The two daemons moved through the silent village, in and out of the shadows, padding cat-formed across the moonlit gathering-floor, pausing outside the open door of Mary's house.
Cautiously they looked inside and saw only the sleeping woman; so they withdrew and moved through the moonlight again, toward the shelter tree.
Its long branches trailed their fragrant corkscrew leaves almost down to the ground. Very slowly, very careful not to rustle a leaf or snap a fallen twig, the two shapes slipped in through the leaf curtain and saw what they were seeking: the boy and the girl, fast asleep in each other's arms.
They moved closer over the grass and touched the sleepers softly with nose, paw, whiskers, bathing in the life-giving warmth they gave off, but being infinitely careful not to wake them.
As they checked their people (gently cleaning Will's fast-healing wound, lifting the lock of hair off Lyra's face), there was a soft sound behind them.
Instantly, in total silence, both daemons sprang around, becoming wolves: mad light eyes, bare white teeth, menace in every line.
A woman stood there, outlined by the moon. It was not Mary, and when she spoke, they heard her clearly, though her voice made no sound.
"Come with me," she said.
Pantalaimon's daemon heart leapt within him, but he said nothing until he could greet her away from the sleepers under the tree.
"Serafina Pekkala!" he said joyfully. "Where have you been? Do you know what's happened?"
"Hush. Let's fly to a place where we can talk," she said, mindful of the sleeping villagers.
Her branch of cloud-pine lay by the door of Mary's house, and as she took it up, the two daemons changed into birds - a nightingale, an owl - and flew with her over the thatched roofs, over the grasslands, over the ridge, and toward the nearest wheel tree grove, as huge as a castle, its crown looking like curds of silver in the moonlight.
There Serafina Pekkala settled on the highest comfortable branch, among the open flowers drinking in the Dust, and the two birds perched nearby.
"You won't be birds for long," she said. "Very soon now your shapes will settle. Look around and take this sight into your memory."
"What will we be?" said Pantalaimon.
"You'll find out sooner than you think. Listen," said Serafina Pekkala, "and I'll tell you some witch-lore that none but witches know. The reason I can do that is that you are here with me, and your humans are down there, sleeping. Who are the only people for whom that is possible?"
"Witches," said Pantalaimon, "and shamans. So..."
"In leaving you both on the shores of the world of the dead, Lyra and Will did something, without knowing it, that witches have done since the first time there were witches. There's a region of our north land, a desolate, abominable place, where a great catastrophe happened in the childhood of the world, and where nothing has lived since. No daemons can enter it. To become a witch, a girl must cross it alone and leave her daemon behind. You know the suffering they must undergo.
But having done it, they find that their daemons were not severed, as in Bolvangar; they are still one whole being; but now they can roam free, and go to far places and see strange things and bring back knowledge.
"And you are not severed, are you?"
"No," said Pantalaimon. "We are still one. But it was so painful, and we were so frightened..."
"Well," said Serafina, "the two of them will not fly like witches, and they will not live as long as we do; but thanks to what they did, you and they are witch in all but that."
The two daemons considered the strangeness of this knowledge.
"Does that mean we shall be birds, like witches' daemons?" said Pantalaimon.
"Be patient."
"And how can Will be a witch? I thought all witches were female."
"Those two have changed many things. We are all learning new ways, even witches. But one thing hasn't changed: you must help your humans, not hinder them. You must help them and guide them and encourage them toward wisdom. That's what daemons are for."
They were silent. Serafina turned to the nightingale and said, "What is your name?"
"I have no name. I didn't know I was born until I was torn away from his heart."
"Then I shall name you Kirjava."
"Kirjava," said Pantalaimon, trying the sound. "What does it mean?"
"Soon you will see what it means. But now," Serafina went on, "you must listen carefully, because I'm going to tell you what you should do."
"No," said Kirjava forcefully.
Serafina said gently, "I can hear from your tone that you know what I'm going to say."
"We don't want to hear it!" said Pantalaimon.
"It's too soon," said the nightingale. "It's much too soon."
Serafina was silent, because she agreed with them, and she felt sorrowful. She was the wisest one there, and she had to guide them to what was right; but she let their agitation subside before she went on.
"Where did you go, in your wanderings?" she said.
"Through many worlds," said Pantalaimon. "Everywhere we found a window, we went through. There are more windows than we thought."
"And you saw - "
"Yes," said Kirjava, "we looked closely, and we saw what was happening."
"We saw many other things. We met an angel," said Pantalaimon quickly. "And we saw the world where the little people come from, the Gallivespians. There are big people there, too, who try and kill them."
They told the witch more of what they'd seen, and they were trying to distract her, and she knew it; but she let them talk, because of the love each one had for the other's voice.
But eventually they ran out of things to tell her, and they fell silent. The only sound was the gentle, endless whisper of the leaves, until Serafina Pekkala said:
"You have been keeping away from Will and Lyra to punish them. I know why you're doing that; my Kaisa did just the same after I came through the desolate barrens. But he came to me eventually, because we loved each other still. And they will need you soon to help them do what has to be done next. Because you have to tell them what you know."
Pantalaimon cried aloud, a pure, cold owl cry, a sound never heard in that world before. In nests and burrows for a long way around, and wherever any small night creature was hunting or grazing or scavenging, a new and unforgettable fear came into being.
Serafina watched from close by, and felt nothing but compassion until she looked at Will's daemon, Kirjava the nightingale. She remembered talking to the witch Ruta Skadi, who had asked, after seeing Will only once, if Serafina had looked into his eyes; and Serafina had replied that she had not dared to. This little brown bird was radiating an implacable ferocity as palpable as heat, and Serafina was afraid of it.
Finally Pantalaimon's wild screaming died away, and Kirjava said:
"And we have to tell them."
"Yes, you do," said the witch gently.
Gradually the ferocity left the gaze of the little brown bird, and Serafina could look at her again. She saw a desolate sadness in its place.
"There is a ship coming," Serafina said. "I left it to fly here and find you. I came with the gyptians, all the way from our world. They will be here in another day or so."
The two birds sat close, and in a moment they had changed their forms, becoming two doves.
Serafina went on: "This may be the last time you fly. I can see a little ahead; I can see that you will both be able to climb this high as long as there are trees this size; but I think you will not be birds when your forms settle. Take in all that you can, and remember it well. I know that you and Lyra and Will are going to think hard and painfully, and I know you will make the best choice. But it is yours to make, and no one else's."
They didn't speak. She took her branch of cloud-pine and lifted away from the towering treetops, circling high above, feeling on her skin the coolness of the breeze and the tingle of the starlight and the benevolent sifting of that Dust she had never seen.
She flew down to the village once more and went silently into the woman's house. She knew nothing about Mary except that she came from the same world as Will, and that her part in the events was crucial. Whether she was fierce or friendly, Serafina had no way of telling; but she had to wake Mary up without startling her, and there was a spell for that.
She sat on the floor at the woman's head and watched through half-closed eyes, breathing in and out in time with her. Presently her half-vision began to show her the pale forms that Mary was seeing in her dreams, and she adjusted her mind to resonate with them, as if she were tuning a string. Then with a further effort Serafina herself stepped in among them. Once she was there, she could speak to Mary, and she did so with the instant easy affection that we sometimes feel for people we meet in dreams.
A moment later they were talking together in a murmured rush of which Mary later remembered nothing, and walking through a silly landscape of reed beds and electrical transformers. It was time for Serafina to take charge.
"In a few moments," she said, "you'll wake up. Don't be alarmed. You'll find me beside you. I'm waking you like this so you'll know it's quite safe and there's nothing to hurt you. And then we can talk properly."
She withdrew, taking the dream-Mary with her, until she found herself in the house again, cross-legged on the earthen floor, with Mary's eyes glittering as they looked at her.
"You must be the witch," Mary whispered.
"I am. My name is Serafina Pekkala. What are you called?"
"Mary Malone. I've never been woken so quietly. Am I awake?"
"Yes. We must talk together, and dream talk is hard to control, and harder to remember. It's better to talk awake. Do you prefer to stay inside, or will you walk with me in the moonlight?"
"I'll come," said Mary, sitting up and stretching. "Where are the others?"
"Asleep under the tree."
They moved out of the house and past the tree with its curtain of all-concealing leaves, and walked down to the river.
Mary watched Serafina Pekkala with a mixture of wariness and admiration: she had never seen a human form so slender and graceful. She seemed younger than Mary herself, though Lyra had said she was hundreds of years old; the only hint of age came in her expression, which was full of a complicated sadness.
They sat on the bank over the silver-black water, and Serafina told her that she had spoken to the children's daemons.
"They went looking for them today," Mary said, "but something else happened. Will's never seen his daemon. He didn't know for certain that he had one."
"Well, he has. And so have you."
Mary stared at her.
"If you could see him," Serafina went on, "you would see a black bird with red legs and a bright yellow beak, slightly curved. A bird of the mountains."
"An Alpine chough... How can you see him?"
"With my eyes half-closed, I can see him. If we had time, I could teach you to see him, too, and to see the daemons of others in your world. It's strange for us to think you can't see them."
Then she told Mary what she had said to the daemons, and what it meant.
"And the daemons will have to tell them?" Mary said.
"I thought of waking them to tell them myself. I thought of telling you and letting you have the responsibility. But I saw their daemons, and I knew that would be best."
"They're in love."
"I know."
"They've only just discovered it..."
Mary tried to take in all the implications of what Serafina had told her, but it was too hard.
After a minute or so Mary said, "Can you see Dust?"
"No, I've never seen it, and until the wars began, we had never heard of it."
Mary took the spyglass from her pocket and handed it to the witch. Serafina put it to her eye and gasped.
"That is Dust... It's beautiful!"
"Turn to look back at the shelter tree."
Serafina did and exclaimed again. "They did this?" she said.
"Something happened today, or yesterday if it's after midnight," Mary said, trying to find the words to explain, and remembering her vision of the Dust flow as a great river like the Mississippi. "Something tiny but crucial... If you wanted to divert a mighty river into a different course, and all you had was a single pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this. Something like that happened yesterday. I don't know what it was. They saw each other differently, or something... Until then, they hadn't felt like that, but suddenly they did. And then the Dust was attracted to them, very powerfully, and it stopped flowing the other way."
"So that was how it was to happen!" said Serafina, marveling. "And now it's safe, or it will be when the angels fill the great chasm in the underworld."
She told Mary about the abyss, and about how she herself had found out.
"I was flying high," she explained, "looking for a landfall, and I met an angel: a female angel. She was very strange; she was old and young together," she went on, forgetting that that was how she herself appeared to Mary. "Her name was Xaphania. She told me many things... She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed. She gave me many examples from my world."
"I can think of many from mine."
"And for most of that time, wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies."
"Yes," said Mary, "I recognize that, too."
"And the struggle isn't over now, though the forces of the Kingdom have met a setback. They'll regroup under a new commander and come back strongly, and we must be ready to resist."
"But what happened to Lord Asriel?" said Mary.
"He fought the Regent of Heaven, the angel Metatron, and he wrestled him down into the abyss. Metatron is gone forever. So is Lord Asriel."
Mary caught her breath. "And Mrs. Coulter?" she said.
As an answer the witch took an arrow from her quiver. She took her time selecting it: the best, the straightest, the most perfectly balanced.
And she broke it in two.
"Once in my world," she said, "I saw that woman torturing a witch, and I swore to myself that I would send that arrow into her throat. Now I shall never do that. She sacrificed herself with Lord Asriel to fight the angel and make the world safe for Lyra. They could not have done it alone, but together they did it."
Mary, distressed, said, "How can we tell Lyra?"
"Wait until she asks," said Serafina. "And she might not. In any case, she has her symbol reader; that will tell her anything she wants to know."
They sat in silence for a while, companionably, as the stars slowly wheeled in the sky.
"Can you see ahead and guess what they'll choose to do?" said Mary.
"No, but if Lyra returns to her own world, then I will be her sister as long as she lives. What will you do?"
"I..." Mary began, and found she hadn't considered that for a moment. "I suppose I belong in my own world. Though I'll be sorry to leave this one; I've been very happy here. The happiest I've ever been in my life, I think."
"Well, if you do return home, you shall have a sister in another world," said Serafina, "and so shall I. We shall see each other again in a day or so, when the ship arrives, and we'll talk more on the voyage home; and then we'll part forever. Embrace me now, sister."
Mary did so, and Serafina Pekkala flew away on her cloud-pine branch over the reeds, over the marshes, over the mudflats and the beach, and over the sea, until Mary could see her no more.
At about the same time, one of the large blue lizards came across the body of Father Gomez. Will and Lyra had returned to the village that afternoon by a different route and hadn't seen it; the priest lay undisturbed where Balthamos had laid him. The lizards were scavengers, but they were mild and harmless creatures, and by an ancient understanding with the mulefa, they were entitled to take any creature left dead after dark.
The lizard dragged the priest's body back to her nest, and her children feasted very well. As for the rifle, it lay in the grass where Father Gomez had laid it down, quietly turning to rust.
