6.
"Adric! Open the door! I know you're in there! Open it now!"
Tegan stamped her foot sending a spray of cold dirty water up her tights. She stepped onto drier ground. "You weasel," she muttered glancing darkly towards the blue door. She looked down, "This is not good."
The level of the lake had risen, or the TARDIS had sunk a little, and the surface was now lapping a few inches above the bottom of the door frame. She took a few careful steps forward, water covering her shoes, and slammed a palm against the battered blue painted wood,
"Nyssa! Can you hear me?!"
"Your friends are not inside?" said Bran from high up on the platform behind Tegan. She turned and looked up at him,
"Nyssa's probably in her laboratory, with the intercom switched off, and Adric's probably just being his usual pig-headed self and ignoring us." She turned and made a noise with her tongue and a rude gesture with her fingers towards the surveillance camera (which she had always presumed was hidden in the light on top of the TARDIS, though she couldn't say why...), "Little weasel," she added, turning away and splashing over to the causeway.
"I could break open the door," Bran began keenly demonstrating with his spear, "If you wished, Priestess."
"Believe me, you couldn't. Give us a hand, will ya?"
Bran took her upstretched hand and pulled her onto the walkway. He stared at the police box,
"It is protected. By spells?"
"Mmm. You could say that."
Bran nodded, impressed,
"You have very powerful magic, Priestess."
Tegan scowled at him. She looked away, along the causeway.
"Look, Bran... don't go on about it." She turned to him suddenly, "Where does this lead to?"Bran stared passed her,
"Into the Land of Ghosts. To the Island of the Dead." He looked at her suddenly alarmed, "It is not permitted for anyone but..." he stuttered, "It is not allowed for us to go there. Not even you, Priestess. Ladra was the only one who could walk the whole of the causeway... to the end of this world."
"The end of the world?" Tegan glanced at him warily, and turned back, "The Doctor said something about being on the edge of things... I wonder if that's what he meant: on the edge of the living world?"
She stared out towards the reed beds and the dark sheer plane of water beyond that seemed momentarily desolate and hard, like a bed of slate. Above it the sky was stark and bright, and then a flurry of dark birds, like a handful of scattered seeds moved across it, whirling and falling and disappearing into the horizon. She heard the isolated croak of a crow somewhere behind her, and then Bran's voice:
"The Doctor is a wise man. I do not understand it, myself. But I believe it, because Ladra says it is so."
Tegan turned to him, raising an elegant eyebrow,
"I thought this Ladra was an attempted murderer?"
Bran looked away. He shook his head,
"It is true... but he is... was a great man."
Tegan frowned,
"Why did he try to kill the Chieftain?"
Bran hesitated, momentarily shocked, it seemed, by the question. He replied slowly,
"There was a great argument. Bréon and he... they were close, like Uncle and Nephew, but after the old Chieftain's death, Ladra became jealous –"
"Jealous? Sorry... go on."
"Ladra resented the great Feasts that were being made in honour of the old Chieftain. He said they were... unseemly. He said that the old man did not deserve so much honour, that the Ghosts do not demand so much reverence. Tubal –"
"Tubal? The Magician? He's a Blacksmith! Isn't he?" Tegan laughed suddenly at the realisation, "He makes Bronze! That's what all those things were on his belt. His metal working tools!" She laughed, then saw Bran's face, "Sorry, go on."
"Tubal said that Ladra was jealous of Bréon's love for the old man. That the Feasts were a proper way to show respect for the death of so great a warrior and leader, and that they should continue." Bran shook his head," There was a terrible argument. That night Ladra went to the Chieftain's house. He killed three of Bréon's hounds and then fled from the village."
"That's horrible!" declared Tegan instinctively.
"It was worse than that," muttered Bran, "When we went to Ladra's house, we found he had stolen the offering from that day's Feast..."
"What offering?"
"A neck band given by the wife of Medhal. The Wild One took it from the River where it had been sacrificed-"
"The Wild One?"
Bran nodded,
"Ladra was the Wild One."
Tegan nodded her understanding,
"Wild!..." she muttered without thinking.
Bran continued,
"There were offerings from many days Feasting in the house. Ladra had taken them all from the water... It was a terrible thing... He had betrayed the Ancestors. Tubal cursed his house and pulled the thatch from its roof and then burned it and then cast ash upon the threshold... It was a terrible day."
Tegan pondered briefly how stealing a necklace could ever be considered more terrible than the killing of three dogs but, in the face of Bran's evident horror at the notion, decided not to contest the matter. She looked again at the TARDIS standing now ankle-deep in water, and had a sudden alarming thought,
"Bran, does the water in this lake rise with the tide?"
"It does. It will rise by another hand or so before falling before nightfall. You can see the mark of the tide on that bank of reeds there." Bran pointed. The lusher, slimy band of green at the base of the pale and papery stems was obvious.
Tegan gauged the potential level against the door of the TARDIS. She hummed thoughtfully,
"Maybe, that's why Adric hasn't opened the doors." She gestured towards the light on the TARDIS, speaking as though her volume had been turned down, "I think I understand, I will go and get the Doctor. Wait there! We'll be right back!" She turned to Bran, "Come on! We've got to get back to the Doctor!"
She started off back along the causeway, halting and turning when Bran failed to follow.
"Have you any idea what could happen if the TARDIS' doors opened now and we couldn't get them shut?" she gestured towards the blue box.
Bran surveyed the scene before him,
"The... Tardis... would flood with water from the Lake. I see..." He frowned, "Would it be bad if the Tardis were to flood with water?"
Tegan raised an eyebrow,
"Not for the TARDIS, maybe, but I'm not so sure about your lake..." She started to stride away, then stopped, staring out towards the reeds. Bran walked up beside her,
"Priestess?"
"I saw something move over there."
The feathery heads of the grasses were shifting slightly, swaying towards stillness whilst she watched as though somebody or something had walked through them. It could have been the breeze.
Bran stepped carefully forwards, his spear raised. They stared at the gently rippling reed bank. Suddenly, a crow called, catching Tegan by surprise. She swore,
"Come on, let's go!" and began to walk the causeway again.
It was odd: They were high up. Above everything. The reed beds were below them and they could see it all laid out like a plan but, instead of becoming more comprehensible from this viewpoint, like the surface of the lake it had suddenly become a concrete plane, impenetrable, with an unknown depth. Tegan had the growing sense that something was moving down there, out of sight.
She increased her pace, Bran scuttling to keep up and searching the surround with his expert gaze. She was suddenly glad he was there.
"Can you see anything?"
"Nothing, Priestess," he replied and was surprisingly stern.
"Maybe it was the wind." She didn't slow her pace.
There was a fluttering, snapping noise behind and she turned, nearly stumbling, to see a large dark shape launch itself in a flurry into the air where it extended wings and became a bird, gliding to the branch of a nearby bush.
"Bloody crows!"
She kept moving. The causeway ran on ahead, dead straight, the reeds rising gradually on both sides so that, fifty metres away, they formed a corridor and Tegan suddenly thought that if anybody was stalking them - chasing them - down there in the undergrowth, they'd soon be in a position to reach out and make a grab at them.
"Fancy a run, Bran?" she muttered through hurried breaths. "Race you to the end!"
She kicked into a sprint, Bran keeping up beside her, the only sound their shallow gasps and the click of her bloody-stupid heels against the wooden slats. The reeds rose on either side, nodding inwards, light and darkness flickering in the depths between the stems. There was a movement nearby, a gust of wind, bending the reeds and sending a wave of sound hissing up behind and then passed and on ahead of them.
Then, suddenly, the reeds fell away. The walkway met the shaggy slope of a rising bank and ended.
Tegan stumbled forwards, looked up and in an instant caught sight of something that sent a thrill of apprehension through her like an electric shock.
She bent over, leaning forwards on her knees, catching her breath, then stood again and looked up once more towards the low grassy hill that rose against the horizon. It was empty, but she would have sworn she had seen, and could still see like an afterglow imprinted by a flash of panic on her inner eye, the tall standing shape with the fluttering outline, the elongated neck, and the pointed ears.
She became aware that Bran was standing beside her, his breathing short but not nearly as laboured as her own. She gulped a few mouthfuls of air and tried to regain her composure.
"Well!" she sighed, standing hands on hips, laughing a little.
The bank was bare and silent, emerald and golden where drifts of decaying leaves lay thickly on the sheep-shorn turf. She turned,
"That was fun!" and saw Bran who was smiling, a little self-consciously, his spear lowered in front of him, and saw beyond on either side the verdant banks of reeds and then the lake and the sky and then something came up out of the ground from her left and swept passed her, taking Bran with it.
She screamed. Bran vanished over the edge of the walkway and out of sight and where he had stood something grey and shapeless rose up, its furry shuddering mass reforming, extending two arms at either side, and a long neck and slender wedge-eared head whose gaping mouth was lined with jagged teeth.
Tegan hesitated, silent suddenly, the daze of panic lifting as she realised she was staring into the mouth of a dead and stuffed animal – a fox, its rigid gape quite unnatural and, this close up, faintly ridiculous. The face of a man stared out from below it, dark tanned and grossly hairy, his beard a matted whitening bush that seemed to swallow up the rest of his features, all except for his eyes that were bright and sparkling like sapphires.
Tegan said,
"You're Ladra, aren't you?"
The bright eyes blinked and narrowed, glinting in a shadow of suspicion. Then the man moved towards her, reaching out, the movement amplified into a frenetic lunge by his jacket of rust and cream-coloured foxes' tails.
Tegan froze in anticipation, wincing as the outstretched hand neared her face. She was shaking inside but determined not to let it show. She wouldn't scream again. That scream before had been a stupid, instinctive response and she wouldn't do that again whilst her brain was in gear. Stupid! Pathetic! He wasn't armed. He was old. His feet were bare, caked in mud and there was mud on his arms, too.
She could smell his body odour as he moved towards her: pungent and sweet. She could hear his breathing: deepening and lengthening. She could feel his fingers slide down onto her cheek, leaving a cold slick trail of mud, and then reaching back towards her ear.
She screamed again.
And then the whole bloody sky fell on him!
It came down like a storm cloud, forcing him onto his knees, his hands flailing above his head, the tails of his coat madly fluttering as all about the darkness seemed to dart and swirl and gradually resolve itself into a spiralling column of large black birds! Crows! Shrieking and rasping as repeatedly, one after the other, they launched themselves onto the cowering figure, pecking and scratching.
Tegan had fallen backwards onto her bum onto the turf and now she scuttled crab-like away from the man and the feathered fury that had engulfed him, gawping in horror as the birds rained down their attacks relentlessly. She felt a grip on her arm hauling her to her feet, and looked and saw that Bran was beside her, pulling her away with him. She resisted for a moment, absorbed by the sight of the belligerent flock and the sound of its shrieking, and then came to her senses, turned and ran.
They made it to the top of the slope before staggering to a halt and looking back.
The flock had dispersed, shreds of it skittering over the reed beds, wheeling skywards here and there, as if searching the landscape below. The figure of Ladra the Wild One was nowhere to be seen.
Bran stepped forwards, turning towards Tegan and staring in awe,
"You summoned the birds from out of the sky to protect you!" Tegan turned to him and blinked. Bran lowered his head, stepping back and bending his knees slightly in a bow. He gasped, "Truly, Tegan follower of the great god Air Australia: you are a most powerful Priestess!"