The Amber Spyglass (Page 14)

He tipped all the ingredients into a mortar and ground them up together, muttering a spell as he did so. Then he tapped the pestle on the ringing edge of the mortar, dislodging the final grains, and took a brush and ink and wrote some characters on a sheet of paper. When the ink had dried, he tipped all the powder onto the inscription and folded the paper swiftly into a little square package.

“Let them brush this powder into the nostrils of the sleeping child a little at a time as he breathes in,” he told her, “and he will wake up. It has to be done with great caution. Too much at once and he will choke. Use the softest of brushes.”

“Thank you, Pagdzin tulku,” said Ama, taking the package and placing it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. “I wish I had another honey bread to give you.”

“One is enough,” said the healer. “Now go, and next time you come, tell me the whole truth, not part of it.”

The girl was abashed, and bowed very low to hide her confusion. She hoped she hadn’t given too much away.

Next evening she hurried to the valley as soon as she could, carrying some sweet rice wrapped in a heart-fruit leaf. She was bursting to tell the woman what she had done, and to give her the medicine and receive her praise and thanks, and eager most of all for the enchanted sleeper to wake and talk to her. They could be friends!

But as she turned the corner of the path and looked upward, she saw no golden monkey, no patient woman seated at the cave mouth. The place was empty. She ran the last few yards, afraid they had gone forever—but there was the chair the woman sat in, and the cooking equipment, and everything else.

Ama looked into the darkness farther back in the cave, her heart beating fast. Surely the sleeper hadn’t woken already: in the dimness Ama could make out the shape of the sleeping bag, the lighter patch that was the girl’s hair, and the curve of her sleeping dæmon.

She crept a little closer. There was no doubt about it—they had gone out and left the enchanted girl alone.

A thought struck Ama like a musical note: suppose she woke her before the woman returned . . .

But she had hardly time to feel the thrill of that idea before she heard sounds on the path outside, and in a shiver of guilt she and her dæmon darted behind a ridge of rock at the side of the cave. She shouldn’t be here. She was spying. It was wrong.

And now that golden monkey was squatting in the entrance, sniffing and turning his head this way and that. Ama saw him bare his sharp teeth, and felt her own dæmon burrow into her clothes, mouse-formed and trembling.

“What is it?” said the woman’s voice, speaking to the monkey, and then the cave darkened as her form came into the entrance. “Has the girl been? Yes—there’s the food she left. She shouldn’t come in, though. We must arrange a spot on the path for her to leave the food at.”

Without a glance at the sleeper, the woman stooped to bring the fire to life, and set a pan of water to heat while her dæmon crouched nearby watching over the path. From time to time he got up and looked around the cave, and Ama, getting cramped and uncomfortable in her narrow hiding place, wished ardently that she’d waited outside and not gone in. How long was she going to be trapped?

The woman was mixing some herbs and powders into the heating water. Ama could smell the astringent flavors as they drifted out with the steam. Then came a sound from the back of the cave: the girl was murmuring and stirring. Ama turned her head: she could see the enchanted sleeper moving, tossing from side to side, throwing an arm across her eyes. She was waking!

And the woman took no notice!

She heard all right, because she looked up briefly, but she soon turned back to her herbs and the boiling water. She poured the decoction into a beaker and let it stand, and only then turned her full attention to the waking girl.

Ama could understand none of these words, but she heard them with increasing wonder and suspicion:

“Hush, dear,” the woman said. “Don’t worry yourself. You’re safe.”

“Roger,” the girl murmured, half-awake. “Serafina! Where’s Roger gone . . . Where is he?”

“No one here but us,” her mother said, in a singsong voice, half-crooning. “Lift yourself and let Mama wash you . . . Up you come, my love . . .”

Ama watched as the girl, moaning, struggling into wakefulness, tried to push her mother away; and the woman dipped a sponge into the bowl of water and mopped at her daughter’s face and body before patting her dry.

By this time the girl was nearly awake, and the woman had to move more quickly.

“Where’s Serafina? And Will? Help me, help me! I don’t want to sleep—No, no! I won’t! No!”

The woman was holding the beaker in one steely-firm hand while her other was trying to lift Lyra’s head.

“Be still, dear—be calm—hush now—drink your tea—”

But the girl lashed out and nearly spilled the drink, and cried louder:

“Leave me alone! I want to go! Let me go! Will, Will, help me—oh, help me—”

The woman was gripping her hair tightly, forcing her head back, cramming the beaker against her mouth.

“I won’t! You dare touch me, and Iorek will tear your head off! Oh, Iorek, where are you? Iorek Byrnison! Help me, Iorek! I won’t—I won’t—”

Then, at a word from the woman, the golden monkey sprang on Lyra’s dæmon, gripping him with hard black fingers. The dæmon flicked from shape to shape more quickly than Ama had ever seen a dæmon change before: cat-snake-rat-fox-bird-wolf-cheetah-lizard-polecat-