"I dont like em," said Lyra decisively. "I think we should get away from em as soon as we can. I reckon if we trap "em in a net or something, Will can cut through and close up and thats it, well be free."
that comes ahead of a storm. The ghosts walked on steadily, and the road ran straight ahead across a landscape that was almost featureless.
"No. He said, when I went to say good-bye, he said it would be very difficult for you, but he thought
"If you go away from us," said Tialyss clear voice, "you must leave the knife. If you wont leave the knife, you must talk to each other here."
And on they walked, trudging in silence under a sky that had finally darkened to a dull iron gray and remained there without getting any darker. The living ones found themselves looking to their left and right, above and below, for anything that was bright or lively or joyful, and they were always disappointed until a little spark appeared ahead and raced toward them through the air. It was the Chevalier, and Salmakia urged her dragonfly ahead to meet him, with a cry of pleasure.
She sighed, coming out of her trance, and tucked the hair behind her ears, feeling the first warmth of the sun on her face and shoulders. There were sounds in the world now, too: insects were stirring, and a very slight breeze was rustling the dry grass stems growing higher up the dune.
What was happening now was like that, but odder, because the edges of things were losing their definition as well and becoming blurred.
By this time Will was waking, too, wearily. The first thing he did was to look for the Gallivespians, who looked back at once, fully focused on him.
She was clutching his arm. He stopped and looked around, and she was right. Not long before he had found the window in Oxford and stepped through into the other world of Cittagazze, there had been an eclipse of the sun, and like millions of others Will had stood outside at midday and watched as the bright daylight faded and dimmed until a sort of eerie twilight covered the houses, the trees, the park. Everything was just as clear as in full daylight, but there was less light to see itby, as if all the strength were draining out of a dying sun.
"Thats what I told him."
Pantalaimon was a hawk as he said that, and his eyes were keener than hers. The darkness of the sky was turning minute by minute into the palest ethereal blue, and as she looked across the sand, the first edge of the sun just cleared the rim of the sea, dazzling her. Because she was on the slope of the dune, the light reached her a few seconds before it touched the beach, and she watched it flow around her and along toward Will; and then she saw the hand-high figure of the Chevalier Tialys, standing by Wills head, clear and wide awake and watching them.
"Well, were not coming to Lord Asriel anyway," said Will. "Weve got something else to do first."
"Its hard to say. They dont look normal, exactly...There was a man I used to see in my town, and he used to walk about outside the shops always holding the same old plastic bag, and he never spoke to anyone or went inside. And no one ever looked at him. I used to pretend he was a ghost. They look a bit like him. Maybe my worlds full of ghosts and I never knew."
"What did he say?"
"Theres four,” she gulped, hand to her throat, and recovered, "four dead horses in there. And millions of flies..."
"How will you know when youve got to the place where youve got to go?" said Will.
The two spies were looking at her with openmouthed incredulity.
"If they got hold of us," said Pantalaimon, meaning him and Lyra, "and got their stings ready to stick in us, Will’d have to do what they said."
"Mama," said a child, "whys it getting dark in the daytime?"
"I cant stay here... Cant stay," he was saying. "But this aint the farm I knew. This is wrong. I got to go..."
They conferred and sped back to the children.
"Cant tell. If you saw one of em in your world, would you know he was a ghost?"
He couldnt even guess. As they moved on, they could see a movement on the horizon to the left and right, and ahead of them a dirty-colored smoke was rising slowly to add its darkness to the dismal air. The movement was people, or ghosts: in lines or pairs or groups or alone, but all empty-handed, hundreds and thousands of men and women and children were drifting over the plain toward the source of the smoke.
When he saw it happen, the man looked at his own hand, appalled. The numbness was beginning to wear off, and he could feel the pity of his state.
But after a few seconds of struggle, they were all through, and Will found the edge of the window (though it was impossible to see) and closed it, shutting the sound of the soldiers away in their own world.
"Dirk Jansen I was," he said, "but already I... I dont know what to do... Dont know where to go..."
Lyra came after Will, and Pantalaimon became a kestrel and flew up as high as he could, making Lyra gasp.
"Will, its fading," she said. "Look!"
There was no one else nearby, after all, and certainly the Gallivespians wouldnt be able to use it. Will rummaged in the rucksack for the water bottle and a couple of biscuits, and handing one to Lyra, he went with her up the slope of the dune.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. All he could do was point at Will and Lyra.
"Certainly not," said Tialys.
He was pointing at the raspberry canes that edged the kitchen garden. Hed just seen a mans legs, one with a shoe on and one without, protruding from the thickest part of the bushes.
"But why dyou think theyre moving?" Lyra said. "If I was a ghost Id want to stay in the places I knew, not wander along and get lost."
Will opened the door. The barnyard looked the same, the kitchen garden was unchanged, the same hazy sun shone down. And there was the mans body, untouched.
It was quite clear which group he expected to be in, and quite clear, too, that he thought it wouldnt be a big one. The other ghosts heard him uneasily, but he was all the guidance they had, so they followed without arguing.
"Child," said Tialys, "when we die, everything is over. There is no other life. You have seen death. Youve seendead bodies, and youve seen what happens to a daemon when death comes. It vanishes. What else can there be to live on after that?"
"Anyway, this must be the world of the dead. These people have just been killed, those soldiers mustve done it, and here they are, and its just like the world they were alive in. I thought itd be a lot different..."
"And how long do you think this expedition will take?" said the Chevalier.
"Were going to see Grandpa," the mother said desperately.
"Theres a town ahead," said Tialys. "It looks like a refugee camp, but its obviously been there for centuries or more. And I think theres a sea or a lake beyond it, but thats covered in mist. I could hear the cries of birds. And there are hundreds of people arriving every minute, from every direction, people like these, ghosts..."
And that time it worked. He found a new world and slid the knife along to make an opening, and a few moments later all of them were standing in what looked like a neat and prosperous farmyard in some northern country like Holland or Denmark, where the stone-flagged yard was swept and clean and a row of stable doors stood open. The sun shone down through a hazy sky, and there was the smell of burning in the air, as well as something less pleasant. There was no sound of human life, though a loud buzzing, so active and vigorous that it sounded like a machine, came from the stables.
At that moment Salmakia came in through the back door, landing her dragonfly on the table in a shimmer of electric blue.
Tialys darted back and said, "It smells sweeter in there," and then he flew back over the threshold while Salmakia scouted further around the outbuildings.
"Look," said Will, swallowing, "or maybe better not."
"No! And I wont, either. Cause theyll only tell Lord Asriel on that speaking-fiddle and hed go there and stop us, so we got to just go, and not talk about it in front of them."
"Then go away, but leave the knife."
The ghosts themselves listened as he spoke, though without much curiosity. They seemed to have settled into a dull trance, and Lyra wanted to shake them, to urge them to struggle and wake up and look around for a way out.
"We should like to know what you intend," said Salmakia.
"Theyre right," he said when he came down. "Theres lines of people all coming from the village. Dead people..."
"We came through by accident," Lyra told him before Will could speak. "I dont know how it happened. We were trying to escape from those men, and we just seemed to find ourselves here."
"Yeah, because I was tired, I think. Well, well see. Just follow the knife?"
The man reached out his hand, and Will tried to take it, but his fingers closed on the air. A tingle of cold was all he felt.
The answer came: Go down. Follow the knife. Go onward. Follow the knife.
"Down the road. Dunno. Got to go. Cant stay here..."
And as she spoke, they could hear the sound of boots on gravel, and a voice issuing orders, and the jingle of metal.
Lyra said quietly, "Will, is this the world of the dead?"
Then Salmakia blinked and said, "What you say doesnt make sense. The dead are dead, thats all. There is no world of the dead."
"Well," she said, "before I met Will, long before I was asleep, I led this friend into danger, and he was killed. I thought I was rescuing him, only I was making things worse. And while I was asleep I dreamed of him and I thought maybe I could make amends if I went where hes gone and said I was sorry. And Will wants to find his father, who died just when he found him before. See, Lord Asriel wouldnt think of that. Nor would Mrs. Coulter. If we went to him wed have to do what he wants, and he wouldnt think of Roger at all, thats my friend who died, it wouldnt matter to him. But it matters to me. To us. So thats what we want to do."
"Thats all it said."
"Will," said Lyra, and he turned to see that there was another figure in the kitchen with them.
"I thought that was true, as well," said Will. "But now Im not sure. At least with the knife we can find out."
"Whats happening?" said Lyra.
Tialys continued to pack the lodestone resonator away, and as he did so, the Lady Salmakia woke up nearby, sitting up graceful and slow from the little hollow shed made in the soft sand. The dragonflies were still asleep, tethered with cobweb-thin cord, their wings damp with dew.
"And will you tell us what that is, since its clear we cant stop you from doing it?"
Salmakia flew down to perch on Lyras hand. The dragonflys little claws pricked as the Lady said, "There are people walking from the village, people like this man, all walking in the same direction."
"Where are you going, Mr. Jansen?" said Lyra.
"They are spies, though," Will pointed out. "They must be good at listening and hiding. So maybe we better not mention it at all. We know where were going. So well just go and not talk about it, and theyll have to put up with it and come along."
But the man didnt notice them. He was still trying to understand what had happened.
When they had taken what they could carry, Will dropped a gold coin into the drawer in the big pine table.
"Hush," said Lyra, "well go together. Whats your name?"
Lyra went and looked, and came back at once, looking pale.
Ahead of them, above the water, was the mist. It rose like a cliff to merge with the gloomy sky, and from somewhere inside it came those bird cries that Tialys had referred to.
"Its not like going blind, even," said Lyra, frightened, "because its not that we cant see things, its like the things themselves are fading..."
"Are there big people on your world, or are they all small like you?" Lyra said.
"To his representative," said Tialys.
That was a surprise, and not a happy one. But she went on and asked: How can we get to the land of the dead?
He was middle-aged, lean, with the look of a man who spent most of the time in the open air. But now he was looking almost crazed, or paralyzed, with shock. His eyes were so wide that the white showed all around the iris, and he was clutching the edge of the table with a trembling hand. His throat, Will was glad to see, was intact.
"You been talking to Lord Asriel?"
"No," said Lyra, "because youd just go and tell them. Youll have to come along without knowing where were going. Of course you could always give up and go back to them."
Then the needle began to dart this way and that, almost too fast to see, and some part of Lyras awareness counted the swings and the stops and saw at once the meaning of what the movement said.
She had brought the alethiometer with her, and now that it was light enough to see, she took the beloved instrument out and laid it on its black velvet cloth in her lap. Little by little, Lyra drifted into that trance in which the many layers of meaning were clear to her, and where she could sense intricate webs of connectedness between them all. As her fingers found the symbols, her mind found the words: How can we get rid of the spies?
The Chevalier Tialys had spoken to Salmakia before skimming ahead, and Will and Lyra watched the dragonfly with eyes greedy for its brightness and vigor as it got smaller and smaller. The Lady flew down andperched her insect on Wills hand.
Lyra didnt want to look, but Will went to see if the man was still alive and needed help. He came back shaking his head, looking uneasy.
The man was using his lodestone apparatus, and when hed finished, Lyra said:
"Even if they dont know where theyre going, theyre all going there together," Lyra said. "We better just go with them."
The two Gallivespians trembled with anger at this slur on their honor.
He looked away and found Lyra.
After a few moments he tried again. Instead of trying not to think of his mother, he said to himself: Yes, I know shes there, but Im just going to look away while I do this...
And indeed the ghosts were moving more purposefully now that they were out of sight of their own village. The sky was as dark as if a mighty storm were threatening, but there was none of the electric tension
"All right," Lyra said, "thats fair. So heres where were going: were going to the world of the dead. We dont know where it is, but the knifell find it. Thats what were going to do."
Tialys, controlling himself, said, "We dont accept one-sided demands. You must give something in exchange. You must tell us what your intentions are, and then I shall give the lodestone resonator into your care. You must let me have it when I want to send a message, but you will always know when that happens, and we shall not be able to use it without your agreement. That will be our guarantee. And now you tell us where you are going, and why."
"Were going to go and find out," said Lyra. "And now weve told you, Ill take your resonator lodestone."
It told her: Do not try, because your lives depend on them.
have an aversion for the man and darted here and there in the kitchen, looking for a way out.
Will took the knife, and a powerful temptation made him feel for the touch of his own world: he had the credit card still; he could buy familiar food; he could even telephone Mrs. Cooper and ask for news of his mother…
"Well, you cut through last night all right," she said.
"No, theyre pulled onward by something," said the Lady. "Some instinct is drawing them down the road."
"Suit yourself," she said. "Are you married to that lady?"
They looked at the oldest man among them, as if he were their guide.
"That was for my ears, not yours."
They made their way back to the spies, who were sitting alertly by the knife, packs on their backs.
"Have you got any children?"
"Truly," he said, "I am dead... Im dead, and Im going to Hell..."
"Might as well go now, then. Except theres not much food left. We ought to find something to take with us, bread and fruit or something. So first Ill find a world where we can get food, and then well start looking properly."
"Hush, dear, dont fret," the mother said. "Cant make anything better by fretting. Were dead, I expect."
Will lay curled up fast asleep, with his head on the rucksack to protect the knife. The cloak had fallen off his shoulder, and she tucked it around him, pretending that she was taking care to avoid his daemon, and that she had the form of a cat, curled up just as he was. She must be here somewhere, Lyra thought.
They were close to the first of the people now, and it was clear: they were all ghosts. Will and Lyra took a step toward each other, but there was nothing to fear, for the ghosts were far more afraid of them and were hanging back, unwilling to approach.
Will followed the Chevalier. He found himself in a big square kitchen, an old-fashioned place with white china on a wooden dresser, and a scrubbed pine table, and a hearth where a black kettle stood cold. Next door there was a pantry, with two shelves full of apples that filled the whole room with fragrance. The silence was oppressive.
The knife jarred with a sound like a nail being drawn along rough stone, and his heart nearly stopped. If he broke the blade again, it would be the end.
"I expect well be told," said the ghost confidently. "Theyll separate out the sinners and the righteous, I dare say. Its no good praying now. Its too late for that. You should have done that when you were alive. No use now."
"Were going where all the others go," he said. "Seems as if I know, but I cant remember learning it. Seems as if its along the road. Well know it when we get there."
She held out her hand, and leopard-Pantalaimon stood, tail swinging slowly, to reinforce her demand. Tialys unslung the pack from his back and laid it in her palm. It was surprisingly heavy, no burden for her, of course, but she marveled at his strength.
"We havent got a net," he said, "or something. Anyway, I bet theyre cleverer than that. Hes watching us now."
Carrying the still sleepy Pantalaimon, she walked away from Will and sat down on the slope of a sand dune a little way off, so their voices wouldnt wake him.
Dirk Jansen was already passing his own body, averting his t eyes. He looked almost as if he were drunk, stopping, moving on, wandering to left and right, stumbling over little ruts and stones on the path his living feet had known so well.
"How are we going to help these people, Will?" she said.
From time to time one of them would glance at Will or Lyra, or at the brilliant dragonfly and its rider, as if they were curious. Finally the oldest man said:
"Are you a ghost?" Will said cautiously.
you could do it. But he never told me why..."
"They feel unhappy there," Will said, guessing. "Its where theyve just died. Theyre afraid of it."
"No."
"Im dead," he said. "Im lying out there, dead. I know I am. You aint dead. Whats happening? God help me, they cut my throat. Whats happening?"
The people themselves, closer now, had begun to notice, too, and were pointing and holding one anothers arms for reassurance.
"There are men coming," she said, "on foot, with weapons. Theyre only a few minutes walk away. And there is a village burning beyond the fields."
Lyra looked at Will and saw him nod.
"They cant hear us now. Theyre too far off. Will, I asked how we get there, too. It said to follow the knife, just that."
The only bright things in the whole landscape were the brilliant red-and-yellow and electric blue of the dragonflies, and their little riders, and Will and Lyra, and Pantalaimon, who was hovering kestrel-shaped close above.
Will and Lyra exchanged a glance to confirm it.
Lyra stepped closer to Will when the man said Im dead, and Pantalaimon fled to her breast as a mouse. As for the Gallivespians, they were trying to control their dragonflies, because the great insects seemed to
But the child wouldnt be consoled and wept bitterly. Others in the group looked at the mother with sympathy or annoyance, but there was nothing they could do to help, and they all walked on disconsolately through the fading landscape as the childs thin cries went on, and on, and on.
His heart jolted. It was the man hed seen not ten minutes before, stark dead in the bushes with his throat cut.
"You, you boy and girl. You aint dead. You aint ghosts. What you coming along here for?"
"I want to tell you something," she said. "Come over here, away from...”
The two spies were already at the farmhouse door, which was ajar.
"But where are we going?" the child said. "I dont want to be dead, Mama!"
"The knife broke because I thought of my mother," he explained. "So Ive got to put her out of my mind. But... its like when someone says dont think about a crocodile, you do, you cant help it..."
Tialys and Salmakia mounted their dragonflies and held them quivering on the ground. The great insects were eager for flight, but the command of their riders was absolute, and Lyra, watching them in daylight for the first time, saw the extraordinary fineness of the gray silk reins, the silvery stirrups, the tiny saddles.
And finally she asked hesitantly, half-ashamed: Is this the right thing to do?
"But why?"
A little groan broke from Dirk Jansens throat, as if there were no denying it anymore. The dragonflies darted out of the door and skimmed over the ground and then shot up high, faster than birds. The man was looking around helplessly, raising his hands, lowering them again, uttering little cries.
She put the alethiometer away and wandered back to Will, with Pantalaimon as large as he could make himself and lion-shaped, in the hope of daunting the Gallivespians.
"We know how to deal with big people," Tialys replied, not very helpfully, and went to talk quietly to the Lady. They spoke too softly for Lyra to hear, but she enjoyed watching them sip dewdrops from the marram grass to refresh themselves. Water must be different for them, she thought to Pantalaimon: imagine drops the size of your fist! Theyd be hard to get into; theyd have a sort of elastic rind, like a balloon.
"Then well go with them," said Will, and swung his rucksack over his shoulder.
Lyra said, "Excuse us for being in your house, but we had to escape from the men who were coming. Im sorry if we startled you. Im Lyra, and this is Will, and these are our friends, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia. Could you tell us your name and where we are?"
And soon they saw them, too: twenty or so men, women, and children, all moving as Dirk Jansen had done, uncertain and shocked. The village was half a mile away, and the people were coming toward them, close together in the middle of the road. When Dirk Jansen saw the other ghosts, he broke into a stumbling run, and they held out their hands to greet him.
"Sounds easy," he said. "But I bet it isnt. Dyou know what Iorek told me?"
"The Chevalier has gone to see whats ahead," she said. "We think the landscape is fading because these people are forgetting it. The farther they go away from their homes, the darker it will get."
This normal-sounding request seemed to bring the man to his senses, and a shudder passed over him, as if he were waking from a dream.
"The thing is," said Lyra, "they cant make us do what they want. They got to follow us. I bet theyre fed up."
Between the waste heaps and the mist, there lay the first town of the dead.
"All right," said Lyra, quite happy to be moving again, with Pan and Will, alive and awake.
"Those little people," Pantalaimon said.
Yes, said the alethiometer instantly. Yes.
The ground was sloping downward now, and becoming more and more like a rubbish dump. The air was heavy and full of smoke, and of other smells besides: acrid chemicals, decaying vegetable matter, sewage. And the farther down they went, the worse it got. There was not a patch of clean soil in sight, and the only plants growing anywhere were rank weeds and coarse grayish grass.
"No. We are colleagues."
"I dont think mine is," said Lyra doubtfully.
The spies were looking through, puzzled. But it was more than puzzlement they felt. Just as the air had resisted the knife, so something in this opening resisted their going through. Will had to push against something invisible and then pull Lyra after him, and the Gallivespians could hardly make any headway at all. They had to perch the dragonflies on the childrens hands, and even then it was like pulling them against a pressure in the air; their filmy wings bent and twisted, and the little riders had to stroke their mounts heads and whisper to calm their fears.
The same thought had occurred to him. But he said, "No, I dont think so. Its one we havent been in before. Look, well load up with as much as we can carry. Theres sort of rye bread, thatll be good, its light, and heres some cheese..."
"We dont know," Lyra told him. "We dont know anything about it, any more than you do. Well just go there and see."
"Well?" said Lyra, seeing Tialys raise his eyebrows. "You should always pay for what you take."
Will called out, "Dont be afraid. Were not going to hurt you. Where are you going?" "
Lyra thought about it. She remembered vividly the horrible scream of pain from Mrs. Coulter, the eye-rolling convulsions, the ghastly, lolling drool of the golden monkey as the poison entered her bloodstream... And that was only a scratch, as her mother had recently been reminded elsewhere. Will would have to give in and do what they wanted.
"Dyou think they had daemons in this world?" said Will.
"Cant we be private?" Lyra said indignantly. "We dont want you listening to what we say!"
"First thing," Will said, "weve got to get some water and some more food, something easy to carry. So Im going to find a world where we can do that, and then well set off."
"We want some kind of guarantee," said Will. "Youre spies, so youre bound to be dishonest, thats your trade. We need to know we can trust you. Last night we were all too tired and we couldnt think about it, but thered be nothing to stop you waiting till we were asleep and then stinging us to make us helpless and calling up Lord Asriel on that lodestone thing. You could do that easily. So we need to have a proper guarantee that you wont. A promise isnt enough."
The color was slowly seeping out of the world. A dim green gray for the bright green of the trees and the grass, a dim sand gray for the vivid yellow of a field of corn, a dim blood gray for the red bricks of a neat farmhouse ...
Lyra was awake before dawn, with Pantalaimon shivering at her breast, and she got up to walk about and warm herself up as the gray light seeped into the sky. She had never known such silence, not even in the snow-blanketed Arctic; there was not a stir of wind, and the sea was so still that not the tiniest ripple broke on the sand; the world seemed suspended between breathing in and breathing out.
"Suppose they thought he wouldnt, though," she said, "suppose they thought he was so coldhearted hed just watch us die. Maybe he better make em think that, if he can."
"Have you told them what were going to do?"
"We ent going."
"Then we should go," said Will.
"I asked the alethiometer," she told him, "and it said we shouldnt try and escape from the little people, because they were going to save our lives. So maybe were stuck with em."
He felt in the air with the knifepoint. And at once he was aware of a new kind of sensation. The blade seemed to be sliding along a very smooth surface, like a mirror, and then it sank through slowly until he was able to cut. But it was resistant, like heavy cloth, and when he made an opening, he blinked with surprise and alarm: because the world he was opening into was the same in every detail as the one they were already standing in.
