A companion novella set two years after The Amber Spyglass, when Lyra is fifteen and settling into her new life as a student at St Sophia's School in Oxford. When a witch's dæmon crashes onto the roof of Jordan College, pursued by a flock of enraged starlings, Lyra and Pantalaimon rescue the creature – a bird-form dæmon called Ragi, who claims his witch is gravely ill and begs Lyra to help him find an Oxford alchemist who holds the cure. What follows is a tense journey through the familiar streets of Lyra's city, where nothing is quite what it seems and the line between friend and enemy is dangerously thin. Includes a fold-out map of Oxford, a postcard from Mary Malone, and other ephemera that seem to have slipped between worlds.