Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [111]
'Innocet, no. Don't end it here. You've got many lives left yet.'
I want an end, she thought. No more dark. A real end at last.
'Innocet.'
'Go and find them, Snail,' she said and pressed his hand.
175
She closed her eyes and heard him move off.
She folded away her thoughts in the dark.
The Doctor wiped his face on his soaking sleeve.
He left Innocet lying against the whitewood tree. When Badger started to follow him, he said 'No!' quietly and the machine stopped in its tracks.
'Go and get help,' he said and the brute lumbered away.
Along the passage went the Doctor. Not far now. The place was al too familiar.
He reached the door. The door to that place where he had taken refuge from the absurd mock infancy of a fully grown Gallifreyan childhood.
The children of my world would be insulted.
The place where he had first hoarded five-dimensional star charts and read Thripsted's Flora and Fauna of the Universe (Abridged for Younger Readers) and made working models of birds' wings and carved his name on the lid of his indignant desk.
They say a Gallifreyan isn't ful y grown out until he tastes his own tongue.
The place was quiet. He expected to disturb a whole flurry of echoes and memories as he pushed open the door.
But he heard only the squeaking of a hinge beetle in the wainscot.
His room was empty. Stripped of its furniture and fittings as if his own remembrance had been exorcized.
He had thought of and believed in so hard that it became reality and was sustained. It sat in the floor like a mouth.
An impossible well on the second floor.
A figure stood balanced on its edge, gazing down into the flickering depths.
'Chris,' said the Doctor.
'Can you hear them?' said the young man. 'I have to go to them.'
'Come back, Chris,' the Doctor said. 'Those thoughts are meant for me. They're not yours.'
Chris didn't look up. The glow was hitting his face, making it a mask. 'No, they're calling me.'
'What do they say?'
Chris edged away round the rim of the well. 'They're calling me. They've been waiting. They're calling the Doctor.'
The Doctor reached for him, but Chris threw himself off the edge and vanished deep into the light.
Silence.
He stared into the impossible depths of the well. He looked in vain for some way to let himself down. His fingers touched the sword cut on his hand.
He walked back along the passage, pushing through the wild branches, to where Innocet lay against the tree.
She was cold.
'Innocet?'
176
Just a shape in a wet dress. No thoughts. No dreams of renewal. Just empty and cold.
He sat on the floor in the sickly lamplight, holding her hand.
Of anything he had ever known, this was the worst.
For long moments, he absorbed the once-familiar angles of her face for a last time. Final y he leant across and gently untied the cords that held the great coil of plaited hair to her body.
'Dear Cousin, forgive me this last dishonour.' Using scissors, he cut through the braid and eased it away from her head.
No more guilt. Travel freely now.
He returned down the tangled passage to his room, unwound the coil of hair and knotted one end to a branch.
Testing his weight on the rope, he slid into the mouth of the well and started to lower himself into the depths.
The thoughts licked up like silent flames around him. As he went deeper, he saw figures clinging to the walls.
Faces he knew. Cousins he remembered. Tulgel, Chovor the Various, Farg and DeRoosifa. But their faces were twisted and gaunt. Maljamin and many-chinned Salpash, now a chinless shadow of her previous girth. Haughty Celesia and little Jobiska.
Faces burning in the hel of their own thoughts.
More and more of them. All staring their silent accusations.
Pitiful, wasted and exhausted characters with gaping eyes and mouths, gathering round him like a lynch mob of ragged scarecrows. There was no renewal here, no rebirth. Fed on spite, his Cousins were de-generating in their own bitterness.
He was grateful at least that Innocet had avoided this.
The well shaft widened into a cavern where they clustered in, jostling