by Doctor Who
Mind you, she had to admit, he was throwing himself into it with vigour and positivity - and she smiled at that thought. God bless Rory.
Tom eased his arm away from Amy. 'You're thinking about him, aren't you?'
She looked at Tom in surprise. 'I'm sorry?'
'Your boyfriend. Fiancé. Whatever he is.'
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Amy opened her mouth to answer but no words came out.
'It's all right,' Tom said. 'I'm not surprised. He's very... dynamic. A city type, probably rich.'
'Not really...'
'And really clever,' Tom carried on. 'I saw the way he looked around the village, taking it all in. I may not be clever, Miss Pond, but I can spot those that are. I hope you'll be very happy.'
'Well, I hope so, too. I think.'
'But you have to get that stupid bow tie off him. Even in the countryside we think they're old-fashioned.'
'Bow... Oh my God!' Amy roared with laughter.
'You think I'm engaged to the Doctor?'
'But you said he was your fiancé...'
'Not the Doctor! Rory! I'm marrying Rory!'
Tom stared at her. For quite a long time.
Speechless. Then: 'Why?'
Amy frowned. 'Cos I love him. I think. No. Yeah, yeah, I do.'
'Rory? Not the Doctor? You're getting married to Rory?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Not. The. Doctor?'
'Nope, not the Doctor. Just friends. Mates. Pals.'
'Oh.' Tom picked a pebble up and tossed it into the brook. 'Oh,' he said again.
'Maybe we need to get back to the village,' Amy suggested, thinking the oppressive atmosphere in 108
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the village itself was preferable to the awkwardness of this conversation.
'There's something I wanted to show you first,'
Tom said. 'Just over the other side of the brook.
Mind getting your toes wet?'
'Course not,' Amy said, pulling her trainers off.
'Lead on.'
Tom jumped nimbly over the brook, but it was a fraction too wide even for him and he was a little short of the bank when he landed, but he moved with the expertise of someone used to doing this and was on the bank, shaking water off his thick boots before it had time to soak in. He gasped.
'You all right?' asked Amy.
'I... I'm not fond of water.'
Amy mock-sighed at him. 'Then why'd you bring me all this way, farmer-boy?'
'Because, annoyingly, there's no other way to get here. You take care.'
Amy took it more slowly, allowing her naked feet to be covered with the brook, feeling the moving water swill around her ankles as she gently walked through it to the other side.
Tom slipped his coat and sweater off, passing the latter to her to use as a towel.
'I'm OK,' she said, but Tom insisted, pointing out that they'd be walking on shale and twigs and stuff that would hurt her soles.
'So you'll need your pretty shoes on.'
She used the woolly sweater to dry her feet. It 109
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was a strange sensation, almost as if the wool was actually absorbing the water - her feet were dry in seconds.
'Thank you,' she said, passing the sweater back.
Tom tied it around his waist and offered her a gentlemanly hand up. 'Why thank you, kind sir,'
Amy said again, but with a slight bow and a smile.
Tom smiled for the first time in a few minutes.
'You are... unusual,' he said. 'Not like the other girls in the village.'
'Ah well, I'm more of a town girl myself,' Amy said. 'I was brought up in a village but couldn't wait to get out and about. Visiting friends. And... stuff.'
'Where did you go?'
'Oh, here and there. Somehow I always ended up back in the village, though. Funny that,' she added, more to herself. 'Until now. Now, I have this friend and he takes me all over the place.'
'That sounds like... fun,' Tom said and it briefly crossed Amy's mind that he'd had to think for a moment about the word 'fun'. Perhaps the inhabitants of Shalford Heights didn't do 'fun' in 1936.
1936.
Wow.
No matter how many places the Doctor took her (oh, and Rory) she still couldn't quite get her head around time travel as a concept.
'It's 1936,' she said out loud and then caught Tom's face. 'Whoops. Of course it is, 1936. Same as THE GLAMOUR CHASE
it was yesterday.'
Tom was still staring at her curiously.
'Oh don't mind me, sexy boy. I just ... say things sometimes. Silly things. Like dates. I like dates. I mean, I like date dates, like times and, um, dates.
Not going on dates. Because, you know, I have Rory, so dating, waaaay back in the past. Oh look, another reference to dates. The time kind. I'll be quiet now.'
Tom just nodded slowly.
'Oh and I can't stand the fruits. Dates. Horrible bitter things. With giant pips in the middle. Stones
- I mean why would you deliberately choose to eat something with stone at the centre? Especially when it tastes as bad as a date. S000, you had something you wanted to show me,' she added as fast as she could. 'Go on then, wow me.'
Quietly (nervously? If so, who could blame him), Tom led Amy into the woods and eventually to a small twisted clump of old trees, which had grown sideways rather than upright. It was a strange formation - there certainly didn't seem to be any real wind there that could cause this strange effect.
And they were an odd, but quite interesting, colour. A sort of greeny yellow that reminded her of dead things. The trees were fascinating. Almost...
'Beautiful,' Amy breathed. 'And quite amazing really. Did you find this place as a kid? Make it your den or something like that?'
Tom ignored her, reaching out to one of the tree forms and stroking its bark.
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Except, Amy realised with a start, it wasn't bark.
She wasn't immediately sure what it was, just that it wasn't tree bark. It looked like...
No.
No, that was silly.
But it did!
It looked like the trees were knitted. Out of wool.
Wool.
Like that stuff that you get from sheep.
Sheep wool.
Not all of them, she thought glancing around.
Just these ones. These strangely formed, twisted ones. Made from wool.
'What do you think, Amy Pond?'
And then Tom did something so strange that Amy suspected he wasn't really called Tom Benson at al . Because his hand seemed to unravel, changing colour as it did so, becoming a sickly greeny-yellow-like-the-tree-bark-that-wasn't-bark-much.
Unravelled! Like a ball of...
Oh.
Tom's arm was nearly gone now, flowing, thread by thread into the tree. Not round it, not over it but actually being absorbed by it. Then the whole right side of his body was going, although his head remained, balanced precariously on what ought to have been a lopsided shoulder with nothing to support it. Tom smiled at her.
'Well,' Amy said. 'That is certainly different.'
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And then the tree reached out and grabbed her, and, not for the first time since she'd begun travelling with the Doctor, Amy blacked out.
113
Chapter
7
'Tel me what you saw, Oliver. All those months ago. I need to know everything.'
Rory and Oliver Marks were round the back of the willow tree, out of sight of the Manse and its many windows. Oliver had insisted upon this, so Rory had wheeled him here. Rory was kneeling beside the wicker wheelchair, holding Oliver's hand caringly. He repeated his request, explaining:
'The Doctor, me and Amy. We want to help you. If it helps, I saw something very weird at the library.'
Oliver slowly shook his head. 'No one needs to know everything, Rory. Some things are better left locked away. Up he
re.' He tapped the side of his forehead. 'For ever.'
Rory took Oliver's hand and squeezed it gently.
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'I'm not going to try to pretend I can understand what you went through, or that I can feel it or share it. Because I can't. But I do know one thing.'
'What's that, then?'
'If you can't find a way to unlock it all, find a way to explain it to us, we have absolutely zero chance of stopping whatever it is that's going on here.'
'And this house, the whole of Shalford Heights and everyone in it will become a dim memory, blasted - quite literally - from history.' The Doctor was beside them suddenly, fingers steepled in front of his chin. 'Well, that might be an exaggeration, but then again, maybe it isn't.'
'When?' Oliver fidgeted uncomfortably. Like he knew something he wasn't telling them.
'Whenever the ball-of-wool monsters attack, I reckon,' said Rory.
Rory started to stand but Oliver wouldn't let go of his hand.
'Not them,' Oliver hissed. 'They're not the enemy.'
Rory eased his hand out of Oliver's frightened grip and stood up. He turned towards the Doctor, but Oliver grabbed his trouser leg with his right hand.
'They're coming,' announced Oliver. He had his left palms now wrapped around some of the willow branches and pulled them to his face and sniffed deeply. 'I can smell them on everything. Don't let them come back. For God's sake, don't let them 116
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come back...'
Rory tried to sound comforting. 'Why do you think that, Oliver?'
The Doctor was chewing his top lip. 'If Oliver says they're coming back, with his heightened senses, I'd risk quite a big wodge of cash that he's right. In which case, we need to know who he's talking about.' The Doctor clicked his fingers. 'Rory, wool. You said wool, he said not wool. Tell me about the wool.'
'Right. Yes. Got it. In the library, there was a lady, quite nice...'
'Oh, you dog, Rory, I thought you were a one-woman man!'
'She was 60, Doctor.'
'Oh. Sorry - carry on, nurse.'
Rory threw the Doctor a look, that said in no uncertain terms that he'd heard that one before.
'Anyway, she wasn't human, she was a big ball of wool, hanging in her office, like a hammock. Which is weird, but I'm telling you the truth.'
'Well of course you are.' The Doctor shrugged.
'Why wouldn't you be. Now, ball of wool. Aliens.
Wool.' The Doctor spun around, punching his fist against his palm, as if trying to recall something.
Then suddenly he stopped and pointed at Rory.
'Yes! Oh yes! Got it. The Weave, great race, lovely planet, fantastic barbecues.'
'Sounds dangerous.'
'Evolution, Rory. Can't set themselves on fire, 117
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that'd send Darwin into a nervous breakdown if someone evolved that stupidly. Not fond of water though, takes for ever to de-soggify themselves. So
- why are the Weave on Earth in 1936, and where are they?'
'In the library, I told you, pretending to be a librarian.'
'Did she give you a number?'
'What? Like a phone number? I told you, I wasn't trying to pick her up!'
'No, they don't have names, they have numbers.
They are like one huuuuuuge family - each homestead, each business, each starship crew, like one big family, looking out for one another because their life cycle is sort of like a Fibonacci code. Each name, a successive number, added to the last.
Literally. And each person exists to form a part of a greater whole. Remove one, and the Weave fall apart. Quite literally over time, I imagine.' 'The Doctor clapped his hands together. 'Yes, I remember now, I met a girl.'
'And I thought I was being accused of chatting them up.'
'Little girl, Rory. About 7 or 8 years old. This was about five or eight faces back ...'
Oliver stared at the Doctor.
'Don't ask,' suggested Rory. 'I can't get my head around statements like that.'
The Doctor was still going. 'Took her for a spin around the cosmos, showed her the universe, got 118
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her home in time for tea. Gave her a homing beacon.
Told her if ever she was in trouble to beep me, and I'd come get her.'
'And you think that's who was in the library?'
'Doubt it, she'd have said something to you. Did she say anything to you? About me, I mean?'
'No, all she went on about was the first Mrs Porter. Like she was trying to tell me something.
Mind you, she was a bit odd because I threw tea all over her.'
'Got her soggy. Nice one, Rory. What did I tell you about the Weave?'
'Nothing till two minutes ago.'
'Oh. Yes, OK, not your fault you got her/him/it wet.'
'Whoa,' said Rory. 'Back up. Her/him/it?'
'The Weave aren't like your species. Humans -
male, female, that's your basic range. The Weave are effectively asexual. They take on characteristics depending on their mood, what looks good aesthetically or what that particular family group want or need. When they take on another person's form, like your librarian, they copy the original but that doesn't mean that your woolly librarian was a female Weave originally.' He suddenly slapped his forehead. 'Of course. Nathaniel Porter. He must be one of them.'
Oliver Marks had been looking from one to the other, like watching a tennis match. Eventually he butted in. 'That wasn't who I saw.'
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'No,' said the Doctor. 'Life wouldn't be that simple, would it. To echo Rory earlier, tell us everything.'
'I never have,' Oliver said. 'I... I can't. I try to lock it all away, Doctor. I picture a little box in my mind, with a lock and everything and I try to put the memories in there. But it's no use. In my head. In my dreams. Always replaying, over and over again.
I think I'm going mad. No one understands.'
'Yes they do,' said Rory gently. 'Maybe not here, maybe not in 1936, but where I come from, we're beginning to. You're ill, but you're certainly not mad. It's all because of whatever you experienced in Little Cadthorpe - your brain rewired itself in those few seconds. It was shocking and awful, and because of that your mind has tried to switch off from it, bury itself. But then little triggers, smells, sights, sounds, even words can make you feel like you are experiencing it again. Like it's happening again. I'm so sorry, Oliver, but I can't stop it. But you do need to believe me, it's not your fault, and it's not a sign that you are going mad. With therapy and time, you will learn to live with it and get back to a normal life, normal routines and learn how to deal with episodes when they happen.'
'You... you understand?'
'Totally.' Rory smiled at Oliver. 'Just hang in there, and know that there are people who want to help you recover, and you will. The memories, the fears even, they won't go away. But they will become 120
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manageable, and will cease to dominate your life. I promise.'
The Doctor leant forward. 'Can I borrow my friend a minute?' he said to Oliver and then led Rory aside, so they were out of earshot.
'They don't have therapists here in 1936 that can help him, Rory. I'm sorry.'
'Don't you think I know that, Doctor? I'm not stupid. But neither is he, and if I can give him just a basic security net, a basic awareness that he's not going mad, then he might start to recover a bit of his old life by himself. I'd rather he made just a five per cent improvement than leave him like this. Just knowing what is wrong helps people cope with PTSD. Them realising that others have suffered, that people understand, it makes a huge difference.
And believe me, if I thought I had a way of helping him further, I'd stay here and do it.'
The Doctor smiled. 'Because that's why you became a nurse.'
'Well no, that was because I wanted to be a doctor to impress Amy, because of you, actually, Mr Raggedy Doctor. But once I st
arted, I realised I loved it, yeah. So I can't just see him in this state of distress and ignore it.'
'You. Are. Brilliant, Rory Williams. Utterly brilliant.' The Doctor smiled. 'My mate the medic.'
Rory felt his face flush slightly at the compliment.
'And anyway, we need to find out who it is that he believes is coming back or we'll never sort out this 121
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mess.' He paused. 'At what point did we start sorting out a mess anyway? I don't remember signing up for mess-sorting-detail, when did I agree to that?'
The Doctor laughed. 'The moment we arrived Rory, the moment we arrived.'
They crossed back to where Oliver was sat in his chair, looking at a few bits of willow branch he'd broken off.
'They wore red,' he said quietly. 'Every time I see anyone in red, I flinch. And their faces...' He stared at his new friends. 'They weren't human. I knew that immediately. No one human could do what they did to those people. To my... my Daisy.' Oliver fumbled at an inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tattered, creased photo of the woman they'd seen in the garden. He stared straight at the Doctor.
'She didn't come back to me, did she? Earlier.'
The Doctor shook his head. 'No, Oliver, it wasn't her. I'm not sure what it was because I couldn't find her in the house.'
'You said these Weave creatures could impersonate anyone,' Rory pointed out.
The Doctor frowned. 'Yeah, and therefore it doesn't fit. Daisy - forgive me, 011y - Daisy died in Little Cadthorpe in...'
'1928,' Rory said. 'I read the reports. It was a village about thirty miles away, in Leicestershire.'
'Well, the Weave need a living, breathing person to copy. It's why they are a basically OK race - even in their rare periods of wartime they never kill their 122
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prisoners because, although their abilities make them perfect spies, they need to keep the originals alive to get a regular boost of the body pattern. And memories.'
'Daisy didn't recognise me,' Oliver muttered.
'So, not a Weave copy,' Rory said.
The Doctor shrugged. 'Oliver, when she appeared, you said other things.'
'Did I?'
'Yes, trigger words. Gas. Petroleum.'