Welcome to chapter two...

Chapter Two

As Lyra entered the hall, she gasped. The couples waltzing around the space were dressed like royalty, all dancing the same dance, their steps perfected and synchronised. However, that wasn't what had impressed Lyra the most. Nearly every surface in the hall seemed to glitter. The marble floor that held the dancing couples was polished so thoroughly, that it looked as though she were walking on a huge looking glass, her heels clicking on the burnished floor. The majestic marble columns were inlayed with golden rivulets, intricate carvings adorning the top and bottom, obviously the work of a master stonemason. They were nearly as tall as the wheel pod trees where the mulefa lived, and they stretched up to the ceiling, framing one of the most fantastic frescoes Lyra had ever seen. It depicted everything, from the kingdom of heaven, to an odd appropriation of some angels, to the armoured bears of the north and even the Witches. Brilliant electric lamps illuminated everything so brightly that Lyra felt as though she had stepped into an alternate, magical world. Party goers milled around the stairs, which led up to balconies above the dance floor, and magnificent French windows stretched up the right hand side of the hall, the party spilling out onto a terrace. Lyra felt dwarfed by the grandeur, and amazed that this beauty could be found inside a seemingly innocuous building in Oxford.

Lyra stood towards the front of the line of girls from St. Sophia's, so enthralled with the beauty and sheer splendour of the place she hardly noticed that the rest of the younger students, and the chaperones, had arrived. Dame Hannah walked down the middle of the lines.

'We're not catching flies Lyra, Thank you,' she uttered as she passed. Lyra's mouth snapped firmly shut and she pulled a face of dislike at Dame Hannah's retreating back. Mary put a gloved hand over her mouth in order to hide her smile.

"Welcome, girls, to Cardinals." Dame Hannah said, 'I trust you shall be on your best behaviour, and will meet some other well cultured people.'

'What she means,' Mary whispered to Lyra, 'is that she wants us to meet some well cultured young men, and make well cultured couples.'

Lyra had to laugh as the girls fanned out amongst the other guests in the hall, intermingling with the highest of high society, or as Lyra liked to think, the most pretentious part of society…

In his attic bedroom, Will was trying to focus on his homework. He had to do well in this test to have a chance at studying Physics at university.

Try as he might, he couldn't concentrate, his mind wandering off to an elegant dance hall, filled with majestic couples twirling and swirling. He leaned back in his chair and stretched, cat-like. He felt as though he could sleep for a year. All this focusing was clearly playing tricks on his mind. Maybe he'd take a break from his Lyra centred thoughts for a while.

Rubbing his tired eyes, he abandoned his homework; he got up and began to pace his room with restless legs, letting his mind wander to the problem he could never solve. He needed to get through, needed to find a way between two seemingly parallel worlds. How? Maybe he wasn't close enough, but Lyra had said that there was a Botanical garden in Her Oxford as well, hadn't she?

'What if she was lying?' a nasty voice said in the back of his mind, 'What if she just said that to make it easier for you to leave her?'

Will sighed. Life was good, and yet he had to go and make things more complicated again. He knew that Mary had some knowledge of his plan. He could see the unasked questions in her expression when they were alone together. Kirjava lounged on his bed, lazily watching Will's progress from the door to the window, and back again. After five more minutes of his pacing, she decided to speak, 'You know Will,' she said, 'Lyra wouldn't want you to dwell on the past, you should move on…' but her voice failed her under Wills' steely gaze.

'Kirjava, it's hard!" he said, exasperated. "And when Xaphania talked about one of our friends already being able to do it or something like that, I…It just gave me hope. That's all, and God knows we need some.' He said as he sat down on the edge of his bed.

'I know what you mean Will,' she said soothingly, as if talking to a small child who was likely to throw a temper tantrum 'I hate this… this compromise.' Her voice filled with compassion, and she became determined 'I'll tell you what. We'll try again in the morning, but there's no use fretting about it now.' She turned away from him, worry filling her small body. She worried that once Will found a way to Lyra's Oxford, he would never want to come home to her. Would she be doomed to live a shorter life without him? She shuddered, her fur prickling.

'This time we'll get through though.' Replied Will, his jaw set, and his mind made up as he crawled into bed. 'I'll need lots of rest…' he mumbled as his eyes slipped shut.

It was ten o'clock and the ball was in full swing, couples laughing, couples dancing, in fact, there were couples everywhere. Lyra, of course, stood to one side watching the other girls from St. Sophia's interact with the people around them. She sometimes wished that she could be free like them, and not have such a past, such a secret hanging over her. But then, when her mind wandered down this train of thought, she would always realise that to be carefree she wouldn't be able to remember Will. He was the constant in her otherwise revolving world. Sometimes he was right at the front of her memory, but those thoughts of him had become less frequent, she realised with a heavy heart. Yet he always seemed to be lurking in the back of her mind in a subconscious way. She often worried she was forgetting him in his simplest form, worried she was holding on to a memory of a memory instead.

She sighed and walked over to one of the huge French windows, looking out into the gardens that surrounded the hall. Neat, trimmed hedges ran around the inside of the walls, framing the lawns and fountains. It seemed that, wherever she went, she was hemmed in; by rules, by walls, but most importantly by the society in which she found herself.

If she were to let slip to half of the people in here what she had done, how she had changed their lives and their world, even just telling her classmates would mean she'd be shunned. Whispers and rumours would follow her everywhere, and she would never be able to 'settle down'. Lyra felt no panic at the idea of being a pariah; in fact, it could work in her favour. The only fear she felt was that of loneliness; for if she could feel alone in a crowded room, how much worse would the isolation be when she had no-one to turn to at all?

She wandered slowly around the hall, weaving in and out of the other guests. It was a tactic she had picked up after attending too many similar gatherings. If she kept a purposeful gaze and walked gracefully enough, she wouldn't be forced to take part in any dull small talk, or worse, have to dance.

Suddenly, the far doors opened and in walked a set of handsomely dressed young men, with cravats and top hats tucked under their arms. They walked in two rows, much like the girls of St. Sophia's had, but there were far less of them. At the head of the columns walked an elderly man, quite a bit shorter than the students he lead, but his profile oozed importance. He came to a halt, the men behind him stopping as if they had rehearsed it until it was perfectly timed. The whole congregation of the hall stopped to look at the newcomers, even the string quartet stopped as people paused in their dance steps to stare. Lyra of course took one look at the pompous idiots and sighed in rather an unladylike fashion. What had the world come to, when men had to dress up to look important?

"Ladies and gentlemen," the small man boomed, surprising most people, who barely managed to keep their faces only mildly interested. "I beg you all to forgive us, but we had a bit of bother with the coaches. The horses seemed to want to have an early night!" He finished, inclining his head, his hands clasped behind his back. People began to laugh politely at his comment as the musicians struck up a lively tune and the dancing once again resumed.

The young men than bowed to their mentor and began to scatter themselves throughout the room. Whispers following one such young man in particular.

"Oh I hear he has just returned from travelling the world with his family…"

"Yes, young Mr. Scott, I hear his family have come into a great deal of money lately…"

"Studying classical civilisations, I do believe? Very in season at the moment."

Lyra heard snippets of people's conversation as she slowed to a stop. 'Yet another one of the idiots with more money than they know what to do with, or parents with too much money to spare,' thought Lyra.

Realising that she had stopped, Lyra started moving again, in case one of the incredibly boring men decided to try and talk to her, and she had to pretend to be interested.

Pan curled himself around her shoulders, feeling her regret and unease, tickling her skin with his fur.

"Don't worry Lyra; things are bound to get better"

Lyra, lost in her own thoughts looked her dæmon as if he were mad. "How can they? Unless we run away. We're stuck 'ere being polite to pompous idiots, pretending to be interested in their sad little lives, and their boring jobs at boring offices. I didn't hear anything about being forced to balls when we were to first join St Sophia's, and for a few wonderful years we wondered where the older girls went, thinking that maybe they went somewhere interesting!" she snorted, attracting the attention of an elderly couple nearby, who gave her disgruntled looks, the lady's dæmon, an owl, puffing up its feathers so much it resembled a ball of fluff much more than an owl.

Lyra sighed. Gave Pan an exasperated look, and moved away from the beady eyed couple.

Colour blurred in front of his vision as Will blinked himself into consciousness. Everywhere he looked, men in smart tuxedos danced with beautiful girls in beautiful gowns.

He wandered around the edge of the space, becoming aware of sights, sounds and smells of the place. Was he dreaming? If so, it was so vivid and lifelike that he felt suspended in time. He came to realise he was in some kind of hall, much grander and more impressive than he'd ever seen. It looked like a scene from a film, couples moving in perfect synchronisation to the flowing music.

He had first appeared in the glittering ballroom when a pack of other men had. He hadn't entered with them; he had just kind of appeared. It was all so confusing that he didn't know what to think. He just kept on moving, looking away from all of the hopeful glances he gathered from several nervous girls, all wishing for a dance partner. He glanced up from his study of the marbled floor only to notice a girl at the other side of the room doing exactly the same as him, but much more successfully. He wondered what she was doing here.

She was pretty, no beautiful, graceful, and yet had a spark that drew him to her, as if she wasn't entirely what she seemed. He wished that she would glance up at him, even for a moment, so that he could see her face, but instead she turned away to talk to her dæmon.

Will felt a trickle of panic suddenly slide between his shoulder blades. A dæmon, in fact, dæmons everywhere: weaving in and out of footsteps on the dance floor, birds bobbing from shoulders and even an albino Burmese python draped stylishly around a woman's torso, like some grotesque accessory.

Could this mean he had successfully moved to Lyra's Oxford?

A/N: Read and review?