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hatters-workshop · 1 year

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Last night I finally watched the finale of His Dark Materials, and of course it made me cry. I've read the final chapters of the Amber Spyglass so many times, and cried at each one. Was it perfect for me? No. But it never could be, because perfect for each individual reader is impossible, and an unfair thing to hope something would achieve. But it was excellent. And Dafne and Amir acted their hearts out with those lines between Lyra and Will when they're raging against the fate they're faced with, and with their promises to each other, and they broke my little heart with it. And finally hearing the "every atom of you and every atom of me..." speech... ooft that kicked me in the gut in all the right ways.

But this morning I happened to read the poem by Clare Harner that goes

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep

And I was hit suddenly by image after image invoked by each line, of each of them, old now and lying in bed (yes I want peace for them in the end. Some would want them to have a victorious or adventurous end but I think they deserve peace.) Pan pressing his face to Lyra's in a final embrace, and Kirjava pressing hers to Will's, and both humans whispering to their daemons that their atoms will find each other, just as they found each other when they were separated before, and Will telling Kirjava to keep Pan's atoms company while Will and Lyra find each other and look for them, and Lyra saying the same to Pan. They tell them that they know where the opening is, if they want to meet them there, but that they would find them either way. And Pan and Kirjava whisper an unneeded reminder to their humans: tell them stories.

And then a wisp of golden fire and Dust curls around a face in each world. Lyra sees her Death again, and they lead her as true as they did the first time. And Will meets his Death, and recognises them though its the first time they've met, but they lead him true, too.

And maybe Will and Lyra find each other in the land of the dead. I'm a romantic, and think even though they are so far apart and couldn't possibly know that the other was dying, they die in the same moment in their own worlds, whatever their lives have gone on to be. Because the universes kept them from being reunited in life, the least they could do is let them see each other again in death, and even with all the changes of their lives and the years they've lived, they know each other instantly. How could they not? And it's a feeling like finding something precious you have looked for every day of your life (because they have) and finally feeling the relief of finding it, and their ghosts are thin and cold and made of almost nothing. They should pass through each other, except they're made of the same kind of nothing. It doesn't feel like it did when they were in their bodies, but it's enough. Soon they'd be closer than they ever could be naturally in life. And they’re the closest they’ve been in so long. So for now, it's enough to hold each other, hand in thin, cold, ghostly hand.

They are at the jetty and the ferry man greets them, and at first he doesn't know them. He hasn't ferried anyone twice before, and he hasn't been hugged and greeted as an old friend, and Lyra wishes she could jokingly scold him for making her leave Pan last time but even now, decades later that wound is too fresh to come out as a joke, and she misses Pan even though she knows she'll be with him again soon, so she let's the chance for the joke go, and they talk to him the whole journey. They don't know if he's alive, or dead, or some other form that is just his, but he looks so genuinely cheery as they speak to him, in a way that his face looks unfamiliar with being, with so many years of his heavy duty weighing on him until now.

They tell him what happened last time they were here, of how they found their daemons like they said they would, and how the opening would let everyone he ferries back out into the world. He looks genuinely shocked at the news.

"Did no one tell you?" They ask.

"Who would tell me?" He replies.

So they tell him, that his job is not to escort people to a prison, but to deliver them back into the world to rejoin every living thing. That the people he ferries need only tell the harpies their stories: and stories, as long as they’re true, of what they saw in life, no matter how small or boring or painful, and to tell them the good news. And the weight lifted from him further, his back straightened and his face brightened, and as they stepped to the shore, he waved to them rather than regretfully returning to his collections as he had every other time, and they heard the echoes of him whispering the phrase they passed down the line last time they'd been there: "Tell them stories."

And no sooner has the sounds of the lap of his boat been eaten by the mist, but they are replaced by flutter of heavy wings.

Of Gracious Wings.

The voice that greeted them was familiar but different: still loud and bold, but it has lost its strained, cracked and painful sound. Her lips were pink instead of the red of caked, vomited blood, and her hair hung soft around her face. A diet of varied stories, even for just the years of Will and Lyra's life, exchanged for millennia of screeching cruelties in the ears of the dead, has clearly suited her, and the smell of putrefaction had faded entirely. She welcomed them, and other harpies gathered themselves around the little ghosts, as they had all been waiting to hear these tales most of all, and they will pass them on to the others, the ones that are away guiding the ghosts to their freedom, so that they can enjoy the tales too.

So Lyra and Will began at the beginning, though they knew that some of it had already been heard by their audience. They added to each other's stories, filling in details and perspectives. It wasn't a short story, and though they were eager to rejoin the world, they enjoyed the reminiscence of the triumphs, and even the pain of the losses and separations could not be skipped over, as they were all a part of their story and to avoid any part of it would be a disrespect to each other.

But then their story as each other know it finishes: their final clumsy kiss before closing the window between their worlds. Every word from then on is new, and they watch each others lips make the shapes of their tales, food for each other as much as for the harpies. The only shared touch point was every year, their shared moment of peace and closeness each Midsummer. They learned of each other's friends and families, loves and losses. Of Will's life with his mother and Mary, and Lyra's learning in St Sophia's and reconnecting with the alethiometer at long last. Of who they were leaving behind in their own worlds, who would mourn them, despite their promises that they were going to go on to be a part of in every world. And as they reached the end of their stories as they could be told; as they reach that very moment, sitting on the floor of the world of the dead, surrounded by harpies and holding each others hands, their words ran out as they just. Look at each other. And smile. Hand held in cold, thin, ghostly hand.

So they rose, and Gracious Wings escorted them personally to the window they had made so long ago now. They waited their turn, though the queue was constantly moving on eager ghostly feet, desperate to return to the world as were, to feel the sun’s rays on their face once more, before they become part of those rays.

They take a moment, hanging back as other ghosts pass through, to look back out across that other world’s horizon. With delight they find it’s changed for the better: the huge seed pod trees seem to be growing stronger and healthier, and though they only had a small view through the window, there are no signs of them dying off like they were before.

They whispered amongst themselves briefly about doing as Will’s father and Lee Scoresby and all those brave people that held their ghosts together to step out into the world to fight in Asriel’s last stand against Metatron. To hold their particles together long enough to return to the mulefa’s world, revisit the trees they knew, see that spot by the river where they held those little red fruits to each other’s lips.

“No,” says Will at length. “We’ve made Kirjava and Pan wait long enough. We’ve waited long enough, too.”

“Plus,” Lyra says, almost giddy, “Soon enough we’ll be part of that river and those berries and everything else too.”

So they step up to the edge of the window, and smell the air and feel the warmth of the sun with the last time on these faces.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.