The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage: Chapters 21–25

Since the discovery of the Rusakov field and the shocking but incontestable revelation that consciousness can no longer be regarded exclusively as a function of the human brain, the search for a particle associated with the field has been energetically pursued by a number of researchers and institutions, without, so far, any indication of success. In this paper I propose a methodology...

Alice was kneeling in front of her, facing away, as the woman bent over her and with deft fingers wove her hair into complex braids, twisting flowers into it as she did.

Lyra was nearly asleep and utterly replete.
“She won’t have had milk like that before,” said the woman.

Besides, Lord Nugent soon found himself wondering whether this deluge was altogether natural.

The flood was running smoothly, like a great river, such as the Amazon or the Nile, which Malcolm had read about—an unimaginable volume of water carried onwards with no snags, no rocks, no shoals, and no harsh wind or tempest to fling the surface into waves.

He was going to say mum and dad, but he couldn’t say the words, because he found a sob choking his throat, and then another, as the images came pouring into his memory: his mother’s kitchen, her calm, sardonic presence...

Malcolm had said glibly to Alice that it would be easy to find him, but would it really?

And then, as suddenly as if a light had been switched on, the canoe shot out of the cavern, out of the cataract, out of the dark, and they were bobbing calmly on a gentle stream flowing between green banks by the light of a thousand glowing lanterns.

So Malcolm and Alice sat amazed on the garden side of the river, pointing to this marvel and that: a glowing fountain, a tree laden with golden pears, a school of rainbow-colored fish that sprang up out of the stream, all moving as one, and turned their heads to look at them with their goggle eyes.

Partway up the trunk, a branch had broken off, and the wound was leaking golden resin.

And he was high enough in the tree to see over the top of the fog bank, which only extended upwards for a few feet, as he now discovered; and beyond it he saw a desolation, a wilderness of broken buildings, burned houses, heaps of rubble, crude shanties...

And he was high enough in the tree to see over the top of the fog bank, which only extended upwards for a few feet, as he now discovered; and beyond it he saw a desolation, a wilderness of broken buildings, burned houses, heaps of rubble, crude shanties...

They had left the light from the trees behind, and the darkness here seemed to be not just the absence of light but a positive presence, something exuded from the vegetation and the moisture.

He looked at the giant’s face and thought he could see a glimmer of benevolence there.

He was so close that Malcolm could smell his skin, which was redolent of mud, and fishes, and weeds.

Maybe he’s the god of a little tributary, like Old Father Thames is the god of the main river, perhaps.

It was utterly bare: a platform of tumbled rocks with not a blade of grass to be seen, no tree, no bush, nor any moss or lichen.

Scenes of devastation began to emerge: the shells of houses, their roofs torn off, furniture and clothing strewn all around or caught in bushes and trees; and the trees themselves, stripped of their branches and sometimes of their bark, standing stark and dead under the gray sky; an oratory, its tower lying full-length on the sodden ground, with enormous bronze bells scattered beside it, their mouths full of mud and leaves.

The searchlight shone directly at them for seconds that felt like minutes, but then it swung away and the engine noise changed as the steersman opened the throttle and moved off along the flood.

“It’s a graveyard. It’s got one of them little houses where they bury people.”
“A mausoleum,” said Malcolm, who had seen the word but never heard it, and pronounced it to rhyme with linoleum.

Everything around was still dripping, and the air was as wet as a sodden sponge, full of the smells of dank vegetation, of rot, of earth crawling with worms.

Lyra was crying steadily, a quiet lament of unhappiness.

Body, mind, and dæmon longed for the oblivion of sleep.

Lyra came placidly enough, happy with her toast.

Ben writhed and kicked and bit and howled, and the monstrous jaws and teeth of Bonneville’s dæmon were closing, slowly, voluptuously, ecstatically, on his little form.

They followed rumors, of which there were many; they ignored every cry for help from the beleaguered people on all sides; they had eyes and minds only for a boy and a girl in a canoe, with a baby, and for a man with a three-legged hyena dæmon.

In the cruel light of the morning, it looked squalid, neglected, overgrown, and there was something worse: the steps of the little mausoleum were stained with blood, a great deal of it.

He looked at the listless little child in her arms, the unhappy dæmon pressed so close against her neck, her eyes half closed; she looked ill and weak.

Twice a day, as the tide came in up the estuary, the great weight of the floodwater leaned its might against the sea and tried to force it back; and until the tide turned and went out again, the two vast masses of contending water roiled and seethed in a wild confusion.

Some barges and lighters held hard to their moorings, though in many cases they were torn loose and swept up or down the river to slam into the embankments, into the wharves and quays or the piers of the great bridges, or to capsize in the surge, or to be carried out to sea and lost.

In the small powerboat he’d hired, Bud Schlesinger rode the wild water, scouring the chaos all around with his eyes, and trying to calm the fears of the owner.

The embankments on both sides, as far as Schlesinger could see, were under several feet of water, and on the right a large submerged park spread out beyond a line of great bare trees, whereas on the left a succession of imposing houses and stately apartment buildings stood silent and deserted.

The engine screamed and the boat lost way, and in a few seconds was wallowing helplessly behind them.

He felt a surge of love for them both, of love and of infinite regret that he’d brought them into this; but he couldn’t dwell on that because there was a new sound now, piercing the noise of the wind and the battering rain: a siren—an alarm—shrieking behind them, its cry like a seabird tossed and flung this way and that in the buffeting air.

Alice was straining to see over his shoulder, clutching Lyra to her chest, hand up to keep the rain out of her eyes—and at the same time Malcolm heard a clangor of bells from directly ahead.