Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [2]
But it did.
The TARDIS landed. Sarah hadn‟t been able to keep still while the Doctor attempted to plot a course, taking her hat off, putting it on again, taking it off, twisting the brim round and round. She‟d offered a dozen suggestions, but of course the Doctor hadn‟t taken notice of any of them. He thought he was able to track down the TARDIS‟s unscheduled stop -
well, more or less. He hadn‟t said the „more or less‟, but Sarah had inferred it. It hadn‟t been far from their actual destination, as far as he could tell - maybe three hundred miles and forty or fifty years out.
Now they were here. She hoped.
Sarah looked at the scanner, and her heart sank. The sun was shining, and where there had been the bare branches of winter, now there were the heavy blossom-laden boughs of spring.
„This isn‟t the place. Well, it could be it, but the time‟s wrong.‟
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
„The trees were bare; it was winter. Now it must be spring or summer, look at it.‟
She peered at the screen, frowning as she tried to remember that brief glance. No, no, I think it is the right place. It‟s hard to tell, it looked different in the dark. That tree stump was there, I think, and that holly bush... yes. So right space but wrong time.‟
The Doctor tossed a scarf end over his shoulder and opened the doors.
„Aren‟t we going to try again?‟
He looked pityingly at her. „I need to find out where we are!
And when. If I can find out why the TARDIS went off course, I might be able to get a bit closer.‟
Sarah tried again. „Shouldn‟t you at least change?‟ she said, pointing at his very obvious tartan accessories. „Three hundred miles from Scotland, you said. You‟ll stand out a bit.‟
Of course, he normally stood out, whatever. That height, that hair, that grin, that ridiculous long scarf. But strangely, she didn‟t really notice all that any more.
But the Doctor was already out of the door. „What‟s more important,‟ he called back, „my hat or Harry Sullivan?‟
She hurried after him.
It took Sarah a while to notice, but the wood was... wrong.
These days she was a town girl through and through, and the difference in seasons meant little other than short sleeves or long sleeves, coat or no coat. And despite memories of childhood, stuffing herself with a local farm‟s strawberries for three days solid because you knew that was all you‟d see of them until next year, as an adult she was perfectly aware that all year round you could get fruit and flowers and other growing things from greenhouses, or other countries - or in the case of fruit and vegetables, in tins - so she didn‟t really take much notice of what was supposed to grow when. But whatever the supermarkets pretended, she was well aware that everything had its season. You got juicy home-grown English strawberries in the summer, and plums in the autumn, and she was fairly certain that daffodils and crocuses were spring and snowdrops were winter. She knew that you didn‟t get everything at once. But here there were bluebells and cowslips and daffodils and the trees were covered in beautiful white blossom, with fluffy catkins dangling here and there like lambs‟ tails. This meant spring.
But there were also poppies and foxgloves, and most telling of all, bramble bushes heavy with purple fruit. And her breath hung in the air as she shivered with the chill of winter.
It was as if all the bulbs that lay dormant under the woodland floor had woken on the same day, and vied to be the first to push their shoots above the ground.
There were petals scattered on the ground, blue and brown and white, just visible in the weak sunlight that drifted through the blooming branches. But as she stooped to look she saw they weren‟t petals from some multihued flower but the wings of dead butterflies, fallen from opened chrysalides.
She drew in a breath, sharply, and the cold stung her throat.
The Doctor knelt beside her. „Born too soon,‟ he said.
Fragile things, butterflies.‟
She wanted to know what had gone wrong with nature, but he didn‟t tell her. Perhaps he was too preoccupied,