Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods (17 page)

Again, Reyn wavered. The weapon slipped down slightly and his hand hovered above the console. Then he shook himself, and straightened up, military-style, except that the uniform didn’t quite seem to fit. ‘No. They’re dying in hundreds of thousands back home, Doctor. I can still make a difference.’

‘Reyn,’ Laura pleaded softly. ‘Please don’t do this. My parents – they’re out there! I’ve talked to you about them, many times. All the years we spent together. All that we’ve seen together. Please don’t do this!’

‘Laura, dear lady!’ Reyn’s sad orange eyes were bright and wet. There was something desperate about him. ‘It’s a risk I have to take.’

The voice was still chanting down.

‘Doctor!’ Amy said. ‘Stop him!’

‘All right,’ the Doctor said. ‘Pond! Mr Pond! Both of you! Triangulate!’

Amy and Rory looked at each other, pulled out their twin devices, pressed the long-unpressed buttons…

And with a groan and a sigh, as if remarking to anyone listening that perhaps it was getting rather old for this game, the TARDIS materialised at the top of the stairs.

The uninitiated gawked at her. ‘What the devil is
that
?’ said Harry.

The Doctor beamed up at it. ‘My ship! Isn’t she cool?’

Emily sniffed. ‘Bit small.’

‘So far I’ve liked you, Emily Bostock. Let’s not quarrel now.’ The Doctor swung round to face Reyn. ‘Now. You. Here’s the deal. Gorgeous blue box up there – travels through time and space. She’s nifty! So.’ He pointed at Reyn. ‘You leave Ship alone.’ He pointed at himself. ‘I take you back home.’ He waved his hands around. ‘Ship stays here because you no longer need it for the journey. Everyone happy. How does that sound?’

‘But Ship is an important part of our arsenal,’ Reyn said doubtfully. ‘We’re fighting a losing battle. We need everything—’

‘Reyn,’ the Doctor said, ‘you may be a soldier now, but you’re not a murderer. If you truly cared so little for life, you would have left this planet centuries ago! But you did the right thing! You were prepared to sacrifice yourself to protect the people of this town. Don’t waste that sacrifice, Reyn, all those long years you spent here. Let me take you back. Leave Ship here. We can take care of it.’

Reyn lowered his head. His ears went flat.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ Laura said.

The gun went down.

‘All right,’ Reyn said. ‘All right, Doctor – I’ll trust you. Take me home.’

Leaving Amy in charge on board Ship, the Doctor took Rory and Reyn into the TARDIS. He waved his hands around.

‘Isn’t she gorgeous? I mean, I know Ship is a very impressive piece of temporal-spatial engineering, Reyn, but I think the TARDIS’s take on the whole business is so much more elegant… and none of that accidentally turning a nearby piece of woodland into a trap for passing strangers—’

‘Doctor,’ said Reyn wearily. ‘You were taking me home.’

‘So I was! Home! Home time for Reyn!’ The Doctor clapped his hands together, and then did the series of random moves and leaps around the console that Rory had come to recognise meant that a journey in time and space was under way.

‘Home?’ said the Doctor. ‘I can get you back home to your foxy-man world in as much time as it takes to say foxy-man world inhabitant…’ He yanked the control that landed the TARDIS, opened the door, pointed outside, and said, ‘There you are, Reyn. Recognise it yet?’

Reyn walked slowly outside, the gun hanging limply from his hand. Rory, following him out, stepped onto a world that looked like it might be the kind of place inhabited by alien foxes. The air was spicy. Sharp angled buildings sunk underground into deep tunnels lit with golden lights. Turrets spiked high into the clouds, silhouetted against an orange sun.

‘This looks like home,’ Reyn said, slowly, ‘but not how I remember it.’ He shook his head. ‘Have I been gone so long?’

‘You’ve been gone longer than you imagine,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘This
is
your home, Reyn, but not when you knew it. This is what your home is going to be. After the Long War. Long, long after.’

Reyn stared around, bewildered by this half-familiar world. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘The War’s
over
? Who won?’

‘Nobody won,’ the Doctor said. ‘Nobody wins at war. But your species survived, if that’s what you mean. They were conquered first –’

Reyn shuddered.

‘– and they suffered for a long time, a very long time. Then the empire that conquered them declined, as empires do, in the end, and your people became free again. They weren’t like they were before – no, how could they be, after all that? They changed. Became a little harder, a little more mistrustful, a little disenchanted. They’d lost a great deal. But they survived. They went on. And that world, down there – thousands of years have passed since your war. The Long War’s hardly even history to them – it’s more the stuff of legend. Like Troy and Hector are to Rory. Like Achilles and Cassandra and… um, Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Doctor,’ Rory whispered, ‘Sherlock Holmes wasn’t real…’

‘Oh, yes, people
say
that…’ The Doctor went on: ‘Reyn, here, in this time, you’re the stuff of legend too! They tell stories about you – the lost traveller. They talk about how one day you’ll return, and you’ll bring with you the knowledge, the way to teach ships to think and speak and be. They don’t know how to do that on your world now. They forgot after the Long War.’

‘Doctor,’ Rory whispered again, ‘is that all true?’

‘It will be,’ the Doctor whispered back, ‘soon enough.’ To Reyn, he said, ‘You spent a long time in the woods, Reyn. Longer than you realised. But time didn’t stand still out here. Your war is long since over. But your world is still here, and it’s been waiting for you to return. The lost traveller has come home.’

Reyn’s shoulders had slumped. His head was down and his ears low. Slowly he turned to look at the Doctor.

‘Home? How can this place be home? Everyone I knew and loved is gone! Oh, Doctor!’ His voice was full of grief. ‘Why have you brought me here? I would rather have died with everyone I knew and loved than be lost like this!’ His orange eyes, clever and sad, looked back at the TARDIS. And then he said, ‘You said this machine could travel in time. You could take me back! Take me back home! Take me back to where I belong!’

His hand tightened around his gun. Rory whispered, ‘Doctor…?’

And then someone called out. ‘The traveller! It is, isn’t it! Look! The traveller!’

A child, or someone who easily remembered being a child, red-furred and long-muzzled and bright-eyed. ‘Look! It
is
him, isn’t it!’ He called over to his friends. ‘Come and look at this! Look at the uniform, the plasma gun – it’s like something from a history book! He’s even got the scar on his nose! It is! It’s the
Traveller
!’

Others passing paused to look too, and their faces changed the moment they caught sight of Reyn. As Rory watched, a crowd quickly formed around the lost old pilot, people whose sheer foxiness was almost overwhelming. They gathered round, chattering, reaching out to touch Reyn, and, suddenly, he was lifted high up, and the air was filled with laughter and delight. Some songs remain the same.

The Doctor looked out at the scene. He was smiling. ‘It’s been a long time since Reyn breathed his own air or held hands that are the same as his. But he’s home now, Rory, and he’s welcome here. It’s time for us to go.’

And so, very quietly, they slipped away.

‘Back to Ship, I suppose,’ said Rory, as the TARDIS doors closed behind them. ‘What is it we have to do there?’

‘Well, we still have to release Ship from all that human history in which it’s entangled itself and then send it on its way. Back to the stars. Back to exploring and learning and knowing… Ooh, though,’ the Doctor twiddled some dials and yanked some levers, ‘one last job to do around here before we leave local space…’

Patiently, the TARDIS landed again in the same place.

‘Where are we now?’ said Rory. ‘And when?’

‘Same where,’ replied the Doctor, ‘but quite a lot earlier when it comes to when. I said that Reyn was a legend, Rory – the lost traveller – and that’s all true, or rather, it will be, once we’ve had a chance to fiddle the books.’

‘Fiddle the books?’ Rory looked at him in horror. ‘What are you getting me into now?’

‘I mean the history books!’

‘Oh, well, if you only meant fiddle the history books I suppose that’s fine!’

‘Legends don’t come from nowhere, you know! Somebody has to… legendate… legendify… Make it all up in the first place! The story needs to be seeded, about the lost traveller from the Long War, who returns with the forgotten knowledge of his age, how to build the famous living ships… So we need to have a few words in some foxy ears from the past, get them twitching, get a few stories started… Just set the whole thing going so the legends are written down by the time Reyn arrives. You know the kind of thing:
And, lo, it was promised that the traveller would return, and we would know him from the great blue box that came from nowhere, heralding his homecoming…
’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Actually, probably quickest if I just write them down myself. Pass me that biro, will you?’

Amy watched with relief as the TARDIS rematerialised on board Ship. Out came the Doctor, Rory at his heels.

‘Sorted?’ Amy said.

‘Of course!’

‘So where is Reyn?’ asked Laura anxiously. ‘Is he safe? Is he happy?’

‘Yes, he’s safe – and soon I think he’ll realise that he’s happy. He’s back amongst his own people now. He’s a legend. A living legend. I think he’ll soon be happier than he’s ever been.’ He smiled at Laura. ‘And now… Well. Laura Brown. I think you know what has to happen next.’

Amy glanced suspiciously at the regretful looks Laura and the Doctor were giving each other. ‘What? Doctor, what else have you got up your sleeve? And why do I think I won’t like it?’

‘We guided Ship through its Shift, Amy, and we saw Reyn safely on his way. But Ship is still here, still bound up with Swallow Woods, and it can still affect Foxton and the people that live there. All those time pockets and spatial wotsits, they’re scattered around Swallow Woods like leaves, waiting to pull people in, sending them through the portal place. But we can fix it.’

‘Er, getting lost now, Doctor,’ Rory said. ‘How do we fix it?’

‘Laura knows, I think.’

‘Laura?’ said Amy. She turned to the old woman. ‘What? What do you know?’

‘I think,’ Laura said slowly, ‘that I have to stay here. Or, rather, stay in the environment that Reyn created. To seal it from behind. Close up time around me… Because everything that’s happened to me here – that can’t be taken back. I went into Swallow Woods, and I met Reyn – and Ship – and I spent sixty years here with them. None of that can be taken back, or it will undo the Doctor’s fix, too. But that will be the end of it. Am I right, Doctor?’

‘Nearly,’ the Doctor said. ‘But not quite. You’re right that we can’t take back what’s happened to you, Laura. You’re the last, now that Vicky and Jess are home. But Ship doesn’t have to be here throughout all of time. We can send Ship on its way now… Well, one specific now. Your now. It will have to have been here for you to visit. And for Emily and Harry too. But not before. Or in between. Or since.’

‘Wait,’ said Amy. ‘Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. If we want to rid Swallow Woods of Ship’s influence, we can – but Laura
has
to have come here and spent all that time here. Laura’s timeline can’t be reversed.’

‘And why would I want my life reversed? Would you? Would anyone?’ Laura bristled.

‘It isn’t so much about reversing. Time’s not like that. It’s more… fluid. But no, Laura, no one is going to change your story-so-far,’ said the Doctor. ‘Although, where it goes now is up to you. The world that you shared with Reyn will disappear when Ship sets out – but I don’t think Ship would mind some company for the road.’

Ship’s walls shimmered in a gentle confirmation.

‘But your parents!’ Amy said in dismay. ‘Your family!’

‘If I go back,’ Laura said, ‘I’ll be older than my parents, much older! How do we explain that? And you know how I wanted to travel, Amy. How I wanted to see new things… And I will! This time, I really will!’

‘And you’re only going into space!’ the Doctor said. ‘That’s no reason not to stay in touch!’

‘Doctor,’ said Emily worriedly. ‘What about us? Me and Harry. We’re part of it. We’ve come this way, too, haven’t we?’

‘Well, Miss Emily Bostock – that’s entirely up to you. Laura, really, is the one that matters. Laura’s the one that
has
to take this path. You can go home, Emily. And you, Harry.’

‘But we don’t have to go home, do we? We could leave, too?’ said Emily. ‘There’s nothing stopping us from going with them?’

‘Not at all! Ship has been here in your time to meet you. So no, there’s nothing stopping you going with them, Emily. If you want.’

‘Then I’ll go,’ she said, and turned to Laura. ‘If you don’t mind, missus. If you don’t mind some company?’

Laura laughed. ‘Of course I don’t mind!’

Emily turned to Harry and held out her hand. ‘What do you say, love? Won’t you come too?’

‘Away?’ Harry said. He looked around uncertainly. ‘You sure it’s safe, Emmy?’

‘Safe,’ said the Doctor helpfully, ‘is a matter of perspective. But it’s probably better than 1917.’

‘Which,’ Rory muttered, ‘you told me was absolutely nothing to worry about.’

‘Ah. Yes. Mostly.
Mostly
nothing to worry about. But I’d say heading into space on board a living ship probably beats 1917. And certainly beats the trenches.’

That was enough to convince Harry.

‘Live and learn,’ the Doctor said. ‘Good choice.’

The travellers watched as, on the TARDIS screen, Swallow Woods released Ship from its embrace. The trees rocked and parted, and the living ship lifted from the ground and then left, taking its new crew to the stars. A few golden trails spun wildly in its wake, and then drifted away. For one brief second, Amy thought she glimpsed a huge fantastic castle with a rainbow overhead – but the vision slipped away before she could even be certain it was there.