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dnd oakley street > Oakley Street Part Seven
The Thames
The storm hits Marchestra suddenly. The sound of rain and hail battering the roof and canvas keeps her crew awake. Their daemons stay close. Louise’s ears flop down to drown out the noise. Erin curls up into a ball.
Outside, a harsh screech punctures the otherwise constant deluge of precipitation. It slowly gets nearer and louder, until there is no doubt as to its source. John braves the weather for a moment to confirm what everyone is thinking. The sound is not a screech, but laughter.
Cassandra joins John at the stern. She starts the engine and hauls in the anchor, ready to move. The bank is barely visible now, but the edge can be seen by a line of trees along the bank, which extend far back into a dark forest. Everyone else rises and sees the situtation for themselves. Cassandra opens a hatch near the stern and distributes what little spare storm clothing she has, lending her own waterproofs to Dahlia. She manoeuvres over to the bank, getting as close as she can to enable everyone to disembark. Cassandra and Louise stay on board Marchestra to keep her from drifting away.
As the party enter the forest, the laughter, which can belong to no other than Gerard Bonneville’s hyena daemon, is joined by a second voice. They are still too far away to identify the second voice, only that it is distinct from Gerard’s. As they move on foot along the bank, working hard with each step to lift their heavy boots out of the mud, the voice becomes clearer. It is that of a child. Through the thick trees, they spot the outline of a small boat, brought far beyond the bank of the river by the storm water, and able to navigate here in no more than a foot of water. The name of the boat, freshly painted on her prow, is ‘La Belle Sauvage’.
Using the bright, new paint as their landmark, the party creep over to the source of the second voice. They find themselves at the edge of a clearing, arriving soon enough to glimpse the hyena daemon running away into the forest and out of view. Entering the clearing, they are suddenley surrounded by an eerie, purple light. Below their feet, unnoticed before, are white flowers. The scene before them is surreal. A woman with long hair sits peacefully in the centre of the clearing. She holds a baby in her arms and is breastfeeding her. A short distance from her are a boy and a girl, both tangled in vines which are coming out of the ground at many points. The boy, the party recognise as Malcolm Polstead, which explains the presence of La Belle Sauvage. Malcolm and the girl both have cat daemons. The party cannot see either the baby’s daemon, or the long-haired woman’s daemon.
John, employing stealth, moves closer to where Malcolm and the girl are held captive. He carefully cuts through some of the vines. As his knife severs the first strand, it immediately reattaches itself behind the blade.
“My baby!” cries the woman, ecstatic, and apparently oblivious to John’s attempt to free the children. “She’s tasted fairy milk!”
The party deduce that this can mean only one thing. The woman is a fae, and she believes that the child, having tasted her milk, now belongs to her.
Before the party have time to think further about this, what appear to be two of the trees in the dark forest start to move. The fae woman gestures, and a magical forcefield appears, a gossamer thin boundary protecting herself and the child from crossfire.
John is first to attack. He looses an arrow in the direction of the first tree man. In retaliation, the tree man shocks John. Ethel attack the same tree man with her scimitar, distracting him to allow Dahlia to make a quick sneak attack.
With each blow dealt against the tree men, the fae woman winces in pain. Such is the strength required by the tree men to keep fighting, that they draw magic away from the vines holding Malcolm and the girl captive. They pull themselves free, and quickly run towards the fae.
The thin forcefield has also started to decay. John lunges at it, shattering it into thousands of glittering, ephemeral pieces. John takes the baby from the exhausted fae and hands it to Malcolm.
Dahlia, still very much aware of the danger of the situation, presses the tip of her rapier up against the neck of the fae, who is now sobbing. The pressure is just enough to draw blood, then she withdraws as the woman accedes.
“I was supposed to have a child, but I cannot,” are the words audible between her cries.
“Have you considered fostering?” asks a perplexed Dahlia, which does not prompt an audible response from the fae.
The fae departs, her mood utterly sunken by the events which have just transpired.
The party regroup with Malcolm, and the girl, whom he introduces to them as Alice. “Can you direct me to Oakley Street?” he asks, holding back tears of joy.
Dahlia says, kindly, “Yes, but for that, you’d have to go to London.”
Malcolm informs that party that he has, held safely, a cotton bag, within which is an elaborately decorated metal box. It is the fourth alethiometer. He does not, however, go as far as to offer to gift it to the party.
Reunited with Malcolm, and having made a new friend in Alice, the party start walking back to the bank, to meet Cassandra and report on the events.
The party are all back aboard Marchestra and warm and drying, for the moment. Their new charges, Alice, Lyra, and Malcolm are with them, describing how they came to be in the clearing and how Lyra came to be in the hands of the fae. Dahlia has been carrying the baby Lyra since rescuing the three children from the fae. She presents Lyra to Cassandra, who is nervous at first, but then holds the baby carefully in her arms and smiles.
Dahlia asks Malcolm about the alethiometer. “Will you give it to Oakley Street, for them to use?”
“No,” he replies. “The alethiometer belongs to Lyra, so it will stay with her.”
The party are surprised at this, but given all that the children have been through, nobody comments on it at the moment. Instead, Ethel asks Malcolm about recent events. “How did you end up outside in weather like this?” she asks, in a caring tone.
Malcolm recounts the tale. “I was visiting the nuns over at the priory, to check that they would be safe in the storm.” He has the attention of all those present, except Lyra’s. “But before I reached the nunnery, I found Lyra in her basket. The current was too much for me to get to the nunnery, so I carried Lyra in her basket aboard ‘La Belle Sauvage’ to the shore. There, I met Alice, who my parents had sent out to check on me.”
For the first time, the party take a proper look at Alice. She is older than Malcolm, roughly fifteen years of age. Like Malcolm, she helps out at The Trout, the inn owned by Malcolm’s parents. Something about Alice and Malcolm’s tone when they are speaking to each other suggests that they don’t always get along happily. However, the situation has brought them together, and they seem to be putting aside their differences to work together.
Together, the party must come up with a plan. Two options present themselves; either continue to Oxford, where Alice, Lyra and Malcolm will find safety with their families and Doctor Hannah might be able to use the alethiometer, or turn around and head to London, taking Lyra to Oakley Street, and also ensuring the safety of all involved. The party are divided. Cassandra looks outside. She can tell that the storm is easing off, but that the increased current poses a significant obstacle to navigating Marchestra successfully to Oxford.
The party can hear the blades of a gyrocopter slicing through the air overhead. The sound gets louder and louder, until the gyrocopter is almost directly above them. A voice shouts down from the gyrocopter. It is an authoritative, kind, male voice. “Who are you? Are you alright?”
“Cassandra Van Beek,” replies Cassandra. “We are friends of Farder Coram.”
“As am I, Asriel,” comes the reply.
“Lord Asriel!” shouts Dahlia. “We are here with Malcolm, and Alice, and your daughter!”
Three rope ladders drop from the gyrocopter. The children climb up first, then Dahlia, carrying baby Lyra. John and Tom climb up next. Cassandra is reluctant to leave Marchestra, as without a helmsman, she could easily be carried away by the current and run aground.
“We’ll take good care of your vessel, you have my word,” calls down Asriel. Cassandra quickly drops the anchor and climbs up the rope ladder last. Asriel pulls up the ladder and signals to the gyrocopter pilot to set off for Oxford.
Asriel takes a good look at all of the group, including the children. He holds his daughter. He looks at Cassandra first. “Pardon the assumption, but judging by your looks, would I be correct in saying that you are a gyptian?”
“Yes,” replies Cassandra, simply.
“Respectable!” is all that Dahlia offers, though she needn’t have; Lord Asriel is a friend of the gyptians. As the group learned from the gyptians they met in Paris, gyptians in Brytain are offered a strong degree of protection by Lord Asriel, and so they can walk in society without persecution.
As they gyrocopter takes the children to Oxford, Asriel explains that this is the safest place for them. “Lyra was never safe with me,” he says, “That’s why she was in a nunnery.”
Dahlia asks Asriel about the ownership of the alethiometer. “Surely it is best given to Oakley Street?”
“Malcolm says that it belongs to Lyra, and I trust his judgement,” replies Asriel. “He and Alice have kept my daughter safe through the storm, and for that also, I respect their opinions.”
The gyrocopter almost touches down outside Jordan College. Lord Asriel jumps off and is immeditely knee deep in floodwater. Alice passes baby Lyra down to him and he thanks Alice again for looking after her. Lord Asriel wades through the water to the college gate, where he meets the master, who is clearly surprised by Lord Asriel’s arrival. Handing over the child, Asriel recites some words in Latin. The master’s confusion continues.
“Scholastic Sanctuary?” he asks, baffled. “She’s a child, Asriel! Not a scholar!”
“Then you’d better make her one,” is Asriel’s reply. He leaves Lyra and the alethiometer in the care of the master and boards the Gyrocopter.
As the gyrocopter gains height, the group can see the extent of the flooding in Oxford. Ethel, eager to help, offers her assistance distributing sand bags.