She swallowed. The alethiometer never lied: this boy was a murderer, and if he’d killed before, he could kill her, too. She nodded seriously, and she meant it.
“All right,” she said.
Pantalaimon had become a lemur, and was gazing at him with disconcerting wide eyes. Will stared back, and the dæmon became a mouse once more and crept into Lyra’s pocket.
“Good,” he said. “Now, while we’re here, we’ll pretend to these other kids that we just come from somewhere in their world. It’s good there aren’t any grownups about. We can just come and go and no one’ll notice. But in my world, you got to do as I say. And the first thing is you better wash yourself. You need to look clean, or you’ll stand out. We got to be camouflaged everywhere we go. We got to look as if we belong there so naturally that people don’t even notice us. So go and wash your hair for a start. There’s some shampoo in the bathroom. Then we’ll go and find some different clothes.”
“I dunno how,” she said. “I never washed my hair. The housekeeper done it at Jordan, and then I never needed to after that.”
“Well, you’ll just have to work it out,” he said. “Wash yourself all over. In my world people are clean.”
“Hmm,” said Lyra, and went upstairs. A ferocious rat face glared at him over her shoulder, but he looked back coldly.
Part of him wanted to wander about this sunny silent morning exploring the city, and another part trembled with anxiety for his mother, and another part was still numb with shock at the death he’d caused. And overhanging them all was the task he had to do. But it was good to keep busy, so while he waited for Lyra, he cleaned the working surfaces in the kitchen, and washed the floor, and emptied the rubbish into the bin he found in the alley outside.
Then he took the green leather writing case from his tote bag and looked at it longingly. As soon as he’d shown Lyra how to get through the window into his Oxford, he’d come back and look at what was inside; but in the meanwhile, he tucked it under the mattress of the bed he’d slept in. In this world, it was safe.
When Lyra came down, clean and wet, they left to look for some clothes for her. They found a department store, shabby like everywhere else, with clothes in styles that looked a little old-fashioned to Will’s eye, but they found Lyra a tartan skirt and a green sleeveless blouse with a pocket for Pantalaimon. She refused to wear jeans, refused even to believe Will when he told her that most girls did.
“They’re trousers,” she said. “I’m a girl. Don’t be stupid.”
He shrugged; the tartan skirt looked unremarkable, which was the main thing. Before they left, Will dropped some coins in the till behind the counter.
“What you doing?” she said.
“Paying. You have to pay for things. Don’t they pay for things in your world?”
“They don’t in this one! I bet those other kids en’t paying for a thing.”
“They might not, but I do.”
“If you start behaving like a grownup, the Specters’ll get you,” she said, but she didn’t know whether she could tease him yet or whether she should be afraid of him.
In the daylight, Will could see how ancient the buildings in the heart of the city were, and how near to ruin some of them had come. Holes in the road had not been repaired; windows were broken; plaster was peeling. And yet there had once been a beauty and grandeur about this place. Through carved archways they could see spacious courtyards filled with greenery, and there were great buildings that looked like palaces, for all that the steps were cracked and the doorframes loose from the walls. It looked as if rather than knock a building down and build a new one, the citizens of Ci’gazze preferred to patch it up indefinitely.
At one point they came to a tower standing on its own in a little square. It was the oldest building they’d seen: a simple battlemented tower four stories high. Something about its stillness in the bright sun was intriguing, and both Will and Lyra felt drawn to the half-open door at the top of the broad steps; but they didn’t speak of it, and they went on, a bit reluctantly.
When they reached the broad boulevard with the palm trees, he told her to look for a little café on a corner, with green-painted metal tables on the pavement outside. They found it within a minute. It looked smaller and shabbier by daylight, but it was the same place, with the zinc-topped bar, the espresso machine, and the half-finished plate of risotto, now beginning to smell bad in the warm air.
“Is it in here?” she said.
“No. It’s in the middle of the road. Make sure there’s no other kids around.”
But they were alone. Will took her to the grassy median under the palm trees, and looked around to get his bearings.
“I think it was about here,” he said. “When I came through, I could just about see that big hill behind the white house up there, and looking this way there was the café there, and . . . ”
“What’s it look like? I can’t see anything.”
“You won’t mistake it. It doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen.”
He cast up and down. Had it vanished? Had it closed? He couldn’t see it anywhere.
And then suddenly he had it. He moved back and forth, watching the edge. Just as he’d found the night before, on the Oxford side of it, you could only see it at all from one side: when you moved behind it, it was invisible. And the sun on the grass beyond it was just like the sun on the grass on this side, except unaccountably different.
“Here it is,” he said when he was sure.
“Ah! I see it!”
She was agog, she looked as astounded as he’d looked himself to hear Pantalaimon talk. Her dæmon, unable to remain inside her pocket, had come out to be a wasp, and he buzzed up to the hole and back several times, while she rubbed her still slightly wet hair into spikes.
“Keep to one side,” he told her. “If you stand in front of it people’d just see a pair of legs, and that would make ’em curious. I don’t want anyone noticing.”
“What’s that noise?”
“Traffic. It’s a part of the Oxford ring road. It’s bound to be busy. Get down and look at it from the side. It’s the wrong time of day to go through, really; there’s far too many people about. But it’d be hard to find somewhere to go if we went in the middle of the night. At least once we’re through we can blend in easy. You go first. Just duck through quickly and move out of the way.”
She had a little blue rucksack that she’d been carrying since they left the café, and she unslung it and held it in her arms before crouching to look through.
“Ah!” She gasped. “And that’s your world? That don’t look like any part of Oxford. You sure you was in Oxford?”
“ ’Course I’m sure. When you go through, you’ll see a road right in front of you. Go to the left, and then a little farther along you take the road that goes down to the right. That leads to the city center. Make sure you can see where this window is, and remember, all right? It’s the only way back.”
“Right,” she said. “I won’t forget.”
Taking her rucksack in her arms, she ducked through the window in the air and vanished. Will crouched down to see where she went.
And there she was, standing on the grass in his Oxford with Pan still as a wasp on her shoulder, and no one, as far as he could tell, had seen her appear. Cars and trucks raced past a few feet beyond, and no driver, at this busy junction, would have time to gaze sideways at an odd-looking bit of air, even if they could see it, and the traffic screened the window from anyone looking across from the far side.
There was a squeal of brakes, a shout, a bang. He flung himself down to look.
Lyra was lying on the grass. A car had braked so hard that a van had struck it from behind, and knocked the car forward anyway, and there was Lyra, lying still—
Will darted through after her. No one saw him come; all eyes were on the car, the crumpled bumper, the van driver getting out, and on the little girl.
“I couldn’t help it! She ran out in front,” said the car driver, a middle-aged woman. “You were too close,” she said, turning toward the van driver.
“Never mind that,” he said. “How’s the kid?”