CHAPTER THIRTEEN: AESAHAETTR-1
百度搜索 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯 或 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
As the moon rose, the witches began their spell to heal Wills wound.They woke him and asked him to lay the knife on the ground where it caught a glitter of starlight.
Lyra sat nearby stirring some herbs in a pot of boiling water over a fire, and while her panions clapped and stamped and cried in rhythm, Serafina crouched over the knife and sang in a high, fierce tone:
"Little khey tore your iron out of Mother Earths entrails, built afire and boiled the ore, made it weep and bleed and flood, hammered it and tempered it, plunging it in icy water, heating it ihe fe till your blade was blood-red, scorg!
Then they made you wound the water once again, a again, till the steam was boiling fog and the water cried for mercy.
And when you sliced a single shade into thirty thousand shadows, then they khat you were ready, then they called you subtle one.
"But little knife, what have you done?
Unlocked blood-gates, left them wide!
Little knife, your mother calls you, from the entrails of the earth, from her deepest mines and caverns, from her secret iron womb.
Listen!"
And Serafina stamped again and clapped her hands with the other witches, and they shook their throats to make a wild ulu-lation that tore at the air like claws. Will, seated in the middle of them, felt a chill at the core of his spine.
Then Serafina Pekkala turo Will himself, and took his wounded hand in both of hers. When she sang this time, he nearly flinched, so fierce was her high, clear voice, so glittering her eyes; but he sat without moving, ahe spell goon.
"Blood! Obey me! Turn around, be a lake and not a river.
When you reach the open air, stop! And build a clotted wall, build it firm to hold the flood back.
Blood, your sky is the skull-dome, your sun is the open eye, your wind the breath ihe lungs, blood, your world is bounded. Stay there!"
Will thought he could feel all the atoms of his body responding to her and, and he joined in, urging his leaking blood to listen and obey.
She put his hand down and turo the little iron pot over the fire. A bitter steam was rising from it, and Will heard the liquid bubbling fiercely.
Serafina sang:
"Oak bark, spider silk, ground moss, saltweed— grip close, bind tight, holdfast, close up, bar the door, lock the gate, stiffen the blood-wall, dry the gore-flood."
Thech took her own knife and split an alder sapling along its whole length. The wounded whiteness gleamed open in the moon. She daubed some of the steaming liquid into the split, then closed up the wood, easing it together from the root to the tip. And the sapling was whole again.
Will heard Lyra gasp, and turo see another witch holding a squirming, struggling hare iough hands. The animal anting, wild-eyed, kig furiously, but the witchs hands were merciless. In one she held its fs and with the other she grasped its hind legs and pulled the frenzied hare out straight, its heaving belly upward.
Serafinas knife swept across it. Will felt himself grow dizzy, and Lyra was restraining Pantalaimon, hare-formed himself in sympathy, who was bug and snapping in her arms. The real hare fell still, eyes bulging, breast heavirails glistening.
But Serafina took some more of the deco and trickled it into the gaping wound, and then closed up the wound with her fingers, smoothing the wet fur over it until there was no wound at all.
The witch holding the animal relaxed her grip a gently to the ground, where it shook itself, turo lick its flank, flicked its ears, and nibbled a blade of grass as if it were pletely alone. Suddenly it seemed to bee aware of the circle of witches around it, and like an arrow it shot away, whole again, bounding swiftly off into the dark.
Lyra, soothing Pantalaimon, gla Will and saw that he knew what it meant: the medie was ready. He held out his hand, and as Serafina daubed the steaming mixture on the bleeding stumps of his fingers he looked away and breathed in sharply several times, but he didnt flinch.
Once his open flesh was thhly soaked, the witch pressed some of the sodden herbs onto the wounds and tied them tight around with a strip of silk. And that was it; the spell was done.
Will slept deeply through the rest of the night. It was cold, but the witches piled leaves over him, and Lyra slept huddled close behind his back. In the m Serafina dressed his wound again, aried to see from her expressioher it was healing, but her face was calm and impassive.
Oheyd eaten, Serafina told the children that the witches had agreed that siheyd e into this world to find Lyra and be her guardians, theyd help Lyra do what she now knew her task to be: namely, to guide Will to his father.
So they all set off; and it was quiet going for the most part. Lyra sulted the alethiometer to begin with, but warily, and learhat they should travel in the dire of the distant mountains they could see across the great bay. Never havihis high above the city, they werent aware of how the coastline curved, and the mountains had been below the horizon; but now wherees thinned, or when a slope fell away below them, they could look out to the empty blue sea and to the high blue mountains beyond, which were their destination. It seemed a long way to go.
They spoke little. Lyra was busy looking at all the life in the forest, from woodpeckers to squirrels to little green moss snakes with diamonds down their backs, and Will needed all his energy simply to keep going. Lyra and Pantalaimon discussed him endlessly.
"We could look at the alethiometer," Pantalaimon said at one point when theyd dawdled oh to see how close they could get to a browsing fawn before it saw them. "We never promised not to. And we could find out all kinds of things for him. Wed be doing it for him, not for us."
"Doupid," Lyra said. "It would be us wed be doing it for, cause hed never ask. Youre just greedy and nosy, Pan."
"That makes a ge. Its normally you whos greedy and nosy, and me who has to warn you not to do things. Like iiring room at Jordan. I never wao go in there."
"If we hadnt, Pan, dyou think all this would have happened?"
"No. Cause the Master would have poisoned Lord Asriel, and that wouldve been the end of it."
"Yeah, I suppose.... Who dyou think Wills father is, though? And whys he important?"
"Thats what I mean! We could find out in a moment!"
And she looked wistful. "I might have done once," she said, "but Im ging, I think, Pan."
"No youre not."
"You might not be.... Hey, Pan, when I ge, youll stop ging. Whatre you going to be?"
"A flea, I hope."
"No, but dont you get any feelings about what you might be?"
"No. I dont want to, either."
"Youre sulking because I wont do what you want."
He ged into a pig and grunted and squealed and sill she laughed at him, and then he ged into a squirrel and darted through the branches beside her.
"Who do you think his father is?" Pantalaimon said. "Dyou think he could be anyo?"
"Could be. But hes bound to be someone important, almost as important as Lord Asriel. Bound to be. We know what we re doing is important, after all."
"We dont know it," Pantalaimon pointed out. "We think it is, but we dont know. We just decided to look for Dust because Roger died."
"We know its important!" Lyra said hotly, and she even stamped her foot. "And so do the witches.
They e all this way to look for us just to be my guardians and help me! A to help Will find his father. Thais important. You know it is, too, else you wouldnt have licked him when he was wounded. Whyd you do that, anyway? You never asked me if you could. I couldnt believe it when you did that."
"I did it because he didnt have a daemon, and he needed one. And if you were half as good at seeing things as you think you are, youdve known that."
"I did know it, really," she said.
They stopped then, because they had caught up with Will, who was sitting on a rock beside the path. Pantalaimon became a flycatcher, and as he flew among the branches, Lyra said, "Will, what dyou think those kidsll do now?"
"They wont be following us. They were thtened of the witches. Maybe theyll just go back to drifting about."
"Yeah, probably. They might want to use the khough. They might e after us for that."
"Let them. Theyre not having it, not now. I didnt want it at first. But if it kill the Specters ..."
"I rusted Angeliot from the beginning," Lyra said virtuously.
"Yes, you did," he said.
"Yeah. I did, really.... I hated it in the end, that city."
"I thought it was heaven when I first found it. I couldnt imagine anythier than that And all the time it was full of Specters, and we never knew...."
"Well, I wont trust kids again," said Lyra. "I thought back at Bolvangar that whatever grownups did, however bad it was, kids were different. They wouldnt do cruel things like that. But I ent sure now. I never seen kids like that before, and thats a fact."
"I have," said Will.
"When? In your world?"
"Yeah," he said, awkwardly. Lyra waited and sat still, and presently he went on. "It was when my mother was having one of her bad times. She and me, we lived on our own, see, because obviously my father wasnt there. And every so ofteart thinking things that werent true. And having to do things that didnt make se to me, anyway. I mean she had to do them or else shed get upset and afraid, and so I used to help her. Like toug all the railings in the park, or ting the leaves on a bush—that kind of thing. She used to get better after a while. But I was afraid of anyone finding out she was like that, because I thought theyd take her away, so I used to look after her and hide it. I old anyone.
"And once she got afraid when I wasnt there to help her. I was at school. And she went out and she wasnt wearing very much, only she didnt know. An<bdo>..</bdo>d some boys from my school, they found her, and they started..."
Wills face was hot. Without being able to help it he found himself walking up and down and looking away from Lyra because his voice was unsteady and his eyes were watering. He went on:
"They were tormenting her just like those kids at the tower with the cat.... They thought she was mad and they wao hurt her, maybe kill her, I wouldnt be surprised. She was just different and they hated her. Anyway, I found her and I got her home. And the day in school I fought the boy who was leading them. I fought him and I broke bis arm and I think I broke some of his teeth—I dont know. And I was going to fight the rest of them, too, but I got in trouble and I realized I better stop because theyd find out—I meaeachers and the authorities. Theyd go to my mother and plain about me, and then theyd find out about how she was and take her away. So I just preteo be sorry and told the teachers I wouldnt do it again, and they punished me fhting and I still said nothing. But I kept her safe, see. No one kneart from those boys, and they knew what Id do if they said anything; they knew Id kill them aime.
Not just hurt them. And a bit later she got better again. No one knew, ever.
"But after that I rusted children any more than grownups. Theyre just as keen to do bad things. So I wasnt surprised when those kids in Cigazze did that.
"But I was glad wheches came."
He sat down again with his back to Lyra and, still not looking at her, he wiped his hand across his eyes. She pretended not to see.
"Will," she said, "what you said about your mother... and Tullio, when the Specters got him... and when you said yesterday that you thought the Specters came from your world..."
"Yes. Because it doesnt make sense, what was happening to her. She wasnt mad. Those kids might think she was mad and laugh at her and try to hurt her, but they were wrong; she wasnt mad.
Except that she was afraid of things I couldnt see.
And she had to do things that looked crazy; you couldhe point of them, but obviously she could. Like her ting all die leaves, or Tullio yesterday toug the stones in the wall. Maybe that was a way to put the Specters off. If they turheir ba something frightening behind them and tried to get really ied iones and how they fit together, or the leaves on the bush, like if only they could make themselves find that really important, theyd be safe. I dont know. It looks like that. There were real things for her to be frightened of, like those men who came and robbed us, but there was something else as well as them. So maybe we do have the Specters in my world, <mark></mark>only we t see them and we havent got a name for them, but theyre there, and they keep trying to attack my mother. So thats why I was glad yesterday when the alethiometer said she was all right."
He was breathing fast, and his right hand was gripping the handle of the knife in its sheath. Lyra said nothing, and Panta-laimo very still.
"When did you know you had to look for your father?" she said after a while.
"A long time ago," he told her. "I used to pretend he risoner and Id help him escape. I had long games by myself doing that; it used to go on for days. Or else he was on this desert island and Id sail there and bring him home. And hed kly what to do about ></a>everything—about my mother, especially—and shed get better and hed look after her and me and I could just go to school and have friends and Id have a mother and a father, too. So I always said to myself that when I grew up Id go and look for my father.... And my mother used to tell me that I was going to take up my fathers mantle. She used to say that to make me feel good. I didnt know what it meant, but it sounded important."
"Didnt you have friends?"
"How could I have friends?" he said, simply puzzled. "Friends ... They e to your house and they know your parents and... Sometimes a boy might ask me around to his house, and I might go or I might not, but I could never ask him back. So I never had friends, really. I would have liked ... I had my cat," he went on. "I hope shes all right now. I hope someones looking after her."
"What about the man you killed?" Lyra said, her heart beating hard. "Who was he?"
"I dont know. If I killed him, I dont care. He deserved it. There were two of them. They kept ing to the house aering my mother till she was afraid again, and worse thahey wao know all about my father, and they wouldnt leave her alone. Im not sure if they were police or what. I thought at first they were part of a gang or something, and they thought my father had robbed a bank, maybe, and hidden the money. But they didnt want mohey wanted papers. They wanted some letters that my father had sent. They broke into the house one day, and then I saw it would be safer if my mother was somewhere else. See, I couldnt go to the polid ask them for help, because theyd take my mother away. I didnt know what to do.
"So in the end I asked this old lady who used to teach me the piano. She was the only person I could think of. I asked her if my mother could stay with her, and I took her there. I think shell look after her all right. Anyway, I went back to the house to look for these letters, because I knew where she kept them, and I got them, and the men came to look and broke into the house again.
It was nighttime, or early m. And I was hiding at the top of the stairs and Moxie—my cat, Moxie—she came out of the bedroom. And I didnt see her, nor did the man, and when I knocked into him she tripped him up, and he fell right to the bottom of the stairs....
"And I ran away. Thats all that happened. So I dido kill him, but I dont care if I did. I ran away ao Oxford and then I found that window. And that only happened because I saw the other cat and stopped to watch her, and she found the window first. If I hadnt seen her... or if Moxie hadnt e out of the bedroom then..."
"Yeah," said Lyra, "that was lucky. And me and Pahinking just now, what if Id never goo the wardrobe iiring room at Jordan ahe Master put poison in the wine? None of this would have happeher."
Both of them sat silent on the moss-covered ro the slant of sunlight through the old pines and thought how many tiny ces had spired t them to this place. Each of those ces might have gone a different erhaps in another world, another Will had not seen the window in Sunder-land Avenue, and had wandered on tired and lost toward the Midlands until he was caught. And in another world another Pantalaimon had persuaded another Lyra not to stay iiring room, and another Lord Asriel had been poisoned, and aner had survived to play with that Lyra forever on the roofs and in the alleys of another unging Oxford.
Presently Will was strong enough to go on, and they moved together along the path, with the great forest quiet around them.
They traveled on through the day, resting, moving, resting again, as the trees grew thinner and the land more rocky. Lyra checked the alethiometer: Keep going, it said; this is the right dire. At noon they came to a village untroubled by Specters. Goats pastured on the hillside, a grove of lemon trees cast shade oony ground, and children playing iream called out and ran for their mothers at the sight of the girl itered clothing, and the white-faced, fierce-eyed boy in the bloodstained shirt, and the elegant greyhound that walked beside them.
The grownups were wary but willing to sell some bread and cheese and fruit for one of Lyras gold s. The witches kept out of the way, though both childreheyd be there in a sed if any dahreatened. After another round of Lyras bargaining, one old woman sold them two flasks of goatskin and a fine linen shirt, and Will renounced his filthy T-shirt with relief, washing himself in the icy stream and lying to dry i sun afterward.
Refreshed, they moved on. The land was harsher now; for shade they had to rest in the shadow of rocks, not under wide-spreading trees, and the ground underfoot was hot through the soles of their shoes. The sun pou their eyes. They moved more and more slowly as they climbed, and when the sun touched the mountain rims and they saw a little valley open below them, they decided to go no farther.
They scrambled down the slope, nearly losing their footing more man once, and then had to shove their way through thickets of dwarf rhododendrons whose dark glossy leaves and crimson flower clusters were heavy with the hum of bees. They came out in the evening shade on a wild meadow b a stream. The grass was knee-high and thick with flentians, quefoil.
Will drank deeply iream and then lay down. He couldnt stay awake, and he couldnt sleep, either; his head inning, a daze of strangeness hung over everything, and his hand was sore and throbbing.
百度搜索 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯 或 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.