‘We did our best,’ Honoré said. ‘We did the best we could, with the best of intentions.’
‘That poor creature had the best of intentions, too,’ Emily countered. ‘And we know which road is littered with good intentions.’
Lechasseur felt his shoulders slump. Then he and Emily both swung round as they heard a high-pitched, electronic chiming noise. They saw Alice holding up to her ear a device that they recognised, from their recent adventure in Japan[1], as a mobile phone.
‘Mum?’ Alice was saying. ‘Look, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I was wondering if I could pop round to see you this evening. And, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a couple of friends I’d like to bring with me …’
Lechasseur grinned. ‘I don’t know,’ he reflected. ‘Maybe things aren’t going to turn out quite so bad after all.’
‘’Ere, what the hell are you lot doing there!’
Lechasseur and Emily swung round again to see, striding toward them from the direction of the nearest Boldman Exports warehouse, the elderly, uniformed figure of Dorkins, the security guard.
‘I guess some things haven’t really changed all that much, either,’ mused Lechasseur.
‘We’ll have time to think about that later,’ replied Emily. ‘Once we’re back in 1950. Can you see Dorkins’ time snake?’
‘Sure can.’
‘Okay then.’
Emily took Honoré’s hand firmly in hers, and a moment later they were both gone, leaving only the faintest trace of blue lightning lingering momentarily in the air where they had stood.
After everything they’d experienced, Alice, Joan and Tess hardly blinked an eye at this. Dorkins, however, dropped to his knees in the snow, his jaw falling opening in astonishment. ‘Bloody hell!’ he breathed. ‘They always said this place was haunted, but I never thought I’d see a pair of ghosts with my own two eyes!’
In the midst of the collapsing enclave it had built outside of time, the creature curled up and waited to die. It wanted to be angry with Emily; it wanted to hate her for tricking it and leaving it here, but it couldn’t. It understood that she had done what she thought best for the women the creature had cared for. It didn’t understand why she had refused to surrender the existence of a child, a being that wasn’t alive yet. Among the creature’s species, the unborn were an irrelevance. They became real only when they were born. But it didn’t care now. It was tired and beaten and only wanted it all to end. Time snapped back and forth, establishing timelines, discarding false time tracks and erasing that which now had never happened. And all the time, the pocket the creature had built shrank under the onslaught from time, until it closed around the creature. The pain from the waves of time beating and tearing at it was almost unbearable, and the creature felt an enormous relief when a huge swell of temporal energy crashed into the battered remains of the enclave, wiping it away and erasing it from history. And then there was darkness.
And slowly, as the creature became aware again, amazed that it was still alive, small pin-pricks of light became clear in the darkness, and it felt a familiar sensation. It was free, floating in space between worlds. Those specks of light were far off stars it could visit. Tentatively, still afraid of being repelled again, the creature reached out through time and found no obstacles barring its path. Elation coursed through its being, and the creature began to slide exultantly through time. It was free.
[1] See Time Hunter: Kitsune.
About The Authors
Claire Bartlett does not exist. She was created by Iain McLaughlin to take the flack if people hated his work. So, to be clear, she did not graduate with a teaching degree; she is not the assistant editor of Animals And You magazine and she has not co-written Doctor Who short stories and two scripts for a Doctor Who audio spin off range. So, if you meet someone claiming to be Claire Bartlett, see a doctor, you’re imagining things.
Iain McLaughlin does not exist. He is a figment of Claire Bartlett’s imagination, created on one of her less happy days, and he is, in fact, a pseudonym. So, should you see him in the bar at a convention, ignore him. He’s not really there. He has not written plays and short stories and did not write Blood And Hope, a Doctor Who novella for Telos.
Claire Bartlett would like you to know that she did breed penguins in Alaska for a year before moving on to koala-farming, while Iain McLaughlin’s claim to fame is that he cut the toenails of the Tibetan monks in Nepal.
Neither Claire Bartlett nor Iain McLaughlin actually exists. Probably. And they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to write their biographies in the pub.
* Some of the above might not be 100% accurate.
The Time Hunter Series
Echoes Page 15