Will and Lyra followed the stream into the wood, walking carefully, saying little, until they were in the very center.
There was a little clearing in the middle of the grove, which was floored with soft grass and moss-covered rocks. The branches laced across overhead, almost shutting out the sky and letting through little moving spangles and sequins of sunlight, so that everything was dappled with gold and silver.
And it was quiet. Only the trickle of the stream, and the occasional rustle of leaves high up in a little curl of breeze, broke the silence.
Will put down the package of food; Lyra put down her little rucksack. There was no sign of the daemon-shadows anywhere. They were completely alone.
They took off their shoes and socks and sat down on the mossy rocks at the edge of the stream, dipping their feet in the cold water and feeling the shock of it invigorate their blood.
"I'm hungry," Will said.
"Me too," said Lyra, though she was feeling more than that, something subdued and pressing and half happy and half painful, so that she wasn't quite sure what it was.
They unfolded the cloth and ate some bread and cheese. For some reason their hands were slow and clumsy, and they hardly tasted the food, although the bread was floury and crisp from the hot baking stones, and the cheese was flaky and salty and very fresh.
Then Lyra took one of those little red fruits. With a fast beating heart, she turned to him and said, "Will..."
And she lifted the fruit gently to his mouth.
She could see from his eyes that he knew at once what she meant, and that he was too joyful to speak. Her fingers were still at his lips, and he felt them tremble, and he put his own hand up to hold hers there, and then neither of them could look; they were confused; they were brimming with happiness.
Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happened, they were clinging together, blindly pressing their faces towards each other.
"Like Mary said," he whispered, "you know straight away when you like someone, when you were asleep on the mountain, before she took you away, I told Pan."
"I heard," she whispered, "I was awake and I wanted to tell you the same and now I know what I must have felt all the time: I love you, Will, I love you…"
The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her body and her warm honey-fragrant hair and her sweet moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit.
Around them there was nothing but silence, as if the whole world were holding its breath.