The Amber Spyglass hdm-3 Page 23

  What was happening now was like that, but odder, because the edges of things were losing their definition as well and becoming blurred.

  "It’s not like going blind, even," said Lyra, frightened, "because it’s not that we can’t see things, it’s like the things themselves are fading…"

  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…

  The people themselves, closer now, had begun to notice, too, and were pointing and holding one another’s arms for reassurance.

  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.

  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 called out, "Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you. Where are you going?" "

  They looked at the oldest man among them, as if he were their guide.

  "We’re going where all the others go," he said. "Seems as if I know, but I can’t remember learning it. Seems as if it’s along the road. We’ll know it when we get there."

  "Mama," said a child, "why’s it getting dark in the daytime?"

  "Hush, dear, don’t fret," the mother said. "Can’t make anything better by fretting. We’re dead, I expect."

  "But where are we going?" the child said. "I don’t want to be dead, Mama!"

  "We’re going to see Grandpa," the mother said desperately.

  But the child wouldn’t 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 child’s thin cries went on, and on, and on.

  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 and perched her insect on Will’s hand.

  "The Chevalier has gone to see what’s 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."

  "But why d’you think they’re moving?" Lyra said. "If I was a ghost I’d want to stay in the places I knew, not wander along and get lost."

  "They feel unhappy there," Will said, guessing. "It’s where they’ve just died. They’re afraid of it."

  "No, they’re pulled onward by something," said the Lady. "Some instinct is drawing them down the road."

  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 that comes ahead of a storm. The ghosts walked on steadily, and the road ran straight ahead across a landscape that was almost featureless.

  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:

  "You, you boy and girl. You ain’t dead. You ain’t ghosts. What you coming along here for?"

  "We came through by accident," Lyra told him before Will could speak. "I don’t know how it happened. We were trying to escape from those men, and we just seemed to find ourselves here."

  "How will you know when you’ve got to the place where you’ve got to go?" said Will.

  "I expect we’ll be told," said the ghost confidently. "They’ll separate out the sinners and the righteous, I dare say. It’s no good praying now. It’s too late for that. You should have done that when you were alive. No use now."

  It was quite clear which group he expected to be in, and quite clear, too, that he thought it wouldn’t be a big one. The other ghosts heard him uneasily, but he was all the guidance they had, so they followed without arguing.

  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.

  They conferred and sped back to the children.

  "There’s a town ahead," said Tialys. "It looks like a refugee camp, but it’s obviously been there for centuries or more. And I think there’s a sea or a lake beyond it, but that’s 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…"

  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.

  "How are we going to help these people, Will?" she said.

  He couldn’t 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.

  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.

  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.

  Between the waste heaps and the mist, there lay the first town of the dead.

  Chapter 19. Lyra And Her Death

  Here and there, fires had been lit among the ruins. The town was a jumble, with no streets, no squares, and no open spaces except where a building had fallen. A few churches or public buildings still stood above the rest, though their roofs were holed or their walls cracked, and in one case a whole portico had crumpled onto its columns. Between the shells of the stone buildings, a mazy clutter of shacks and shanties had been put together out of lengths of roofing timber, beaten-out petrol cans or biscuit tins, torn plastic sheeting, scraps of plywood or hardboard.

  The ghosts who had come with them were hurrying toward the town, and from every direction came more of them, so many that they looked like the grains of sand that trickle toward the hole of an hourglass. The ghosts walked straight into the squalid confusion of the town, as if they knew exactly where they were going, and Lyra and Will were about to follow them; but then they were stopped.

  A figure stepped out of a patched-up doorway and said, "Wait, wait."

  A dim light was glowing behind him, and it wasn’t easy to make out his features; but they knew he wasn’t a ghost. He was like them, alive. He was a thin man who could have been any age, dressed in a drab and tattered business suit, and he was holding a pencil and a sheaf of papers held together with a clip. The building he’d stepped out of had the look of a customs post on a rarely visited frontier.

  "What is this place?" said Will, "And why can’t we go in?"

  "You’re not dead," said the man wearily. "You have to wait in the holding area. Go farther along the road to the left and give these papers to the official at the gate."

  "But excuse me, sir," said Lyra, "I hope you don’t mind
me asking, but how can we have come this far if we en’t dead? Because this is the world of the dead, isn’t it?"

  "It’s a suburb of the world of the dead. Sometimes the living come here by mistake, but they have to wait in the holding area before they can go on."

  "Wait for how long?"

  "Until they die."

  Will felt his head swim. He could see Lyra was about to argue, and before she could speak, he said, "Can you just explain what happens then? I mean, these ghosts who come here, do they stay in this town forever?"

  "No, no," said the official. "This is just a port of transit. They go on beyond here by boat."

  "Where to?" said Will.

  "That’s not something I can tell you," said the man, and a bitter smile pulled his mouth down at the corners. "You must move along, please. You must go to the holding area."

  Will took the papers the man was holding out, and then held Lyra’s arm and urged her away.

  The dragonflies were flying sluggishly now, and Tialys explained that they needed to rest; so they perched on Will’s rucksack, and Lyra let the spies sit on her shoulders. Pantalaimon, leopard-shaped, looked up at them jealously, but he said nothing. They moved along the track, skirting the wretched shanties and the pools of sewage, and watching the never-ending stream of ghosts arriving and passing without hindrance into the town itself.

  "We’ve got to get over the water, like the rest of them," said Will. "And maybe the people in this holding place will tell us how. They don’t seem to be angry anyway, or dangerous. It’s strange. And these papers…"

  They were simply scraps of paper torn from a notebook, with random words scribbled in pencil and crossed out. It was as if these people were playing a game, and waiting to see when the travelers would challenge them or give in and laugh. And yet it all looked so real.

  It was getting darker and colder, and time was hard to keep track of. Lyra thought they walked for half an hour, or maybe it was twice as long; the look of the place didn’t change. Finally they reached a little wooden shack like the one they’d stopped at earlier, where a dim bulb glowed on a bare wire over the door.

  As they approached, a man dressed much like the other one came out holding a piece of bread and butter in one hand, and without a word looked at their papers and nodded.

  He handed them back and was about to go inside when Will said, "Excuse me, where do we go now?"

  "Go and find somewhere to stay," said the man, not unkindly. "Just ask. Everybody’s waiting, same as you."

  He turned away and shut his door against the cold, and the travelers turned down into the heart of the shanty town where the living people had to stay.

  It was very much like the main town: shabby little huts, repaired a dozen times, patched with scraps of plastic or corrugated iron, leaning crazily against each other over muddy alleyways. At some places, an anbaric cable looped down from a bracket and provided enough feeble current to power a naked lightbulb or two, strung out over the nearby huts. Most of what light there was, however, came from the fires. Their smoky glow flickered redly over the scraps and tatters of building material, as if they were the last remaining flames of a great conflagration, staying alive out of pure malice.

  But as Will and Lyra and the Gallivespians came closer and saw more detail, they picked out many more figures sitting in the darkness by themselves, or leaning against the walls, or gathered in small groups, talking quietly.

  "Why aren’t those people inside?" said Lyra. "It’s cold."

  "They’re not people," said the Lady Salmakia. "They’re not even ghosts. They’re something else, but I don’t know what."

  The travelers came to the first group of shacks, which were lit by one of those big weak anbaric bulbs on a cable swinging slightly in the cold wind, and Will put his hand on the knife at his belt. There was a group of those people-shaped things outside, crouching on their heels and rolling dice, and when the children came near, they stood up: five of them, all men, their faces in shadow and their clothes shabby, all silent.

  "What is the name of this town?" said Will.

  There was no reply. Some of them took a step backward, and all five moved a little closer together, as if they were afraid. Lyra felt her skin crawling, and all the tiny hairs on her arms standing on end, though she couldn’t have said why. Inside her shirt Pantalaimon was shivering and whispering, "No, no, Lyra, no, go away, let’s go back, please…"

  The "people" made no move, and finally Will shrugged and said, "Well, good evening to you anyway," and moved on. They met a similar response from all the other figures they spoke to, and all the time their apprehension grew.

  "Will, are they Specters?" Lyra said quietly. "Are we grown up enough to see Specters now?"

  "I don’t think so. If we were, they’d attack us, but they seem to be afraid themselves. I don’t know what they are."

  A door opened, and light spilled out on the muddy ground. A man—a real man, a human being—stood in the doorway, watching them approach. The little cluster of figures around the door moved back a step or two, as if out of respect, and they saw the man’s face: stolid, harmless, and mild.

  "Who are you?" he said.

  "Travelers," said Will. "We don’t know where we are. What is this town?"

  "This is the holding area," said the man. "Have you traveled far?"

  "A long way, yes, and we’re tired," said Will. "Could we buy some food and pay for shelter?"

  The man was looking past them, into the dark, and then he came out and looked around further, as if there were someone missing. Then he turned to the strange figures standing by and said:

  "Did you see any death?"

  They shook their heads, and the children heard a murmur of "No, no, none."

  The man turned back. Behind him, in the doorway, there were faces looking out: a woman, two young children, another man. They were all nervous and apprehensive.

  "Death?" said Will. "We’re not bringing any death."

  But that fact seemed to be the very thing they were worried about, because when Will spoke, there was a soft gasp from the living people, and even the figures outside shrank away a little.

  "Excuse me," said Lyra, stepping forward in her best polite way, as if the housekeeper of Jordan College were glaring at her. "I couldn’t help noticing, but these gentlemen here, are they dead? I’m sorry for asking, if it’s rude, but where we come from it’s very unusual, and we never saw anyone like them before. If I’m being impolite I do beg your pardon. But you see, in my world, we have daemons, everyone has a daemon, and we’d be shocked if we saw someone without one, just like you’re shocked to see us. And now we’ve been traveling, Will and me—this is Will, and I’m Lyra—I’ve learned there are some people who don’t seem to have daemons, like Will doesn’t, and I was scared till I found out they were just ordinary like me really. So maybe that’s why someone from your world might be just a bit sort of nervous when they see us, if you think we’re different."

  The man said, "Lyra? And Will?"

  "Yes, sir," she said humbly.

  "Are those your daemons?" he said, pointing to the spies on her shoulder.

  "No," said Lyra, and she was tempted to say, "They’re our servants," but she felt Will would have thought that a bad idea; so she said, "They’re our friends, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia, very distinguished and wise people who are traveling with us. Oh, and this is my daemon," she said, taking mouse-Pantalaimon out of her pocket. "You see, we’re harmless, we promise we won’t hurt you. And we do need food and shelter. We’ll move on tomorrow. Honest."

  Everyone waited. The man’s nervousness was soothed a little by her humble tone, and the spies had the good sense to look modest and harmless. After a pause the man said:

  "Well, though it’s strange, I suppose these are strange times… Come in, then, be welcome…"

  The figures outside nodded, one or two of them gave little bows, and they stood aside respectfully as Will and Lyra walked into the warmth and
light. The man closed the door behind them and hooked a wire over a nail to keep it shut.

  It was a single room, lit by a naphtha lamp on the table, and clean but shabby. The plywood walls were decorated with pictures cut from film-star magazines, and with a pattern made with fingerprints of soot. There was an iron stove against one wall, with a clothes-horse in front of it, where some dingy shirts were steaming, and on a dressing table there was a shrine of plastic flowers, seashells, colored scent bottles, and other gaudy bits and pieces, all surrounding the picture of a jaunty skeleton with a top hat and dark glasses.

  The shanty was crowded: as well as the man and the woman and the two young children, there was a baby in a crib, an older man, and in one corner, in a heap of blankets, a very old woman, who was lying and watching everything with glittering eyes, her face as wrinkled as the blankets. As Lyra looked at her, she had a shock: the blankets stirred, and a very thin arm emerged, in a black sleeve, and then another face, a man’s, so ancient it was almost a skeleton. In fact, he looked more like the skeleton in the picture than like a living human being; and then Will, too, noticed, and all the travelers together realized that he was one of those shadowy, polite figures like the ones outside. And all of them felt as nonplussed as the man had been when he’d first seen them.

  In fact, all the people in the crowded little shack—all except the baby, who was asleep—were at a loss for words. It was Lyra who found her voice first.

  "That’s very kind of you," she said, "thank you, good evening, we’re very pleased to be here. And like I said, we’re sorry to have arrived without any death, if that’s the normal way of things. But we won’t disturb you any more than we have to. You see, we’re looking for the land of the dead, and that’s how we happened to come here. But we don’t know where it is, or whether this is part of it, or how to get there, or what. So if you can tell us anything about it, we’ll be very grateful."