The first thing Will did was to make Lyra sit down, and theook out the little pot of bloodmoss oi and looked at the wound on her head. It was bleeding freely, as scalp wounds do, but it wasnt deep. He tore a strip off the edge of his shirt and mopped it , and spread some of the oi over the gash,
trying not to think of the filthy state of the claw that made it.
Lyras eyes were glazed, and she ale.
"Lyra! Lyra!" he said, and shook her gently. "e on now, weve got to move."
She gave a shudder and took a long, shaky breath, and her eyes focused on him, full of a wild despair.
"Will, I t do it anymore, I t do it! I t tell lies! I thought it was so easy, but it didnt work, its all I do, and it doesnt work!"
"Its not all you do. You read the alethiometer, t you? e os see where we are. Lets look fer."
He helped her up, and for the first time they looked around at the land where the ghosts were.
They found themselves on a great plain that extended far ahead into the mist. The light by which they saw was a dull self-luminesce that seemed to exist everywhere equally, so that there were no true shadows and no true light, and everything was the same dingy color.
Standing on the floor of this huge space were adults and children, ghost people, so many that Lyra couldnt guess their number. At least, most of them were standing, though some were sitting and some lying down listless or asleep. No one was moving about, or running or playing, though many of them turo look at these new arrivals, with a fearful curiosity in their wide eyes.
"Ghosts," she whispered. "This is where they all are, everyohats ever died..."
No doubt it was because she didnt have Pantalaimon anymore, but she g close to Wills arm, and he was glad she did. The Gallivespians had flown ahead, and he could see their bright little forms darting and skimming over the heads of the ghosts, who looked up and followed them with wonder; but the silence was immense and oppressive, and the gray light filled him with fear, and Lyras resence beside him was the only thing that felt like life.
Behind them, outside the wall, the screams of the harpies were still eg up and down the shore. Some of the ghost people were looking up apprehensively, but more of them were staring at Will and Lyra, and then they began to crowd forward. Lyra shrank back; she didnt have the strength just yet to face them as she would have liked to do, and it was Will who had to speak first.
"Do you speak our language?" he said. " you speak at all?"
Shivering and frightened and full of pain as he and Lyra were, they had more authority than the whole mass of the dead put together. These phosts had little power of their own, and hearing Wills voice, the first clear voice that had souhere in all the memory of the dead, many of them came forward, eager to respond.
But they could only whisper. A faint, pale sound, no more than a soft breath, was all they could utter. And as they thrust forward, jostling and desperate, the Gallivespians flew down and darted to and from in front of them, to prevent them from crowding too close. The ghost children looked up with a passionate longing, and Lyra k once why: they thought the dragonflies were daemons; they were wishing with all their hearts that they could hold their own daemons again.
"Oh, they ent daemons," Lyra burst out passionately; "and if my own daemon was here, you could all stroke h