Lyra went and looked, and came back at once, looking pale.
“There’s four”—she gulped, hand to her throat, and recovered—“four dead horses in there. And millions of flies . . .”
“Look,” said Will, swallowing, “or maybe better not.”
He was pointing at the raspberry canes that edged the kitchen garden. He’d just seen a man’s legs, one with a shoe on and one without, protruding from the thickest part of the bushes.
Lyra didn’t want to look, but Will went to see if the man was still alive and needed help. He came back shaking his head, looking uneasy.
The two spies were already at the farmhouse door, which was ajar.
Tialys darted back and said, “It smells sweeter in there,” and then he flew back over the threshold while Salmakia scouted further around the outbuildings.
Will followed the Chevalier. He found himself in a big square kitchen, an old-fashioned place with white china on a wooden dresser, and a scrubbed pine table, and a hearth where a black kettle stood cold. Next door there was a pantry, with two shelves full of apples that filled the whole room with fragrance. The silence was oppressive.
Lyra said quietly, “Will, is this the world of the dead?”
The same thought had occurred to him. But he said, “No, I don’t think so. It’s one we haven’t been in before. Look, we’ll load up with as much as we can carry. There’s sort of rye bread, that’ll be good—it’s light—and here’s some cheese . . .”
When they had taken what they could carry, Will dropped a gold coin into the drawer in the big pine table.
“Well?” said Lyra, seeing Tialys raise his eyebrows. “You should always pay for what you take.”
At that moment Salmakia came in through the back door, landing her dragonfly on the table in a shimmer of electric blue.
“There are men coming,” she said, “on foot, with weapons. They’re only a few minutes’ walk away. And there is a village burning beyond the fields.”
And as she spoke, they could hear the sound of boots on gravel, and a voice issuing orders, and the jingle of metal.
“Then we should go,” said Will.
He felt in the air with the knifepoint. And at once he was aware of a new kind of sensation. The blade seemed to be sliding along a very smooth surface, like a mirror, and then it sank through slowly until he was able to cut. But it was resistant, like heavy cloth, and when he made an opening, he blinked with surprise and alarm: because the world he was opening into was the same in every detail as the one they were already standing in.
“What’s happening?” said Lyra.
The spies were looking through, puzzled. But it was more than puzzlement they felt. Just as the air had resisted the knife, so something in this opening resisted their going through. Will had to push against something invisible and then pull Lyra after him, and the Gallivespians could hardly make any headway at all. They had to perch the dragonflies on the children’s hands, and even then it was like pulling them against a pressure in the air; their filmy wings bent and twisted, and the little riders had to stroke their mounts’ heads and whisper to calm their fears.
But after a few seconds of struggle, they were all through, and Will found the edge of the window (though it was impossible to see) and closed it, shutting the sound of the soldiers away in their own world.
“Will,” said Lyra, and he turned to see that there was another figure in the kitchen with them.
His heart jolted. It was the man he’d seen not ten minutes before, stark dead in the bushes with his throat cut.
He was middle-aged, lean, with the look of a man who spent most of the time in the open air. But now he was looking almost crazed, or paralyzed, with shock. His eyes were so wide that the white showed all around the iris, and he was clutching the edge of the table with a trembling hand. His throat, Will was glad to see, was intact.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. All he could do was point at Will and Lyra.
Lyra said, “Excuse us for being in your house, but we had to escape from the men who were coming. I’m sorry if we startled you. I’m Lyra, and this is Will, and these are our friends, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia. Could you tell us your name and where we are?”
This normal-sounding request seemed to bring the man to his senses, and a shudder passed over him, as if he were waking from a dream.
“I’m dead,” he said. “I’m lying out there, dead. I know I am. You ain’t dead. What’s happening? God help me, they cut my throat. What’s happening?”
Lyra stepped closer to Will when the man said I’m dead, and Pantalaimon fled to her breast as a mouse. As for the Gallivespians, they were trying to control their dragonflies, because the great insects seemed to have an aversion for the man and darted here and there in the kitchen, looking for a way out.
But the man didn’t notice them. He was still trying to understand what had happened.
“Are you a ghost?” Will said cautiously.
The man reached out his hand, and Will tried to take it, but his fingers closed on the air. A tingle of cold was all he felt.
When he saw it happen, the man looked at his own hand, appalled. The numbness was beginning to wear off, and he could feel the pity of his state.
“Truly,” he said, “I am dead . . . I’m dead, and I’m going to Hell . . .”
“Hush,” said Lyra, “we’ll go together. What’s your name?”
“Dirk Jansen I was,” he said, “but already I . . . I don’t know what to do . . . Don’t know where to go . . .”