The Amber Spyglass

“Do you think she’d listen? Do you think even if she listened she’d believe me? She doesn’t trust me. She hates me, Will. You must know that. She despises me. I, well . . . I don’t know how to say it . . . I love her so much I’ve given up everything I had—a great career, great happiness, position and wealth—everything, to come to this cave in the mountains and live on dry bread and sour fruit, just so I can keep my daughter alive. And if to do that I have to keep her asleep, then so be it. But I must keep her alive. Wouldn’t your mother do as much for you?”

Will felt a jolt of shock and rage that Mrs. Coulter had dared to bring his own mother in to support her argument. Then the first shock was complicated by the thought that his mother, after all, had not protected him; he had had to protect her. Did Mrs. Coulter love Lyra more than Elaine Parry loved him? But that was unfair: his mother wasn’t well.

Either Mrs. Coulter did not know the boil of feelings that her simple words had lanced, or she was monstrously clever. Her beautiful eyes watched mildly as Will reddened and shifted uncomfortably; and for a moment Mrs. Coulter looked uncannily like her daughter.

“But what are you going to do?” she said.

“Well, I’ve seen Lyra now,” Will said, “and she’s alive, that’s clear, and she’s safe, I suppose. That’s all I was going to do. So now I’ve done it, I can go and help Lord Asriel like I was supposed to.”

That did surprise her a little, but she mastered it.

“You don’t mean—I thought you might help us,” she said quite calmly, not pleading but questioning. “With the knife. I saw what you did at Sir Charles’s house. You could make it safe for us, couldn’t you? You could help us get away?”

“I’m going to go now,” Will said, standing up.

She held out her hand. A rueful smile, a shrug, and a nod as if to a skillful opponent who’d made a good move at the chessboard: that was what her body said. He found himself liking her, because she was brave, and because she seemed like a more complicated and richer and deeper Lyra. He couldn’t help but like her.

So he shook her hand, finding it firm and cool and soft. She turned to the golden monkey, who had been sitting behind her all the time, and a look passed between them that Will couldn’t interpret.

Then she turned back with a smile.

“Good-bye,” he said.

And she said quietly, “Good-bye, Will.”

He left the cave, knowing her eyes were following, and he didn’t look back once. Ama was nowhere in sight. He walked back the way he’d come, keeping to the path until he heard the sound of the waterfall ahead.

“She’s lying,” he said to Iorek Byrnison thirty minutes later. “Of course she’s lying. She’d lie even if it made things worse for herself, because she just loves lying too much to stop.”

“What is your plan, then?” said the bear, who was basking in the sunlight, his belly flat down in a patch of snow among the rocks.

Will walked up and down, wondering whether he could use the trick that had worked in Oxford: use the knife to move into another world and then go to a spot right next to where Lyra lay, cut back through into this world, pull her through into safety, and then close up again. That was the obvious thing to do: why did he hesitate?

Balthamos knew. In his own angel shape, shimmering like a heat haze in the sunlight, he said, “You were foolish to go to her. All you want to do now is see the woman again.”

Iorek uttered a deep, quiet growl. At first Will thought he was warning Balthamos, but then with a little shock of embarrassment he realized that the bear was agreeing with the angel. The two of them had taken little notice of each other until now—their modes of being were so different—but they were of one mind about this, clearly.

And Will scowled, but it was true. He had been captivated by Mrs. Coulter. All his thoughts referred to her: when he thought of Lyra, it was to wonder how like her mother she’d be when she grew up; if he thought of the Church, it was to wonder how many of the priests and cardinals were under her spell; if he thought of his own dead father, it was to wonder whether he would have detested her or admired her; and if he thought of his own mother . . .

He felt his heart grimace. He walked away from the bear and stood on a rock from which he could see across the whole valley. In the clear, cold air he could hear the distant tok-tok of someone chopping wood, he could hear a dull iron bell around the neck of a sheep, he could hear the rustling of the treetops far below. The tiniest crevices in the mountains at the horizon were clear and sharp to his eyes, as were the vultures wheeling over some near-dead creature many miles away.

There was no doubt about it: Balthamos was right. The woman had cast a spell on him. It was pleasant and tempting to think about those beautiful eyes and the sweetness of that voice, and to recall the way her arms rose to push back that shining hair . . .

With an effort he came back to his senses and heard another sound altogether: a far-distant drone.

He turned this way and that to locate it, and found it in the north, the very direction he and Iorek had come from.

“Zeppelins,” said the bear’s voice, startling Will, for he hadn’t heard the great creature come near. Iorek stood beside him, looking in the same direction, and then reared up high, fully twice the height of Will, his gaze intent.

“How many?”

“Eight of them,” said Iorek after a minute, and then Will saw them, too: little specks in a line.

“Can you tell how long it will take them to get here?” Will said.