She said the name half to herself, because she couldn’t believe Dr. Malone would be in this world. Still, the alethiometer indicated her clearly, although of course it couldn’t give her name. Lyra put it away and stood up slowly beside Will.
“I think we should go down to them,” she said. “They en’t going to hurt us.”
Some of them had stopped, waiting. The leader moved ahead a little, trunk raised, and they could see how he propelled himself with powerful backward strokes of his lateral limbs. Some of the creatures had gone to the pond to drink; the others waited, but not with the mild, passive curiosity of cows gathering at a gate. These were individuals, lively with intelligence and purpose. They were people.
Will and Lyra moved down the slope until they were close enough to speak to them. In spite of what Lyra had said, Will kept his hand on the knife.
“I don’t know if you understand me,” Lyra said cautiously, “but I know you’re friendly. I think we should—”
The leader moved his trunk and said, “Come see Mary. You ride. We carry. Come see Mary.”
“Oh!” she said, and turned to Will, smiling with delight.
Two of the creatures were fitted with bridles and stirrups of braided cord. Not saddles; their diamond-shaped backs turned out to be comfortable enough without them. Lyra had ridden a bear, and Will had ridden a bicycle, but neither had ridden a horse, which was the closest comparison. However, riders of horses are usually in control, and the children soon found that they were not: the reins and the stirrups were there simply to give them something to hold on to and balance with. The creatures themselves made all the decisions.
“Where are—” Will began to say, but had to stop and regain his balance as the creature moved under him.
The group swung around and moved down the slight slope, going slowly through the grass. The movement was bumpy, but not uncomfortable, because the creatures had no spine; Will and Lyra felt that they were sitting on chairs with a well-sprung seat.
Soon they came to what they hadn’t seen clearly from the bluff: one of those patches of black or dark brown ground. And they were as surprised to find roads of smooth rock lacing through the prairie as Mary Malone had been sometime before.
The creatures rolled onto the surface and set off, soon picking up speed. The road was more like a watercourse than a highway. In places it broadened into wide areas like small lakes; and at others it split into narrow channels, only to combine again unpredictably. It was quite unlike the brutal, rational way roads in Will’s world sliced through hillsides and leapt across valleys on bridges of concrete. This was part of the landscape, not an imposition on it.
They were going faster and faster. It took Will and Lyra a while to get used to the living impulse of the muscles and the shuddering thunder of the hard wheels on the hard stone. Lyra found it more difficult than Will at first, because she had never ridden a bicycle, and she didn’t know the trick of leaning into the corner; but she saw how he was doing it, and soon she was finding the speed exhilarating.
The wheels made too much noise for them to speak. Instead, they had to point: at the trees, in amazement at their size and splendor; at a flock of birds, the strangest they had ever seen, their fore and aft wings giving them a twisting, screwing motion through the air; at a fat blue lizard as long as a horse basking in the very middle of the road (the wheeled creatures divided to ride on either side of it, and it took no notice at all).
The sun was high in the sky when they began to slow down. And in the air, unmistakable, was the salt smell of the sea. The road was rising toward a bluff, and presently they were moving no faster than a walk.
Lyra, stiff and sore, said, “Can you stop? I want to get off and walk.”
Her creature felt the tug at the bridle, and whether or not he understood her words, he came to a halt. Will’s did, too, and both children climbed down, finding themselves stiff and shaken after the continued jolting and tensing.
The creatures wheeled around to talk together, their trunks moving elegantly in time with the sounds they made. After a minute they moved on, and Will and Lyra were happy to walk among the hay-scented, grass-warm creatures who trundled beside them. One or two had gone on ahead to the top of the rise, and the children, now that they no longer had to concentrate on hanging on, were able to watch how they moved, and admire the grace and power with which they propelled themselves forward and leaned and turned.
As they came to the top of the rise, they stopped, and Will and Lyra heard the leader say, “Mary close. Mary there.”
They looked down. On the horizon there was the blue gleam of the sea. A broad, slow-moving river wound through rich grassland in the middle distance, and at the foot of the long slope, among copses of small trees and rows of vegetables, stood a village of thatched houses. More creatures like these moved about among the houses, or tended crops, or worked among the trees.
“Now ride again,” said the leader.
There wasn’t far to go. Will and Lyra climbed up once more, and the other creatures looked closely at their balance and checked the stirrups with their trunks, as if to make sure they were safe.
Then they set off, beating the road with their lateral limbs, and urging themselves forward down the slope until they were moving at a terrific pace. Will and Lyra clung tight with hands and knees. They felt the air whip past their faces, flinging their hair back and pressing on their eyeballs. The thundering of the wheels, the rush of the grassland on either side, the sure and powerful lean into the broad curve ahead, the clearheaded rapture of speed—the creatures loved this, and Will and Lyra felt their joy and laughed in happy response.
They stopped in the center of the village, and the others, who had seen them coming, gathered around raising their trunks and speaking words of welcome.
And then Lyra cried, “Dr. Malone!”
Mary had come out of one of the huts, her faded blue shirt, her stocky figure, her warm, ruddy cheeks both strange and familiar.
Lyra ran and embraced her, and the woman hugged her tight, and Will stood back, careful and doubtful.
Mary kissed Lyra warmly and then came forward to welcome Will. And then came a curious little mental dance of sympathy and awkwardness, which took place in a second or less.
Moved by compassion for the state they were in, Mary first meant to embrace him as well as Lyra. But Mary was grown up, and Will was nearly grown, and she could see that that kind of response would have made a child of him, because while she might have embraced a child, she would never have done that to a man she didn’t know; so she drew back mentally, wanting above all to honor this friend of Lyra’s and not cause him to lose face.
So instead she held out her hand and he shook it, and a current of understanding and respect passed between them, so powerful that it became liking at once and each of them felt that they had made a lifelong friend, as indeed they had.
“This is Will,” said Lyra, “he’s from your world—remember, I told you about him—”
“I’m Mary Malone,” she said, “and you’re hungry, the pair of you, you look half-starved.”
She turned to the creature by her side and spoke some of those singing, hooting sounds, moving her arm as she did so.
At once the creatures moved away, and some of them brought cushions and rugs from the nearest house and laid them on the firm soil under a tree nearby, whose dense leaves and low-hanging branches gave a cool and fragrant shade.
And as soon as they were comfortable, their hosts brought smooth wooden bowls brimming with milk, which had a faint lemony astringency and was wonderfully refreshing; and small nuts like hazels, but with a richer buttery taste; and salad plucked fresh from the soil, sharp, peppery leaves mingled with soft, thick ones that oozed a creamy sap, and little cherry-sized roots tasting like sweet carrots.
But they couldn’t eat much. It was too rich. Will wanted to do justice to their generosity, but the only thing he could easily swallow, apart from the drink, was some flat, sligh
tly scorched floury bread like chapatis or tortillas. It was plain and nourishing, and that was all Will could cope with. Lyra tried some of everything, but like Will she soon found that a little was quite enough.
Mary managed to avoid asking any questions. These two had passed through an experience that had marked them deeply; they didn’t want to talk about it yet.
So she answered their questions about the mulefa, and told them briefly how she had arrived in this world; and then she left them under the shade of the tree, because she could see their eyelids drooping and their heads nodding.
“You don’t have to do anything now but sleep,” she said.
The afternoon air was warm and still, and the shade of the tree was drowsy and murmurous with crickets. Less than five minutes after they’d swallowed the last of the drink, both Will and Lyra were fast asleep.
They are of two sexes? said Atal, surprised. But how can you tell?
It’s easy, said Mary. Their bodies are different shapes. They move differently.
They are not much smaller than you. But they have less sraf. When will that come to them?
I don’t know, Mary said. I suppose sometime soon. I don’t know when it happens to us.
No wheels, said Atal sympathetically.
They were weeding the vegetable garden. Mary had made a hoe to save having to bend down; Atal used her trunk, so their conversation was intermittent.
But you knew they were coming, said Atal.
Yes.
Was it the sticks that told you?
No, said Mary, blushing. She was a scientist; it was bad enough to have to admit to consulting the I Ching, but this was even more embarrassing. It was a night picture, she confessed.
The mulefa had no single word for dream. They dreamed vividly, though, and took their dreams very seriously.
You don’t like night pictures, Atal said.
Yes, I do. But I didn’t believe them until now. I saw the boy and the girl so clearly, and a voice told me to prepare for them.
What sort of voice? How did it speak if you couldn’t see it?
It was hard for Atal to imagine speech without the trunk movements that clarified and defined it. She’d stopped in the middle of a row of beans and faced Mary with fascinated curiosity.
Well, I did see it, said Mary. It was a woman, or a female wise one, like us, like my people. But very old and yet not old at all.
Wise one was what the mulefa called their leaders. She saw that Atal was looking intensely interested.
How could she be old and also not old? said
Atal. It is a make-like, said Mary.
Atal swung her trunk, reassured.
Mary went on as best she could: She told me that I should expect the children, and when they would appear, and where. But not why. I must just look after them.
They are hurt and tired, said Atal. Will they stop the sraf leaving?
Mary looked up uneasily. She knew without having to check through the spyglass that the shadow particles were streaming away faster than ever.
I hope so, she said. But I don’t know how.
In the early evening, when the cooking fires were lit and the first stars were coming out, a group of strangers arrived. Mary was washing; she heard the thunder of their wheels and the agitated murmur of their talk, and hurried out of her house, drying herself.
Will and Lyra had been asleep all afternoon, and they were just stirring now, hearing the noise. Lyra sat up groggily to see Mary talking to five or six of the mulefa, who were surrounding her, clearly excited; but whether they were angry or joyful, she couldn’t tell.
Mary saw her and broke away.
“Lyra,” she said, “something’s happened—they’ve found something they can’t explain and it’s … I don’t know what it is … I’ve got to go and look. It’s an hour or so away. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Help yourself to anything you need from my house—I can’t stop, they’re too anxious—”
“All right,” said Lyra, still dazed from her long sleep.
Mary looked under the tree. Will was rubbing his eyes.
“I really won’t be too long,” she said. “Atal will stay with you.”
The leader was impatient. Mary swiftly threw her bridle and stirrups over his back, excusing herself for being clumsy, and mounted at once. They wheeled and turned and drove away into the dusk.
They set off in a new direction, along the ridge above the coast to the north. Mary had never ridden in the dark before, and she found the speed even more alarming than by day. As they climbed, she could see the glitter of the moon on the sea far off to the left, and its silver-sepia light seemed to envelop her in a cool, skeptical wonder. The wonder was in her, and the skepticism was in the world, and the coolness was in both.
She looked up from time to time and touched the spyglass in her pocket, but she couldn’t use it till they’d stopped moving. And these mulefa were moving urgently, with the air of not wanting to stop for anything. After an hour’s hard riding they swung inland, leaving the stone road and moving slowly along a trail of beaten earth that ran between knee-high grass past a stand of wheel trees and up toward a ridge. The landscape glowed under the moon: wide, bare hills with occasional little gullies, where streams trickled down among the trees that clustered there.
It was toward one of these gullies that they led her. She had dismounted when they left the road, and she walked steadily at their pace over the brow of the hill and down into the gully.
She heard the trickling of the spring, and the night wind in the grass. She heard the quiet sound of the wheels crunching over the hard-packed earth, and she heard the mulefa ahead of her murmuring to one another, and then they stopped.
In the side of the hill, just a few yards away, was one of those openings made by the subtle knife. It was like the mouth of a cave, because the moonlight shone into it a little way, just as if inside the opening there were the inside of the hill; but it wasn’t. And out of it was coming a procession of ghosts.
Mary felt as if the ground had given way beneath her mind. She caught herself with a start, seizing the nearest branch for reassurance that there still was a physical world, and she was still part of it.
She moved closer. Old men and women, children, babes in arms, humans and other beings, too, more and more thickly they came out of the dark into the world of solid moonlight—and vanished.
That was the strangest thing. They took a few steps in the world of grass and air and silver light, and looked around, their faces transformed with joy—Mary had never seen such joy—and held out their arms as if they were embracing the whole universe; and then, as if they were made of mist or smoke, they simply drifted away, becoming part of the earth and the dew and the night breeze.
Some of them came toward Mary as if they wanted to tell her something, and reached out their hands, and she felt their touch like little shocks of cold. One of the ghosts—an old woman—beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
“Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well. Just tell them stories.”
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
She looked into the darkness. As far as she could see into that endless silence, more of these ghosts were coming, thousands upon thousands, like refugees returning to their homeland.
“Tell them stories,” she said to herself.
33
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie …
> • GEORGE HERBERT •
MARZIPAN
Next morning Lyra woke up from a dream in which Pantalaimon had come back to her and revealed his final shape; and she had loved it, but now she had no idea what it was.
The sun hadn’t long risen, and the air had a fresh bloom. She could see the sunlight through the open door of the little thatched hut she slept in, Mary’s house. She lay for a while listening. There were birds outside, and some kind of cricket, and Mary was breathing quietly in her sleep nearby.
Lyra sat up and found herself naked. She was indignant for a moment, and then she saw some clean clothes folded beside her on the floor: a shirt of Mary’s, a length of soft, light patterned cloth that she could tie into a skirt. She put them on, feeling swamped in the shirt, but at least decent.
She left the hut. Pantalaimon was nearby; she was sure of it. She could almost hear him talking and laughing. It must mean that he was safe, and they were still connected somehow. And when he forgave her and came back—the hours they’d spend just talking, just telling each other everything …
Will was still asleep under the shelter tree, the lazy thing. Lyra thought of waking him up, but if she was on her own, she could swim in the river. She happily used to swim naked in the river Cherwell with all the other Oxford children, but it would be quite different with Will, and she blushed even to think of it.
So she went down to the water alone in the pearl-colored morning. Among the reeds at the edge there was a tall, slender bird like a heron, standing perfectly still on one leg. She walked quietly and slowly so as not to disturb it, but the bird took no more notice of her than if she’d been a twig on the water.
“Well,” she said.
She left the clothes on the bank and slipped into the river. It was seawater coming in on the tide, and it was strange to Lyra, who had never swum in salt water before. She swam hard to keep warm, and then came out and huddled on the bank, shivering. Pan would help dry her, normally. Was he a fish, laughing at her from under the water? Or a beetle, creeping into the clothes to tickle her, or a bird? Or was he somewhere else entirely with the other dæmon, and with Lyra not on his mind at all?
His Dark Materials Omnibus Page 106