Lee Scoresby dreamed of flying. It was, by far, the most pleasant dream he would have for some time. He vaguely remembered tumultuous dreams before that, prairie fire and smoke and people he loved falling away into thick black shadows while the flames raged. Then, in the midst of the inferno, a small hare appeared. One might think the man would mistake it for Hester; they looked very similar, but Lee knew Hester as he knew himself and instantly saw the hare as simply that, an unknown hare.
"Follow me," said the hare, just as though she were his daemon, and she ran through the thickest of the flames. As is the way in dreams, Lee simply knew he must follow, and he did. The fire burned in ways that a dream fire should not, but there was no going back. And beyond the fire was cool air, and he flew, until the fire was a distant memory. He never saw the hare. He vaguely hoped it had made it through, then heard it laughing ahead of him and thought it must have, that it must have flown away before he got through the flame himself. He felt glad.
He dreamed of flying and then he woke up and reality was not a pleasant waking. If he could have leapt back into his dream he would have, but he felt he had slept himself out and there was too much energy in him now to slip back into dreams.
His fever may have burnt away, but it left behind pain. The constant shivering his fever had induced left his muscles burning with a deep soreness…and this on top of the soreness that comes from being made to walk with one's arms bound and then being very thoroughly beaten from head to foot over the entire course of his captivity.
The river had helped reduce the swelling, and the bloodmoss had encouraged healing as well as having some properties to dull pain. Ironically, the worst of his open wounds hurt less than the places where his skin hadn't split but only bruised. This was not to say they did not hurt, throbbing with a deep, dull sort of pain that was horrible but bearable. The bruises and the sore muscles were bearable too, particularly if he did not move. It was how they all piled on top of each other that turned bearable into unbearable.
Quite naturally, awakening into such an unpleasant place as his body had become, Lee would gladly have fallen back into sleep. Failing that, he would have liked to moan and groan and not move a single aching muscle.
"You're awake!" said a young voice which quite took away his ability to voice his pain. He would rather have bitten his own tongue off than voice it to her. He knew this instinctively, even before he his memories sorted themselves into anything that would allow him to know who she was or why it mattered that she not listen to him groaning. In part it was from not wanting to upset her, but part was simply pride. So he did not let out the groan that wanted to escape, instead turning his blinking eyes towards the speaker.
"Lyra?" he said, surprising himself with how weak and rough his voice sounded. His eyes felt gritty and teary at the same time, and they did not want to focus, but he got them to in the end, because his last clear memory of Lyra was danger, and he needed to see her.
"We're all fine, Lee," said Hester, huddled at his side. His arm was wrapped around her without him even noticing, hand gently caressing an ear. Considering how Hester never really cared for her ears being petted, it said a lot that she was allowing it.
His eyes focused at last and he was relieved to see the girl looked much like she sounded; visible skin unmarred, daemon full of energy as he clambered over the girl as a squirrel. Lyra's hair was a tangled mess, and her skirt had been torn and resewn at some point (the tear the work of the vandal to the camp, the sewing courtesy of Iorek who was surprisingly gifted in that regard, when she needed to change from her wet clothes and the tear was discovered.) Despite her clothes and hair, she looked hale and healthy and full of energy as she hovered over him.
Satisfied, he looked around past her, his memories still a bit of a jumble but knowing there was at least one more member of their party unaccounted for. And there he was; wearing his helmet but the rest of his armor disassembled, no obvious wounds. Beside Iorek was a less expected figure.
"Serafina Pekkala?" Lee said next, utterly confused and wondering if he still dreamed.
"You do not remember my arrival?" the witch said, then, "I am not surprised. You were very ill. I bring you warm broth; it will make you strong.
"What kind of broth?" asked Lee, who was not feeling particularly hungry and would much rather have been given a glass of cold water to soothe his throat, rather than a bowl of something thick and hot to fill his stomach.
"A nourishing one," the witch answered, and Lee stared at her suspiciously.
"Just drink the damn broth, Lee," said Hester, her own voice strained, and then, as Lee felt the first curls of guilt in his stomach, because of course Hester had to share his aches and pains, she said, "And don't be stupid." The last was not explained, but they had had that sort of conversation often enough for him to follow. She accepted his pain as a gift and wished she could take more from him and he was not to complain or wish things otherwise. Lee left off feeling that guilt as he managed to turn his head enough to see her and discover a whole new guilt.
"You're hurt," said Lee, taking in the bandages wrapped skillfully so as to cover the nape of her neck without strangling her.
"Most healed already," Hester answered. Lee wanted to hold her properly, suddenly desperate for closeness. He could hardly explain it himself, except he felt her need as his own, and she felt raw and exposed and longed to curly up so deep into his skin that she could only feel him. She needed him, and he was just lying there, being sick and weak and hurt.
"Hester," he said, his voice raw for a whole new reason, and in this he did not care who saw him being weak, because when it came to Hester he had no pride. Hester huddled as close as she could, still not willing to crawl up over him, not just to fulfil her own needs, not if it would hurt him. He wanted her to hurt him, if that was what it took, but doing it would hurt her too.
"She is not badly injured," Iorek's deep voice said, knowing how Lee cared.
"Just…just drink the damn broth, Lee," said Hester, and if Lee hadn't been able to feel her, trembling and raw, he might have been fooled into thinking she really was fine. She was not fine, and he was not fine, and things were not fine. But they would be.
Lee drank the broth.
Iorek had to help him sit up, because his muscles felt stiff and wrung out, and between the pain of moving and the weakness he could not easily lift himself up.
"Let me," said Iorek, when Lee tried anyway, biting the inside of his cheeks to hold back his groans. "You will tear open your wounds again, after all the trouble I went to binding them up."
"He had to patch you up with his own armor," Lyra said, sounding awed and proud and eager to share. "He stuck a tiny bit of it inside you like a bandage to stop you bleeding inside."
She had rather unfortunate timing with her revelation, as Lee was just trying to take his first sip of the broth, Serafina Pekkala carefully helping him to hold the bowl, and he breathed in at exactly the wrong moment and broke down into a coughing fit. A very painful coughing fit. Coughing uses muscles he would rather not have used. He was lucky in that Iorek thought better of helping him with a pat to his back.
"What was that?" Lee asked, once he had the breath to and the pain had receded enough to allow for noises that weren't pained groans or curse words, neither of which he felt comfortable voicing in the moment. Iorek stayed at his back, solid and warm, and did not answer. He could not see the bear there, so Lee turned his questioning eyes towards Serafina Pekkala, who simply returned his look with a piercing gaze of her own, and then towards the child and Pan.
Instead of explaining further, Lyra, still sounding impressed and respectful, said "You bled a lot. It's still splashed out on the ground over there. I never seen so much blood pour out of a person…a person who is still living, I mean. That man whose head was broken up bled a lot too."
Lee closed his eyes at that, wincing for reasons entirely unrelated to pain, and said, "Lyra…sweetheart…" before trailing off, not quite knowing what there was to say. Sorry? Try to forget you saw that? He was doing a wonderful job as her protector.
"Mr. Lee," said Lyra, and Lee's lips twitched upward in a pleased smile in spite of everything, "Mr. Lee…I wanted to say…I wanted to say thank you. And…and I'm sorry."
"What do you have to be sorry for?" Lee asked, also wanting to know what she was thankful for, but the second statement was so confounding that it was the one he asked after.
"I didn't lie good enough," she answered. "They kept hurting you."
"Nonsense." That was Serafina Pekkala, answering before Lee could. "I could read those men's hearts, even dead, and there was not a thing you could have done to make them stop."
"You can read a dead man's heart?" asked Lyra, distracted, now turning her awe towards the witch. Lee couldn't quite decide whether to be relieved or jealous.
"Nothing easier," answered Serafina Pekkala. "Men like act all tough while all the while their hearts melt into the stones like soft goo. Those men were not going to be stopped by anything short of a bullet or an armored bear's vengeance. There are times when words can be a shield and times when they need to be a weapon. This time was a weapon time, and you did admirably. Drink your broth, Lee Scoresby."
Lee was more successful in drinking down the broth the second try, as Lyra kept at the witch with her questions and did not feel the need to make any new revelations. He could not quite place the taste of what was in the broth, but the broth was warm and tasted wholesome and brought to his mind his mother's chicken soup.
After the broth was more medicinal tea, the bitterness supposedly balanced by honey but really just teaching Lee's tongue to hate honey, and then cool clear water to wash that flavor away. Lee allowed it because it was near impossible to do anything else with Lyra looking down at him, her large, worried eyes lighting up when he allowed the others to do whatever they thought necessary to encourage his health.
"We should bottle that look," Hester murmured, not to Lee, to everyone really; "Bring it out whenever we need Lee to behave."
"A useful ointment," Iorek agreed, and he sounded solemn but Lee knew him well enough to hear the laughter in his voice.
"What do you mean?" asked Lyra, who had no idea her own potency.
"Tell me again about Iorek putting his armor inside me," Lee said quickly, before it could be explained to her. Besides, he really wanted to know what that was about.
"Oh, Mr. Lee, it was just when Serafina Pekkala came, only we didn't know she'd came, she just appeared with magic…"
Lyra's retelling involved probably more dramatics than what they had actually lived; to hear her tell it he went white as a wraith from the bleed inside him and Iorek stabbed him to the hilt with a dagger like he was some kind of sacrifice on an altar (the blade had gone exactly as deep as it had needed to, which was most certainly not to the hilt), and Lee was almost certainly right on the point of dying before Iorek saved him.
"And he put a piece of his very own armor inside you, like…like sharing his soul with you," Lyra said.
"It was the only metal at hand with the right properties," Iorek said, the first time he felt the need to offer any corrections to her rather embellished tale.
Lee, by that point, had actually gotten a bit caught up in the story, and had almost forgotten that Lyra was retelling real events that had happened to him. It did not feel exactly real, but if he moved his hand beneath his blanket he could feel the bandage, feel the throb beneath the bandage of the wound, confirming that at least some of what she described had really happened.
"What were you doing in all of this, Hester?" he asked, in lieu of what he really wanted to ask, which was whether he really still had a piece of Iorek's sky-iron armor inside him.
"Sleeping," answered Hester. "Same as you. The witches said they would keep you from moving."
"Huh," said Lee, rather glad upon reflection because he imagined being cut into and having (to hear Lyra tell it, and here she wasn't far off) white hot metal stuck inside him likely hurt quite a bit (hurt still, except the bloodmoss dulled it), and he would hate for Hester to have felt that while he got to sleep through it.
"Anyway," said Lyra, "Iorek made it into a sort of bandage where you were bleeding and then he tilted you over and a lot of blood poured out, like…like a faucet of blood. But the armor stayed in, and Iorek said that was a good thing because it meant it held and you weren't going to bleed to death. You were awfully pale though…except around your eye…"
And the child trailed off, no longer enthused in her telling but looking rather pale herself. Lee did not feel much better; having come to remember that it was him the story was about, it was not particularly pleasant to imagine himself bleeding out. He really did not like to imagine Lyra watching that happen.
"Well, it's a good thing Iorek is such a fine nursemaid, then, en't it?" Lee said with forced cheerfulness, doing his best to seem hearty and hale, never mind that he still needed Iorek to hold him up, never mind the hand still clinging to Hester, shaking in sympathy with Hester's trembling. "I guess I'll have no choice but to be right as rain."
"You better be…be right as rain," answered Lyra, suddenly sounding fierce, as if she could order him healthy.
"And so he will be," said Serafina Pekkala, and from her it sounded like a prophesy as much as an order.
Then Iorek helped Lee to lie back down (on his side, because even dulled by the bloodmoss lying on his back would have been an agony), and Lee took the chance to more fully curl around Hester. He found himself blinking then, starting to feel the pull of sleep even though he could not have been awake more than an hour and he had already slept for so long.
"Go back to sleep, Lee," Hester murmured, her own voice sleepy, on the verge of doing the very thing she had commanded.
"Been sleeping," Lee answered, feeling sore and tired and not wanting either. Then he must have fallen asleep in spite of himself because it was dark when he next opened his eyes.
Iorek helped Lee take care of some pressing bodily needs, then insisted he drink more of Serafina Pekkala's broth and yet more tea.
"I'll float away on all this liquid," Lee said, quietly, because Lyra was sleeping. She lay as still as death, wrapped up warm quite close by. She had gotten in the habit of curling up against Iorek at night, citing his warmth as her reason, and the bear always allowed it.
"Any nightmares yet?" Lee asked, voice as quiet as he could make it, trusting to Iorek's superior hearing to understand him.
"You became uneasy within minutes of falling asleep," Iorek answered, and Lee knew the bear well enough to know when he was being teased, in spite of the solemn and serious way Iorek had said it.
Lee made a face and said, "I meant the child and you knew it." And then, "I don't remember nightmares."
"The witch Serafina Pekkala put her hand over your forehead and said, 'sleep', and you relaxed." Then, "She did the same for Lyra Silvertongue before she retired. The child has not stirred."
"And what about yourself?" asked Lee. "Any nightmares when you sleep?"
"I have none," answered Iorek.
"Because Serafina Pekkala did her little trick over you, or because you haven't slept."
"Bears do not need as much sleep as humans. I am fine."
"You have to let your guard down some time," Lee pointed out. "Better if it's not due to exhaustion forcing you down."
"When I let my guard down, as you say, bad things always happen. I must make sure they do not happen again."
Then Lee did groan, not from pain, but from having to deal with an obstinate bear. "You can sleep without bad things happening," Lee tried, already knowing that was not going to convince Iorek.
"I let my guard down for my anger, and a bear died under my paws and I was banished. I let my guard down among humans, let myself become drunk, and my armor was stollen and I was indebted and made to labor for men who had no care for me. The last time I let my guard down, I allowed strangers to break into our camp and steal you. I must not let my guard down again."
"You did not 'let your guard down', you went off too far away to be on guard. I'm the one who let my guard down. I drank too much to notice when Hester started pawing at me that she heard something. My Winchester was still wrapped up and put away when…wait…" Here Lee trailed off, as a horrible thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Your gun is fine," Iorek said, knowing well Lee's worry, "And so are your instruments. One of the men went through the camp, breaking and slashing at random, but he missed those items."
"There, you see?" said Lee, feeling a rush of relief. "You take care of me and Hester, and you take care of Lyra and Pan…you gave a piece of your armor for me…now you need to take care of yourself."
"It was the only metal…" Iorek began to say.
"Yeah, yeah, the only metal that would do. You would have given it to anyone in need."
"I did not say that," answered Iorek, then, "Go back to sleep, Lee Scoresby."
"Don't think I won't find a way to get you to sleep," Lee murmured back, "And don't think…" but what he did not want Iorek to think would never be known, because exhaustion lost him the argument and he drifted back into sleep.
It was not an easy sleep, but he was still tired enough that uneasy was the worst of it.
Iorek stood guard all through the night.