The terrible flood of Dust in the sky had stopped flowing. It wasn't still, by any means; Mary scanned the whole sky with the amber lens, seeing a current here, an eddy there, a vortex farther off; it was in perpetual movement, but it wasn't flowing away anymore. In fact, if anything, it was falling like snowflakes.  It's a suburb of the world of the dead. Sometimes the living come here by mistake, but they have to wait in the holding area before they can go on. Yeah," said the red-haired girl, in the garden of the deserted casino.  We seen her, me and Paolo both seen her. She come through here days ago." "Now," said the angel, "we go closer. The valley with the cave runs down from the left side of the glacier, and a river of meltwater runs through it. The head of the valley is here. You fought for this, and lost two fingers?" the bear said. "Show me the wound." "She look hot," said the little boy. "Sweaty in the face, all right." Mrs. Coulter couldn't speak. She had to turn away and go to the window to conceal the emotion on her face. Finally she said: Baruch said, "Well, there is a world of the dead. Where it is, and what happens there, no one knows. My ghost, thanks to Balthamos, never went there; I am what was once the ghost of Baruch. The world of the dead is just dark to us." Will and Lyra were soaked through, shivering, racked with pain, and stumbling blindly through mud and over rocks and into little gullies where storm-fed streams ran red with blood. Lyra was afraid that the Lady Salmakia was dying: she hadn't uttered a word for several minutes, and she lay faint and limp in Lyra's hand. There was a tree not far away, just a dead trunk with its bone white branches thrusting into the chilly gray air, and because Lyra was feeling weak, and because she didn't think she could walk and talk at the same time, she made for that so as to have somewhere to sit. The crowd of ghosts jostled and shuffled aside to make room. "I can think of it," said the bear, "but not understand what I am thinking. It is the strangest thing I have ever seen." "How many?" How long she stayed out, Mary didn't know. When the intensity of her feeling began to subside, and exhaustion took its place, she made her way slowly down the hill toward the village. "I'm going to go now," Will said, standing up. "Of course. Will said, "Is there anyone here from my world, where we don't have daemons? Not who? At once the hawk screamed three times, so loud that Lyra's head rang. In response there darted from the sky first one, then two and three and more, then hundreds of brilliant warrior-bearing dragonflies, all skimming so fast it seemed they were bound to crash into one another; but the reflexes of the insects and the skills of their riders were so acute that instead, they seemed to weave a tapestry of swift and silent needle-bright color over and around the children. "You know," she said, "the Church, the Catholic Church that I used to belong to, wouldn't use the word daemon, but St. Paul talks about spirit and soul and body. So the idea of three parts in human nature isn't so strange. He died fighting. He kept a whole company of Muscovites at bay while the man escaped. I found his body. He died bravely. I shall avenge him." He raised the rifle to his shoulder again and saw them react, shifting backward clumsily, crowding together. They understood. No,he said, "but that's a different sort of not fair. That's just like an earthquake or a rainstorm. It might not be fair, but no one's to blame. But if I just leave my mother with an old lady who isn't very well herself, then that's a different kind of not fair. That would be wrong. I've just got to go home. But probably it's going to be difficult to go back as we were. Probably the secret's out now. I don't suppose Mrs. Cooper will have been able to look after her, not if my mother's in one of those times when she gets frightened of things. So she's probably had to get help, and when I go back, I'll be made to go into some kind of institution." He pressed a button, and a lance of flame jetted toward the tossing, swaying zeppelin. An instant later the whole airship bloomed into a rose of white fire, engulfing the intention craft, which hung motionless and unharmed in the middle of it. Lord Asriel moved the craft unhurriedly away, and they watched as the blazing zeppelin fell slowly, slowly down on top of the whole scene, bomb, cable, soldiers, and all, and everything began to tumble in a welter of smoke and flames down the mountainside, gathering speed and incinerating the resinous trees as it went, until it plunged into the white waters of the cataract, which whirled it all away into the dark. Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say: She sighed, coming out of her trance, and tucked the hair behind her ears, feeling the first warmth of the sun on her face and shoulders. There were sounds in the world now, too: insects were stirring, and a very slight breeze was rustling the dry grass stems growing higher up the dune. Flying slowly above the tiles, which glistened with the recent rain, she edged the machine into a little gully between a steep tiled roof and the sheer wall of the tower. The place was only visible from the belfry of the Chapel of the Holy Penitence nearby; it would do very well. The afternoon air was warm and still, and the shade of the tree was drowsy and murmurous with crickets. Less than five minutes after they'd swallowed the last of the drink, both Will and Lyra were fast asleep. There was a knock at the door behind him, and he turned at once.