4/15/2023 0 Comments Last wood torrent![]() What's that hourglass mean, Farder Coram? she asked, over the alethiometer, one sunny morning in his boat. The door shut behind her with a decisive click. Pantalaimon hissed quietly, but John Faa's daemon took off from the back of his chair and flew at them with black wings, not threateningly, but like a reminder of good manners and Lyra turned on her heel as the crow glided over her head and wheeled back to John Faa. She pestered Roger van Poppel with suggestions about the stores they needed to take: Had he remembered snow goggles? Did he know the best place to get arctic maps? She hung around Adam Stefanski, watching as he made his choice of the volunteers for the fighting force. Meanwhile, all around her the tantalizing work of assembling the expedition was going on day and night. Pantalaimon sat up in her arms, his wildcat eyes blazing green. She was inside the room now, and all the men and their daemons were watching her, some with amusement and some with irritation, but she had eyes only for John Faa. He might have been ill, or he might have suffered a crippling blow, but the result was that Sophonax was as sleek and healthy and beautiful as Farder Coram was ravaged and weak. So you oughter take me, Lord Faa, excuse me for interrupting your talk." And like that woman said, you might need women to play a part-well, you might need kids too. You'd be sorry if you got up there and then found you needed me and found you'd left me behind. I can do navigation and I can take anbaromagnetic readings off the Aurora, and I know what parts of a bear you can eat, and all kind of useful things. ![]() And before that, even, I meant to rescue my friend Roger the kitchen boy from Jordan who was took. That's what I set out to do when I run away from Mrs. "I want to come and help rescue the kids. I want to come north, Lyra said so they could all hear it. So although she admired the fur of Sophonax and even speculated on what it might feel like, she never made the slightest move to touch her, and never would. Lyra couldn't remember having to be told that: she just knew it, as instinctively as she felt that nausea was bad and comfort good. Daemons might touch each other, of course, or fight but the prohibition against human-daemon contact went so deep that even in battle no warrior would touch an enemy's daemon. She longed to touch that fur, to rub her cheeks against it, but of course she never did for it was the grossest breach of etiquette imaginable to touch another person's daemon. When the sunlight touched her, it lit up more shades of tawny-brown-leaf-hazel-corn-gold-autumn-mahogany than Lyra could name. When Pantalaimon was a cat, he was lean and ragged and harsh, but Sophonax, for that was her name, was golden-eyed and elegant beyond measure, fully twice as large as a real cat and richly furred. She could hardly take her eyes off Farder Coram's daemon, who was the most beautiful daemon she'd ever seen. Coulter, and watched as she read the alethiometer. Instead he talked to her, and listened to her memories of Oxford and of Mrs. He took pity on the fierce, desperate little girl and didn't send her away. Probably you'll need me to help you understand Mr. I think it'd be best if I helped you, Farder Coram, she said, "because I probably know more about the Gobblers than anyone else, being as I was nearly one of them. I bet there's one in Bodley's Library in Oxford, she said. So in default, Lyra attached herself to Farder Coram. But he had slipped away in the early hours of the morning after the second roping, and naturally no one could say where he'd gone or when he'd return. The man she most wanted to help was Benjamin de Ruyter, the spy. Over the next few days, Lyra concocted a dozen plans and dismissed them impatiently for they all boiled down to stowing away, and how could you stow away on a narrowboat? To be sure, the real voyage would involve a proper ship, and she knew enough stories to expect all kinds of hiding places on a full-sized vessel: the lifeboats, the hold, the bilges, whatever they were but she'd have to get to the ship first, and leaving the fens meant traveling the gyptian way. His mind was sharp and clear and powerful, though, and soon Lyra came to love him for his knowledge and for the firm way he directed her. He could not walk without leaning on two sticks, and he trembled constantly like an aspen leaf.
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