50 - Grimm Reality

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Grimm Reality

Simon Bucher-Jones Kelly Hale

Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd

Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

London W12 OTT

First published 2001

Original series broadcast on the BBC

Format © BBC 1963 Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of

Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton

Dedications

To my daughter Morgan, who in her identity of 'Superlady' has defeated more 'Daddy Monsters From the

Swamp', than any other superhero. With thanks to: Kelly Hale, obviously and most heartily. Watch her,

kiddies: she can write. To everyone who's helped or suggested something I've ignored. With

acknowledgements to -spot them if you can - the worlds of Grimm, Tolkein, Baum, ER Eddison and Richmal

Crompton, not necessarily in that order.

-SBJ

For Jackie, petting bumblebees in heaven

Thanks to my mother and family for always being there even when I wasn't 'all there', and to Simon, my

son, who has lived with a writer all his life, poor thing. Hello to my man in Stari Grad, Sheahan for

listening. Thanks to Bob's Harem for happily embracing whatever I'm working on and helping to make it

better, and to the advisory committee - pussycat boy Paul Dale Smith,'No Pyjamas' Henry Potts, and the

Yanks - God bless America -Jonathan Dennis and Ian Mclntire. Also Mark Rushford and Amsel Zivkovich for

the cheering. And to Women Writing Who workshop (do it again!). But mostly, thanks to the Impeccable

One.

- Kelly Hale

The tales within are all original in as much as these sorts of

tales can be, with the exception of'The Master-Maid', borrowed

in part from a Scandinavian folk tale of the same name.

Curiously, almost languidly, Anji turned the pages of the ancient untitled book she'd found in a carved

box deep in the TARDIS.

Dave had been one for pulp fiction: the smell, the faint patina of the pages. The book reminded her of

him. Before, she'd always preferred new printings. Uniform editions if possible. Clean, straight spines

arrayed across the shelves in neatness. Armies of knowledge. Facts. She'd always been the stiff one in

the family, the daughter with improving tastes. Look where that had taken her, now.

Browsing along the corridors was half a walk spent bumping into old friends, a Penguin copy of Three Men

In a Boat here, a pristine set of Stone's Justice Manual there, and half a safari into the unknown. The

Doctor's heaps of books in the honeycombed cubbyholes of the TARDIS corridors might well contain the

wisdom of the aeons - a lost work by Sophocles resting against Delia Smith's Cooking Dictionary - Book

Thirty Four:Xylocarp to Zwieback - but there was no immediate prospect of laying one's hands on a

particular vital bit of data. Why, for example, did the Doctor have five editions of Life and Likings of

a Lobster all from different public libraries? All, she noted with a frown, overdue before she was even

born. Not that that mattered to a time traveller, although it struck her as sloppy.

It was a conundrum that only a tall glass of lemonade with ice and a good book would unravel. She rested

the book on her knee, and contemplated the woodcut that opened the text.

Prologue

The Prince Mho Has Curious

The Prince rode hard through the dark corridor of the forest, the sound of his horse's hooves pounding

in his head and the sound of the wolves behind him thundering in his heart. He knew much about the

wolves of these woods, knew that if he slowed his pace or veered from his course they would take him

down in an instant, for they were relentless hunters of the faint-hearted. But his wise old uncle had

told him to stay true to his purpose, turn neither to the left nor to the right, to ride hard and fast

until he was upon the moor. The wolves would give up their chase quickly once he was within sight of his

goal. For across the moor was the Scarlet Hedge. And even the wolves were right to be daunted by that

monstrous briar.

The advice of his uncle had been freely given. The advice of the silver fox he'd rescued from the gold

and ruby cage in the chamber of his father's wife had cost him dear. For that simple act of compassion

she had banished him, made of him a wanderer, forced to go his own way in the world with naught but his

trusty mount, Falada, his sword and the clothes on his back. But in gratitude the fox had given this

counsel: 'Even if you are offered the power of life and death, take nothing until True Love offers you

her hand, for a Princess must be won, not given, and any other gift is no gift at all. Heed me well, O

Prince, or you will be unlucky.'

The Prince's boot leather had seen much travel since he'd freed the silver fox, and his thread-of-gold

cloak let in more wind than it kept out, but even so he was feeling pleased with himself. He was on the

moor now, with a blue sky overhead and the great wall of thorn in sight. And somewhere within there was

his Princess.

The Scarlet Hedge served, so his uncle said, to protect the Princess in her vulnerable sleep from casual

interlopers, hobbledehoys, and sightseers. 'Traversing it will be no mean feat, mark my words, lad.' The

Prince could see the evidence of those who had attempted it and failed, in rags and bones set out,

pinned to the giant vicious barbs the way shrikes impaled flies on blackthorn. It was the blood of these

men that had earned the hedge its scarlet name.

Dismounting, he laid the tip of one gloved finger against an outlying thorn and pushed slightly. It

sliced into his leather gauntlet easily, and he pulled back, only just preventing it from penetrating

his flesh. He could neither climb nor push his way through without being skewered like the rest.

His hand went to the pouch at his belt, to the magic gifts he had won by kindness and through good deeds

and services to the many varied creatures he'd encountered on his journey. He considered whether it was

time to call in the favours promised him, or to draw his sword and try to slash his way through. And, as

he was considering, the heavens caught fire.

High in the eastern sky to his right, a pin-point ball of light spun and twisted lazily, casting the

shadow of the hedge left and down to the edge of the moor. The ball of light was not so much falling as

drifting out of the cloudless blue of the sky.

The Prince had never seen so odd a thing as this levenbolt. The sword at his side was wrought from star

iron, plucked from the heavens by the fairy Belesia and forged by her magick. She had gifted the sword

to his father, who had, in turn, bequeathed it to him. Maybe this lightning ball was a similar prize he

could mark for later glory, after the Princess was his. Up and down was neither left nor right, so did

his uncle's warning still apply?

The fire hit the ground with a sound like a newly forged sword being quenched in ox's blood. A thick

hissing and spitting sound like no other the Prince knew, although he was curious about many things, the

arcanum of swordsmithing among them.

Shielding his eyes with his raised gauntlets, the Prince drew near the place where it had fallen. Around

it the earth had splashed up like ripples in a pond that had frozen in a pattern of ridges. At the

centre of the ripples, he could see a dark shape made indistinct by the now fading light.

A sweet smell filled the air. Was it lavender, vanilla, a nostrum or a herb? He couldn't tell. He had

expected the earth to stink of burning from the falling fire, but instead his senses were overwhelmed

with the tang of a thousand fragrances, each curiously individual and unmixed.

The shape was clearer now, a carved wooden box. A box of the same black wood as the thorn hedge, a

tracery of blood-red spirals contouring its surface. He tried to follow the pattern. A spiral. No, a

double spiral. Or perhaps an illusion, like the two faces and the goblet that a juggler had once shown

him. Maybe it was more than one shape as the perfume was more than one scent.

Open me.

The voice in his head was her sweet voice as he had heard her sing years before.

He had been a page at her father's court, educated in the traditions of chivalry, before returning to

his own country. He had never forgotten her high child's voice. When he had heard that the sleep curse

had stilled it he'd wept and sworn to free her.

You will see her free, if only you will open me.

He could see now, a catch, a dull metal clasp on the side of the box. Unadorned, practical, it lacked

the artistry of the bold design. It was purposeful. It demanded he open it.

The words of his counsellors came back to him; but there was something compelling in the way the light

licked at the box's outline.

Only if you open me will you have your heart's desires.

The clasp was old and brittle to the touch. Opening it would be easy. Easier by far than winning his way

past the scarlet hedge. It smacked of dishonour somehow; and yet wasn't every injunction to be either

obeyed or broken? Sometimes the heroes of lore won because they questioned.

Almost unbidden, and yet without the least sensation of surprise, he felt his hands opening the box, as

if it were, after all, inevitable.

And then his heart's desires came true. All of them. At once.

He kissed the Princess, and she woke / and he touched her and she woke / and he merely set foot in her

chamber and she woke as the dust stirred / and her eyes were blue / hazel / black as sloes. And her

first words were 'Oh, my Prince' / and her first words were 'You came for me' / and her first words were

'Do you remember the song I sang when you were a page in my father's keep?' / and the wedding came

swiftly / and the wedding came after three strange tasks / and the wedding came that Christmas / and

there was no high wedding for they lived together in a hut in the woods and were wed by God alone. And

they had a son / a daughter / twin sons. And / And / And&

And the Prince lay in the earth, his hand on the open box, his eyes glazed and his breath faint and

regular, and he saw everything and nothing. And the blackthorn retained its dominion.

It was half a day later before the old woman gathering firewood from the sloughed-off, oldest thorn

branches of the hedge found the Prince lying there, petals and dust blown on to his upturned, staring

eyes.

She tapped the body sharply with her blackthorn walking stick, and grunted under her breath when the

Prince didn't move. His royal status was obvious enough from his clothes, his unsoiled stockings and his

sword. She drew it from his belt and made a few trial passes, left-handed, gay as a child. The heavy

star iron moved lightly, familiarly, in her old arthritic grasp.

She saw the box at the Prince's right hand. It was a grey shape -dust draped over a skeleton of fine

bone. A spider box, all webs and promises. She kicked it away with her pointed leather shoe, and it

burst sickly. It was too much to hope that that would be an end of it; that one life alone had been

eaten.

It was all starting again and there was no defence against it, not in all the world.

Chapter One

The Cunning Forest

William Brok was a space miner. No different from any of the licensed or the freelance exotic-matter

specialists who had gone out into space on the coat tails of the second wave of colonisation. Now that

he had less than three hours to live, it was that realisation -that he had achieved nothing that hadn't

been accomplished by a dozen or more of his peers - that really weighed on him.

His old ship, Esmerelda's Dream, had betrayed him at the last, the heart of its fusion drive burning out

trying to match the velocity of a nondescript asteroid in the deep velvet night of the Hen's Tooth

Nebula. He had gambled that the mass of the passing planetesimal would have captured a layer of exotic

matter from the Nebula, coating the miniature world like pearls forming round grit. Actually he had had

only a brief glimpse of a dark and rocky ordinary surface before his ship had died. No q-balls full of

squarks, no strange matter, not even a splotch of space-born long-chain molecules, or the cold remains

of Hydrogen-3- No profit. Big loss.

The fusion engine was at the other end of the ship, a hundred metres away from the conical armoured

living space. Not far enough in the case of an accident but a psychologically important separation from

what in effect was a captive sun. It wasn't radioactive but it might as well have been - the drives were

sold as sealed units. You bought and then you bought again when the time on the warranty came up. People

who risked shipping with fusion motors out of warranty tended to vanish. William's had run out a month

ago. He had been, so he'd told himself, on the verge of a big find, a haul of antihydrogen maybe or the

mother lode: a quantum white hole. The readings from the other side of the nebula almost proved it. If

only he hadn't looked for verification first, spent the last working moments of his poor little ship

hoping to find traces on that damned rock, just because its course brought it in from extra-nebula

space. He might at least have got to see that rarest of cosmic events before dying. Instead it lay,

possibly, a mere few light years distant on the other side of the nebula from Earth.

Now he had two hours and forty-five minutes of life left. With his drive down, the oxygen plant wasn't

making new air. He had a space suit; he could reach the drive in ten minutes. Improvise a cutting torch;

get the casing open in, what, another fifteen? Leaving him two whole comfortable hours and a few, few

minutes to figure out how to restart the drive. The suit's own air maker might spin that out, but even

as he started to get his suit on he knew it was a fool's attempt.

Maybe he ought to be praying instead.

However, he set out for the fusion engine without getting down on his knees, and so, really, he had no

business being the recipient of a miracle.

The Bonaventure broached the nebula like a swimmer learning the breaststroke for the first time. Fields

of antigravitons pushed nebula matter away and out of its path, setting up a sparkling display of

burning light. Human-Captain Christina Morgenstern thought of them as wings. Her abanak colleagues

agreed the comparison was apt even though the only flying creature on their home world was a rather

ratty-looking bat with an incontinent habit of relieving itself over their broad hippopotamus-like

heads. As for the insectoid vuim, they only grumbled about not seeing the need for metaphors and got

back to the engine room. 'You see it, Captain?'

Christina's eyes squinted against the reflection on the screen, which caught them briefly, hazel and

wide, before a fresh layer of antireflectant rolled in, plating the screen.'Just, Mr Vondra. What do you

make of it?'

'A smallish human craft, Christina-Captain. Becalmed, I suppose we might say'

'Interesting. Can we get a message laser on line? How soon before we pass them, and how much energy

would it take to intercept?'

A vuim moved smoothly to answer from an adjacent console, its insect-like carapace clattering slightly.

'One of our port array lasers will be online in two minutes. We will pass in just over five if we do not

match velocities. Braking in three minutes would be risky but not impossible. The ship is moving at

approximately nine point five kilometres per second, suggestive of an attempt to match delta vee with

the asteroid moving away at two hundred and sixty degrees. The ship itself is dark, cooling in the

infrared. It may be a derelict. There's still some heat radiation from the discharge vanes at the rear

of the drive - Captain! I have a spacesuit-sized heat source near the rear of the ship, possibly a

survivor.'

Christina hesitated. A life in the void. Maybe a human life if the ship's design was any indication. Yet

stopping to investigate would waste energy and even risk their own ship. And another body would be a

drain on ship's resources. A drain on their profit margins.

She sighed.'Take us to a match, Mr Vondra'.

At worst it would cost them time and air. And maybe the little mining ship or its spacesuited figure

could pay their way somehow. She liked miners. They were hardened men. Romantic. Independent. Alone.

Gullible.

On the other side of the nebula, on a little planet so like Earth as to make Fitz feel, briefly, that it

might be Earth - again, the Doctor took a huge lungful of air as if he could breathe in the world.

'Marvellous,' he pronounced. Overhead a rooklike bird cawed in response.

Fitz shaded his eyes, watching the black shape streak across the blue sky for a moment before glancing

back at the TARDIS nestled among a dry and dusty group of spindly trees. Maybe, while the chameleon

circuit didn't actually work, it still managed to look somehow subtly not out of place - as if the

police might be expected to have a public call box in every minor woodland. That this fabulous ship,

gateway to time and space, cast a familiar spell over its faded blue woodwork still amazed him. It never

looked like anything else but it didn't stand out, either - just an ancient artefact in an old spinney

caught in the early shadows of a chilly afternoon. Overhead the sun was just a shade past the zenith.

The hill they had landed on was tufted with clumps of coarse grass and sloped gently down towards a

broad expanse of shimmering green. He could make out the grey-brown haze of a forest several miles away,

and to his right a smear, a glistening thread that might be a river.

He turned his gaze to the Doctor again, who was wearing an expression that had become something of a

defining fixture. Puzzlement. That look of half recognition, half distress, as if he'd been here before

but could not, would never, be sure.

'Marvellous,' the Doctor repeated with vigorous emphasis. He caught Fitz's eye and grinned.'Bracing,

isn't it?'

Fitz nodded, clenching his teeth and wrapping his arms around himself against a sudden gush of icy air.

'You know,' Anji said a trifle smugly from within the folds of her heavy black coat, 'there are

instruments in the TARDIS that happily offer information on the climate conditions outside.'

Fitz looked down at his grey flannel shirt, black jeans and scruffy boots. He'd been asleep when they'd

landed and had dressed in a hurry, prompted by the Doctor's enthusiastic announcement: 'We've landed

somewhere!' It was the same announcement he made nearly every time, same surprise and excitement. It

was

starting to get on Fitz's nerves -again.

Between Anji's tailored elegance and Fitz's thrown-on drab stood the Doctor, whose only concession to

the weather was probably not a concession at all - a long coat with a cape attached and a split up the

back, the kind of coat you saw cowpokes wearing in films where there was a lot of dust blowing around

Texas. The reddish brown colour was only a shade darker than he imagined the dust of Texas would be. It

wasn't buttoned of course and beneath it the Doctor's white shirt ballooned out as the wind gusted

through it.

By the Doctor's movements it was clear they were in for a brisk march, and, although this might serve to

warm Fitz up, the steely colour of the clouds rolling in made him think otherwise. 'Hold up a second,'

he called. 'I need an overcoat.'

He turned back to the copse where the TARDIS was parked and found himself blinking at a forest - a big

forest - stretching away in a curve over the hill and possibly for ever beyond it, trees so close

together he could barely glimpse the faint illusion of the ship within.

From behind him Anji whispered, 'Oh my God.' The Doctor whistled softly, a long slow note that was muted

and swallowed up by the sudden and ominous vegetation. He gulped loud enough for them to hear it. Then

said, 'Interesting.' Both his companions whirled on him, stunned.

'Interesting!'

Where the hell did it -'

'How could it -'

The Doctor was already examining one of the trees, his hand stroking the thick bark. His other hand

waved impatiently at them and they both clamped their mouths shut as he bent down to look at the roots.

'Is it real?' Anji ventured after a tense moment.

'Seems to be.'

Fitz moved closer. He could see that the roots were deep in the soil. There were patches of weaker moss

and grass in the deep shadows and where the earth was pulled in by the rapacity of the trees, but not

much of that. No sign of upheaval. Not that hundreds of trees could have thrust out of the ground in a

few seconds while their backs were turned - and with no vestige of noise whatsoever. The trees were so

closely packed together they'd need a chainsaw to cut their way through to the ship.

The Doctor seemed determined to try, however, and was even now attempting to squeeze himself between

two

of the closest trees. A smear of moss darkened the collar of his coat. His foot slipped and he skimmed

his nose on the bark. He exhaled, trying to make himself smaller, and then thrust his hand through the

crevice, followed by the rest of his arm, and finally jammed his shoulder into the narrow space between

the oaks.

'This is - this is really quite - quite a tight - Ow!' He drew back, tearing his sleeve and scraping

away flakes of bark in his haste. He shook his hand, now scratched and bloodied, and blew on a cut that

had pricked his middle finger. A droplet of startling red flew off and sat like a holly berry on a fern

frond. 'Brambles,' he explained before putting the finger in his mouth and sucking on it for a moment.

His eyes wandered over other possible options.

'I'll sidle around. It can't be this dense everywhere.'

Anji came over to Fitz. 'A forest springs up out of nowhere and he thinks he can just slide through it.'

'We've been in tighter holes than this and got back out again,' he blustered.

Anji wrapped her bright-red scarf tighter about her throat and gave his shoulder a reassuring

pat.'You're the one without a coat.' Fitz shivered again, not merely from the cold this time. The

imposing primordial trees were sucking the heat right out of him. It was the sort of forest that

reminded him of tiny children leaving foolish breadcrumb trails for the crows to gobble up. Crows very

much like those now wheeling above his head. Struck by a sudden panic, he spun back towards the open

downs, reassured by the sight of the unaltered expanse. That was when he saw the flapping paper fastened

to a birch tree standing all alone beyond the forest, straight as a lamp post, with one branch pointing

downward over the rolling grassland.

'Come on,' he shouted to Anji. 'I spy civilisation, language, papermaking, hot soup!'

'So,William, m'dear, it seems your instruments were right.' Christina ran her manicured nail down,

tracing a line on a bubble screen. "The exotic-miner's eldorado: nothing so common as a wormhole that

gives access only to a pitiful, single real-world exit point.What we've got here is a quantum white

hole, a -' her lips pursed over the words, - 'Naked singularity. A point of intersection with any

conceivable locus in any conceivable universe.'

William nodded, a hint of loss in his posture, shoulders slumping in the Trinary Corp coveralls ship's

stores had dug out for him.'I could have retired on that. Got a whale ranch on Titan; helped boss the

oceanoforming.'

'You know we had to claim salvage, Bill. I'm glad we were able to help you out, but we have shareholders

of three cultures waiting for dividends. Have you thought any more about signing up with us? We could do

with an exoticist.' She drummed her fingers on the white-hole graphic, making the screen flow and

resize. "This exceeds our hopes, already'

'Oh yeah?' Brok said. Understatement of the century. He leaned closer.'And what did you hope for,

Captain?'

'Who? Me? Personally?' The question surprised her. As if her hopes could be different from her wants.

Her first thought was the obvious answer. All of it. The whole enchilada, naturally. Same as you, Billy

boy. But instead, she thumbed the screen to 'display' and let the holograms answer for her.

The quantum white hole was in close orbit round the planet. If it could be called an orbit when its

peculiar antigravitational physics meant it was pushed towards the planet by every other body in the

universe, and repelled by the planet in an exact balance. So far the ship's sensors had traced six

bursts of energy from it and tracked them down. Anything could come from a white hole. Anything. Matter,

antimatter, information, future technologies, the flotsam and jetsam of a billion billion universes.

White holes had no causality.

'I want that. I didn't hope for it.'

'Well, I did!'

'No. You went after it. You wanted its -' she felt for a word -gifts. We all do. The abanak contingent

work as one big happy hippo family and they want their family to prosper. The vuim, well, their

problem's been on half the newscasts in the galaxy. They need funds badly: genetic medicine isn't cheap.

But you and me and my human crew? We just want. That's part of what we are. Isn't it, Bill?'

The text on the paper was printed in thick black type, maybe hand-printed, on what Fitz took to be

vellum - not that he'd ever seen vellum, but it was an odd, stiff and heavy paper with a certain lustre

to it, and if that and the content didn't cry out for vellum then he wasn't a Famous Traveller.

Coming back into sight, the Doctor waved to them and they waited while he took his time striding over.

His boots were thick with black mud and a bird seemed to have mistaken his shoulder for a traveller's

convenience.

'It's a big forest,' he said. Anji stared at him, a snide retort dancing on the tip of her tongue, but

instead she simply gestured to the notice fastened to the birch without the use of nails, staples or

sticky tape.

Fitz had rallied his insouciance in the face of shivering wonder and began to read aloud in a mixture of

cockney town crier and Donald Pleasance.

'Whosoever may, by dint of powers magickal -'he stuttered over the 'k' in 'magickal', unsure whether it

required extra emphasis -'or divers arts, be they alchemic, subtle or the blessing of true love, rescue

from and otherwise revoke the dread curse of sleep which for forty nights and days out of each forty-one

afflicts the Princess Ebonyblack, may by royal decree of her father claim her hand in marriage and one

half of the rights, lands, duties, suzerainty and demesnes within the gift of her loving father. Full

details of the pleasances and prospects, theretofore, may be obtained from the Castle Notary in

accordance with the common practice. Lockets containing a portrait of the Princess are available on

request and payment of a thaler to show purity of intent; monies returnable on completion of the quest

or return of the miniature.'

A moment of solemn silence followed, before Anji emitted a burst of laughter. 'This is just ridiculous!'

The crows acknowledged her assessment with raucous angry squawks.

Although the Doctor smiled, he didn't seem to share her reasons for amusement.'Why? Kings worry about

their daughters as much as anyone else. People offer everything they have for family sometimes.'

'Well, if half a kingdom gets given away every time there's a crisis, in a dozen generations every

farmhouse is a castle, every farmer a king. It doesn't make any kind of sense.'

'As opposed to the Acme Instant Forest?' Fitz commented.

'No. I mean, who's left to till the fields? How could they feed themselves?'

The Doctor seated himself on a tree stump, flapping his coat tails out of the way of a brown and red

ledge fungus. '"When Adam delved and Eve span who then was a gentleman?" Maybe when everyone's a

king or

queen they draw lots and merge the kingdoms all over again. Maybe it isn't that simple.'

'Obviously it isn't simple,' Anji muttered, glancing at the forest behind them. 'It's an interesting

place, I'll give it that.'

'It's an interesting cold place,' Fitz said through chattering teeth.

The Doctor slapped his thighs, a precursor to activity, though the rest of his body didn't follow

through by standing up. 'We need the services of a woodcutter. I don't suppose we could be in Texas?' he

asked hopefully. His companions blinked incomprehensibly at him for a moment. Then Anji chuckled. 'It

doesn't look like a chainsaw massacre kind of world, Doctor.'

Fitz gulped and was very glad of that.

'No,' the Doctor said. 'Just as well. I prefer a good solid axe.' He shot a look at the forest, hoping

it had heard his couched threat and sunk back into the ground. It hadn't. He blew out a noisy sigh, got

to his feet again and went to the birch tree. Plucking the vellum from the bark, he turned it over. The

other side was blank, but when he'd turned it back again there were new and different words on the page.

This time he read them aloud.

'"Goblin Market, outwith the walls. Come one, come all. Pax Emptor." I wonder which walls they mean.'

Fitz looked at the single pointing branch. 'Signpost?'

As the three travellers set off down the slope - one anticipating the wonders and delights suggested by

a Goblin Market, one determined to find a speedy resolution to the forest problem and one hoping mostly

for hot soup at the journey's end - something was stirring in the trees high above the TARDIS. The thick

trunk of an oak began to bulge and strain outwards with a brittle creaking, forming a gall of timber.

This wooden sac grew rapidly, showering the TARDIS's sloping roof with flecks of bark. When it reached

the diameter of a Santa's sack it stopped growing. A glistening oozing liquid flowed out between the

cracks, and then, with a final snap!, it broke open.

Something hairy, lean and brown pulled itself out of the pod. Something that, where it wasn't hair, was

wrinkled like an old, old man. It dropped like an ape on to the blue box beneath it. A brief impromptu

jig commenced as it felt the thrum of the alien device beneath its feet, and then, with a grunt, it

slipped to all fours.

Matted hair fell across the beacon on the box's roof as it laid its head down and listened.

Chapter Iujo The Goblin Market

Outside his cubical William Brok could hear, or imagined he could hear, the ant-scuttling of the vuim.

He'd have to get used to that. Have to get used to being called Bill, to seeing people, to stepping out

of people's way. Get used to air that didn't smell exclusively of him.

He'd been reading up on the vuim on his bedside screen. Serious folk, weird time sense, one of the few

races to consider Wagner a composer of quick, hummable, stick-in-the-mind ditties. A typical vuim

popular hit lasted upwards of eight hours. Good traders apparently. Maybe patience counted. The abanaks

he'd traded with himself. Good people, not just good traders. Trustworthy. Probably ran the

Bonaventure's public relations. They had the looks for it. No one could mistrust a friendly pink

hippopota-person.

His own kind weren't so easy for him to unfairly pigeonhole.

The quarters he'd been allocated were smaller than the living space on his ship had been. Because that

had served for every need, it had needed to be a certain size. Some miners had gone mad through under-

estimating how much space they needed; but with the rest of the Bonaventure available - command levels,

and planning decks with their swept-back consoles, meeting rooms for negotiations, and wide empty

storage bays for goods acquisition - the trade ship's designers had obviously cut sleeping space to the

minimum.

Something banged hard on the wall of his cubbyhole. Ratta-tat-tat; then a splatter of impacts. Reaching

up and grabbing the guide-rails he pulled himself down and out of the bed, hitting the door control - in

the designer approved space-saving manner -with his right boot-heel. like a typical miner he slept

clothed and with his boots on.

In the corridor a vuim was convulsing.

It was clearly in physical distress, having a seizure or something, but he had no idea how to stop a

vuim swallowing its tongue or whether they had a single air-passage that a tongue might block. He

settled for shouting,'Crewman in distress!'

The vuim resembled insects; and insects breathed through spiracles on their sides; but while he

remembered that, he hadn't a clue how to recognise a spiracle. Still calling for help, he placed a hand

on its chest and tried to feel for rising and falling lungs. Its greeny-grey skin was slightly cool and

seemed stretched over plates or overlapping scales beneath. Somewhere its body was making a rasping

sound. He stopped shouting to listen for it.

Two abanaks, chortling and hooting to each other, came around the bend at the end of the corridor and

broke into a run, their little hippopotamus legs pounding. They ran like a joke, but they covered the

ground.

From the bank of the stream Fitz and Anji watched the Doctor wade into the icy water, trousers rolled up

to the knees, trying yet again to catch the floating hat with his piece of flotsam.

'Give it up,' Fitz called, 'you're making my toes curl just watching you.' Not just my toes either, he

thought - it was brass-monkey time now. The Doctor had lent him his 'duster' but, as the name implied,

it was only designed to keep out dust.

'It's just an old hat,' Anji agreed. 'I've never been convinced by the theory that you can tell

everything about the owner from their headgear.'

'Aha,' the Doctor shouted, brandishing a bedraggled straw hat on the end of his stick. 'Now, what does

this tell us?' Anji shook her head slightly. Fitz grinned in spite of himself. Flipping the hat into his

other hand and dropping the stick, the Doctor stared at the soggy mass looking for the vast secrets it

contained. He stuck a hand inside and stretched his fingers out to fill the space. 'Average human

cranial capacity.'

"They wrote in English; Anji reminded him with an exasperated sigh.

'Yes,' the Doctor conceded. 'Vanishing and self-writing English. I'm anxious to meet them: they could

have a career in advertising.'

'Or as high flyers in the City,' Fitz added.

'Ha ha,' Anji said.

'What I mean,' the Doctor continued,'is what if we only thought we were reading English?'

'Here,' an elderly voice interrupted, 'what are you doing with my hat, young man?'

An old lady, frail in a woollen shawl, was regarding them from the far bank.

'Returning it of course!' the Doctor shouted, and began to wade across the stream towards her.

She gave him a look that the Doctor had heard described in 1940s Lancashire as 'like a smell of gas.'

'Maybe you'll do,' she said.

He waded closer and looked up at her on the high red soil of the bank. Her hands seemed too young for

her face, smooth lady's hands.

'Do for what?' he asked.

'You've got a strong back, anyone can see that, and you don't mind a bit of wet. Come here.You shall

carry me over to the other bank.'

The Doctor considered and gave her his cheekiest grin.'What's the magic word?'

As she gazed down at him, her eyes were deep hollows in the wrinkles of her face. The finger that

crooked at him, demanding he come closer still, now looked ancient, hard, not fragile bone at all but

part of a claw draped in skin. Suddenly the Doctor felt very strongly that he might be pushing things.

Maybe he didn't want to know the magic word after all, not yet.

'All right, grandam.' He tossed her the hat, which she put, still dripping, upon her head. Then he

turned and edged backwards towards the bank, bending to accommodate her. On the opposite bank he could

see Anji and Fitz watching him, so he waved, and felt happy again. For some reason he kept thinking of

Sinbad the sailor, or was it St Christopher?

A pair of bony knees dug into his ribs and her weight hit him. Surprisingly, his knees buckled slightly.

'Come on then, young man. Do you think I have all day to wait for lazy younger sons and slugabeds?'

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GrimmRealitySimonBucher-JonesKellyHalePublishedbyBBCWorldwideLtdWoodlands,80WoodLaneLondonW12OTTFirstpublished2001Copyright©SimonBucher-Jones&KellyHale2001ThemoralrightoftheauthorshasbeenassertedOriginalseriesbroadcastontheBBCFormat©BBC1963DoctorWhoandTARDISaretrademarksoftheBBCISBN0563538414Imaging...

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