It was perfectly circular and as thick as the width of her palm. There was a depression in the center, where it had been attached to the tree. It wasn’t heavy, but it was immensely hard and covered in fibrous hairs, which lay along the circumference so that she could run her hand around it easily one way but not the other. She tried her knife on the surface; it made no impression at all.
Her fingers seemed smoother. She smelled them; there was a faint fragrance there, under the smell of dust. She looked at the seedpod again. In the center there was a slight glistening, and as she touched it again, she felt it slide easily under her fingers. It was exuding a kind of oil.
Mary laid the thing down and thought about the way this world had evolved.
If her guess about these universes was right, and they were the multiple worlds predicted by quantum theory, then some of them would have split off from her own much earlier than others. And clearly in this world evolution had favored enormous trees and large creatures with a diamond-framed skeleton.
She was beginning to see how narrow her scientific horizons were. No botany, no geology, no biology of any sort—she was as ignorant as a baby.
And then she heard a low thunder-like rumble, which was hard to locate until she saw a cloud of dust moving along one of the roads—toward the stand of trees, and toward her. It was about a mile away, but it wasn’t moving slowly, and all of a sudden she felt afraid.
She darted back into the grove. She found a narrow space between two great roots and crammed herself into it, peering over the buttress beside her and out toward the approaching dust cloud.
What she saw made her head spin. At first it looked like a motorcycle gang. Then she thought it was a herd of wheeled animals. But that was impossible. No animal could have wheels. She wasn’t seeing it. But she was.
There were a dozen or so. They were roughly the same size as the grazing creatures, but leaner and gray-colored, with horned heads and short trunks like elephants’. They had the same diamond-shaped structure as the grazers, but somehow they had evolved, on their front and rear single legs, a wheel.
But wheels did not exist in nature, her mind insisted; they couldn’t; you needed an axle with a bearing that was completely separate from the rotating part, it couldn’t happen, it was impossible—
Then, as they came to a halt not fifty yards away, and the dust settled, she suddenly made the connection, and she couldn’t help laughing out loud with a little cough of delight.
The wheels were seedpods. Perfectly round, immensely hard and light—they couldn’t have been designed better. The creatures hooked a claw through the center of the pods with their front and rear legs, and used their two lateral legs to push against the ground and move along. While she marveled at this, she was also a little anxious, for their horns looked formidably sharp, and even at this distance she could see intelligence and curiosity in their gaze.
And they were looking for her.
One of them had spotted the seedpod she had taken out of the grove, and he trundled off the road toward it. When he reached it, he lifted it onto an edge with his trunk and rolled it over to his companions.
They gathered around the pod and touched it delicately with those powerful, flexible trunks, and she found herself interpreting the soft chirrups and clicks and hoots they were making as expressions of disapproval. Someone had tampered with this: it was wrong.
Then she thought: I came here for a purpose, although I don’t understand it yet. Be bold. Take the initiative.
So she stood up and very self-consciously called:
“Over here. This is where I am. I looked at your seedpod. I’m sorry. Please don’t harm me.”
Instantly their heads snapped around, trunks held out, glittering eyes facing forward. Their ears had all flicked upright.
She stepped out of the shelter of the roots and faced them directly. She held out her hands, realizing that such a gesture might mean nothing to creatures with no hands themselves. Still, it was all she could do. Picking up her rucksack, she walked across the grass and stepped onto the road.
Close up—not five steps away—she could see much more about their appearance, but her attention was held by something lively and aware in their gaze, by an intelligence. These creatures were as different from the grazing animals nearby as a human was from a cow.
Mary pointed to herself and said, “Mary.”
The nearest creature reached forward with its trunk. She moved closer, and it touched her on the breast, where she had pointed, and she heard her voice coming back to her from the creature’s throat: “Merry.”
“What are you?” she said.
“Watahyu?” the creature responded.
All she could do was respond. “I am a human,” she said.
“Ayama yuman,” said the creature, and then something even odder happened: the creatures laughed.
Their eyes wrinkled, their trunks waved, they tossed their heads—and from their throats came the unmistakable sound of merriment. She couldn’t help it: she laughed, too.
Then another creature moved forward and touched her hand with its trunk. Mary offered her other hand as well to its soft, bristled, questing touch.
“Ah,” she said, “you’re smelling the oil from the seedpod …”
“Seepot,” said the creature.
“If you can make the sounds of my language, we might be able to communicate, one day. God knows how. Mary,” she said, pointing to herself again.
Nothing. They watched. She did it again: “Mary.”
The nearest creature touched its own breast with its trunk and spoke. Was it three syllables, or two? The creature spoke again, and this time Mary tried hard to make the same sounds: “Mulefa,” she said tentatively.
Others repeated, “Mulefa” in her voice, laughing, and even seemed to be teasing the creature who had spoken. “Mulefa!” they said again, as if it were a fine joke.
“Well, if you can laugh, I don’t suppose you’ll eat me,” Mary said. And from that moment, there was an ease and friendliness between her and them, and she felt nervous no more.
And the group itself relaxed: they had things to do, they weren’t roaming at random. Mary saw that one of them had a saddle or pack on its back, and two others lifted the seedpod onto it, making it secure by tying straps around it, with deft and intricate movements of their trunks. When they stood still, they balanced with their lateral legs, and when they moved, they turned both front and back legs to steer. Their movements were full of grace and power.
One of them wheeled to the edge of the road and raised its trunk to utter a trumpeting call. The herd of grazers all looked up as one and began to trot toward them. When they arrived, they stood patiently at the verge and let the wheeled creatures move slowly through them, checking, touching, counting.
Then Mary saw one reach beneath a grazer and milk it with her trunk; and then the wheeled one rolled over to her and raised her trunk delicately to Mary’s mouth.
At first she flinched, but there was an expectation in the creature’s eye, so she came forward again and opened her lips. The creature expressed a little of the sweet, thin milk into her mouth, watched her swallow, and gave her some more, again and again. The gesture was so clever and kindly that Mary impulsively put her arms around the creature’s head and kissed her, smelling the hot, dusty hide and feeling the hard bones underneath and the muscular power of the trunk.
Presently the leader trumpeted softly and the grazers moved away. The mulefa were preparing to leave. She felt joy that they had welcomed her, and sadness that they were leaving; but then she felt surprise as well.
One of the creatures was lowering itself, kneeling down on the road, and gesturing with its trunk, and the others were beckoning and inviting her … No doubt about it: they were offering to carry her, to take her with them.
Another took her rucksack and fastened it to the saddle of a third, and awkwardly Mary climbed on the back of the kneeling one, wondering where to put her legs—in fro
nt of the creature’s, or behind? And what could she hold on to?
But before she could work it out, the creature had risen, and the group began to move away along the highway, with Mary riding among them.
because he’s Will.”
8
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
• EXODUS •
VODKA
Balthamos felt the death of Baruch the moment it happened. He cried aloud and soared into the night air over the tundra, flailing his wings and sobbing his anguish into the clouds; and it was some time before he could compose himself and go back to Will, who was wide awake, knife in hand, peering up into the damp and chilly murk. They were back in Lyra’s world.
“What is it?” said Will as the angel appeared trembling beside him. “Is it danger? Get behind me—”
“Baruch is dead,” cried Balthamos, “my dear Baruch is dead—”
“When? Where?”
But Balthamos couldn’t tell; he only knew that half his heart had been extinguished. He couldn’t keep still: he flew up again, scouring the sky as if to seek out Baruch in this cloud or that, calling, crying, calling; and then he’d be overcome with guilt, and fly down to urge Will to hide and keep quiet, and promise to watch over him tirelessly; and then the pressure of his grief would crush him to the ground, and he’d remember every instance of kindness and courage that Baruch had ever shown, and there were thousands, and he’d forgotten none of them; and he’d cry that a nature so gracious could never be snuffed out, and he’d soar into the skies again, casting about in every direction, reckless and wild and stricken, cursing the very air, the clouds, the stars.
Finally Will said, “Balthamos, come here.”
The angel came at his command, helpless. Shivering inside his cloak, in the bitter cold gloom of the tundra, the boy said to him, “You must try to keep quiet now. You know there are things out there that’ll attack if they hear a noise. I can protect you with the knife if you’re nearby, but if they attack you up there, I won’t be able to help. And if you die, too, that’ll be the end for me. Balthamos, I need you to help guide me to Lyra. Please don’t forget that. Baruch was strong—be strong, too. Be like him for me.”
At first Balthamos didn’t speak, but then he said, “Yes. Yes, of course I must. Sleep now, Will, and I shall stand guard, I shan’t fail you.”
Will trusted him; he had to. And presently he fell asleep again.
When he woke up, soaked with dew and cold to his bones, the angel was standing nearby. The sun was just rising, and the reeds and the marsh plants were all tipped with gold.
Before Will could move, Balthamos said, “I’ve decided what I must do. I shall stay with you day and night, and do it cheerfully and willingly, for the sake of Baruch. I shall guide you to Lyra, if I can, and then I shall guide you both to Lord Asriel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed, I shall live many thousands of years more; but I never met a nature that made me so ardent to do good, or to be kind, as Baruch’s did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now it’s not, I shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same.”
“Then Baruch would be proud of you,” said Will, shivering.
“Shall I fly ahead now and see where we are?”
“Yes,” said Will, “fly high, and tell me what the land’s like farther on. Walking on this marshland is going to take forever.”
Balthamos took to the air. He hadn’t told Will everything he was anxious about, because he was trying to do his best and not worry him; but he knew that the angel Metatron, the Regent, from whom they’d escaped so narrowly, would have Will’s face firmly imprinted on his mind. And not only his face, but everything about him that angels were able to see, including parts of which Will himself was not aware, such as that aspect of his nature Lyra would have called his dæmon. Will was in great danger from Metatron now, and at some time Balthamos would have to tell him; but not quite yet. It was too difficult.
Will, reckoning that it would be quicker to get warm by walking than by gathering fuel and waiting for a fire to catch, simply slung the rucksack over his shoulders, wrapped the cloak around everything, and set off toward the south. There was a path, muddy and rutted and potholed, so people did sometimes come this way; but the flat horizon was so far away on every side that he had little sense of making progress.
Sometime later, when the light was brighter, Balthamos’s voice spoke beside him.
“About half a day’s walk ahead, there is a wide river and a town, where there’s a wharf for boats to tie up. I flew high enough to see that the river goes a long way directly south and north. If you could get a passage, then you could move much more quickly.”
“Good,” said Will fervently. “And does this path go to the town?”
“It goes through a village, with a church and farms and orchards, and then on to the town.”
“I wonder what language they speak. I hope they don’t lock me up if I can’t speak theirs.”
“As your dæmon,” said Balthamos, “I shall translate for you. I have learned many human languages; I can certainly understand the one they speak in this country.”
Will walked on. The toil was dull and mechanical, but at least he was moving, and at least every step took him closer to Lyra.
The village was a shabby place: a huddle of wooden buildings, with paddocks containing reindeer, and dogs that barked as he approached. Smoke crept out of the tin chimneys and hung low over the shingled roofs. The ground was heavy and dragged at his feet, and there had obviously been a recent flood: walls were marked with mud to halfway up the doors, and broken beams of wood and loose-hanging sheets of corrugated iron showed where sheds and verandas and outbuildings had been swept away.
But that was not the most curious feature of the place. At first he thought he was losing his balance—it even made him stumble once or twice—for the buildings were two or three degrees out of the vertical, all leaning the same way. The dome of the little church had cracked badly. Had there been an earthquake?
Dogs were barking with hysterical fury, but not daring to come close. Balthamos, being a dæmon, had taken the form of a large snow white dog with black eyes, thick fur, and tight-curled tail, and he snarled so fiercely that the real dogs kept their distance. They were thin and mangy, and the few reindeer Will could see were scabby-coated and listless.
Will paused in the center of the little village and looked around, wondering where to go, and as he stood there, two or three men appeared ahead and stood staring at him. They were the first people he had ever seen in Lyra’s world. They wore heavy felt coats, muddy boots, and fur hats, and they didn’t look friendly.
The white dog changed into a sparrow and flew to Will’s shoulder. No one blinked an eye at this: each of the men had a dæmon, Will saw, dogs, most of them, and that was how things happened in this world. On his shoulder, Balthamos whispered: “Keep moving. Don’t look them in the eye. Keep your head down. That is the respectful thing to do.”
Will kept walking. He could make himself inconspicuous; it was his greatest talent. By the time he got to them, the men had already lost interest in him. But then a door opened in the biggest house in the road, and a voice called something loudly.
Balthamos said softly, “The priest. You will have to be polite to him. Turn and bow.”
Will did so. The priest was an immense, gray-bearded man, wearing a black cassock, with a crow dæmon on his shoulder. His restless eyes moved over Will’s face and body, taking everything in. He beckoned.
Will went to the doorway and bowed again.
The priest said something, and Balthamos murmured, “He’s asking where you come from. Say whatever you like.”
“I speak English,” Will said slowly and clearly. “I don’t know any other languages.”
“Ah, English!” cried the priest gleefully in English. “My dear young man! Welcome to our village, our little no-lon
ger-perpendicular Kholodnoye! What is your name, and where are you going?”
“My name is Will, and I’m going south. I have lost my family, and I’m trying to find them again.”
“Then you must come inside and have some refreshment,” said the priest, and put a heavy arm around Will’s shoulders, pulling him in through the doorway.
The man’s crow dæmon was showing a vivid interest in Balthamos. But the angel was equal to that: he became a mouse and crept into Will’s shirt as if he were shy.
The priest led him into a parlor heavy with tobacco smoke, where a cast-iron samovar steamed quietly on a side table.
“What was your name?” said the priest. “Tell me again.”
“Will Parry. But I don’t know what to call you.”
“Otyets Semyon,” said the priest, stroking Will’s arm as he guided him to a chair. “Otyets means Father. I am a priest of the Holy Church. My given name is Semyon, and the name of my father was Boris, so I am Semyon Borisovitch. What is your father’s name?”
“John Parry.”
“John is Ivan. So you are Will Ivanovitch, and I am Father Semyon Borisovitch. Where have you come from, Will Ivanovitch, and where are you going?”
“I’m lost,” Will said. “I was traveling with my family to the south. My father is a soldier, but he was exploring in the Arctic, and then something happened and we got lost. So I’m traveling south because I know that’s where we were going next.”
The priest spread his hands and said, “A soldier? An explorer from England? No one so interesting as that has trodden the dirty roads of Kholodnoye for centuries, but in this time of upheaval, how can we know that he will not appear tomorrow? You yourself are a welcome visitor, Will Ivanovitch. You must stay the night in my house and we will talk and eat together. Lydia Alexandrovna!” he called.
An elderly woman came in silently. He spoke to her in Russian, and she nodded and took a glass and filled it with hot tea from the samovar. She brought the glass of tea to Will, together with a little saucer of jam with a silver spoon.
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