From time to time the half-boy spoke.
«What's that you said?» asked Lyra.
«I says is she gonna know where I am?»
«Yeah, she'll know, she'll find you and we'll find her. Hold on tight now, Tony. It en't far from here….»
The bear loped onward. Lyra had no idea how tired she was until they caught up with the gyptians. The sledges had stopped to rest the dogs, and suddenly there they all were, Farder Coram, Lord Faa, Lee Scoresby, all lunging forward to help and then falling back silent as they saw the other figure with Lyra. She was so stiff that she couldn't even loosen her arms around his body, and John Faa himself had to pull them gently open and lift her off.
«Gracious God, what is this?» he said. «Lyra, child, what have you found?»
«He's called Tony,» she mumbled through frozen lips. «And they cut his daemon away. That's what the Gobblers do.»
The men held back, fearful; but the bear spoke, to Lyra's weary amazement, chiding them.
«Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.»
«You're right, lorek Byrnison,» said John Faa, and turned to give orders. «Build that fire up and heat some soup for the child. For both children. Farder Coram, is your shelter rigged?»
«It is, John. Bring her over and we'll get her warm….»
«And the little boy,» said someone else. «He can eat and get warm, even if…»
Lyra was trying to tell John Faa about the witches, but they were all so busy, and she was so tired. After a confusing few minutes full of lantern light, woodsmoke, figures hurrying to and fro, she felt a gentle nip on her ear from Pantalaimon's ermine teeth, and woke to find the bear's face a few inches from hers.
«The witches,» Pantalaimon whispered. «I called lorek.»
«Oh yeah,» she mumbled. «lorek, thank you for taking me there and back. I might not remember to tell Lord Faa about the witches, so you better do that instead of me.»
She heard the bear agree, and then she fell asleep properly.
When she woke up, it was as close to daylight as it was ever going to get. The sky was pale in the southeast, and the air was suffused with a gray mist, through which the gyptians moved like bulky ghosts, loading sledges and harnessing dogs to the traces.
She saw it all from the shelter on Farder Coram's sledge, inside which she lay under a heap of furs. Pantalaimon was fully awake before she was, trying the shape of an arctic fox before reverting to his favorite ermine.
lorek Byrnison was asleep in the snow nearby, his head on his great paws; but Farder Coram was up and busy, and as soon as he saw Pantalaimon emerge, he limped across to wake Lyra properly.
She saw him coming, and sat up to speak.
«Farder Coram, I know what it was that I couldn't understand! The alethiometer kept saying bird and not, and that didn't make sense, because it meant no daemon and I didn't see how it could be….What is it?»
«Lyra, I'm afraid to tell you this after what you done, but that little boy died an hour ago. He couldn't settle, he couldn't stay in one place; he kept asking after his daemon, where she was, was she a coming soon, and all; and he kept such a tight hold on that bare old piece of fish as if…Oh, I can't speak of it, child; but he closed his eyes finally and fell still, and that was the first time he looked peaceful, for he was like any other dead person then, with their daemon gone in the course of nature. They've been a trying to dig a grave for him, but the earth's bound like iron. So John Faa ordered a fire built, and they're a going to cremate him, so as not to have him despoiled by carrion eaters.
«Child, you did a brave thing and a good thing, and I'm proud of you. Now we know what terrible wickedness those people are capable of, we can see our duty plainer than ever. What you must do is rest and eat, because you fell asleep too soon to restore yourself last night, and you have to eat in these temperatures to stop yourself getting weak….»
He was fussing around, tucking the furs into place, tightening the tension rope across the body of the sledge, running the traces through his hands to untangle them.
«Farder Coram, where is the little boy now? Have they burned him yet?»
«No, Lyra, he's a lying back there.»
«I want to go and see him.»
He couldn't refuse her that, for she'd seen worse than a dead body, and it might calm her. So with Pantalaimon as a white hare bounding delicately at her side, she trudged along the line of sledges to where some men were piling brushwood.
The boy's body lay under a checkered blanket beside the path. She knelt and lifted the blanket in her mittened hands. One man was about to stop her, but the others shook their heads.
Pantalaimon crept close as Lyra looked down on the poor wasted face. She slipped her hand out of the mitten and touched his eyes. They were marble-cold, and Farder Coram had been right; poor little Tony Makarios was no different from any other human whose daemon had departed in death. Oh, if they took Pantalaimon from her! She swept him up and hugged him as if she meant to press him right into her heart. And all little Tony had was his pitiful piece offish….
Where was it?
She pulled the blanket down. It was gone.
She was on her feet in a moment, and her eyes flashed fury at the men nearby.
«Where's his fish?»
They stopped, puzzled, unsure what she meant; though some of their daemons knew, and looked at one another. One of the men began to grin uncertainly.
«Don't you dare laugh! I'll tear your lungs out if you laugh at him! That's all he had to cling onto, just an old dried fish, that's all he had for a daemon to love and be kind to! Who's took it from him? Where's it gone?»
Pantalaimon was a snarling snow leopard, just like Lord Asriel's daemon, but she didn't see that; all she saw was right and wrong.
«Easy, Lyra,» said one man. «Easy, child.»
«Who's took it?» she flared again, and the gyptian took a step back from her passionate fury.
«I didn't know,» said another man apologetically. «I thought it was just what he'd been eating. I took it out his hand because I thought it was more respectful. That's all, Lyra.»
«Then where is it?»
The man said uneasily, «Not thinking he had a need for it, I gave it to my dogs. I do beg your pardon.»
«It en't my pardon you need, it's his,» she said, and turned at once to kneel again, and laid her hand on the dead child's icy cheek.
Then an idea came to her, and she fumbled inside her furs. The cold air struck through as she opened her anorak, but in a few seconds she had what she wanted, and took a gold coin from her purse before wrapping herself close again.
«I want to borrow your knife,» she said to the man who'd taken the fish, and when he'd let her have it, she said to Pantalaimon: «What was her name?»
He understood, of course, and said, «Ratter.»
She held the coin tight in her left mittened hand and, holding the knife like a pencil, scratched the lost daemon's name deeply into the gold.
«I hope that'll do, if I provide for you like a Jordan Scholar,» she whispered to the dead boy, and forced his teeth apart to slip the coin into his mouth. It was hard, but she managed it, and managed to close his jaw again.
Then she gave the man back his knife and turned in the morning twilight to go back to Farder Coram.
He gave her a mug of soup straight off the fire, and she sipped it greedily.
«What we going to do about them witches, Farder Coram?» she said. «I wonder if your witch was one of them.»
«My witch? I wouldn't presume that far, Lyra. They might be going anywhere. There's all kinds of concerns that play on the life of witches, things invisible to us: mysterious sicknesses they fall prey to, which we'd shrug off; causes of war quite beyond our understanding; joys and sorrows bound up with the flowering of tiny plants up on the tundra….But I wish I'd seen them a flying, Lyra. I wish I'd been able to see a sight like that. Now drink up all that soup. D'you want some more? There's some pan-bread a cooking too. Eat up, child, because we're on our way soon.»