The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) Read Free Page B

they couldn’t do.
    She pushed the blankets away and stood up, shivering, because St. Sophia’s was parsimonious where heating was concerned. A quick wash in the little basin where the hot water knocked and shook the pipes in protest before condescending to appear, and then she pulled on the tartan skirt and the light gray jersey that were more or less the only clean things she had.
    And all the time Pan lay pretending to sleep on the pillow. It was never like that when they were young, never.
    “Pan,” she said wearily.
    He had to come, and she knew he would, and he stood up and stretched and let her lift him to her shoulder. She left the room and started downstairs.
    “Lyra, let’s pretend we’re talking to each other,” he whispered.
    “I don’t know if pretending’s a good way to live.”
    “It’s better than not. I want to tell you what I saw last night. It’s important.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me when you came in?”
    “You were asleep.”
    “I wasn’t, any more than you were just now.”
    “Then why didn’t you know I had something important to tell you?”
    “I did. I felt something happen. But I knew I’d have to argue to get you to tell me about it, and frankly…”
    He said nothing. Lyra stepped out at the foot of her staircase and into the dank chill of the morning. One or two girls were walking towards the hall; more were coming away, having had breakfast, stepping briskly out to the morning’s work, to the library or to a lecture or tutorial.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” she finished. “I’m tired of this. Tell me after breakfast.”
    She climbed the steps into the hall and helped herself to porridge, and took her bowl to a spare place at one of the long tables and sat down. All around her, girls of her own age were finishing their scrambled eggs, or porridge, or toast, some chatting happily, some looking dull or tired or preoccupied, one or two reading letters or just eating stolidly. She knew many of them by name, some just by sight; some were friends cherished for their kindness or their wit; some just acquaintances; a small number not exactly enemies, but young women she knew she would never like, because they were snobbish or arrogant or cold. She felt as much at home in this scholastic community, among these brilliant or hardworking or gossipy contemporaries, as she did anywhere else. She should have been happy.
    As she stirred some milk into her porridge, Lyra became aware of the girl opposite. She was called Miriam Jacobs, a pretty, dark-haired girl, sufficiently quick and clever to get by academically without doing more work than the minimum; a little vain, but good-natured enough to let herself be teased about it. Her squirrel dæmon, Syriax, was clinging to her hair, looking stricken, and Miriam was reading a letter, one hand on her mouth. Her face was pale.
    No one else had noticed. As Miriam put the letter down, Lyra leant across the table and said, “Miriam? What is it?”
    Miriam blinked and sighed as if she were coming awake, and pushed the letter down onto her lap. “Home,” she said. “Something silly.” Her dæmon crept onto her lap with the letter while Miriam went through an elaborate demonstration of not caring that was wasted on her neighbors, who hadn’t been watching anyway.
    “Nothing I can help with?” asked Lyra.
    Pan had joined Syriax under the table. Both girls could sense that their dæmons were talking, and that whatever Syriax told Pan would be in Lyra’s knowledge very soon. Miriam looked at Lyra helplessly. Another moment and she might burst into tears.
    Lyra stood up and said, “Come on.”
    The other girl was in that state in which any decisiveness, from anyone, is seized like a lifebelt in a rough sea. She went with Lyra out of the hall, clutching her dæmon to her breast, not asking where they were going, just following like a lamb.
    “I’m sick to death of porridge and cold toast and dry scrambled eggs,” said Lyra. “There’s