Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [38]
‘Know this!’ she suddenly exclaimed, her lips pulled back, her face tight to her skull like a death mask. ‘The children shall return – and we will all be destroyed!’
And she swept over and through him like a dark angel, and Jens stumbled, then ran, into the grey heart of the fog. His screams and cries were soon swallowed up, and silence gripped the village once more.
Emerging from a void of sleep and shadow, Jude became aware of something hard and unyielding under her back, and something damp on one side of her face.
She struggled into a seated position, holding herself tight, trying to stop her teeth chattering. She was in some sort of building – the ground beneath her was as smooth and as flat as wood, but felt like iron or steel – and it was almost completely dark. And the moisture she felt on her skin was a small patch of blood, just beginning to thicken and clot.
She wasn’t in the forest any more.
Her last memory was of tugging herself free of Martha and running towards her father. Something strange was happening – she kept glimpsing a single silver corridor, and she wondered if she was nearly dying and this was the way to heaven. But she wasn’t injured, she didn’t feel unwell – and the monster was attacking her father. Compared to that awful reality, nothing else mattered.
She had darted towards him, screaming his name, oblivious to the great creature, its wings stretched out as if to cover the sky. Suddenly, everything around her changed, a new reality crashing over the old one. She was in darkness, in some sort of echoing chamber – and she was falling.
She must have hit the floor and passed out. Now she stood, trying desperately to see shapes in the darkness. Her ears strained for any sound, but they throbbed only with silence. Of her father, of the monster, of the forest, there seemed to be no trace.
Swallowing down her panic, she started to explore her enclosed environment, her feet echoing against the floor. Definitely metal of some sort. She was indoors, somewhere. And everything was very, very dark.
She walked for a few moments, hands outstretched before her. She told herself not to be scared – she wasn’t a baby, she knew that she wasn’t necessarily in danger just because she couldn’t see where she was going – but, even so, the sooner she found a lantern or a window, the better.
She took a few more steps and found a wall, hewn seemingly from the same strong, resilient metal as the floor. She pushed herself on tiptoes, stretched her arms in either direction as far as she could – nothing. The wall seemed entirely featureless and smooth.
She edged along it, still feeling her way with outstretched arms and cautious, shuffling footsteps. Suddenly she stumbled into something, about waist-height and very solid. She ran her hands across it nervously, but it seemed to be just a box, absolutely square and seemingly made of some sort of faintly warm, plant-like material. There was no obvious lid to the box, nothing else to indicate its purpose or to give her reason to examine it further. She groped further into the gloom, forcing herself to breathe slowly, batting away each fear as it came to mind. What if I don’t get out? What if I’m imprisoned forever? How can I get back to the forest? What’s happened to Dad?
‘Shh,’ she hissed, irritated at herself. ‘Let’s just find a door.’
The moment she spoke, a dim light began to seep into the room. She nervously dropped to her knees, seeking shelter behind another one of the plain boxes. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked, but there was no reply. However, the light grew a little stronger, painting everything with a dull yellow colour.
She looked around her – the room was smaller than she had thought, not much larger than her bedroom, though the ceiling was high. The light came from the ceiling; a series of lanterns, about the size of small vanity mirrors, were built into the roof. The ceiling and the walls seemed utterly featureless. Thankfully, one of the walls was studded