Lyra moaned and trembled untrollably, just as if she had been pulled out of water so cold that her heart had nearly frozen. Pantalaimon simply lay against her bare skin, inside her clothes, loving her back to herself, but aware all the time of Mrs. Coulter, busy preparing a drink of something, and most of all of the golden monkey, whose hard little fingers had run swiftly over Lyras body when only Pantalaimon could have noticed; and who had felt, around her waist, the oilskin pouch with its tents.
「Sit up, dear, and drink this,」 said Mrs. Coulter, and her gentle arm slipped around Lyras bad lifted her.
Lyra ched herself, but relaxed almost at once as Pantalaimon thought to her:
Were only safe as long as we pretend. She opened her eyes and found that theyd been taining tears, and to her surprise and shame she sobbed and sobbed.
Mrs. Coulter made sympathetic sounds and put the drink into the monkeys hands while she mopped Lyras eyes with a sted handkerchief.
「Cry as much as you o, darling,」 said that soft voice, and Lyra determio stop as soon as she possibly could. She struggled to hold back the tears, she pressed her lips together, she choked down the sobs that still shook her chest.
Pantalaimon played the same game: fool them, fool them. He became a mouse and crept away from Lyras hand to sniff timidly at the drink in the monkeys clutch. It was innocuous: an infusion of ile, nothing more. He crept back to Lyras shoulder and whispered, 「Drink it.」
She sat up and took the hot cup in both hands, alternately sipping and blowing to cool it. She kept her eyes down. She must pretend harder than shed ever done in her life.
「Lyra, darling,」 Mrs. Coulter murmured, stroking her hair. 「I thought wed lost you forever! What happened? Did you get lost? Did someoake you out of the flat?」
「Yeah,」 Lyra whispered.
「Who was it, dear?」
「A man and a woman.」
「Guests at the party?」
「I think so. They said you needed something that was downstairs and I went to get it and they grabbed hold of me and took me in a car somewhere. But wheopped, I ran out quid dodged away and they never caught me. But I didnt know where I was....」
Another sob shook her briefly, but they were weaker now, and she could pretend this one was caused by her story.
「And I just wandered about trying to find my way back, only these Gobblers caught me....And they put me in a van with some other kids and took me somewhere, a big building, I dunno where it was.」
With every sed that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of plexity and trol that the alethiometer gave her.
She had to be careful not to say anything obviously impossible; she had to be vague in some places and i plausible details in others; she had to be an artist, in short.
「How long did they keep you in this building?」 said Mrs. Coulter.
Lyras journey along the als aime with the gyp-tians had taken weeks:
shed have to at for that time. She ied a voyage with the Gobblers to Trollesund, and then an escape, lavish with details from her observation of the town; and a time as maid-of-all-work at Einarssons Bar, and then a spell w for a family of farmers inland, and then being caught by the Samoyeds and brought to Bolvangar.