John Faa spoke:
「Lyra, child, Farder has told me about your reading of that instrument.
And Im sorry to say that poor Jacob has just died. I think were going to have to take you with us after all, against my inations. Im troubled in my mind about it, but there doo be any alternative. As soon as Jacobs buried acc to , well take our way. You uand me, Lyra: youre a ing too, but it ent an occasion for joy or jubilation. Theres trouble and danger ahead for all of us.
「Im a putting you under Farder s wing. Dont you be a trouble or a hazard to him, or youll be a feeling the fory wrath. Now cut along and explain to Ma Costa, and hold yourself in readio leave.」
The wo weeks passed more busily than any time of Lyras life so far.
Busily, but not quickly, for there were tedious stretches of waiting, of hiding in damp crabbed closets, of watg a dismal rain-soaked autumn landscape roll past the window, of hiding again, of sleepihe gas fumes of the engine and waking with a sick headache, and worst of all, of never once being allowed out into the air to run along the bank or clamber over the deck or haul at the lock gates or catch a m rope thrown from the lockside.
Because, of course, she had to remain hidden. Tony Costa told her of the gossip ierside pubs: that there was a hunt the length of the kingdom for a little fair-haired girl, with a big reward for her discovery and severe punishment for anyone cealihere were strange rumors too: people said she was the only child to have escaped from the Gobblers, and she had terrible secrets in her possession. Another rumor said she wasnt a human child at all but a pair of spirits in the form of child and daemoo this world by the infernal powers in order treat ruin; a another rumor said it was no child but a fully grown human, shrunk by magid in the pay of the Tartars, e to spy on good English people and prepare the way for a Tartar invasion.
Lyra heard these tales at first with glee and later with despondency. All those people hating and fearing her! And she loo be out of this narrow boxy . She loo be north already, in the wide snows uhe blazing Aurora. And sometimes she loo be back at Jordan College, scrambling over the roofs with Roger with the Stewards bell tolling half an hour to diime and the clatter and sizzle and shouting of the kit....Then she wished passiohat nothing had ged, nothing would ever ge, that she could be Lyra of Jordan College forever and ever.
The ohing that drew her out of her boredom and irritation was the alethiometer. She read it every day, sometimes with Farder and sometimes on her own, and she found that she could sink more and more readily into the calm state in which the symbol meanings clarified themselves, and those great mountain raouched by sunlight emerged into vision.
She struggled to explain to Farder what it felt like.
「Its almost like talking to someone, only you t quite hear them, and you feel kind of stupid because theyre cleverer than you, only they do cross or any thing.... And they know such a lot, Farder ! As if they knew everything, almost! Mrs. Coulter was clever, she knew ever such a lot, but this is a different kind of knowing....Its like uanding, I suppose....」
He would ask specific questions, and she would search for answers.
「Whats Mrs. Coulter doing now?」 hed say, and her hands would move at once, and hed say, 「Tell me what youre doing.」
「Well, the Madonna is Mrs. Coulter,