But he didn’t answer. He brought his fingers to her face. He touched her cheekbones and her forehead and the bridge of her nose. “Lyra,” he said again. “I like your name.” Then: “I wish I had a name.”
Lyra closed her eyes. He kept touching her. He ran his fingers across her scalp. He traced the long curve of her earlobe, and then moved a finger down her neck, pressing lightly as though to feel her pulse beating up through his hand. And everywhere he touched, she imagined she was healed. She imagined the disease simply vanishing, evaporating, like water under the sun. “We can give you a name,” she said, still with her eyes closed. “You can take one from the stars, like I did.”
He was quiet for a while. His hand moved to her shoulder. He walked his fingers along her collarbone. He placed his thumb in the hollow of her throat.
“You pick,” he said, and for the briefest second he touched her lips, too. Then he placed his hand flat against her chest, just above her heart.
In the darkness behind her eyelids she saw a universe explode into being, expand into brightness. She pictured names and stars bright blue or purple or white-hot.
“Caelum,” she said. She knew it was right as soon as she said it out loud. “You’ll be Caelum.”
“Caelum,” he repeated. Even without opening her eyes, she could tell he was smiling.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 13 of Gemma’s story.
FOURTEEN
SOMETHING HAD CHANGED. LYRA COULDN’T have said what it was, exactly, only that something had softened in Caelum, or in her, or both. They were bound together. They had chosen each other, to be responsible for and to care for each other.
By four p.m. they had reached Little Waller, although Lyra asked several people to be sure. A policeman spotted them standing at a corner, puzzling over the sign, and came loping down the street. Lyra’s chest tightened—he was wearing a uniform similar to the one the guards had worn at Haven, and she thought of that night on the marshes and how the soldiers had been afraid to move Cassiopeia, afraid she might be contagious. You know how expensive these things are to make? But the policeman only asked them if they needed help and pointed the way.
“Straight and keep walking,” he said. “That road runs right out into marshland. Couldn’t have picked a nicer day for it.” She didn’t know whether he was being serious. It was already so hot the pavement shimmered.
On their way through town they passed a blocky cement building called the Woodcrest Retirement Home. Behind a tall hedgerow, several sprinklers were tossing up water, crossing in midair, making shimmering rainbows. Both Lyra and Caelum crouched to drink, and Lyra felt a bit like a dog but not in a bad way. She and Caelum were a team, a pack. They could survive like this. They would survive. They’d figure out a way.
Together.
Caelum stood guard while Lyra took off her filthy shirt and her jeans, and, crouching, moved into the spray of water to clean herself. They had no towels, so she had to get dressed right away again, but it didn’t matter: the water was delicious and cold, and she was happier than she could ever remember being. Then she stood watch for him, although she couldn’t resist looking after he’d stripped off his shirt. She had seen anatomical drawings of the muscles connecting the shoulder blades and torqued around the spine, but she had never imagined that they could make this, something seamless and graceful. Something beautiful.
They set out again, their shirts damp with water, their socks squelching a little in their shoes. Neither of them cared. They walked in silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Lyra and Caelum: the two replicas with names plucked straight from the stars.
Jake’s road was little more than a dirt path through the woods, crowded with tall spruce trees and hanging moss and loud with the chitter of birds. All at once Lyra felt her happiness picked apart by anxiety, by the sense of someone concealed and watching. But the road was empty except for a dead turtle, flattened under a car tire, and a bird picking at it. The bird flapped away as soon as they approached.
What was that feeling? It was standing naked in front of a team of doctors and nurses. It was the lights in the operation room, and the shadow of people moving behind glass.
Jake’s house, number 1211, looked like it had simply been dropped there, temporarily stifling a nest of exploding growth. Two shutters were broken and the window boxes were empty. But a little lawn had been cleared in front of the porch, and someone had repainted the exterior yellow to conceal the moisture rotting out the baseboards. A cat slunk beneath the porch, and for a paranoid second Lyra was sure that Sheri Hayes had followed them all this way to yell at them for ruining her pictures. But that didn’t make sense. And there must be many cats in the world. There were many everything in this world.
Lyra followed Caelum to the front door. The sun was hot on the back of her neck and felt weighty. They knocked and rang the doorbell. No one came. Jake’s car was in the driveway, though. Lyra recognized it. They rang the doorbell again. Caelum leaned in to listen at the door. But it was obvious no one was home. There was not a single creak from inside.
“He must be out,” Lyra said at last, although she hated to admit it. The disappointment was almost physical. Suddenly she was exhausted again.
“We’ll wait for him here, then,” Caelum said. When Lyra looked at him, he shrugged. “He’s got to be back sometime, right?”
“He said his aunt would come home today,” Lyra said. She didn’t have a clear sense of what an aunt was but knew it meant family, like mother and grandmother. “What if his aunt finds us first?”