Dead of Winter - James Goss [1]
Rory was about to say, ‘But I am grabbing on—’ when the entire inside of the TARDIS performed an advanced roller-coaster move. The room spun like a washing machine, in a tumble of brass, books and alien machinery, and then stopped. Wrongly.
‘Gorgeous!’ breathed the Doctor. ‘That is one beautiful ceiling. Funny how you don’t appreciate how lovely a ceiling really is until you’re dangling twenty feet above it.’
I was holding on for dear life to a piece of TARDIS control thingy. It was seemingly made out of an old banjo. I hoped it wasn’t something important. I could already feel it snapping under my weight.
‘Why is this happening?’ I shouted.
‘Yeah!’ said Rory. I was suddenly aware how far away from me he was, wedged into the staircase.
The Doctor looked at us both seriously. ‘Can’t really tell, not at the moment.’ He was still upside down like a tweedy praying mantis, clinging to the crystal pillar, which was now rather the wrong shade of red. ‘What I can tell you is that we are definitely still crashing, and that the time rotor is getting quite hot.’ He looked at me. ‘Sorry. I don’t suppose you can reach the warp transfer coil, can you, Pond?’ He paused and repeated, louder: ‘The Warp Transfer Coil.’
‘Shout as loud as you like.’ I glared at him. ‘Still not a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘Hey-ho,’ said the Doctor, somehow managing to shrug.
Something else exploded, and the ship lurched again. You know that terrible feeling on an airplane when you hit turbulence and suddenly remember that you’re in a thin metal tube that really has very little business being miles off the ground? That! I could just see across to a large screen which showed us tumbling through the Time Vortex like ball bearings down a drain.
‘Something pretty bad’s happening nearby in the space-time continuum,’ the Doctor shouted over the noise. ‘The TARDIS is a terrible rubbernecker – like a little old lady, she can’t resist slowing down for a gawp at a car crash in the next lane. Bless.’
‘This is not slowing down,’ bellowed Rory.
‘Good point,’ agreed the Doctor, looping a leg around a stray cable. ‘Still, on the bright side it explains why whenever we land—’
‘We end up in trouble!’ I laughed.
Despite everything I was having fun. The thing about the Doctor is that you keep on forgetting there is no safety net. Just one look at him, at the excitement in his eyes, the smile on his face, at the slightly hopeless way he was trying to shin up a melting crystal and I somehow stopped worrying. Oh Doctor, I thought, I’ll never forget you. This turned out to be a bit ironic.
An old-fashioned alarm clock started ringing on the console, a little brass hammer striking a tiny bell over and over.
‘What’s that?’ yelled Rory.
‘Proximity sensor!’ whooped the Doctor, finally losing his grip on the pillar. ‘Which means—’
We crashed.
A Letter from Maria
St Christophe
4th December 1783
Dear Mother,
Oh! I am so bored and so cold. Now the summer season is over, there’s no one here to play with any more. I am feeling much better now, thank you very much, so please, when will you send for me? I do so long to be back in Paris. I miss Papa, I miss the puppies (this week I think they should be called Antony and Cleopatra – won’t that be fun?), and, of course, I miss you the MOST.
It seems ever so long since I last saw you. I bet you must have several wonderful new dresses by now. I fear mine are starting to look awful drab – the laundry here is worse than even Eloise in one of her baddest moods. So please tell me what your new dresses are like, and if we have any new horses, perhaps?
Dr Bloom’s establishment is much as it was in summer only darker and much colder. You would not like it now. You would miss the sun and it is always raining. There are draughts in every room and the fires smoke so much they make the patients cough dreadfully.
You would find the people here most dreary