Read an Excerpt
The Break
Ama climbed the path to the cave, as she'd done for many days now, bread and milk in the bag on her back, a heavy puzzlement in her heart. How in the world could she ever manage to reach the sleeping girl? Would the woman never leave the cave for more than a few minutes?
Ama came to the rock where the woman had told her to leave the food since she wasn't allowed in the cave anymore. She put down the bag, but she didn't go straight home; she climbed a little farther, up past the cave and through the thick rhododendrons, and farther up still to where the trees thinned out and the rainbows began.
This part of the valley was where the streams and cascades ran most confusingly: shafts of green-white water would sink into potholes and emerge a little lower down, or gush upward in splintered fountains, or divide into myriad streamlets, or swirl round and round trapped in a whirlpool. When the world was frozen, spears and shelves and columns of glassy ice grew over every surface, and under it all, the water could still be heard gushing and tinkling, and spray still escaped to the air for the rainbows to form.
Ama and her dæmon climbed up over the rock shelves and around the little cataracts, past the whirlpools and through the spectrum-tinted spray, until her hair and her eyelids and his squirrel fur were beaded all over with a million tiny pearls of moisture. The game was to get to the top without wiping your eyes, despite the temptation, and the sunlight sparkled and fractured into red, yellow, green, blue, and every color between right in front of Ama's eyes, but she mustn't wipe her hand across to see better until she got right to the top, or the game would be lost.
Kulang, her dæmon, sprang to a rock near the top of the little waterfall, and she knew he would turn at once to watch and make sure she didn't brush the moisture off her eyelashes -- except that he didn't.
Instead he clung there, gazing forward.
Ama wiped her eyes, because the game was canceled by the surprise her dæmon was feeling. As she pulled herself up to look over the edge, she gasped and fell still, because she had never seen a creature like this one: a bear, but four times the size of the black bears in the forest, and ivory white, with a black nose and black eyes that glared down from the top of the waterfall, only an arm's length away from her.
"Who's that?" said the voice of a boy, and while Ama couldn't understand the words, she caught the sense easily enough.
After a moment the boy appeared next to the bear: fierce-looking, with frowning eyes and a jutting jaw. And was that a dæmon beside him, bird-shaped? It was unlike any dæmon she'd seen before, but there was nothing else it could be. It flew to Kulang and chirruped briefly: Friends. We shan't hurt you.
The great white bear had not moved at all.
"Come up," said the boy, and again her dæmon made sense of it for her.
Watching the bear with superstitious awe, she scrambled up to the top of the little waterfall and stood shyly on the rocks beside them. Kulang became a butterfly and settled for a moment on her cheek, but left it to flutter around the other dæmon, who sat still on the boy's hand.
"Will," he said, pointing to himself.
She responded, "Ama."
Each said the other's name, and very soon she grew less nervous, though Ama remained frightened of the boy almost more than of the bear: he had a horrible wound: two of his fingers were missing. She felt dizzy when she saw it.
The bear turned away and trod along the milky stream, occasionally lying down as if to cool himself in the water, which was so close to his own color. The boy's dæmon took to the air and darted and fluttered with Kulang among the rainbows, and slowly they began to understand each other.
And what should the boy be looking for but a cave, with a girl asleep?
The words tumbled out of her in response. "I know! I know where it is! And she's been kept asleep by a woman who says she is her mother, but no mother would be so cruel, would she? She makes her drink something to keep her asleep, but I have some herbs to make her wake up, if only I could get to her!"
She spoke so quickly that Will could only shrug and spread his hands. It took the dæmons a minute or more of talking before the understanding came into Will's mind.
"Iorek," he called, and the bear lumbered along the bed of the stream, licking his chops, for he had just swallowed a fish. "Iorek," Will said, "I think this girl is saying she knows where Lyra is. What I'll do is go with her to have a look, while you stay here and watch."
Iorek Byrnison said nothing, but stood foursquare in the stream as Will concealed his rucksack behind a rock and buckled on the knife before clambering down through the rainbows with Ama. Will had to brush his eyes frequently and peer through the dazzle to see where it was safe to put his feet, and the mist that filled the air was icy. No wonder Iorek was enjoying the water; Will could only imagine how much he had suffered from the heat of the journey.
When they reached the foot of the falls, Will settled the knife more comfortably at his waist and wiped the moisture out of his eyes once more. Ama indicated that they should go carefully and make no noise, and they walked in single file down the slope, between mossy rocks and great gnarled pine trunks where the dappled light danced intensely green and a billion tiny insects scraped and sang. Down, and farther down, and still the sunlight followed them, deep into the valley, while overhead the branches tossed unceasingly in a bright sky.
Then Ama halted. Will drew himself behind the massive bole of a cedar, and looked where she was pointing.
Through a tangle of leaves and branches he saw the side of a cliff rising up to the right, and partway up-
"Mrs Coulter," he whispered, and his heart was beating fast.
It was just a brief movement, but he waited a moment, and then he saw her fully. She came out from behind a buttress in the rock and made a gesture as if she were throwing ashes or dust away, and then she reached forward and shook out a thick-leaved branch. Had she been sweeping the floor with it? Her hair was bound round with a scarf and her sleeves were rolled up. Will could never have imagined her looking so domestic.
But there was a flash of gold, and that vicious monkey appeared, leaping up to the woman's shoulder. Together, as if they suspected something, they looked all around, and suddenly Mrs Coulter did not look domestic at all.
Ama was whispering urgently, and Will understood. She was afraid of the golden monkey, because he was so greedy and cruel; he liked to catch bats in the cave and tear their wings off while they were alive; and Ama wouldn't go near the cave when the woman was there - but she never left! What could they do?
"Does she have anyone else with her? No soldiers, or anything like that?" he said.
But Ama didn't know. She had never seen soldiers, but people did talk about strange and frightening men, or they might be ghosts, seen on the mountainsides at night…But there had always been ghosts in the mountains, everyone knew that. So they might not have anything to do with the woman. But she did have a pistol.
Well, thought Will, if she doesn't leave the cave and Lyra's in there, I'll have to go and pay a call.
He said, "What is this drug you have? What do you have to do with it to wake her up?"
Ama explained.
"And where is it now?"
In her home, she said. Hidden away.
"All right. Wait here and don't come near. She mustn't know that I know about you, and you mustn't say that you know me. When do you next bring her food?"
Half an hour before sunset, Ama's dæmon said.
"Bring the herbs with you then," said Will. "I'll meet you here."
She watched with great unease as he set off along the path. Surely he didn't believe what she had just told him about the monkey dæmon, or he wouldn't walk so recklessly up to the cave.
Actually, Will felt very nervous. All the noises of the forest seemed to be very clear as he walked along the path, and all his senses seemed to be purified, so that he was aware of the tiniest insects drifting in the sun shafts and the movement of the clouds above, even though all his attention was fixed on the cave mouth.
"Balthamos," he whispered, and the angel dæmon flew to his shoulder as a bright-eyed small bird with red wings. "Keep close to me, and watch that monkey."
"Then look to your right," said Balthamos tersely.
And Will saw a patch of golden light at the cave mouth that had a face and eyes and was watching them. They were no more than twenty paces away. He stood still, and the golden monkey turned his head to look in the cave, said something, and turned back.
Will felt for the knife handle and walked on.
When he reached the cave, the woman was waiting for him.
She was sitting at her ease in the little canvas chair, with a book on her lap, watching him calmly. She was wearing traveler's clothes of khaki, but so well were they cut and so graceful was her figure that they looked like the highest of high fashion, and the little spray of red blossom she'd pinned to her shirt front looked like the most elegant of jewels. Her hair shone and her dark eyes glittered, and her bare legs gleamed golden in the sunlight.
She smiled. Will very nearly smiled in response, because her expression was so kindly. He was so unused to the sweetness and gentleness a woman could put into a smile that it almost unsettled him completely.
"You're Will," she said in that low, intoxicating voice.
"How do you know my name?" he said harshly.
"Lyra says it in her sleep."
"Where is she?"
"Safe."
"I want to see her."
"Come on, then," she said, and got to her feet, dropping the book on the chair.
For the first time since coming into her presence, Will looked at the monkey dæmon. His fur was long and lustrous, each hair seeming to be made of pure gold, much finer than a human's, and his little face and hands were black. Will remembered that face well from the evening when he and Lyra stole the alethiometer back from Sir Charles Latrom in the house in Headington: contorted with hate, the monkey had tried to tear him apart with his teeth until Will had slashed left-right with the knife and forced him backward, so that he could close the window and shut away Mrs. Coultour and her dæmon in a different world. Will thought that nothing on earth would make him turn his back on that monkey now.
But Balthamos was watching closely, and Will stepped carefully over the rocky floor of the cave and followed Mrs Coulter to the little still figure lying in the shadows.
And there she was, his dearest friend, asleep. So small she looked! He was amazed at how all that force and fire that was Lyra awake could look so gentle and mild when she was sleeping. At her neck Pantalaimon lay in his polecat shape, his fur glistening, and Lyra's hair lay damp across her forehead.
He knelt down beside her and lifted the hair away. Her forehead was hot. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw the golden monkey crouching to spring, and set his hand on the knife; but Mrs Coulter shook her head very slightly, and the monkey let the tension go.
Without seeming to, Will was memorizing the exact layout of the cave: the shape and size of every rock, the slope of the floor, the exact height of the ceiling above the sleeping girl. He would need to find his way through it in the dark, and this was the only chance he'd have to see it first.
"So you see, she's quite safe," said Mrs Coulter.
"Why are you keeping her here? And why don't you let her wake up?"
"Let's sit down."
She didn't take the chair, but sat with him on the moss-covered rocks at the entrance to the cave. She sounded so kindly, and there was such sad wisdom in her eyes, that Will's mistrust deepened. He'd been on guard, of course, ever since he'd come into her presence, but now he felt that every word she said was a lie, every action concealed a threat, and every smile masked an impulse of deceit. He would have to be doubly, trebly on guard, and he'd have to deceive her as well. But maybe (he thought with a little thrill of pleasure) his own life had been preparing him for this all the time; for he knew no one as good at deceiving as he had had to be.
Right, he thought. I can deal with you.
"Would you like something to drink?" she said. "Look, I'll have some too…It's quite safe. Look."
She cut open some brownish, wrinkled fruit and pressed the cloudy green juice into two small beakers. She sipped one and offered the other to Will, who had watched so closely he knew she could have put nothing in it; so he sipped as well, and found it fresh and astringent.
"How did you find your way here?" she said.
"It wasn't hard to follow you."
"Evidently. Have you got Lyra's alethiometer?"
"Yes," he said, and let her work out for herself whether or not he could read it.
"And you've got a knife, I understand."
"Sir Charles told you that, did he?"
"Sir Charles? Oh - Carlo, of course. Yes, he did. It sounds fascinating. May I see it?"
"No, of course not," he said. "Why are you keeping Lyra here?"
"To keep her safe," she said, "because I love her. I'm her mother. She's in appalling danger and I won't let anything happen to her."
"Danger from what?" said Will stolidly.
"Well…," she said, and set her beaker down on the ground, leaning forward so that her hair swung down on either side of her face. When she sat up again, she tucked it back behind her ears with both hands, and Will smelled the fragrance of some scent she was wearing combined with the fresh smell of her body, and he felt disturbed and embarrassed.
Mrs Coulter gave no indication that she'd noticed, and went on: "Look, I'm going to do something unlikely, Will, I'm going to tell you the complete truth. I don't know how you came to be mixed up with my daughter, and I don't know what you know already, and I certainly don't know if I can trust you; but equally, I'm tired of having to lie. So here it is: the complete and utter truth.
"I found out that my daughter is in danger from the very people I used to belong to -- from the Church. Frankly, I think they would even kill her if they knew where she was. And I found myself in a dilemma, you see: obey the Church, or save my daughter. I was a faithful servant of the Church, too. There was no one more zealous; I gave my life to it; I served it with a passion.
"But I had this daughter…
"She knows better than anyone that I didn't look after her well when she was young. She was taken away from me and brought up by strangers. Perhaps that made it hard for her to trust me. But when she was growing up, I saw the danger that she was in, and three times I've tried to save her from it. This is the third time. I've had to become a renegade and hide in this remote place, and now to learn that you found us so easily -- well, you can understand, that worries me. The Church won't be far behind. And they want to kill her, Will. They will not let her live."
