a little breeze touched her hair and stirred the leaves overhead. All the different bells of the city chimed, once each, this one high, that one low, some close by, others farther off, one cracked and peevish, another grave and sonorous, but agreeing in all their different voices on what time it was, even if some of them got to it a little more slowly than others. In the other Oxford where she and Will had kissed good-bye, the bells would be chiming, too, and a nightingale would be singing, and a little breeze would be stirring the leaves in the Botanic Garden.

'And then what?' said her daemon sleepily. 'Build what?'

'The Republic of Heaven,' said Lyra."

- - - -

Lyra and Pantalaimon hardly slept at all during that night, and many nights to come. Complex plans formed in her mind as to how she could make Will stop using the Subtle Knife, then broke off as she realized ways that all of them could fail. Finally, after about a week and a half of this, she made the decision to go with the simplest plan in her head, and one she had deemed too simple to use. But it had the best chance of working.

So it was that Lyra dragged herself out of her room on the 11th day of this to meet Will at the breakfast table.

"So, speaking to me again?" he asked harshly, Kirjava purring slightly out of frustration.

"Yes, look Will, this argument was really stupid," responded Lyra ashamedly. "We should just forget it, after all our love is probably worth more than some stupid knife."

Will looked at her suspiciously. "Really? Just yesterday you had yourself all barricaded up in your room, and I get the feeling you would've told anybody you could talk to about what an asshole I was." He took a sip of his morning coffee, and glanced down at the Sunday paper lying open in front of him. "God, another story about the Driftbreeze," he mumbled, then threw the paper away angrily.

But it was time for Lyra to demonstrate the skill that had earned her the name Silvertongue, and although she had never thought of lying to Will, it was really as easy as it had been many years ago, in an ice fortress on Svalbard. "Yes, Will, really I'm sorry. I never meant for things to get that out of control...I guess I didn't love you enough, forgot that we sacrificed everything for each other." She took a deep breath and continued. "Will, listen-I'm really sorry. From the bottom of my heart. Can you forgive me?"

Will looked at her pouting face, the amber eyes just as beautiful as they had been when she burst out of the door in Cittagazze, and he smiled. "Lyra, I might get angry at you, but I can never stop loving you. You know that. Now, d'you want to-" and he pointed at the stairs leading to their bedroom upstairs.

"But of course," said Lyra mischievously. "We just made up, didn't we?" Pantalaimon, meanwhile, was rubbing himself against Kirjava suggestively, distracting Will, playing with his feelings. Will simply grinned and took Lyra's hand, leading her upstairs. He didn't even glance back until he reached the bedroom, and that was when he noticed that Lyra was gone. Confused, he looked around, and out of habit felt for the subtle knife at its sheath on his belt.

His hand hit the sky-metal sheath. The knife was gone.

- - - -

Roger and Amanda slowly made their way back to the spot on the beach where their friends were waiting, savoring every moment they had left alone with each other. Still wanting to test their newfound love for each other, they reluctantly stepped down from the mountains, only to be met immediately by a very angry Matt and Callisto. Roger's daemon Mantra stood to the side, accompanied by a sky-blue bird for which nobody had a name.

The bird spoke directly to Amanda. "I am your daemon," he said, "and until that lightning storm, I wasn't even aware I existed. The magic of Land's End tore me from your heart." Roger looked at Amanda, and knew she was feeling the exact same thing he had felt in that valley in the North of this same world. "I had no need for a name before, but you must name me now. Just remember that whatever you name me will be my name forever, so choose well."

Amanda looked at Roger as if wanting a suggestion, but Roger just shrugged and put his arm around her. Her daemon looked straight into her eyes.

"Fine," said Amanda jokingly, "leave me all alone here, then. I guess I'll call you—Terra. It means 'land', which I guess is kind of weird because you're a bird, but I don't know anything else..."

"Terra," said her daemon, trying the name out. "I like it."

"It's great," said Roger. "Perfect."

Reassured, Amanda glanced at her daemon, and he flowed into her arms.

"Sorry to interrupt the reunion, guys," said Matt sarcastically, "but we were kind of waiting for you for three hours, without any word from you except what that daemon of yours said, and we need to know what's going on."

Roger sighed, looked at Amanda, and rolled his eyes. She giggled.

And so Roger explained everything that had happened on the rocky cliffs of Land's End, from his first encounter with Amanda, to that fateful storm, to their falling in love. When they were done, Matt stood in silence for a few seconds, then said, "Well, I guess it's time to get back to Ryan and that Aura or whatever. We found a new window while we were looking around, did you know that? We left Ryan by it so we won't forget where it is."

And so they walked in silence along the beach, staring up at the cliffs that towered high above them, Roger and Amanda not taking their eyes off of each other the whole time. It began to rain, small drops at first, then big ones, which caused them to take bigger steps, until they fell into a kind of jog towards the spot where they had left Ryan. When they had almost reached the spot where Ryan was, Roger and Amanda gave him the slip, their daemons scampering behind them as wolves. "We'll find it later," said Roger, as Amanda began to kiss him again. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

"No," Amanda mumbled, half-giggling as their lips touched once again. "They'll find us, anyway. Let's save that for when we get to it."

Roger didn't know how long he and Amanda sat there, the rain pounding on top of them, barely sheltered by a thin canopy of trees, but not caring as their lips met again and again. All he would remember was their wolf daemons suddenly walking up to their humans, and looking shyly at each human's lover. Roger's turned into a dog, not a servile puppy, but a sleek, powerful golden retriever. Amanda's Terra remained a wolf, although he became gray with white streaks around the ears.

And before they knew it, as though they had meant to do it all their lives, Roger raised his hand and stroked Terra, and he could see Amanda reach across him to run her hand over Mantra's golden fur. It felt right, and Roger immediately took Amanda in his arms and kiss her harder, as the streaks of rain fell all around them, and a furious Ryan and Matt scoured the trees for them, and they didn't care about any of it.

- - - -

Lyra Silvertongue was in a hurry.

She made her way to the bench in the Botanic Garden where she and Will had departed the first time, and where she had first realized that they could still see each other, and where Will made the decision to come and get her in her world, nine years ago. Going on ten, actually. What day was it again? Lyra glanced at her watch.

And for the first time, realized the magnitude of what she was doing. The hands ticked around the watch innocently, but she read the symbolism as if it had hit her in the face.

It was five minutes before noon on Midsummer's Day.

- - - -

Mary Malone looked out her window once again with the Amber Spyglass and was shocked at what she saw. It was as if history was repeating itself-the Dust once again fell in great volleys straight down from the sky, and she could picture the mulefa's joy as they realized what had happened, and she thanked the fate that had brought the newest young lovers together.

Suddenly, she saw a figure slip out of the house, holding a knife. 'Lyra?' she wondered. But she didn't have enough time to think about it, and she saw another, larger figure slip out after her. Quickly, she pocketed the spyglass and ran after Will, towards the Botanic Garden.

- - - -

Lyra took a deep breath and went into a trance. She had last used it that day in her room when she had first realized how much the Dust leakage had hurt the world, but on a different instrument.

She had once told Will that the trances used to read the alethiometer and to use the subtle knife were very similar. Well, now she was going to use that knowledge to her advantage.

She reached her mind out to the knife tip, very gently so as not to disrupt the process. She was surprised at how easy it was, and even more surprised when she found herself accidentally cut a window.

Cursing the knife, she tried again, and this time had barely brought her mind to the knife tip when the memory of what she and Will had done to the world with the knife came to her, and the knife jarred and shattered into a million pieces on the ground. She had just begun to sweep up the pieces when Will appeared. He was followed closely by Mary Malone, who looked nervous and hopeful all at the same time.

"I've already done it," said Lyra, "so don't bother stopping me. It's over."

"I know it is," said Will sadly. "And I did a lot of thinking on the way here. If you couldn't break it, I would've. Because your love for me is a million times more important than some stupid knife, and I should've realized that ten years ago."

And before she could do anything about it, he kissed her deeply, and, leading Mary Malone behind him, stepped through the window she had accidentally opened, and closed it behind him.

- - - -

Roger sat drinking a Coke and talking to Matt and Ryan, ignoring the loud music blasting all around them. He wanted to talk about their journey, and this was the first time his parents had let him out of the house since he had returned.

He heard someone shout his name, and looked straight ahead of him to find Amanda beckoning him to come dance with her. Sighing obviously, he rolled his eyes at her friends jokingly and ran up to her. Mantra, Aura, Callisto, and Terra sat in a back room talking amongst themselves. Even though people in Roger's world couldn't see them, he thought it would be a bit awkward if someone who was dancing suddenly bumped into an invisible golden retriever or wolf.

Jason and Kyle stood leaning against the refreshment stand and raised their Cokes in a mock toast to Roger as he approached his girlfriend. Grinning, they began to dance.

Roger never wanted it to end.

- - The End - -

- - - -

Ok, first of all, it was lots of fun writing this story. And I haven't totally abandoned trying to become a writer when I grow up. But most likely I won't, and most likely this is going to be one of my last times posting on this site. Anyway, ever since school started it's been pretty hard updating this story, and soon it'll be almost impossible, so I'm going to take a leave of absence from writing for a while. I don't think a sequel really fits this story, except maybe telling what Roger and Amanda's lives are like together, but there wouldn't be much action in there.

No, I think I'm going to stop the idea of It's Not Worth It here, because it seems like a fitting place to end the story. I'd like to thank every one of my reviewers as well; without my reviewers I never would've learned as much as I did while writing this story. Being my first, it taught me a lot about writing, mostly to include more description and slow down every now and then.

Anyway, this is my final revision of the Author's Notes and Credits portion of the story, and I have received a lot more readers since my last post, so I've decided to leave a brief summary of all that happened throughout the story, in case someone doesn't understand it all.

The story begins two years after Lyra and Will parted in Cittagazze, and they are both making their way to the Botanic Gardens for their yearly visit. While there, they accidentally discover the way that the angels spoke about of traveling through the worlds ("like imagination, but much truer"). This shocks Will enough that he vows to do whatever it takes to see Lyra again, and so he repairs the knife and cuts through to Lyra's world, making his way to Jordan College, although how he got there I'm not quite sure. XD

Anyway, it's a few years later, and a kid named Kyle is setting off for his first day of ninth grade and high school in Redwood, California. We find out that he's a member of a group of prankster friends, and that one of his best friends is named Roger. Then, while he's making his way to Algebra I, he passes out (a completely understandable action, except that he wouldn't wake up even when presented with free pizza). We then switch to Roger's point of view as he and his best friends, Ryan and Matt (who are actually based on my former best friends while I wrote this story), find out about Kyle's fainting spell. The US government freaks out, although they don't bomb anyone, so Bush must now be out of office (ZING!), and labels the mysterious illness "star sickness", because the victim's consciousness seems to just float up into the stars. Roger decides to lighten the atmosphere by playing a prank (why not?) on his English teacher, based on my 8th grade English teacher, who really WAS that dumb (she handed out the books our test was over, passed out the test, then went to the teachers' lounge for 30 minutes). The three friends lead her into the forest conveniently located behind their school (incidentally the place where a fellow student disappeared some years ago), then abandon her, but as Roger asks Matt, who was carrying the map, how to get back, they find that Matt's passed out.

While looking for the way out of the forest, they encounter an opened window, which was used by Will and Lyra during their honeymoon in the port town that is the counterpart to Redwood in Lyra's world. They come out in an unfamiliar town ruled by a shaman (there is no America in Lyra's world), and there find out that they are considered freaks because of their lack of daemons. They don't know what to do next, but they hear from Jule, the shaman, that there is a place up north where they could get daemons. (Forgive me for being incredibly proud of remembering the way that witches are able to separate from their daemons.) Meanwhile, the star sickness, or "Driftbreeze" as it's called in Lyra's world, is spreading rapidly, and still no one knows the cause. That is, until one day when Mary Malone observes someone become "infected" with the Driftbreeze through the amber spyglass. She notices that the Dust is sucked out of the person (because the open windows are causing Dust to flow into the abyss) and that the daemon becomes unconscious long before the human. For that's what the Driftbreeze does-knocks out the daemon, which is "the only thing separate humans from animals" according to Pullman. And the only thing separating humans from animals is free will-sentience. When the victims of the Drifts/star sickness wake up, it is found that this is true-they seem to have lost their sentience.

Meanwhile, Roger, Ryan, and Matt board a ship headed for the North and make their way to the mysterious witches' place, Ryan and Roger carrying the still-unconscious Matt on a stretcher. As they pass through the gateway to the place, all of their daemons are torn from their hearts, similar to what happened to Will and Lyra upon entering the world of the dead. The shock jolts Matt's daemon back into consciousness, thus snapping him out of the "star sickness". Together, the friends make their way through the witches' place, but Ryan falls unconscious and Matt is lost in an avalanche, leaving Roger to carry Ryan out the exit. But when he's almost there, he falls unconscious due to fatigue and cold. While asleep, he has visions of Lyra and Will, the cause of the star sickness. He wakes to find himself staring into Matt's face; Serafina Pekkala's clan, in a prime example of artistic license, also happened to be traveling through the desolate place, and rescued Matt when they saw him about to be buried by the avalanche.

The three friends, now all conscious but missing their souls, begin to search for their daemons. They find them while wandering the North and name them: Roger's is Mantra (a repeated statement designed to breed hope), Ryan's is Aura (the imaginary field around everyone that has something to do with their personality), and Matt's is Callisto (he describes pretty well my thought process behind that, actually: I was really into Perfect Dark at the time). Their daemons tell them what they have to do: make Will stop cutting windows, close the existing ones, and go back to his own world. Will and Lyra have an argument with Mary as she tries to tell them the same thing, and the two lovers refuse to stop seeing each other.

Roger, Ryan, and Matt realize that they have to make their way to Oxford, England, if they want to stand any chance of stopping star sickness before it overcomes the worlds. They board a ship headed out from the North. Roger sees a girl that looks vaguely familiar to him, and he eventually recognizes her as Amanda Colbert (a name taken word-for-word from a book called Breathing Underwater), the girl who went missing from Roger's school years earlier. Roger, in a blatant display of teenage hormones, had gotten drunk the night before on the captain's whiskey and engaged in some R-rated activities with Amanda which he didn't remember. In another excellent use of artistic license, the captain gets Driftbreeze, causing the ship to crash, and the three friends are thrown into the ocean, Matt barely managing to rescue Amanda from certain death.

The foursome make their way to the southwestern coastline of Britain, landing at a place called Land's End (which actually exists). The next morning, Roger awakes to find Amanda missing. He and his friends begin a frantic search that ends with Roger finding Amanda atop some cliffs. She tells him of legends that Land's End holds a great magical power. In by far the greatest display of artistic license yet, when Roger reaches out to take Amanda's hand, a magical lightning storm begins, causing both Roger and Amanda to relive each others' lives (an easy way to get them to fall in love, which is precisely what I needed to do at this point). When they finally make their way back, they are met by an irate Matt, who tells them that they need to get back and that Matt and Ryan had found a convenient window back to their own world. Amanda meets her daemon, Terra (Earth), which was torn from her heart by the magic of Land's End.

While Matt is leading Roger and Amanda back to the window, they give him the slip and engage in a heavy make-out session, touching each other's daemons in the process and causing history to repeat itself. The Dust once again is rerouted and now falls straight downwards, making the Driftbreeze right again. Meanwhile, Lyra is fed up with Will's stupidity and steals the knife, planning to break it. Will realizes what a dumbass he has been and goes after Lyra, taking the knife from her, returning to his own world, and closing the window behind him. The angels (coughartisticlicensecough) close the rest of the windows aside from the one leading out of the world of the dead, thus making things right again. KaiserMonkey breaths a deep sigh of relief that that's over with, posts this, then goes out job hunting.

I leave you with some tips here on how I managed to pour out 24000 words about another book-

Remember in that epilogue/author's notes part at the end of the Amber Spyglass, where Pullman says he's stolen tons of ideas from other writers? Well, now I know exactly what he means. The first idea for star sickness came from some crappy old book named Starbright and the Dream Eater, which I read about a year ago now. In that book there was "Spindle Sickness" where people would fall asleep and never wake up, just become lost in their own dreams forever. So I just stole the "sickness" part and applied it to HDM, and that was pretty much it...

Also, I first got the idea for the Land's End chapter from the old Super Nintendo game Earthbound. Originally Roger and Amanda were going to the world of Roger's mind, and he would have to defeat some bad inner part of himself to get out. Then he and Amanda would fall in love, etc., and go kick Will's ass in a battle for the subtle knife. But that goes to show how ideas change, right? This seemed like a better idea, but the original Land's End idea was stolen from a place called Magicant in Earthbound, which is pretty much the world of Ness (the main character)'s mind, and he has to defeat a monster called Ness's Nightmare to get out.

That's another tip-don't be afraid to abandon your outline completely in the middle of writing your story. In the original idea for this story, Roger & friends were going to go to the witches' place, get their daemons, get on a ship, make it to Oxford somehow (without crashing), and forcefully take the Subtle Knife from Will. See the difference? Amanda wasn't even in the story, and Land's End wasn't mentioned at all. But that would suck, so I had to change my ideas. Just because you already thought about a part of the story doesn't mean it's done...

Finally, never be too serious. If writing is ever not enjoyable, try not to force it. I snuck little bits of humor into my story (although they're not really that funny) everywhere, and you should try to be the same. James Jago, the author of The Silver Bird, does a great job of this. He's in my favorites, so please read his stories, they're great!

That's it, so for the last time, this is KaiserMonkey, and please review!