Северное сияние

Then she did hear something: a mysterious, vastly distant rustling and crackling. It was a sound she had heard before: the sound of the Aurora. Out of nowhere a veil of radiance had fallen to hang shimmering in the northern sky. All those unseen billions and trillions of charged particles and possibly of Dust conjured a radiating glow out of the upper atmosphere. This was going to be a display more brilliant and extraordinary than any Lyra had yet seen, as if the Aurora knew the drama that was taking place below, and wanted to light it with the most awe-inspiring effects.

'Witches have known of the other worlds for thousands of years. You can see them sometimes in the Northern Lights. They aren't part of this universe at all; even the furthest stars are part of this universe, but the lights show us a different universe entirely. Not further away, but interpenetrating with this one. Here, on this deck, millions of other universes exist, unaware of one another.'
He raised his wings and spread them wide before folding them again.
'There', he said. 'I have just brushed ten million other worlds, and they knew nothing of it. we are as close as a heartbeat, but we can never touch or see or hear those other worlds except in the Northern Lights.'
'And why there?' said Farder Coram.
'Because the charged particles in the Aurora have the property of making the matter of this world thin, so that we can see through it for a brief time.'

...As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skilful dancer. Lyra thought she could even hear them: a vast distant whispering swish. In the evanescent delicacy she felt something as profound as she's felt close to the bear. She was moved by it: it was so beautiful it was almost holy; she felt tears prick her eyes, and the tears splintered the light even further into prismatic rainbows. (...) Perhaps, she thought calmly, whatever moves the alethiometer's needle is making the Aurora glow too. It might even be Dust itself.
And as she gazed, the image of a city seemed to form itself behind the veils ans streams of translucent colour: towers and domes, honey-coloured temples and colonnades, broad boulevards and sunlit parkland. It was a whole universe away.

So she had passed her childhood, like a half-wild cat. The only variation in her days came on those irregular occasions when Lord Asriel visited the College. A rich and powerful uncle was all very well to boast about, but the price of boasting was having to be caught by the most agile Scholar and brought to the Housekeeper to be washed and dressed in a clean frock, following which she was escorted (with many threats) to the Senior Common Room to have tea with Lord Asriel and an invited group of senior Scholars. She dreaded being seen by Roger. He'd caught sight of her on one of these occasions and hooted with laughter at this beribboned and pink-frilled vision. She had responded with a volley of shrieking curses that shocked the poor Scholar who was escorting her, and in the Senior Common Room she'd slumped mutinously in an armchair until the Master told her sharply to sit up, and then she'd glowered at them all till even the Chaplain had to laugh.

"The Palmerian Professor mentioned a name,» he said after a minute or so. «Barnard-Stokes? What is the Barnard-Stokes business?"

"Ah, it's not our field, Charles. As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two—how shall I put it—renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable. The Holy Church naturally disapproved of this abominable heresy, and Barnard and Stokes were silenced."

- Мы все подчиняемся судьбам. Но должны действовать так, как если бы этого не было, - сказала ведьма, - или умрем от отчаяния. Есть любопытное пророчество об этом ребенке: ей предназначено судьбой положить конец судьбе. Но она должна сделать это, не осознавая, что она делает, - как если бы её вёл к этому характер, а не судьба. Если ей укажут, что она должна сделать, тогда ничего не удастся; смерть сметёт все миры; это будет торжество отчаяния, вечное. Вселенные станут взаимосвязанными машинами, слепыми, лишёнными мысли, чувства, жизни...