Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [3]
„No one‟s walked through here for months,‟ she called to him, as he began forcing his way through the overgrown brambles, seemingly careless of their tearing at his coat and trousers. „All the paths are overgrown.‟
Then she realised that if nature had gone wrong, that didn‟t mean a thing.
She trod more warily, but then her clothes were thinner and she didn‟t see the point in getting them torn, and her arms and legs too; it wasn‟t as if a few extra minutes in the wood now would make any difference to Harry in whatever time he was trapped in. The Doctor made it to the edge of the wood several minutes before she did. As she stumbled out, grumbling to herself about the scratches she hadn‟t been able to avoid, she realised they were next to a church. The Doctor was leaning on the gate that led to the churchyard, waiting for her for once.
Sarah wasn‟t that keen on churchyards, on the whole. Not through any extreme distaste but - well, they were full of dead people. People who had once been alive, who had been like her. Happy. Sad. Worried. Excited. Who had secret thoughts that would never be known to anyone else, ever.
And now were nothing, rotting or bones, horrible bones where there had once been a person, and you were walking on top of dead people...
So she didn‟t exactly avoid churchyards, but she wouldn‟t go out of her way to wander in one.
„Come on, let‟s find a pub or something,‟ she said, hoping to get out of the cold. „They‟ll tell us where we are and what the date is.‟
But the Doctor was opening the gate. „Nonsense!
Everything we need to know is right here.‟
„In the churchyard?‟
He pointed behind him and to the left, and Sarah spotted a noticeboard, the dark blue paint peeling in places. She trotted over to it.
„No year,‟ the Doctor called back, „but services listed for December.‟
Sarah looked at the blossoming trees. But it was cold enough for December, and the sun, now she could see it, was low in the sky. „Perhaps it‟s abandoned?‟
„Check the paper.‟
The paper was slightly weather-beaten but not discoloured; the ink wasn‟t faded. It looked quite new. The handwriting was a strong cursive script, with the broad downstrokes and narrow bars of a nibbed pen. It listed a simple timetable of services: two per Sunday, 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and one on Christmas morning. Strangely there were no other „extra‟
services - the church‟s denomination wasn‟t clear, but she would have expected at least a carol service, or Christingle, or midnight mass. But there was just the stark list of Sundays: 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, and Christmas Day, the 25th. If you knew the calendar of every year you could work out exactly when it was, Sarah thought, with a brief smile of surprise that the Doctor didn‟t have such information at his fingertips.
„OK, you‟ve sold me, it‟s December,‟ she said, trotting through the gate into the churchyard. Couldn‟t see the Doctor, though. „Doctor? Where are you?‟
He didn‟t answer. She began walking round the gravestones, not thinking about what was below her feet.
Absolutely not thinking about it.
„Some of these seem quite new. 1934, 1935. I reckon the thirties is a fairly safe bet, don‟t you, Doctor?‟ He still wasn‟t answering. „And hello, brick wall. I might as well be talking to you. How are you today?‟
„Sarah.‟
He just said it; didn‟t call for her, but it was as loud and commanding as a shout. She stumbled over a headstone as she hurried towards the voice. „Doctor? Oh, well done, Doctor. This is definitely newly dug Earth. What‟s the date?‟
He pointed at the marble grave marker. Not as newly dug as all that, then, if they‟d carved that already. But that didn‟t really tell them much. So what date was it? „1936,‟ she read.
„28th November. That would fit. So, it‟s December 1936. Just under three years till the Second World War. So, we can go back to the TARDIS now, go and find...‟
But her eyes had already wandered up the gravestone before she finished speaking, before the Doctor had stopped her with an almost compassionate, „Sarah...‟, and a lump rose into her