PART THREE SVALBARD EIGHTEEN - FOG AND ICE-1

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    Lee Scoresby arranged some furs over Lyra. She curled up close ter and they lay together asleep as the balloo 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.

    “This little girls pretty important, huh?” he said after several minutes.

    “More than she will know,” Serafina Pekkala said.

    “Does that mean theres gonna be mu the way of armed pursuit? You uand, Im speaking as a practical man with a living to earn. I t afford to get busted up or shot to pieces without some kind of pensation 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. A me tell you, maam, when we land lorek Byrnison on Svalbard, that will t as an act of war.”

    He spat a pieokeleaf delicately overboard.

    “So Id like to know what we  expe the way of mayhem and rus,” he finished.

    “There may be fighting,” said Serafina Pekkala. “But you have fought before.”

    “Sure, when Im paid. But the fact is, I thought this was a straightforward transportation tract, and I charged acc. And Im a w now, after that little dust-up down there, Im a w 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 versation.”

    “Mr. Scoresby,” said the witch, “I wish I could answer your question. All I  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.”

    “Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not.”

    “We have no more choi that than iher or not to be born.”

    “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 panions I sit and yarn with. Dont you wish for a choi a while ?”

    Serafina Pekkala sidered, and then said, “Perhaps we dohe same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so were not ied in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice betweehing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will e again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good dition, 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 exge apart from mutual aid. If a witeeds something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we dont sider cost one of the factors in deg 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... inceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?”

    “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 fort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notio 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 exge for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and whe enough, maam, Im gonhis balloon and book me a passage on a stea<big></big>mer talveston, and Ill never leave the ground again.”

    “Theres another differeween us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sive up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.”

    “I see that, maam, and I envy you; but I aint got your sources of satisfa. Flying is just a job to me, and Im just a tei. 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 aiold nothing about kinda troubling.”

    “lorek Byrnisons quarrel with his king is part of it too,” said the witch.

    “This child is destio play a part in that.”

    “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 tellihat shes just some kind of clockwork toy wound up a going on a course she t ge?”

    “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 desti 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 bee nothing more than interlog maes, blind ay of thought, feeling, life...”

    They looked down at Lyra, whose sleeping face (what little of it they could see inside her hood) wore a stubborn little frown.

    “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, ba Oxford or somewhere.

    Did you know that?”

    “Yes, I did know that. Lyra is carrying something of immense value, and it seems that the fates are using her as a messeo 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 s<cite></cite>he might follow and bring something to her father.”

    “Thats how you read it, huh?”

    For the first time the witch seemed unsure.

    “That is how it seems....But we t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”

    “And what brought you into all this, if I  ask?”

    “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 s friendship for the gyptian people, which goes back to the time when Farder  saved my life. We are doing this at their bidding. And they have ties of obligation with Lord Asriel.”

    “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.”

    “If we  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 ges; the old ways are out bbr></abbr>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.”

    “I dont kher, maam. I thitached 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  call on you for a tug in the right dire, Ill feel kinda easier in my mind; and if theres anything I  do for you iurn, you only have to say. But just so as I know, would you mind telling me whose side Im on in this invisible war?”

    “We are both on Lyras side.”

    “Oh, no doubt about 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 remaiill 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, aing 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, rog and bumping much more than on a normal flight.

    Lee Scoresby wasnt ed for his fort so much as for his instruments, and he spent some time making sure they were securely lashed to the main struts.

    Acc to the altimeter, they were nearly ten thousa 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 vas sheet he used as an emergency bivouad spread it in front of the sleeping children to keep off the wind, before lying down back to back with his old rade in arms, lorek Byrnison, and falling asleep.

    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.

    Roger was sleeping, and so were Lee Scoresby and the bear. Beside the basket, however, the witch queen was flying steadily.

    “How far are we from Svalbard?” Lyra said.

    “If we meet no winds, we shall be over Svalbard in twelve hours or so.”

    “Where are we going to land?”

    “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 , well set you down ierior, away from lofur Raknisons palace.”

    “Whats going to happen when I find Lord Asriel? Will he want to e back to Oxford, or what? I dont know if I ought to tell him I know hes my father, her. He might want to preteill my uncle. I dont hardly know him at all.”

    “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  bridge the gulf between that world and this. But he needs something to help him.”

    “The alethiometer!” Lyra said. “The Master of Jordan gave it to me and I thought there was something he wao say about Lord Asriel, except he never had the ce. 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  probably read it as good as anyone now.”

    “I dont know,” said Serafina Pekkala. “How hell do it, and what his task will be, we t tell. There are powers who speak to us, and there are powers above them; and there are secrets even from the most high.”

    “The alethiometer would tell me! I could read it now....”

    But it was too cold; she would never have mao 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 suspensi of the balloon, pulled by six or seven witches sitting on their cloud-pine brahe stars shone as bright and cold and hard as diamonds.

    “Why ent you cold, Serafina Pekkala?”

    “We feel cold, but we dont mind it, because we will not e to harm. And if we ed 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?”

    “No. You would die if you took your furs off. Stay ed up.”

    “How long do witches live, Serafina Pekkala? Farder  says hundreds of years. But you dont look old at all.”

    “I am three hundred years or more. Our oldest witch mother is nearly a thousand.

    One day, Yambe-Akka will e for her. One day shell e for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She es to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”

    “Are there men witches? Or only women?”

    “There are men who serve us, like the sul at Trollesund. And there are meake for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to uand this, but I shall tell you anyway and youll uand it later: men pass in front of our eyes l<bdi>.</bdi>ike butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at ohey die so soon that our hearts are tinually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of ahey 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 bees more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka es for you. She is older thaundra. Perhaps, for her, witches lives are as brief as mens are to us.”

    “Did you love Farder ?”

    “Yes. Does he know that?”

    “I dont know, but I know he loves you.”

    “When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride ay. I loved him at once. I would have ged my nature, I would have forsakear-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 ot ge 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....”

    “He never said! Was it a girl? A witch?”

    “No. A boy, and he died in the great epidemic of forty years ago, the siess 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 s. And then the call came for me to return to my own people, because Yambe-Akka had taken my mother, and I was  queen. So I left, as I had to.”

    “Did you never see Farder  again?”

    “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 roud of him and his goodness. But I stayed away, for they were dangerous times for my , and witch wars were threatening, and besides, I thought he would fet me and find a human wife....”

    “He never would,” said Lyra stoutly. “You oughter go and see him. He still loves you, I know he does.”

    “But he would be ashamed of his own age, and I wouldnt want to make him feel that.”

    “Perhaps he would. But you ought to send a message to him, at least. Thats what I think.”

    Serafina Pekkala said nothing for a long time. Pantalaimon became a tern and flew to her branch for a sed, to aowledge that perhaps they had been i.

    Then Lyra said, “Why do people have daemons, Serafina Pekkala?”

    “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.”

    “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 se or ferocious you think youll never uand 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 t 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 a it back....But what I wonder is, whys he ing to Svalbard? Theyll fight him. They might kill him....I love lorek. I love him so much I wish he wasnt ing.”

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