“Did you love Farder Coram?”
“I see. So youre towing the balloon to Svalbard for the gyp-tians sake. And does that friendship extend to towing us back again? Or will I have to wait for a kindly wind, and depend on the indulgence of the bears in the meantime? Once again, maam, Im asking merely in a spirit of friendly enquiry.”
Did you know that?”
“I dont know, but I know he loves you.”
“How long do witches live, Serafina Pekkala? Farder Coram says hundreds of years. But you dont look old at all.”
“We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born.”
“He never said! Was it a girl? A witch?”
“He never would,” said Lyra stoutly. “You oughter go and see him. He still loves you, I know he does.”
“Whatever they were doing at Bolvangar, we felt it was wrong with all our hearts. Lyra is their enemy; so we are her friends. We dont see more clearly than that. But also there is my clans friendship for the gyptian people, which goes back to the time when Farder Coram saved my life. We are doing this at their bidding. And they have ties of obligation with Lord Asriel.”
For the first time the witch seemed unsure.
“He wont want to go back to Oxford, Lyra. It seems that there is something to be done in another world, and Lord Asriel is the only one who can bridge the gulf between that world and this. But he needs something to help him.”
“Yeah! Were different from them all right....Like bears. Theyre strange, ent they, bears? You think theyre like a person, and then suddenly they do something so strange or ferocious you think youll never understand them....But you know what lorek said to me, he said that his armor for him was like what a daemon is for a person. Its his soul, he said. But thats where theyre different again, because he made this armor his-self. They took his first armor away when they sent him into exile, and he found some sky iron and made some new armor, like making a new soul. We cant make our daemons. Then the people at Trollesund, they got him drunk on spirits and stole it away, and I found out where it was and he got it back....But what I wonder is, whys he coming to Svalbard? Theyll fight him. They might kill him....I love lorek. I love him so much I wish he wasnt coming.”
Serafina Pekkala said nothing for a long time. Pantalaimon became a tern and flew to her branch for a second, to acknowledge that perhaps they had been insolent.
“The alethiometer would tell me! I could read it now....”
“Are there men witches? Or only women?”
“Sure, when Im paid. But the fact is, I thought this was a straightforward transportation contract, and I charged according. And Im awondering now, after that little dust-up down there, Im a wondering how far my transportation responsibility extends. Whether Im bound to risk my life and my equipment in a war among the bears, for example. Or whether this little child has enemies on Svalbard as hot-tempered as the ones back at Bolvangar. I merely mention all this by way of making conversation.”
“There are men who serve us, like the consul at Trollesund. And there are men we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and youll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isnt. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches lives are as brief as mens are to us.”
“More than she will know,” Serafina Pekkala said.
“It depends on the weather. Well try to avoid the cliffs, though. There are creatures living there who prey on anything that moves. If we can, well set you down in the interior, away from lofur Raknisons palace.”
“There may be fighting,” said Serafina Pekkala. “But you have fought before.”
“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If shes told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...”
“Never. I heard of his deeds; I heard how he was wounded by the Skraelings, with a poisoned arrow, and I sent herbs and spells to help him recover, but I wasnt strong enough to see him. I heard how broken he was after that, and how his wisdom grew, how much he studied and read, and I was proud of him and his goodness. But I stayed away, for they were dangerous times for my clan, and witch wars were threatening, and besides, I thought he would forget me and find a human wife....”
“You speak of destiny,” he said, “as if it was fixed. And I aint sure I like that any more than a war Im enlisted in without knowing about it. Wheres my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that shes just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she cant change?”
“I see that, maam, and I envy you; but I aint got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and Im just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I aint been told nothing about kinda troubling.”
“Mr. Scoresby,” said the witch, “I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier.”
“Everyone asks that, and no one knows the answer. As long as there have been human beings, they have had daemons. Its what makes us different from animals.”
“Oh, no doubt about that.”
“I dont know either, maam. I think hes attached himself to the little girl as a kind of protector. She helped him get his armor back, you see. Who knows what bears feel? But if a bear ever loved a human being, he loves her. As for landing on Svalbard, its never been easy. Still, if I can call on you for a tug in the right direction, Ill feel kinda easier in my mind; and if theres anything I can do for you in return, you only have to say. But just so as I know, would you mind telling me whose side Im on in this invisible war?”
When Lyra woke up, the moon was high in the sky, and everything in sight was silver-plated, from the roiling surface of the clouds below to the frost spears and icicles on the rigging of the balloon.
“The alethiometer!” Lyra said. “The Master of Jordan gave it to me and I thought there was something he wanted to say about Lord Asriel, except he never had the chance. I knew he didnt really want to poison him. Is he going to read it and see how to make the bridge? I bet I could help him. I can probably read it as good as anyone now.”
“So Id like to know what we can expect in the way of mayhem and ructions,” he finished.
“When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride and beauty. I loved him at once. I would have changed my nature, I would have forsaken the star-tingle and the music of the Aurora; I would never have flown again—I would have given all that up in a moment, without a thought, to be a gyptian boat wife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you cannot change what you are, only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human. I stayed with him for long enough to bear him a child....”
“Yes, I did know that. Lyra is carrying something of immense value, and it seems that the fates are using her as a messenger to take it to her father. So she came all this way to find her friend, not knowing that her friend was brought to the North by the fates, in order that she might follow and bring something to her father.”
“Does that mean theres gonna be much in the way of armed pursuit? You understand, Im speaking as a practical man with a living to earn. I cant afford to get busted up or shot to pieces without some kind of compensation agreed to in advance. I aint trying to lower the tone of this expedition, believe me, maam. But John Faa and the gyptians paid me a fee thats enough to cover my time and skill and the normal wear and tear on the balloon, and thats all. It didnt include acts-of-war insurance. And let me tell you, maam, when we land lorek Byrnison on Svalbard, that will count as an act of war.”
“Thats how you read it, huh?”
But it was too cold; she would never have managed to hold it. She bundled herself up and pulled the hood tight against the chill of the wind, leaving only a slit to look through. Far ahead, and a little below, the long rope extended from the suspension ring of the balloon, pulled by six or seven witches sitting on their cloud-pine branches. The stars shone as bright and cold and hard as diamonds.
“Well, Im kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, Ill break yer bones, but names aint worth a quarrel. But maam, you see my dilemma, I hope. Im a simple aeronaut, and Id like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when Ive got enough, maam, Im gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and Ill never leave the ground again.”
“No. A boy, and he died in the great epidemic of forty years ago, the sickness that came out of the East. Poor little child; he flickered into life and out of it like a mayfly. And it tore pieces out of my heart, as it always does. It broke Corams. And then the call came for me to return to my own people, because Yambe-Akka had taken my mother, and I was clan queen. So I left, as I had to.”
“I guess part of her knows that,” said the aeronaut. “Looks prepared for it, anyways. How about the little boy? You know she came all this way to save him from those fiends back there? They were playmates, back in Oxford or somewhere.
“Yes. Does he know that?”
Lee Scoresby arranged some furs over Lyra. She curled up close to Roger and they lay together asleep as the balloon swept on toward the Pole. The aeronaut checked his instruments from time to time, chewed on the cigar he would never light with the inflammable hydrogen so close, and huddled deeper into his own furs.
“Whats going to happen when I find Lord Asriel? Will he want to come back to Oxford, or what? I dont know if I ought to tell him I know hes my father, neither. He might want to pretend hes still my uncle. I dont hardly know him at all.”
“Oh, I like choice, though,” he said. “I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Dont you wish for a choice once in a while ?”
“Why ent you cold, Serafina Pekkala?”
“And what brought you into all this, if I can ask?”
“This little girls pretty important, huh?” he said after several minutes.
Then Lyra said, “Why do people have daemons, Serafina Pekkala?”
According to the altimeter, they were nearly ten thousand feet up. The temperature was minus 20 degrees. He had been colder than this, but not much, and he didnt want to get any colder now; so he unrolled the canvas sheet he used as an emergency bivouac, and spread it in front of the sleeping children to keep off the wind, before lying down back to back with his old comrade in arms, lorek Byrnison, and falling asleep.
“Did you never see Farder Coram again?”
“I am three hundred years or more. Our oldest witch mother is nearly a thousand.
“Theres another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.”
Serafina Pekkala considered, and then said, “Perhaps we dont mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so were not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We dont feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we dont consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?”
He spat a piece of smokeleaf delicately overboard.
“We feel cold, but we dont mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldnt feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. Its worth being cold for that.” “Could I feel them?”
Lee Scoresby wasnt concerned for his comfort so much as for his instruments, and he spent some time making sure they were securely lashed to the main struts.
“Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not.”
They looked down at Lyra, whose sleeping face (what little of it they could see inside her hood) wore a stubborn little frown.
“I dont know,” said Serafina Pekkala. “How hell do it, and what his task will be, we cant tell. There are powers who speak to us, and there are powers above them; and there are secrets even from the most high.”
“Where are we going to land?”
“No. You would die if you took your furs off. Stay wrapped up.”
“How far are we from Svalbard?” Lyra said.
“Perhaps he would. But you ought to send a message to him, at least. Thats what I think.”
“If we can help you back to Trollesund, Mr. Scoresby, we shall do so. But we dont know what we shall meet on Svalbard. The bears new king has made many changes; the old ways are out of favor; it might be a difficult landing. And I dont know how Lyra will find her way to her father. Nor do I know what lorek Byrnison has it in mind to do, except that his fate is involved with hers.”
“If we meet no winds, we shall be over Svalbard in twelve hours or so.”
One day, Yambe-Akka will come for her. One day shell come for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”
“We are both on Lyras side.”
“lorek Byrnisons quarrel with his king is part of it too,” said the witch.
“This child is destined to play a part in that.”
They flew on. Because of the clouds below there was no way of telling how fast they were going. Normally, of course, a balloon remained still with respect to the wind, floating at whatever speed the air itself was moving; but now, pulled by the witches, the balloon was moving through the air instead of with it, and resisting the movement, too, because the unwieldy gas bag had none of the streamlined smoothness of a zeppelin. As a result, the basket swung this way and that, rocking and bumping much more than on a normal flight.
“But he would be ashamed of his own age, and I wouldnt want to make him feel that.”
Roger was sleeping, and so were Lee Scoresby and the bear. Beside the basket, however, the witch queen was flying steadily.
“That is how it seems....But we cant read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”
