Summary
After the fire drill, Lyra hides her warm clothes above a ceiling panel in the dormitory. When Mrs. Coulter enters the building both the children and adults of Bolvangar are nervous. Lyra enlists Annie, Bella and Martha in her escape plan. Word quickly but quietly spreads among the children to have their warm clothes ready for when they hear Lyra’s signal: the fire alarm. Meanwhile, panic spreads among the nurses and doctors as they discover that the dæmons have escaped from their cages.
Lyra manages to avoid being seen by Mrs. Coulter. As night falls, she devises a plan to explore the space above the ceiling while the other children sleep. All of the children offer clothes to bulk up Lyra’s bed in case a nurse checks on them. Navigating through the ceiling’s pipes and machinery is difficult, but Lyra is able to find her way to the space above the conference room. There, she overhears Mrs. Coulter in a meeting with three male doctors.
Mrs. Coulter questions the doctors about the dæmons’ escape. Since all of the adults were busy at the time, they conclude a child must have let the dæmons out. Mrs. Coulter is upset and says that tomorrow she wants to see all of the children to discover who is responsible. The doctors also give Mrs. Coulter a report on a new machine for intercision. This machine severs children’s link to their dæmons by placing them in separate compartments and dropping a metal guillotine between them. Mrs. Coulter expresses a desire to see the machine at work as soon as possible. She leaves the conference room and the doctors continue their discussion.
Once Mrs. Coulter has left, Lyra accidentally makes a noise and the doctors catch her. They decide to sever Pantalaimon from Lyra immediately, since the shock of intercision will prevent Lyra from telling anybody what she has heard. Although Lyra and Pantalaimon fight back fiercely, they are unable to overpower the three grown men and their dæmons. The doctors bring Lyra to the intercision room.
Once the doctors successfully place Lyra and Pantalaimon in the separate compartments of the intercision machine, Mrs. Coulter is alerted by the noise and comes to see what is happening. She is surprised to see Lyra, her daughter, on the verge of being severed from her dæmon. Mrs. Coulter immediately orders the doctors to leave and frees Lyra and Pantalaimon from the machine. She then brings Lyra to her own bedroom and comforts her, as she is profoundly shocked and afraid.
Lyra comes to her senses as Mrs. Coulter is preparing her a cup of tea. When Mrs. Coulter asks Lyra why she left the cocktail party, Lyra invents an elaborate story to explain how she arrived at Bolvangar without giving away information about the gyptians. Lyra demands to know the purpose of intercision. Mrs. Coulter explains that it is to prevent the children from being affected by Dust, which she says has a harmful effect on the adults that attract it. Changing the subject, Mrs. Coulter reveals that she knows the Master gave Lyra an alethiometer. She thinks the Master gave her the device so that it would end up in the hands of Lord Asriel. This is because, according to Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel is involved in an evil plot that requires the alethiometer to be completed.
Mrs. Coulter orders Lyra to give her the alethiometer instead. When Lyra does not reply she starts to search the pouch where Lyra normally keeps the device hidden. However, Lyra has left the alethiometer with her winter clothes above the ceiling in the dormitory. Instead, Mrs. Coulter finds the tin can containing the spy-fly. Thinking that the alethiometer is inside, she pries open the can, leading the spy-fly to attack Mrs. Coulter with all of its pent up force. Lyra seizes the moment and escapes from Mrs. Coulter’s room.
As she runs toward the dormitory, Lyra triggers the building’s fire alarm and sets a fire in the kitchen. She arrives at the dormitory to find it empty. Lyra retrieves her warm clothes and the alethiometer from the ceiling, then joins the crowds of children who are evacuating the building. By now the fire has spread throughout the building and the doctors cannot stop the children from escaping. However, as the children approach the gates of the compound, they face an orderly formation of Tartar guards, accompanied by their terrifying wolf dæmons.
Lyra instructs the children to attack the guards with snowballs and to aim for their eyes. This tactic briefly confuses the guards. Suddenly, an army of witches begins to attack the guards from above with bows and arrows. The children take the opportunity to advance past the Tartar formation. A unit of Tartars breaks away from the formation to retrieve the children. But out of the darkness, Iorek Byrnison appears to attack the Tartars from behind. The children finally make it out of the compound.
The escaped children now face another obstacle: the darkness and cold. Lyra instructs them to keep walking so that they don’t freeze, and to follow Iorek’s tracks in hopes of finding the gyptian caravan. When the cold has almost overcome even Lyra, who has warmer clothes than most, they finally run into the gyptians. The gyptians are overcome with joy to see the freed children, some of whom are their own sons, daughters, and siblings.
The joy does not last for long, however. Mrs. Coulter and a squad of Tartars catch up with the group on motorized sledges. They briefly get a hold of Lyra and Roger, but once again Iorek Byrnison and a pair of witches come to their rescue. While Iorek attacks the Tartars, the witches pluck Lyra and Roger out of the hands of their captors and fly away with them on their cloud-pines. The witches deposit Lyra and Roger on the ground near Lee Scoresby, who is waiting with his balloon ready to fly. Iorek catches up with them, and the four of them take off into the sky.
Once the balloon rises far above the clouds, a group of witches flying on branches of cloud-pine closes in on it. One witch comes closer than the others and identifies herself as Serafina Pekkala. She informs Lyra that the gyptians have completely destroyed Bolvangar and have managed to save all of the children that were held captive there. Lee Scoresby throws a rope to a group of witches who start tugging the balloon north, towards Svalbard. Serafina Pekkala asks Lyra if she knows why she is going to Svalbard. Lyra realizes that she doesn’t know if it is to deliver the alethiometer to her father or to help him escape from the panserbjørne. Serafina instructs Lyra to sleep, saying that she has many things she must tell Lyra when she awakens.
Analysis
Mrs. Coulter’s arrival causes a frightened and nervous mood to spread in Bolvangar. Lyra is not exempt. She has encountered many horrifying things since leaving Jordan College. Yet Mrs. Coulter is the only person who strikes so much fear in her so as to distract her from her purpose. In an effort to stay focused, Lyra struggles to think about her friends and allies on their way to save her.
Then, as word spreads of Lyra’s plan for escape, a similar effect takes hold of the other children. At first Mrs. Coulter’s presence appears to make them frightened, nervous, and distracted. But as they participate in a plan to escape they become hopeful and animated, dispelling the somber mood that Mrs. Coulter brought. Lyra herself marvels at “the effect that hope can have.” Through this episode, Pullman presents hope as a powerful tool in the struggle to overcome fear.
As Lyra sneaks around the ceilings of Bolvangar she reminds Pantalaimon of the time they snuck into the Retiring Room and witnessed the Master’s attempted murder of Lord Asriel. Pantalaimon replies that had they not done that, “none of this would have happened.” Lyra responds, “then it’s up to me to undo it, isn’t it?”
This parallelism with the opening scene of the novel prompts the reader to reflect on all that has changed since the first time Lyra and her dæmon argued while hiding in a forbidden place. Lyra and Pantalaimon’s discussion also highlights the themes of inevitability, destiny, and agency in the novel. One faraway event—their adventures in the Retiring Room—seems to be the direct cause of everything that is happening now. Lyra feels that if her decisions caused these events then only her decisions can alter their situation.
Mrs. Coulter’s rescue of Lyra from intercision is a dramatic moment in the novel. It also reveals the hypocrisy at the heart of Mrs. Coulter’s actions. She is excited to watch other children be severed from their dæmons. However, she is horrified to think that it might happen to her own daughter. When she tries to justify the practice of intercision to Lyra, she explains that severed dæmons do not have to be taken away from children. Rather, they can continue living with them as “the best pet in the world.” This phrase alludes to the feeling that Pantalaimon had in London: that Mrs. Coulter was treating Lyra more like a pet than an assistant.
In this section, Pullman brings one of the novel’s primary conflicts to a close: Lyra and the gyptians successfully rescue the kidnapped children from the evil experiments of the Oblation Board. As Part Two closes, Lyra flies further north, with some confusion as to her purpose.
