Chapter Seven

"Just how long did I sleep?" Donna stepped into the dusk and stared into the distance to adjust her eyes.

"Hmm…oh I don't know. Quite a while I suppose. I was busy working and you were snoring. Anyway, it's fall and the days are shorter. It's still early evening."

Donna's stomach growled, "Well that explains the hunger. I guess it was early afternoon by the time we made it back here. And I do NOT snore!"

The Doctor grinned as he passed her an electric candle and showed her how to light it. "Well, then either the lyots are still in need of severe recalibrating or we have a Trelathian Warthog with a cold running about the T.A.R.D.I.S." He turned the candle so the flash shield blocked the simulated electrical flame from blinding them as they walked. "Here," he added reaching into his pocket and handing her a meal bar. "It's roast and carrots, and no spitting out the carrots this time. It's disgusting."

Donna snatched supper from him and tore into it with her teeth. Her stomach mumbled a 'thank you' in anticipation.

As they reached the edge of the woods, The Doctor pulled out another candle and lit it before crossing the tree line. Creeping as silently as they could, they worked their way deeper and deeper into the woodland. Every few yards The Doctor would pull out his sonic for a quick reading before forging ahead. Donna found herself daydreaming as she watched the eerie glow from her candle cast bending tree shadows reaching into the forest as if they were fingers dragging themselves away from the light.

"Doctor?"

"Shhh!"

"Oi, don't shush me."

"SHhh! Listen!"

Remembering the humming of Elizabeth's blaster, Donna perked up her ears only to hear an owl somewhere to their right, some creature (most likely a mouse or squirrel) scurrying away to their left, and a woman's voice from somewhere up ahead.

"Wait," Donna stopped. "Is that Tituba?"

Instead of answering, The Doctor blew out his electric candle and motioned for Donna to do the same. Ahead, a blaze from a campfire marked their destination.

Stealthily, they moved towards the voice. Now Donna was sure it was Tituba, but her Caribbean accent was much thicker now.

"Da key to da future is rusty and covered wid blood, while da past is shiny. Da past has been polished and recently used and does not lay in da shadows waitin' for us to find it. You must be willin' to forge a new path, else you be followin' in da footsteps of another."

Tituba was sitting on a log surrounded by four girls from about twelve to sixteen years of age. Trinkets, feathers and talismans were suspended from fir trees decorating the hidden nest. She reached up and snagged a small leather pouch dangling from a nearby branch. Untying it, she poured its contents into a short wide bowl.

"A stinkpot." The Doctor commented.

"An outhouse substitute? Donna wrinkled her nose as if her imagination could almost smell the sewage. "A colonial bedpan. Eww"

Setting the bedpan aside Tituba picks up something and shakes it between her hands while reciting some Caribbean enchantment. Suddenly she casts the contents of her hands to the ground. The jagged chucks of bone and teeth shone in the campfire light and the girls closed in to inspect as Tituba interpreted the runes.

"Our sisters, they be cursed." Tituba pointed from rune to rune.

"Is she talking about Elizabeth, Doctor?"

"Most likely," whispered the Doctor. "Elizabeth and her cousin Abigail. They both began to have fits and convulsions about the same time".

"Dey be cursed and be needin a ward." Tituba continued her reading. "It is up to us to find da spirit in da flesh who be a-tauntin' her. But to expel da familiar, we needs to satisfy or sour its soul. " She pointed at the bedpan. "A cake of rye made with da fluids of our sisters will divide da creature from itself."

Pulling a feathery talisman from nearby, Tituba tossed it into the fire. Then, rolling her eyes back she began another Caribbean chant reciting it over and over as the talisman smoked and burned in a quickly growing blue and green flame. As the smoke became thicker, the girls scooted away and Tituba slowed her chant. Relaxing a bit she opened her eyes slightly to find the camp filled with the dense smoke. Suddenly there was a bright flash of light and Tituba…disappeared!

The girls looked though the smoke and then looked around them. The littlest one jumped up and took a step to where Tituba had just been standing. Upon not finding her, the girl realized that it had not been a trick of the fire or the smoke, but that Tituba had really disappeared!

With skirts heaved to a most scandalous thigh level, the girls screamed and ran through the forest. The Doctor charged the scene and scanned the area where Tituba had been. One of the girls came crashing back to the campsite and grabbed the bedpan and ran back into the woods again before she even realized that The Doctor was standing there. Donna walked up chuckling. "That was quite a performance. I would expect that was top entertainment for this day and age. She is quite a magician. How did she do it?"

"It was real."

"What? What was real?"

"Her disappearance, it wasn't magic. Magic is sleight of hand and illusion and mirrors. This was real. She's been abducted."

As if on cue from a movie director, Tituba's bloodcurdling scream pierced the silence of the evening.