• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'I don't think we should stay here.’ He got up on to his horse and tugged the reins free of the post. Ace mounted up as well. The Doctor wheeled his horse round towards the track.

'Please don't leave me here.’

They turned to look at the source of this piteous voice.

In the wide entrance of the barn stood a young girl. She was leaning against one wall as though she could hardly stand.

‘Don’t go.’

When they had found a place to sleep, away from the farm, the Doctor sorted out portions of the beef jerky that they had been given as food and they listened to the girl’s story while they ate.

‘My name is Bathsheba,’ she told them. ‘A few days ago my father sent me into the woods to gather kindling for the fire. With Dagda’s Wheel gone, the world has grown colder and we need all the heat we can produce. He said it was the only job I can do. My arm, you see, and my leg is not much better.

The Doctor and Ace had indeed seen how poorly developed the muscles in the limbs of her right side were. She had stumbled across the yard and been unable to lift herself on the Doctor’s horse.

'I went out into the wood and did my best, despite my weakness, but it takes such a long time. I lay down to rest between the roots of a tree and fell asleep. When I awoke, Arawn’s Wheel was low in the west and I realized that I had slept through a whole night. I was stiff and cold and it took me a long time to walk back to the farm. I knew that they would not be worried because they would hardly have noticed I was not there. But when I got back, they were all dead, all of them.' She started to sob. The Doctor went over and held her in his arms.

'There, there, Bathsheba, it's all over now. There's nothing more you can do about it, Bats.'

This seemed to still her tears. She looked up at him with soulful eyes.

'It's all my fault,' she said, 'because I'm wicked and ugly.'

'What do you mean?' Ace asked. 'You're not wicked or ugly.'

'What do you call this?' Bathsheba asked indicating her withered arm. 'I might as well have been born a witch. The demons smelled me and came to kill my family so that they .could take me away.'

'But they didn't, did they?' Ace pointed out. 'That proves it wasn't your fault.' Bathsheba shrugged silently but wouldn't say any more about it; she seemed to be trying to block it from her mind.

But slowly she told them more about herself, and when she discovered that the Doctor and Ace were from the world described in her book, she came close to being delighted and asked them question after question. With some encouragement, she produced the book from her pocket. It was the only thing she had rescued from her home.

‘Ah, the Bible.' The Doctor took it from her and opened the cover to look at the inscription there. 'A late eighteenth-century copy, I see.'

'You've read it?' Bathsheba seemed surprised.

'Oh yes, I even helped with one of the lines. How did it go? I think it started, "In the beginning ... ".

Something like that anyway - it may not even have been the Bible, there are a lot of things that start with, "In the beginning ... ". The Book of Rassilon for one.'

'Stop babbling, Professor,' Ace told him.

'Sorry.' He returned the book to Bathsheba. 'I think it's time we settled down for the night, don't you?'

Ace took a sleeping bag from her rucksack and the spare pack yielded a blanket and mat for Bathsheba to use. The Doctor sat down, his back against the tree they were using for shelter. Bathsheba was soon asleep, but Ace stayed awake for a time and whispered quietly to the Doctor.

'Why are the Firbolg and Fomoir trying to get into Dinorben, Professor?'

'They're afraid, Ace. Understandably perhaps – after all, the sun has vanished and demons roam the land. Sounds like it might be the end of the world to me. And the humans are afraid that if they let the others through then the men of Earth will discover the stone circle and prevent the outflow of refugees Nobody wants to know people who haven't got a home.’

'It