Frank and the Northern Lights - Chapter 12 - The Lost Boy

The Lost Boy

The gyptians, Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison and Lyra started travelling by sledges. While they were travelling, John Faa asked Lyra if she could find out with her Aletbiometer how the soldiers at Bolvangar were defending the place they would have to get through. Without any hesitation she dialed her instrument and answered accurately with details but she couldn’t catch the overall meaning, which seemed ghost like. But John Faa thought it didn’t matter at that time. He was only interested in how they would get through the place which sixty riflemen were defending.

Although she said again she felt that it would be the child they would have to rescue, he wasn’t concerned about that at all. She thought it was necessary to investigate so asked Iorek Byrnison to help her. He accepted her request and ran with her to where she had pointed, which was a small and almost ruined village. She sought the child, she had felt, everywhere in there. After a few minutes, she found the child in a dilapidated shed and was absolutely shocked. She could see the child, who had been a victim of something, didn’t have his demon at all. He was only clutching a dried fish as if it was his demon and that was all he could do. The Gobblers had cut it away.

That was what the Gobblers were doing to the children, cutting away their demons.