Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [102]
‘I really expected you to head back to Hekison with everybody,’ said Chris.
‘You enjoyed all that fighting. Coming back to life all the time. Like a video-game hero!’
Kame wondered vaguely what he was talking about. ‘The thing, young Kuriisu-san, is that now that Kannon is no longer Kannon – and I do not pretend to fully understand all that has occurred – but the thing is that, the next time I die, I will not return.’
He put a hand to his breast. ‘At my age, Kuriisu-san, it is time to reconsider one’s life. For many years I have lived as best I could by bushido, the strict code of the warrior. Now it is time I went beyond that and attempted to penetrate the truth of reality.’ He swallowed his sake. ‘If I fail to achieve enlightenment this evening, I shall turn myself over to the tender mercies of Kadoguchiroshi.’
‘Hair of the dog, eh?’ Chris grinned. ‘I’ll drink to that!’ He leant over the smoky firepit, and dropped a crumpled piece of paper into it. The flames flared up for an instant, and the paper was gone.
‘And you, Kuriisu-san?’ Kame glanced around at the rabble in the inn. They had walked a long way into town, and he wanted to be sure they got back to the monastery with their skins and their purses intact. ‘What of your quest to discover what lies beyond death? I doubt my poor descriptions have left you any the wiser.’
‘Oh,’ said Chris, waving his cup around and splashing sake down his sleeve,
‘I’m not worried about any of that any more. It’s all resolved. I have been,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘de-angsted.’
Kame nodded. ‘You struck me as more of a straightforward, courageous fellow than a philosopher.’
‘Oh. Thanks. Hey?’
‘This “original nature” of which Roshi has spoken. . . it is not studying sutras or debating points of scripture. It is behaving purely and simply as oneself It is only when you stop to worry that you become burdened, unable to act.’
209
‘That’s deep.’ Kame bowed. Chris raised his sake cup. ‘Here’s half a cat in your eye.’
So Christopher Cwej went up the mountain in the morning, squinting in the sunlight glinting off the fresh snow. He carried nothing with him. He thought about nothing as he climbed up towards the Castle, just looked at the snow and the trees and the leaves and stones, and smiled to himself from time to time.
The TARDIS wasn’t back yet. There was a square indentation in the snow, freshly dusted by last night’s small fall. Chris sat down beside it, on a fallen beam.
The shrine, the single carved stone meant to lock in the spirit of the vampire, was gone. Chris suspected it was somewhere about the place, probably in little pieces, but he didn’t go looking for it.
He checked again, looking into the unhappy place inside himself where Liz had been living all this time. But now, when he reached for those feelings, they were gone. It really was all resolved.
Even the weird dreams would probably stop now.
He started to whistle.
The Doctor stood with his hands resting lightly on the console as the materi-alization routine began. For a moment he thought about nothing at all, just listening to the grinding sound of the TARDIS landing as though it was music, letting his head become completely empty and be filled by that old, familiar, meaningless sound.
Then all of the thoughts and plans and memories came flooding back in.
For a moment, the Doctor felt as though his brain was too small to hold it all, as though something was going to start flowing over the top of his mind and dribble down the sides of his head.
Wouldn’t it be nice, he thought for a moment, amidst the jumbled shouting in his skull, to be a plum blossom, and just bloom without a thought?
There was the usual clunk as the TARDIS finished landing. The Doctor pulled his thoughts together and opened the doors.
A snowball hit him squarely in the face.
He yelled and knocked the powdery snow away. Another snowball sailed past as he stormed out of the door.
Chris was peeping up from behind a snow fortress. ‘Got you!