Genesis

by KaiserMonkey

Prologue

- - - -

The boatman was silent as the waves sloshed against the hull of his rowboat. A great part of Will felt that the boatman was actually feeling sorry for him, although Will knew that this wasn't possible. The boatman of the World of the Dead didn't feel emotions. Will's Death sat beside him, a very kind and polite guide that Will would rather had not even come into existence.

The oars dipped into the water repeatedly, dip, push, flip, dip, push. A coldness unlike anything that he had ever felt before enveloped Will, and he cried out in anguish for his dead daemon. For Kirjava had disappeared the instant Will had died—in fact, Will had refused to believe he was dying until Kirjava had begun to fade. She was part of the worlds now, he thought, part of Dust and matter and every universe and happy, happier than he was because he was stuck alone in the world of the dead, and Lyra certainly hadn't died yet...

Lyra.

It had been a long time since he had entertained the idea of ever seeing her again. He still returned to the bench in the Botanic Garden every day religiously, although in his old age he had almost forgotten why he continued to do so. The only picture of Lyra that he had, her pale blue eyes burning into him as they shared one last tear-mingling kiss in front of their café in Cittagazze, had lost almost all meaning and faded almost completely into the recesses of his mind. His wife, Alicia, had been the main woman in his life for almost as long as he could remember, ever since he closed the final window and broke the knife. Even Mary Malone and his mother had left him behind, and he had been almost certain that Alicia would soon follow suit.

"It's not very often I have to ferry one across twice, you know," came a voice. Will looked up and was shocked to see that it had come from the weathered boatman, and despite Will's old age—one hundred and five, about average in the world he had come from—the boatman still looked aged beyond years.

Then it came to Will. Was it possible that the boatman would know if Lyra was waiting for him? He felt an immense pang of conscience as he remembered his freshly grieving widow, but the pain of the world of the living was rapidly fading from his concern, leaving him only focused on one thing, one thing before he joined Kirjava in the atoms and particles of the worlds themselves.

"Did you ferry anyone else across recently that you recognized?" asked Will in a raspy voice.

The boatman chuckled, thinking of the love between Adam and Eve, which was still obvious even in their frail condition. "Yes, your love is waiting for you on the other side," said the boatman, and Will felt his heart fill with joy, emptying just as fast when he realized how happy Kirjava would have been if she was here to see this moment.

"Pining for your daemon, I suppose?" asked the boatman, and Will nodded somberly. "Cheer up, young man. She will be waiting for you when you rejoin her—something that only you and your lady friend made possible."

"Yeah, I suppose," said Will. What would await him when he exited through the window that he himself had opened in the world of the mulefa, so many long years ago? Would he be able to find his daemon's disjoined particles, and Lyra's, and intertwine with them and become one like he had been told so long ago?

Will's thoughts were interrupted by the sudden bump of the rowboat against the dock on the island, which looked just as he remembered. He thanked the boatman one last time and stepped off of the boat after his Death, who beckoned him onward.

Unlike the first time that he and Lyra had traversed the island, this time Will had a guide who knew exactly where he was going. His Death looked back continuously as if to reassure himself that Will was still there—an unnecessary action, for Will now wanted nothing more than to join Lyra one last time before he let go.

All around Will were slime-covered blocks of stone, and a dripping noise could be heard echoing throughout the landscape. His Death continued unwaveringly, shrugging off the rain and dreariness of the place as if he was made for it—which, Will reminded himself, he was.

"Don't be so sad," said Will's Death in an extremely misguided attempt at appeasing Will's longing for Kirjava. "You get to go on—you can't possibly tell me that you were happy in the world of the living?"

An image of Will's wife, laughing as he kissed her in the rain, and Kirjava rubbing against his legs to awake him in the morning, and sitting on the bench in the Botanic Garden flashed through Will's mind, but he said nothing. His Death would never understand.

"Here we are, Will," said his Death as they arrived at a wooden door with a hole where the lock should be, and Will nodded with a forced attempt at politeness before pushing through the door, almost shielding his head instinctively before remembering that the harpies had promised not to harm anyone who came through there. Nevertheless, it was warily that he continued on his way through the dreary plain, now empty save for a small number of ghosts that was leaving, guided by a harpy, in order to rejoin the world of the living.

Will's gaze moved throughout the land of the dead. Ahead of him, the plain extended onwards seemingly forever, and the dripping of water echoed even more loudly throughout the lifeless expanse. To his right the ghosts had disappeared into the mist. And on his left—

He almost missed her at first. She looked largely the same, her vivaciousness even more evident that it had been in life in the midst of her monotonous surroundings. Her once-blonde hair had faded to gray, but her blue eyes still held the spark that Will had fallen in love with so long ago.

"Lyra!" shouted Will, although it only came out as a gasping whisper. Nevertheless, he could have sworn that Lyra turned to look at him as he ran towards her, and soon she was in his arms, and even though their ghostly bodies passed through each other he felt the feeling that he had been without for the last eighty years of his life—the very rightness that was being in Lyra's arms, kissing her and simply being with her and her hands on Kirjava and her kiss—

"Will?" she said, her eyes suddenly sparking as she recognized him. "Oh! Will! You're here! You're really here!" Her tears flowed freely for the first time in decades as she laid eyes on her lost love.

Will lost track of the amount of time that he and Lyra simply stood there, entranced by each other, staring into each other's eyes and vowing never to leave each other again, and that they'd be together in the end, forever. But they were finally snapped out of their trance by the arrival of a harpy, the rechristened Gracious Wings herself. She looked exactly the same as she had when Will and Lyra had come for the first time to the land of the dead, and she alighted on a stone as she spoke to Will and Lyra.

"And now, Eve, your Adam has returned," said the harpy, and Lyra nodded, her eyes glistening with a feeling beyond anything she had experienced in years.

"I believe there is something you owe me?" Gracious Wings asked kindly, and Will nodded before beginning. He told Gracious Wings everything that had happened to him, from as early in his life as he could remember. He told her of his mother and her "games" that became frighteningly real, and his adventure with Lyra, and what happened when they discovered their love for each other, and the end of Lord Asriel's war on heaven, and how he and Mary Malone had returned to Mary's flat and collected Will's mother and started a new life. He told her how he had gone to Oxford University and studied particle physics, and how he had met Alicia for the first time, and how he finally decided to become a professor at Oxford and pass on his knowledge and Dust along to a new generation. He told of how he returned to the Botanic Garden every Midsummer's Day at exactly noon to be with Lyra, and how he had returned to his house one day to find his mother dead, and how Mary Malone had followed her soon after, both dying peacefully in their sleep. And he told her of how he himself had been sitting on the bench on Midsummer's Day when he fell asleep and awoke to find himself in the land of the dead.

And when he was done with his story he felt as though hours must have passed, although time meant nothing in the land of the dead. "Come," said Gracious Wings finally, and, just as she had promised, she guided Will and Lyra upwards and to the point in the land of the dead where Will's window still stood, opening outward to blissful light and life and the particles of their daemons and everyone who had ever died.

Will took Lyra in his arms. "I love you," he said, every bit of him seeming to be on fire, "and when we float up into the sky I'll find the particles that used to be Kirjava and the particles that used to be you and join with them. And they will have to take two atoms when they want to make new matter, not just one." Lyra cracked a wide smile at his repetition of what she had said so long ago.

"I love you, too," answered Lyra, "and I'll never have to leave you after this, Will, never. I'll be with you in nature itself for eternity."

And with this, the elderly yet young couple took each other's hands and stepped out into the world of the mulefa. And when they drifted away they were met by Pantalaimon and Kirjava, and they hung onto each other as tightly as they could, their particles forming bonds stronger than any seen before, and they promised never to let go.

And on that very day at that very moment, two people were born simultaneously, a boy and a girl, one in Will's world and one in Lyra's.