Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [7]
Chris turned to look down into the Castle grounds. You’d have to be out of your mind to haul yourself up to the top of the mountain and attack the place. Besides, the wall was undamaged. The fire must have been accidental.
A serious danger for the wooden buildings with their paper doors.
Behind the ruined building, he could see the TARDIS, a blue oblong standing between the barren trees. It was a long time since Chris had thought about how weird it was that all those hallways and rooms could fit inside that little box. The Doctor stopped beside his space-time machine and gave it a gentle pat. He was carrying something.
Chris climbed back down the ladder, sandals slipping a little on the rungs.
He wondered if he could hide some proper boots under the baggy trousers.
The Doctor was waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder, holding a lacquered bamboo bow taller than he was.
‘It looks so peaceful,’ said Chris.
‘It isn’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ve arrived smack in the middle of sengoku jidai, the Age of the Warring States. More than half a century of constant warfare.
The Shogunate is collapsing, the land is in fragments. Rival feudal lords are fighting tooth and nail for power.’
16
‘Oh yeah,’ said Chris. ‘And under feudalism –’
‘– it’s your count that votes.’ The Doctor handed the bow to Chris. It ought to be splintered and rotting, but it was still whole. Chris raised it and plucked the string, experimentally, listening to the deep thwack and the echoes that followed. Even the string was still good.
‘So have you been here before?’ said Chris.
‘Yes.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out an eggshaped thing the size of his fist, made out of something that wasn’t glass. A rainbow slick of colours moved across its surface, flaring to white where the little man’s fingers touched it. ‘I had thought perhaps the temporal distortion was coming from here.’
Chris said, ‘Time isn’t quite right here, is it?’
Without warning, the Doctor tossed the egg at him. Chris snatched it out of the air without thinking.
He looked at the oval shape in his palm. It fizzed like sherbet where it touched his skin. ‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘hold it with just your fingertips.’
Chris gingerly corrected his grip. Now the tingling was all in the concentration of nerve endings in his fingers. The colours swirled down as though to touch him, bleeding into white against his skin.
‘What do you feel?’ said the Doctor.
‘It’s like putting a battery on your tongue,’ said Chris.
‘Try closing your eyes.’
Chris did as he was told. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Time isn’t moving normally here.
It’s as though there’s some sort of shadow. . . but it’s left behind from a long time ago. There’s something. . . newer and stronger. Somewhere close by.’
He opened his eyes. The Doctor was smiling at him, pleased.
Chris grinned and tossed the egg at him with a flick of his wrist. The Doctor yelped and grabbed at it.
‘Somewhere below us, I think,’ said Chris. ‘Down the mountainside.’ He turned to go back to the TARDIS.
The Doctor tucked the egg back into his jacket pocket. ‘A walk in the fresh air will do us good.’ He pointed his umbrella tip at the gate.
Chris hesitated by the wall, where the flower was growing, a pink eye staring out at them. He caught the faint tang of its perfume as he reached out to pick it.
The Doctor’s hand was suddenly on his arm. ‘Don’t,’ he said.
Chris took a step back. ‘Why?’
‘It’s probably poisonous. This was never a healthy place.’
Chris followed the Doctor down the mountainside. The Time Lord followed a path that wasn’t there, effortlessly negotiating boulders and fallen trees.
17
How long had they been travelling together? It was easy to lose track of time when one day didn’t follow another. Chris knew he was somewhere around twenty-six. The Doctor was at least one thousand and three years old.
Chris smiled to himself, remembering that last birthday party. It was very difficult to surprise the Doctor, but Benny had managed it, quietly setting things up in a secluded room in the TARDIS and swearing Chris and Roz to