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 ns. 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 s or biscuit tins, torn plastic sheeting,
scraps of plywood or hardboard.
The ghosts who had e with them were hurrying toward the town, and from every dire came more of them, so many that they looked like the grains of sand that trickle toward the hole of an hlass. The ghosts walked straight into the squalid fusion of the town, as if they kly 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 wasnt easy to make out his features; but they knew he wasnt 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 buildiepped out of had the look of a s post on a rarely visited frontier.
"What is this place?" said Will, "And why t we go in?"
"Youre 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 dont mind me asking, but how we have e this far if we ent dead? Because this is the world of the dead, isnt it?"
"Its a suburb of the world of the dead. Sometimes the living e here by mistake, but they have to wait in the holding area before they go on."
"Wait for how long?"
"Until they die."
Will felt his head swim. He could see Lyra was about tue, and before she could speak, he said, " you just explain what happens then? I mean, these ghosts who e 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.
"Thats not something I tell you," said the man, and a bitter smile pulled his mouth down at the ers. "You must move along, please. You must go to the holding area."
Will took the papers the man was holding out, and then held Lyras arm and urged her away.
The dragonflies were flying sluggishly now, and Tialys explaihat they o rest; so they perched on Wills 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 watg the never-ending stream of ghosts arriving and passing without hindrao the town itself.
"Weve 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 doo be angry anyway, or dangerous. Its 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 wheravelers would challehem ive in and laugh. A all looked so re