Lyra. Chapter 3. The Thing Opened in His Hands

It sprang open with a snap and he leapt back half a step, holding it out at arm's length the way you hold a thing that might still bite. A man who had stood in a shield wall, who had not flinched at a charging horse, recoiled from a lady's parasol blooming blue in a dim shed. He stared at it. It did not attack again. Lyra laughed — really laughed, the way she had not since before all of this — and for a moment the knight forgot to be afraid of looking foolish.