That must be what the nurse was feeling for, Dale thought. If all the ponies have those . . . rays, they would expect that I have them, too. Or that I’m supposed to. There had been a shock when he touched Lyra’s mark, and he felt a lesser version of the same thing whenever he’d been touched by the nurse’s hooves. She could have been varying the intensity, perhaps—he’d certainly seen evidence that Lyra’s horn could controllably lift objects of different weights. I wonder if that’s how the nurse can grab things with her hoof.