right of passage page 3

'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
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