Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [39]
The shadow was still sliding over the ground towards the empty hollow.
Leela resisted the urge to move with it so that she could get a closer look at what was happening. Some of the featureless darkness had already passed beyond the small line of bushy trees and she thought she could see the dip in the ground filling up with blackness. She shivered. Why was she shivering again? She closed her eyes. It was colder. There was a breeze now, too. She opened her eyes and glanced at the nearest tree. It was still.
She could feel the air moving but the tree could not. So she must be imagining it. Unless she was imagining the tree. Perhaps it was bent and lashing about in a storm of wind. She closed her eyes and checked again.
It definitely felt as though air was being sucked past her towards the hollow.
Darkness that flowed and a wind that did not. The TARDIS gone, stranding her and the Doctor. What was this place? The Doctor had ignored her feelings but she had been uncomfortable here from the moment they arrived. Though he would never admit it, this proved that she was right and he was wrong. People and animals were afraid to be here. The whole wood was full of fear. She was not afraid. She was Leela of the Sevateem and she had fought stronger adversaries and faced worse predators. She froze.
Predators. She had forgotten the predators she had set out to stalk. This was the trap she had been expecting. She had not been paying attention and she had fallen into the trap she had taken so much trouble to avoid.
Fear thrilled through her body, her nostrils and eyes widened, her mouth went dry and her breath caught in her throat. She badly wanted to turn and run. Predators prey, prey run away. She stood her ground and waited to react to the attack.
In the hollow the dark began to heap up, gradually forming itself into a block of black nothing. Leela felt herself drawn by the dizzying blankness of it. She felt herself teetering forward at the edge of an unimaginable drop, pushed on by the rush of cold behind her.
She took a step towards the hollow, and then another and another. She struggled to stop. This was the attack, she told herself. This was what she must react to. This was what she must fight. This was what the Tesh were doing. They thought she was less than they were. They thought she could not understand. She was Leela of the Sevateem and that meant she was stupid. The machine that had been God had left her in ignorance.
Ignorance was why her father had died. Ignorance was what the Doctor had brought her to and left her to face alone. This was her loss and her pointlessness.
She tried to turn away from the blackness but she found herself unable to balance. She fell clumsily. The spiny ground-vines caught her skin, making tiny, stinging tears and cuts. She was abruptly furious at the pain. She kicked at the undergrowth and slashed at the earth with her knife. Helpless rage overwhelmed her.
The cold intensified and she was pulled towards the hollow. Nothing around her was moving at all. Everything seemed frozen in a moment of time which she was not a part of. Everything was moving except for her: everything was motionless except for her. Both were happening in the same moment. She was unconnected to the world and in the same instant uncontrolled within it. She alone was drifting and dragging in the unreal wind with nothing around her moving, and at the same time everything was moving normally while she was lost, alone, ignored. The TARDIS appeared as if to torment her and then it vanished again. Another rush of mindless fury raged through her.
She was bumping across the ground