His Dark Materials: The Complete Collection: now a major BBC TV series

she would be able to stitch a wound or change a bandage, but never to tell a story.

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

She looked defiant as well as lost,

If light can cross, so can we. And we had to learn to see it, Lyra, just as you learned to use the alethiometer.

fierce attention.

the moment when she first felt a twinge of regret. She knew she shouldn’t be here; she knew what the alethiometer wanted her to do, and it was not this. She stood doubtfully in the doorway.

we can only wonder at the strangeness of it. So Dust may be strange, and we wonder at it, but we don’t fret and tear things apart to examine it. Leave that to the Church.”

was a doorway into the spirit world – they’d known about it for centuries – part of the initiation of a medicine-man involved going through and bringing back a trophy

They felt as if they were home again. The wide warm night, and the scent of flowers and the sea, and the silence, bathed them like soothing water.