Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass

“So you can tell your father what you’ve seen,” Mrs. Coulter went on. “No evil spirit. Just my daughter, asleep under a spell, and in my care. But, please, Ama, tell your father that this must be a secret. No one but you two must know Lyra is here. If the enchanter knew where she was, he would seek her out and destroy her, and me, and everything nearby. So hush! Tell your father, and no one else.”

She knelt beside Lyra and smoothed the damp hair back from the sleeping face before bending low to kiss her daughter’s cheek. Then she looked up with sad and loving eyes, and smiled at Ama with such brave, wise compassion that the little girl felt tears fill her gaze.

Mrs. Coulter took Ama’s hand as they went back to the cave entrance, and saw the girl’s father watching anxiously from below. The woman put her hands together and bowed to him, and he responded with relief as his daughter, having bowed both to Mrs. Coulter and to the enchanted sleeper, turned and scampered down the slope in the twilight. Father and daughter bowed once more to the cave and then set off, to vanish among the gloom of the heavy rhododendrons.

Mrs. Coulter turned back to the water on her stove, which was nearly at the boil.

Crouching down, she crumbled some dried leaves into it, two pinches from this bag, one from that, and added three drops of a pale yellow oil. She stirred it briskly, counting in her head till five minutes had gone by. Then she took the pan off the stove and sat down to wait for the liquid to cool.

Around her there lay some of the equipment from the camp by the blue lake where Sir Charles Latrom had died: a sleeping bag, a rucksack with changes of clothes and washing equipment, and so on. There was also a case of canvas with a tough wooden frame, lined with kapok, containing various instruments; and there was a pistol in a holster.

The decoction cooled rapidly in the thin air, and as soon as it was at blood heat, she poured it carefully into a metal beaker and carried it to the rear of the cave. The monkey daemon dropped his pine cone and came with her.

Mrs. Coulter placed the beaker carefully on a low rock and knelt beside the sleeping Lyra. The golden monkey crouched on her other side, ready to seize Pantalaimon if he woke up.

Lyra’s hair was damp, and her eyes moved behind their closed lids. She was beginning to stir: Mrs. Coulter had felt her eyelashes flutter when she’d kissed her, and knew she didn’t have long before Lyra woke up altogether.

She slipped a hand under the girl’s head, and with the other lifted the damp strands of hair off her forehead. Lyra’s lips parted and she moaned softly; Pantalaimon moved a little closer to her breast. The golden monkey’s eyes never left Lyra’s daemon, and his little black fingers twitched at the edge of the sleeping bag.

A look from Mrs. Coulter, and he let go and moved back a hand’s breadth. The woman gently lifted her daughter so that her shoulders were off the ground and her head lolled, and then Lyra caught her breath and her eyes half‑opened, fluttering, heavy.

“Roger,” she murmured. “Roger… where are you… I can’t see…”

“Shh,” her mother whispered, “shh, my darling, drink this.”

Holding the beaker in Lyra’s mouth, she tilted it to let a drop moisten the girl’s lips. Lyra’s tongue sensed it and moved to lick them, and then Mrs. Coulter let a little more of the liquid trickle into Lyra’s mouth, very carefully, letting her swallow each sip before allowing her more.

It took several minutes, but eventually the beaker was empty, and Mrs. Coulter laid her daughter down again. As soon as Lyra’s head lay on the ground, Pantalaimon moved back around her throat. His red‑gold fur was as damp as her hair. They were deeply asleep again.

The golden monkey picked his way lightly to the mouth of the cave and sat once more watching the path. Mrs. Coulter dipped a flannel in a basin of cold water and mopped Lyra’s face, and then unfastened the sleeping bag and washed Lyra’s arms and neck and shoulders, for Lyra was hot. Then her mother took a comb and gently teased out the tangles in Lyra’s hair, smoothing it back from her forehead, parting it neatly.

She left the sleeping hag open so the girl could cool down, and unfolded the bundle that Ama had brought: some flat loaves of bread, a cake of compressed tea, some sticky rice wrapped in a large leaf. It was time to build the fire. The chill of the mountains was fierce at night. Working methodically, she shaved some dry tinder, set the fire, and struck a match. That was something else to think of: the matches were running out, and so was the naphtha for the stove; she must keep the fire alight day and night from now on.

Her daemon was discontented. He didn’t like what she was doing here in the cave, and when he tried to express his concern, she brushed him away. He turned his back, contempt in every line of his body as he flicked the scales from his pine cone out into the dark. She took no notice, but worked steadily and skillfully to build up the fire and set the pan to heat some water for tea.

Nevertheless, his skepticism affected her, and as she crumbled the dark gray tea brick into the water, she wondered what in the world she thought she was doing, and whether she had gone mad, and, over and over again, what would happen when the Church found out. The golden monkey was right. She wasn’t only hiding Lyra: she was hiding her own eyes.

Out of the dark the little boy came, hopeful and frightened, whispering over and over:

“Lyra, Lyra, Lyra…”

Behind him there were other figures, even more shadowy than he was, even more silent. They seemed to be of the same company and of the same kind, but they had no faces that were visible and no voices that spoke; and his voice never rose above a whisper, and his face was shaded and blurred like something half‑forgotten.

“Lyra… Lyra…”

Where were they?

On a great plain, where no light shone from the iron‑dark sky, and where a mist obscured the horizon on every side. The ground was bare earth, beaten flat by the pressure of millions of feet, even though those feet had less weight than feathers; so it must have been time that pressed it flat, even though time had been stilled in this place; so it must have been the way things were. This was the end of all places and the last of all worlds.

“Lyra…”

Why were they there?

They were imprisoned. Someone had committed a crime, though no one knew what it was, or who had done it, or what authority sat in judgment.

Why did the little boy keep calling Lyra’s name?

Hope.

Who were they?

Ghosts.

And Lyra couldn’t touch them, no matter how she tried. Her baffled hands moved through and through, and still the little boy stood there pleading.

“Roger,” she said, but her voice came out in a whisper. “Oh, Roger, where are you? What is this place?”

He said, “It’s the world of the dead, Lyra, I dunno what to do, I dunno if I’m here forever, and I dunno if I done bad things or what, because I tried to be good, but I hate it, I’m scared of it all, I hate it…”

And Lyra said, “I’ll

“Be quiet,” said Will, “just be quiet. Don’t disturb me.”

It was just after Lyra had been taken, just after Will had come down from the mountaintop, just after the witch had killed his father. Will lit the little tin lantern he’d taken from his father’s pack, using the dry matches that he’d found with it, and crouched in the lee of the rock to open Lyra’s rucksack.

He felt inside with his good hand and found the heavy velvet‑wrapped alethiometer. It glittered in the lantern light, and he held it out to the two shapes that stood beside him, the shapes who called themselves angels.