Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [68]
‘This –’ John tapped the Doctor on the chest – is the image. So we’ll wait for the real thing. For jingle‐jangle.’ He smiled, wringing out the tea‐towel. ‘Imagine trying to explain that to some cat in a suit. The straights are so locked into their clock they’ve forgotten about the big spirals of time. They don’t even know it’s the sun god’s birthday. December 21.’
‘The winter solstice?’ The Doctor wiped his free hand across his brow. John washed his face again with the tea‐towel. ‘I think you’re getting your mythologies muddled.’
‘Not everyone has forgotten the old religions,’ said John. ‘The sun god is reborn every year on this day. That’s why we organized the Happening for tonight, the longest night of the year. When Cris brought you here yesterday, we knew we were right. This was all meant to happen.’
‘It’s time‐permeable,’ said the Doctor suddenly. ‘That’s how it knew who I was in 1487, after we’d met in 1994. That’s how it was able to arrange this.’ He tried to sit up, but the handcuffs pulled his arm backwards. ‘Past and future are the same to it, because it – it –’
He snapped into a convulsive arch, mouth and eyes opening as an excruciating flower tried to blossom inside his chest. The bowl of water fell off the bed with a crash. With a gunshot noise, the window broke, a crazy set of lines etching themselves across the surface. The room filled with the smell of ozone, as though something electrical was burning.
Lizzie squealed. An awful grin split John’s face.
The Doctor suddenly relaxed, gulping air, blood gushing from his nose. His free hand spasmed, clutching at the wall, flakes of paint coming off under his fingernails.
‘Jingle‐jangle,’ said Lizzie, hysterically.
John got up, pushed the Doctor’s shoulders down against the bed. ‘If you keep pulling on that cuff, you’re only going to hurt yourself.’
The Doctor’s face twisted as another wave hit him, those petals pushing against his hearts, those thorns tearing at the inside of his skin. Cris had never been like this in his worst moments. John grabbed the man’s arms and held him still as he thrashed, panicking, the handcuff clanging against the metal leg of the bed. Metal sounded on metal in a desperate rhythm as he wrenched at the bond.
‘I can hear it –’ the Doctor gasped. His eyes glittered. ‘I can hear, I can hear it, this is what happened before, in Tenochtitlan, oh I remember now –’ The next paroxysm threw John backwards, yelping, his hands seared where they had been touching the Doctor.
And there was a breeze blowing now, a cold wind gushing out of nowhere, smelling of roses and bleeding, carrying the sound of clattering bells. Lizzie’s cup tipped over as the candle flared and died. The air around the bed boiled and ululated with energy. Both hippies sprang backwards, raising their arms against the outflow of power, Blue light, Blue sound.
In the maelstrom, the Doctor howled, burning, being erased, being unmade, until until
‘Unbind me,’ said Huitzilin.
John fell to his knees. Lizzie’s mouth opened and closed, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Where the Doctor had been, there was a tall man, naked except for a loincloth and a pair of sandals. A rainbow of feathers cascaded down over his face, mixed with the milky colour of his hair. He glowed like snow in moonlight.
The room was silent.
* * *
Third Slice
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
Konrad Adenauer
* * *
Chapter 11
Jingle‐Jangle Morning
* * *
i remember now
It was not unusual to see the police in St John’s Wood, not since the hippies had begun to move in. They were objects of special interest, with their conspicuousness, their vagabond lifestyles, their buying and selling of drugs.
This bright December morning more than just the police had come to the Wood. The locals peeped out of their windows, through the letter slots in their doors. How much