The Amber Spyglass (Page 86)

The first ghost girl was saying something in that lost little whisper.

“Why do we want to find him?” said Will. “Well, Lyra wants to speak to him. But there’s someone I want to find as well. I want to find my father, John Parry. He’s here, too, somewhere, and I want to speak to him before I go back to the world. So please ask, if you can, ask for Roger and for John Parry to come and speak to Lyra and to Will. Ask them—”

But suddenly the ghosts all turned and fled, even the grownups, like dry leaves scattered by a sudden gust of wind. In a moment the space around the children was empty, and then they heard why: screams, cries, shrieks came from the air above, and then the harpies were on them, with gusts of rotten stink, battering wings, and those raucous screams, jeering, mocking, cackling, deriding.

Lyra shrank to the ground at once, covering her ears, and Will, knife in hand, crouched over her. He could see Tialys and Salmakia skimming toward them, but they were some way off yet, and he had a moment or two to watch the harpies as they wheeled and dived. He saw their human faces snap at the air, as if they were eating insects, and he heard the words they were shouting—scoffing words, filthy words, all about his mother, words that shook his heart; but part of his mind was quite cold and separate, thinking, calculating, observing. None of them wanted to come anywhere near the knife.

To see what would happen, he stood up. One of them—it might have been No-Name herself—had to swerve heavily out of the way, because she’d been diving low, intending to skim just over his head. Her heavy wings beat clumsily, and she only just made the turn. He could have reached out and slashed off her head with the knife.

By this time the Gallivespians had arrived, and the two of them were about to attack, but Will called: “Tialys! Come here! Salmakia, come to my hand!”

They landed on his shoulders, and he said, “Watch. See what they do. They only come and scream. I think it was a mistake when she hit Lyra. I don’t think they want to touch us at all. We can ignore them.”

Lyra looked up, wide-eyed. The creatures flew around Will’s head, sometimes only a foot or so away, but they always swerved aside or upward at the last moment. He could sense the two spies eager for battle, and the dragonflies’ wings were quivering with desire to dart through the air with their deadly riders, but they held themselves back: they could see he was right.

And it had an effect on the ghosts, too: seeing Will standing unafraid and unharmed, they began to drift back toward the travelers. They watched the harpies cautiously, but for all that, the lure of the warm flesh and blood, those strong heartbeats, was too much to resist.

Lyra stood up to join Will. Her wound had opened again, and fresh blood was trickling down her cheek, but she wiped it aside.

“Will,” she said, “I’m so glad we came down here together . . .”

He heard a tone in her voice and he saw an expression on her face that he knew and liked more than anything he’d ever known: it showed she was thinking of something daring, but she wasn’t ready to speak of it yet.

He nodded, to show he’d understood.

The ghost girl said, “This way—come with us—we’ll find them!”

And both of them felt the strangest sensation, as if little ghost hands were reaching inside and tugging at their ribs to make them follow.

So they set off across the floor of that great desolate plain, and the harpies wheeled higher and higher overhead, screaming and screaming. But they kept their distance, and the Gallivespians flew above, keeping watch.

As they walked along, the ghosts talked to them.

“Excuse me,” said one ghost girl, “but where’s your dæmons? Excuse me for asking. But . . .”

Lyra was conscious every single second of her dear, abandoned Pantalaimon. She couldn’t speak easily, so Will answered instead.

“We left our dæmons outside,” he said, “where it’s safe for them. We’ll collect them later. Did you have a dæmon?”

“Yes,” said the ghost, “his name was Sandling . . . oh, I loved him . . .”

“And had he settled?” said Lyra.

“No, not yet. He used to think he’d be a bird, and I hoped he wouldn’t, because I liked him all furry in bed at night. But he was a bird more and more. What’s your dæmon called?”

Lyra told her, and the ghosts pressed forward eagerly again. They all wanted to talk about their dæmons, every one.

“Mine was called Matapan—”

“We used to play hide-and-seek, she’d change like a chameleon and I couldn’t see her at all, she was ever so good—”

“Once I hurt my eye and I couldn’t see and he guided me all the way home—”

“He never wanted to settle, but I wanted to grow up, and we used to argue—”

“She used to curl up in my hand and go to sleep—”

“Are they still there, somewhere else? Will we see them again?”

“No. When you die, your dæmon just goes out like a candle flame. I seen it happen. I never saw my Castor, though—I never said good-bye—”

“They en’t nowhere! They must be somewhere! My dæmon’s still there somewhere, I know he is!”

The jostling ghosts were animated and eager, their eyes shining and their cheeks warm, as if they were borrowing life from the travelers.

Will said, “Is there anyone here from my world, where we don’t have dæmons?”

A thin ghost boy of his own age nodded, and Will turned to him.

“Oh yes,” came the answer. “We didn’t understand what dæmons were, but we knew what it felt like to be without them. There’s people here from all kinds of worlds.”