Lyra nervously adjusted the beads on her necklace.
"Pan, where on earth are those hair combs? They en't anywhere around here!"
Her cultivated accent weakened in her frustration and colloquial Oxford leaked back in. Lyra stood in front of a mirror in her private apartment in Dame Hannah's college. As a senior student with a well-paid tuition, Lyra was afforded several comfortable—but small—rooms at the university. While the decorations were not quite of the slickly feminine design that Lyra recalled from her memories of her mother, there was an air of the sophistication that Lyra had picked up as a polished student. She still burned with desire whenever she saw a muddy claybed.
Pan bounded over with a small bag of costly silk. With a look of gratitude, Lyra shook out jeweled combs that had been coming-of-age gifts from the Master of Jordan College. She did not really want to wear the formal things to the banquet tonight, but the Master would be there and she knew he didn't have very many banquets left in him.
The banquet was being held for the new full-time students, and Lyra was one of them. Her particular friend from the boarding school was a girl named Lizetta, who shared Lyra's rooms. The irony that Lyra was now living with a real "Lizzie" was lost on neither her nor Pantalaimon. Lizetta was from another part of Eastern Anglia and was gone on a holiday to see her family.
Lyra wished and wished that she might've gone too. Dutifully, Lyra had obeyed Dame Hannah and her other schoolmasters ever since the fateful twists of the war had brought delivered her into their care. Minor or major lapses aside, Lyra had not wavered from her studies even as she became frustrated beyond measure at the skill that she could no longer master over the alethiometer.
"You'd do better to only wear one jeweled comb, or they might think you're too high-bred for a student," advised Pantalaimon.
Finally, Lyra viewed herself in the mirror. She saw a young woman, barely beyond her teenage years, looking to fill out the skin of her new body and polish up the edges. Her hair was longer, and twisted with elegance and carelessness. It was the favorite cosmetic-themed trick that Lyra had learned.
Her dress was midnight blue, the color of the initiate, and Lyra's soft puckered lips and dazzling eyes made her enticing and supple, and powerful. She decided on pushing one silver comb into her hair and gave a puff of pleasure and anxiety.
"Ready now, Pan?"
She had brushed him shiny and sleek all afternoon long.
Lyra felt his assent. She threw open the door and locked it behind her, tipping the keys into her small blue handbag.
The banquet hall was full of quietly mingling guests, who sipped from liquor flutes offered by servants and whose swishing robes nimbly avoided their stolid dog dæmons.
Dame Hannah hailed Lyra almost immediately. She was seated off the dais in a comfortable armchair, facing a little mahogany coffee table and the wizened friend of Lyra's from her youth, the Master of Jordan College. His crow dæmon turned its black eyes on her.
He rose to greet her but Lyra stepped up quickly, noticing that he was now using a walking cane.
"Hello, Master," she said, kissing him with a daughterly gentleness on both cheeks. She helped him gain his seat again and took her own when Dame Hannah's servant retrieved another chair. These were the only guests seated in the naphtha light of the hall, for both Dame Hannah and the Master were white-headed and quivering with age.
"Lyra Silvertongue," said the Master simply. He didn't mention how she was all grown up, or how pretty and commanding she had become, or how her jaw still jutted slightly but in a different way than before. She offered him a gracious smile, nervously fingering Pantalaimon's fur.
A servant poured each of them a glass of Tokay, and Lyra received hers stiffly. Dame Hannah gave her a covert nod, the signal that it was perfectly acceptable for Lyra to accept the drink and sip, but Lyra looked to the Master. He smiled slightly, revealing a row of yellowing teeth.
"The Tokay is indeed a gift of the college," the Master said easily "No poison this time." His voice traveled over the words haltingly, slowly, raspy and ponderous with his great age. To show his good faith, the Master drank from his own goblet. Lyra followed.
Then a great many questions were asked and answered and the replies were all satisfactory. Yes, Lyra was doing wondrously in her alethiometer studies and certainly, the symbol books were reprinted only last year. No, no, it was unnecessary to offer payment; Lyra's scholarship more than paid for her expense. Of course, she didn't have a great use for embroidered ribbons and Nipponese earrings, thank heavens! No, thank you, no more Tokay. Was it dinner?
Lyra was pleased with herself when the first course came; she really was. Pan glanced warningly at her but she paid him no heed. The Master was surely impressed with how conversational and congenial she had become, and Lyra's academic accomplishments actually were nothing short of wondrous. She spent at least an hour everyday pouring over the meanings written in the old books, marking meanings she might forget and penciling memory device next to the pictures. Her diligence was limitless.
But Lyra was not quite ready to admit that she was only practicing a newer, updated, and more grown-up version of lying. She was becoming imaginative and studious, yes. Lyra the lady was a far cry from Lyra the youngster, but she hadn't figured on quite how to put the two together yet. That was where she was still growing up, and in such a way that she didn't even realize.
"Dr. Broken Arrow!" whispered Dame Hannah delightedly. "He managed to attend dinner after all! Master, you surely must know that Ruth, another of our girls, has studied under Dr. Broken Arrow for her thesis on Muscovy policies. Lyra, you must make introductions at dessert. Ruth wrote us to say that he was a charming mentor—"
For all of her cleverness, Dame Hannah was still apt to behave slightly like a schoolgirl when she prattled about her students. It had taken Lyra some time to realize that this was how Dame Hannah manipulated her college's power: indulging men's ideas of what female Scholars were, and using them to her advantage with simple bragging and gentle suggestions. It was another aspect of Dame Hannah that Lyra was forced to admire—the occasional sacrifice of her dignity for the advancement of her students—even if Lyra still had no mind herself to try out any of these games. It was unspeakable to say the least, but also true that Dame Hannah's mind wandered now and again due to her advanced years and some of the rambling certainly wasn't pre-conceived. Banquets of this sort with college business at hand were trying matters.
As the servants brought the cranberry goose onto the table, Lyra's anxiety reached a high point. She exchanged the barest hint of a glance with Pantalaimon and then rose, folding her napkin primly.
"Excuse me a moment," Lyra said politely (reciting words she had learned by rote). "I have something small to attend to. Forgive my departure."
Dame Hannah nodded vaguely, but the Master's eyes were quicker. Lyra's cloth napkin has been twisted and wrinkled by her clenching fingers. A nudge from his crow dæmon made him point his face towards the great bay window looking over the blackened blue sky.
Lyra hurried past the Porter (a thickish man with a brain far slower than Mr. Shuter's) and emerged onto the streets of Oxford wearing her academic finery. She chose her favorite bench in front of the college and paced restlessly in front. Pan flowed onto the seat with one graceful slither.
"We can't leave every banquet just to get fresh air," said Pan severely. Lyra spared him a disparaging glance.
"Don't you think I know that, Pan? I can't sit there, though, and in such an isolated seat of honor! Pah!"
"Many students would murder for the seat between the Master of Jordan and Dame Hannah," replied Pantalaimon stubbornly.
"Don't pretend you don't feel it, Pan. I'd love to talk to either of them, but you know those politicking Scholars. There's no way to get a solid honest word out of them at these functions until the chocolatl or coffee…"
"Not like you've ever stayed to try," mumbled Pan. He settled more firmly onto the bench though, and showed no inclination to go back inside.
Lyra turned her head upwards towards those shining stars and smiled. Formless grey fog drifted idly over the city and people rushing past looked only momentarily at the young woman with her face upturned towards the heavens.
"I think I'd like to take a journey, Pan…" said Lyra quietly. "I'd like to see the north again, or something…"
"I know," admitted Pan. "We don't belong in these buildings all the time, Lyra, as much as everyone tries so hard to make a space for us. But Xaphania…we can't just leave and wander our world…"
"It'd be empty, anyway!" said Lyra viciously. Not a day past without a memory of Will, not a single day.
"No, no. There are always friends, Lyra. Haven't we at least got them?"
"You're right," said Lyra, and she plunked down hard on the wooden slats of the bench. Pan slid into her lap and she wrapped her arms around her beloved dæmon. "We'll go back inside after only a minute, though. Won't we?"
"Yes," agreed Pantalaimon, gazing at the white moon too and undoubtedly thinking of John Faa and Kaisa and Kirjava just as Lyra's thoughts ran on similar lines. "Yes. Only a minute."
The Master watched through the bay window as Lyra—so full of promise and strength that had not been beaten from her by education and grooming—sat with her dæmon and dreamed. She was not lost. She would be someone. He cut slowly into his cranberry goose and smiled, his dæmon pecking at his small dish of cranberries with renewed vigor.
Without more reviews, it will be slightly harder to continue. That's all I'm saying. And I finally read Lyra's Oxford (highly recommended, of course).
Thanks for reading and reviewing!
