“Thank you,” she said to Mr. Makepeace. “I hope you feel better soon.”
“Good night, Lyra,” he said.
Five minutes later, in the University Park, Pan said: “Listen.”
They stopped. Somewhere in the dark trees, a bird was singing.
“A nightingale?” Lyra guessed, but they didn't know for certain.
“Maybe,” Pan said, “the meaning—you know…”
“Yeah. … As if the birds—and the whole city—”
“Protecting us? Could it be that?”
They stood still. Their city lay quietly around them, and the only voice was the bird's, and they couldn't understand what it said.
“Things don't mean things as simply as that,” Lyra said, uncertainly. “Do they? Not like mensa means table. They mean all kinds of things, mixed up.”
“But it feels like it,” Pan said. “It feels as if the whole city's looking after us. So what we feel is part of the meaning, isn't it?”
“Yes! It is. It must be. Not the whole of it, and there's a lot more we don't even know is there, probably…. Like all those meanings in the alethiometer, the ones we have to go deep down to find. Things you never suspect. But that's part of it, no question.”
The city, their city—
Very shortly afterward, as they climbed in through the pantry window with the loose latch, they found the remains of an apple pie on the marble worktop.
“We must be lucky, Pan,” Lyra said, as they carried it upstairs. “See, that's another thing it means.”
And before they went to bed, they put the crumbs out on the windowsill, for the birds.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A KNOPF
This is a work of fiction Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
Text copyright © 2003 by Philip Pullman
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by Alfred A Knopf,
an imprint of Random House Children's Books,
a division of Random House, Inc, New York
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc
www randomhouse com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www randomhouse.com/teachers
Pullman, Philip
Lyra's Oxford / Philip Pullman, engravings by John Lawrence
SUMMARY Lyra and Pantalaimon (now a pine-marten) are back at Oxford,
but their peace is shattered by Ragi, the daemon of the witch Yelena,
who is searching for a healing elixir to cure his witch
eISBN: 978-0-307-48781-0
PZ7 P968 Ly 2003 [Fie]— 22 2003273903
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Chapter 1 - Lyra and the Birds
Copyright
