Tayo walked on the shiny floors of his big house. The house felt cold inside. He heard the sounds of the house – people working, a clock ticking. It felt like his house was a safe place, but it also felt like a jail. He had a secret now, and it felt heavy, like holding a rock in his hand. The old book was hidden under the floor in his room.
He thought about Lyra. She lived a simpler life, but now she had to be careful too. How could they talk? The garden place was not safe anymore. People from the city who watched might have seen them. Talking through the house workers was too risky. Everyone in his house might tell secrets. Tayo felt like someone was watching him all the time.
His days were slow and boring again. He had lessons that felt useless. He ate quiet meals with his parents. They only talked about money and rules for the city's energy. Tayo was often alone in his big room. He tried to find old stories in the house computers. He looked for the names "Primeator" and "Nuwa," or about the time when the world broke. But the computers only had boring, clean stories about how the city was built and how the energy was now controlled. It said the "wild energy" was bad and had been stopped.
Many days went by. Tayo felt worried. One night, he left his window open a little bit. He hoped to see something from Lyra.
Then, late one night, a small, smooth stone was on his window. It was not a stone from his house gardens. Tayo's heart jumped. He looked out, but only saw the guards in their shining clothes walking around the house. The guards felt cold and hard, like the watchers Tayo had felt before. The stone was cool in his hand. He looked at it. No message.
He sat by the window for a long time. Was it just a stone? Or was Lyra sending a sign? How could he send a sign back? It was too dangerous to send anything.
The next day, there was a different stone on his window. It was flat and grey. The day after, a little stone with a strange shape. Every morning, a new stone.
Tayo started to understand. Lyra was telling him she was there, thinking, planning. He could not send stones back, but he could show her he saw them. The next morning, he put a bright red leaf from a tree near his room next to the stone on the window. He did it before the sun was fully up.
That night, no stone came. But there was a tiny piece of paper, rolled up tight and tied with a string. Tayo's hands shook a little. He unrolled it in the dim light of his room. He saw Lyra's writing.
It said:
Find the place called the Whispering Market. It is in the south part of the city, near the old river wall. Look for the selling place with blue lights. Ask for "Stories of the Broken Time." Go by yourself. Be careful. Soon.
The Whispering Market. Tayo's parents said it was a bad place, full of bad people who sold secrets and things the city did not want people to have. The city's rules were not so strong there. Maybe Lyra was there, or someone who knew her.
The quiet stone messages had worked. Tayo's house felt a little less like a jail now. He felt scared, but also excited. This was real danger, like in the adventure books he read. But this was his life now.
He knew leaving his big house and going to the market, even for a short time, would be hard and dangerous. But he had to know more. He had to understand about the "living key" and why the watchers were looking for him. His real life was not in the big, safe house. It was outside, in the hidden places of the city. He had to find it.