It was truly a fascinating planet.
Not even because the biosphere would change so abruptly. That's what you expect from carbon-based life. Leave for a couple of years, come back to a completely novel set of species. Not everyone can see the point in studying something that's doomed to vanish in a copule of days anyhow, but that was what Sela deemed the task before science, to preserve ephemeric things for the future generations. Besides, the planet had a special location in space, right in the middle of a node within the Web of Time. He promised himself the oddest of anomalies. Who knows, maybe the inhabitants would evolve the time sense?
The year he spent here was a mixture of disappointment and wild happiness. At the beginning he found no sentient life, but wait couple of days and lo! The drones brought news of timid, little budding intelligence. Tingling from delight, Sela prepared the equipment for an industrious period of gathering data, copying mind-patterns, studying them and taking megabytes of notes on the development of intelligence in biochemically atypical life forms.
Unfortunately (this was the great disappointment), the ephemerids showed no signs of a time sense in spe. Sela knew how the perceptional ability was ver y loosely connected to basic biochemistry. The creators of the Web, Time Lords themselves, had carbon-based bodies, although quite durable, and needed special meditation technique to slow the course of their minds so they could communicate with intelligences of the more usual sort. The communication, granted, wasn't usually much of a dialogue – Sela heard all about it in his piloting class, but he never met anyone who'd know anyone to make friends with a Time Lord.
In Cosmos there were ephemerids, rather intelligent at that, only able to register electromagnetic radiation in a spectra so high that would spell cellular destruction for most ephemerids. There were creatures with more familiar biochemistry, but completely blind to gravitational waves. Maybe the ephemerids of this planets couldn't evolve the time sense, because the Web of Time node bombarded them with too much data all the time?
It needed further research.
The air was thick from the heat and the smell of hawthorn. Elaine imagined herself standing in a monk's cell which suddenly grew myriads of tiny leaves and white flowers, filling the cell with their perfume. Overhead she had a ceiling of branches, hiding her from the hot rays of sun Elaine knew were falling from the sky.
The thicket rustled, shaken by one of her friends' hands, breaking a branch nearby. A startled bird flew right before Elaine's nose, and she, laughing, dove under a thick bough. Her braid caught on a thorn. She untangled it carefully, pressing her own bunch of hawthorn to her chest with her other hand, then she straightened up in another room of the green maze, adorned with clusters of tiny white flowers. A warm sunray wriggled through the greenery to kiss Elaine's head. The bushes rustled.
"Adele?"
Adjusting her hold on the bunch of hawthorn, she stepped forward.
"Adele, is that you? Jovita?"
Clouds covered the sun. Elaine suddenly shuddered.
"I should come back." she said out loud, before she heard the mysterious rustling again.
"Who's there?" A wild boar, maybe, she thought. Trying to move back, she walked right into a thorny wall of bushes.
"Adele! Jovita!" she groaned, but all she heard was her own voice. But wait, there! Among the branches. Isn't it light?
Elaine went towards it, her grip firmly on the fragrant branches. A bright light overcame her.
Elaine stumbled and, falling, leaned heavily on a bough. She had lost her hawthorn flowers, her head was swimming.
Every breath hurt, but not as much as the one before it. She slid down to sit on a large, flat stone, to wait till she feels better.
When her breath came back, Elaine raised her head.
The forest was sparse here, and rather dry. Elaine poked at a heap of withered leaves with the tip of her shoe. Right by her side there was a wide, sandy road, and somebody was coming. Elaine could distinctly hear the squeaking of sand under his feet.
She waited patiently for the stranger to come around the corner. She wasn't too ill to run, and besides, would a brigand just walk around in the bright day? A single brigand?
And yet the very sight of him nearly made her fall of the boulder. He himself wasn't exactly strange, although very tall and rather oddly, ugly dressed, but the thing he was pushing by his side… Two large wheels, nearly see-through, so thin their spokes were, connected together with an odd arrangement of thick bars, painted dark purple, slightly shiny. Elaine laughed out loud, making the itinerant magician startle and look at her. He must have never expected to meet anyone in the woods.
Gracefully (or so she hoped) she stood up, courtsied and said "Greetings. Would you allow me to join you? I'm heading back to the castle."
Truth be told, if she hadn't burst out laughing, Nate'd have passed the kid and never even seen her.
"You speak English?"
Judging by the widening of her eyes, the answer was probably "no".
"What are you doing here, on your own?" Nate tried on.
The girl was plaster-of-Paris shade of pale, made even more prominent by a bright blue dress and very dark hair with green ribbons braided into it, awfully well-behaved for her age. Although Nate's photographical specialty were landscapes, flowers and wild animals, not fashion. He knew how to follow animals.
"I'm going to the town, maybe I'd walk you there?"
She didn't understand a word, of course, just stared at him with those huge eyes.
"Listen" he waved his hand along the road, towards the town. "I'm going there."
He walked several steps forwards, then turned to her with a nod. "Coming?"
The girl blinked, then nodded. Together they walked towards town.
"Can't lock her up for hiking."
"Jim" Nate put his hands on the desk, gazed deep into his cousin's eyes and slowly, clearly, taking care not to use words too difficult for a policeman, said "I found the kid on her own in the forest. She's pale as a ghost, can't understand a word in English. Will you find her parents, or won't you?"
Jim typed something.
"Name?"
Nate swallowed the words that came to him.
"I. Don't. Know. She" he waved his hand at the girl, curled up in a plastic chair "Can't. Speak. English."
"Age?"
"How should I know? Fourteen?"
"Any special characteristics"
Nate looked at the girl, currently busy plucking at her sleeve. Which was bright yellow.
"A completely weird taste in clothes?"
Jim went on with the computer work, while Nate contemplated the girl.
She got some of her colours back, but still was pale. And thin, not anorectic thin, just slender.
Noticing his stare, she asked something in that melodious language of hers, tilting her head. Nate shook his head. He was always horrible with languages.
"Okay, you can take her to the hospital or-"
The door slammed, the kid jumped, Nate was pushed back from the desk by mrs. Janson's strong hand.
"Well, Hawthorne?" She hissed. "It's been a week, to the minute, and Robert still isn't back. Now will you listen, or do I have to do something drastic?"
Jim shrugged, typed something and started asking mrs. Janson for her husband's personal data. Nate shook his head. He did like and respect his old teacher quite a lot, especially right now, and wasn't too keen on witnessing against her in an assault and battery case. Especially that he, himself, wasn't innocent of battering the victim, even if this had happened almost twenty years back.
"Come on." He reached for the colourfully clothed girl. "We've done all we could. Don't worry about the idiot." He added, seeing her glance back.
Having gotten over the first shock, Elaine decided the strange town was nice, in the way gems are nice: smooth, clean and cold. She did like the tiny gardens and the single trees, painstakingly surrounded with low walls, as well as solid-looking houses, almost tiny castles in their own manner. At the same time it all shone of glass, huge, impractical windows. These must have costed an impossible amount of money. The alleys were little like those Elaine had seen during fairs in the town she knew, as well. She liked how wide they were, and how much light they got. It's a wonder nobody thought of this back home, she mused. Everyone wants more space upstairs. And you can't walk for all the stalls.
These alleys were almost empty. There obviously wasn't a fair today, although Elaine would have felt more at home if there was. She followed her guide around a small pond, apparently purely decorative (how much money did this town have?) surrounded with an odd fence, a thick chain festooning from low posts. Then the guide turned and walked into the shadow between the stone houses.
Looking at her, he said something, but all Elaine could do was shake her head. He gave her the handles of his strange contraption, then he put his hand deep into a hole cut into his doublet to pull out a tiny key. He put the key, in turn, into the lockhole of a simple, wooden door. Inventive, Elaine thought. Who would have guessed this? The inventor opened the door and took the metal oddity from Elaine, before inviting her in with a gesture.
The inside was very bright and much more spacious than she had expected.
"Is this a guild house?" she asked, forgetting for a moment that they spoke different languages.
"Are we going to spend the night here?"
Her guide propped the metal thing on the wall, took off his doublet to hang it on a peg. On another, smaller peg he hung his keys, then took off his boots to stand them by the wall as well. He wore another pair of delicate, white shoes underneath.
He said something, a little worriedly, a little friendly, but Elaine could only smile.
The man looked at her without a word. After a while he waved his hand and opened the nearest door.
"Do you have so much space everywhere?" Elaine blurted out.
The room had enormous windows, hung with a delicate, goldish-coloured fabric. On one side there was a heavy, square table, surrounded by four chairs, on the other – a row of cabinets with a single top, at which the inventor made himself busy. Similar cabinets were hanging on the wall above.
Water babbled. Elaine, curious, came closer.
"Water from the wall?" she shouted, and the magician looked at her from the tap. Of course, she laughed at herself. A water tank for washing. Obviously they could afford having this filled and cleaned, instead of just having a man to carry water. The guide moved, so Elaine could, grateful, walk up to the metal washbasin and open the tap, only a little at first, then a bit more. The water was ice cold. The soap on the basin's edge felt oddly hard, but it did lather when she wet and rubbed it. It smelled nice. Elaine dried her hands with a white towel given her.
"Are we the only ones sleeping here tonight?" she asked, hanging the towel on a peg. The man, having put some mugs on the counter, gave her an apologetic smile. Elaine took a mug to examine – it was glazed ,with a dark, smooth surface, oddly shaped, narrower on the bottom, with a wide mouth. She repeated her question, slowly, in Latin, but the man only blinked. Oh, well. Maybe there'll be someone to talk to later.
The host walked her to the table, sat Elaine comfortably on a chair, very soft, if a little too high, then gently took the mug out of her hands. Elaine watched him fill a colourful jug with water, then close the lid on the jug and put it on the counter. He started opening the cabinets, pulling boxes out, large and small, some shiny, some dull. Water boiled. Elaine looked around her, confused, and her guide put something in the mugs to pour the water from his jug over it. Steam rose from the cups, carrying an unfamilliar smell. A jug that boils water? Elaine thought. Where am I?
There never was a bench on the lawn by the school building. The older citizens, mrs. Janson among them, would, every once in a while, petition the town council. The petitions were reverently buried in the archives, achieving precisely nothing. Today, though, exactly on the spot where the bench could be, a blue wooden police box stood tall, with a lantern at the top and frozen glass in the windows.
A group of high-school students passed by it, laughing, not even noticing, as if the box had always been there, but mrs. Janson, who left the school a minute later, stopped in her tracks.
"Well, I'll be."
She shook her head. Was that a student joke?
The box opened with a squeak, making her drop her handbag.
"I'll give you a hand." The man, coming out of the box, squatted to pick up her things. He had a nice, gentle voice.
"Thank you." mrs Janson mumbled. The stranger stood up. He didn't look at all like a student. About as tall as she was, he had crystal blue eyes, with a melancholic and soulful gaze. A thick mane of brown hair went down to his shoulders, he was wearing a nineteen century-ish, long velvet jacket with matching trousers and a silvery gray cravat. And he was smiling kindly.
Possibly he was in some fashionable band or other. Something called "Blue Box" or "The Anachronisms". He might have been promoting a new record or something. Mrs. Janson wasn't very well oriented.
"Is everything all right?" asked the maybe-musician.
She blinked. "Yes, fine. Stress." She nodded at him, carefully took her handbag from the stranger and took off, one eye on the road.
"What is it that you find so stressful?"
She jumped!
"Right now – you." She snarked, but her heart wasn't in it. A week of not sleeping at nights and cramming logarythms into young heads during the days, she was too exhausted to be angry. Besides, the stranger seemed honestly interested. On the other hand, he was a stranger, and she wasn't a girl someone could catch with a nice voice and an excentric charm. She turned to the Williams' bakery.
"It's not just the mischievous students, is it?"
The man walked beside her, as if it wasn't a big deal.
"None of your business." She stated, looking out for cars. There weren't any at this time of the day, but mrs. Janson just couldn't (and wouldn't) shake off the habit.
The stranger (wonder of wonders!) stopped on the curb. Mrs. Janson glanced at him from the other side of the road. He stood, eyes fixed on a tablet, or a smartphone, or whatever it was. She really had no idea. The important thing was, he let her be, and the Williams' was just round the corner. She only had tea and oatmeal at home, and Robert could come back any minute. Maybe that's a great big misunderstanding? Maybe he'll be there when she comes back, he'll hug her and apologise for giving her so much grief.
She snorted, wiped her eyes, gave the door a push. The bell overhead rang.
The bell over the door rang, drowning out mr. Williams' voice.
"Excuse me?"
"We're out of apple cake" the baker repeated, awkwardly massaging his neck.
"Everyone buys it, we can never make enough. Maybe you'd like a slice of the nut cake?"
"Mmmm… nut cake? With these chocolate frou-frou thingies?" The possibly-musician stood just by her, holding his smartphone or whatever these are called.
"Erm… see for yourself."
"Great." He sounded like a nut cake with chocolate was the best part of the entire Universe.
"Exactly what you need." He told mrs. Janson with a radiant smile. "To tell you the truth, I wouldn't say no to a little cake."
He bit his lip, like a little girl at the blackboard.
Mrs. Janson looked him up and down. He didn't seem drunk, or starved, for that matter, although his gaze kept wandering towards cakes.
And he obviously wasn't going to let her be. She sighed.
"I'll have a large portion of nut cake, please."
The stranger smiled at her.