Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods (6 page)

‘Try again,’ Rory said. ‘Describe exactly what you can see.’

‘Well, where there’s trees, there’s leaves. I can see leaves. Lots of leaves.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a little path heading off just in front of us. I think I can hear a stream, up ahead somewhere. And there’s the sun, scattered through the breaks between the branches. It’s not such a dense old wood as people would have you think—’

‘What time did we leave the Fox, Emily?’

‘Just after closing time, of course. That’s half past nine.’

‘Half past nine. And yet there’s the sun. When we left the Fox, the moon was out. Remember? It was nearly full. And now…’ Rory waved his hand around. ‘Sunshine.’

‘So? So the sun’s coming up. That happens, you know, even in Foxton. Nothing strange about that.’

‘But it’s autumn. The nights are longer. How long since we left the pub? An hour at most. How can the sun be coming up already?’

Emily drew her shawl around herself more tightly. ‘I don’t mind saying so, but you’re frightening me, Mr Williams.’

‘It’s OK,’ Rory said softly. ‘We’re not in any danger, not in any real danger. But Emily – please, promise me, don’t run off like that again. Because I might not be able to find you, and if you get lost, you could be lost for ever.’

Emily pulled away from him. In a whisper, she said, ‘Who are you, exactly?’

Rory Williams thought of himself as possibly the least alarming person of his acquaintance. Amy – now
she
was alarming. Gorgeous, wonderful, unique – and alarming. And as for the Doctor… Now Rory saw himself through Emily’s eyes: a stranger who appeared from nowhere saying bizarre things while the world went suddenly mad… He knew exactly how it felt to be on the receiving end. He reached out to take Emily’s hand. It had gone cold, so he started to rub it.

‘Who I am doesn’t matter, not really,’ he said. ‘But it’s possible that things are going to get weird around here, Emily, weirder than they are already. It’s important that you trust me. I’m a friend. I can look after you.’

As he spoke, the sun shone more brightly on Swallow Woods, catching on the dust motes and pollen and dandelion parachutes that were drifting about, making them gleam for the merest second and then disappear. The leaves were gently stirring. It seemed to Rory almost as if they were held in some eternal Maytime – only Emily’s hand was still cold.

‘All right, Mr Williams,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll trust you. But you have to tell me what’s going on around here. I’m not daft, and you don’t have to lie to me, not even to protect me. You shouldn’t do that, not if you want me to trust you. Besides,’ she said, and gave him a secretive sideways look, ‘we all know about the woods. We pretend it’s not real, but we all know about it. So what’s happening? What’s going on?’

‘OK. It’s difficult, but try this. Ages ago, someone abandoned a machine in the woods. It’s been leaking a kind of energy ever since, like the steam from Mr Blakeley’s car, and it’s made the woods bend out of shape. That’s why all these strange things happen – how it can hop from autumn to summer, or day to night.’

‘And why the people… well, why they go missing.’

‘Yes, that too. It’s not magic or enchantment or anything—’

‘Well, I know that! Good gracious, this is the twentieth century! I’m not some simple country girl! I was at school all the way up to 13, I’ll have you know!’

‘Sorry! Yes, of course, twentieth century… Anyway, this machine has been sitting here rotting and the stuff it’s made from makes the strange things happen—’

‘Like if Mr Blakeley’s motor car broke down near a stream, and some metal got into the water so it turned a funny colour and you couldn’t drink it without getting sick?’

‘That’s…. pretty much exactly what I mean.’

‘See – not so daft, am I? Is that why you’re here? To fix the machine?’

‘Not so much fix it as find it and cart if off for scrap.’

‘And then Swallow Woods will go back to being ordinary?’

‘That’s the idea.’

Emily rested her hand flat against the trunk of the old tree supporting them. ‘Poor old Swallow Woods. Everyone scared, and it’s not its fault. Seems a shame to take the magic away, even if it wasn’t really magic in the first place.’ She stroked the crusty bark with her thumb and sighed. ‘Suppose it happens to all of us in time.’

She shook herself and, with a quicksilver movement, slid down from the tree. ‘And you knew I came through Swallow Woods and you were worried I’d get lost too. That’s nice. I thought you were nice, Mr Williams.’ She pulled back her hair and set her hat upon her head, shoving a pin in here and there to keep it fixed in place. Then she put the feather and the butterfly straight.

‘Can I help?’ she said. ‘Help you find the machine?’

Rory clambered down the tree. ‘Of course. But we have to stay together.’

‘So where now?’ she said, when he was on the ground again. ‘Where are we heading?’

‘What do you think, Emily?’

‘Me? What do I know? Don’t you have a map or something?’

‘How would you map a place like this? Who would come here to map it?’

She shivered, even in the sunshine. ‘You’re not helping with my nerves, you know. Well,’ she pointed at the path, ‘I suppose that’s as good a way as any.’

So they went that way, and Rory’s heart was heavy, because he had not told Emily everything, not quite. Rory knew that Emily Bostock was going to disappear into Swallow Woods tonight. That’s what history said: a green mark against her name in the parish records, one of many marks he and Amy and the Doctor had found leading back through time. Rory’s job tonight was to follow Emily, not to lead her; to stay close, to find out where she was going and where she had gone – and perhaps, that way, to save her.

Amy watched on the monitor as Rory got his bearings. Then the TARDIS dematerialised, and she could see nothing beyond the formless, timeless Vortex. ‘He will be all right, won’t he? Doctor?’

‘Hmm?’ The Doctor was busy tinkering with another small bronze triangular device, exactly the same as the one he had just given Rory.

‘Rory. He’ll be all right, won’t he?’

‘Of course he’ll be all right. Rory’s a trooper. Trooper Rory. Solid as a rock – and not one of those porous rocks that lets water through. Trooper Rory the non-porous rock, that’s what they call him.’

‘Those woods, though. They sound creepy. Paths moving and shifting and wandering about…’

‘It’s not going to be a walk in the park, Amy, no, but it is a perfectly normal side effect of this particular kind of interstellar drive. There can be some disorientation at first, but you soon get used to it. We know from the records that Emily disappears, which means she must find her way to the ship eventually. All Rory has to do is stick with her, and then use
this
–’ he threw the device to Amy – ‘to signal us so that we can get a fix.’

She twisted the triangular object around between her fingers. ‘Looks like a piece of—’

‘In
no
way,’ said the Doctor firmly, ‘does my superbly engineered triangular tracking technology resemble a piece of chocolate. And I certainly wouldn’t advise biting into it. It may be good for locating people stuck in spatial warps, but I doubt it’s good for your fillings.’

‘Fillings? Speak for yourself, mister! I looked after my teeth. Brushed
and
flossed. So this little hoojamaflip is really how we’re going to find Rory?’

‘When he’s found the ship, yes.’

‘And the reason we can’t land the TARDIS right in the woods is because of the temporal wotsit.’

‘On this occasion the wotsit is in fact spatial rather than temporal. Swallow Woods is… well, it’s bigger on the inside. And the word you’re looking for is warp.’

‘Warp,’ said Amy. ‘OK. I’m with you. Nearly. Run it past me again.’

‘Pass me your scarf,’ said the Doctor.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your scarf. That’s the woollen thing wrapped around your neck.’

‘Oi. Watch it.’ Amy undid her scarf and handed it over. It was a good scarf, long and thin and with cheerful bright stripes, and Amy was fond of it. ‘You’re not going to Doctor it, are you? I want it back. Undoctored.’

‘I’m not going to do anything to it. Nothing that I wouldn’t do to a scarf of my own. Now, watch and listen.’ He pulled the scarf out lengthways and held it in front of him. ‘About ten thousand years ago – give or take a few thousand years – somebody landed their exploration ship near Swallow Woods. Crash-landed, I should say. Because the ship broke down.’

‘And the AA hadn’t been invented yet.’

‘That’s right. No AA. Not for a while. Terrible time. Unspeakable. Now, the cause of the breakdown was that the ship’s propulsion unit malfunctioned.’

‘Propulsion unit. Is that Doctor for “engine”?’

‘Yes, that’s Doctor for engine. A thing that gets you from A to B.’

‘I call that a cup of tea.’

Calmly, the Doctor said, ‘I can hold on to this scarf indefinitely, you know.’

‘All right, all right! I’m listening now. Properly.’

‘Good. Now, what you must understand about space, Amy, if you haven’t worked this out already, is that it’s very big. And if you’re serious about getting from A to B, you need something considerably more complex than a nice hot cup of tea. You’re not trying to move yourself from the kitchen to the sofa. You’re trying to span the vast empty spaces that lie between the lonely distant stars. So how do you do that? In the case of our exploration ship, the propulsion unit – engine – folds pieces of space together.’

‘I’m guessing my scarf’s about to have its moment of glory.’

‘Correct.’ The Doctor folded the ends of the scarf together, so that a long loop hung down. ‘But you can see how all that space gets pushed somewhere, into a sort of pocket. When the ship broke down, the pilot dumped it in Swallow Woods, where it’s been causing havoc ever since.’ He tugged the scarf so that the loop swung backwards and forwards. ‘This is why people disappear. They’re caught in these pockets and can’t get back out.’

‘So if we took the TARDIS into the woods, it would probably get pulled into one of these pockets too. We’d be as lost as anyone else.’

‘Exactly. But what we
can
do is follow a couple of missing people from different times, triangulate back from them to work out the position of the ship, remove the broken propulsion unit, and –’ he pulled his hands apart and the scarf went straight – ‘escort anyone lost back to their own time. It’s a perfectly simple clean-up job. I only wish people wouldn’t go around fly-tipping. I’m not a cosmic bin man.’

‘Do we know where the ship came from, Doctor?’

‘I think so.’ Slowly, he began to fold the scarf. ‘All a long time ago, though. Sad story. Shouldn’t dwell on these things.’

‘Keep Buggering On, like Winston said, eh?’

‘Always, Pond. Always.’

Amy turned her attention back to the bronze device. ‘Tracking people through spatial wotsits. Chocolate definitely can’t do that.’

‘And then there’s the nuts and the nougat. Think of your fillings.’

‘I don’t
have
any— Oh, shut up! What do you call this locator thingie, anyway?’

‘Do you know, I hadn’t decided on a name.’ He peered at it. ‘It’s triangular and it triangulates. How about we call it a triangulator? Or is that too obvious? No, let’s keep things self-explanatory.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like your scarf back now, Amy? We’ve landed, and it’s autumn.’

Arm-in-arm, Rory and Emily walked through Swallow Woods. The day – if indeed a single day was happening around them – became warmer and sunnier, as if spring was accelerating towards summer. The birdsong grew louder and more joyous. Rory even thought he could hear the leaves unfurling, a gentle steady rising sound. He didn’t feel afraid, more awed at the strange swift transformation taking place around him; at the sense of being very close to living things and yet very far away from anything human. Except Emily, of course. She walked through the woods with her mouth open and her eyes bright, seeming to savour every moment of this rapidly passing spring.

After what might have been an hour (both their watches had long since stopped), the trees moved apart, forming a round glade. Entering, they both gasped and fell silent. It was as if they had walked into a vast cathedral, but one that was living and growing, not made of stone. The trees were huge and thick with dark green foliage; their upper branches were interwoven, joining each tree to its neighbour and thereby forming massive archways through which dark avenues leading out from the clearing could be glimpsed. The air was hushed, as if a service was about to begin in an ancient green temple.

‘Emily,’ Rory whispered. ‘Why are you humming?’

‘Humming? Wouldn’t dare! Be like whistling in church! There’s water over there, though. Must be that you can hear.’

A small pool, deep and still, lay at the heart of the clearing. They knelt side-by-side and drank thirstily. Emily splashed water over her face and hands. When the ripples settled, Rory could see their reflections, slightly distorted, and framed by the tall trees.

‘Here, what’s that?’ Emily said. Rory, investigating where she had pointed, found the remains of a campfire; a few charred sticks and some small bones left over from a lonely sort of supper.

‘I wonder who else could be here?’ Rory said.

‘Could be Harry.’

‘Harry?’

‘Harry Thompson from Brook’s Farm. Haven’t seen him in the Fox for nigh on six weeks. Word is he’s run off. His call-up was due. Poor lamb, he’s a sensitive sort. If the trees have been playing tricks on him, he’ll be scared half out of his skin.’

Rory picked up one of the burnt sticks and stirred the ashes. They were cold and dead. ‘What would you do,’ he said, ‘if we found him?’

‘What would I do? I’d come back here tomorrow with a loaf of bread and a packet of fags and whatever else he asked for. I wouldn’t send anyone out to France, not for all the tea in China. They wouldn’t send him now, anyway. He’s as good as deserted. They shoot you for that.’ She stood up, abruptly, brushing away the leaves and twigs and ashes sticking to her long skirt. In a quiet, fierce voice, she said, ‘I hope Harry’s here. I hope he’s all right. I hope he stays here as long as this terrible, evil war goes on.’