Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [36]
But she knew blackness was behind and all around her, everywhere except where she looked. She knew it was overtaking her, gradually wrapping itself round her and slowly closing her in. She felt cold, and chilly whispers of air touched her skin and made her shiver. Her heart was pounding and she was finding it hard to breathe. Little swirls of wind stirred dead leaves and dust around her.
Leela knew certain predators could make themselves invisible and use their invisibility to make the fear of death almost worse than death itself.
She closed her eyes. She had been taught that when a threat was invisible, sight could be a distraction and a danger. She took several slow, deep breaths and tried to blank her mind. One of the earliest lessons of her training was to recognise and control the physical symptoms of panic, and then identify the reasons for it. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. Slowly her breathing became easier and she felt her heartbeat slowing down. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. Ignoring everything she had seen, or thought she had seen, she concentrated on her other senses. She listened: but there was no particular sound, nothing you would not expect in a place such as this. Even if a predator was invisible it could not move without making some small noise which did not fit the general pattern; but there was nothing. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know.
She sniffed the air. She smelled vegetation, damp and rotting, live and growing, dry and blowing. There was nothing recently crushed or torn: nothing to suggest immediate danger. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. She turned her face slightly, feeling the air. You could not feel darkness but you could feel a change in temperature, you could feel a shift in the way the air was moving. She tried to keep what she had seen out of her mind: not to use what her eyes had given her while she continued building the picture of what was around her. Was it especially cold? Was there really a wind? Yes, she decided, there was some small stirring in the air. But it was not chillingly cold and it was not out of the ordinary. A flow of air could be expected to break and swirl in a place like this. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. What she knew was that in her panic she had reacted to small things and exaggerated their effects. She was back in control now. The question that remained to be answered was why had she panicked? There was no reason she could think of. She set the question aside for the moment. Perhaps she would be able to answer it when she knew more about these predators and how they hunted.
Leela opened her eyes. The strange darkness had receded. There were still hints of it, wisps of fear, glimpsed at the very edges of her sight. Mist, smoke, shadows: it could be any of them she told herself, or all of them.
Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. She stepped carefully across the thorny vines that crisscrossed the ground and concentrated on finding the path she and the Doctor had taken when they set out. Soft-footed, she moved diagonally back and forth through the fringe of the wood, knowing that the pattern of search would cut their original trail and that she would recognise when and where it did. She wanted to approach the TARDIS from a different direction. If she accidentally walked part of the same trail as before it would give the predators a dangerous advantage.
Know your ground or end up buried in it. So many stupidly obvious rules her warrior-trainers had required her to learn by heart and recite back to them whenever they instructed, she thought. Breathe deep and slow, examine what you know. Know your ground or end up buried in it.
Predators