If Dust were a good thing…If it were to be sought and welcomed and cherished…
“We could look for it too, Pan!” she said.
That was what he wanted to hear.
“We could get to it before he does,” he went on, “and….”
The enormousness of the task silenced them. Lyra looked up at the blazing sky. She was aware of how small they were, she and her daemon, in comparison with the majesty and vastness of the universe; and of how little they knew, in comparison with the profound mysteries above them.
“We could,” Pantalaimon insisted. “We came all this way, didn't we? We could do it.”
“We got it wrong, though, Pan. We got it all wrong about Roger. We thought we were helping him….” She choked, and kissed Roger's still face clumsily, several times. “We got it wrong,” she said.
“Next time we'll check everything and ask all the questions we can think of, then. We'll do better next time.”
“And we'd be alone. lorek Byrnison couldn't follow us and help. Nor could Farder Coram or Serafina Pekkala, or Lee Scoresby or no one.”
“Just us, then. Don't matter. We're not alone, anyway; not like….”
She knew he meant not like Tony Makarios; not like those poor lost daemons at Bolvangar; we're still one being; both of us are one.
“And we've got the alethiometer,” she said. “Yeah. I reckon we've got to do it, Pan. We'll go up there and we'll search for Dust, and when we've found it we'll know what to do.”
Roger's body lay still in her arms. She let him down gently.
“And we'll do it,” she said.
She turned away. Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries. But they weren't alone.
So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.
END OF BOOK ONE