The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  The starboard lifeboat was on the water now, and more and more of the victims were being pulled to safety. Lyra helped to haul two young men and five children up onto the platform, and the last person to make it there was a very old woman, stiff with fear, being pulled along by a boy of twelve or so, who might have been her grandson. Lyra tugged him up first, and then, between them, they hauled the old woman aboard.

  She was shaking with cold—they were all cold—and Lyra, despite the exertion and her warm jacket, was soon shivering too. She peered out at the lapping water, scattered with wreckage and bits of clothing and unidentifiable objects that were once so important that people thought it worth carrying them away when they fled. Had they been fleeing from something? It looked like it.

  “Lyra?”

  She turned in alarm. It was Alison Wetherfield, warm and anxious. Lyra hadn’t realized she was on the ferry.

  “I think they’ve got everyone out on this side,” Lyra said.

  “Come and help. These sailors don’t know what to do once they’ve got them aboard.”

  Lyra followed her. “Where do you think these people are from?” she said. “They look like refugees.”

  “That’s exactly what they are. They’re probably farmers or rose gardeners, fleeing from the mountain men.”

  Lyra thought of the people she’d seen disembarking from the river steamer in Prague: Had they too come from this part of the world? Was this happening all over Europe?

  But there was no time to think about that. In the saloon they found sixty, maybe seventy people, all soaking wet, all freezing cold, the children crying, old people lying helpless, their dæmons feebly clinging to their sodden clothes; and more people limped or tottered in every minute as the last survivors were pulled out of the sea. And not only survivors: the sailors had picked up a number of bodies from the water too, and the cries of their relatives as they recognized this child, that woman, made Lyra’s heart turn over with sorrow.

  But Alison was everywhere, calling instructions to the crew, comforting a frightened mother, enfolding a baby in a blanket snatched from a passenger, calling for the ship’s cook and demanding hot drinks, hot soup, bread and cheese for the survivors, some of whom seemed to be near to starvation. Lyra followed and helped carry out her instructions, giving out blankets, picking up a baby who seemed to belong to no one and was too frightened or too shocked even to cry, and rocking it on her breast.

  Little by little the chaos crystallized into a sort of rough order. Alison was the source of that. She was abrupt, she was rude, she was impatient, but everything she said was clear, and every instruction made sense, and, as well as giving the ferry passengers things to do that were obviously helpful, she radiated an air of certainty and experience.

  “You looking for dry clothes for that child?” she said, seeing Lyra nonplussed by her burden.

  “Well, yes.”

  “The woman over there in the green coat’s got some. You’ll have to change the child’s nappy. Ever done that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s common sense. Work it out. Get the child dry and clean and warm before you do anything else.”

  Lyra was glad to obey, and made a creditable job of it, she thought. Once the child (who turned out to be a boy) was washed and wrapped up warmly, she supposed he would need feeding, and began to look for something he could eat, only to be stopped by a woman with wild eyes, still wearing the sodden clothes she’d been pulled out of the sea in, who pointed at the baby and herself, sobbing with relief. Lyra handed him over, and at once the woman put him to her breast, chilly and damp though that was; and a moment later the child was sucking passionately.

  Then Alison called her over to help with a different problem. A girl of five or six years old, all alone, warm and dry at least by now and in the clothes of another and slightly bigger child, was seemingly mesmerized or frozen with horror. She could hardly move; her mouse dæmon clutched at her neck, shivering; her eyes were focused on the middle distance, no matter what was in front of her.

  “Her family’s all drowned,” said Alison. “Her name’s Aisha. She only speaks Arabic. She’s in your charge now.”

  And she turned away to deal with a sobbing little boy. Lyra nearly quailed, but the girl’s frozen gaze and the terror in the eyes of her tiny dæmon decided her. She crouched down beside her and took her limp and frozen hand.

  “Aisha,” she whispered.

  The dæmon crept down into the neck of the big sweater the girl was wearing, and Lyra thought: Pan, you should be here. This dæmon needs you. You shouldn’t have left me.

  “Aisha, ta’aali,” she said, trying to recall the Arabic vocabulary the Scholars at Jordan had drilled into her so many years before. “Ta’aali,” she said again, hoping it meant “Come.”

  She stood, holding on to the child’s all but lifeless hand, and tugged gently. The girl didn’t resist, didn’t obey, just seemed to float with her, as if she had no bodily presence at all. Lyra was desperate to take her away from the crying, the noise of voices raised in sorrow or desperation, the sight of the rows of dead partly covered by blankets or sheets, away from all the confusion and distress.

  On the way out of the saloon she picked up a round Turkish flatbread and a small carton of milk from the buffet. She led the child to the wicker chair she’d been half sleeping in when the ferry had run into the other boat; it was wide enough for them both, and the blanket was still there. She laid the bread and milk on the deck beside her and wrapped herself and the child in the blanket. She scrupulously avoided touching the little dæmon, who trembled and whispered at the girl’s neck, more alive, it seemed, than Aisha was herself.

  Lyra picked up the bread. “Aisha, khubz,” she said. “Inti ja’aana?”

  She broke off a piece and offered it. Aisha didn’t seem to hear or see. Lyra nibbled it herself, hoping the child would see that it was harmless, but again there was no response.

  “Well, I’ll just hold you, and the bread’s here when you need it,” she whispered. “I’d tell you in Arabic, but I didn’t pay enough attention to my lessons when I was little. I know you’re not understanding this, but you’ve had enough to deal with tonight and I won’t be giving you a test on it. I just hope I can make you warm.”

  The girl lay at Lyra’s side, in her left arm, and a great coldness seemed to emanate from her frail body. Lyra tucked the blanket around her again, making sure she was covered.

  “Well, you’re really cold, Aisha, but it’s a big blanket and you’ll warm up soon. We’ll warm each other up. You can go to sleep if you feel like it. Don’t worry if you can’t understand me. Of course, if you spoke to me, I wouldn’t understand you either. We’d just have to wave our hands and pull faces. And point. We’ll probably understand in the end.”

  She nibbled another piece of the bread.

  “Look, if you don’t take some soon, I’ll have eaten it all and that’ll look very fine, won’t it, me scoffing the food they brought for you and the other people from your boat. It’d be a scandal. I’d be in all the papers, exposed as a thief and an exploiter of the dispossessed, and there’d be a picture of me looking guilty and you looking reproachful….I’m sure this isn’t helping. I just thought if I kept on whispering…I know! I’ll sing you a song.”

  From somewhere very deep and very far back there came the words of one nursery rhyme after another, little bits of nonsense with rhymes and tunes and rhythms that the baby Lyra had loved without understanding them at all. She’d been somewhere warm on a lap or in someone’s arms, and the lulling words and the simple tunes were part of the warmth and the safety, and she sang them very softly to the child, pretending that Aisha was Lyra and Lyra was…Who could it have been? It must have been Alice, sharp-tongued, caustic Alice with the soft breast and the warm arms.

  After a few minutes she found a little, chilly presence at
her neck. The child’s dæmon was cuddling up against her, knowing no better, and it was all Lyra could do to keep her voice steady as she sang, because she herself had missed that feeling so much, so much. And presently they all fell asleep together.

  * * *

  * * *

  And she dreamed of the cat again, the dæmon cat. She was entwining herself between Lyra’s legs as they stood on that moonlit lawn, and the atmosphere of love and bliss was still there, but shot through now with anxiety. She had to do something. She had to go somewhere. The cat was urging her to follow, taking a few steps away, turning to look back at her, coming back and then going away again, and now she wasn’t sure she was Will’s dæmon after all. The moonlight bleached out all the colors: this was a black-and-white world.

  She tried to follow the cat, but her legs wouldn’t move. At the edge of the trees the dæmon looked back once more and then moved away into the darkness. Lyra was overwhelmed with love and loss and sorrow, and tears ran down her sleeping cheeks.

  * * *

  * * *

  They woke to a bright morning. The sun hadn’t yet appeared over the mountains, but the air was clear and clean, and the sea was as still as glass. The steady, quiet beat of the engines was the only sound, until Lyra heard the calls of seabirds too, and human voices nearby.

  “Aisha,” she whispered. “Are you awake? Sihiiti?”

  She felt a frightened little scamper. The girl’s dæmon had been sleeping between the two of them, and woke to find the presence of this stranger alarming. He darted back to Aisha’s breast, and the girl sensed his fear and felt it too, and she drew away with a little whimper of anxiety.

  Lyra sat up gently and tucked the blanket around the child. It was sharply cold without it. Aisha watched her every movement, as if Lyra would murder her unless she kept guard.

  “Aisha, don’t be scared of me,” Lyra said quietly. “We’ve been asleep and it’s morning. Here—look—eat a bit of this bread. It’s pretty stale, but it’s all right.”

  She gave the child the rest of the flatbread. Aisha took it and nibbled the edge, not daring to take her eyes off Lyra, who smiled at her. There was no smile in response, but Lyra was glad to see her unfrozen from that mesmerized horror of the night.

  “There’s some milk too,” she said.

  She twisted the top of the carton and tore off the tab. Aisha took it and drank, handing it back to Lyra when she’d had enough. That little reaction itself was encouraging. Lyra held it for her while Aisha ate a little more bread.

  She thought, Sometime soon she’s going to remember what happened, and realize that she’s lost everyone. And then what? Her mind moved over different possibilities: Aisha in the company of others like her, moving laboriously westwards in the hope of refuge, hungry, cold, robbed of the little she had. Or being taken in by a family who didn’t speak her language, who treated her as a slave, who beat her and starved her, who sold her to men who would use her little body in any way they liked. Or being turned away from house after house, begging for shelter on a winter night. But people were better than that, surely? Wasn’t the human race better than that?

  She wrapped the blanket more carefully around the little girl and held her close, turning her head away so her tears wouldn’t run down onto Aisha’s face.

  Slowly around them the ship was coming awake. Other people had been sleeping on the deck, wrapped up in blankets or huddling close together, and now they were beginning to stir, talking in quiet tones or sitting up stiffly.

  Aisha said something. Lyra could hardly hear her, and couldn’t understand anyway, but something in the way the child was moving made it clear what she meant, and Lyra stood up and helped her up too, draping the blanket around her to keep in the warmth, and led her to a lavatory. She waited outside, still half-asleep, and listened to the voices around in the hope of hearing a word or two that she understood. Little shreds and snatches, splinters of meaning, like flying fishes appearing for a moment above the water and then disappearing again: that was all.

  Then the note of the engines slowed, and the slight movement changed as the boat seemed to be turning tightly. Not again, thought Lyra, but a few moments later it began to pitch a little and lean into the turn. In the confined and overheated passageway, with no sight of the sea, Lyra began to feel a little queasy, and when Aisha came out, she took the child’s hand and led her out on deck again, where the air was fresh. Aisha held her hand readily enough, and her dæmon seemed more active and less fearful than he’d been in the night. He was whispering in the girl’s ear and watching Lyra all the time. Aisha murmured a word or two in response.

  Lyra saw a queue of people forming on the deck outside the main saloon and led Aisha to join it, hoping it was for breakfast. And so it turned out to be: fresh flatbreads and a little cheese. Lyra took some and went back to the chair, where Aisha sat huddled under the blanket, bread in one hand and cheese in the other, and nibbled steadily.

  Then Lyra noticed that the ferry had indeed changed direction and was now slowing down and moving towards a harbor under the rocky hills of an island.

  “I wonder where this is,” she said to Aisha.

  The child simply stared at her and then at the hills, the little town of white-painted houses, the fishing boats in the harbor.

  “Well, how’s she doing?” said Alison Wetherfield, appearing suddenly beside them.

  “She’s eating, at least,” said Lyra.

  “What about you? Have you eaten something?”

  “I thought the food was for the refugees.”

  “Well, go and buy something from the cafeteria. I’ll wait here. You won’t be any use if you’re hungry.”

  Lyra did, and came back with bread and cheese for herself and a spice cake for the child. The only drink available was a sweet mint tea, which was hot, at least. Every part of the vessel was crowded and noisy and alive with voices expressing fear, curiosity, anger, and sorrow; and Lyra was grateful for it, because she was definitely less interesting than the situation they were all in, and she could pass among people without being noticed at all.

  When she got back to the child, she found her talking freely to Alison. Freely, but quietly and with eyes lowered, and in a monotone. Lyra tried to follow her words, but could make out very little; perhaps Aisha spoke a dialect of Arabic different from the classical kind they taught at Jordan College. Or perhaps Lyra simply hadn’t paid attention to her lessons.

  She offered the spice cake, and the child looked up just once as she accepted it, and then cast her eyes down again; and Lyra knew in a moment that the trust of the night was gone, and Aisha now felt the fear every human being felt for someone so mutilated as to be without a dæmon.

  “I’m going to wash,” she said to Alison, not noticing that the woman had seen Aisha’s fear and the immediate sadness it had caused Lyra.

  When she came back, hoping she looked refreshed, she said, “Where are we? What’s this place?”

  “One of the Greek islands. I don’t know which one. The refugees will go ashore here, no doubt. I don’t expect the Greeks will refuse to let them land. They’ll take them to the mainland eventually and they’ll settle somewhere.”

  “What’ll happen to her?”

  “I’ve spoken to a woman who’ll look after her. We can only do so much, Lyra. There comes a point when we have to accept that other people can do more.”

  Aisha was now finishing the spice cake, her eyes still firmly cast down. Lyra wanted to stroke her hair but held back, not wanting to frighten her.

  The ferry had come to rest against a quay, and deckhands were making it fast to bollards at the bow and the stern. There was a loud clatter of chains as a gangway was lowered, and a little crowd was already gathering on the waterfront to see what had brought the ferry to their harbor.

  Lyra stood at the rail and watched the activity unfold, and gradua
lly fell into a kind of trance. Perhaps she hadn’t slept well, or perhaps her energy was depleted, but she found herself withdrawing little by little into a labyrinth of daydream and speculation, all involving dæmons.

  The moment in the night when the little mouse dæmon had cuddled against her: had that really happened? She was as sure of it as she could be of anything, but (as so often now) it was the meaning that was a mystery.

  Perhaps there was no meaning. That’s what Simon Talbot would say. She felt a lurch of revulsion, and then she thought something else: she’d felt at the time that the poor little dæmon was attracted by her warmth, the greater certainty of her adulthood, by the simple fact of her being in charge and offering comfort. Now it occurred to her that there was another interpretation. Perhaps it was the little dæmon himself who sensed a loneliness and desolation in Lyra, and came to give her comfort—not the other way round at all. And it had worked. That thought was a shock, but it convinced her. She wanted to express her gratitude, but when she turned to look at the child again, she found that it would be impossible; there was no point where they could meet and understand each other. The moment in the night was an end point, not a starting point.

  “Can I do anything to help?” she said to Alison when the woman got up and lifted the child to her feet.

  “I’ve decided I should go ashore to see that they’re looked after properly. I’ve got no authority; all I can do is boss people, but it seems to work. I’ll wait for a later boat—I doubt the captain will want to lose more time than he needs to. You stay on board and gather yourself, and go on and find your dæmon. That’s what you need to do. If you go through Aleppo, don’t leave without seeing Father Joseph at the English school. He’s not hard to find, and he’s a very good man. Goodbye, my dear.”