Tight as Lyra is tricking Iofur at Svalbard in stating that she is Iorek's daemon, the bear gets flustered. He asks questions (something like How? Why?) After he says this, the phrase goes: "The flies left his mouth like tiny words". In fact, I'm sure it SHOULD read 'The words left his mouth like tiny flies.' A good phrase, but very funny since they goofed it up! They might have fixed this in another version of the book, but the soft cover has this.