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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 dæmons, everyone has a dæmon, 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons?” 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 dæmon,” 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 clotheshorse 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.”
