Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [17]
„In the middle ages, green was considered unlucky,‟ the Doctor said, gazing towards the leafy canopy. „The colour of witches.‟
They walked into the wood.
The Doctor seemed to have a purpose, to know where he was going. Harry just followed. Some paths were easier than others: thick with grass but still passable. Where there were brambles or nettles, though, it was harder going. The Doctor never seemed to get pricked or stung - without seeming to go out of his way he was just always where the thorns weren‟t.
Harry, on the other hand, was limping and clutching a damp hankie around painful fingers. He wished he had a trusty sword, like the prince in Sleeping Beauty. He wondered what the prince would have said if he had fought his way through the thickets to find his princess eaten by wolves on the other side.
„This is it,‟ said the Doctor suddenly. What he meant by „it‟, Harry did not know. The way in front of them was no longer passable: a mound of green tangled to the sky. „This is where she was.‟
And Harry realised he meant that this was the spot where the girl‟s body had lain, although how the Doctor knew it he couldn‟t tell. It had been a clearing, and now it was the furthest thing from a clearing possible.
„I think that supports my hypothesis,‟ said the Doctor. „It was the blood that brought the land to life. Here, where the blood was spilled, the growth is strongest.‟
„Is this a sacred spot?‟ Harry asked.
„Perhaps,‟ the Doctor said. „But perhaps we would be better to call it “unholy”.‟
„The trees haven‟t attacked us,‟ Harry said. „But they attacked George Stanton.‟
„Ah, but from what you‟ve said, the trees were hurt. George Stanton shot at them. They were retaliating - or merely defending themselves.‟
Harry shook his head. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you. But, I say, sentient trees?’
„Of course, he could have been lying,‟ the Doctor said. „A murderer, accounting for the blood on his clothing. But assuming he isn‟t - how would you explain it?‟
Harry couldn‟t put his feelings into words. He believed in so many things now - aliens, and other worlds, and travelling through time. But they were all things that - well, that could happen. There were other planets, why not things living on them? People had invented aeroplanes and toasters and television, why not, one day, a time machine? They were things in the future, forward-thinking things, things that one did not know about as of twentieth-century Earth, but yet may be out there. Were out there. But this... it seemed like magic to him, and magic was a backwards thing, a superstitious thing, a thing with no rational explanation. If the trees were aliens – sentient tree aliens from Oakus IV or Beechwood Alpha - then he would be fine. If werewolves were infected with mutating DNA brought by wolfmen of the future, or had had electronic bits implanted by an evil dictator wanting wolf-soldiers to go into battle on his behalf, then Harry would accept it instantly. But if these were trees -
ordinary trees in an English wood - with souls, and if a man had been cursed by a wolfskin, or belt, or bite, to howl at the full moon, then he just didn‟t know what to think. Or what to say.
Harry was still standing there, mouth half open, words trying to form on his tongue, when they heard the footsteps.
Someone was approaching. A village man, a man with a pitchfork? A witch, come to scatter more blood on the unholy ground?
It was neither. Harry watched with some confusion from behind a tree, as a young man - no witch, no farmer -
wandered past the erstwhile clearing. The newcomer was a short, slight young man, maybe in his late teens. He had shoulder length dark hair, soft leather boots on his feet, and a blue and white striped tunic. A leather sack hung on his back. He was, to judge by appearances, a thousand years out of date.
There was no reason why a young man from a thousand years ago should not be in a West Country wood in 1936, if one