were standing in, and there were huge wooden posts, like telegraph poles, dotted along it, holding it up. At the top of the fence enormous bales of barbed wire were tangled in spirals, and Gretel felt an unexpected pain inside her as she looked at the sharp spikes sticking out all the way round it. There wasn't any grass after the fence; in fact there was no greenery anywhere to be seen in the distance. Instead the ground was made of a sand-like sub- stance, and as far as she could make out there was nothing but low huts and large square buildings dotted around and one or two smoke stacks in the distance. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she did she realized that she couldn't find any words to express her surprise, and so she did the only sensible thing she could think of and closed it again. "You see said Bruno from the corner of the room, feeling quietly pleased with himself because whatever it was that was out there and whoever they were he had seen it first and he could see it whenever he wanted because they were outside his bedroom window and not hers and therefore they belonged to him and he was the king of everything they surveyed and she was his lowly subject. I don't understand," said Gretel. Who would build such a nasty-looking place? It is a nasty-looking place, isn't it?' agreed Bruno.