FIFTEEN - THE DAEMON CAGES-2
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“Why do you cut peoples daemons away?”“What? Whos been talking to you about that?”
“This girl, I dunno her name. She said you cut peoples daemons away.”
“Nonsense...”
He was agitated, though. She went on:
“Cause you take people out one by one and they never e back. And some people re you just kill em, and other people say different, and this girl told me you cut—”
“Its not true at all. Wheake children out, its because its time for them to move on to another place. Theyre growing up. Im afraid your friend is alarming herself. Nothing of the sort! Dont even think about it. Who is your friend?”
“I only e here yesterday, I dont know anyones name.”
“What does she look like?”
“I fet. I think she had sort of brown hair...light brown, maybe...! dunno.”
The doctor went to speak quietly to the nurse. As the two of them ferred, Lyra watched their daemons. This nurses retty bird, just as and incurious as Sister Claras dog, and the doctors was a large heavy moth.
her moved. They were awake, for the birds eyes were bright and the moths feelers waved languidly, but they werent animated, as she would have expected them to be. Perhaps they werent really anxious or curious at all.
Presently the doctor came bad they went on with the examination, weighing her and Pantalaimon separately, looking at her from behind a special s, measuring her heartbeat, plag her under a little nozzle that hissed and gave off a smell like fresh air.
In the middle of one of the tests, a loud bell began t a ringing.
“The fire alarm,” said the doctor, sighing. “Very well. Lizzie, follow Sister Betty.”
“But all their outdoor clothes are down in the dormitory building, Doctor. She t go outside like this. Should we go there first, do you think?”
He was a having his experiments interrupted, and snapped his fingers in irritation.
“I suppose this is just the sort of thing the practice is meant to show up,” he said. “What a nuisance.”
“When I came yesterday,” Lyra said helpfully, “Sister Clara put my other clothes in a cupboard in that first room where she looked at me. The o door. I could wear them.”
“Good idea!” said the nurse. “Quick, then.”
With a secret glee, Lyra hurried there behind the nurse arieved her proper furs and leggings and boots, and pulled them on quickly while the nurse dressed herself in coal silk.
Then they hurried out. In the wide arena in front of the main group of buildings, a hundred or so people, adults and children, were milling about: some iement, some in irritation, many just bewildered.
“See?” one adult was saying. “Its worth doing this to find out what chaos wed be in with a real fire.”
Someone was blowing a whistle and waving his arms, but no one was taking muotice. Lyra saw Roger and beed. Rged Billy Costas arm and soon all three of them were together in a maelstrom of running children.
“No onell notice if we take a look around,” said Lyra. “Itll take em ages to t everyone, and we say we just followed someone else and got lost.”
They waited till most of the grownups were looking the other way, and then Lyra scooped up some snow and rammed it into a loose powdery snowball, and hurled it at random into the crowd. In a moment all the children were doing it, and the air was full of flying snow. Screams of laughter covered pletely the shouts of the adults trying tain trol, and thehree children were around the er and out of sight.
The snow was so thick that they couldnt move quickly, but it dido matter; no one was following. Lyra and the others scrambled over the curved roof of one of the tunnels, and found themselves in a strange moonscape ular hummocks and hollows, all swathed in white uhe black sky and lit by refles from the lights around the arena.
“What we looking for?” said Billy.
“Dunno. Just looking,” said Lyra, ahe way to a squat, square building a little apart from the rest, with a low-powered anbaric light at the er.
The hubbub from behind was as loud as ever, but more distant. Clearly the children were making the most of their freedom, and Lyra hoped theyd keep it up for as long as they could. She moved around the edge of the square building, looking for a window. The roof was only seve or so off the ground, and uhe other buildings, it had no roofed tuo ect it with the rest of the station.
There was no window, but there was a door. A notice above it said ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN in red letters.
Lyra set her hand on it to try, but before she could turn the handle, Roger said:
“Look! A bird! Or—”
His or was an exclamation of doubt, because the creature swooping down from the black sky was no bird at all: it was someone Lyra had seen before.
“The witchs daemon!”
The goose beat his great wings, raising a flurry of snow as he landed.
“Greetings, Lyra,” he said. “I followed you here, though you didnt see me. I have been waiting for you to e out into the open. What is happening?”
She told him quickly.
“Where are the gyptians?” she said. “Is John Faa safe? Did they fight off the Samoyeds?”
“Most of them are safe. John Faa is wouhough not severely. The men who took you were hunters and raiders who often prey on parties of travelers, and alohey travel more quickly than a large party. The gyptians are still a days journey away.”
The two boys were staring in fear at the goose daemon and at Lyras familiar manner with him, because of course theyd never seen a daemon without his human before, and they knew little about witches.
Lyra said to them, “Listen, you better go and keep watch, right. Billy, you go that way, and Roger, watch out the way we just e. We ent got long.”
They ran off to do as she said, and then Lyra turned back to the door.
“Why are y to get in there?” said the goose daemon.
“Because of what they do here. Th></a>ey cut—” she lowered her voice, “they cut peoples daemons away. Childrens. And I think maybe they do it in here. At least, theres something here, and I was going to look. But its locked....”
“I open it,” said the goose, a his wings once or twice, throwing snow up against the door; and as he did, Lyra heard something turn in the lock.
“Go in carefully,” said the daemon.
Lyra pulled open the dainst the snow and slipped ihe goose daemon came with her. Pantalaimon was agitated and fearful, but he didnt want the witchs daemon to see his fear, so he had flown to Lyras breast and taken sanctuary inside her furs.
As soon as her eyes had adjusted to the light, Lyra saw why.
In a series of glass cases on shelves around the walls were all the daemons of the severed children: ghostlike forms of cats, or birds, or rats, or other creatures, each bewildered and frightened and as pale as smoke.
The witchs daemon gave a cry of anger, and Lyra clutched Pantalaimon to her and said, “Dont look! Dont look!”
“Where are the children of these daemons?” said the goose daemon, shaking with rage.
Lyra explained fearfully about her enter with little Tony Makarios, and looked over her shoulder at the ped daemons, who were clustering forressing their pale faces to the glass. Lyra could hear faint cries of pain and misery. In the dim light from a low-powered anbaric bulb she could see a name on a card at the front of each case, ahere was ay oh Tony Makarios on it. There were four or five other empty ones with names ooo.
“I want to let these poor things go!” she said fiercely. “Im going to>藏书网</a> smash the glass a em out—”
And she looked around for something to do it with, but the place was bare. The goose daemon said, “Wait.”
He was a witchs daemon, and much older than she was, and stronger. She had to do as he said.
“We must make these people think someone fot to lock the plad shut the cages,” he explained. “If they see broken glass and footprints in the snow, how long do you think your disguise will last? And it must hold out till the gyptians e. Now do exactly as I say: take a handful of snow, and when I tell you, blow a little of it against each cage in turn.”
She ran outside. Roger and Billy were still on guard, and there was still a noise of shrieking and laughter from the arena, because only a minute or so had gone by.
She grabbed a big double handful of the light powdery snow, and then came back to do as the goose daemon said. As she blew a little snow on each cage, the goose made a clig sound in his throat, and the catch at the front of the cage came open.
When she had unlocked them all, she lifted the front of the first one, and the pale form of a sparrow fluttered out, but fell to the ground before she could fly. The goose tenderly bent and nudged her upright with his beak, and the sparrow became a mouse, staggering and fused. Pantalaimon leaped down to fort her.
Lyra worked quickly, and within a few minutes every daemon was free. Some were trying to speak, and they clustered around her feet and even tried to pluck at her leggings, though the taboo held them back. She could tell why, poor things; they missed the heavy solid warmth of their humans bodies; just as Pantalaimon would have dohey loo press themselves against a heartbeat.
“Now, quick,” said the goose. “Lyra, you must run bad mih the other children. Be brave, child. The gyptians are ing as fast as they . I must help these poor daemons to find their people....” He came closer and said quietly, “But theyll never be one again. Theyre sundered forever. This is the most wicked thing I have ever seen....Leave the footprints youve made; Ill cover them up. Hurry now....”
“Oh, please! Before you go! Witches...They do fly, dont they? I wasnt dreaming when I saw them flying the ht?”
“Yes, child; why?”
“Could they pull a balloon?”
“Undoubtedly, but—”
“Will Serafina Pekkala be ing?”
“There isnt time to explain the politics of witations. There are vast powers involved here, and Serafina Pekkala must guard the is of her .
But it may be that whats happening here is part of all thats happening elsewhere. Lyra, youre needed inside. Run, run!”
She ran, and Roger, atg wide-eyed as the pale daemons drifted out of the building, waded toward her through the thiow.
“Theyre—its like the crypt in Jordan—theyre daemons!”
“Yes, hush. Dont tell <tt></tt>Billy, though. Dont tell a. e on back.”
Behind them, the goose was beating his wings powerfully, throwing snow over the tracks theyd made; and near him, the lost daemons were clustering or drifting away, g little bleak cries of loss and longing. When the footprints were covered, the goose turo herd the pale daemons together. He spoke, and one by ohey ged, though you could see the effort it cost them, until they were all birds; and like fledglings they followed the witchs daemon, fluttering and falling and running through the snow after him, and finally, with great difficulty, taking off. They rose in a ragged line, pale and spectral against the deep black sky, and slowly gained height, feeble aic though some of them were, and though others lost their will and fluttered downward; but the great gray goose wheeled round and hem back, herding them gently on until they were lost against the profound dark.
Roger was tugging at Lyras arm.
“Quick,” he said, “theyre nearly ready.”
They stumbled away to join Billy, who was being from the er of the main building. The childreired now, or else the adults had regained some authority, because people were lining up raggedly by the main door, with much jostling and pushing. Lyra and the other two slipped out from the er and mingled with them, but before they did, Lyra said:
“Pass the word around among all the kids—they got to be ready to escape. They got to know where the outdoor clothes are and be ready to get them and run out as soon as we give the signal. And they got to keep this a deadly secret, uand?”
Billy nodded, and Roger said, “Whats the signal?”
“The fire bell,” said Lyra. “Wheime es, Ill set it off.”
They waited to be ted off. If anyone in the Oblation Board had had anything to do with a school, they would have arrahis better; because they had nular group to go to, each child had to be ticked off against the plete list, and of course they werent in alphabetical order; and none of the adults was used to keeping trol. So there was a good deal of fusioe the fact that no one was running around anymore.
Lyra watched and noticed. They werent very good at this at all. They were sla a lot of ways, these people; they grumbled about fire drills, they didnt know where the outdoor clothes should be kept, they could children to stand in line properly; and their slaess might be to her advantage.
They had almost finished when there came another distra, though, and from Lyras point of view, it was the worst possible.
She heard the sound as everyone else did. Heads began to turn and s the dark sky for the zeppelin, whose gas engine was throbbing clearly iill air.
The one lucky thing was that it was ing from the dire opposite to the one in which the gray goose had flown. But that was the only fort. Very soon it was visible, and a murmur of exciteme around the crowd. Its fat sleek silver form drifted over the avenue of lights, and its own lights blazed downward from the nose and the sluh the body.
The pilot cut the speed and began the plex business of adjusting the height.
Lyra realized what the stout mast was for: of course, it was a m mast. As the adults ushered the children inside, with everyoaring bad pointing, the ground crew clambered up the ladders in the mast and prepared to attach the m cables. The engines were r, and snow was swirling up from the ground, and the faces of passengers showed in the windows.
Lyra looked, and there was no mistake. Pantalaimon clutched at her, became a wildcat, hissed in hatred, because looking out with curiosity was the beautiful dark-haired head of Mrs. Coulter, with her golden daemon in her lap.
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