'What
was that thing?' I asked. 'The thing you waved in front of her?'
'Oh,
just a pocket watch,' he replied. 'A little hypnotic suggestion to
help her forget what happened tonight. I don’t think a child of her
age should remember doing that,
do you? And also, I don’t want her to remember you.'
He looked at me, and
saw my dejection. 'What’s the matter, Leela?' he asked. 'Why the
long face?'
'My face is not…'
'Sad. I meant, why so
sad?'
'I failed her,' I said.
'I closed my eyes and opened them to find that she had done what I
should have done. It should have been me that slayed the Bemmoth
beast to keep the child safe. Not the other way around.'
The
Doctor laughed, loudly. I scowled at him. 'I do not see what is so
funny,' I said. 'I should
have protected her,
saved her from
death.'
'Oh,
come on Leela!' he grinned. 'That’s exactly what did happen.
You did save her from
death – just, a younger you and an older her! Hm?'
I
pondered on this for a while. 'I suppose so,' I said eventually.
'Does this sort of thing happen very often,
when travelling in the Tardis?'
'More
often than you can possibly imagine,' he replied. He opened the doors
to the Tardis,
and beckoned me in. 'Let’s go somewhere,' he said, his eyes
sparkling again. 'Somewhere really interesting,
this time.' He grinned a mischievous grin as he went inside. 'Come
along, Norman,' he said. 'I think you’ve earned the right.'
Before following him
in, I looked around one last time at the clearing, the jungle, my
home. I might never see it again. Would that be bad? I looked at the
place wistfully – but my decision had been made.
And then I heard it.
The unmistakable noise of a party of warriors from the village,
searching for a lost child. I knew what I must do. Swiftly, I ran to
the carcass of the Bemmoth beast and severed one of its heads. I
placed the trophy beside Leela’s slumbering body, and ran back into
the Tardis, slamming the doors shut behind me. And the demons
of the console made us de-materialise just as Tomas’s
father and his band came into the clearing and, to their relief and
joy, found my younger, sleeping self.
~~
I
awake to find that I am lying in my cot in the child-house, staring
up into the face of the house-mother. Out of the corner of my eye, I
can see something. I turn to look: it is the head of a Bemmoth beast!
I
sit up in shock, and pull back lest it bite me – before realising
it lacks a body. The creature is dead.
But
why is it here? Did I take the Rite? I have some vague memory of a
forest, a fleeting feeling of terror… but it is all a blank. I have
no recollection of anything since leaving the sleeping child-house a
night – a week? – ago.
I
look to the house-mother, my face a hundred questions. What has
happened? Why can I not remember?
She
smiles, and gently pushes me back down into my cot.
'Rest
now, Leela,'she says, kindly. 'Warriors need their sleep.'
written by
NIC FORD
copyright 2013
artwork by
COLIN JOHN
copyright 2013
written by
NIC FORD
copyright 2013
artwork by
COLIN JOHN
copyright 2013