[ad_1]
AThe darkness was falling on the edge of the Fens, the rain was also beginning to fall. It was time of day when Giorgio Brabandt was generally looking for a likely place to moor for the night, but as they were so close to his native waters, he was inclined to keep moving forward. He knew every turn of these labyrinthine waterways, and the lights he sent to Lyra to climb to the bow and stern were a matter of courtesy to other boaters, and not a need to show the way.
"When do we get to the Fens, Master B?" Lyra said.
"We are here now," he said. "More or less, there is no border or customs post, nothing like that, one minute you're out, the next minute you're inside.
"So how do you know?"
"You have a feeling for that. If you are Egyptian, it's like going home. If you are not Egyptian, feel uncomfortable, nervous, you have the impression that all these boggarts and horrors are in the water, watching you. You do not feel it?
"No."
"Oh, well, we can not be here yet, otherwise I have not told you enough stories.
He stood at the bar, in polish and in the southwest, while Lyra was sitting right at the entrance, wrapped in an old cloak. The back light outlined a yellow outline around its voluminous shape and illuminated the incessant raindrops that filled the air. Lyra was aware of the potatoes cooking on the naphtha stove in the kitchen behind her. she would go soon and cut a few slices of bacon to fry.
"When do you think we will go to Zaal?" She says.
"Ah, there is a way to say that."
"What's that?"
"When you're close enough to see it, you're almost there."
"Well, it's useful, I have to -"
He suddenly raised a hand to silence her, and at the same moment his demon looked up. Brabandt protected his eyes from the edge of his southwest and rolled his eyes, and Lyra followed their example. She could not see anything, but heard a distant roar coming from the air.
"Lyra, go backwards and dowse this glimpse," said Brabandt, pulling the throttle back and reaching out the other side of the back light.
The light on the bow was reflected throughout the entire roof of the cabin, so Lyra could see easily enough to run and jump. When she reached out her hand and extinguished the wick to extinguish the flame, she could hear the sound more easily and a moment later she could see the source: the pale form of an egg-like zeppelin, slipping slowly behind them. the starboard side, below the clouds and showing no light.
She felt herself back in the cockpit. Brabandt had led the Portuguese maid to the side and cut the engine to a whisper. When Lyra jumped, she felt a little shock when the boat touched the grassy bank.
"Do you see it?" He said softly.
"I can see one. Is there more?
"That's enough. Does this follow us?
"No, I should not think they can still see the lights, not through that rain, and with the sound of the engine they will never be able to hear ours.
"I'm going to leave then," he said.
He pushed the throttle forward and the engine responded with a slight growl. The boat continued.
"How can you see?" Lyra said.
"Instinct, keep your trap closed, I need to listen."
She remembered the potatoes and ran inside to get them out of the fire and drain them. The old hut warm and comfortable, the kitchen clean, the steam, the smell of boiled potatoes – they felt like a bulwark against the danger above; but she knew that they were nothing of the sort and that a well-directed bomb would kill her as well as Brabandt and would sink the Maid in a few moments.
She scrambled from end to end, checking all the blinds. There was not a single fault. Finally, she turned off the light in the kitchen and went out into the cockpit again.
The roar of the zeppelin engine was loud now. It sounded like it was directly above the head. She narrowed her eyes in the pouring rain and saw nothing.
"Psst," Brabandt said softly. "Look to starboard."
Lyra stood up and stared as hard as she could, ignoring the rain in her eyes, and this time saw a small flickering green light. It was inconstant, but it always came back, after missing a second or two, and it was moving.
"Is this another boat?" She says.
"It's a will-o'-the-wyke. A lantern pumpkin.
"There is another!"
A second light, reddish in color, appeared and disappeared not far from the first. Lyra watched as they approached each other, touching each other, disappearing, then moving closer.
The maid of Portugal continued to move slowly and steadily, while Brabandt continued to check left and right, listened, glanced, even raising his face to sniff the air. The rain was beating stronger than ever. The marsh lights seemed to follow the boat, then Lyra realized that the zeppelin above her head had moved slightly in their direction, as if to see what they were. The engine seemed very noisy, very close, and she wondered how the pilot could see anything in the dark. The boat left no wake and every light on board was extinguished.
"There is another," Lyra said.
A third light had joined the first two, and now they organized a strange dance, interrupted, suspended and deflected. The cold, inconstant glow made Lyra uncomfortable. Only the solid bridge under his feet and the cumbersome presence of Giorgio Brabandt saved him from the sickly fear of things that were outside, beyond reason, in the dark.
"It's like that," said Brabandt.
He was right. As if drawn, the zeppelin was heading to starboard toward the lights of the marsh.
Brabandt pushed the throttle further forward, and the narrow boat picked up speed. In the faint glow of the marsh lights, Lyra could see him twisting all the senses, and Anneke, his daemon, jumped onto the roof of the cabin, his head moving in that direction and that of catching a fragment of perfume that would help avoid a mud bank or bypass a bend.
Lyra almost said, "Can I help?" But she realized by opening her mouth that he was confiding a task to him, he would tell him. So she sat down in the doorway again, stopped, and looked to starboard, where the marsh lights were blinking harder than ever.
Suddenly, a line of fire descended to the lights of the swamps of the sky swarming above. He touched the water and exploded into a bloom of orange and yellow flames and, after a second second, Lyra heard the brief whistling of the flight and the solid crump of the blast.
The lights of the marshes all extinguished at the same time.
"There," said Brabandt. "They broke the law now. They are allowed to fly over, but not to do that. "
Anneke grunted as she stood in four places and watched the glow dissipate quickly from the rocket.
A moment later, a dozen marsh lights flashed again, moving quickly, coming and going here and there, even going up and down. Small streams of fire spouted from the ground to ignite and extinguish in a moment.
"It's angry," Brabandt said. "The problem is that they show us."
The boat was still purring in the darkness, but he was right: the lights of the swamps were so bright and bright that they, tiny, lit up the length of the maid of Portugal, dripping with rain and catching every flicker. light.
"They do not like us, go-wykes, but they like them even less," said Brabandt. "But they still do not like us. We would not mind a bit if we were sunk and drowned or we collapsed into a thousand pieces. "
Anneke barked, a brief scream of alarm. She looked up and Lyra, who followed his gaze, saw a small form fall from the zeppelin and unfold quickly in a parachute. Almost immediately, the wind caught it and threw it back, but the black form under the awning burst into a bright flame.
"Flares," says Brabandt, while another was falling, blossoming and blazing.
The response of the marsh lights was instantaneous and furious. More and more of them started, jumping and dancing to the falling rocket, and when it reached the water, they invaded the whole, their cold fire controlling its heat and finally drowning it in a cloud of smoke and a chorus of little cries and sucking noises.
Suddenly, Lyra got up and ran inside, heading down the boat to her little hut at the bow. She searched for her bunk, felt the bedside table, shifted her hands over the book and the lamp until they found the velvet bag that contained the alethiometer. With both hands safe, she returned to the boat, aware of Braband's small movements with the steering wheel and throttle, the roar of the zeppelin engine somewhere above, the moaning of the wind. From the kitchen, she saw Braband at the bar stand against the flickering lights of the marshes, then she found herself at the door and settled on the bench where she could see.
"Agree?" Brabandt said.
"Yes, I'll see what I can find."
She was already spinning the small wheels of the alethiometer and peering closely at the intermittent glow to try to distinguish the symbols. But it was not good: they were more or less invisible. She held the instrument between her palms and stared at the flickering jacky-lanterns, aware of a powerful contradiction that almost tore her mind in half. What she wanted to do would implicate that secret republic of Brabandt, and yet she told herself that it was nonsense, superstition, nothing but senseless fancies.
The zeppelin was turning in front of them, its searchlight probing the rain and the dark swamp below. Another minute or two, he would face them and once the maid of Portugal was fixed in the light of the light, nothing would save them.
Pan, Pan, Pan, thought Lyra, I need you now, little bastard, traitor.
She tried to imagine collecting all the pumpkins as if she were raising sheep, but it was so difficult because after all, she had no imagination, as Pan had said. What would it do to do that? She thinks louder and louder. She considered herself a light herd and the absent Pan as a light dog running from one side to the other of the marsh, still squatting, leaping again, barking again, barking briefs orders, running where she thought.
And what stupidity, she thought, what a puerility. It's just methane or something like that. It's just natural, meaningless. His concentration has weakened.
She heard a sob coming out of her throat, completely against her will.
Brabandt said, "What are you doing, girl?"
She ignored him. She clenched her teeth and called Pan absent again, an infernal hunting dog with shining eyes and a slaveryman flying from her lips, and she saw the terrified lights of the marshes running away and waving around the cold ray. The zeppelin was getting closer and she could hear the rain drumming on the big muzzle of the plane, even in the face of the wind and the roar of the engine.
She felt something go up in her, like a tide, wave after wave, grow and roll back and then grow again, a little more each time, and it was anger, it was desire, it was a lot. was visceral.
"What are they doing? God, look at that …," said Brabandt.
The marsh lights accelerated and climbed, rubbing again and again at a point in the water just in front of the zeppelin searchlight, then with a scream, something came out of the marsh which was neither a lantern nor a puppet. -the-wyke, but a big bird, a heron or even a stork, heavy and white and terrified by the green lights that crowned that pushed him into the beam of the spotlight, and even higher, crashing against his paws, s & # Piling up like hornets to his heavy and heavy body as he feared and flung himself on the plane …
Brabandt said in a hoarse voice, "Hold on, girl." The spotlight was almost on them.
Then, in an explosion of fire, blood and white feathers, the heron flew straight into the port engine of the zeppelin.
Tthe aircraft flip-flopped and immediately swung to the left; it dipped and sagged when the starboard engine yelled and the large slug-shaped shape drifted to the side and down. The tail rose, caught by the wind, without a port engine to stabilize it, and the craft drifted more and more towards the marsh, more and more near the maid of Portugal, as if it were dropped on a bed. Small sounds of sound, screams, screams, swirling in the wind and were removed again. By the light of the dancing swamp lights and the fire that was now out of control of the Zeppelin, she and Brabandt looked on in horror as one person, two, three, rushed out of the cabin and fell into darkness. . A moment later, the big zeppelin's broken shell collapsed into the water just fifty meters from them, surrounded by clouds of steam, smoke, flames, and the dancing lights of the marshes, which triumphed. The heat burned Lyra's face, and Brabandt pressed his southwest against her.
It was horrible to watch, but she could not look away. The skeleton of the airship was black against the big fire of light, then it collapsed and fell with a cascade of sparks and smoke.
"They will not survive that, any of them," Brabandt said. "They are all dead now."
"Horrible."
"Always."
He shifted the throttle and the boat moved in the middle of the stream and gained speed slowly.
"This heron," Lyra said in a trembling voice. "The lights of the marshes pursued him. They did fly in the engine. They knew what they were doing. "
And me too, she thought. I made it happen.
"A heron, is not it? Perhaps. I thought it was a flying boggart. They steal, some of them, producing a kind of whirring sound. Only there were so many things happening that we could not hear that. That's probably what it was, a flying elf or a spirit out of the water. In summary of the secret Commonwealth, what I told you. Look at the pumpkins-lanterns now.
The marsh lights, a dozen of them, had gathered around the wreckage on fire, making little darts at her and coming out again, wavering and dancing.
"What are they doing?"
"Look for survivors. They will pull them under the water and finish them. Potaters already done?
"Oh yes."
"Well, do not let them get cold, what do you say, there's a box of bully bully in the bin, cut them with the potatoes and fry them, and I'm starting to have a little peck. "
Lyra felt sick. She could not help but think of the zeppelin's dead men, burned or drowned or worse, and that beautiful white bird, ruthlessly pushed into the engine's blades. The food was the last thing she wanted at that time, but when the hash was cooking, she realized that it was a shame to waste it and that it smelled good; she brought two plates into the cockpit, where Brabandt first picked up a fork and dropped it overboard.
"For the fools of happiness," he said.
Lyra did the same with his, then they ate their supper, protecting their plates from the rain.
• The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust The second volume will be published Oct. 3 by David Fickling Books in association with Penguin Random House. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. UK free p & p on all online orders over £ 15.
[ad_2]
Source link