The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

  He put them all back and took out the next folder.

  “This is in English,” he said.

  “He was English, wasn’t he?”

  “Bonneville? I suppose he might have been French. Hey, look!”

  The first page was typewritten, a title page, and it said: An Analysis of Some Philosophical Implications of the Rusakov Field, by Gerard Bonneville, Ph.D.

  “The Rusakov field!” said Malcolm. “We were right! He did know about it!”

  “And he’s got a Ph.D., look. Like Dr. Relf. We ought to take all this to her.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “If we ever…”

  “What else is in the folder?”

  He flipped through it. Densely typed pages, the text broken by equations full of signs he had never seen before; there was no way of understanding it. He looked at the opening paragraph.

  Since the discovery of the Rusakov field and the shocking but incontestable revelation that consciousness can no longer be regarded exclusively as a function of the human brain, the search for a particle associated with the field has been energetically pursued by a number of researchers and institutions, without, so far, any indication of success. In this paper I propose a methodology…

  “Save that for later,” Malcolm said. “It’ll be interesting, though, I bet.”

  “What’s next?”

  The third, fourth, and fifth folders contained only papers that were unreadable. The mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols was like no language Malcolm had ever seen.

  “It must be code,” he said. “I bet Dr. Relf and Oakley Street could understand it.”

  There was still something else at the bottom of the rucksack, and it was heavy too. A package wrapped in oilskin, and inside that in thick soft leather, and finally in black velvet, opened up to disclose a square wooden box, as big as the palm of a large man’s hand, much decorated with marquetry in exotic patterns.

  “Look at that!” Malcolm said, admiring the workmanship. “That must have taken years!”

  “How d’you open it?” said Asta, mouse-formed.

  He looked all round it and saw no hinges, no clasp, no keyhole, no way in at all.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Well, if there’s no hinges…”

  “Does the lid just lift off?”

  He tried and found it didn’t.

  “If you were a mechanic—” she said, and got no further before he flicked her off the gunwale. But before she hit the water, she became a butterfly and flew up to perch on his hair.

  He turned the box round slowly. He pressed every part of its surface, looking for a secret catch.

  “That edge, there,” said his dæmon’s butterfly voice. “Where it’s sort of green.”

  “What about it?”

  “Press it sideways.”

  He did, quite gently, and then a little more forcefully, and felt something move. A narrow panel that ran the length of the end of the box slid sideways for about the length of his thumbnail.

  “Ah,” he said. “That’s a start.”

  He pushed it back, and then out again, feeling for some tiny looseness anywhere that might reveal where the next movement came. After a few moments he found it: the opposite side of the box slid downwards for the same distance.

  “Getting there,” he said.

  The first panel slid a little further, and then the other side did the same, and then it happened a third time. But that was all. He could push them in back to the starting point and then out again, but they would only move those three steps, and still the box wasn’t open.

  He looked all round, felt here and there, and then…“Ah,” he said, “I got it.”

  When the side was as far down as it would go, the top could slide out. It was as simple as that.

  “Oh!” said Asta. “Is that a…”

  In a bed of black velvet lay a golden instrument like a large watch or a compass. It was the most beautiful thing Malcolm and his dæmon had ever seen. It was just as Dr. Relf had described it to him, but finer than he could ever have imagined. The thirty-six pictures around the dial were minute and clear, the three hands and the one needle were exquisitely shaped out of some silver-gray metal, and a golden sunburst surrounded the center of the dial.

  “That’s what it is,” he said, and he found he was whispering.

  “Hide it. Put it back straightaway,” she said. “Look at it later, when we’re somewhere else.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. You’re right.”

  He was bewitched by its beauty, but he did as she said and put it straight back into the box, wrapped it up, and thrust it into the bottom of the rucksack.

  “Where can he have got that from?” she whispered.

  “Stole it. That’s what I reckon.”

  He fastened the rucksack again and stowed it where it was before, under the thwart.

  “Dr. Relf said there was six originally, remember?” he said. “And one was missing, because they knew where five of them were but not the sixth….I bet this is it.”

  There was silence from further up in the grassy glade where the fire was, and when Malcolm got back there, he saw why: Lyra was asleep on the grass, wrapped in a silken blanket the color of sunshine, and the woman was busy doing something to Alice’s hair. Alice was kneeling in front of her, facing away, as the woman bent over her and with deft fingers wove her hair into complex braids, twisting flowers into it as she did. The butterflies were still there. One or two were resting on the sleeping Pan, some on the woman’s shoulders and neck, and some tried to settle on Ben, who lay head on paws close to Alice; but whenever they did, he growled very softly and deeply, and they took off again.

  Alice’s expression was strange. She was embarrassed, but at the same time she was shy and delighted and determined to be as pretty as the woman wanted her to be. The look she gave Malcolm was almost fierce, as if daring him to laugh or roll his eyes, and there was a pleading in it too. Since they had killed Bonneville, they had been close to each other, probably closer than Malcolm had felt to anyone. Now she was being made to look different from the ratty, thin-faced girl with the permanent sneer and the swift frown, his closest friend. Now she was becoming almost pretty. He felt strange about that, and he could tell that she did too.

  He looked away.

  The woman was murmuring to her, and Malcolm tried not to listen. He moved further away and lay down on the grass. The day was warm, and he was sleepy. He closed his eyes.

  —

  Someone was shaking his shoulder. It was Alice.

  “Wake up! Mal, we can’t stay here. Wake up!”

  She was whispering, but he heard every word.

  “Why can’t we stay here?” he whispered back.

  “Come and see what she’s doing.”

  He rolled over and rubbed his eyes. Then he sat up.

  “What? Where is she?”

  “By the fire. Just come quietly. Don’t make a noise.”

  Malcolm stood up and found himself still dazed with sleep. She caught him before he fell.

  “You all right?” she said.

  “Just dizzy. What’s she doing?”

  “I can’t…But you gotta come and look.”

  She took his hand as they walked the little way up to the fire. It was late afternoon, nearly evening, and for the first time for months, it seemed to Malcolm, he could see a sunset. The sky was clear in the southwest and the rays of the sun struck through the trees, red, warm, and dazzling. As his senses returned, he looked back at the canoe, and it was still there, and the rucksack was still under the seat. Alice tugged his hand: she didn’t want to stop.

  The little grassy glade was clearly illuminated, and right in the middle of it sat Diania, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted, with Lyra sucking vigorously at her right nipple. The woman looked up and gave them a smile so strange she might have been inhuman.

  “What are you doing?” said Malcolm.

  “Why, feeding the child, of course! Giving her good milk. Look at her suck!”

 
; She looked down proudly. The nipple slipped out of Lyra’s mouth, and the woman lifted her up to her shoulder and patted her back. Lyra obligingly belched, and the woman promptly brought her down on the other side, and the child’s little mouth began to work open and shut even before she found the nipple. Then she closed her eyes and went on sucking vigorously.

  Malcolm thought that she never sucked the bottle like that. Asta whispered, “This woman is trying to steal her.”

  Malcolm tugged at Alice’s hand, and together they left the little glade and went back to the canoe.

  “She’s not good!” said Asta passionately.

  “No, she en’t,” said Alice’s dæmon.

  “She’s not doing her any harm,” said Malcolm, but he knew it wasn’t true as soon as he said it.

  “She’s doing that to make her belong to her,” said Alice. “She en’t normal, Mal. She en’t proper human. See them butterflies? Well, which one’s her dæmon?”

  “I think they all are.”

  “Well, where were they just now?”

  “I…They weren’t there.”

  “They were. They were all over Pan. You couldn’t hardly see him. She’s doing some magic or summing, I swear. You know the fairies, in stories? Well, they take human children.”

  “But not really,” said Malcolm. “Only in stories.”

  “But story after story, and songs too, they all say that happens. They steal kids and they’re never seen again. It’s true,” she said.

  “Well, normally…,” said Malcolm.

  “It’s not normal!” said Asta. “Nothing’s normal. Everything’s changed after the flood.”

  Asta was right—nothing was normal anymore. Malcolm tried to remember the fairy tales he knew. Could you bargain with fairies? Did they keep their promises? There was something about names….

  “We’ve got to get her back,” he said.

  “Let’s just go and ask her,” said Alice. “Then we’ll know right enough.”

  “We’ve got to get ready to go straightaway. If we stay here, she’ll just steal Lyra when we’re asleep.”

  “Yeah,” said Alice. “But we can’t pack all our stuff without her seeing. It’s impossible.”

  “I got an idea,” said Malcolm.

  Asta flew off his shoulder and began to search for a stone of the right size, while he took the rucksack out of the canoe.

  “What you doing?” said Alice. “What’s that?”

  He opened the box and showed her the alethiometer. Her eyes widened.

  “Here’s one,” said Asta from a little way off, “but I can’t…”

  Alice helped her pull the stone out of the ground and washed it in the water. Meanwhile, Malcolm wrapped the alethiometer in the velvet and the leather and oilskin and stuffed it back into the rucksack. Alice’s eyes gleamed with approval as he put the stone in the box and closed it again.

  “I’ll tell you more later,” he said.

  Then, alethiometer and box separately in the rucksack over his shoulder, they went back to the glade. The woman was still feeding Lyra, but when they arrived, she took the child away from her breast. Lyra was nearly asleep and utterly replete.

  “She won’t have had milk like that before,” said the woman.

  “No, and thank you for feeding her,” said Malcolm, “but we’re going to go now.”

  “Won’t you stay another night?”

  “No. We need to go. It’s been kind of you to let us stay here, but it’s time we went on.”

  “Well, if you must, then you must.”

  “And we’ll take Ellie now.”

  “No, you won’t. She’s mine.”

  Malcolm’s heart was beating so hard he could hardly stand up. Alice’s hand found his.

  “We’re taking her,” she said, “because she’s ours. We know what we’re doing with her.”

  “She’s mine. She’s drunk my milk. Look at how happy she is in my arms! She’s going to stay with me.”

  “Why d’you think you can do this?” said Malcolm.

  “Because I want to, and I have the power. If she could speak, she’d say she wanted to stay here too.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “Bring her up to be one of my people, of course.”

  “But she isn’t one of your people.”

  “She is now she’s drunk my milk. You can’t alter that.”

  “Anyway, what people d’you mean?”

  “The oldest people there are. The first inhabitants of Albion. She’ll be a princess. She’ll be one of us.”

  “Look,” said Malcolm, swinging the rucksack down to the ground, “I’ll give you a treasure to have instead.”

  “What sort of treasure?”

  “A treasure fit for a queen. You are a queen, en’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you a fairy person?”

  “Where is this treasure?”

  Malcolm brought out the box.

  “Let me see,” she said.

  “Let me hold Ellie, and then you can look properly,” said Alice.

  But Diania held the child closer and gave Alice a look that frightened her.

  “You think I’m stupid? Every trick you can think of, I’ve seen it and heard it a thousand times before. How would a pair of children like you be in charge of a treasure? It doesn’t make sense. No one would give you a treasure to look after.”

  “Then why are we looking after a baby?” said Alice.

  “That’s much easier to explain,” she said.

  And that was the moment Malcolm had been waiting for.

  “If you can explain it,” he said, “then you can keep her, and the treasure as well.”

  The woman looked at him and cuddled Lyra closer, rocking her back and forth.

  “If I can explain…”

  “If you can explain how me and Sandra came to be looking after Ellie, then she can stay with you.”

  The woman was thinking.

  “How many chances?” she said. “I want more than one.”

  “You can have three.”

  “Three. All right. First: she is your sister, and your parents have died. They left her to you to look after.”

  “Wrong,” said Malcolm. “Two more chances.”

  “All right…Two: you stole her from her crib and you’re taking her to London to sell.”

  “That’s wrong too. Only one chance left.”

  “Only one…only one…Very well. Let me see. I know! She was in the care of the nuns, and then the flood came, and you and Sandra took her from her crib and put her in your boat, and you were swept away by the flood and there was a man chasing you, and then you killed him, and then she was taken by the Sisters of Holy Obedience, and you rescued her and brought her here.”

  “Who did?”

  “You did. Richard and Sandra.”

  “Brought who here?”

  “Ellie, of course!”

  “Well, you’re wrong for the third time,” said Malcolm, “because this is Alice, not Sandra, and I’m Malcolm, not Richard, and the baby’s not Ellie, she’s Lyra. You lost.”

  And then the woman opened her mouth and uttered a wail so loud and terrible that Malcolm had to cover his ears. She opened her arms, and Lyra fell out and would have hit the ground if Alice hadn’t darted in and caught her. The woman put her hands to her head, tears flooded from her eyes, and she flung herself full-length on the grass, weeping with a passion that touched Malcolm’s heart with fear.

  But he gathered up their blankets and their tin of biscuits and held out the wooden box.

  “I promised you a treasure,” he said, “and here it is.”

  The woman was sobbing bitterly; her whole body was heaving with the gulps that racked her.

  “Here,” he said again, and put it down on the grass.

  The woman rolled over onto her back and flung her head from side to side.

  “My baby!” she cried. “You’re taking my baby away!”

 
“No, she’s not your baby,” said Malcolm.

  “I waited for a thousand years to hold a baby to my breast! And she’s drunk my milk! She’s mine!”

  “We’re going away now. Look, I put the treasure down here.”

  She sat up, sobbing so much that she could hardly hold her balance. One hand wiped away the tears that flooded her face, and the other felt along the ground till it found the box.

  “What is this?”

  “I told you. Treasure. We’re going now. Thank you for letting us stay for a bit.”

  The woman got to her knees, and then flung herself at Alice’s feet, clinging to her legs. Alice looked alarmed and held Lyra out of her reach.

  “He doesn’t understand—he never would—how could a man understand? But you—”

  “No,” said Alice.

  “Did you look in the glass after I arranged your hair?”

  “Yes…”

  “And did you like it?”

  “Yes. But…”

  “I could make you beautiful. I could make your face so lovely that every man would be your slave. I could do that! I have that power!”

  Alice’s lips were set tight. Malcolm just looked at her helplessly. Something had told him already that Alice was discontented with her looks. He could read her face now, and he saw a succession of emotions pass over it, some too hard for him to name or to know. Finally it settled into the usual half-sneering contempt.

  “You’re a liar,” she said. “Let go of my legs.”

  The woman did, sobbing again, but without hope this time. Malcolm felt truly sorry for her. But what could they do?

  He quietly walked away. Alice went with him, Lyra silent and asleep in her arms.

  He turned around once more and saw the woman sitting up, turning the box over and over in her hands.

  “What’s she going to do when she opens it?” Alice whispered.

  “She never will.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “ ’Cause she’s not a mechanic.”

  The canoe was safe; he had been anxious about that. He held it steady for Alice, and when she and the child were settled in the prow and the rucksack was stowed under the thwart, he got in himself and took the paddle and propelled La Belle Sauvage away from the enchanted island.