The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials 2 by Philip Pullman

Author:Philip Pullman [Pullman, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2015-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

9

Theft

FIRST THEY WENT back to the café, to recover and rest and change their clothes. It was clear that Will couldn’t go everywhere covered in blood, and the time of feeling guilty about taking things from shops was over; so he gathered a complete set of new clothes and shoes, and Lyra, demanding to help, and watching in every direction for the other children, carried them back to the café.

Lyra put some water on to boil, and Will took it up to the bathroom and stripped to wash from head to foot. The pain was dull and unrelenting, but at least the cuts were clean, and having seen what the knife could do, he knew that no cuts could be cleaner; but the stumps where his fingers had been were bleeding freely. When he looked at them he felt sick, and his heart beat faster, and that in turn seemed to make the bleeding even worse. He sat on the edge of the bath and closed his eyes and breathed deeply several times.

Presently he felt calmer and set himself to washing. He did the best he could, drying himself on the increasingly bloodied towels, and then dressed in his new clothes, trying not to make them bloody too.

“You’re going to have to tie my bandage again,” he said to Lyra. “I don’t care how tight you make it as long as it stops the bleeding.”

She tore up a sheet and wrapped it round and round, clamping it down over the wounds as tight as she could. He gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t help tears. He brushed them away without a word, and she said nothing.

When she’d finished he said, “Thank you.” Then he said, “Listen. I want you to take something in your rucksack for me, in case we can’t come back here. It’s only letters. You can read them if you want.”

He took out the green leather writing-case and handed her the sheets of airmail paper.

“I won’t read them unless –”

“I don’t mind. Else I wouldn’t have said.”

She folded the letters up, and he lay on the bed, pushed the cat aside, and fell asleep.

Much later that night, Will and Lyra crouched in the lane that ran along beside the tree-shaded shrubbery in Sir Charles’s garden. On the Cittàgazze side, they were in a grassy park surrounding a classical villa that gleamed white in the moonlight. They’d taken a long time to get to Sir Charles’s house, moving mainly in Cittàgazze, with frequent stops to cut through and check their position in Will’s world, closing the windows as soon as they knew where they were.

Not with them but not far behind came the tabby cat. She had slept since they’d rescued her from the stone-throwing children, and now she was awake again she was reluctant to leave them, as if she thought that wherever they were, she was safe. Will was far from sure about that, but he had enough on his mind without the cat, and he ignored her.

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