Summary
As the gyptian caravan heads further north, a heavy fog settles over them. Unexpectedly, a shower of arrows attacks the group. In the confusion that follows, a pair of attackers snatch Lyra and taker her away on a sledge. At first she thinks her kidnappers are Tartars acting under the direction of Mrs. Coulter. But soon she learns that they are actually local Samoyed hunters. They do not even know Lyra’s name, let alone her purpose for being in the North or her political importance.
The Samoyed hunters take Lyra and Pantalaimon to Bolvangar, where an uninspired doctor and a dull nurse named Sister Clara receive her. Lyra gives them a false name and pretends to be uninterested and clueless so that they do not discover her identity. Sister Clara takes Lyra’s clothes and puts her in used pajamas. However, she allows Lyra to keep her oilskin pouch with her alethiometer, spy-fly, and twig of cloud-pine.
After measuring Lyra's height and weight, Sister Clara brings her to a cafeteria to serve her a plate of food. As Lyra eats, the doctor asks what she is doing in the North. Lyra invents a story that her father is a tobacco trader who is fulfilling a promise to bring her on a trip. However, attackers raided their caravan and took her away. The doctor tries to convince Lyra that she hallucinated the attack because of the cold and that she must have simply gotten lost. He lies to her, telling her that her father will soon come to find her at the station, safe and sound.
Lyra begins to feel very tired because the nurse put sleeping pills in her food. Sister Clara takes Lyra to a dormitory with many sleeping children, and she quickly falls asleep. Shortly after, she is awoken by three girls, Annie, Bella and Martha, who have already been at Bolvangar for some time. They inform Lyra that usually children arrive in big groups, the adults perform experiments on them, and then one by one they are taken away, never to return. One of the children has heard that the adults perform tests to measure when the child starts attracting Dust. Once the child attracts Dust the adults remove them from Bolvangar. The girls also mention that usually a group of children disappears when Mrs. Coulter arrives. This news makes Lyra very nervous and she asks when Mrs. Coulter is next due for a visit. The girls reply that she will come the day after tomorrow. Aware that she must escape before Mrs. Coulter learns of her presence, Lyra begins to plot.
In the morning, Lyra joins the day-to-day life of the children at Bolvangar. Over the course of the morning, she makes contact first with Roger and then with Ma Costa’s son Billy. They communicate through their dæmons so as to not reveal to the nurses and doctors that they know each other. Roger informs Lyra that he has discovered that there is a space above the ceiling panels where a child can crawl from one part of the building to another.
In the afternoon Lyra must go to a testing room where a nameless doctor and a nurse named Sister Betty perform tests on her. While she is there, a fire drill goes off and everyone must evacuate the building. Because the outdoor clothes that Sister Clara gave Lyra are in the dormitory building, Lyra is able to convince the nurse to recover her original clothing.
Outside, Lyra takes advantage of the confusion to sneak off with Roger and Billy and look around. They find an out-of-the-way building with a sign above the door that says “ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.” Kaisa, Serafina Pekkala’s goose dæmon, appears out of the sky. He followed Lyra after the Samoyed attack and has been waiting for her to appear outdoors to make contact with her. He informs Lyra that the gyptians survived the attack, although John Faa is wounded. They are still about a day away from Bolvangar. Lyra tells Kaisa what she has learned since arriving there.
Kaisa uses his witch magic to unlock the door of the forbidden building. Lyra instructs Billy and Roger to keep watch while she enters the building with Kaisa. Inside, they discover row upon row of caged dæmons. Some cages are empty but still bear the names of the dead children who the dæmons once accompanied. Kaisa unlocks the cages. The confused and scared dæmons all turn into birds and escape with her, flying into the distance to search for their human bodies. However, Kaisa is aware that their separation is permanent: even if they find their bodies, the dæmons will never again be bound to their children.
When they return to the fire drill, Lyra instructs Roger and Billy to spread the word to the children that they must prepare to escape when she gives the signal. Lyra takes note of the adults’ total disorganization as they try to complete the drill. As the children begin to return indoors, a zeppelin appears in the sky and begins to descend on Bolvangar. In the window, Lyra spots Mrs. Coulter, who has arrived a day before her scheduled visit.
Analysis
Both the gyptian leaders and Lyra share the concern that Mrs. Coulter is following them. But neither party knows of the other’s fears. Since only the reader is aware that they are having the same thoughts, this is an instance of dramatic irony. Moreover, as the group worries about an attack from Mrs. Coulter, a shower of arrows attacks the caravan. The reader is likely to assume that the attackers are linked to Mrs. Coulter, just as Lyra does. However, the attackers turn out to be a group of hunters—a threat that no one in the group had even considered. Pullman strengthens the effect of this situational irony by placing it immediately after the dramatic irony of the characters’ concerns about Mrs. Coulter.
Pullman’s detailed descriptions of the research station at Bolvangar help to characterize the Oblation Board as heartless and unnatural. After having come so far, Lyra enters Bolvangar lying on her back on a Samoyed sled. As she enters the compound she sees blinding electric lights. These create an effect similar to when she looks at the aurora. However, Pullman contrasts the warm, natural lights of the aurora, which fill Lyra with awe and inspiration, to the blinding, electric lights that seem to warn of danger.
The interior of the building is heated intensely, and Lyra, who has gotten used to the biting cold of the North, is immediately uncomfortable. While the building has no windows, there is a photograph of a tropical beach on the wall to “give the illusion of light.” In fact, this out-of-proportion photograph is the only aspect of the station that has any connection to nature. In this way, Pullman establishes Bolvangar as a place whose activities are opposed to nature and natural beauty.
While at Bolvangar, Lyra comes up against her enemy directly for the first time. Pullman makes use of this moment to lay out what makes Lyra and her allies special. He does so by presenting the staff at Bolvangar as a foil. The adults at Bolvangar are terribly “bland.” The food at Bolvangar is boring and tasteless, unlike the strange roasted eel the gyptians gave Lyra. In contrast, Lyra is inventive and sparky. Her allies are unique and eccentric. Everything that the doctors and nurses lack, Lyra possesses, and this is what gives her the upper hand in her struggle.
In this section, different parts of Lyra’s life come into contact with each other for the first time. Her childhood friends from Oxford, Roger and Billy, watch in awe as Lyra talks casually with Kaisa, a witch’s dæmon. Their surprise highlights how much Lyra has learned and grown since leaving Jordan College. At first, Lyra was also shocked to learn that witches could be so far away from their dæmons. But by now she has grown used to the idea that there are many different kinds of people in the world. And it is now that Lyra has an opportunity to coordinate the efforts of the many different worlds where she has learned to be a leader.
Meanwhile, as the effort to free the children from Bolvangar comes to its climax, Lyra continues to plot for her secret mission: freeing her father from Svalbard. By now the reader knows that Lyra has been gathering information to form a plan to reach the far-northern fortress where her father is captive. At the same time as Lyra cooperates with others to accomplish shared goals, she never stops being her own person. As she gains more confidence, she begins to dream big and to act on her own.
