Marisa Coulter never wanted to be a mother. That was the lie she told herself.
As a child, she had dolls, like most girls did. And like with many girls (certainly more than most acknowledged), most of those dolls came to a sad end: scalped, or arms lost, or little painted faces smashed in. For some children, this happens by accident, through the child loving the doll to pieces. And sometimes, as with Marisa, this was a calculated enjoyment of her own power to destroy. It did not help that she quickly learned to turn on the tears, show her pathetically ruined doll, then adding in a dash of accusation to cast blame on another child, and then she would shortly receive a new doll along with vengeance. It would be a mistake to assume she did not love her dolls, but they ended broken all the same.
And now she was not a child, but she had a child, one she was meant to love and adore with all her heart. The child ruined her carefully crafted marriage. If it could only have been her husband's, all would still have been well. (She did not truly want it to be her husband's; her husband was malleable and weak. He could not even avenge his own manhood properly). If it could only have looked like it could be her husband's. But the girl, like most babies, resembled its father in every aspect, nature's misguided attempt to keep the father from killing it; how that backfired.
Marisa Coulter, if asked, would say either that she adored her child, or that she had never wanted her, depending on who asked and why. Both were lies. Marisa Coulter wanted to be a mother from the start, but never for the child, always for herself.
She loved her child with a greedy need. She loved her as she loved her own self. And she hated her as she hated her own self. The golden monkey at her side looked on the tiny baby and showed not an ounce of tenderness towards it. He was jealous, Marisa supposed. (Not supposed, knew.) She could feel his agitation like an itch under the skin, always and ever, worse when he saw anything she loved. He did not think she had enough love for both him and anyone, or anything, else. Perhaps he was right. He did not touch the baby, though, did not even make a swipe at her little daemon.
Marisa did not cry when the baby was taken away. Her daemon did not exult either, as one might expect, but gave a steely, off-putting glare. He did not want the baby, but the baby was theirs. She did cry when she told her husband how the baby had died, the perfect appearance of a sorrowful young mother facing enormous tragedy. Her monkey still glared, but that was accepted as an expression of grief.
Until it wasn't.
And her life was in ruins, and it was the child's fault, and she did not know how she felt. Perhaps she did not hold enough love in her heart for anything beyond herself, but the girl was a part of her.
When she finally came for her daughter (when Lord Asriel was far away, on one of his explorations, too far away to have a care what happened with his daughter, when she had gained enough power within the church to be viewed as sympathetic rather than sinful) she surprised herself by wanting her.
She dressed her up like a little doll, and showed her London, and showed London her, and for a time she could pretend that she truly was a mother and that she felt the joy and pride and love that a mother feels.
Lyra was not her mother, though, and she did not act like a doll; she allowed the dresses only with reluctance and she did not obediently go silent and still when Marisa tired of playing with her but kept being a person all the time, and Marisa sometimes just looked at her and remembered the tiny baby, and wondered if having her baby taken so soon, so young, had broken some bond between them because sometimes Marisa looked at this ridiculous child and could not see herself in her at all and could not see her father either and she tried to find the place in her heart where her love lived and just found herself. Would it have been different if she had had Lyra from babyhood? Or would she only have broken her doll all the sooner?
Marisa Coulter gave Lyra many trinkets, but never any dolls. Not even when the child once noticed a lovely little porcelain figure and admired it. Most anything else the child noticed or took a fancy to was hers on the spot, but not the doll.
"I suppose you want that, now," said Marisa, with clear disdain. The child, who adored her new guardian and took all her opinions to be her own, tilted her head, then said, "No, of course not. I am not a baby. I only thought it pretty…to look at."
Marisa saw herself clearest in the child when Lyra lied. That was when she also felt the strongest sense of pride. It was also when her daemon hated the child the most and bared his teeth and glared until the girl's daemon would either change into something that allowed him to huddle in the child's hands…or into something fierce and protective.
They listened to the child speak so fondly with Pan (the daemon had a pet name, that's how fond she was) and Marisa wanted to break them, to make them more like her and her own daemon, greedy and resentful and sly. The girl lied, to save herself and to entertain, for attention, but not for the best reason to lie: ambition.
Surely the girl had ambitions, but they were so…common. Her closest friend, the one she begged to be allowed to bring with her to London, was a kitchen boy. Of course, Marisa had had to create an excuse more palatable than 'I don't want you to be friends with a kitchen boy'. 'He would miss his home' was acknowledged but disagreed with. 'He will be jealous and resentful' was also acknowledged but even more swiftly called false. Marisa finally had to create a crisis that called the boy away, and then told the girl he had been asked and 'if he wants to come, he has only to join us by the time the zeppelin lifts off'. There was not time for Lyra to find him and ask him herself, and she was young and trusting enough still to accept, at take-off, that her friend had not wanted her. She did not hide her tears. She never sought out comfort, but neither did she ever hide her tears.
Marisa rather thought she should feel bad when she made her own child cry. At best, though, she could console herself with the fact that she did not enjoy it. It is not like she hurt the girl anyway. She never beat her, never locked her in the dark, never denied her food or toiletries or…or any of the myriad of possibilities that had crossed her mind when the need came to discipline the child.
Perhaps sometimes she grabbed too rough. Perhaps sometimes she did not hold her daemon back when it went for Pan. Perhaps she failed at laying out boundaries, instead keeping her expectations shifting, laughing when she should scold, or scolding when she wants to laugh. Or some mixture of the two; her moods changing and unpredictable, laughter turning into a snarl, rage disintegrating into laughter.
Then came the day Lyra received a letter from Roger. The day she met Lee Scoresby. The day she almost died.
In fact, Roger sent two letters. The first was through the regular post, in another's hand because, as the boy explained in his ill-thought out and meandering correspondence, he did not feel up to the task of writing, but got a friend to help. That ridiculous attempt was given with due diligence to the fire, Lyra none the wiser. The second letter proved both children had been slyer than she knew, brought by the gyptians, and this letter found its intended recipient without maternal censor.
That was the first time the girl looked at the woman with something that was neither admiration, nor respect, nor anxiety, nor love. The look Lyra gave her was like looking in a mirror; it was the first time Marisa truly saw herself in her child.
"I was protecting you, Lyra. Yes, even from your friend. It is what a mother does for her daughter."
"You are not my mother!"
Marisa Coulter did not explain, never said whether she spoke figuratively (I see you like a daughter), or literally (you are my daughter). She did not need to; Lyra looked at her mother's face and saw herself.
It was, perhaps, not the best way for an orphan to discover she did have a mother.
Lyra ran, blindly, no forethought, no calculation, her only thought to get away from that woman. She ran into the street, heard shouts, squeals, saw the ambaric car too late, too close, felt the hard impact, heard Marisa Coulter scream her name in horror. All the wind was knocked out of her, and it took her long moments to understand what had happened…and what had not, that she was not knocked over by the car but by a body, a body that had rolled as it hit, taking the blunt of the blow from the asphalt. The person beneath her felt large, solid, warm. She was held so tightly she could feel the person's heart beating, furiously fast.
"You alright?" asked a voice, female, and for a moment Lyra remembered Mrs. Coulter…no, her mother screaming her name. But that was not her mother's voice, and she turned her head and saw a rabbit, or what she supposed to be a rabbit, but a large, rough looking one, so close they were practically touching as it peered at her, fore paws resting on the arm that was still holding tightly to the girl. Lyra rather stared, both still shocked from the near accident and somewhat surprised for a daemon to talk to her with such concern, because it was her the daemon was looking at.
"Don't worry 'bout me," said the person holding her, a man's voice, "M'fine."
"I wasn't asking about you, Lee," said the rabbit. "I know you'll live."
"Are you alright, Lyra?" Pan asked, flitting nervously as a bird, and finally landing, to both man and girl's surprise, on the rabbit's head. "I should have…"
"I'm fine," Lyra said, finally finding her voice, not about to let Pan take the blame for anything, and she moved to sit up, only to be stopped by how tightly the man still held her. "Er…mister?"
"Scoresby…Lee Scoresby," said the man, not catching on to what she was really asking until she pulled again. Then, "Oh…" and he let her go. Then Marisa Coulter was there, pulling Lyra up off the man.
The end result was that Lyra did not run away that day.
Marisa Coulter at first had every appearance of a terrified mother; she smiled at the man who saved Lyra and gave him her address and told him to stop by for 'compensation'.
"Happy to oblige for such lovely ladies," answered Lee, which Lyra wrinkled her nose to.
"You want money for saving me?" she asked, clear scorn in her voice, because she knew stories well enough to know the gallant hero was supposed to refuse. She may also have been embarrassed to have been saved, which made her less than courteous to her savior, even if Pan did seem cozy with the man's daemon and was now giving her a disapproving look.
"Aren't you worth money?" Mr. Scoresby asked right back, amused rather than insulted, and that had confused Lyra enough to ask no more questions. "Anyway," continued Mr. Scoresby, "Any chance to see such lovely ladies again would be worth it."
Marisa Coulter smiled as though charmed, then took Lyra home. Behind closed doors, the concern melted away into pure, raw fury.
"You will never run from me again," she ordered, twisting the girl's arm until she cried out, but then Lyra looked back with defiance, her own fury ignited.
"I will always run, because you are not my mother!" she screamed, twisting herself free and falling to the floor. And then she screamed again because the golden monkey, features twisted into a grotesque mask of hatred, had Pan. Pan shrieked in panic, too frightened (to hurt) to think, let alone to change into something that would allow for escape.
And for a long moment, Marisa stared at her crying child, and at her own daemon torturing Lyra and Pan both, and she could not find the horror that should be there. She knew it existed, she had certainly felt something when she saw Lyra almost knocked down in the street, something fierce with teeth that struck at her heart. But she felt nothing but satisfaction now, seeing her own child put securely in her place.
Her daemon could have ripped Pan limb from limb in that moment and she would have just watched as the daemon and child were destroyed, and she would have felt nothing. After, perhaps, perhaps it would have destroyed her too, but in the moment…nothing.
The monkey stopped on his own though; perhaps it was love, in a way, enough to stay his hand. Perhaps it was simply self preservation, understanding better than Marisa herself how she should have responded. And after he let Pan go, after they had stood together for a full five minutes simply looking down at the sobbing child as she cuddled her daemon to her, Marisa Coulter came to a realization.
"I am not good for you…am I."
This was not an epiphany, but a simple recognition, like looking in a mirror and acknowledging a gray hair or a wart. Unexpectedly, the child turned her teary eyes up to meet hers, and instead of vitriol or hatred, they seemed to be asking for something, begging.
"Please," said the child. "You are my mother."
Marisa Coulter did not know what the child was asking for. All she knew was that it was not in her power to give it.
"I will break you…one day," she said, just as dispassionately as her first statement, a spoken moment of fact rather than a threat or a fear. The girl continued to plead with her eyes. Marisa Coulter considered what to do. The simplest would be to send her back to Jordan College. Back to her rough and tumble existence. Back to her kitchen boy. No, there were better places. "Perhaps I should send you to your father."
"My what?" asked a small voice in return.
When Lee Scoresby did call on them, having taken the time to clean himself up, he did not receive the reward he expected (nor the one he feared; it was awkward to explain to beautiful women that what he wanted from them, and what they thought he wanted from them, did not exactly line up). What he got at first was a lovely meal and fine conversation.
"What do you do, Mr. Scoresby? An aeronaut? How thrilling!"
Then, less innocently, "You ever take passengers?" and "Is it safe?"
Then, finally, "Mr. Scoresby, I know I do not know you well, but I feel I can trust you. You saved my daughter, and she means everything to me, I absolutely adore her. I have a job for you, and very important one, if you are willing. I will pay you quite handsomely too."
"A fine lady," Lee said, later, to Hester, still on a high from his evening spent with the captivating woman and her interesting daughter. The woman was beautiful, and Lee always had a soft spot for beauty, and the girl's eyes were bright with interest and admiration when he talked about his journeys up north, and that is always agreeable to have directed towards oneself. He had always liked children and always rather wished he could have some, but he had never had the opportunity.
"If you say so, Lee," answered Hester, heavy doubt in her tone. She was never blinded nearly so completely as Lee when it came to beautiful women. "Her daemon is something else." It was not said as a compliment.
"Well, you got cozy with the girl's daemon, anyway," Lee pointed out. To that Hester said nothing, but Lee wasn't expecting her to. There were some things all daemons had in common, to do with how they interacted with each other, like they were born with secrets from their human counterparts. Lee never knew what caused Hester to take to some daemons or to be repulsed by others, but she was generally a good judge of character.
"How much time to we have, before she wants us to set out?" Hester asked instead, an important question considering their own business in London.
"That's what happens when you're busy playing with other daemons; you miss important information," Lee answered.
"Makes a change from all the times you're busy making a fool of yourself and I'm the one to keep my ears open," Hester answered easily, then waited patiently for Lee to stop pretending to be indignant and answer her question.
"A month. Plenty of time to make our inquiries. A shame we had to come all the way to London for it; you would think news of an arctic bear would come from…well…the arctic. Anyway, Mrs. Coulter wanted to make her own inquiries into something, and she thought it might take a month."
"Into us, probably. She'll want to be sure of our character. I suppose it was a good gig while it lasted."
"You think she'll back out?" asked Lee.
"I think if she hears half of what you've gotten up to over the years, she'd be a fool not to. It's her daughter. Best start to think what we'll do if she does back out, because I don't know we have the funds to get us back north again on our own."
"It'll be fine," Lee answered. "Worst comes to worst, we set up with a carnival or the like and give rides to rich tourists."
"That didn't go so well last time," Hester pointed out.
"Well…this time we know better what not to do."
Marisa Coulter was not making inquiries into the Texan aeronaut, or not in the way Lee and Hester thought she would. She was using her money, favors, and connections to ask one very complicated, but very important question from a source that always tells the truth. It was, more or less, exactly the same question Lord Asriel would later ask of a witch. And she received almost exactly the same answer.
"She is mine," Marisa said to her daemon, after hearing the answer from a slightly confused theologian (like Lord Asriel, she did not think it prudent to explain the question was about her own daughter). "Why should I give her up. I could make myself safe. For her."
Her daemon said nothing. Did not even give her an accusing stare. He did not even seem to listen. She sighed.
"Why did you never want me?" asked Lyra, as her things were packed away. She did not sound accusing either. She just sounded tired.
"You are going to someone who wants you," answered her mother. "You are going home."
The girl did not say, 'I am home'. She was a liar, but she did not lie to be cruel, and those words never crossed her lips.
"Goodbye, Mrs. Coulter," she said when it was time to leave. Then, because perhaps Mrs. Coulter had taught her some things, "Thank you for having me. I had a lovely time."
And perhaps, for the first and last time in her life, Marisa Coulter acted as a mother and put her child before herself.
Note: This was meant to be a short passage explaining how Lyra and Lee met, and why her mother sent Lyra with Lee in the first place, before I continued on in the 'present', but Marisa Coulter rather took over. Oh well. Stories go where they need to go, I guess.