Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass

And it was coming apart… No, something was getting off its back.

The something was a man.

She could see him quite clearly, even at that distance; the moonlight was brilliant, and her eyes were adjusted to it. She looked through the spyglass, and put the matter beyond doubt: it was a human figure, radiating Dust.

He was carrying something: a long stick of some kind. He came along the path quickly and easily, not running, but moving like an athlete or a hunter. He was dressed in simple dark clothes that would normally conceal him well; but through the spyglass he showed up as if he were under a spotlight.

And as he came closer to the village, she realized what that stick was. He was carrying a rifle.

She felt as if someone had poured icy water over her heart. Every separate hair on her flesh stirred.

She was too far away to do anything: even if she’d shouted, he wouldn’t have heard. She had to watch as he stepped into the village, looking to the left and right, stopping every so often to listen, moving from house to house.

Mary’s mind felt like the moon and the clouds trying to hold back the Dust as she cried out silently: Don’t look under the tree – go away from the tree –

But he moved closer and closer to it, finally stopping outside her own house. She couldn’t bear it; she put the spyglass in her pocket and began to run down the slope. She was about to call out, anything, a wild cry, but just in time she realized that it might wake Will or Lyra and make them reveal themselves, and she choked it back.

Then, because she couldn’t bear not knowing what the man was doing, she stopped and fumbled for the spyglass again, and had to stand still while she looked through it.

He was opening the door of her house. He was going inside it. He vanished from sight, although there was a stir in the Dust he left behind, like smoke when a hand is passed through it. Mary waited for an endless minute, and then he appeared again.

He stood in her doorway, looking around slowly from left to right, and his gaze swept past the tree.

Then he stepped off the threshold and stood still, almost at a loss. Mary was suddenly conscious of how exposed she was on the bare hillside, an easy rifle shot away, but he was only interested in the village; and when another minute or so had gone by, he turned and walked quietly away.

She watched every step he took down the river path, and saw quite clearly how he stepped onto the bird’s back and sat cross‑legged as it turned to glide away. Five minutes later they were lost to sight.

“Dr. Malone,” said Lyra in the morning, “Will and me have got to look for our daemons. When we’ve found them, we’ll know what to do. But we can’t be without them for much longer. So we just want to go and look.”

“Where will you go?” said Mary, heavy‑eyed and headachy after her disturbed night. She and Lyra were on the riverbank, Lyra to wash, and Mary to look, surreptitiously, for the man’s footprints. So far she hadn’t found any.

“Don’t know,” said Lyra. “But they’re out there somewhere. As soon as we came through from the battle, they ran away as if they didn’t trust us anymore. Can’t say I blame them, either. But we know they’re in this world, and we thought we saw them a couple of times, so maybe we can find them.”

“Listen,” Mary said reluctantly, and told Lyra about the man she’d seen the night before.

As she spoke, Will came to join them, and both he and Lyra listened, wide‑eyed and serious.

“He’s probably just a traveler and he found a window and wandered through from somewhere else,” Lyra said when Mary had finished. “Like Will’s father did. There’s bound to be all kinds of openings now. Anyway, if he just turned around and left, he can’t have meant to do anything bad, can he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t like it. And I’m worried about you going off on your own – or I would be if I didn’t know you’d already done far more dangerous things than that. Oh, I don’t know. But please be careful. Please look all around. At least out on the prairie you can see someone coming from a long way off…”

“If we do, we can escape straight away into another world, so he won’t be able to hurt us,” Will said.

They were determined to go, and Mary was reluctant to argue.

“At least,” she said, “promise that you won’t go in among the trees. If that man is still around, he might be hiding in a wood or a grove and you wouldn’t see him in time to escape.”

“We promise,” said Lyra.

“Well, I’ll pack you some food in case you’re out all day.”

Mary took some flat bread and cheese and some sweet, thirst‑quenching red fruits, wrapped them in a cloth, and tied a cord around it for one of them to carry over a shoulder.

“Good hunting,” she said as they left. “Please take care.”

She was still anxious. She stood watching them all the way to the foot of the slope.

“I wonder why she’s so sad,” Will said as he and Lyra climbed the road up to the ridge.

“She’s probably wondering if she’ll ever go home again,” said Lyra. “And if her laboratory’ll still be hers when she does. And maybe she’s sad about the man she was in love with.”

“Mmm,” said Will. “D’you think we’ll ever go home?”

“Dunno. I don’t suppose I’ve got a home anyway. They probably couldn’t have me back at Jordan College, and I can’t live with the bears or the witches. Maybe I could live with the gyptians. I wouldn’t mind that, if they’d have me.”

“What about Lord Asriel’s world? Wouldn’t you want to live there?”

“It’s going to fail, remember,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because of what your father’s ghost said, just before we came out. About daemons, and how they can only live for a long time if they stay in their own world. But probably Lord Asriel, I mean my father, couldn’t have thought about that, because no one knew enough about other worlds when he started… All that,” she said wonderingly, “all that bravery and skill… All that, all wasted! All for nothing!”

They climbed on, finding the going easy on the rock road, and when they reached the top of the ridge, they stopped and looked back.

“Will,” she said, “supposing we don’t find them?”

“I’m sure we will. What I’m wondering is what my daemon will be like.”

“You saw her. And I picked her up,” Lyra said, blushing, because of course it was a gross violation of manners to touch something so private as someone else’s daemon. It was forbidden not only by politeness, but by something deeper than that – something like shame. A quick glance at Will’s warm cheeks showed that he knew that just as well as she did.

They walked on side-by-side, suddenly shy with each other. But Will, not put off by being shy, said, “When does your daemon stop changing shape?”

“About… I suppose about our age, or a bit older. Maybe more sometimes. We used to talk about Pan settling, him and me. We used to wonder what he’d be – ”

“Don’t people have any idea?”

“Not when they’re young. As you grow up you start thinking, well, they might be this or they might be that… And usually they end up something that fits. I mean something like your real nature. Like if your daemon’s a dog, that means you like doing what you’re told, and knowing who’s boss, and following orders, and pleasing people who are in charge. A lot of servants are people whose daemons are dogs. So it helps to know what you’re like and to find what you’d be good at. How do people in your world know what they’re like?”