Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [44]
Rose reached out and took her hand, trying to calm her down. ‘Yeah, well, things never turn out how you imagine them, do they? It’s what keeps divorce lawyers in business.’
‘And what happened then?’ asked the Doctor, more concerned about Vanessa’s story than her feelings.
Vanessa swallowed her hysteria with a few hiccups. After a couple of goes, she managed to continue. ‘Then… Then the call went dead. The caster shut down. The lights went off. I felt like I was about to be sick… and then I was here.’
The Doctor wasn’t satisfied. ‘There has to be more to it than that.’
‘Well, there isn’t!’ Vanessa insisted. ‘I didn’t have a clue what had happened. I thought… I thought I must be dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or someone was playing some elaborate trick on me. But after a few weeks I pretty much gave up on that idea.’
‘And you still don’t know how you got here?’ said Rose.
Vanessa shook her head.
‘So why do you think you might have something to do with what Ursus is up to?’
‘There’s no such thing as time travel and yet here I am, thousands of years before my birth. It’s impossible to turn people to stone and yet it’s happening here. Two impossibles…’
‘…don’t necessarily make a possible,’ the Doctor completed. ‘And anyway, time travel is perfectly possible, if far too advanced for your society.’
Rose shrugged apologetically at Vanessa. ‘But turning people to stone…’ she said.
‘Isn’t impossible either. We’re talking something extremely complex at a molecular level – not something that your average ancient Roman could have managed, true, but not impossible.’
‘So, not magic, then,’ said Rose.
‘Don’t be silly, Rose,’ said the Doctor.
‘Or petrifold regression?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘My, you have been paying attention. Nope, that takes weeks.’
‘So… is Ursus from the twenty‐fourth century too?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Gracilis has known him since he was a child.’ He suddenly jumped up. ‘Ursus! Where is he?’
Rose shrugged. ‘How should I know?’
‘He brought you here…’
‘Well, I wasn’t really paying attention at the time,’ said Rose. ‘I was a bit too busy standing very still and having pigeons pooing on me.’
The Doctor waved for her to be quiet. ‘Yes, yes, I know… But he wouldn’t have brought you here for no reason, just left you… And I was right behind, so I’d have seen him if he went back towards the road…’ He was pacing about now, examining the ground. ‘Footprints!’ he cried after a moment. ‘Come on!’
Rose scrambled to follow him as he set off, with Vanessa on her heels.
‘Couldn’t get the cart any further, that’s why he left you here,’ the Doctor said after a while.
‘You don’t say,’ said Rose. ‘What do you think stopped him?’
They were weaving between trees, picking their way along paths that were barely there – or not there at all. She tried to clear the path with her spear, but brambles still tore harshly at her skin and clothes. The Doctor, spearless, still somehow managed to avoid them all.
‘I’m really not dressed for this,’ Rose muttered, thinking longingly of jeans and sturdy boots. ‘Ow!’ she exclaimed, as a branch stuck in her once‐elaborately styled hair. She wished she’d kept Minerva’s helmet on. ‘Still, on the plus side, no one’s going to ask me to do any modelling looking like this. Or be a Minerva‐gram either.’
The Doctor carried on with his own train of thought. ‘He was probably planning to come back for you.’
‘If he could find his way back,’ said Rose. ‘Because I’m not sure I’m going to be able to.’ They seemed to have been following the trail for miles, even though they probably hadn’t been, and as far as she could see all the trees looked pretty much alike.
‘But where was he going?’ asked Vanessa.
The Doctor – who didn’t