The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2)

by Philip Pullman

“Well, when a Spectre catch a grown-up, that’s bad to see. They eat the life out of them there and then, all right. I don’t want to be grown-up, for sure. At first they know it’s happening, and they’re afraid, they cry and cry, they try and look away and pretend it ain happening, but it is. It’s too late. And no one ain gonna go near them, they on they own. Then they get pale and they stop moving. They still alive, but it’s like they been eaten out from inside. You look in they eyes, you see the back of they heads. Ain nothing there.”

Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?

He was desolate. But then he felt the strangest thing, and brushed the back of his right wrist across his eyes to find Pantalaimon’s head on his knee. The dæmon, in the form of a wolfhound, was gazing up at him with melting, sorrowing eyes, and then he gently licked Will’s wounded hand again and again, and laid his head on Will’s knee once more.

Grumman smiled briefly, and said, “The name he used is my own true name, John Parry.

Then there was a long silence. Lee fumbled in his pocket and found some more bullets. As he reloaded he felt something so rare his heart nearly failed; he felt Hester’s face pressed to his own, and it was wet with tears.

Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.