An Opus Alchymicum Vol 1: The Experimental Theologian's Apprentice

A Whisper of the North

When she'd endured a week of particularly nasty picking-on by the girls of Jericho Prep, Hermione liked to spend her weekend evenings by just laying on the deck of her father's narrowboat, where it was moored to the banks of the canal that flanked the back of their house in Abingdon. She found that she could forget the tormenting the easiest when she simply looked up at the clear night and listened to the silence all around her.

Like the air itself, which was full of the whispers of the breeze as it swapped hushed stories with those being told by the slow-moving waters of the canal, Hermione found that she could hear all of the currents and turbulence of the silence, if she listened in just the right half-focused, half-ignorant way. She could tell when it bunched up and grew dense, and when it spiked as if in alarm, and when it relaxed enough to calm any observer to sleep.

It was only much later that Hermione would realise that she was listening to Dust.

And this night, Hermione half-wished that she was on the narrowboat as usual. For what she was witnessing caused her to hop from foot-to-foot with awkward embarrassment. Despite being just ten-years-old, Hermione Granger was worldly for her age, and knew that the scene in front of her was almost forbidden for young eyes to see. Even so, Hermione found it hard to look away.

For she had never seen the dæmons of two strangers embrace before ... so Hermione peeked on shyly, as Papageno became a door mouse and hid his eyes behind his tiny paws as he burrowed into the hood of Hermione's coat. It seemed indecent to watch, but she was deeply curious to see what might happen.

For this is just what the dæmons of Alice Lonsdale and Malcolm Polstead, two close friends of Lyra's, were doing despite their audience, as they all sat in the bar of the pub that Malcolm owned, which was called The Trout. Clearly, Alice and Malcolm weren't strangers at all. Hermione stared at their dæmons intently as they met - hers a dog, his a cat - as they started rolling around together, biting and clawing playfully at each other, undoubted intimacy existing between them. Hermione watched as though intruding on something illicit, as if she'd just stumbled upon the humans, themselves, locked in a passionate clinch without caring who caught them.

This felt very much the same.

"I'd like you to meet Hermione Granger ... my new apprentice," Lyra was saying, which jerked Hermione back to her senses and to the moment. She bowed politely as Alice and Malcolm turned their eyes to study her, their dæmons pausing in their revelry to sniff curiously at Papageno, when he ventured bravely as a moth from behind Hermione's ear and fluttered down politely to meet them. Satisfied, Ben the mongrel and Asta the ginger cat went back to their indecent cavorting like nobody's business, causing Hermione to blush at the sight of them carrying on in such a fashion.

"And which school do you attend, dear?" asked Alice, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.

"Jericho Prep," Hermione mumbled, wringing her hands nervously.

"The girls side, of course," Alice frowned. She turned to Lyra. "I've always said that you should push for Jordan to have its own feeder academy, and then invite all good students of any sex to attend. It would stop all this non-mixing nonsense. It's neolithic, is that attitude."

"Perhaps now isn't the time to debate the gender inequality in our elite education system," Malcolm proffered. He had the look of a Scholar, but the air of a man who knew his way around in the world, and the build of someone who could handle himself in a struggle. Hermione was more than a little bit afraid of him.

"No, it isn't," Lyra agreed. "We have a problem. A very unique problem."

"An Oakley Street problem, you said," Malcolm frowned. "How can this little girl have any need of us?"