'I think the trees are getting thicker,' said the Doctor. 'Like the forest is trying to keep us out.'
Clara glanced around. He was right. 'Do you mean... are those trees closer together than they were before?' she said, her heart starting to pound in her chest.
The Doctor looked behind them. 'Now you mention it.'
As he said this, behind them the way they had come appeared to have closed over completely in a tangle of dead, wiry branches, blocking their retreat. It was getting darker and darker overhead.
'Uh-oh,' said Clara.
'"The best way out is always through,"' mused the Doctor. 'Do you know, I think this calls for a bit of the old you-know-what.'
Clara knew they were not imagining it, even though as they ran it felt like a panicky dream from which she could not awaken.
The trees were moving in the wind as if they were alive; they were twisting towards her; stretching out ancient gnarled fingers, trapping in her hair, clutching at her dress, ripping her clothes. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she could feel her own breath tearing at her throat.
Twisted vines shot up from nowhere, branches appeared, separating them, until she could no longer see the Doctor, could see nothing except the next gap or the next hole in the twisted, splitting wall of nightmarish rotting branches and black encroaching trees.
She was completely lost now, her mind blind to anything but the call to flee. She could not tell one way from another, had no sense of where the TARDIS or even the Doctor might be or might once have been, as the forest swelled to fill her entire world. Half of her red cloak was gone, tom off on a persistent branch, her hair had escaped its bun and had fallen all round her face, and still she ran on.
At last she saw a light glinting ahead through the black thicket of trees and the heavy grey of the sky, and she pounded on towards it.
'Clara!'
The Doctor was calling her, but she couldn't hear, as the blood crashed around her head and all she could feel was branches pulling at her. He snatched up her red cloak.
'Clara!'
Still he could not get through, even as he started to run towards her, confounded as to how she could be charging so hard towards it.
'Clara!' He was running at full pelt now, astonished she had not seen the danger, incredulous she had not stopped. 'Clara!!!!!!'
At the last instant, she heard him. Heard something. She turned her head - and immediately a branch shot out and knocked her to the ground. The last thing she saw was the light opening up in front of her; a huge pit of fire that was consuming the trees and heading towards them.
How had she not smelt the burning, felt the force of the licking flames, the indescribable heat? He scooped her up and glanced around the burning wood, searching for an exit, any way out. The flames were coming faster and faster. Behind him, the woods had closed up against him; the trees were now a solid wall of wood, completely entwined with each other, already starting to smoulder. To the side of the clearing too, the trees were too thick.
'Alors,' said the Doctor to himself, then, looking down at Clara's unconscious face in her arms, took a deep breath, then covered her entirely with the red cloak and picked her up. He turned up the collar of his jacket and quickly smoothed down his eyebrows. Then he blinked rapidly twice, took a deep breath, put the collar up over his mouth, and ran straight into the wall of flame.
He had taken a long run-up and stretched out his legs as far as they could go to get as much clearance on the other side as possible, and he made it. He felt his hair scorch, the smell of burning in his nostrils as he took a huge leap through the raging walls of flame, one which caught the trail of Clara's cloak. He rolled her briskly on the ground to beat out the flames, muttering briefly, 'Please don't wake up right now' as he did so, then blinked the smoke out of his eyes and looked ahead.
'Gah,' he said, as his eyes took in the horrifying vista. 'Naughty Planet Anthony, why do I think you're doing this on purpose?'
They were perched right on the edge of an impossibly vertiginous cliff, over which he had very nearly rolled them both, scree scattering below. The fire was still raging right behind them, cutting off their escape route, but the precipice was perilously high.
The Doctor went to peer over the top of it. It was so steep he had to bend his head out quite far to see the bottom of the vast mountain. Ugly grey tufts were floating beneath them; they were higher than the clouds.
At the bottom of the cliff, at least a kilometre down, was something that at first the Doctor took for a white, foaming river. As he looked closer, however, he saw that it was something - no, many things - moving. Alive. A squirming, writing mass of... something. He couldn't tell what. Beasts of some kind. They looked like impossibly large churning maggots. He arched an eyebrow and sat back, no longer able to pretend to himself that their bad luck was coincidental.
Behind him, Clara was sitting up, rubbing her head and trying to remember where she was. When she saw the Doctor, her face broke into a relieved smile.
'Oh, thank goodness,’ she said, sitting up carefully, clutching her head. 'We're safe!'
'Ye-es...' said the Doctor. He frowned and looked over to the far side of the abyss. 'I wish I'd packed a flask.'
He looked up to the other side. Slowly, out of the chilly mists on the far side, a figure was approaching, dressed in a faded cloak with the hood up. It moved slowly and seemed both human and not at the same time. The Doctor moved nearer to watch the figure approach, as Clara gradually pulled herself to her feet, looking in fear at the fire still blazing behind them.
'You're too close to the edge,' she shouted.
'My favourite spot,' said the Doctor, still concentrating hard on the opposite cliff side.
The figure stood there, and its cloak hood fell back. It was not a person; or rather, it was no longer a person. It was an empty, gleaming skull, picked and polished white, and the odd, human-esque figure beneath the cloak was also skeletal; it was made entirely of bone. A walking skeleton.
The Doctor blinked rapidly. 'Well, that's unusual,' he said.
' Unusual?’ said Clara, beside him. 'He's not a new chair.'
The Doctor ignored her, lifted up his hands to his mouth and hollered across the abyss. 'Hallo there! Nice to meet you!'
'Politeness,’ muttered Clara to herself. 'Always important to politely introduce yourself to a hideous death skeleton.'
'Who are you? I'm the Doctor, this is—'
'Don't tell him my name!' said Clara. 'What if it's Death, come to claim us? I don't want him to find me.'
'Nah,' said the Doctor. 'Death rides a skeletal horse, too. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.'
The skeleton stared at them, then lifted its bony left arm, one long white finger raw and gleaming, as if pointing at them.
It then raised its right hand, which contained a long, slim, very sharp knife. Then it leant its hand over the side of the canyon, above a grassy outcrop, and started, with delicate movements, to shave off tiny fractions of the bone. They fell onto the gorse, and formed immediately into letters. Clara winced.
'KNOW,' the letters spelled in white powder, the 'K' and the 'W' fading away with the wind, just as they'd seen inside the forest.
'Well, yes, we got that one,' said the Doctor. 'I will say, this isn't the most welcoming spot we've ever visited.'
'That's disgusting,' said Clara.
The Doctor looked along the cliff edge. To the left there was another clump of trees past were the fire had burned out, thick and dense with black, but Clara thought she saw something glinting in the twisted branches; something that made her instinctively flinch.
Ahead was the canyon, and the scorched wasteland ahead showed the skeletal figure silhouetted in the gathering dust. The other side was not far, but it was too far to jump, and the precipice was horribly steep.
'I want to go and chat to him,' said the Doctor decisively. 'I wish I could reach him on the telebone. Ha! Telebone!'
Clara gave him a look.
&n
bsp; 'Excuse me!' hollered the Doctor. 'Is there a bridge? Can we come and talk to you?'
The figure stayed completely still, then slowly turned and began walking away.
'After him,' said the Doctor. 'There has to be a way across somewhere.'
But to their right, there was nothing as the cliff sheered off. And to the left, they plunged head first into the newest copse of trees.
Clara caught sight of it again out of the comer of her eye. Just a sense of movement, a flicker she could not pin down, but that sent a cold-fingered shudder down her spine that wasn't just the chilling wind. She slowed a little.
'Hmm,' said the Doctor. 'There must be a bridge somewhere round here. Impossible physical skeletons can't fly.'
The next time the Doctor saw it too.
'Hey! There's something up those trees.'
'I was considering pretending I hadn't seen it,' said Clara, 'in the hope that it might go away.' She wrapped her arms in the remnant of the red cloak, and briefly considered putting it over her head, so she wouldn't have to look.
As they approached, Clara saw the movement more clearly: an intense, muscular writhing; brown and copper scales glinting in the half-light, great heavy coils hanging down from branches.
'Well, aren't you beautiful,’ breathed the Doctor. 'How on earth do you survive here? What do you eat?'
'Doctor!' screamed Clara.
The huge head of the enormous snake shot out with extraordinary speed, its massive jaws impossibly wide, a loud hiss of furious expelled air. The Doctor lurched back, startled, as the hideous creature missed him by inches, then retreated its massive body in preparation for a second strike, its ghastly pink maw wide apart.
'Us!' said Clara. 'It's going to eat us!'
'Extraordinary animal,' whispered the Doctor in awe. 'Pure predator.'
They were backing away when Clara heard another malevolent hiss from right behind her. She jumped. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and held it up.
'Now,' he said calmly to Clara. 'The thing about a really big snake is, much as I would hate to hurt her, it pays to be prepared, just in case you ever have to cut your way out from the inside.'
The huge head veered at them again; Clara could see more writhing in the trees around them and found herself backing towards the edge of the cliff. A rattle of scree tumbled down as her foot slipped back on the very edge. Clara was trying to do the odds in her panicking brain; would she rather tumble down a cliff side or be eaten by a snake?
The huge brown snake was rearing again, preparing for another strike, the branch was right above their head, and there was no time left now to think at all. She grasped the Doctor's coat, faintly, for comfort. But he was busy, darting right and left, the snake following.
weaving its massive body, its slitted eyes fixed on the Doctor's.
'Can it hypnotise you?' said Clara, her breath stopping in her throat.
'It can try!' said the Doctor gleefully. 'But fortunately my Parseltongue is excellent... I'll talk her out of it somehow - Aha!'
He fumbled with a setting on his sonic screwdriver, which started to vibrate in his hand, glowing a faint blue and, to Clara's utter astonishment, bravely stuck his hand straight up in the air in front of the snake's face and beamed the light into its eyes.
She waited for the creature to devour him fingers first, but instead, the snake hesitated then caught the light with its gaze. Gently, the Doctor waggled his screwdriver from side to side, and the snake followed, weaving its massive head from side to side.
'Ha!' said the Doctor. 'And also: phew!'
He slowed his arm motion down and gently moved his hand from side to side as if conducting an orchestra. As he did so, the snake slowly closed its jaws and started to undulate itself, huge shivers passing along its elongated body. Gradually, the coils relaxed and the huge long tail unfurled and drooped to the ground.
'OK,' said the Doctor in a low voice, not taking his eyes off the snake, or slowing the relentless hypnotic movement of his hand. 'We are almost certainly only going to get one shot at this.'
Clara moved quietly too. The snake's head followed the Doctor's hand, as he carefully inched around.
'Now,' he said, quickly indicating with his eyes and speaking very quietly.
'You are joking,’ said Clara.
'No,’ said the Doctor, eyes on the snake. 'Because normally my jokes are brilliant, and this, right now, would be a terrible joke, don't you think? I think I would lose my reputation for my wonderful jokes. You know, like that one about the telebone?'
'Yes, that one,’ said Clara. She looked ahead at what he was indicating. It was the ravine, the cliff's edge. And, hanging off the tree, the long, long tale of a snake, looking very like a rope.
'Won't we just pull down the snake?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'No, her instincts will make her grip on. Might hurt a bit, pulling her tail, but that can't be helped.' The hissing from the other trees grew louder and the Doctor frowned. 'They're asking what she's doing. They're getting suspicious. So, are you ready?'
'Am I ready to swing over a precipice by snake's tail?' said Clara.
'Yeah! I know, new thing!' said the Doctor gleefully.
He speeded his hand up momentarily, as the snake looked as if it was settling down to sleep, its tail waving lazily in the wind. They backed away as far as they could without coming up against one of the snake's friends in the other trees.
'1...2...3...'
Then they both ran and jumped and swung, the forward momentum carrying them forward straight out over the cliff's edge. A fierce wind blew right through them. Clara clung with one arm to the Doctor, one to the surprisingly warm, smooth body of the beast. She felt it tighten from the top, obviously clinging on to the tree and was only conscious of the Doctor shouting 'Jump!' before the snake's tail slithered out of their grasp and she felt herself thudding into the other side of the cliff, bumping her head and getting a mouthful of rock and dirt, taking the skin off her hands and knees, grazing her cheeks but clinging on; clinging on for dear life. She risked a look down then regretted it instantly, and instead concentrated on hauling herself up and over the ledge, grabbing the strong arm that reached down for her.
'You know, my old mate Tarzan used to do this all the time,’ confided the Doctor. 'He said it was vines, but we knew the truth.'
Clara wasn't listening. She had stopped short, staring straight ahead. Then she let out a sharp cry of surprise and relief.
'Clara!'
But Clara had already torn away, dashed over to the sight she was so desperate to see: the TARDIS was there, the familiar blue box that was, impossibly, standing completely by itself on the flat rocky plain this side of the abyss. Clara ran with her arms outstretched as if to embrace it.
The Doctor watched, sadly, as she reached the mirage TARDIS, as she carried on, ran through it, the fake blue light shimmering, rendering the box nothing more than the illusion it was.
He had known straight away, of course. He could recognise his own TARDIS, and he knew this wasn't it; rather a foul trick. But Clara's face, as she turned, put her hand through the blue light image, waved it around, then sank to the ground, was completely desolate and wretched.
'What?' said the Doctor, wandering over. He marched right through the fake TARDIS. 'You've gone a really weird white colour.'
'Because obviously I am having a really bad dayV Clara stood up, launched herself at him and buried her face in his jacket.
'You're all wobbly!'
'I'm shaking.’
'Really? Teeth and everything? Let me see your teeth, that's my favourite bit.'
She show’ed him her chattering mouth.
'Ha. Excellent. You can nibble your way out of trouble.'
Tenderly, he took out his handkerchief and wiped away the tiny beads of blood from her forehead. Night was falling fast on the vast inhospitable landscape and it was terribly cold.
'I thought it was quite fun, me rescuing you for a change.'
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'Well, how about I don't want anyone to be rescuing anyone?' said Clara, drawing back.
She knew she sounded sulky, but she couldn't help herself. Sometimes, when travelling with the Doctor, she felt... it was hard to explain, even to herself. It was if her true feelings were buried under so many layers that sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what was just a dream.
Clara pouted. Then she pouted again, because if you didn't make it really clear to the Doctor that you were sulking, he was simply incapable of noticing. Even now he was scanning the horizon, plotting their next course.
He turned round and finally clocked her face.
'Ah. Clara. You're... you're not happy are you?'
'Apart from the quicksand and the moving forest and the fire and the fact that I have snake on me? No. I'm great!'
There was a very long pause between them. Then finally the Doctor sighed. 'Look. The thing is...'
She could tell he was trying to be tactful, which she appreciated, because she knew he absolutely did not have the knack.
'The thing is, most people who come travelling with me...'
A faint look of weariness passed over his face.
'Most people... they love it. They love it. And I get to experience a universe I know too well; I get to experience it through their eyes, through fresh eyes. And I need that.'
Clara nodded, feeling suddenly rather tearful.
'What I mean is, I can't promise everything will be all right, I can only promise that it will be interesting. And fun, and wonderful and cool and amazing. But you have to open your eyes.'
'To the beauty of snakes,' said Clara quietly.
'The beauty of snakes,' said the Doctor, nodding his head vehemently. 'Exactly.'
Clara nodded too. But I'm not, she suddenly found herself thinking, a voice from deep within her. I'm not one of your other innocent chums, your buddies you go yomping around with, who 'love' adventures, because they have never learned the cost.
She wondered what she meant. Her head hurt suddenly.
The odd voice inside her piped up again: I have known it, it said. As deep in my bones as the skeletons who walk here: what it feels like and what it costs me, and I do not think that snakes are beautiful. Did they say they would, all those others? Did they say they would die for you and suffer for you and live life as an open wound for you? And did they? Or do they go to sleep at night safe and warm in their beds?
Doctor Who: The Triple Knife Page 5
