Lyra was awake before dawn, with Pantalaimon shivering at her breast, and she got up to walk about and warm herself up as the gray light seeped into the sky. She had never known such silenot even in the snow-blaed Arctic; there was not a stir of wind, and the sea was so still that not the ti ripple broke on the sand; the world seemed suspended betweehing in and breathing out.
Will lay curled up fast asleep, with his head on the rucksack to protect the khe cloak had fallen off his shoulder, and she tucked it around him, pretending that she was taking care to avoid his daemon, and that she had the form of a cat, curled up just as he was. She must be here somewhere, Lyra thought.
Carrying the still sleepy Pantalaimon, she walked away from Will and sat down on the slope of a sand dune a little way off, so their voices wouldnt wake him.
"Those little people," Pantalaimon said.
"I dont like em," said Lyra decisively. "I think we should get away from em as soon as we . I re if we trap "em in a or something, Will cut through and close up and thats it, well be free."
"We havent got a ," he said, "or something. Anyway, I bet theyre cleverer than that. Hes watg us now."
Pantalaimon was a hawk as he said that, and his eyes were keehan hers. The darkness of the sky was turning minute by mio the palest ethereal blue, and as she looked across the sand, the first edge of the sun just cleared the rim of the sea, dazzling her. Because she was on the slope of the duhe light reached her a few seds before it touched the beach, and she watched it flow around her and along toward Will; and then she saw the hand-high figure of the Chevalier Tialys, standing by Wills head, clear and wide awake and watg them.
"The thing is," said Lyra, "they t make us do what they want. They got to follow us. I bet theyre fed up."
"If they got hold of us," said Pantalaimon, meaning him and Lyra, "and got their stings ready to sti us, Will』d have to do what they said."
Lyra thought about it. She remembered vividly the horrible scream of pain from Mrs. Coulter, the eye-rolling vulsions, the ghastly, lolling drool of the golden monkey as the poisoered her bloodstream... And that was only a scratch, as her mother had retly been reminded elsewhere. Will would have to give in and do what they wanted.
"Suppose they thought he wouldnt, though," she said, "suppose they thought he was so coldhearted hed just watch us die. Maybe he better make em think that, if he ."
She had brought the alethiometer with her, and now that it was light enough to see, she took the beloved instrument out and laid it on its black velvet cloth in her lap. Little by little, Lyra drifted into that tran which the many layers of meaning were clear to her, and where she could sericate webs of eess between them all. As her fingers found the symbols, her mind found the words: How we get rid of the spies?
Then the needle began to dart this way and that, almost too fast to see, and some part of Lyras awareness ted the swings and the stops and saw at ohe meaning of what the movement said.
It told her: Do not try, because your lives depend on them.
That was a surprise, and not a happy one. But she went on and asked: How we get to the land of the dead?
The answer came: Go down. Follow the knife. Go onward. Follow the knife.
And finally she asked hesitantly, half-ashamed: Is this the right thing to do?
Yes, said the