Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [1]
How simple if life were a fairy tale. A supernatural servant - Come, Puck!
Fly, Ariel! - flits in an instant to the pale moon and returns with a cool ivory salve that at one touch shrinks his wound away to the condition of never-was. There isn't even a scar. Where the pain boiled and spat there is now sweet calm, and peace fills him like light. He often imagines this. He often wonders how he can imagine something he has never, never felt.
This is part of his gentleness towards the children. He believes that they feel it. Possibly not: the private sufferings of childhood can be terrible.
But he suspects they do, that they know. It's something in their eyes. Some clarity. Some grace. They are not yet sullied.
Which is why, of course, they're so valuable. It's another example of the queer way morality appears to intrude into what he knows is simply a hard science. The peculiar innocence of childhood clearly has a special organic reality in the brain, a chemical composition that enables the electrochemical field - the energy - to manifest almost without resistance and so achieve such impressive power. A child is a near-frictionless conductor. The old Abramelean term is perfect: a child is a fabulous medium.
The magician was not, to be quite honest, certain this was true of all children - but that was a line of thought he preferred not to pursue. It was nothing to his purposes, anyway. He had no intention of working with children.
Adults, obviously, were another matter.
PART ONE
Dream Place
'Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour - but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands?'
- Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire
Chapter One
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
The Doctor didn't know he was dreaming. He thought he was lying on his back with his eyes shut, trying to figure out why he was awake. He felt as if he'd been lying here for hours, heavy-limbed yet restless, his mind skittering from one trivial thought to another. He decided to focus on something relaxing by turning his thoughts into music. Mozart. One of the horn concertos.
He said out loud, 'Why am I afraid to open my eyes?'
His words bewildered him. Then he realised they were true. Perhaps
'afraid' was too strong a word, but he definitely did not want to open his eyes. Why not? He extended his other senses out into his bedroom in the TARDIS. Everything was in order. There were no strange smells or unusual noises. The sheet lay raspily light against his skin; the room temperature was the same as always.
Open your eyes, he thought, but he didn't. His hearts continued to beat at the usual rate; his breathing didn't change. He wasn't showing any of the symptoms of fear. But that didn't matter. He didn't want to open his eyes.
'Oh, for heaven's sake,' he muttered and, just as he spoke, muffled under the sound of his voice, there was a noise. Not nearby. Far away in the corridors of the TARDIS. It was sudden and, if not loud, carrying, but he hadn't heard it clearly, he wasn't sure what -
It came again.
It sounded like a stick breaking. Only it echoed.
He opened his eyes. Blackness. He shifted his vision up and down the spectrum into what human beings called the 'nonvisual' wavelengths, but all he saw was the usual pulse and flow of the TARDIS energy, running its engines, maintaining the environment. In the 'normal' spectrum, everything was black. Nothing.
Nothing and silence.
He listened to the reassuring sound of his own breathing, still regular and calm. He listened to the deep double thump of his hearts.
Crack!
He inhaled sharply. It was nearer. And the sound wasn't a breaking stick no, something else a grinding snap like a bone cracking. How could it be so loud when it was still so far away? No. No, it wasn't loud so much as penetrating. He had felt the vibration