Philip Pullman: The Subtle Knife

When his skin had dried a little, he pulled on his jeans and looked for somewhere he'd be likely to find food. The hotels were too grand. He looked inside the first hotel, but it was so large that he felt uncomfortable, and he kept moving down the waterfront until he found a little caf6 that looked like the right place. He couldn't have said why; it was very similar to a dozen others, with its first-floor balcony laden with flowerpots and its tables and chairs on the pavement outside, but it welcomed him.

There was a bar with photographs of boxers on the wall, and a signed poster of a broadly smiling accordion player. There was a kitchen, and a door beside it that opened on to a narrow flight of stairs, carpeted in a bright floral pattern.

He climbed quietly up to the narrow landing and opened the first door he came to. It was the room at the front. The air was hot and stuffy, and Will opened the glass door onto the balcony to let in the night air. The room itself was small and furnished with things that were too big for it, and shabby, but it was clean and comfortable. Hospitable people lived here. There was a little shelf of books, a magazine on the table, a couple of photographs in frames.

Will left and looked in the other rooms: a little bathroom, a bedroom with a double bed.

Something made his skin prickle before he opened the last door. His heart raced. He wasn't sure if he'd heard a sound from inside, but something told him that the room wasn't empty. He thought how odd it was that this day had begun with someone outside a darkened room, and himself waiting inside; and now the positions were reversed —

And as he stood wondering, the door burst open and something came hurtling at him like a wild beast.

But his memory had warned him, and he wasn't standing quite close enough to be knocked over. He fought hard: knee, head, fist, and the strength of his arms against it, him, her — a girl about his own age, ferocious, snarling, with ragged dirty clothes and thin bare limbs.

She realized what he was at the same moment, and snatched herself away from his bare chest to crouch in the corner of the dark landing like a cat at bay. And there was a cat beside her, to his astonishment: a large wildcat, as tall as his knee, fur on end, teeth bared, tail erect.

She put her hand on the cat's back and licked her dry lips, watching his every movement.

Will stood up slowly.

«Who are you?»

«Lyra Silvertongue,» she said.

«Do you live here?»

«No,» she said vehemently.

«Then what is this place? This city?»

«I don't know.»

«Where do you come from?»

«From my world. It's joined on. Where's your daemon?»

His eyes widened. Then he saw something extraordinary happen to the cat: it leaped into her arms, and when it got there, it changed shape. Now it was a red-brown stoat with a cream throat and belly, and it glared at him as ferociously as the girl herself. But then another shift in things took place, because he realized that they, both girl and stoat, were profoundly afraid of him, as much as if he'd been a ghost.

«I haven't got a demon,» he said. «I don't know what you mean.» Then, «Oh! Is that your demon?»

She stood up slowly. The stoat curled himself around her neck, and his dark eyes never left Will's face.

«But you're alive,» she said, half-disbelievingly. «You en't… You en't been .. .»

«My name's Will Parry,» he said. «I don't know what you mean about demons. In my world demon means … it means devil, something evil.»

«In your world? You mean this en't your world?»

«No. I just found… a way in. Like your world, I suppose. It must be joined on.»

She relaxed a little, but she still watched him intently, and he stayed calm and quiet as if she were a strange cat he was making friends with.

«Have you seen anyone else in this city?» he went on.

«No.»

«How long have you been here?»

«Dunno. A few days. I can't remember.»

«So why did you come here?»

«I'm looking for Dust,» she said.

«Looking for dust? What, gold dust? What sort of dust?»

She narrowed her eyes and said nothing. He turned away to go downstairs.

«I'm hungry,» he said. «Is there any food in the kitchen?»

«I dunno,» she said, and followed, keeping her distance from him.

In the kitchen Will found the ingredients for a casserole of chicken and onions and peppers, but they hadn't been cooked, and in the heat they were smelling bad. He swept them all into the dustbin.

«Haven't you eaten anything?» he said, and opened the fridge.

Lyra came to look.

«I didn't know this was here,» she said. «Oh! It's cold.»

Her daemon had changed again, and become a huge, brightly colored butterfly, which fluttered into the fridge briefly and out again at once to settle on her shoulder. The butterfly raised and lowered his wings slowly. Will felt he shouldn't stare, though his head was ringing with the strangeness of it.

«Haven't you seen a fridge before?» he said.

He found a can of cola and handed it to her before taking out a tray of eggs. She pressed the can between her palms with pleasure.

«Drink it, then,» he said.

She looked at it, frowning. She didn't know how to open it. He snapped the lid for her, and the drink frothed out. She licked it suspiciously, and then her eyes opened wide.

«This is good?» she said, her voice half hoping and half fearful.

«Yeah. They have Coke in this world, obviously. Look, I'll drink some to prove it isn't poison.»

He opened another can. Once she saw him drink, she followed his example. She was obviously thirsty. She drank so quickly that the bubbles got up her nose, and she snorted and belched loudly, and scowled when he looked at her.

«I'm going to make an omelette,» he said. «D'you want some?»

«I don't know what omelette is.»

«Well, watch and you'll see. Or there's a can of baked beans, if you'd like.»

«I don't know baked beans.»

He showed her the can. She looked for the snap-open top like the one on the cola can.

«No, you have to use a can opener,» he said. «Don't they have can openers in your world?»

«In my world servants do the cooking,» she said scornfully.

«Look in the drawer over there.»

She rummaged through the kitchen cutlery while he broke six eggs into a bowl and whisked them with a fork.

«That's it,» he said, watching. «With the red handle. Bring it here.»

He pierced the lid and showed her how to open the can.

«Now get that little saucepan off the hook and tip them in,» he told her.

She sniffed the beans, and again an expression of pleasure and suspicion entered her eyes. She tipped the can into the saucepan and licked a finger, watching as Will shook salt and pepper into the eggs and cut a knob of butter from a package in the fridge into a cast-iron pan. He went into the bar to find some matches, and when he came back she was dipping her dirty finger in the bowl of beaten eggs and licking it greedily. Her daemon, a cat again, was dipping his paw in it, too, but he backed away when Will came near.

«It's not cooked yet,» Will said, taking it away. «When did you last have a meal?»

«At my father's house on Svalbard,» she said. «Days and days ago. I don't know. I found bread and stuff here and ate that.»

He lit the gas, melted the butter, poured in the eggs, and let them run all over the base of it. Her eyes followed everything greedily, watching him pull the eggs up into soft ridges in the center as they cooked and tilt the pan to let raw egg flow into the space. She watched him, too, looking at his face and his working hands and his bare shoulders and his feet.

When the omelette was cooked he folded it over and cut it in half with the spatula.