Excerpt from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials followup, The Secret Commonwealth

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is an excellent fantasy story about Lyra Belacqua, a child from a world not unlike our own, except everyone has an animal familiar called a dæmon and the land is ruled by a theocracy called the Magisterium. It’s a good time.

Anyway, the series is having a bit of a moment. In the wake of Game of Thrones, everyone is looking for the next big fantasy smash, and HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials (made in cooperation with the BBC) looks like one of the better candidates.

Dafne Keen from Logan is playing Lyra, they just cast Will, another main character…everything looks like it’s going smoothly.

Things are happening on the literary end, too. Pullman is in the middle of writing a new trilogy, The Book of Dust, that further explores Lyra’s world. The first book in that new series, La Belle Sauvage, was set years before the original story. The second, The Secret Commonwealth, follows a 20-year-old Lyra as she continues her struggles against the Magisterium, and is due out later this year. Earlier this week, The Guardian published an excerpt from the new book. So here is…an excerpt of the excerpt.

Some context: in this excerpt, Lyra, now an undergraduate student at Oxford, is fleeing from the Magisterium for some reason; it’s always something with her. She’s stealing away downriver in the company of Giorgio Brabandt, a gyptian; the gyptians are a nomadic people Lyra worked with in the original trilogy. They’re aboard his boat, The Maid of Portugal, and being searched for by zeppelins from the Magisterium. But the zeppelin has another problem to deal with: mysterious “will-o’-the-wykes,” creatures that appear as floating lights above a swamp.

Basically, what I’m saying is that a blimp is about to fight a bunch of swamp lights. Strap in:

"Suddenly a line of fire streaked down towards the marsh lights from the teeming sky above. It hit the water and exploded in a blossom of orange and yellow flame, and after a second Lyra heard the brief whistle of the flight and the solid crump of the explosion.The marsh lights went out all at once.“There,” said Brabandt. “They broke the law now. They’re allowed to fly over, but not to do that.”Anneke was growling as she stood four-square and gazed at the rapidly fading glow from the rocket.A moment later a dozen marsh lights flickered again, moving swiftly, darting here and there, even rising and falling. Little jets of fire spurted up from the ground, to flare and go out in a moment.“That’s made ’em angry,” said Brabandt. “Trouble is, they’re showing us up.”The boat was still purring forward into the dark, but he was right: the marsh lights were so fierce and brilliant now that, small as they were, they illuminated the whole length of the Maid of Portugal, streaming with rain and catching every flicker of light.“They don’t like us, the will-o’-the-wykeses, but they like them zeppelins even less,” Brabandt said. “But they still don’t like us. Wouldn’t bother ’em a bit if we got sunk and drowned, or smashed into a thousand splinters.”Anneke barked, a short yap of alarm. She was looking up, and Lyra, following her gaze, saw a little shape falling from the zeppelin and briskly unfolding into a parachute. Almost at once the wind caught it and tossed it backwards, but then the black shape under the canopy burst into a brilliant flame.“Flares,” said Brabandt, as another fell, blossomed, and blazed.The response from the marsh lights was instant and furious. More and more of them flickered into being and leaped and danced towards the falling flare, and when it reached the water, they swarmed all over it, their cold fire mastering its heat and finally drowning it in a cloud of smoke and a chorus of wet little shrieks and sucking noises.Suddenly Lyra jumped up and ran inside, feeling her way along the length of the boat to her little cabin in the prow. She felt for her bunk, felt the bedside table, moved her hands over the book and the lamp until they found the velvet bag that held the alethiometer. With that safely in both hands she moved back through the boat, conscious of the little movements Brabandt was making with the wheel and the throttle, of the roar from the zeppelin’s engine somewhere above, of the moaning of the wind. From the galley she saw Brabandt at the tiller outlined against the flickering marsh lights, and then she was in the doorway again, and sat on the bench from where she could see out.“All right?” said Brabandt.“Yes. I’m going to see what I can find out.”She was already turning the little wheels of the alethiometer, and peering close in the intermittent glimmer to try and make out the symbols. But it was no good: they were more or less invisible. She held the instrument between her palms, and stared fiercely out at the flickering jacky-lanterns, aware of a powerful contradiction that almost tore her mind in two. What she wanted to do would involve this secret commonwealth of Brabandt’s, and yet she told herself it was nonsense, superstition, nothing but meaningless fancy.The zeppelin was turning around ahead of them, its searchlight probing the rain and the dark marsh gloom below it. Another minute or two, and it would be facing them, and once it had the Maid of Portugal fixed in the glare of the light, nothing would save them.Pan, Pan, Pan, Lyra thought, I need you now, you little bastard, you traitor.She tried to imagine gathering all the jacky-lanterns as if she was herding sheep, but it was so hard, because after all she had no imagination, as Pan had said. What would it be like to do that? She thought harder and harder. She thought of herself as a light-herd, and the absent Pan as a light-dog, racing from side to side across the marsh, crouching down still, leaping up again, barking short sharp commands, running where she thought him to.And how stupid, she thought, how childish. It’s just methane or something. It’s just natural, meaningless. Her concentration faltered.She heard a sob coming from her throat, completely against her will.Brabandt said, “What you doing, gal?”She ignored him. She gritted her teeth and summoned the absent Pan again, a hell-hound now, with glowing eyes and slaver flying from his lips, and she saw the terrified marsh lights fleeing and flocking and circling round as the zeppelin’s cold beam of light came closer and closer and she heard the drumming of rain on the great snout-prow of the aircraft, even over the wind and the roar of the engine.She felt something rising inside her, like a tide, wave upon wave of it, growing and receding and then growing again, a little more each time, and it was anger, it was desire, it was visceral.“What they doing? Good God – look at that … ” Brabandt was saying.The marsh lights were speeding and climbing, dashing again and again at a spot on the water just ahead of the zeppelin’s searchlight, and then with a shriek something rose out of the marsh that wasn’t a jacky-lantern nor a will-o’-the-wyke but a large bird, a heron or even a stork, heavy and white and terrified by the darting green glimmers that harried it up and up and into the beam of the searchlight, and higher still, snapping at its legs, crowding like hornets at its great hefty body as it lumbered up in fear and hurled itself at the aircraft—Brabandt said hoarsely, “Hold tight, gal.” The searchlight beam was nearly on them.Then in an explosion of fire and blood and white feathers, the heron flew straight into the port engine of the zeppelin."

Some interesting stuff here: first, I want to reiterate that it’s cool that a blimp fought swamp lights and the swamp lights won, and by using a bird, no less. I note that Lyra is pining for Pan, her dæmon, and calls him a “traitor” and a “bastard.” Apparently they’ve had a falling out. It’s also interesting that Lyra, as a 20-year-old, is finding it harder to get into the state of mind needed to operate the alethiometer, a key bit machinery from the first trilogy. I guess it’s the sort of thing that comes easier when you’re a child. Much of the original trilogy was about growing up, so there’s a melancholiness to that.

Head to The Guardian to read the rest!

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The Secret Commonwealth is due out October 3. HBO’s His Dark Materials will air late this year. Everything’s coming up Lyra!

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