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That could hardly be clearer She folded the stalks away and closed the book, and then realized that she’d drawn a circle of watching creatures around her

One said, Question? Permission? Curious

She said, Please Look

Very delicately their trunkses of the book One thing they were astonished by was the doubleness of her hands: by the fact that she could both hold the book and turn the pages at the saether, or play the childhood game of "This is the church, and this is the steeple," or er , at exactly the same moment in Lyra’s world, as a charm to keep evil spirits away

Once they had examined the yarrow stalks and the book, they folded the cloth over them carefully and put them with the book into her rucksack She was happy and reassured by the e from ancient China, because it meant that what she wanted most to do was exactly, at that moment, what she should do

So she set herself to learning more about the mulefa, with a cheerful heart

She learned that there were two sexes, and that they livedchildhoods - ten years at least - growing very slowly, as far as she could interpret their explanation There were five young ones in this settlerown and the others so se the seedpod wheels The children had to round, but for all their energy and adventurousness (skipping up to Mary and shying away, trying to cla in the shalloater, and so on), they see elerace of the adults was startling by contrast, and Mary safor the day when the wheels would fit She watched the oldest child, one day, go quietly to the storehouse where a number of seedpods were kept, and try to fit his foreclaw into the central hole; but when he tried to stand up, he fell over at once, trapping hiled to get free, squeaking with anxiety, and Mary couldn’t help laughing at the sight, at the indignant parent and the guilty child, who pulled himself out at the last minute and scampered away

The seedpod wheels were clearly of the utan to see just how valuable they were

Thetheir wheels By deftly lifting and twisting the claw, they could slip it out of the hole, and then they used their trunks to exa for cracks The claas forles to the leg, and slightly curved so that the highest part, in the ht as it rested on the inside of the hole Mary watched one day as a zalif exa here and there, lifting her trunk up in the air and back again, as if sa the scent

Mary reers when she had examined the first seedpod With the zalif ’s permission she looked at her claw, and found the surfaceshe’d felt on her world Her fingers simply would not stay on the surface The whole of the claw seerant oil, and after she had seen a nu the state of their wheels and their claws, she began to wonder which had coh of course there was a third eley Creatures could only use wheels on a world that provided thehways There must be some feature of the mineral content of these stone roads that made them run in ribbon-like lines over the vast savanna, and be so resistant to weathering or cracking Little by little, Mary caether, and all of it, seeed by the razers, every stand of wheel trees, every clurass, and they knew every individual within the herds, and every separate tree, and they discussed their well-being and their fate On one occasion she saw theso the their necks with a wrench of a powerful trunk Nothing asted Holding flakes of razor-sharp stone in their trunks, the utted the anian a skillful butchery, separating out the offal and the tenderthe horns and the hooves, and working so efficiently that Mary watched with the pleasure she felt at seeing anything done well

Soon strips ofto dry in the sun, and others were packed in salt and wrapped in leaves; the skins were scraped clear of fat, which was set by for later use, and then laid to soak in pits of water filled with oak bark to tan; and the oldest child was playing with a set of horns, pretending to be a grazer,there was fresh meat to eat, and Mary feasted well

In a similar way the mulefa knehere the best fish were to be had, and exactly when and where to lay their nets Looking for so she could do, Mary went to the net-makers and offered to help When she sa they worked, not on their own but two by torking their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why they’d been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own At first she felt that this gave her an advantage - she needed no one else - and then she realized how it cut her off fros were like that And fro the task with a feers and trunkthings the wheeled people ed, it was the seedpod trees that they took roves within the area looked after by this group There were others farther away, but they were the responsibility of other groups Each day a party went out to check on the well-being of the hty trees, and to harvest any fallen seedpods It was clear what the ained; but how did the trees benefit fro with the group, suddenly there was a loud crack, and everyone ca one individual whose wheel had split Every group carried a spare or tith it, so the zalif with the broken wheel was soon remounted; but the broken wheel itself was carefully wrapped in a cloth and taken back to the settlement

There they prized it open and took out all the seeds - flat pale ovals as big as Mary’s little fingernail - and examined each one carefully They explained that the seedpods needed the constant pounding they got on the hard roads if they were to crack at all, and also that the seeds were difficult to germinate Without the mulefa ’s attention, the trees would all die

Each species depended on the other, and furthermore, it was the oil that made it possible It was hard to understand, but they see and feeling; that young ones didn’t have the wisdom of their elders because they couldn’t use the wheels, and thus could absorb no oil through their claws

And that hen Mary began to see the connection between the mulefa and the question that had occupied the past few years of her life

But before she could examine it any further (and conversations with theand explaining and illustrating their arguotten nothing and everything they had ever knoas available immediately for reference), the settlement was attacked

Mary was the first to see the attackers coh she didn’t knohat they were

It happened inrepair the roof of a hut The h, because they were not cliround, and she could lay thatch and knot it in place with her two hands, once they had shown her the technique, much more quickly than they could

So she was braced against the rafters of a house, catching the bundles of reeds thrown up to her, and enjoying the cool breeze fro the heat of the sun, when her eye was caught by a flash of white

It caht was the sea She shaded her eyes and saw one - two -out of the heat haze, sorace for the river mouth

Mary! called the zalif fro?

She didn’t know the word for sail, or boat, so she said tall, white, ave a call of alarm, and everyone in earshot stopped work and sped to the center of the settle ones Within a minute all the mulefa were ready to flee

Atal, her friend, called: Mary! Mary! Come! Tualapi! Tualapi!

It had all happened so quickly that Mary had hardly moved The white sails by this tiainst the current Mary was impressed by the discipline of the sailors: they tacked so swiftly, the sailsdirection simultaneously And they were so beautiful, those snohite slender sails, bending and dipping and filling -

There were forty of the upriver ht But she saw no crew on board, and then she realized that they weren’t boats at all: they were gigantic birds, and the sails were their wings, one fore and one aft, held upright and flexed and trimmed by the power of their own muscles

There was no time to stop and study them, because they had already reached the bank, and were cli as her forearlanced back, frightened now, over her shoulder as she fled - they had powerful legs: no wonder they had moved so fast on the water

She ran hard after theher nahway She reached the, and as Mary scra away up the slope after her companions

The birds, who couldn’t ave up the chase and turned back to the settle and growling and tossing their great cruel beaks high as they sed the driededible was gone in under a minute

And then the tualapi found the wheel store, and tried to sreat seedpods, but that was beyond them Mary felt her friends tense with alarm all around her as they watched from the crest of the low hill and saw pod after pod hurled to the ground, kicked, rasped by the claws on the s, but of course no harm came to them from that What worried the mulefa was that several of theed toward the water, where they floated heavily downstreareat snohite birds set about de blows of their feet and stabbing, s , al with sorrow

I help, Mary said We ain

But the foul creatures hadn’t finished yet; holding their beautiful wings high, they squatted a the devastation and voided their bowels The smell drifted up the slope with the breeze; heaps and pools of green-black-brohite dung lay a the broken beams, the scattered thatch Then, their clu strut, the birds went back to the water and sailed away downstrea had vanished in the afternoon haze did the ain They were full of sorrow and anger, but mainly they were powerfully anxious about the seedpod store

Out of the fifteen pods that had been there, only tere left The rest had been pushed into the water and lost But there was a sandbank in the next bend of the river, and Mary thought she could spot a wheel that was caught there; so to the mulefa ’s surprise and alarth of cord around her waist, and swam across to it On the sandbank she found not one but five of the precious wheels, and passing the cord through their softening centers, she swa theratitude They never entered the water the care to keep their feet and wheels dry Mary felt she had done soht, after a scanty meal of sweet roots, they told her why they had been so anxious about the wheels There had once been a time when the seedpods were plentiful, and when the world was rich and full of life, and thebad had happened one out of the world - because despite every effort and all the love and attention the