The Amber Spyglass (Page 102)

Lord Asriel touched the controls again and the intention craft began to speed away northward. But Mrs. Coulter couldn’t take her eyes off the scene; she watched behind them for a long time, gazing with tear-filled eyes at the fire, until it was no more than a vertical line of orange scratched on the dark and wreathed in smoke and steam, and then it was nothing.

TWENTY-SIX

THE ABYSS

The Sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning,
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night …

• WILLIAM BLAKE •

It was dark, with an enfolding blackness that pressed on Lyra’s eyes so heavily that she almost felt the weight of the thousands of tons of rock above them. The only light they had came from the luminous tail of the Lady Salmakia’s dragonfly, and even that was fading; for the poor insects had found no food in the world of the dead, and the Chevalier’s had died not long before.

So while Tialys sat on Will’s shoulder, Lyra held the Lady’s dragonfly in her hands as the Lady soothed it and whispered to the trembling creature, feeding it first on crumbs of biscuit and then on her own blood. If Lyra had seen her do that, she would have offered hers, since there was more of it; but it was all she could do to concentrate on placing her feet safely and avoiding the lowest parts of the rock above.

No-Name the harpy had led them into a system of caves that would bring them, she said, to the nearest point in the world of the dead from which they could open a window to another world. Behind them came the endless column of ghosts. The tunnel was full of whispers, as the foremost encouraged those behind, as the brave urged on the fainthearted, as the old gave hope to the young.

“Is it much farther, No-Name?” said Lyra quietly. “Because this poor dragonfly’s dying, and then his light’ll go out.”

The harpy stopped and turned to say:

“Just follow. If you can’t see, listen. If you can’t hear, feel.”

Her eyes shone fierce in the gloom. Lyra nodded and said, “Yes, I will, but I’m not as strong as I used to be, and I’m not brave, not very anyway. Please don’t stop. I’ll follow you—we all will. Please keep going, No-Name.”

The harpy turned back and moved on. The dragonfly shine was getting dimmer by the minute, and Lyra knew it would soon be completely gone.

But as she stumbled forward, a voice spoke just beside her—a familiar voice.

“Lyra—Lyra, child . . .”

And she turned in delight.

“Mr. Scoresby! Oh, I’m so glad to hear you! And it is you—I can see, just—oh, I wish I could touch you!”

In the faint, faint light she made out the lean form and the sardonic smile of the Texan aeronaut, and her hand reached forward of its own accord, in vain.

“Me too, honey. But listen to me—they’re working some trouble out there, and it’s aimed at you—don’t ask me how. Is this the boy with the knife?”

Will had been looking at him, eager to see this old companion of Lyra’s; but now his eyes went right past Lee to look at the ghost beside him. Lyra saw at once who it was, and marveled at this grown-up vision of Will—the same jutting jaw, the same way of holding his head.

Will was speechless, but his father said:

“Listen—there’s no time to talk about this—just do exactly as I say. Take the knife now and find a place where a lock has been cut from Lyra’s hair.”

His tone was urgent, and Will didn’t waste time asking why. Lyra, her eyes wide with alarm, held up the dragonfly with one hand and felt her hair with the other.

“No,” said Will, “take your hand away—I can’t see.”

And in the faint gleam, he could see it: just above her left temple, there was a little patch of hair that was shorter than the rest.

“Who did that?” said Lyra. “And—”

“Hush,” said Will, and asked his father’s ghost, “What must I do?”

“Cut the short hair off right down to her scalp. Collect it carefully, every single hair. Don’t miss even one. Then open another world—any will do—and put the hair through into it, and then close it again. Do it now, at once.”

The harpy was watching, the ghosts behind were crowding close. Lyra could see their faint faces in the dimness. Frightened and bewildered, she stood biting her lip while Will did as his father told him, his face close up to the knifepoint in the paling dragonfly light. He cut a little hollow space in the rock of another world, put all the tiny golden hairs into it, and replaced the rock before closing the window.

And then the ground began to shake. From somewhere very deep came a growling, grinding noise, as if the whole center of the earth were turning on itself like a vast millwheel, and little fragments of stone began to fall from the roof of the tunnel. The ground lurched suddenly to one side. Will seized Lyra’s arm, and they clung together as the rock under their feet began to shift and slide, and loose pieces of stone came tumbling past, bruising their legs and feet—

The two children, sheltering the Gallivespians, crouched down with their arms over their heads; and then in a horrible sliding movement they found themselves being borne away down to the left, and they held each other fiercely, too breathless and shaken even to cry out. Their ears were filled with the roar of thousands of tons of rock tumbling and rolling down with them.

Finally their movement stopped, though all around them smaller rocks were still tumbling and bounding down a slope that hadn’t been there a minute before. Lyra was lying on Will’s left arm. With his right hand he felt for the knife; it was still there at his belt.