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With Mrs. Coulter on their heels, Will and Lyra didn’t have much time. Will plunged the subtle knife into the finest slither between worlds and tore through. A window appeared before them, and through it the welcoming flicker of a fire beckoned.
They tumbled through and Will closed it shut behind them. They breathed a sigh of relief as they collected themselves, heaped against each other on the floor. Lyra’s daemon, Pan, was a red panda safely nestled within her arms.
There were voices coming from just around the corner and the pair shared a glance of concern, would these people be friends or enemies?
They were nestled within wooden shelves lined with books, or rather, what Lyra presumed were books buried under layers and layers of dust. The titles would have been impossible to read in bright daylight, let alone the dim, orange light from the flickering hearth.
On Lyra’s signal, the pair began to crawl towards the voices. Of all the worlds they had visited, they had yet to discover a single one where humans had daemons, so Pan turned into a mouse and hid within Lyra’s coat pocket to make sure he wouldn’t scare anyone.
“Perhaps we ought to get another armchair,” said a voice.
“Angel, we’ve discussed this,” the second voice sounded like someone with a strange lisp. Every ‘s’ was drawn out into a hiss, “The more chairs you have in here the more people just want to sit in them and stay in here for hours. It’s a bit irritating when they do that. I thought you didn’t want to sell any books.”
“Yes, my dear, but we could both have a chair to sit by the fire so you wouldn’t have to drape yourself over me-“
“Aw, come on! You know how tiresome I find limbs these days. They just get in the way. It’s simpler without them, really.”
Will shot Lyra a perplexed look. Lyra finally reached the end of the bookshelf and was just able to peep her head around it. In a cosy armchair by the hearth sat a man with curly white hair who looked a lot like the scholars she had grown up with at Jordan college. Draped around his neck and along his arms, there was a handsome black snake.
Lyra’s heart soared as she realised that the second voice belonged to the snake. They had finally found one! Another World where people had daemons! Before her conscience could stop her, meaning before Pan or Will could stop her, she rolled out from behind the shelf and stood up.
“Lyra what are you doing??” whispered Will, but too late.
The man and the snake turned to look at her with less surprise than she had expected.
“Angel,” hissed the snake, “Am I seeing things, or is there a teenager standing right over there by that bookshelf?”
“You are not seeing things, my dear. I too, can plainly see an adolescent girl standing before us.” The man stood up from his armchair. The snake slithered onto the floor and stayed close to the fire; his wide yellow eyes never leaving Lyra. “I’m so sorry my dear,” continued the man, “where are my manners. Lovely to meet you, although I do say I am quite perplexed about how you happen to be here, and you have a rather peculiar smell…”
“Not one of my people,” said the snake to the man.
“No, not one of mine either,” replied the man.
Both continued to stare at Lyra.
“Hello, I’m Lyra,” said Lyra, “this is Will,” she dragged Will out from behind the bookshelf, “and this is Pan,” she said. Pan rolled out of her jacket pocket, once more in the form of a red panda. He tumbled over himself on the floor.
“Lyra, are you sure this is wise?” said Will in a low voice.
“I think we can trust them, Will. Besides, I knew my world wasn’t the only one with daemons!”
“Demons?” hissed the snake.
“Your World?” said the man.
“Pan is my daemon,” Lyra said, and Pan turned into a large black snake just like the one by the fire and curled himself around her neck, “is he your daemon?” Lyra asked the man, pointing to the snake by the fire.
The man seemed to flush and stutter for a moment, whilst the snake hissed, although it was impossible to tell what sort of emotion the hiss was supposed to express. They both spoke at once, the man saying “Well, yes, I suppose you could say he is my demon, yes…” whilst the snake said, “absolutely not. I am an independent demon. I do not belong to anyone.”
The man and the snake exchanged a look. Lyra looked back and forth between the pair of them in confusion.
It was a testament to the many strange sights that Lyra had seen on her journey that she did not jump when the snake suddenly started to change into the shape of a man. She felt Will place a protective hand on her shoulder and Pan turned into an ermine, hiding his face behind her hair.
Where the snake had been, there stood a man who was comically different to the scholarly, white-haired one. This man had red hair hanging limp to his shoulders and wore a strange, black leather jacket that looked like it might belong in Will’s world. Most startling of all was his eyes which remained snake-like: bright yellow with wide, black slits for pupils. Without saying a word, the scholarly man handed him a set of round sunglasses.
“Thanks,” he said fondly, as he put them on to hide his strange eyes, “Gotta say, I like the style. Wish I could do that,” he gestured to Pan, “change form however I wanted. Unfortunately, I’ve only got the one. Can you imagine, though, I could drive you to whole new levels of crazy, right Angel?”
“Don’t get me started. It’s hard enough you clinging to me all day in reptilian form. What in heaven’s name what I do if you could be a bird as well? Or a sloth? Or… Or… a rat?”
“A rat? Come on, I have more style than that. How about a lion? Or an eagle? Or one of those really fucking huge things in the ocean, what are they called-“
“Whales.”
“Yes! Whales.”
The pair suddenly realised they were talking to themselves again and that Lyra and Will were staring at them with wide eyes, “Ah,” said the scholarly one, “my apologies. We don’t have many visitors these days. Anyway, I’m Aziraphale, this here is Crowley. Why don’t you tell us more about you, how you ended up here, and what’s all this about other worlds and demons?”
Lyra and Will glanced at each other. Will shrugged. Lyra turned back to the strange pair, “It’s a long story.”
“Excellent! I love long stories.”
“Ugh, yes, you do,” said the man in the leather jacket, “Too much. One of the many low points of the dark ages was the time that bard ended up telling us a story for three whole weeks in that middle-of-nowhere tavern in Inverness.”
“Nonsense Crowley, these two seem much more interesting. And probably hungry?” Aziraphale asked. Will and Lyra nodded with a little too much vigour. They hadn’t eaten properly in days, “Jolly good! How do you feel about mezze? We can order some from the splendid little place just around the corner.”
And with that, Will and Lyra settled in for the first evening of warmth, comfort, and good food that they had had in a long time, and they told the strange pair their tale.