Chapter 109

He came out of the dark at the end of the boathouse the way a reflection comes up in a window when the lamp is lit behind you: not arriving, only there.

Tall. Pale. Dark hair swept back from a face that might have been thirty. He wore a plain dark coat with a high collar, and no ring, and nothing in his hands. He stopped a few paces off along the landing stage, near enough to speak without raising his voice and not one step nearer, and looked at me with an expression of mild and courteous pleasure, as though we had been introduced at a dinner and he had been hoping to be seated beside me.

I had seen him once before, over Lyra’s shoulder, under an apple tree.

“We have met,” he said. “You were barefoot, I think, in a shirt that was not yours. You made a very small sound.” He inclined his head. “I said the Luna. I see I was early.”

His voice was low and unhurried and quite beautiful, and it had no breath under it. I listened for the heart. There was nothi