Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [108]
So the bird had offered her a clue. She wanted to escape? Sometimes birds wanted to escape. Sometimes birds were kept in cages. They too longed to escape. And sometimes the doors of the cages were left open. And the bird flew out.
Ace’s body was trapped. But her mind was free. Her mind was a bird flapping frantically in a cage, beating its wings against the bars. But the door of the cage was open. Warlock had opened it for her. Or perhaps the door was always open and warlock had merely revealed this fact to her. Maybe it was a fact that necessarily remained hidden during the rest of her life. After all, it was a dangerous thing, to have your mind spread its wings and leave your body like a bird leaving its cage.
So the bird had taught her a lesson. It had given her something of great power. A metaphor, an idea. It had shown her how she could escape.
And with warlock’s help she had done just that. Her mind had fled her body and flown, free.
But where to?
The bird had shown her that, too. It had led her eyes all around the barn until it had settled on its perch.
So Ace had flown out of her body. Like a bird from a cage.
Straight into another cage. A real cage this time, not an idea, not a metaphor. A cage with bars of steel. And Ace had stared out of those bars, staring through new eyes. Stretching with new muscles in a new body. She had peered out of the cage and looked back across the room and seen the oddest sight of her eventful young life.
She had seen herself. Seen a girl called Ace, strapped into a chair. Helpless. Suddenly oddly pale‐looking. It was her body in that chair but there was something wrong with it. Even from across the room she could see that.
Her body looked like a puppet with its strings cut. It gave her a strange chill to look at it. She had shivered and licked her fur in a desperate attempt to comfort herself.
Her fur?
For a moment fear had threatened to overwhelm her. But then she had turned her head and seen something else.
The others. Also trapped in their chairs. The bearded man. And the girl called…
Now, lying here in the quiet woods, breathing the sweet night air, Ace struggled to remember the girl’s name. All that came to mind was a taste. The flavour in her mouth made her stomach clench with hunger. She could taste the sea. Then there came the strong thought of soft meat in her mouth. Ace thought of discarded fishbones and…
Shell. The girl with the tattoos called Shell. And the man called Jack. Ace had stared at them, from her new vantage point. Through the bars of her cage she watched them, struggling in their chairs. Their loud human voices had called to each other excitedly. They could see that something was wrong with Ace. With her old body, that is.
‘What’s happened to Ace?’ Jack had shouted. Or maybe he had merely whispered the words. His human voice had boomed in Ace’s sensitive ears.
‘She’s gone,’ said Shell.
Jack had stared fearfully at the limp body in the chair, the staring eyes drifting slowly shut. Eyes as blank as an idiot’s. A moment earlier Ace had been staring out from behind those eyes. Now she was –
‘Gone? Bloody gone where?’
Then Ace had called out to them from her new body and they had both turned their heads to stare. Jack looked at the cat in its cage and said, ‘Something’s happening. I don’t like this.’
‘Warlock has taken Ace. Now we must follow her.’
‘Follow her where?’ His voice was edged with fear. Ace could clearly hear the rise and fall of his emotions with each syllable.
Ace howled from her cage, to show Jack the way. Jack had shouted something then, really scared now. Because the black cat was making a noise unlike anything he’d ever heard before. A prolonged howl which began to sound like words. It was as though the cat was imitating him. Except the sound the cat made sounded slightly different. Jack had yelled, ‘Follow her where?’ And the cat made three long yowling