Jenny Colcan, page 6
'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.'
'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?
But as quickly as the thought crossed her mind, it rippled away, like shaking off the dust of a fast-fading morning dream. Clara shook her head, which cleared instantly, and blinked away the tears that had somehow started to form in her eyes. 'You're right,' she said, pulling herself together. 'Of course you're right. I'm fine. Again?' she said, indicating left, the purple mountains, the weakening, barely noticeable sun going down, rattlings coming right and left, night coming in on this horrible planet filled with monsters.
The Doctor gave her a wink. 'Once more unto the breach, dear friend?'
'Once more,' said Clara, a sweet smile spreading across her face, as she once again suppressed and forgot the tumult within.
'Who would build this torture garden?
For that, as the Doctor looked around, was clearly what it was. In the distance he could see lines and lines of barbed wire - landmines? It made no sense. They were being watched, but why the multitude of ways to kill or horribly injure yourself? He and Clara only just skirted a massive mantrap, set up outside a small cave, obviously there to trap the sleepy and unwary.
The chill wind blew right through them as they walked on without speaking,
Clara gathering the cloak around herself, her face set against the weather.
Finally, across the landscape, the figure they were both following and dreading to see revealed itself; first a dot on the horizon, moving slowly, looking, from this distance, once more like a man. It was only as they grew closer that the hideous skeletal form revealed itself, the pale white bone glinting in the watery moonlight of the two pale moons.
'Ahoy!' shouted the Doctor. 'Where are you off to, matey?'
The skeleton wore its rictus grin, but the slumped posture and weary walk made it seem defeated. Clara, oddly, had the very strong impression that it was sad.
'Where are you going?' said the Doctor.
The skeleton held up his scalpel again, and Clara looked away. The shavings
of bone formed on the ground.
‘Le Roi des Os,' it spelled on the ground. Everything except the 'O's quickly scattered.
'Le Roi des Os,' said the Doctor. 'Oh, you're French.'
Clara stared at it too. 'The King of Bones,' she read.
'You belong to the King of Bones?' said the Doctor.
The skeleton's sightless eyes were still pointing in the direction of the far horizon as it nodded.
'Who is he?' The Doctor circled him, looking closely. The rattling head followed them wherever they went, the scalpel held high. Then he saw it. 'Cor!'
he said suddenly. 'They did a right job on you. Come and have a look, Clara.'
'Must I?'
'Look!' The Doctor pointed out near invisible, very thin pale wires that connected the bones to each other.
'Camutium filaments. Practically undetectable, but send signals at nearly the speed of light. You, my friend are the most astonishing thing, look at you.'
The skeleton turned its head very slowly to look at the Doctor, who was standing behind him.
'Human bones held with electro-stimulating filaments. You are the weirdest
robots ever. Why can't you talk?'
The skeleton held up the scalpel again.
'No,' said the Doctor. 'Don't do that. Does it hurt you?'
The skeleton did not move.
'He doesn't want you to talk, does he? The King of Bones? He wants you to
do his bidding silently. Is that it?'
'Is there a person in there?' said Clara in horror.
'Y-o-u-a-r-e-n-o-t-a-f-r-a-i-d-o-f-u-s,' spelled the skeleton slowly on the ground.
The Doctor looked at him aghast. 'How could I be?' he said, his voice breaking with pity.
The skeleton stood still for a moment.
'C-O-M-E,' he spelled on the ground, and he trudged on.
They followed a strange path, sometimes veering wildly to the right, sometimes doubling back. The Doctor inferred, correctly, that the skeleton was avoiding deadly traps in the dark of the night, and was grateful, but worried about where they were being led. If the King of Bones did not want them dead, what did he want with them?
All the way he talked non-stop to the skeleton, telling him silly French jokes and singing songs and trying to get a reaction from him that wasn't a scalpel.
'Does he,’ he said finally, 'does he make you do things you don't want to do, the Roi des Os? Does he make you? Ooh, Boney! Like that other French bloke,
Napoleon. Now, as you know, I like everyone...'
The figure suddenly stopped, and the great empty pits of eyeholes trained themselves on the Doctor. There was an uncharacteristically long pause.
'Um, OK, carry on,' said the Doctor finally, clearing his throat.
Just as he did so, a crackle of light raced up the filaments that bound the skeleton together and it jerked backwards as if shocked. Then it turned to face forwards again, and the party continued.
Although later Clara realised it was only a few hours, that cold and exhausting journey, across the ruined world, dotted here and there with blast craters and the occasional howl, seemed to her to take forever.
Finally, over the crest of a crumbled hill, they saw it, eerily gleaming by the light of the pallid moons. The only building on, it seemed, the entire world. It was built of white marble, Clara thought at first, and was beautiful in the manner of the Taj Mahal but, as she grew closer, swallowing madly, she realised that it was in fact constructed of bones: thousands, hundreds of thousands of bones,
like planking on the huge structure. It had rows of windows, the knobbly extrusions of femurs all lined up neatly; smaller crossed bones making decorative patterns around the arched doorframes.
Clara felt the breath catch in her throat. The awful beauty of the palace was undeniable, built though it was on a slaughterhouse. Silent skeletons stood in rows as sentries; there were hundreds of them. She gasped and nudged the Doctor. Over to the side, standing like the others, its head ridiculously large in comparison to its body, standing with the rest, was the unmistakeable skeleton of a child.
The Doctor blinked twice, rapidly, and marched up to the front door. 'Thank
you,' he said to the skeleton who had led them there so silently. 'Courage, mon brave.'
And he looked at the doorknocker, comprised of finger bones, and left it behind, rapping instead with his knuckles, but there was no reply.
He pushed at the door and it opened, slowly. Inside, it was dark, musty smelling, oppressively warm. There was not a sound to be heard.
Clara could hear the blood pounding in her head, the rhythm of her own heart.
The Doctor turned to her with a sudden wink. 'I don't know about you,' he said, quietly. 'But I haven't met many goodies who live in houses like this.'
The first room they entered was covered in weaponry: scores of swords, guns, lasers and axes hanging on the bone walls. Next they passed a stairwell, leading downwards into the dark. Clara thought she could see a faint light coming from the basement, but the Doctor stalked on.
'Watch out for booby traps,' he said, which wasn't helpful as the house was
dusty and gloomy, and Clara fully expected the floor to give way with every step.
Moving further in - still they had seen no one, heard nothing - the walls were hung with red woven tapestries that deadened the sound of their footsteps. Dust lay thickly everywhere, under an oppressive layer of heat, and the air was heavy with the scent of decay.
Suddenly Clara stopped. 'Listen,’ she said.
They did. It sounded like... it was... music. Definitely music. Strange and complex, and played on instruments that Clara didn't recognise, but it was music.
They headed for one of the many doors in that direction, getting closer to it. One of the arched doors was swinging slightly open. That was the room where the music was playing loudly. It was rather beautiful.
The Doctor cleared his throat and knocked loudly on the side of the archway.
'Hullo?'
Again, there was no response, and they made their way slowly forwards.
It was so dark in the room it took a couple of seconds for Clara's eyes to focus; she could barely make out what she was looking at. It couldn't possibly, she thought at first, be a living person, a real one. But, as her eyes adjusted, she realised it was: in fact, it was a young man, but he was also incredibly, grotesquely fat, so fat he could barely move.
His skin was pitted with huge red spots, angry and infected-looking. He wore
glasses, which were stretched out either side of his head, and his unwieldy mass was perched on some kind of a cushion arrangement that moulded to his distorted limbs.
The man was wearing a huge, dirty shirt with a row of what looked like pens
in the top pocket. Everywhere around him were plates of dirty and discarded food piled up; a large hookah, empty bottles, crumpled up paper, screens. It looked, Clara thought with some astonishment, like the world's messiest teenage bedroom, with the world's largest teenager. It smelled like it too. Rows of screens displaying different areas they had already been through lit up and flashed, and the man's fingers played rapidly over the tops of them, as if it were a fast action video game. There was also a large white- glowing console in his other hand.
Everyone held their breath for a beat.
'Oh yeah, hi,' came a breathy, nasal voice finally, faux casually. 'So, well done for getting this far, yeah? Most people don't.' He pulled a 'what can you do?' face, before picking something up off one of the dirty plates, sniffing it, then eating it and wiping his hands on the large undergarment he was wearing.
'You're the King of Bones?' said the Doctor.
The man raised his eyebrows. 'Wow, very good, you got them to talk to you.'
His face turned stem. 'I told them not to do that. I stopped them talking, stopped them signing, stopped them writing in sand, and now this. Waste of good bone.
Stupid robots.'
His eyes blinked behind the thick-lensed glasses. Clara had the very clear impression he didn't need them; that they were not his, but a trophy.
'Who are you? You guys seem a bit cool about the whole thing,'he said, sounding disappointed. 'Normally everyone is gibbering by the time they get here. Vomit, wet pants, the lot.'
Clara swallowed crossly. 'He's the Doctor and I'm Clara. We don't scare
easily,' she said, in her strongest voice.
He just stared at them. 'He doesn't,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Clara.
'I don't like your house,’ said the Doctor.
'I don't like your jacket,’ said the man. 'But I'm far too polite to mention it.'
'Did you build this place?'
'I did,’ said the man. 'With blood, sweat, tears. And some bones.' He barked
an awkward laugh at his own joke.
The Doctor squinted at him. 'But why? What reason?'
The man shrugged huge beefy shoulders and said the last thing the Doctor had expected to hear. 'It's my job, mate.'
Clara leaned forward. Sure enough, he had a faded, encrusted nametag clipped onto his shirt pocket. It looked completely incongruous in the hideous room. 'Etienne Boyce,’ she read aloud.
The man smiled. His teeth were blackened and ghastly, his gums so pink they looked blood red. Clara could smell the decay from clear across the room.
'What kind of job is this?' said the Doctor, struggling to hold on to his temper.
The man blinked very rapidly. 'Security,' he said. 'I'm in computer security.'
