This time they didn’t have to walk far. The Doctor led them through the trees, finding a steep bank. It was covered in tall nettles that seemed to sway in time to the music that drifted down from above.
‘Don’t let them sting you,’ the Doctor said, ploughing straight into the nettles to clamber up the incline.
‘Why?’ she hissed up at him, keeping her voice down. ‘What will happen?’
He stopped and looked down. ‘At best, it’ll hurt.’
‘And at worst?’
‘You’ll turn into them.’
‘I’ll turn into nettles!’
He continued on his way. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
She’d wanted him to tell her he was joking, but had been here long enough by now to know that he wasn’t.
Thank heavens she hadn’t completely abandoned her fleece. She removed the sleeves from around her waist and slipped it back on, pulling the zip up tight to her neck. Tucking her trouser legs into her socks, she slid her hands into her sleeves and started after the Doctor. The nettles were up to her waist as she climbed, her feet struggling to find firm footing beneath the weeds. She fell forward more than once, throwing up a fleece-covered sleeve to stop herself landing face first in the nettles. The barbed leaves caught on the fibres of her jacket, but she kept going, praying that none of the venomous needles found their way through the many tears her uniform had endured.
She made it to the top of the bank, grabbing a lowhanging branch to pull herself the last metre or so. The Doctor was ahead, hiding behind a bush. Keeping her head down, she ran over, dropping down beside him. The music was louder now and ridiculously compelling. Schofield found herself tapping her hand across her knee in time with the melody. In fact, her entire body was tingling. She felt light-headed, her eyelids drooping as an inane smile spread across her face. She was swaying, laughter bubbling up from deep inside her; a giggle that she tried to control but knew would escape. What was wrong with her? And why did she care? It felt good, whatever it was. She didn’t want to fight the laugh, but embrace it. Who cared if it gave away their presence? She wanted to dance. She wanted to dance so badly, even though her legs were cramped and her back ached. Dancing would make it all better. Dancing would make her feel alive.
The giggle slipped past her lips and the world began to spin …
The Doctor leant across and tapped the sunglasses. It was like being slapped in the face to sober you up. Schofield looked around, disorientated, as if realising where she was for the first time.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I needed the glasses to sample a few bars before they could filter out the effects.’
Schofield cocked her head. He was right. She couldn’t hear the music at all now, although she could still feel it in her gut, a faint vibration. She thought she should tell the Doctor, but liked the sensation, no matter how scary it had been. ‘What did it do to me?’
‘Ever heard of mind control?’
‘Yes, but it was just music.’
He looked at her askance. ‘Just music. Music is primal.’ He tapped his chest. ‘It gets into a heart, into a soul. Ever seen a film before the score is laid down? The action seems stilted, the emotional resonance not quite there. Add a soundtrack, and you make the audience feel the way you want.’
‘But where is it coming from?’
He pointed past the bush, but Schofield couldn’t see a thing. A thick mist hung low in front of them, obscuring the field beyond.
‘Look harder,’ he told her.
‘How …?’ Even before she finished her question, her vision began to clear. It wasn’t that the mist was thinning, somehow she knew it was still there, but the sunglasses were reacting to her thoughts, cutting through the fog.
So that’s what X-ray vision felt like.
Shapes were solidifying in the haze. Tall, blocky shadows arranged in a circle. Stones! They were standing stones, each covered in moss that seemed to squirm across the faces of the monoliths.
She could see fires now, braziers mounted on poles, and that wasn’t all. There were figures gathered around the stones, dancing and cheering. They swam into focus, and Schofield had to clasp her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.
There were Boggarts, with their rangy limbs and shaggy hair, and giants as tall as a double-decker bus with hairy faces and even hairier hands. Some of the throng were small, barely coming up to the Boggarts’ bony knees, with large bulbous heads and stubby limbs. Others were obscenely fat, folds of layered flesh covered in swirling tattoos, ridged tusks curling up from their wide, slobbering months.
Then there were the things that hovered in the air, darting back and forth like wasps ready to attack on a summer day. They bore a resemblance to their Boggart cousins, with the same blotchy skin, and long, clawed fingers. But these had long conical heads cropped with tight crimped hair, and translucent wings that whirred between angular shoulder blades.
‘The fair folk,’ the Doctor explained quietly.
‘They don’t look very fair to me.’
‘Not in any sense of the word.’
‘What are they watching?’
‘The Dance,’ the Doctor replied, as if those were the most hateful words in the English language.
Schofield could make out a large golden harp, glistening in the torchlight. It was being played by a creature with the body the size of a child and the arms of a daddy-long-legs. Its fingers plucked and strummed the strings, mesmerising even from this distance, until Schofield saw something else in the centre of the stone circle.
Someone was dancing, whirling around and around in time to the music, arms waving, and legs kicking.
She wanted to look closer, and the glasses obliged, zooming in like a camera lens. Were these things telepathic?
She could make out a tattered bomber jacket and frayed jeans. It was a woman, dancing as if no one was watching, lost to the music, her head lolling forward as if it was too heavy for her neck, hair obscured by a black beanie hat.
‘That’s your friend,’ Schofield realised. ‘Charlotte.’
‘She always wanted the limelight.’
Charlotte turned, facing them as she gyrated in the centre of the ring. Her face was gaunt, the creases deep around her nose and mouth. Her eyes were rolling in sunken sockets, her skin as grey as the lock of hair that tumbled down from beneath her hat
‘What happened to her?’ Schofield asked, the glasses pulling away for her.
‘She’s been dancing a long time,’ the Doctor replied. ‘And will continue to do so until her audience grows weary, or her heart ruptures in her chest …’