Chapter 2 CHAPTER ONE: THE CAT AND THE HORNBEAM TREES-2

Will looked around carefully. Behind him the full moon shone down over a distant prospect of great green hills, and on the slopes at the foot of the hills there were houses with rich gardens, and an open parkland with groves of trees and the white gleam of a classical temple. Just beside him was that bare patch in the air, as hard to see from this side as from the other, but definitely there. He bent to look through and saw the road in Oxford, his own world. He turned away with a shudder: whatever this new world was, it had to be better than what hed just left. With a dawning light-headedness, the feeling that he was dreaming but awake at the same time, he stood up and looked around for the cat, his guide.

She was nowhere in sight. No doubt she was already exploring those narrow streets and gardens beyond the cafes whose lights were so inviting. Will lifted up his tattered tote bag and walked slowly across the road toward them, moving very carefully in case ited all disapp . The air of the place had something Mediterranean or maybe Caribbean about it. Will had never been out of England, so he couldnt compare it with anywhere he knew, but it was the kind of place where people came out late at night to eat and drink , to dance and enjoy music. Except that there was no one here, and the silence was enormous.

On the first corner he reached there stood a cafe, with little green tables on the pavement and a zinc-topped bar and an espresso machine. On some of the tables glasses stood half-empty; butt; a plate of risotto stood next to a basket of stale rolls as hard as cardboard. He took a bottle of lemonade from the cooler behind the bar and then thought for a moment before dropping a pound coin in the till. As soon as hed shut the till, he opened it again, realizing that the money in there might say what this place was called. The currency was called the corona, but he couldn't tell any more than that.

He put the money back and opened the bottle on the opener fixed to the counter before leaving the cafe and wandering down the street going away from the boulevard. Little grocery shops and bakeries stood between jewelers and florists and bead-curtained doors opening into private houses , where wrought-iron balconies thick with flowers overhung the narrow pavement, and where the silence, being enclosed, was even more profound. The streets were leading downward, and before very long they opened out onto a broad avenue where more palm trees reached high into the air, the underside of their leaves glowing in me streetlights.

On the other side of the avenue was the sea. Will found himself facing a harbor enclosed from the left by a stone breakwater and from the right by a headland on which a large building with stone columns and wide steps and ornate balconies stood floodlit among flowering trees and bushes. In the harbor one or two rowboats lay still at anchor, and beyond the breakwater the starlight glittered on a calm sea. By now Wills exhaustion had been wiped out. He was wide awake and possessed by wonder. From time to time, on his way through the narrow streets, hed put out a hand to touch a wall or a doorway or the flowers in a window box , and found them solid and convincing. Now he wanted to touch the whole landscape in front of him, because it was too wide to take in through his eyes alone. He stood still, breathing deeply, almost afraid.

He discovered that he was still holding the bottle hed taken from the cafe. He drank from it, and it tasted like what it was, ice-cold lemonade; and welcome, too, because the night air was hot. He wandered along to the right, past hotels with awnings over brightly lit entrances and bougainvillea flowering beside them, until he came to the gardens on the little headland. The building in the trees with its ornate facade lit by floodlights might have been an opera house . There were paths leading here and there among the lamp-hung oleander trees, but not a sound of life could be heard: no night birds singing, no insects, nothing but Wills own footsteps.

The only sound he could hear came from the regular, quiet breaking of delicate waves from the beach beyond the palm trees at the edge of the garden. Will made his way there. The tide was halfway in, or halfway out, and a row of Pedal boats was drawn up on the soft white sand above the high-water line. Every few seconds a tiny wave folded itself over at the seas edge before sliding back neatly under the next. Fifty yards or so out on the calm water was a diving platform. Will sat on the side of one of the pedal boats and kicked off his shoes, his cheap sneakers that were coming apart and cramping his hot feet. He dropped his socks beside them and pushed his toes deep into the sand. A few seconds later he had thrown off the rest of his clothes and was walking into the sea.

The water was deliciously between cool and warm. He splashed out to the diving platform and pulled himself up to sit on its weather-softened planning and look back at the city. To his right the harbor lay enclosed by its breakwater. Beyond it a mile or so away stood a red-andwhite- striped lighthouse. And beyond the lighthouse, distant cuffs rose dimly, and beyond them, those great wide rolling hills hed seen from the place hed first come through. Closer at hand were the light-bearing trees of the casino gardens, and the streets of the city, and the waterfront with its hotels and cafes and warm-lit shops, all silent, all empty.

And all safe. No one could follow him here; the men who searched the house would never know; the police would never find him. He had a whole world to hide in. For the first time since hed run out of his front door that morning, Will began to feel secure. He was thirsty again, and hungry too, because hed last eaten in another world, after all. He slipped into the water and swam back more slowly to the beach, where he put on his underpants and carried the rest of his clothes and the tote bag. He dropped the empty bottle into the first rubbish bin he found and walked barefoot along the pavement toward the harbor.

When his skin had dried a little, he pulled on his jeans and looked for somewhere hed 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 café6 that looked like the right place. He couldnt 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 hed 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 cats 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. Its joined on. Wheres 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 glazed 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 hed been a ghost. "I havent got a demon," he said. "I dont 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 Wills face. "But you're alive," she said, half-disbelievingly. "You ent... You ent been .. ." "My names Will Parry," he said. "I dont know what you mean about demons. In my world demon means ... it means devil, something evil." "In your world? You mean this ent 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 cant 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 hadnt been cooked, and in the heat they were smelling bad. He swept them all into the dustbin. "Havent you eaten anything?" he said, and opened the fridge. Lyra came to look. "I didnt know this was here," she said. "Oh! Its cold." Her daemon had changed again, and became 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. was ringing with the strangeness of it. "Havent 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 didnt 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, Ill 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. "Dyou want some?" "I don't know what omelette is." "Well, watch and you'll see. Or theres a can of baked beans, if youd 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. "Thats 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. "Its not cooked yet," Will said, taking it away. "When did you last have a meal?" "At my fathers house on Svalbard," she said. "Days and days ago. I dont 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. "Find a couple of plates," he said, and Lyra obediently did so. She seemed quite willing to take orders if she saw the sense of them, so he told her to go and clear a table in front of the cafe. He brought out the food and some knives and forks from a drawer, and they sat down together , a little awkwardly. She ate hers in less than a minute, and then fidgeted, swinging back and forth on her chair and plucking at the plastic strips of the woven seat while he finished his. Her daemon changed yet again, and became a goldfinch, pecking at invisible crumbs on the tabletop. Will ate slowly. Hed given her most of the beans, but even so he took much longer than she did. The harbor in front of them, the ligr *s along the empty boulevard, the stars in the dark sky above, all hung in the huge silence as if nothing else existed at all. And all the time he was intensely aware of the girl. She was small and slight, but wiry, and shed fought like a tiger; his fist had raised a bruise on her cheek, and she was ignoring it. Her expression was a mixture of the very young—when she first tasted the cola—and a kind of deep, sad wariness. Her eyes were pale blue, and her hair would be a darkish blond once it was washed; because she was filthy, and she smelled as if she hadnt bathed for days. "Laura? Lara?" Will said. "Lyra." "Lyra... Silvertongue?" "Yes." "Where is your world? How did you get here?" She shrugged. "I walked," she said. "It was all foggy. I didnt know where I was going. At least, I knew I was going out of my world. But I couldn't see this one till the fog cleared. Then I found myself here." "What did you say about dust?" "Dust, yeah. Im going to find out about it. But this world seems to be empty. Theres no one here to ask. Ive been here for ... I dunno, three days, maybe four. And theres no one here. " "But why do you want to find out about dust?" "Special Dust," she said shortly. "Not ordinary dust, obviously." The daemon changed again. He did so in the flick of an eye, and from a goldfinch he became a rat, a powerful pitch-black rat with red eyes. Will looked at him with wide wary eyes, and the girl saw his glance. "You have got a daemon," she said decisively. "Inside you." He didnt know what to say. "You have," she went on. "You wouldn't be human else. Youd be ... half dead. We seen a kid with his daemon cut away. You ent like that. Even if you dont know youve got a daemon, you have. We was scared at first when we saw you. Like you was a night-ghast or something. But then we saw you weren't like that at all." "We?" "Me and Pantalaimon. Us. But you, your daemon ent separate from you. Its you. Apart of you. Youre part of each other. Ent there anyone in your world like us? Are they all like you, with their daemons all hidden away?" Will looked at the two of them, the skinny pale-eyed girl with her black rat daemon now sitting in her arms, and felt profoundly alone. "Im tired. Im going to bed," he said. "Are you going to stay in this city?" "Dunno. Ive got to find out more about what Im looking for. There must be some Scholars in this world. There must be someone who knows about it." "Maybe not in this world. But I came here out of a place called Oxford. Theres plenty of scholars there, if thats what you want." "Oxford? she cried. "Thats where I come from!" "Is there an Oxford in your world, then? You never came from my world." "No," she said decisively. "Different worlds. But in my world theres an Oxford too. Were both speaking English, ent we? Stands to reason theres other things the same. How did you get through? Is there a bridge, or what?" "Just a kind of window in the air." "Show me," she said. It was a command, not a request. He shook his head. "Not now," he said. "I want to sleep. Anyway, its the middle of the night." "Then show me in the morning!" "All right, Ill show you. But Ive got my own things to do. Youll have to find your scholars by yourself." "Easy," she said. "I know all about Scholars." He put the plates together and stood up. "I cooked," he said, "so you can wash the dishes." She looked incredible. "Wash the dishes?" she scoffed. "Theres millions of clean ones lying about! Anyway, Im not a servant. Im not going to wash them." "So I won't show you the way through." "I'll find it by myself." "You wont; its hidden. Youd never find it. Listen, I dont know how long we can stay in this place. Weve got to eat, so well eat whats here, but well tidy up afterwards and keep the place clean, because we ought to. You wash these dishes. Weve got to treat this place right. Now Im going to bed. room. Ill see you in the morning." He went inside, cleaned his teeth with a finger and some toothpaste from his tattered bag, fell on the double bed, and was asleep in a moment. * * * Lyra waited till she was sure he was asleep, and then took the dishes into the kitchen and ran them under the tap, rubbing hard with a cloth until they looked clean. She did the same with the knives and forks, but the procedure didnt work with the omelette pan, so she tried a bar of yellow soap on it, and picked at it stubbornly until it looked as clean as she thought it was going to. Then she dried everything on another cloth and stacked it neatly on the drainboard. Because she was still thirsty and because she wanted to try opening a can, she snapped open another cola and took it upstairs. She listened outside Wills door and, hearing nothing, tiptoed into the other room and took out the alethiometer from under her pillow. She didnt need to be close to Will to ask about him, but she wanted to look anyway, and she turned his door handle as quietly as she could before going in. There was a light on the sea front outside shining straight up into the room, and in the glow reflected from the ceiling she looked down at the sleeping boy. He was frowning, and his face glistened with sweat. as formed as a grown man, of course, because he wasn't much older than she was, but hed be powerful one day. How much easier if his daemon had been visible! She wondered what its form might be, and whether it was fixed yet . Whatever its form was, it would express a nature that was savage, and courteous, and unhappy. She tiptoed to the window. In the glow from the streetlight she carefully set the hands of the alethiometer, and relaxed her mind into the shape of a question. The needle began to sweep around the dial in a series of pauses and swings almost too fast to watch. She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy? The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer. When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once. He could find food, and show her how to reach Oxford, and those were powers that were useful, but he might still have been untrustworthy or cowardly. felt as safe with him as shed felt with lorek Byrnison, the armored bear. She swung the shutter across the open window so the morning sunlight wouldn't strike in on his face, and tiptoed out.