Work Text:
It is the well known path. Lyra walks it at least once a year, now with such a routine that she could probably with her eyes closed. Her feet know every stone on the pavement, each gap, each joint with their varying height, each step through the archways. Her ears know the path just as well, know where the murmuring of the city fades into the whispering of the gardens, just like her nose smells the name giving botanic. It is idyllic, an exclave of reflection.
Though today the path is different. Lyra can’t remember starting her walk, it’s just already behind her when she spots the bench, her bench, their bench. She looks around, but can’t see anything, as all around lays lies white haze, fog, which veils her gaze.
“I think I’m dreaming, Will,” is all she can find to say.
But she sits down, on her side, the right side. If this were a dream, it is a very stable one, from which she does not awaken at the realisation.
“What does it mean, Pan?” she asks, but her dæmon does not answer, for he lies asleep under the bench.
Then another person appears, and even before the mist completely reveals it, Lyra has an idea who it is. And then it steps out of the mist, and Lyra is certain it is Will. But this reunion is so different from what she had imagined. It is Will. Without exclamation mark. Her heart leaps, but not as high as she would have thought. She stands up and takes a good look. Will is Will, but he is not the Will that she had imagined, abstracted from memories and dreams all those years ago. He is taller, broader, with masculine shoulders, no longer a boy whom the witches would envy for his art of invisibility.
“Is it you, Will?” she asks.
“Lyra, is it you?” asks he.
Again without exclamation mark. Is he as surprised? Had his mind drawn a different idea that conflicts with what he sees now? Did he think she be taller, or shorter? Did he expect more of what he knew of her mother, Marisa?
“It is me, Will, if it is you.”
Both embrace each other. Deep, familiar, full of snugness. But still so different than expected.
“Will, is this a dream?” she asks him.
“It feels different to a dream, just so…”
“-stable. If this was a dream, it had already vanished.
They look around. Endless white haze all around, as far as their eyes can see, else there is just them two, and the bench on a small island of pebbles. No telling from which Oxford it even is. They sit down again, look at each other.
“How are you?” they finally say, in unison.
Both laugh. Years of longing, of hoping, of questions, and now these words, as if both had just randomly met on the market between carrots and dill. But isn’t there so much truth in this simple phrase, so much wish to share one’s life with with the other? And so Lyra begins, tells of her life, those seven years since they had to part ways following their mutual adventure. Tells of her time at school, St Sophia’s, of her friends there, of her other adventures, of what she learned since. And Will listens, takes part, asks questions, becomes part of her story. Understands.
“And today? Are you still living in your Jordan College, which we couldn’t find in my Oxford?”
“No, I have my own small house. And I’m becoming a scholar.”
Will nods approvingly, before he breaks out in a giggle.
“You don’t think I got the wit for that?” she slyly replies, but he waves her off.
“No, you just hated scholars, cursed them as the ones who wanted to kill your father because his teachings didn't match theirs.”
“I know, but today – it’s just that I have to make money in some way, and history and languages interest me, soooo why not earn my bread and butter with it. And what about you? You now playing piano at the symphony?”
Will shakes his head, grinning even more.
“I haven’t touched a piano in ages, rather did a lot more sports in recent years. And right now I’m studying medicine.”
“Oh.” Lyra replies full of appreciation.
“-was relatively easy to get into. Since your father has been here, young people are flooding the sciences and engineering, all the medical schools have drastically lowered their entry criteria…”
But Lyra is still with the half sentence before that.
“My father? What did he do in your world?”
“He appeared in all sorts of places and countries,‘the man with the tame snow leopard'. Solicited participation in his fight against the Authority, in exchange he offered technology. So much has changed, new power stations are now being built everywhere, which have only water vapour coming out their chimneys. And many other things that are barely understood and are now being researched, like these Gallivespian stones. A lot has changed and will certainly change in the future. But much also remains the same.”
“Do you still live with Mary?”
“I did, till I finished my A-levels, today I got my own small flat.”
“In Oxford.” Lyra adds convinced.
But once more Will shakes his head with a smile.
“Sorry but no, despite all that would be beyond my budget. I study in Exeter.”
“Oh, right at the seaside, that’s nice too… – but you still see Mary often?”
“I do… though right now we have a bit of radio silence between us.”
“Oh no!” says Lyra, her heart dropping. “What happened?”
“Not a lot, no worries, it’s just that she… ignored an agreement.”
Lyra’s questioning gaze is enough for Will to continue.
“Her science was more... – so, when I broke the knife, it broke into many small shards. We scattered them all over England, threw them in rivers and lakes or buried them, so that no one could ever fix it again. I stuck a few splinters in a picture frame, just as a reminder of our adventure, and of you. And Mary asked me at some point if she could borrow one of them for her research.”
“And you said ‘no’.”
“Exactly. No one should ever repair it, or even learn anything about it that could help in forging a new one. We took an oath, after all.”
“But she did it anyway.”
Will takes a deep breath and blows the air through his folded fingers.
“At some point she… ‘borrowed’ a tiny splinter, to experiment with. I never noticed, but one day she forgot a report on her desk, I stumbled upon it, read it all-”
“She tried forging a new knife?”
“No no, don’t panic, she didn’t. She merely tried breeding more of the weird metal its edge was made of – she failed at that, but it doesn’t change that she broke our agreement.”
“That suits Mary, doesn't think twice, just does what she thinks is right.”
“You understand her?”
“I understand why she did it. Even if what she did was wrong.”
For a moment both again sit in silence.
“'My old self,” Lyra then begins again, “would curse Mary now, and rage, but no, today I understand her.”
“We’ve truly grown up, it seems.”
“At least a little.”
“Medically our bodies need another five years until everything has matured. Mentally is another question.“ he says.
Lyra’s gaze drops down through the laths of the bench, where Pan is still sleeping soundly. Now where is Kirjava? Lyra can feel her, or rather she feels nothing wrong or weird in regards to Will, but still, no sign of the cat with its lustrous and rich fur.
“Where is Kirjava, Will? I can’t see her anywhere.”
“She is here with us,” he says, and points to his chest, “again a part of me.”
“But, what, how did that happen?”
“It did just on its own. The first few weeks after the return to my world I obsessed in making sure that no one could see her, but after a while it became clear that no one else could. Mary could, but only because the had been taught how, by Serafina. At some point Mary could see Kirjava less and less, then the same happened to me, and then, roughly a year ago, I could no longer.”
“But that is horrible!”
“No, you don’t understand, that part of me is still there, just no longer in the form of a cat. She is part of me again, as she was before it all, before the ferryman ripped her from my heart.”
“Can you two still speak with each other?”
“Just like before, in my mind.”
For a moment Lyra just gazes into the endless white, contemplating.
“That means,” she begins again, “had their been some kind of technology or medicine in your world to keep Pan, and me, alive in it, something the angels had not known – Pan would have become a part of me too?”
“No one can know that.”
Lyra lifts her Pantalaimon from the floor and places him on her skirt covered lap. He doesn't wake up, just wriggles a little to make himself cosy on her much more comfortable thighs. It is just so unimaginable, loosing his presence, his voice, turning him into just a fleeting disembodied ghost in the emptiness of her head.
“Pan would have been the least of our problems, least of your problems. You’d have had no papers, no ID, no birth certificate, you’d certainly have been sent to some foster institutions and been grilled by pedagogues, to find out your true origins.”
How easy she had imagined her life in Will's world back then. Moving in with Mary, pretending to be a niece or something, going to school with Will and simply living a carefree life with hot dogs, cola and cinema. Conversely, had Will chosen to stay in her world, there would have been exactly the same problems, and Will would certainly have been forced to work in menial jobs, given he had no money and no connections, no name. Will Parry, the day labourer, instead of Dr William Parry, surgeon.
“I wonder if our love would have survived that. We were only twelve after all.” she whispers.
Does Lyra still love Will today? She's rather sure that no, what she loves are the memories, the feelings, the ecstasy in her heart that their young love had ignited in her back then. But would the Lyra of today still love the Will of yesteryear, age aside, fall in love again? Would she fall in love again with the Will of today, as he sits next to her?
She takes his hand, squeezes it for but a moment, but lets go of it quickly again.
“Are you in love with someone today?” he asks.
Lyra nods and talks about her boyfriend, how she got together with him, what their relationship is all about, where it might be heading. She hardly dares to turn towards Will, expecting sadness, maybe even anger, but when she looks into his eyes she sees nothing but kindness.
“He sounds like a great chap, like someone who deserves you.”
“I love him so much, our love is just… so different to ours back then. What about you, do you have a someone?”
Will tells her of a girlfriend he had in school, who he had really loved, but only for like a year, as they had grown apart in the confusion that is puberty. He tells of girls who only pined over him because they thought his missing fingers were “masculine”, and of fellow female students who like him for his talent in the studies. He seems to have many options, but doesn't have a steady girlfriend at the moment.
“But I mean we’re what, twenty, twenty-one? Plenty of time to find the right person for whatever may come. It’s not like this whole medicine degree is leaving me much leisure time to spend with a partner anyway.”
Lyra takes Will’s hand again, and holds it dearly. For quite a while both sit again in silence.
Then she speaks again:
“None of this is real. This bench, this fog. This is all just something that's happening in my head. I'm probably lying in bed by myself and drooling into my pillow.”
“And maybe I'm lying in my bed and snore into mine, and our dreams have somehow connected. Maybe with this we've achieved that imagination travelling the angel was talking about.”
“Without really trying.” she says.
“Maybe that was the key. Maybe our REM sleep just has to be exactly in sync for us to connect somehow.”
“REM sleep?” asks Lyra.
“Rapid-Eye-Movement, the sleeping phase in which we dream, you can’t know the term, no idea if doctors in your world use the same.” he apologises.
This explanation is almost evidence enough for Lyra that this is not really a normal dream that only her brain is weaving, because dreams can only utilise what you already know – and Lyra really doesn't know much about medicine, she not a doctor, just half a scholar at this point, and two thirds of an alethiometrist. And her alethiometer usually lies on her bedside cabinet at night, and sometimes she even falls asleep on it, with her cheek on the warm gold. Has she tonight? Has it been guiding her nocturnal mind?
“Maybe we do this all the time, meet in shared dreams to tell each other what's happening in our lives. And when we wake up, it's forgotten.” Will says sorrowfully.
“But it would mean that we can always be happy to hear that we're doing well, again and again,” Lyra replies.
What a strange, contradictory thought, but one that gives her so much joy. And even if she forgets these conversations and their content again and again, she may not forget the feeling of them being together here.
“And at some point we tell each other about our work, where we live, who we married, what our children's names are, who our children married.”
“...and wake up happy without knowing why.”
“...like pen pals who write in magic ink. Whose letters can only be read under special lamps.”
“...and which then go up in smoke....”
“...and one day, when we die, we will meet in the World of the Dead to walk the last path together.”
“...if we find each other there. The world was big, and there were many ghosts there.”
“...I will definitely try. I won't be in a hurry I guess.”
“Me neither.”
Lyra leans against his shoulder, feeling Will's closeness, his steady breathing, the slow beat of his heart. She closes her eyes.
And awakens.