Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass

“Oh, and you’re offering to tell me a story?”

“If you’d like.”

“Maybe I would. And what then?”

“You might let us go in through that door and find the ghost we’ve come here to look for; I hope you would, anyway. If you’d be so kind.”

“Try, then,” said No‑Name.

And even in her sickness and pain, Lyra felt that she’d just been dealt the ace of trumps.

“Oh, be careful,” whispered Salmakia, but Lyra’s mind was already racing ahead through the story she’d told the night before, shaping and cutting and improving and adding: parents dead; family treasure; shipwreck; escape …

“Well,” she said, settling into her storytelling frame of mind, “it began when I was a baby, really. My father and mother were the Duke and Duchess of Abingdon, you see, and they were as rich as anything. My father was one of the king’s advisers, and the king himself used to come and stay, oh, all the time. They’d go hunting in our forest. The house there, where I was born, it was the biggest house in the whole south of England. It was called – ”

Without even a cry of warning, the harpy launched herself at Lyra, claws outstretched. Lyra just had time to duck, but still one of the claws caught her scalp and tore out a clump of hair.

“Liar! Liar!” the harpy was screaming. “Liar!”

She flew around again, aiming directly for Lyra’s face; but Will took out the knife and threw himself in the way. No‑Name swerved out of reach just in time, and Will hustled Lyra over toward the door, because she was numb with shock and half‑blinded by the blood running down her face. Where the Gallivespians were, Will had no idea, but the harpy was flying at them again and screaming and screaming in rage and hatred:

“Liar! Liar! Liar!”

And it sounded as if her voice were coming from everywhere, and the word echoed back from the great wall in the fog, muffled and changed, so that she seemed to be screaming Lyra’s name, so that Lyra and liar were one and the same thing.

Will had the girl pressed against his chest, with his shoulder curved over to protect her, and he felt her shaking and sobbing against him; but then he thrust the knife into the rotten wood of the door and cut out the lock with a quick slash of the blade.

Then he and Lyra, with the spies beside them on their darting dragonflies, tumbled through into the realm of the ghosts as the harpy’s cry was doubled and redoubled by others on the foggy shore behind them.

The first thing Will did was to make Lyra sit down, and then he took out the little pot of bloodmoss ointment and looked at the wound on her head. It was bleeding freely, as scalp wounds do, but it wasn’t deep. He tore a strip off the edge of his shirt and mopped it clean, and spread some of the ointment over the gash, trying not to think of the filthy state of the claw that made it.

Lyra’s eyes were glazed, and she was ash‑pale.

“Lyra! Lyra!” he said, and shook her gently. “Come on now, we’ve 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 can’t do it anymore – I can’t do it! I can’t tell lies! I thought it was so easy – but it didn’t work – it’s all I can do, and it doesn’t work!”

“It’s not all you can do. You can read the alethiometer, can’t you? Come on, let’s see where we are. Let’s look for Roger.”

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‑luminescence 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 couldn’t 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 turned to look at these new arrivals, with a fearful curiosity in their wide eyes.

“Ghosts,” she whispered. “This is where they all are, everyone that’s ever died…”

No doubt it was because she didn’t have Pantalaimon anymore, but she clung close to Will’s 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 Lyra’s warm presence beside him was the only thing that felt like life.

Behind them, outside the wall, the screams of the harpies were still echoing 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 didn’t 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. “Can 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 poor ghosts had little power of their own, and hearing Will’s voice, the first clear voice that had sounded there 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 knew at 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 en’t daemons,” Lyra burst out compassionately; “and if my own daemon was here, you could all stroke him and touch him, I promise – ”

And she held out her hands to the children. The adult ghosts hung back, listless or fearful, but the children all came thronging forward. They had as much substance as fog, poor things, and Lyra’s hands passed through and through them, as did Will’s. They crammed forward, light and lifeless, to warm themselves at the flowing blood and the strong‑beating hearts of the two travelers, and both Will and Lyra felt a succession of cold, delicate brushing sensations as the ghosts passed through their bodies, warming themselves on the way. The two living children felt that little by little they were becoming dead, too; they hadn’t got an infinite amount of life and warmth to give, and they were so cold already, and the endless crowds pressing forward looked as if they were never going to stop.

Finally Lyra had to plead with them to hold back.

She held up her hands and said, “Please – we wish we could touch you all, but we came down here to look for someone, and I need you to tell me where he is and how to find him. Oh, Will,” she said, leaning her head to his, “I wish I knew what to do!”

The ghosts were fascinated by the blood on Lyra’s forehead. It glowed as brightly as a holly berry in the dimness, and several of them had brushed through it, longing for the contact with something so vibrantly alive. One ghost girl, who when she was alive must have been about nine or ten, reached up shyly to try and touch it, and then shrank back in fear; but Lyra said, “Don’t be afraid – we en’t come here to hurt you – speak to us, if you can!”