Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [49]
There were other figures too, crowding into the tea room. Or perhaps they were only wall-hangings, or holograms in single neon colours: Blue Aztec, silver Sumerian. A glaring Egyptian with the head of some animal Kadiatu didn’t recognize, a camel with square ears, or a long-snouted greyhound. Different cultures and times crammed into the one place, all the gods who had lived inside the Doctor’s head.
Kadiatu imagined his dreams leaking through the cracks she had made in time, forwards, backwards, sideways. Who heard him, who dreamed his dreams? Did he only exist because so many people dreamed about him? Did they exist because they dreamed of him?
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None of these gods had been invited to the tea-party – but then, neither had she. She’d left the door open for them when she’d come trespassing in his garden.
So she shut up, tried to stay inconspicuous. At least, as inconspicuous as a six and a half foot tall black woman can be in a small chashitsu. She didn’t want the White Lady to notice her.
The Lady ran a smooth white finger along the Doctor’s scar. He tried hard not to react. ‘I came here to get away from it all,’ he said.
‘You can’t get away from me,’ said the White Lady. ‘Like a moth to the flame you’re always returning.’
Kadiatu tilted her head, trying to make out the sound outside the hut.
‘Do you remember the first time we met?’ the Lady was saying. ‘High on a rocky hillside, and you running out of the house, into the cold air.’
‘I remember. I remember watching the outsiders in the valley, with their bows and arrows . . . ’
Time put her hand on his shoulder, her butterfly flittering and landing in his hair. He smiled at the feathery touch. ‘I remember the flutterwing. I thought it was some sort of meteorological phenomenon; it took up half the sky. It was gorgeous . . . ’
‘And then?’
‘I did not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man,’ breathed the Doctor. ‘Or was it a frog?’
‘Don’t avoid the question,’ said the White Lady.
‘Don’t mind me, I’m playing for Time.’
‘Playing to win?’
‘She heals all wounds.’
‘Wounds all heels?’
‘Can’t you hear it?’ said Kadiatu. ‘Someone’s screaming.’
The white Lady lifted her head to listen. ‘That’s my song. I hear the scream, even when you make no sound.’
Kadiatu looked at the hour-glass, but the sand weighed heavily on the bottom. There was no Time left. The hut was empty but for the three of them.
‘Scream,’ said the White Lady.
She pressed a perfect hand against the Doctor’s left collarbone. He met her eyeless eyes and grabbed at her wrist, trying to wrench her palm away.
She was irresistibly pushing him back onto the matting, her fingers digging through the cloth of his jacket. The butterfly was crushed against the matting.
‘Why won’t you scream?’
He moaned through clenched teeth as something green erupted from above his collarbone. Young leaves shot up between the Lady’s white fingers. A 93
single, blood-red flower unfurled itself in her grip, its petals pulsing in time with his hearts.
‘WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE YOU SCREAM?’
Kadiatu did not want to throw up on the nice straw mats, so she bolted out of the tea-room, fingers dragging at her midriff.
She ran through a hideous green, organic chamber. A group of uniformed men and women were kicking something on the floor, something curled into a protective shape, arms thrown over its head.
She fled into a room full of surgeons, masked and gowned, one stabbing a massive scalpel into the shoulder of a draped figure on a table. The other figures carried garden implements. A nurse filled a syringe with fertiliser.
Kadiatu ran, throwing her arms over her head. She didn’t remember any of this.
She found herself stumbling over a worn hillside covered in scree, gasping as she looked up into the orange sky and saw the giant insect pitch and yaw, a long arrow shaft embedded