‘Please,’ Schofield gasped. ‘I’m going have to stop. Just for a minute.’
She leant on a tree, snatching her hand away as she felt the bark contract beneath her fingers. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, no longer feeling self-conscious about talking to a tree. It was amazing how quickly you adapted to a world where all bets were off.
If only she could get used to the heat. It wasn’t like a summer’s day at home, or even the dry heat of holidays abroad. She couldn’t describe it. The temperature seemed to radiate from the ground itself. She had loosened her collar and rolled up her sleeves, but her blouse was drenched, her mouth so dry that her tongue felt twice its normal size.
Even the Doctor had stopped running, stripping off his coat, which was now hung casually over his shoulder. He still looked like he was on a Sunday stroll, though, his brow annoyingly free of sweat.
‘They can’t be far behind,’ he reminded her as she leant forward, rasping for breath.
‘And you still have no idea how we’re going to get home?’
‘Of course I have,’ he said, sounding genuinely aggrieved. ‘I’m taking us back to the building site, or at least this realm’s corresponding location. If a gateway to the Visible has been opened there once, we might be able to open it again.’
‘Might?’ she said, looking up at him through strands of wet hair.
‘Why are people so down on might?’ he retorted. ‘Might is good. Might is only one step away from can. Would you rather I gave up?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t lie to me.’
That stopped him. ‘What?’
She stood up, her chest still tight. She jabbed her finger towards a large purple tree, its thick trunk splitting into a fork. ‘We passed that half an hour ago. Twice, in fact. You haven’t a clue where we’re going, because we’re going around in circles.’
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘That’s impossible.’ He turned to view the tree, only able to admit the truth when he wasn’t looking in her direction. ‘Of course, my unerring sense of direction may have deserted me.’
‘No one’s blaming you.’
He turned back to her. ‘It sounds like you are.’
‘Doctor, we were attacked by a tree back there. Who’s to say the rest of the forest isn’t moving, the paths shifting with every step we take?’
His expression clouded at the thought. ‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’
He suddenly looked so unsure of himself. Schofield had the feeling that while the sensation wasn’t completely unknown to him, the Doctor still didn’t know how to process it. He was obviously a man who was used to winning.
‘So,’ she said, deciding that allowing him to wallow would more than likely end with them being captured and killed, ‘what are we going to do?’
He was about to answer when he stopped, frowning. He turned, looking away from her, and, holding his head back, inhaled noisily.
‘What are you doing?’
He sniffed again, looking puzzled. ‘Something’s not right.’
She put her hands on her hips. ‘Just the one thing?’
He faced her, his eyes narrowed ‘Can’t you smell it?’
‘Doctor, I can barely smell anything. The entire place stinks of rotting sugar.’
‘This way,’ he said, setting off to the left.
He jumped over a small flowered shrub, disturbing the blooms which took to the air as one, scattering like butterflies. Schofield cried out, raising her hand to stop the tiny flapping petals from swarming into her face, but by the time that the strange flock had flown into the sky, the Doctor was long gone.
‘Wait,’ she cried out, heading in the direction she thought he’d disappeared, although her tired legs meant that she had to squeeze past the now flowerless bush rather than leap it in a single bound. Her trousers snagged on the shrub’s thorny branches but she pulled them free, hearing the tell-tale rip of fabric. What was one more tear among friends. Thanks to their new colour scheme, they were hardly regulation anyway.
It didn’t take long to catch up with the Doctor, who was still following his nose.
‘If this works, we should employ you as a bloodhound,’ she muttered, feeling slightly ridiculous for pinning her hopes on one man’s olfactory passages.
‘Through here,’ he said, changing direction without warning and pushing his way through a cluster of tightly packed trees to the right. ‘Excuse me, ladies.’
She did the same, grazing her cheek on the bark. Why would trees grow so closely anyway? Perhaps they were huddled together for a gossip, a thought that would have seemed crazy any other day.
Rubbing her sore face, she found the Doctor standing gazing at the very last thing she expected to see.
A camper van was parked in the middle of the clearing, and, if its state was anything to go by, had been for quite some time. The bodywork was badly eaten up by rust, the last vestiges of yellow paint peeling away. Grass grew long around the base, bindweed wrapped around the wheel arches and tarnished bumpers.
And yet the Doctor was approaching the van as if it was an old friend. ‘Velma, Velma, Velma,’ he said, tutting. ‘What has happened to you?’
‘You recognise this thing?’ Schofield said, peering through windows that were caked in grime.
‘She belonged to a friend of mine. Well, an acquaintance really. You met her. Charlotte Sadler, aka Cryptogal-UK.’
‘The lass with the phone.’
‘The very same,’ he said, running his hand along the blemished bodywork.
‘And I’m assuming she doesn’t work for UNIT, either?’
‘Not yet, although they could’ve done a lot worse. Charlotte was persistent, that’s for sure.’
Schofield didn’t like the way the Doctor was talking. ‘What do you mean, was?’
The Doctor disappeared around the back of the van. ‘You’d better come and see for yourself.’
He was standing beside the van’s door. The paint around the handle wasn’t just scratched, it was gouged, deep channels cut into the metal itself.
‘What do these look like to you?’
The answer was obvious. ‘Claw marks. Lots and lots of claw marks. The Boggarts?’
He didn’t answer, but instead produced an eyeglass from his pocket, the kind her grandad had used to fix watches. Throwing his jacket on the ground and holding the lens in place with his eye, he bent down to inspect the scratches. ‘I thought so.’
‘Thought what?’
‘The paint around the marks has bubbled, from intense heat. Something got its fingers burnt.’
He tapped a button on the side of the eyeglass. It beeped, and whirred and then sparked furiously. The Doctor stood up sharply, the lens dropping from his face. It landed in the grass next to his feet, and smoked furiously, the smell of burning electrics only just noticeable, almost lost in the sickly reek of the forest.
‘Is it supposed to do that?’ she asked.
The Doctor blinked to clear his vision, and rubbed his eye. ‘I should have thought before activating the spectatropic filter. Technology can be a bit temperamental around here.’
‘These work all right,’ she said, tapping her sunglasses.
‘Dimensional shielding in the hinges,’ he explained. ‘If that failed, the sonic vibrations would reduce your brains to rice pudding.’
‘Now he tells me,’ she said, shaking her head.
The Doctor peered over her shoulder into the trees behind her. ‘The sonic cone probably means that you can’t hear that either, can you?’
‘Hear what?’ she said, looking behind her, half expecting to see a pack of slavering Boggarts.
‘Music.’
The way he was glowering told Schofield that the tune wasn’t to his taste.
‘Nearby?’
He nodded. ‘Not far away.’
He turned back to the van, pulling at the door. It stuck, the sliding mechanism long since rusted solid. He pulled harder, the runners squealing as the door yanked open.
The inside of the van was a wreck. Splintered doors hung from ransacked cupboards, the seats shredded, their padding strewn across a cluttered floor. The Doctor brushed some of the detritus away, revealing muddy footprints beneath.
Schofield felt sick. The prints were far too large to be a human’s, and then there were the six toes, each ending in a sharp point. She imagined the Boggarts in there; snarling, biting, dragging the poor girl out of the door. At least there was no blood, not that she could see.
The Doctor stalked away, his face darkening. ‘Can you close the door?’ he asked, his words tight and controlled.
She tried her best, the mechanism sticking before the lock could click home.
The Doctor stood facing the trees. His eyes had been full of sorrow when he’d seen the inside of the van. Now, they were furious, burning with righteous indignation.
She walked up beside him, not wanting to intrude on his grief. He didn’t say anything, but reached over to tap the side of the sunglasses. The soundscape of the forest changed, and she realised she could hear a cascading melody filtering through the trees.
‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ she commented. ‘Quite jaunty.’ She was pretty sure she’d never used the word jaunty in her life.
The Doctor went back to retrieve his jacket. He slipped his arms through the golden sleeves, despite the heat. Schofield had the sudden impression of a knight pulling on his armour, preparing for battle.
‘You asked what we were going to do, PC Schofield,’ he said, straightening his lapels and brushing blades of grass from his sleeves. ‘It’s time to face the music.’
‘And dance?’ she offered with a half-smile.
The look he gave her was grave. ‘I hope not. For both our sakes.’