Free His Dark Materials Omnibus by Philip Pullman Page A

Steward’s bell began to toll, announcing half an hour before dinner.
    This was her world. She wanted it to stay the same forever and ever, but it was changing around her, for someone out there was stealing children. She sat on the roof ridge, chin in hands.
    “We better rescue him, Pantalaimon,” she said.
    He answered in his rook voice from the chimney.
    “It’ll be dangerous,” he said.
    “ ’Course! I know that.”
    “Remember what they said in the Retiring Room.”
    “What?”
    “Something about a child up in the Arctic. The one that wasn’t attracting the Dust.”
    “They said it was an entire child.… What about it?”
    “That might be what they’re going to do to Roger and the gyptians and the other kids.”
    “What?”
    “Well, what does
entire
mean?”
    “Dunno. They cut ’em in half, probably. I reckon they make slaves out of ’em. That’d be more use. They probably got mines up there. Uranium mines for atomcraft. I bet that’s what it is. And if they sent grownups down the mine, they’d be dead, so they use kids instead because they cost less. That’s what they’ve done with him.”
    “I think—”
    But what Pantalaimon thought had to wait, because someone began to shout from below.
    “Lyra! Lyra! You come in this instant!”
    There was a banging on the window frame. Lyra knew the voice and the impatience: it was Mrs. Lonsdale, the Housekeeper. There was no hiding from her.
    Tight-faced, Lyra slid down the roof and into the gutter, and then climbed in through the window again. Mrs. Lonsdale was running some water into the little chipped basin, to the accompaniment of a great groaning and hammering from the pipes.
    “The number of times you been told about going out there … Look at you! Just look at your skirt—it’s filthy! Take it off at once and wash yourself while I look for something decent that en’t torn. Why you can’t keep yourself clean and tidy …”
    Lyra was too sulky even to ask why she was having to wash and dress, and no grownup ever gave reasons of their own accord. She dragged the dress over her head and dropped it on the narrow bed, and began to wash desultorily while Pantalaimon, a canary now, hopped closer and closer to Mrs. Lonsdale’s dæmon, a stolid retriever, trying in vain to annoy him.
    “Look at the state of this wardrobe! You en’t hung nothing up for weeks! Look at the creases in this—”
    Look at this, look at that … Lyra didn’t want to look. She shut her eyes as she rubbed at her face with the thin towel.
    “You’ll just have to wear it as it is. There en’t time to take an iron to it. God bless me, girl, your
knees
—look at the state of them.…”
    “Don’t want to look at nothing,” Lyra muttered.
    Mrs. Lonsdale smacked her leg. “Wash,” she said ferociously. “You get all that dirt off.”
    “Why?” Lyra said at last. “I never wash my knees usually. No one’s going to look at my knees. What’ve I got to do all this for? You don’t care about Roger neither, any more than Chef does. I’m the only one that—”
    Another smack, on the other leg.
    “None of that nonsense. I’m a Parslow, same as Roger’s father. He’s my second cousin. I bet you didn’t know that, ’cause I bet you never asked, Miss Lyra. I bet it never occurred to you. Don’t you chide me with not caring about the boy. God knows, I even care about you, and you give me little enough reason and no thanks.”
    She seized the flannel and rubbed Lyra’s knees so hard she left the skin bright pink and sore, but clean.
    “The reason for this is you’re going to have dinner with the Master and his guests. I hope to God you behave. Speak when you’re spoken to, be quiet and polite, smile nicely and don’t you ever say
Dunno
when someone asks you a question.”
    She dragged the best dress onto Lyra’s skinny frame, tugged it straight, fished a bit of red ribbon out of the tangle in a drawer, and brushed Lyra’s hair with a coarse