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Lyra stands at the head of the crowd, her eyes flashing with determination. Pan sits regally on her shoulders, giving the stink-eye to the daemons of anyone who might protest, and Roger has to visibly push up his courage to tug on Lyra’s sleeve.
“You sure, Lyra?” he asks.
She tilts her head and grins at him. “Of course I’m sure,” she says. “We’ve got to get those gyptians!” she shouts, her voice carrying to the veritable army in front of her, and everyone takes up the cheer in an almighty roar, daemons chattering and squawking. Someone heads forward, one of the leaders, and soon all the townies and collegers and brick-burners’ children are rushing over the small rise to the boating canal in a tidal wave of mud and childish glee.
There’s Lyra and Roger, and two of the boys from outside Jordan whom Lyra deigned acceptable to join them. Lyra’s heart beats a swift pace of excitement and deceit, and she gives them all a smug smile. “And now,” she says, “we’ve got to find that bung and pull it right out.”
One of the boys scoffs; she immediately dismisses him as a townie. “I en’t never heard of this bung,” he says. His daemon drops to the ground and growls.
“Me neither,” the colleger pipes up, but he backs down under Lyra’s steady glare.
Pan jumps down from Lyra’s shoulders and paces, cat-like on the ground. Her mouth firms into a thin line and she says, “I told you, my Uncle Asriel pulled the bung out from that Tartar’s ship up North.”
Roger folds his arms across his chest, but Salcilia burrows her way into his pocket so he doesn’t speak up. The townie looks disbelieving and says, “I dunno. He hasn’t been around in forever.”
Pan grows larger, with sharp, pointed teeth. He bares them and growls menacingly and their daemons circle each other warily, looking for a weakness. Lyra hisses a breath between her teeth. “Look, we need to go, else we en’t finding nothing.”
It’s then that the townie’s daemon leaps, claws outstretched; Pan curls into a ball of hedgehog-spikes and the other daemon abruptly shifts course and becomes a moth, fluttering to the townie’s shoulder. “Fine,” the townie says, disgruntled, and Lyra scowls at him once more before turning to the small group.
“Well?” she says. “Let’s go!”
They head along the edges of the Canal, creeping past the ruckus of the fight taking place, bits of mud and clay flying through the air. Lyra’s fingers ache with the urge to reach down and grab a handful to throw, but she clenches her fists and they sneak along the side of the brightly painted boat, splattered with the efforts of her crew.
The door to the cabin flies open, and the gyptians stride out. The gyptian boy, about Lyra's age, ducks down and throws his own ball of mud toward their attackers, and his mother’s voice carries to all the children when she reprimands him and boxes his ears, her hands like bludgeons. Lyra bites her lip and winces in dismay as some of the children retreat in the face of authority, but the collegers are clever enough to spot her and bend down to grab more handfuls of mud.
Lyra whispers, “Now!”
The mud splatters on the gyptians and they race forward onto land, and Lyra clambers over the side of the boat, Roger and the other boys following. She looks around and sees the mooring-ropes, and Roger hurries over to her side as she pulls at it, tugging it over the post.
“What now?” asks Roger.
Lyra frowns. “Shh,” she says, her eyes fixed on the gyptians. They glance behind them just as Lyra and Roger make a mad dash for the cabin, the boat tugged by the current down the Canal. The door shuts behind them, and Roger turns the lock.
Inside is larger than she first thought, with a well-crafted table and ornaments lining the walls. Lyra steps carefully, looking around and basking in the strangeness, though it’s only a moment before Pan shifts his grip on her shoulder and she remembers her original purpose.
The townie and the colleger stand along the back wall, opening drawers and running their fingers along interesting pottery, restless and impatient.
“It’d be on the floor, somewhere,” she says, and she drops down to all fours, casting a sharp eye across for any lumps that could be the bung. Sunlight streams in through the glass-paneled windows set high in the walls, the table and chairs casting deep shadows on the wooden floor. She shakes her head, getting to her feet.
Roger shares a glance with her and says, “We got to split up.” He looks around, heading to the nearest door. “Lyra?”
She nods agreeably. “Sure. We've got this room,” she tells the other two, and she quickly opens the door a crack and pulls Roger inside before he can protest.
The room has a set of bunks along the wall, and a porthole-window that Lyra has to stand on her toes to peer through. There’s nothing but water outside. She wrinkles her nose and Pan yawns widely, curling around her neck and ermine-fur brushing her collarbone. Roger heads for the cupboards, his daemon perched on a high cabinet in the corner.
Lyra scuffs her feet on the floor, and kicks the toe of her boot on something. “Roger!” she says, delighted, and takes a few quick steps back to squeeze under the bunk, feeling carefully along the wooden panels to an indentation that she curls her fingers around.
“Is that it?” Roger asks, and their eyes meet in twin expressions of amazement. Lyra’s face splits into a grin and she tugs at it, feeling some of the floor give way.
The trapdoor opens smoothly, and they both peer down into the darkness. Tugging off a boot and pulling the top laces free, Lyra dangles it over the hole, letting it fall inch by inch. She leans in, and it comes to an abrupt stop when her arm is half-submerged in the dark. The hole is surprisingly shallow, so she lets the boot drop and jumps in after it. Pan doesn’t move other than a soft shifting and a sleepy sigh.
Standing up, the small area comes up to her neck, and Roger breathes a soft exclamation of wonder. “A real trapdoor, Lyra, with a secret room!” he says. “What’d they need a trapdoor for, though?”
She shrugs, the rise of her shoulders barely visible. “I dunno,” she says, and bends down to fumble her boot back onto her foot. She feels around the floor blindly, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that might be interesting in there, no dead bodies or captured witches or even the elusive bung. “Do you reckon,” she starts, but she’s interrupted by a loud bang that echoes through the room.
Roger glances up, wide-eyed. The sound of footsteps sounds close, too close, and he holds out his hands and helps Lyra out of the secret compartment. They both pull together at the trapdoor, and it closes with a satisfying thump just as there’s noise, yelling and shouting from outside.
“Did you lock it?” Lyra asks breathlessly, and the two other boys appear at the door.
“Quick!” the colleger says, “Quick! We found a door to the deck again, see?” and he leads them past the main room to another, and a side door from there. The sunlight is near-blinding as they tumble out and head to the edge of the boat, and she can hear people shouting for them to stop.
The boys jump off. Roger hangs back, and he says shakily, “Lyra?”
(Two days earlier, Lyra had told Roger the Plan. He had said, “It sounds great, Lyra, but – I en’t a swimmer, I dunno how.”
She said, “We en’t swimming ever, not in this. Besides, I can’t swim neither.”)
Looking over the edge into the depths of the Canal, she briefly wonders if the other side is closer to shore. The noise gets louder and the door to the cabins opens and –
She grabs Roger’s hand, takes a deep breath and jumps.
They land with a splash and break apart, and Pantalaimon is startled awake at the rush of cold. Lyra reaches for him and grabs at his shark-fin, but he’s strangely dazed and weak enough that he can barely pull her along.
Lyra clutches at him and opens her eyes, squinting against the sting of water. Roger and his daemon are further ahead, her dragging him along, and the other two boys are striking out by themselves, their daemons swimming alongside them, pinwheeling their arms and kicking their legs.
“Kick,” Pan hisses at her, “Come on, Lyra, kick!”
She kicks her legs and tries to mimic the others, keeping her feet straight and pointed. Pan stubbornly swims on as they pull against the current. Her lungs burn and he pulls close enough to the surface for her to lift her head and take another breath, and he swims further down and closer to the shallows.
They roll onto the muddy shore together, Lyra gasping for breath as she stumbles onto the ground. Pan shakes water from his dog-fur unenthusiastically as she rushes forward to Roger, leaving a trail of dripping water in her wake.
His daemon perks up as Lyra approaches, and Roger squints at her against the sunlight. His clothes are soaked through, his hair plastered to his forehead, and his eyes are reddened from the water. “We en’t never doing that again,” Roger says firmly.
Lyra can’t repress the smile spreading across her face. “We didn’t find the bung,” she says logically, “so – ”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Pan interrupts, his feathers scratchy as he murmurs into her ear, “but I think they might be looking for us.”
And when she listens closely, she can hear gyptian voices on the breeze. She glances around and notices that the townie and colleger have run off, probably back to their own groups, and when she rises to her tiptoes she can see Jordan College looming in the distance.
“We better go,” she says, and Roger nods, rising to his feet. They head off at a walk that soon speeds to a run, and the sky is a clear, endless blue as their daemons swoop and soar, two black splotches against the sun.