Chapter 18 18. The Periphery of the Dead World

It is possible that we may only Two days or so of meetings with the dead... ——John Webster [john Webster (1580?—1625), British poet] Lyra woke before dawn, Pantalaimon shivering against her chest, and she got up and walked around to warm herself.At this moment, gray light is seeping into the sky.She had never seen such silence, not even in the snow-covered North Pole.There is not a breath of wind, the sea is so still that there is not even the smallest ripple on the beach, and the world seems to hang on breathing threads. Will was curled up in a sound sleep, his head resting on the rucksack to protect the knife, the cape slipping from his shoulders.She wrapped it tightly around him, pretending to do so to avoid his elf, imagining that the elf had the shape of a cat, curled up like him.She must be here somewhere, Laila thought.

With Pantalaimon still blindfolded, she left Will and sat down on the slope of a sand dune not far away so that the sound of their talking would not wake him. "The little ones," said Pantalaimon. "I don't like them," Lyra said emphatically. "I think we should get out of them as soon as possible. I think if we net them or something, Will can cut a hole and close it. That's it, and we're free." "We don't have a net or anything," he said, "I bet they're not that stupid anyway. He is looking at us now. " Pantalaimon was an eagle when he said this, and his eyes were sharper than hers.The dark sky was changing to a very pale blue by the minute, and as she looked across the sand the first edge of the sun was just emerging from the edge of the sea, dazzled her.Because she was on the slope of the dune, the light hit her for a few seconds before reaching the beach, and she watched it flow around her body, toward Will, and then saw the palm-high figure of the knight Thales, standing Will's head, watching them soberly.

"The problem is they can't force us to do what they want, they have to go with us, and I bet they've had enough," Leila said. "If they catch us," Pan said, referring to him and Lyra, "have our boots ready for us, and Will will have to do what they say." Laila thought about it.She still vividly remembers Mrs. Coulter's horrible scream of pain, the eye-rolling twitch, and the horrible howl of the golden monkey when the poison entered her blood... and it was just a slight scratch, Just like someone had reminded her mother that way not long ago.Will will have to back down and do what they say.

"Maybe they think he doesn't, though," she said. "Maybe they think he's a cold hearted guy who'll just watch us die. He'd better let them think that, if he can." She carried the alethiometer with her, and now that there was enough light to see, she took out her beloved instrument and placed it on the black velvet covering her lap.Gradually, she drifted into that trance where many layers of meaning were clear, where she could feel the intricate web of connections between them. As her fingers found the symbols, her heart found the words: How do we get rid of spies?

Then the hands began to move rapidly from side to side, faster than she had ever seen it before - so fast, in fact, that for the first time she feared that she would miss some of the swings and pauses, but something in her mind was counting, and understood immediately. What the swing said. It told her: Don't make such an effort, because your lives depend on them. It's a surprise, but not a surprise.But she went on to ask: How can we get to the world of the dead? The answer is: go down, follow the knife.Go up and follow the knife. Finally, she hesitated and asked embarrassingly: Is this right?

Yes, the alethiometer said immediately, yes. Sighing, she came out of her trance, pushed her hair behind her ears, and felt the first warmth of the sun on her face and shoulders.Now there were sounds in the world too: insects moved, a very slight wind stirred the stalks of dry grass that grew higher up in the dunes. She put away the alethiometer, strolled back to Will, and Pantalaimon turned into the biggest lion he could, hoping to overwhelm Galliferspin's majesty. The man is using his lodestone instrument.When he had finished Lyra said: "'Did you speak to Lord Asriel?"

"Speak to his representative," Thales said. "We're not going." "I just told him that." "How did he say?" "That was for me, not for you." "As you please," she said. "Are you married to that lady?" "No, we are colleagues." "Do you have a kid?" "No." Thales continued to pack his lodestone resonators.At this moment Madame Salmachia awoke nearby, and sat up gracefully and slowly from the little hole she had dug in the soft sand.The dragonflies were still sleeping, their bodies covered in cobweb-thin threads, and their wings were wet with dew.

"Are there adults in your world, or are they all as small as you?" "We know how to deal with your lord," replied Thales, somewhat inaccurately, and went over to have a quiet conversation with Madame.Their voices were too soft for Laila to hear, but she liked to watch them suck dew from the grass to refresh herself.Water must be different for them, she thought to Panchelemon: Imagine a drop the size of your fist!They'll be hard to drink, and they'll have a sort of stretchy shell, like a balloon. At this time, Will also woke up exhausted, and the first thing he did was to look for those Galliferspins, and they immediately looked back at him, focusing all their attention on him.

He looked away and found Laila. "I want to tell you something," she said, "come here, leave..." "If you leave us," Thales said in a crisp voice, "you must keep your knives. If you don't leave your knives, then you must speak here." "Can't we be alone for a while?" Lyra said angrily. "We don't want you to hear us!" "Then go away, but leave the knife behind." Anyway, with no one else around, the Galliferspins certainly wouldn't be using it.Will dug out the water lunchbox and a biscuit or two in his rucksack, handed one to Lyra, and walked with her up the slope of the dune.

"I asked the alethiometer," she told him, "and it said we shouldn't try to get away from these little people because they're going to save our lives. So maybe we're tied to them." "Have you told them our intention?" "No! I won't tell them either, because they'll just tell Lord Asriel with that talking violin, and he'll go there to stop us—so we'll just go and don't talk about it in front of them. thing." "They're spies, though," Will pointed out. "They must be good at eavesdropping and hiding, so maybe it's best we don't bring it up at all. We know where we're going, so we just go and don't talk about it and they have to swallow it."

"Now they can't hear us, they're too far away. Will, and I asked how we got there. It says follow the knife, that's all. " "Sounds easy," he said, "but I bet it's not that easy. You know what Iorek said to me?" "No idea. He said - when I went to say goodbye to him - he said it would be hard for you, but he thought you could do it, but he didn't tell me why..." "The knife broke because I was thinking about my mom," he explained, "so I had to get her out of my mind. But...it's like when people say don't think about crocodiles, you do. Can't control myself..." "Well, didn't you make it through last night," she said. "Yeah, I think it's because I'm tired. Well, we'll see. Just follow the knife?" "That's what it says." "Then we'd better go now, it's just that there isn't much food left, and we should find something to take with us, bread and fruit or something. So first I'm going to find a world where we can find food, and then we'll be decent It's time to move." "Okay," Lyra said, happy to be moving again, alive and well with Pen and Will. They walked back to the spies, their backpacks slung over their shoulders, and they sat warily by the knives. "We want to know your plans," said Salmakia. "Well, we're not going to Lord Asriel's anyway," Will said. "We've got to do something else first." "Since we can't stop you from doing it, can you tell us what it is?" "No," Lyra said, "because you're just going to tell them. You have to go with us without knowing where we're going. Of course, you can always give up and go back to them." "Of course not," Thales said. "We need some kind of assurance," Will said. "You're spies, so you must be dishonest, that's your job. We need to know if we can trust you. Last night, we were all too tired to think about it, but there's nothing stopping you from waiting until we Sleep and sting us so we can't do anything, then use that lodestone to call Asriel. You can do that easily. So we need to have proper assurances from you not to do it, just a promise is not enough." The two spies trembled with indignation that he had so blackened their honor. Thales controlled himself and said, "We don't accept unilateral demands. You have to give something in exchange, and you have to tell us what your plans are, and then I'll give you the magnet resonator for safekeeping. When I When you want to send a message, you have to give it to me, but you will always know when, and we can't use it without your consent. That will be our guarantee, now you tell us where you plan to go and why." Will and Lyla exchanged a wink to confirm each other. "Okay," Lyra said, "that's fair. Here's where we're going: we're going to the world of the dead. We don't know where it is, but the knife will find it, and that's what we're going to do .” The two spies stared at her in disbelief with their mouths open. Then Sarmazia blinked and said: "You are talking nonsense. The dead are dead, that's all. There is no world of the dead." "I thought it was true, too," Will said, "but now I'm not sure, at least with this knife we'll be able to find out." "But why?" Lyra looked at Will and saw him nod. "Well," Lyra said, "before I met Will, long before I fell asleep, I put a friend in danger, he was killed, and I thought I was saving him, but I made things worse. As I fell asleep, I dreamed about him and I thought maybe I should go where he went and say sorry so I can make amends. Will wants to find his dad too He died as soon as he found him. Look, Lord Asriel wouldn't think about it, and neither would Mrs Coulter. If we go to him, we'll have to do what he wants , and he doesn't think about Roger at all - my dead friend - he doesn't care, but for me, for us, it's very important. So that's what we want to do." "Son," Thales said, "when we die, it's over. There's no other life. You have seen death, you have seen dead bodies, you have seen what happens to elves when death comes.it will disappear.What will survive after that? " "We're just going to find out," Lyra said. "Now that we've told you, I'm going to take your lodestone resonator." She held out her hand, and Pantalaimon, the snow leopard, stood, wagging his tail slowly to reinforce his request.Thales unhooked the backpack from her back and placed it in the palm of her hand.It was staggeringly heavy, certainly no burden to her, but she marveled at his strength. "How long do you think this expedition will take?" asked the knight. "We don't know," Lyra told him. "We don't know anything about it any more than you do. We just go there and see." "First," said Will, "we've got to get some water and more food, something easy to carry, so I'm going to find a world where we can do that, and off we go." Thales and Salmacia mounted their dragonflies, steadying them trembling on the ground.The gigantic insects were anxious to take flight, but the orders of their riders were paramount.Lyra saw them for the first time in daylight, with their delicate silver-gray bridles, silver spikes, and tiny saddles. Will took out the knife, and a strong temptation made him grope around his world: he still had the credit card, he could buy familiar groceries, he could even call Mrs. The sound of pulling nails through rough stone stuck, and his heart almost stopped.If he broke the blade again, it was over. After a while, he tried again, and instead of trying not to think about his mother, he said to himself: Yes, I know where she is, but I don't look at her when I do it... This time it worked, he discovered a new world, slid the knife across it and made an opening.In a few moments they were all standing on a neat and prosperous farm in some northern country that looked like Holland or Denmark, with a clean stone yard and a row of barns with the doors wide open.The sun shone through the smoky sky, and there was something burnt in the air, and something not-so-pleasant.There was no sound of human life, but there was a great humming from the barn, so lively and vigorous that it sounded like machinery. Laila walked over to have a look, and immediately came back pale. "There are four—" She put her hands on her throat and swallowed a mouthful of saliva, holding back her nausea, "——four evening dagger horses, hundreds of millions of flies..." "Look," Will said, swallowing. "Perhaps it's best not to look at it." He was pointing to strawberry stalks by the kitchen garden, and he had just seen a man's legs, one with a shoe on and one without, protruding from the thickest part of the bush. Lyra didn't want to look, but Will went over to see if the man was alive and in need of help.He came back shaking his head, looking disturbed. Two spies had arrived at the open farmhouse door. Thales jumped back and said, "It smells better in there," and flew back across the threshold, while Sarmazia circled the outhouse to spy further. Will followed the knight and found himself in a square kitchen.The place was old-fashioned, with white china on the wooden cupboards, a well-scrubbed pine table, and a cold kettle on the fire. There is a pantry next door with two shelves full of apples that fill the room with aroma.The silence was overwhelming. Lyra said quietly, "Will, is this the world of the dead?" He thought of that too, but said: "No, I don't think so. It's a world we've been in before. See, we can take as much as we can, and there's rye bread, which is good--light-- — and here's some cheese..." When they had had enough, Will threw a gold coin into the drawer of the large pine table. "Huh?" Laila said seeing Thales's raised eyebrows, "You should pay for whatever you take." At this moment, Sarmazia came in through the back door and put her dragonfly, shimmering in blue, on the table. "Someone is coming," she said, "on foot, armed, only a few minutes away, and there's a village burning across the fields." As she spoke, they heard the clatter of boots on the cobbles, a voice calling the shots, and the clang of metal. "Then we should go," Will said. He felt in the air with the tip of the knife, and immediately he was aware of a new sensation, as if the blade was sliding across a very smooth surface, like a mirror, and then it slowly sank until he could cut, but the surface was producing Resistance, like a heavy cloth.After making a slit, he blinked in amazement: for the world he was opening was identical in every detail to the world in which they now stood. "What's the matter?" Lyra said. The spies looked over, confused.But they felt far more than confusion.Just as the air had blocked the knife just now, so something on the other side of the opening was preventing them from entering.Will had to push off the invisible substance, and drag Lyra through it.The Galliferspins could hardly speak at all, and they had to stop the dragonflies on the children's hands, but even then there seemed to be some pressure in the air that held them back, their cicada-like wings bent, The little riders stroked their heads and whispered to them to calm their fears. After a few seconds of struggle and they're all through, Will finds the edge of the cut (though invisible) and closes it, shutting the soldiers' voices into a world of their own. "Will," Lyra said.He turned and saw someone else in the kitchen with them. His heart stopped beating.This was the man he had seen with his throat slit, dead in the bushes, less than ten minutes before. He was of middle age, thin, and looked like the kind of guy who spends most of his time out of doors.But now, in shock, he seemed almost frozen, or paralyzed.His eyes were so wide that the irises were all white around them, and as he gripped the edge of the table with one trembling hand, Will was pleased to see that his throat was intact. He opened his mouth to speak, but not a word came out.All he could do was point at Will and Lyla. Lyra said, "Forgive us for entering your house, but we have to flee from those who are coming. Sorry to surprise you.I am Lyra, this is Will, and these are our friends, Knight Thales and Lady Salmachia.Can you tell us your name and where we are? " The normal-sounding request seemed to bring the man back to his senses, and he shivered as if waking from a dream. "I'm dead," he said. "I'm lying there, dead. I know I'm dead. You're not dead. What happened?God help me, they slit my throat.What happened? " When the man said I was dead, Lyra couldn't help but move closer to Will, and Pantalaimon fled to her chest in the form of a mouse.As for the Galliferspins, they were trying to keep their dragonflies under control, for the huge insects seemed to resent the man, and were darting about the kitchen, looking for a way out. But the man paid them no attention, still trying to figure out what happened. "Are you a ghost?" Will said cautiously. The man held out his hand, and Will tried to grab it, but his fingers closed in the air, feeling nothing but a tingling chill. When the man looked at what happened in front of him, he looked at his hands and his face was pale.Has the numbness started?Xiao Tui, he could feel the pitifulness of his situation. "Really," he said, "I'm dead... I'm dead, I'm going to hell..." "Shh," Lyra said, "we're going together, what's your name?" "My name is Dirk Jensen," he said, "but I've...I don't know what to do...don't know where to go..." Will opened the door. The warehouse looked the same, the kitchen garden hadn't changed, the misty sun was still shining, and the man's body hadn't been touched. A small moan escaped Dirk Jansen's throat, as if it could no longer be denied.Dragonflies flew out the door, skimmed the ground, and soared high into the sky, faster than the birds.The man looked around helplessly, raised and lowered his hands, and let out a small cry. "I can't stay here . . . I can't stay here," he said. "This is not the farm I know. It's not right. I have to go. . . . " "Where are you going, Mr. Johnson?" Lyra asked. "On the road, I don't know, I have to go, I can't stay here..." When Sarmazia flew down and landed on Laila's hand, hurt by the dragonfly's tiny claws, the lady said, "Someone came out of the village—someone like this man—all Go in the same direction." "Let's go with them then," Will said, swinging the rucksack over his shoulders. Dirk Jensen had stepped over his own body, his eyes cocked to the side, looking drunk, stopping and staggering, bumping the path he knew so well. Lyra followed Will, and Pantalaimon, transformed into a kestrel, flew as high as he could, leaving Lyra panting. "They're right," he said, coming down. "There's a procession coming out of the village. Dead people..." After a while, they saw it too: twenty or so men, women and children, all walking just as Dirk Johnson had just done, bewildered and terrified.The village was half a mile away, and people were coming towards them, walking close together in the middle of the road.When Dirk Jensen saw the other ghosts, he staggered to a run, and they stretched out their hands to meet him. "Even if they don't know where they're going, they're all going together," Lyra said. "We'd better just go with them." "Do you think people in this world have elves?" Will said. "I don't know. If you saw such a person in your world, would you know he was a ghost?" "It's hard to tell. They don't look normal, exactly...I once saw a guy in my town who was always walking around outside the store with the same old plastic bag and never talked to anyone, Never went in, nobody looked at him. I used to assume he was a ghost, they kind of looked like him. Maybe my world is full of ghosts, I just never knew." "I don't think my world is like this," Lyra said hesitantly. "It must be the world of the dead, anyway. These people have just been killed—the soldiers must have done it—and here they are, in exactly the same world as they lived in when they were alive, and I thought it would be so different... ..." "Well, it's fading," she said. "Look!" She grabbed his arm and he stopped and looked around.She was right that not long ago he had found that window in Oxford and stepped across into another world of Magpie City, where there had been an eclipse like thousands of others.Will stood outside in the middle of the day, watching the bright sun fade and blur until an eerie, eerie twilight light enveloped the houses and trees and parks.Everything was as clear as in full daylight - but not so much, as if all the strength was being drawn from a dying sun. Everything that is happening now is just as it was then, only weirder, because the edges of everything are also being lost and blurred. "It's not like we're going blind, though," Lyra said fearfully, "because it's not that we can't see, it's as if everything is fading by itself..." Color is slowly oozing out of this world.A misty green-gray replaced the bright green of the trees and grass, a misty sand-gray replaced the vivid yellow of a field of corn, a misty blood-gray cast over the red brick of a neat farmhouse ...and now the people who are more crowded are beginning to notice this too, pointing and linking arms looking for comfort. The only bright things in the whole scene were the dazzling red-yellow and steel-blue of the dragonflies, and their riders, Will and Lyra, and Pantalaimon, who had taken the form of a kestrel and hovered tightly overhead. Now that they were very close to the people who walked ahead, it was clear: they were all ghosts.Will and Lyra each took a step toward each other, but there was nothing to be afraid of, because the ghosts seemed to be more afraid of them, and they backed away, not daring to approach. Will cried, "Don't be afraid. We won't kill you. Where are you going?" They looked at the oldest man among them as if he were their guide. "We're going where everyone else is going," he said, "like I should know, but I can't remember, like this is the way to go, and we'll know when we get there." "Mom," said a child, "why is it getting dark in broad daylight?" "Hush, dear, don't worry," said the mother. "It's no use worrying. I think we're dead." "But where are we going?" asked the child, "I don't want to die, mother!" "We're going to see Grandpa," said the mother desperately. But the child refused to be comforted, and burst into tears.Others looked at the mother with sympathy or annoyance, but they could do little to help, and they all walked sadly on through the fading landscape, the shrill cries of the children ringing and ringing in their ears. ringing. The knight Thales said something to Sarmazia, and then flew to the front, and Will and Lila looked enviously at the smaller and smaller dragonflies, jealous of their bright colors and abundant energy.The lady flew down and landed her insect on Will's hand. "Knights look to see what's ahead," she said. "We think the landscape is fading because these people are forgetting it, and it's getting darker the further they go from their homes." "But why do you think they're leaving?" Lyra said. "If I were a ghost, I'd want to be in places I know rather than wandering around and getting lost." "They're not happy here," Will guessed. "This is where they just died. They're afraid of this place." "No, they were being dragged along by something," said the lady. "Something instinctively pulled them down the road." Indeed, his own village was no longer visible, and the ghosts walked with more purpose.The sky was dark, as if a storm was coming, but there was no lightning and thunder like before the storm.The ghosts walked steadily on, the road cutting straight through an almost featureless landscape. Now and then one of them glanced at Will or Lyra, or the dazzling dragonflies and their riders, as if out of curiosity.Finally the oldest man asked, "You, you two boys and girls, you are not dead, you are not ghosts, what are you doing here?" "We ended up here by chance," Lyra told Will before he could speak. "I don't know what happened. We were trying to get away from those people, and we found ourselves here." "How will you know you've got where you need to be when the time comes?" Will said. "I think someone will tell us," said the ghost confidently. "They'll separate the guilty from the righteous, I dare say. It's useless to pray now, it's too late to do it now. You should have done it while you were alive, it's useless now." He was obviously estimating which category he fell into, and it was clear he didn't think there would be many people in that category, and the others were uncomfortable listening to him, but he was their only guide, so they followed him without arguing. . They walked on, trudging in silence under a sky that had at last turned a dull iron gray and remained so.The few who were alive found themselves looking left and right, up and down, looking for anything bright or alive or cheery, but always disappointed, until there was a little flash of light ahead, rushing towards them through the air, that It's the knight, Sarmazia shouted joyfully, urging her dragonfly to meet him. They talked for a while, then quickly returned to the children. "There's a town ahead," Thales said. "It looks like a refugee camp, but it's obviously been there for centuries. I think there's a sea or a lake beyond, but it's covered in fog and I can hear the birds. The cries of children. Hundreds of people arrive every minute, from every direction, just like these people—these ghosts..." The ghosts listened when he spoke, though not with much curiosity.They seemed to be in a dull trance, and Lyra wanted to shake them awake, to encourage them to rise up and struggle, to wake up and find a way out. "How do we help these people, Will?" she said. Will couldn't even guess.Going on, I could see a little movement on the horizon to the left and right, and a dirty smoke rose slowly ahead, adding its darkness to the gloomy sky.It was people, or ghosts, that moved: in processions, in pairs, in groups, or singly, but all empty-handed, thousands of men, women, and children crossing the plain, converging toward the source of the black smoke. The ground seemed to be sloping downward, becoming more and more like a dump, and the air was thick with smoke and other smells: acrid acidic chemicals, rotting vegetable matter, sewage.It got worse the further you went down, there was no clean soil in sight, the only vegetation was overgrown weeds and rough, gray sod. Ahead of them, above the water, was a mist that rose like a cliff and merged into the overcast sky, and from somewhere within it came the bird call that Thales had mentioned. Between the rubbish and the mist, stands the first town of the dead world.