On Midsummer Day when she is eighty-eight years old, Lyra sits on the bench in the Botanic Gardens as she has done thousands of times before. Pan curls in her lap and Lyra closes her eyes, determined this time to be able to see, really see what she wants to when she opens them.

She still remembers the words of the angel, knows that it is possible, always has been possible, to move between the worlds, if only she can find the right balance, the perfect balance between her eyes and her imagination.

She has given up hope, gave up hope fifty years ago, that it would work. She tries with her eyes open and her eyes closed, after meditation and after exercise, after thought and after what she supposes could be called prayer, to call up a door into existence, an entryway, a passage to the one thing that matters.

She has given up hope, but this time, when she opens her eyes, it is different. The Gardens are the same, the wind rustles lightly in the trees, the tulips at her feet bend and brush their heads against each other as though all they wish for is a caress. The path twists off to the right just as it always has, down toward the iron gate with its twisted spine.

But at the gate, oh, at the gate there is a man. An old man, bent over toward the ground, grasping a cane and pulling the gate shut behind him. His hair has turned white and floats in wisps across the back of his head and when he turns, it is Will.

Will, her Will, coming up the path toward her as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Lyra cries out, hand to her mouth and stands, Pan leaping from her lap at the same moment, rushing, rushing faster than she could possibly walk toward the cat, black as a midnight sky with clouds, that is Kirjava.

They meet in the middle and it is as if they never parted, their hands reaching for each other, their bodies melding together as they once did. Lyra lifts her head up toward him and they kiss.

She has done it. She has finally done it. Lyra is still not sure how, but she has finally done it, she has finally learned to see. And now, from now until the end of their lives, the end of time, she will never have to let go.

The nurse looks toward Lyra. "There she goes," she says fondly to no one in particular. She reaches across the back of the bench to adjust the blanket wrapped around Lyra's shoulders and her eyes fix on Pan and the growing patch of grey in his vibrant red coat. "Dreaming again."