He let go of an oar and reached his crooked hand up to the iron ring set in the post at the corner of the jetty. With the other hand he moved the oar to bring the boat right up against the planks.
There was no need to speak. Will got in first, and then Lyra came forward to step down, too.
But the boatman held up his hand.
“Not him,” he said in a harsh whisper.
“Not who?”
“Not him.”
He extended a yellow-gray finger, pointing directly at Pantalaimon, whose red-brown stoat form immediately became ermine white.
“But he is me!” Lyra said.
“If you come, he must stay.”
“But we can’t! We’d die!”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
And then for the first time Lyra truly realized what she was doing. This was the real consequence. She stood aghast, trembling, and clutched her dear dæmon so tightly that he whimpered in pain.
“They . . . ” said Lyra helplessly, then stopped: it wasn’t fair to point out that the other three didn’t have to give anything up.
Will was watching her anxiously. She looked all around, at the lake, at the jetty, at the rough path, the stagnant puddles, the dead and sodden bushes . . . Her Pan, alone here: how could he live without her? He was shaking inside her shirt, against her bare flesh, his fur needing her warmth. Impossible! Never!
“He must stay here if you are to come,” the boatman said again.
The Lady Salmakia flicked the rein, and her dragonfly skimmed away from Lyra’s shoulder to land on the gunwale of the boat, where Tialys joined her. They said something to the boatman. Lyra watched as a condemned prisoner watches the stir at the back of the courtroom that might be a messenger with a pardon.
The boatman bent to listen and then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If she comes, he has to stay.”
Will said, “That’s not right. We don’t have to leave part of ourselves behind. Why should Lyra?”
“Oh, but you do,” said the boatman. “It’s her misfortune that she can see and talk to the part she must leave. You will not know until you are on the water, and then it will be too late. But you all have to leave that part of yourselves here. There is no passage to the land of the dead for such as him.”
No, Lyra thought, and Pantalaimon thought with her: We didn’t go through Bolvangar for this, no; how will we ever find each other again?
And she looked back again at the foul and dismal shore, so bleak and blasted with disease and poison, and thought of her dear Pan waiting there alone, her heart’s companion, watching her disappear into the mist, and she fell into a storm of weeping. Her passionate sobs didn’t echo, because the mist muffled them, but all along the shore in innumerable ponds and shallows, in wretched broken tree stumps, the damaged creatures that lurked there heard her full-hearted cry and drew themselves a little closer to the ground, afraid of such passion.
“If he could come—” cried Will, desperate to end her grief, but the boatman shook his head.
“He can come in the boat, but if he does, the boat stays here,” he said.
“But how will she find him again?”
“I don’t know.”
“When we leave, will we come back this way?”
“Leave?”
“We’re going to come back. We’re going to the land of the dead and we are going to come back.”
“Not this way.”
“Then some other way, but we will!”
“I have taken millions, and none came back.”
“Then we shall be the first. We’ll find our way out. And since we’re going to do that, be kind, boatman, be compassionate, let her take her dæmon!”
“No,” he said, and shook his ancient head. “It’s not a rule you can break. It’s a law like this one . . .” He leaned over the side and cupped a handful of water, and then tilted his hand so it ran out again. “The law that makes the water fall back into the lake, it’s a law like that. I can’t tilt my hand and make the water fly upward. No more can I take her dæmon to the land of the dead. Whether or not she comes, he must stay.”
Lyra could see nothing: her face was buried in Pantalaimon’s cat fur. But Will saw Tialys dismount from his dragonfly and prepare to spring at the boatman, and he half-agreed with the spy’s intention; but the old man had seen him, and turned his ancient head to say:
“How many ages do you think I’ve been ferrying people to the land of the dead? D’you think if anything could hurt me, it wouldn’t have happened already? D’you think the people I take come with me gladly? They struggle and cry, they try to bribe me, they threaten and fight; nothing works. You can’t hurt me, sting as you will. Better comfort the child; she’s coming; take no notice of me.”
Will could hardly watch. Lyra was doing the cruelest thing she had ever done, hating herself, hating the deed, suffering for Pan and with Pan and because of Pan; trying to put him down on the cold path, disengaging his cat claws from her clothes, weeping, weeping. Will closed his ears: the sound was too unhappy to bear. Time after time she pushed her dæmon away, and still he cried and tried to cling.
She could turn back.
She could say no, this is a bad idea, we mustn’t do it.
She could be true to the heart-deep, life-deep bond linking her to Pantalaimon, she could put that first, she could push the rest out of her mind—
But she couldn’t.
“Pan, no one’s done this before,” she whispered shiveringly, “but Will says we’re coming back and I swear, Pan, I love you, I swear we’re coming back—I will—take care, my dear—you’ll be safe—we will come back, and if I have to spend every minute of my life finding you again, I will, I won’t stop, I won’t rest, I won’t—oh, Pan—dear Pan—I’ve got to, I’ve got to . . .”