During dinner the Master and Dame Hannah talked of what had happened in Lyra’s absence, and she listened in dismay, or sorrow, or wonder. When they withdrew to his sitting room for coffee, the Master said:
“Now, Lyra, we’ve hardly heard from you. But I know you’ve seen many things. Are you able to tell us something of what you’ve experienced?”
“Yes,” she said. “But not all at once. I don’t understand some of it, and some makes me shudder and cry still; but I will tell you, I promise, as much as I can. Only you have to promise something, too.”
The Master looked at the gray-haired lady with the marmoset dæmon in her lap, and a flicker of amusement passed between them.
“What’s that?” said Dame Hannah.
“You have to promise to believe me,” Lyra said seriously. “I know I haven’t always told the truth, and I could only survive in some places by telling lies and making up stories. So I know that’s what I’ve been like, and I know you know it, but my true story’s too important for me to tell if you’re only going to believe half of it. So I promise to tell the truth, if you promise to believe it.”
“Well, I promise,” said Dame Hannah.
The Master said, “And so do I.”
“But you know the thing I wish,” Lyra said, “almost—almost more than anything else? I wish I hadn’t lost the way of reading the alethiometer. Oh, it was so strange, Master, how it came in the first place and then just left! One day I knew it so well—I could move up and down the symbol meanings and step from one to another and make all the connections—it was like . . .” She smiled, and went on, “Well, I was like a monkey in the trees, it was so quick. Then suddenly—nothing. None of it made sense; I couldn’t even remember anything except just basic meanings, like the anchor means hope and the skull means death. All those thousands of meanings . . . Gone.”
“They’re not gone, though, Lyra,” said Dame Hannah. “The books are still in Bodley’s Library. The scholarship to study them is alive and well.”
Dame Hannah was sitting opposite the Master in one of the two armchairs beside the fireplace, Lyra on the sofa between them. The lamp by the Master’s chair was all the light there was, but it showed the expressions of the two old people clearly. And it was Dame Hannah’s face that Lyra found herself studying. Kindly, Lyra thought, and sharp, and wise; but she could no more read what it meant than she could read the alethiometer.
“Well, now,” the Master went on. “We must think about your future, Lyra.”
His words made her shiver. She gathered herself and sat up.
“All the time I was away,” Lyra said, “I never thought about that. All I thought about was just the time I was in, just the present. There were plenty of times when I thought I didn’t have a future at all. And now . . . Well, suddenly finding I’ve got a whole life to live, but no . . . but no idea what to do with it, well, it’s like having the alethiometer but no idea how to read it. I suppose I’ll have to work, but I don’t know at what. My parents are probably rich, but I bet they never thought of putting any money aside for me. And anyway, I think they must have used all their money up by now, so even if I did have a claim on it, there wouldn’t be any left. I don’t know, Master. I came back to Jordan because this used to be my home, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I think King Iorek Byrnison would let me live on Svalbard, and I think Serafina Pekkala would let me live with her witch clan; but I’m not a bear and I’m not a witch, so I wouldn’t really fit in there, much as I love them. Maybe the gyptians would take me in . . . But really I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m lost, really, now.”
They looked at her: her eyes were glittering more than usual, her chin was held high with a look she’d learned from Will without knowing it. She looked defiant as well as lost, Dame Hannah thought, and admired her for it; and the Master saw something else—he saw how the child’s unconscious grace had gone, and how she was awkward in her growing body. But he loved the girl dearly, and he felt half-proud and half in awe of the beautiful adult she would be, so soon.
He said, “You will never be lost while this college is standing, Lyra. This is your home for as long as you need it. As for money—your father made over an endowment to care for all your needs, and appointed me executor; so you needn’t worry about that.”
In fact, Lord Asriel had done nothing of the sort, but Jordan College was rich, and the Master had money of his own, even after the recent upheavals.
“No,” he went on, “I was thinking about learning. You’re still very young, and your education until now has depended on . . . well, quite frankly, on which of our scholars you intimidated least,” he said, but he was smiling. “It’s been haphazard. Now, it may turn out that in due course your talents will take you in a direction we can’t foresee at all. But if you were to make the alethiometer the subject of your life’s work, and set out to learn consciously what you could once do by intuition—”
“Yes,” said Lyra definitely.
“—then you could hardly do better than put yourself in the hands of my good friend Dame Hannah. Her scholarship in that field is unmatched.”
“Let me make a suggestion,” said the lady, “and you needn’t respond now. Think about it for a while. Now, my college is not as old as Jordan, and you’re too young yet to become an undergraduate in any case, but a few years ago we acquired a large house in north Oxford, and we decided to set up a boarding school. I’d like you to come and meet the headmistress and see whether you’d care to become one of our pupils. You see, one thing you’ll need soon, Lyra, is the friendship of other girls of your age. There are things that we learn from one another when we’re young, and I don’t think that Jordan can provide quite all of them. The headmistress is a clever young woman, energetic, imaginative, kindly. We’re lucky to have her. You can talk to her, and if you like the idea, come and make St. Sophia’s your school, as Jordan is your home. And if you’d like to begin studying the alethiometer systematically, you and I could meet for some private lessons. But there’s time, my dear, there’s plenty of time. Don’t answer me now. Leave it until you’re ready.”