But she didnt stop to visit her homeland, or to fort and ence her sisters. Instead, she flew north and farther north, into the fogs and gales around Svalbard, the kingdom of Iorek Byrnison, the armored bear.
She hardly reized the main island. The mountains lay bare and black, and only a few hidden valleys fag away from the sun had retained a little snow in their shaded ers; but what was the sun doing here anyway, at this time of year? The whole of nature was overturned.
It took her most of a day to find the bear-king. She saw him among the rocks off the northern edge of the island, swimming fast after a walrus. It was harder for bears to kill ier: when the land was covered in id the great sea-mammals had to e up to breathe, the bears had the advantage of camouflage and their prey was out of its element. That was how things should be.
But Iorek Byrnison was hungry, and eveabbing tusks of the mighty walrus couldnt keep him at bay. Serafina watched as the creatures fought, turning the white sea-spray red, and saw Iorek haul the carcass out of the waves and onto a broad shelf of rock, watched at a respectful distance by three ragged-furred foxes, waiting for their turn at the feast.
When the bear-king had finished eating, Serafina flew down to speak to him. Now was the time to face her remorse.
"King Iorek Byrnison," she said, "please may I speak with you? I lay my ons down."
She placed her bow and arrows o rock between them. Iorek looked at them briefly, and she khat if his face could register aion, it would be surprise.
"Speak, Serafina Pekkala," he growled. "We have never fought, have we?"
"King Iorek, I have failed your rade, Lee Scoresby."
The bears small black eyes and bloodstained muzzle were very still. She could see the wind ruffling the tips of the creamy white hairs along his back. He said nothing.
"Mr. Scoresby is dead," Serafi on. "Before I parted from him, I gave him a flower to summoh, if he should need me. I heard his call and flew to him, but I arrived too late. He died fighting a foruscovites, but I know nothing of what brought them there, or why he was holding them off when he could easily have escaped. King Iorek, I am wretched with remorse."
"Where did this happen?" said Iorek Byrnison.
"In another world. This will take me some time to tell."
"Then begin."
She told him what Lee Scoresby had set out to do: to find the man who had been known as Stanislaus Grumman. She told him about how the barrier between the worlds had been breached by Lord Asriel, and about some of the sequehe melting of the ice, for example. She told of the witch Ruta Skadis flight after the angels, and she tried to describe those flying beings to the bear-king as Ruta had described them to her: the light that shone ohe crystalline clarity of their appearahe riess of their wisdom.
Then she described what she had found when she answered Lees call.
"I put a spell on his body to preserve it from corruption," she told him. "It will last until you see him, if you wish to do that. But I am troubled by this, King Iorek. Troubled by everything, but mostly by this."
"Where is the child?"
"I left her with my sisters, because I had to answer Lees call."
"In that same world?"
"Yes, the same."
"How I get there from here?"
She explained. Iorek Byrnison listened expressionlessly, and then said, "I shall go to Lee Scoresby. And then