Then both the daemons bristled and looked up. Will and Lyra sensed it, too, and followed their eyes to the sky. A light was moving toward them: a light with wings. "Ah!" she cried, and reached for Serafina's arm to steady herself, for there on the iron fence around the parkland sat a bird: glossy black, with red legs and a curved yellow bill: an Alpine chough, just as Serafina had described. It, he, was only a foot or two away, watching her with his head slightly cocked, for all the world as though he was amused. "Yes, it did." The thing was a great bird the size of a vulture, with the face and breasts of a woman. Will had seen pictures of creatures like her, and the word harpy came to mind as soon as he saw her clearly. Her face was smooth and unwrinkled, but aged beyond even the age of the witches: she had seen thousands of years pass, and the cruelty and misery of all of them had formed the hateful expression on her features. But as the travelers saw her more clearly, she became even more repulsive. Her eye sockets were clotted with filthy slime, and the redness of her lips was caked and crusted as if she had vomited ancient blood again and again. Her matted, filthy black hair hung down to her shoulders; her jagged claws gripped the stone fiercely; her powerful dark wings were folded along her back; and a drift of putrescent stink wafted from her every time she moved. His words fell into Lyra's mind like heavy stones, and Will, too, felt the deadly weight of them. "D'you think they had daemons in this world?" said Will. He talked to the captain and the crew, out of politeness, but lacking Lyra's instant ease with strangers, he found it difficult to think of much to say; and in any case they were little interested in him. This was only a job, and when it was over they would leave without a backward glance, and besides, they didn't much like the bears, for all their gold. Will was a foreigner, and as long as he paid for his food, they cared little what he did. Besides, there was that strange daemon of his, which seemed so like a witch's: sometimes it was there, and sometimes it seemed to have vanished. Superstitious, like many sailors, they were happy to leave him alone. Atal willingly let her run her fingers around the wheel holes again, and watched curiously as Mary coated one of the pieces with a film of the clear, sweet substance. "How many worlds can you enter with the knife?" said Tialys. "But where are you going?" The form of the angel seemed to condense and swirl into a little vortex in midair, and then a blackbird swooped down onto the grass at Will's feet. "Will," said Lyra, "what d'you think the harpies will do when we let the ghosts out?" "Open it wider," said Lee Scoresby. "Let us out!" "But they might still be after you," she said. "Those men." "Yeah. You're right. Course we could." "She is in the hands of Mrs. Coulter," said Fra Pavel. "And they are in the Himalaya. So far, that is all I have been able to tell. I shall go at once and ask for a more precise location, and as soon as I have it, I shall tell the Court; but..." The sun was high in the sky when they began to slow down. "We must talk to Lyra about this," said Farder Coram, "and learn how it came about and what it means." They were fishing at the time, but the river was low and the fish must have been elsewhere, so they let the net lie across the water and sat on the grassy bank and talked, until Mary saw the dry branch, which had a smooth white surface. She burned the design, a simple daisy, into the wood, and delighted Atal; but as the thin line of smoke wafted up from the spot where the focused sunlight touched the wood, Mary thought: If this became fossilized, and a scientist in ten million years found it, they could still find Shadows around it, because I've worked on it. Will did so. The priest was an immense, gray-bearded man, wearing a black cassock, with a crow daemon on his shoulder. His restless eyes moved over Will's face and body, taking everything in. He beckoned. And he caught the gun, but then Mrs. Coulter fell still, and Will became aware of a strange stalemate. Suddenly, for no reason Will could see, both angels looked up and in the same direction. He followed their gaze, but saw nothing. He had seen his cat do this once: look up alert from her half-sleep and watch something or someone invisible come into the room and walk across. That had made his hair stand up, and so did this. When they did come face to face, it happened quite suddenly. In among the press of all the ghosts, there he was, his familiar features wan but his expression as full of delight as a ghost could be. He rushed to embrace her. "It would be merciful to kill it," said Tialys. "How do you know?" said Lyra. "It might still like being alive, in spite of everything. You're my death, en't you?" she said.