Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods (9 page)

‘But—’

‘Lips! Sealed! Now!’

‘Sir,’ Porter said quietly, ‘it can’t do any harm.’

The three of them stood and listened, but all Galloway could hear was the steady pitter-patter of rain against the window. He felt like a fool. ‘There’s nothing,’ he said, impatiently. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘You can’t hear it?’ The young man frowned and pressed his ear back against the window. ‘I can’t be the only one who can hear it…’

Porter, unexpectedly, said, ‘I can.’

The young man swung round to face her. He stared at her as if noticing her properly for the first time. ‘Yes!
You
! You can hear it!’

He was becoming extremely excited. Carefully, Galloway put himself between the suspect and Porter.

‘You’ve lived here your whole life, haven’t you?’ the young man said. ‘Not him. Not with that accent, as Pond-like as Pond herself. But
you
,’ he pointed both his forefingers at Porter. ‘Oh I could kiss you!’ He pulled back. ‘I won’t, though, that would be weird… But you can hear it too! I’m not hearing things! Or, rather, I
am
hearing things, but not in the way that leads to awkward conversations, more awkward than usual… You! Yes! You’ve heard it your whole life, haven’t you? And I
missed
it!’

He swung back to face the window. He banged his forehead against it and the blind came crashing down on top of his head. Now he had to struggle to disentangle himself, talking all the while.

‘Oh, there’s too much noise in this day and age! With your clocks and your 24-hour rolling news and your non-stop reality shows and your CB radio transmissions…’

He managed to get out from under the blind, which slumped back glumly into its former diagonal position.

Porter and Galloway exchanged a look.
CB radio…?

‘All that blathering and chattering and texting and phoning in – no wonder I could hardly hear anything! But it’s there, isn’t it? Oh yes, it’s there. The propulsion unit, the engine, the nice hot cup of tea. Not dead. Not dead at all. Still running. All I had to do was
listen
!’

‘You’ve stopped making sense,’ said Porter. ‘What’s not dead? What’s still running?’

As she repeated his words, the young man stopped still and stared at her as if a terrible realisation had struck him. The effect was rather like lightning hitting a gangly and over-excited telegraph pole.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘but if it’s still running, then that changes things. Because it couldn’t run indefinitely. Not for thousands of years, anyway. It would need maintenance… And maintenance means someone… someone’s there… I’ve let them go off with those ridiculous triangular things, and the ship hasn’t been abandoned at all! There’s somebody there!’

‘You mean in Swallow Woods?’ said Porter. ‘Who?’ she urged. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Well, who else would it be? The pilot, of course. The ship hasn’t been abandoned! The pilot’s still here!’

People. Holding her down, stopping her getting away. Vicky struggled, but their arms were around her, unyielding, like a nightmare tangle of tree branches pressing, scratching, trapping her. She looked round desperately for a place to hide, but the woods were wintry and offered no cover. She struggled, futilely, and then realised that her captors were talking to her, shushing her, trying to calm her, saying her name.

‘Vicky, it’s OK.’ A Scottish accent. ‘Vicky, we won’t hurt you. You’re safe.’

‘My watch,’ she said, trying to make them understand. It was so important that they understood; that they knew about everything that was happening here. Perhaps if they understood, they could explain it to her. ‘My watch stopped!’

‘We know,’ said another voice; someone local. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Are you OK?’

‘No!’ Vicky said, and then burst into tears. ‘My mum’s going to kill me!’

One of them let go of her; the other person’s hold relaxed, turning into an embrace. Vicky felt herself rocked gently to and fro. ‘No she won’t,’ said the local one, a soft reassuring breath in her ear. ‘She’s going to be thrilled to see you.’

‘Bet you get a new watch out of it,’ said the other. ‘At the very least.’

Vicky couldn’t help but laugh, even through her tears. ‘I’ll be choosing my own watches in future, thanks!’

She received another hug for that.

‘Good on you, kiddo,’ said the Scottish voice. ‘I’m Amy, by the way. And this is Jess.’

Rubbing her eyes, Vicky took a proper look at her erstwhile captors. Two young women: one very tall and with amazing long red hair; the other shorter and with serious glasses that Vicky bet could make her look impressively stern if she put her mind to it. But she was the one with her arms round Vicky, the one who had spoken so softly. They both wore expressions of real concern. Vicky started to feel better.

They sat her down under one of the trees. Amy went to get her a drink of water, and then knelt down in front of her. Jess kept tight hold of her hand.

‘OK,’ Amy said. ‘Why don’t you tell us what happened. And don’t worry if it sounds like rubbish. We’ll believe you.’

Again Vicky showed them her watch. It still showed five to ten, as it had been for, for… however long she had been wandering around here – hours, days, weeks – she had no idea now. ‘It was like it was stuck. I couldn’t get it to start again!’

Jess looked down at her own watch, then shook it, and lifted it up to her ear. ‘Snap,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

‘So I missed the last bus. Decided to walk—I know! I know!’ she said, seeing them both roll their eyes. ‘I should have just asked for a lift! But it was getting late, and I didn’t want to bother Frank and Carole. I couldn’t get a signal on my phone… I took a shortcut – should have been fine, nobody comes this way… And then I fell and rolled down the hill, and the clouds came out and I couldn’t see the lights any more… Next thing I knew I was under the trees! It was so dark. I could hardly see my hand in front of me. I kept walking. The woods aren’t that big, are they? I had to reach the edge at some point. I could hear cars on the motorway, so I thought I’d better walk in that direction.’

Amy and Jess exchanged a look. ‘I’m guessing the edge of the woods never turned up,’ Amy said.

‘No. Sometimes the sound got louder and sometimes it went away. And I never got any closer…’

Jess squeezed her shoulder. ‘What happened next?’

Vicky gestured round the glade. ‘I got here… It was exactly like it is now. Winter. The trees were bare and dead. I realised that it was getting light, and I knew that was my best chance of getting out, so I didn’t stop. I left that way.’ She pointed to one of the arches formed by the trees, over to their right. ‘At least, I think it was that way. I walked along the path for a while, and I saw some daylight, and I got really excited – but when I went towards it, I ended up back here.’ She took a deep breath. ‘This next bit’s weird, really weird—’

‘Trust me,’ Amy said, ‘there’s nothing you can say that will sound weird to me.’

Vicky eyed her doubtfully, but carried on. ‘I went another way and the same thing happened. I came back here. Then I started marking the paths with pine cones, so I’d know I wasn’t going the same way twice. Eventually I’d tried them all – I
know
I had! Every single path had a pine cone next to it.’ Her voice started getting louder. ‘But how could that happen? One of them
had
to be the path that brought me here, didn’t it? How could that one lead me back, same as the rest? I don’t understand it!’

‘Shush, it’s all OK,’ said Jess. ‘We’re here now. What happened next?’

‘By this time I was really tired and it was starting to get dark again. I sat down for a while, and I fell asleep. When I woke up…’ She shook her head again. ‘You’re never going to believe this…’

‘Want to bet?’ Amy said. ‘Remember – weird is fine.’

‘Well… when I woke up, it was spring.’

Amy smiled at her. Jess just blinked.

‘OK, that is fairly weird,’ Amy agreed. ‘But, yes, that’s the time pockets. It makes perfect sense.’

‘It does
feel
weird, though,’ Jess said.

‘I thought you’d tell me I was being stupid,’ Vicky said in relief. ‘Or that I must have still been asleep. But I wasn’t. I was definitely awake. I woke up and it was spring. The leaves were green and the birds were singing, and everything smelt of rain and growing. I know I can’t have been asleep because I got up and went to the pool for a drink of water. I can’t have dreamed that, can I? Do you think I must have dreamed it?’

‘Neither of us think you were dreaming, Vicky,’ Jess said, quietly. She rubbed the girl’s arm, partly for warmth, partly for comfort. ‘Carry on.’

‘OK… So I was sitting there drinking from the pool, and then… well, what happened next was summer. It came all in a rush. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… The buds on the trees sprouted and popped open, the leaves unfurled, and then the blossom appeared and grew and then fell – it was like one of those nature films where they speed everything up… I don’t know how long it took, my watch is stuck… It got so warm I had to take my coat off. And the noise, what I thought had been the motorway, that got steadily louder. I had to put my fingers in my ears. I walked around the clearing, trying to work out where it was coming from, but it seemed to be everywhere all at once. And then…’

She stopped and took a very deep breath. She was staring over at one of the archways formed by two trees. ‘There,’ she said, pointing at the archway, ‘There was someone there.’

‘
Laura
?’ mouthed Jess to Amy, over Vicky’s head. To Vicky, she said, ‘Can you describe who it was?’

‘There’s another girl missing in Swallow Woods,’ Amy explained. ‘Do you think it could have been her? She’s a little taller than Jess, but not as tall as me; younger than us but a couple of years older than you. She was wearing a bright red coat and she’s got short black hair—’

Vicky shook her head quickly. ‘No, no – this was someone with reddish, brownish hair. And I think it was a he, not a she. I’m pretty sure of that.’

Amy’s stomach twisted. Could it have been Rory?

‘OK,’ she said, trying to sound calm so that she didn’t frighten Vicky, ‘did this person talk to you? Did they say or do anything at all?’ She would know at once if it was Rory, probably from the gabbling.

But Vicky had closed her eyes, and had started to tremble. Clearly the memory of this person frightened her in some way – but the only person Rory had a chance of frightening was himself.

‘He didn’t say anything,’ Vicky said. ‘He stood under one of the tree arches and he beckoned to me to follow. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, not in a million years!’

‘Good for you,’ said Jess.

‘It was a close thing, though. I don’t know what he was doing, but I felt like I had to follow him. The noise had got really loud now, maybe that was something to do with it, because it was like a magnet was pulling at me, trying to make me go through one of the arches. I wasn’t going to follow a stranger anywhere, but I felt like I should run away – away through one of the other arches. But I didn’t fancy that much, either. So I climbed a tree and I put my headphones on and I sang along—’

‘Oh, good thinking!’ Amy said.

‘—and eventually the leaves started going red and gold, and then it was winter again. But that was even worse in a way. Because everything was dead, and there weren’t any birds. I couldn’t even hear the throbbing noise. There was nothing. I just wanted to go home!’ She started to cry. ‘I really, really want to go home! Mum’s going to kill me—’

‘No. Really, that isn’t going to happen,’ Jess promised.

‘You’re in luck, kiddo,’ Amy said. ‘Everyone’s going to be over the moon to see you. But next time – stick to the path. Better still, call a taxi or stay the night, OK?’

As Jess explained to Vicky how she and Amy had got there, Amy walked slowly around the clearing, one hand brushing along the circle of trees. At each gap between them, she paused to peer through, trying to decide which way would be best. The mist had begun to dissipate, but each of the paths leading out from the clearing rose slightly and then fell away, making it difficult to see what lay beyond. Vicky may have been mistaken, too tired and too distressed to see that she was following the same paths over and over – but what if she was right? What if by some unlucky concatenation of space-time pockets, all these paths did come back here? They could soon exhaust themselves, walking round and round in circles, and that wouldn’t leave them in a fit state to deal with whoever it was that Vicky had seen. Perhaps it was better simply to stay here in the clearing. At some point the Doctor was bound to turn up…

Based on previous experience, however, Amy knew that could take anything up to twelve years. Besides – sitting around and waiting? Hardly her style. The Doctor didn’t travel with people who sat around waiting for him to come and save them, did he? He travelled with people who made a choice about what to do, then went off and did it. Didn’t he?

And what would happen to the town while she was sitting twiddling her thumbs? She couldn’t rely on the Doctor being free in time – which put him in danger too. She couldn’t just push the button on the triangulator. She had to get to the ship first, or the TARDIS would be lost in the woods too. And of course, there would be no help from Rory – wherever he was, he was clearly having trouble of his own. Amy was going to have to deal with her own problems and (she glanced over at Vicky and Jess) other responsibilities. Things weren’t too bad, though. There was no sign, for example, of anything happening that might cause a devastating flood. On the other hand, what if whatever she decided to do next
was
the cause…?

Amy shook her herself. You couldn’t think that way. You’d end up sitting in a tree watching the water lap around your ankles if you thought that way. You had to act.

‘Right,’ she said, turning round to face the others. ‘I’m not thrilled with any of our options right now, but I think probably the worst one is to sit here and wait for the woods to flood. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Jess said.

‘Flood?’ Vicky sounded shaky again.

‘Yeah. Best not to worry about that right now.’