The vast trunk, supported in the grove by its torn-up roots and out on the grass by the mass of branches, was high above their heads. Some of those branches, crushed and broken, were themselves as big around as the biggest trees Will had ever seen; the crown of the tree, tight-packed with boughs that still looked sturdy, leaves that were still green, towered like a ruined palace into the mild air.
Suddenly Lyra gripped Will’s arm.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Don’t look. I’m sure they’re up there. I saw something move and I swear it was Pan…”
Her hand was warm. He was more aware of that than of the great mass of leaves and branches above them. Pretending to gaze vacantly at the horizon, he let his attention wander upward into the confused mass of green, brown, and blue, and there—she was right!—there was a something that was not the tree. And beside it, another.
“Walk away,” Will said under his breath. “We’ll go somewhere else and see if they follow us.”
“Suppose they don’t… But yes, all right,” Lyra whispered back.
They pretended to look all around; they set their hands on one of the branches resting on the ground, as if they were intending to climb; they pretended to change their minds, by shaking their heads and walking away.
“I wish we could look behind,” Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away.
“Just go on walking. They can see us, and they won’t get lost. They’ll come to us when they want to.”
They stepped off the black road and into the knee-high grass, swishing their legs through the stems, watching the insects hovering, darting, fluttering, skimming, hearing the million-voiced chorus chirrup and scrape.
“What are you going to do, Will?” Lyra said quietly after they’d walked some way in silence.
“Well, I’ve got to go home,” he said.
She thought he sounded unsure, though. She hoped he sounded unsure.
“But they might still be after you,” she said. “Those men.”
“We’ve seen worse than them, after all.”
“Yes, I suppose… But I wanted to show you Jordan College, and the Fens. I wanted us to…”
“Yeah,” he said, “and I wanted… It would be good to go to Cittàgazze again, even. It was a beautiful place, and if the Specters are all gone… But there’s my mother. I’ve got to go back and look after her. I just left her with Mrs. Cooper, and it’s not fair on either of them.”
“But it’s not fair on you to have to do that.”
“No,” he said, “but that’s a different sort of not fair. That’s just like an earthquake or a rainstorm. It might not be fair, but no one’s to blame. But if I just leave my mother with an old lady who isn’t very well herself, then that’s a different kind of not fair. That would be wrong. I’ve just got to go home. But probably it’s going to be difficult to go back as we were. Probably the secret’s out now. I don’t suppose Mrs. Cooper will have been able to look after her, not if my mother’s in one of those times when she gets frightened of things. So she’s probably had to get help, and when I go back, I’ll be made to go into some kind of institution.”
“No! Like an orphanage?”
“I think that’s what they do. I just don’t know. I’ll hate it.”
“You could escape with the knife, Will! You could come to my world!”
“I still belong there, where I can be with her. When I’m grown up I’ll be able to look after her properly, in my own house. No one can interfere then.”
“D’you think you’ll get married?”
He was quiet for a long time. She knew he was thinking, though.
“I can’t see that far ahead,” he said. “It would have to be someone who understands about… I don’t think there’s anyone like that in my world. Would you get married?”
“Me too,” she said. “Not to anyone in my world, I shouldn’t think.”
They walked on steadily, wandering toward the horizon. They had all the time in the world: all the time the world had.
After a while Lyra said, “You will keep the knife, won’t you? So you could visit my world?”
“Of course. I certainly wouldn’t give it to anyone else, ever.”
“Don’t look—” she said, not altering her pace. “There they are again. On the left.”
“They are following us,” said Will, delighted.
“Shh!”
“I thought they would. Okay, we’ll just pretend now, we’ll just wander along as if we’re looking for them, and we’ll look in all sorts of stupid places.”
It became a game. They found a pond and searched among the reeds and in the mud, saying loudly that the dæmons were bound to be shaped like frogs or water beetles or slugs; they peeled off the bark of a long-fallen tree at the edge of a string-wood grove, pretending to have seen the two dæmons creeping underneath it in the form of earwigs; Lyra made a great fuss of an ant she claimed to have trodden on, sympathizing with its bruises, saying its face was just like Pan’s, asking in mock sorrow why it was refusing to speak to her.
But when she thought they were genuinely out of earshot, she said earnestly to Will, leaning close to speak quietly:
“We had to leave them, didn’t we? We didn’t have a choice really?”
“Yes, we had to. It was worse for you than for me, but we didn’t have any choice at all. Because you made a promise to Roger, and you had to keep it.”
“And you had to speak to your father again…”
“And we had to let them all out.”
“Yes, we did. I’m so glad we did. Pan will be glad one day, too, when I die. We won’t be split up. It was a good thing we did.”
As the sun rose higher in the sky and the air became warmer, they began to look for shade. Toward noon they found themselves on the slope rising toward the summit of a ridge, and when they’d reached it, Lyra flopped down on the grass and said, “Well! If we don’t find somewhere shady soon…”
There was a valley leading down on the other side, and it was thick with bushes, so they guessed there might be a stream as well. They traversed the slope of the ridge till it dipped into the head of the valley, and there, sure enough, among ferns and reeds, a spring bubbled out of the rock.
They dipped their hot faces in the water and swallowed gratefully, and then they followed the stream downward, seeing it gather in miniature whirlpools and pour over tiny ledges of stone, and all the time get fuller and wider.
“How does it do that?” Lyra marveled. “There’s no more water coming into it from anywhere else, but there’s so much more of it here than up there.”
Will, watching the shadows out of the corner of his eye, saw them slip ahead, leaping over the ferns to disappear into the bushes farther down. He pointed silently.
“It just goes slower,” he said. “It doesn’t flow as fast as the spring comes out, so it gathers in these pools… They’ve gone in there,” he whispered, indicating a little group of trees at the foot of the slope.
They looked at each other, a curiously formal and serious look, before setting off to follow the stream. The undergrowth got thicker as they went down the valley; the stream went into tunnels of green and emerged in dappled clearings, only to tumble over a lip of stone and bury itself in the green again, and they had to follow it as much by hearing as by sight.
At the foot of the hill, it ran into the little wood of silver-barked trees.
Father Gomez watched from the top of the ridge. It hadn’t been hard to follow them; despite Mary’s confidence in the open savanna, there was plenty of concealment in the grass and the occasional thickets of string-wood and sap-lacquer bushes. The two young people had spent a lot of time earlier looking all around as if they thought they were being followed. He had had to keep some distance away, but as the morning passed, they became more and more absorbed in each other and paid less attention to the landscape.
The one thing he didn’t want to do was hurt the boy. He had a horror of harming an innocent person. The only wa
y to make sure of his target was to get close enough to see her clearly, which meant following them into the wood.
Quietly and cautiously he moved down the course of the stream. His dæmon the green-backed beetle flew overhead, tasting the air; her eyesight was less good than his, but her sense of smell was acute, and she caught the scent of the young people’s flesh very clearly. She would go a little ahead, perch on a stem of grass, and wait for him, then move on again; and as she caught the trail in the air that their bodies left behind, Father Gomez found himself praising God for his mission, because it was clearer than ever that the boy and the girl were walking into mortal sin.
He watched them go in among the trees. They hadn’t looked back once since coming over the top of the ridge, but he still kept low, moving down the stream at a crouch, holding the rifle in one hand, balancing with the other.
He was so close to success now that for the first time he found himself speculating on what he would do afterward, and whether he would please the Kingdom of Heaven more by going back to Geneva or staying to evangelize this world. The first thing to do here would be to convince the four-legged creatures, who seemed to have the rudiments of reason, that their habit of riding on wheels was abominable and Satanic, and contrary to the will of God. Break them of that, and salvation would follow.
He reached the foot of the slope, where the trees began, and laid the rifle down silently.
He gazed into the silver-green-gold shadows, and listened, with both hands behind his ears to catch and focus any quiet voices through the insect chirping and the trickle of the stream. Yes: there they were. They’d stopped.
He bent to pick up the rifle—
And found himself uttering a hoarse and breathless gasp, as something clutched his dæmon and pulled her away from him.
But there was nothing there! Where was she? The pain was atrocious. He heard her crying, and cast about wildly to left and right, looking for her.
“Keep still,” said a voice from the air, “and be quiet. I have your dæmon in my hand.”
“But—where are you? Who are you?”
“My name is Balthamos,” said the voice.
Will and Lyra followed the stream into the wood, walking carefully, saying little, until they were in the very center.
There was a little clearing in the middle of the grove, which was floored with soft grass and moss-covered rocks. The branches laced across overhead, almost shutting out the sky and letting through little moving spangles and sequins of sunlight, so that everything was dappled with gold and silver.
And it was quiet. Only the trickle of the stream, and the occasional rustle of leaves high up in a little curl of breeze, broke the silence.
Will put down the package of food; Lyra put down her little rucksack. There was no sign of the dæmon shadows anywhere. They were completely alone.
They took off their shoes and socks and sat down on the mossy rocks at the edge of the stream, dipping their feet in the cold water and feeling the shock of it invigorate their blood.
“I’m hungry,” Will said.
“Me too,” said Lyra, though she was also feeling more than that, something subdued and pressing and half-happy and half-painful, so that she wasn’t quite sure what it was.
They unfolded the cloth and ate some bread and cheese. For some reason their hands were slow and clumsy, and they hardly tasted the food, although the bread was floury and crisp from the hot baking-stones, and the cheese was flaky and salty and very fresh.
Then Lyra took one of those little red fruits. With a fast-beating heart, she turned to him and said, “Will…”
And she lifted the fruit gently to his mouth.
She could see from his eyes that he knew at once what she meant, and that he was too joyful to speak. Her fingers were still at his lips, and he felt them tremble, and he put his own hand up to hold hers there, and then neither of them could look; they were confused; they were brimming with happiness.
Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happened, they were clinging together, blindly pressing their faces toward each other.
“Like Mary said,” he whispered, “you know straight away when you like someone—when you were asleep, on the mountain, before she took you away, I told Pan—”
“I heard,” she whispered, “I was awake and I wanted to tell you the same and now I know what I must have felt all the time: I love you, Will, I love you—”
The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her body and her warm, honey-fragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit.
Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.
Balthamos was terrified.
He moved up the stream and away from the wood, holding the scratching, stinging, biting insect dæmon, and trying to conceal himself as much as he could from the man who was stumbling after them.
He mustn’t let him catch up. He knew that Father Gomez would kill him in a moment. An angel of his rank was no match for a man, even if that angel was strong and healthy, and Balthamos was neither of those; besides which, he was crippled by grief over Baruch and shame at having deserted Will before. He no longer even had the strength to fly.
“Stop, stop,” said Father Gomez. “Please keep still. I can’t see you—let’s talk, please—don’t hurt my dæmon, I beg you—”
In fact, the dæmon was hurting Balthamos. The angel could see the little green thing dimly through the backs of his clasped hands, and she was sinking her powerful jaws again and again into his palms. If he opened his hands just for a moment, she would be gone. Balthamos kept them closed.
“This way,” he said, “follow me. Come away from the wood. I want to talk to you, and this is the wrong place.”
“But who are you? I can’t see you. Come closer—how can I tell what you are till I see you? Keep still, don’t move so quickly!”
But moving quickly was the only defense Balthamos had. Trying to ignore the stinging dæmon, he picked his way up the little gully where the stream ran, stepping from rock to rock.
Then he made a mistake: trying to look behind him, he slipped and put a foot into the water.
“Ah,” came a whisper of satisfaction as Father Gomez saw the splash.
Balthamos withdrew his foot at once and hurried on—but now a wet print appeared on the dry rocks each time he put his foot down. The priest saw it and leapt forward, and felt the brush of feathers on his hand.
He stopped in astonishment: the word angel reverberated in his mind. Balthamos seized the moment to stumble forward again, and the priest felt himself dragged after him as another brutal pang wrenched his heart.
Balthamos said over his shoulder, “A little farther, just to the top of the ridge, and we shall talk, I promise.”
“Talk here! Stop where you are, and I swear I shan’t touch you!”
The angel didn’t reply: it was too hard to concentrate. He had to split his attention three ways: behind him to avoid the man, ahead to see where he was going, and on the furious dæmon tormenting his hands.
As for the priest, his mind was working quickly. A truly dangerous opponent would have killed his dæmon at once, and ended the matter there and then; this antagonist was afraid to strike.
With that in mind he let himself stumble, and uttered little moans of pain, and pleaded once or twice for the other to stop—all the time watching closely, moving nearer, estimating how big the other was, how quickly he could move, which way he was looking.
“Please,” he said brokenly, “you don’t know how much this hurts—I can’t do you any harm—please can we stop and talk?”
He didn’t want to move out of sight of the wood. They were now at the point where the stream began, and he could see the shape of Balthamos’s feet very li
ghtly pressing the grass. The priest had watched every inch of the way, and he was sure now where the angel was standing.
Balthamos turned around. The priest raised his eyes to the place where he thought the angel’s face would be, and saw him for the first time: just a shimmer in the air, but there was no mistaking it.
The angel wasn’t quite close enough to reach in one movement, though, and in truth the pull on his dæmon had been painful and weakening. Maybe he should take another step or two…
“Sit down,” said Balthamos. “Sit down where you are. Not a step closer.”
“What do you want?” said Father Gomez, not moving.
“What do I want? I want to kill you, but I haven’t got the strength.”
“But are you an angel?”
“What does it matter?”
“You might have made a mistake. We might be on the same side.”
“No, we’re not. I have been following you. I know whose side you’re on—no, no, don’t move. Stay there.”
“It’s not too late to repent. Even angels are allowed to do that. Let me hear your confession.”
“Oh, Baruch, help me!” cried Balthamos in despair, turning away.
And as he cried out, Father Gomez leapt for him. His shoulder hit the angel’s, and knocked Balthamos off balance; and in throwing out a hand to save himself, the angel let go of the insect dæmon. The beetle flew free at once, and Father Gomez felt a surge of relief and strength. In fact, it was that which killed him, to his great surprise. He hurled himself so hard at the faint form of the angel, and he expected so much more resistance than he met, that he couldn’t keep his balance. His foot slipped; his momentum carried him down toward the stream; and Balthamos, thinking of what Baruch would have done, kicked aside the priest’s hand as he flung it out for support.
Father Gomez fell hard. His head cracked against a stone, and he fell stunned with his face in the water. The cold shock woke him at once, but as he choked and feebly tried to rise, Balthamos, desperate, ignored the dæmon stinging his face and his eyes and his mouth, and used all the little weight he had to hold the man’s head down in the water, and he kept it there, and kept it there, and kept it there.
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