"I'M BURNING
I'M FUCKING BURNING."
"Is this a movie score or is this another one of her weirdly cheery songs?" Alex asked, eyes wide.
"Personally, this was never one of my favorite Jack Off Jill songs," the Doctor said.
"Okay, even if that's the name of the band, I am not okay with you saying it," Alex said, making a face.
They'd come in through the stage door and were making their way towards the tech booth. They hadn't seen Ginger yet, but the music emanating from the booth seemed to be her doing.
Just as they made it into the auditorium, the side door opened and Ginger entered, wearing a large purple witch hat. She wore a black dress that laced in the front with a wide purple and black tulle skirt that didn't even make it to her knees, which were encased in purple and black striped stockings. Her lipstick was dark green today.
"You look uncharacteristically chipper," Jack said. And it was true - there was just something about Ginger on this day that seemed more lively and energetic.
"Yeah, well, it's Halloween," she said, grinning.
"Not for another 29 days," the Doctor reminded her.
"Well, Christians get two whole months for their holiday, all I ask for is 31 days of Halloween," she grinned. "It's the best, most magical time of the year - I don't care what anyone says! I just get so much energy this time of year!"
"The time of year when the veil between the world is thinnest and Ginger's energy returns from beyond the grave!" the Doctor said.
"Are we going to get started now?" Alex asked, calling them back to the matter at hand.
"Now?" Ginger asked. "No, there's nothing for us to do now."
"But you said to be here at 7," Alex said.
"Yeah, because that's call time," Ginger said. "But I've already run tests on everything and it's good to go. We don't have to be in costume or anything so we have free time."
"Free time for what?" Alex asked.
"I thought you'd never ask," Ginger said, eyes flashing wickedly. "Follow me."
Ginger led them up to the tech booth, which had an assortment of pizza and cookies out for them. "You can eat," she said. "Just keep away from the equipment. I'm sorry if I kept you guys waiting. There were some crows outside and I wanted to feed them."
The creepy song that had been playing stopped and was replaced by one that followed the Halloween theme.
"Here there be witches on the edge of town
Cast them in water to see if they drown
Cleanse them with fire to burn them down
Bury their bones in hallowed ground."
"You are in a bit of a mood today, aren't you?" Alex asked, amused.
"I like witches," Ginger replied. "I like badly behaved women in general, actually."
"You like women in general, actually," Jack said, under his breath.
"There is a whole history there, though," Ginger said, ignoring him. "On the one hand, the condemnation of women who were different, or practiced medicine, or took too many husbands, or took no husbands. Women who were too pretty or too ugly. Disabled women, women of color. On the other hand, from a purely mythological standpoint, the evolution of the witch from a person who was given power by the Devil to a person who was born with intrinsic power..."
"Is this the part where you guys go all geek speak and make us go to Salem for a night?" Alex groaned.
Ginger and the Doctor exchanged a look, clearly weighing the options.
"Always thought it would be cool," she admitted.
"Because of the Crucible?" he asked.
"Yes, as an allegory, but we all know that it was not historically accurate in the slightest."
"Winona Ryder was hot though," Alex said.
"That goes without saying," Ginger replied. "I'll never forgive the world for how it turned its back on her in the late 90s. Girl was having a hard time."
"You two will love Stranger Things," The Doctor said, through a mouthful of pizza.
"The Crucible was one of the only things I enjoyed watching in English class," Alex said, ignoring him.
"Don't they teach any Shakespeare in that school of yours?" the Doctor asked.
"They do," Alex admitted, reluctantly. "I just...find a lot of it sort of incomprehensible. Always liked Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. Oh and Mac-"
"WOAH! WOAH! WOAH!" the other three shouted in unison, moving forward as if to forcibly shush her.
"What do you think you're doing?" Ginger hissed. "You out of your mind?"
"On opening night too!" Jack replied, as if scandalized.
"What?" Alex asked, eyes wide.
"You never say the name of that play in a theatre!" the Doctor said. "You say 'the Scottish play' or nothing at all!"
"What, so you're not supposed to say Mac-" she began.
They all shushed her in unison.
"It's very bad luck," Ginger explained. "The word is cursed."
"But it's the name of a play! Of two characters in that play! What do you do then?"
"It's fine in that one specific context," Jack said. "Outside of that, it is very cursed."
"I wouldn't've thought any of you were the superstitious type," Alex said, amused.
"I'm normally not," Ginger said. "But I've seen this curse play out. I wouldn't chance it."
"Alright," Alex said. "So are we going to Salem, or not?"
"I don't know," Ginger said. "Salem itself wasn't even the only witch trial in Massachusetts around that time-"
"Or the largest," the Doctor cut in.
"But it was the deadliest."
"Unless you take into account European witch trials, of course," they finished, in unison.
"It's so cute," Alex teased. "How they finish each other's-"
"We still have time, you know," Ginger said, ignoring this. "We could go all colonial, take in a few trials."
The Doctor considered this. "Alright," he conceded. "But you're not allowed to dress like that. Not unless you have a death wish."
...
Ginger and Alex had gone back into the TARDIS's costume closet to find something more suitable to wear for their excursion. Ginger finished changing first and started back towards the control room when she decided to allow curiosity to get the best of her. She began poking around. She found a kitchen first, then a tiny lounge space...then came across what seemed to be a sort of attic room. There were assorted odds and ends in there - all relics the Doctor didn't know where to put anywhere else. She glanced over her shoulder, determining that she still had a bit of time before she was missed, and decided to dive in. She didn't know what most of this stuff was or what its importance to him was. She came across a small pirate's chest and thought that might have something valuable within it, but it was still stuff that she couldn't see the value in. She rummaged through it and found a small crystal ball.
"Huh," she said, holding it in front of her to let it catch the light as she looked at the swirling mist within it. "That's almost neat. Wonder why he has one of these."
She someone calling for her from out in the hallway and quickly snapped the treasure chest closed. She realized she was still holding the crystal ball and panicked so acted instinctively and put it in her bag.
"Coming!" she shouted, giving it no more thought. "Got a bit lost is all!"
...
The TARDIS materialized on the outskirts of a small town, late in the afternoon. The four of them began making their way to it.
"Crows," Alex noted the birds on a tree watching them as they approached. "Isn't that normally a bad omen?"
"Don't be silly," Ginger said. "Corvids are spectacularly loyal and intelligent creatures. If I weren't so afraid of contracting bird flu, I'd probably have one as a pet. No no, crows aren't bad omens. Geese, on the other hand..."
"Ginger, I think we need some ground rules before we go in there," the Doctor said, crossing in front of her and refusing to let her pass.
She put her hands on her hips and looked at him incredulously. "Like what? Understand that I don't follow rules."
"It's just one rule - actually. Don't tell people you're a witch."
She laughed. "Come off it."
"I need your word, Ginger."
"Like my word means anything."
"Ginger, please say it. Say that you won't put us all in incredible danger by telling the locals that you're a witch."
She could see he wasn't about to let this go. She sighed. "Fine. Take all the fun out of everything."
...
They'd entered the small town to find it oddly quiet.
"I...don't like this place," Alex said, shivering. "It feels like...fear."
Ginger made a face at her. "Okay, Dramatic Darcy, what the hell does that mean? Smells like fear. Honestly! Setting us up for some bloody brilliant horror movie dialogue, you are."
"I'm just saying...something's wrong here."
They came to the town center, where a bonfire was being constructed. This gave Ginger pause.
"Huh."
"...What?" asked Alex.
"Nothing," Ginger said, not tearing her eyes away from it though she seemed a bit puzzled. "It's just...Doctor, don't you think this is a bit odd?"
"Odd how?" he asked.
"Oh come on," she said. "I mean...I wasn't under the impression that Americans did witch burnings. Americans preferred the gallows."
He caught on. "So why's a wooden stake being constructed?" The Doctor flagged down a man who was passing by with a bit of kindling. "Excuse me, sir, is there an execution on today?"
The man replied in an English accent. "Yessir, didn't you know? Verdict came in, she's to burn in a few hours time."
As he walked away, Ginger turned to the Doctor. "England? We're still in bloody England?"
"This never would've happened if I'd been the one driving," Alex pointed out.
"You know I'm thinking about it," the Doctor said. "And maybe this little educational trip of ours is a bit...grisly for us? Maybe we should go?"
"No, didn't you hear?" Ginger asked. "They've got a witch burning on today! An innocent person is about to be executed! We should rescue her!"
"How?" Alex asked, immediately on board. "I mean, won't that be really difficult?"
"I haven't actually thought that part through yet. Think we need to do a little recon first? Figure out the facts of the case?"
They began walking. "I don't know about this," the Doctor said, nervously. "This seems unnecessarily risky-"
"Stop!" Ginger said to him, tugging on his sleeve to pull him to a stop mid-step. "Don't. Move." She dropped to her knees.
"What...are you doing?" he asked, genuinely perplexed.
She got to her feet. "You were about to step on this little guy." She held out a small frog that she had securely cupped in her hands. She patted its small head like a dog. "Couldn't have you doing that." She looked around and noticed that there were some locals looking at them suspiciously. She smirked. "Come on, let's go find this little guy a well to climb in. Then we can poke around, find some stuff out about the supposed witch."
...
The townsfolk weren't too keen on the strangers - thinking them very suspicious. Their worst fears were confirmed when the four of them were questioning some people about the accused witch and Alex was suddenly struck with a feeling.
"Wait," she said to a woman. "This was you. You didn't like her to begin with - you're a liar using this witchcraft accusation to get an innocent person burned for a petty feud!"
The woman fumed. "Liar! You're the liar!" And suddenly Alex was being accused of witchcraft as well. Ginger, Jack, and the Doctor were all stunned - they didn't quite understand what had just happened there. Ginger was used to thinking quickly, so she did the only thing she knew how. She scooped up a black cat from a nearby alley.
"Here you are, my sweet," she said loudly, picking up the scrawny animal and petting it lovingly as it purred and nuzzled her face affectionately. "Where'd you go off to, my Lucy, my gift from the Devil himself?"
"Ginger, what are you doing?" the Doctor hissed, taking her roughly by the arm.
She pulled away and continued cradling the beast. "I see you have brought me the souls of little children to feast upon! What a good kitty!"
"Ginger, we said no telling people that you're a witch!" the Doctor warned.
"I'm not telling them," she muttered back out of the corner of her mouth. "I'm implying it. This is the only way. Plus I can gather intel from inside the prison."
"Ginger, no-" Alex warned them.
But Ginger released the cat and threw her hands to the sky with a witchy cackle. She grabbed a broomstick that was leaning against the side of a stone building. "By the power I command, I say this day there will be no burning!"
"She's a witch too!" someone shouted. "I bet all four of them are!"
"These three? They wouldn't know real magic if it bit them on the nose. I just use them as power sources." She gestured at Alex with the broomstick. "Take one step, and I kill this girl! I can kill you all with a finger, just you watch me! If you make a move on me, I'll have no more use for keeping these simpletons under my thrall anyway!"
Alex followed her lead and pretended to collapse to the floor, clawing at her neck as if she was being strangled by invisible hands. The Doctor and Jack realized what was happening as well - this was the only way Ginger could see not to drag the others down with her.
"Let them go, foul witch," a minister said. "You may still gain mercy from the Lord if you show mercy yourself."
"What need have I of mercy from your Lord?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bow to but one master."
Jack made the snap decision that Ginger had taken this too far for there to be any way through but forward. He moved quickly and tackled her to the ground. "Sorry," he whispered, after they'd hit the ground. She took his cue and pretended she'd been knocked out.
...
"That was incredibly reckless! You put us all in danger!" the Doctor said, once they were back in the TARDIS. The plan had worked and they'd managed to rescue the girl and pop her to a place where she'd be in no danger.
"Oh darling, you mustn't worry so," Ginger said, doing a perfect Madeline Kahn impression.
"Now is not the time for a Young Frankenstein joke!" he said, resolve weakening.
"Oh come on, admit that was more fun than just sitting in some farming village!"
"I thought it was educational," Alex said. "Really felt like I got the experience of being chased by an angry mob."
"That's because you did," Jack reminded her.
"Oh, right."
"Can I go change back into my normal clothes now?" Ginger asked, exasperated. "I don't like 17th century clothing. Too scratchy."
"Fine, go ahead," the Doctor motioned for her to just get it over with.
"I'd better do that too," Alex said. "I just don't like dresses."
...
Ginger made her way to the bathroom after she'd changed, needing a moment to herself. She reached in her bag to find something, but instead found the crystal ball she'd completely forgotten about.
"Aw hell," she said. "Guess I should go put you back now. Lucky you haven't gotten broken in all the excitement."
"Help us," a voice said from inside it.
"Sorry, what was that?" Ginger asked, not sure if she'd heard that.
"Please, can you help us?" it repeated.
This time she was definitely sure she heard something. "Help you with what?"
"We've been trapped in this orb, please would you help us."
"Trapped? How?"
"Please, would you get us out of here? Speak words of power, and learn to harness your potential. Then we might meet in person."
"Words of power?" she asked, curious despite herself. "Like witchcraft?"
"Nothing so vulgar. It's word science. What is your name?"
She laughed. "No, no, no I know this game. Like I'd go around giving out names willy nilly to a possible demon. Like I've never seen a horror movie before! If you've been trapped inside this orb, I bet it's for a good reason. So I'm just going to leave you in here! Put you right back where you came from!"
"Don't you dare-"
She stuffed it back in her bag as Alex came looking for her.
"Showtime?" she asked.
And Ginger was distracted enough by this that she forgot about the crystal ball again.
...
She didn't give Alex a ton to do on that first night except calling her Ivy and asking her to fetch her a juice box, which was evidently another reference that only Ginger and the Doctor understood.
At intermission, Ginger, Jack, and the Doctor decided to head down to the main auditorium for a moment and left Alex in charge. She soon began hearing strange noises from Ginger's bag.
"Alone again?" it asked. "No matter what you do, they always leave you. They tell you that you're imagining things, that there is something wrong with your perception. They ignore you, brush you to the side, like you're some stupid child."
"Hello?" Alex said, suddenly fearful.
"Harness your power...speak the ancient words that have been denied to you-"
"We're back, we're back, don't worry," Jack said, climbing back into sight.
"I'd actually love this theatre to do Shakespeare," Ginger was saying.
"I wouldn't!" the Doctor protested. "You lot would butcher it!"
"But it's always fun to see people butcher Romeo and Juliet!" Ginger replied. "People get so over the top, it's incredible how bad they can get!"
Then Alex remembered something. "You guys could always try doing Macbe-"
"Silencio!" Ginger said, clearly rattled. "You see that, now I've put a spell on you and you can no longer jinx this performance!"
"It's just a lot of Hocus Pocus," the voice appeared to Alex again, only audible in her head. "Don't let them silence you. You're not a child, you can say what you want."
"This is a ridiculous superstition!" Alex said, annoyed. "It's all a bunch of Hocus Pocus! I'll say it if I want! Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! See! Nothing happened!"
But unbeknownst to her, a portal had just opened backstage and through it climbed what appeared to be a young woman.
After that, everything that could go wrong did. Actors flubbed their lines worse than normal, a spotlight broke, and one of the actors actually broke his leg. Ginger was running back and forth trying to hold things together since both the director and the stage manager were nowhere to be found, so Alex ended up in charge a lot of the time. At one point, the walkie talkies the stage crew used went down and Ginger sent Alex down to check on something. While she was down there, she ran into the woman from the portal, who was instantly recognizable as the voice from before.
"Thank you, child, for freeing me," she said. "The name Macbeth when said in a theatre is powerful word magic and when spoken as you did gave me great power to escape."
Alex was put in a trance and from then on aided in the havoc taking place. The havoc was all a way to bring forth the rest of her banished species, and was working.
The Doctor eventually figured it out and came face to face with the woman behind it all. "Lillith! I thought I banished you!"
"Your name is Lillith?" Ginger asked, seemingly in awe. "Damn, that's goth as hell. Major props for that."
"You did banish me, but your girl set me free!" Lillith cackled. "And soon, we will all be free!"
"Alex, what did you do?" Jack asked, clutching at her. But her face was blank.
"She cannot hear you!" cried Lillith. "She is entirely in my thrall!"
"Well then I'll just have to free her!" Ginger said, coming forward.
"I think not!" Lillith said, reciting some words with an outstretched hand. Ginger's face instantly went blank.
"This can't keep up!" the Doctor insisted, shocked at how quickly Ginger had succumbed. "I banished you once, I can do it again!"
Lillith stepped closer to them then, trying to menace. "What you did before will no longer work."
"Hey Lillith?" Ginger said, tapping on her shoulder. Lillith looked and Ginger punched her in the face. "You should really check to make sure someone is hypnotized, because it is so easy to fake."
They made a run for it then, dragging a catatonic Alex with them. Alex began to come to as soon as they were out of range of the witch's power and they finally stopped to catch their breath in an alley a few blocks over.
"Okay, explain to me what's happening here because I'm not following," Ginger said. "You knew this woman. How?"
"She's a Carrionite," the Doctor explained. "I met them a while back. We managed to banish them."
"We?" Jack asked.
"Well, Martha was there, and Shakespeare," the Doctor said.
"Ah," Ginger replied. "How do we get rid of her?"
"Look in the book," Alex said, fishing it from her pocket. She was still weak, but she could speak. "I noticed she was carrying it with her and managed to snag it while she wasn't looking. I was fighting against her the whole time."
"Did you give her your name?" Ginger asked.
"No, I'm not an idiot," Alex said, leaning back against the alley wall.
"Good girl," Ginger said, feeling an inexplicable sense of pride. She leaned her head against the wall - she was feeling another one of her headaches coming on.
The Doctor reached in his pocket and took out a pair of thick black glasses that Ginger had never seen before. He put them on and began studying the Carrionite book for some sort of clue.
"You two are so cute," Alex said, faintly. "You even have matching glasses!"
"What?" Ginger snapped, looking at him. "Oh no no no, you're totally ripping off my style!"
"I've had these glasses since before you were born!" he replied, with some amusement.
"Bet yours don't have a green back to them!" Ginger huffed. "Probably just plain boring black all the way around."
"Do we really have time for this?" Jack asked.
"You're right, sorry," Ginger replied.
...
They formulated their plan to trap Lillith. They still had the crystal ball where the rest of her sisters were trapped, so they only had to lure her back to the theatre and put on one hell of a show now that all the audience members had left.
"Well?" Lillith said, coming through the door at the back of the audience. The whole room was dark. "I got your message. Ready to give it up?"
The Doctor turned on a spotlight and Alex pressed play on an old jazz standard as Ginger stepped up to the microphone in what can only be described as a Morticia Addams dress and a witch hat.
"I put a spell on you," she sang, extending a hand. "And now you're mine."
She went through the song, adding little bits of Shakespeare now and then in exactly the right points that she'd rehearsed with the Doctor. It was word science. Her putting these words together like this while the Doctor did his bit in the background managed to trap Lillith. Though the Doctor was having a bit of a hard time concentrating.
The song ended, and they trapped Lillith in the orb. Alex looked at the Doctor again, this time smug. "You can close your mouth now, you'll catch flies."
The Doctor hastily tried to compose himself. "I don't know what you mean."
She laughed. "Oh come on! You're so into her! I thought it was just a dumb puppy love crush and was really gonna give you payback for how you teased me over Kira, but the way you looked at her just now! It's so much grosser than that!"
"You're really reaching, Alex," he said, clearly uncomfortable.
"She put a spell on you," Alex insisted. "And now you're hers. I mean, the look on your face!"
"What look?" the Doctor asked. "How, exactly, do you think I was looking at her?"
But at that moment, Ginger and Jack walked over to them.
"That was so cool, it actually worked?" she asked.
"That was...I mean you were...very good," the Doctor stammered, lamely.
"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic," she said, suddenly looking like her awkward self again. But she seemed pleased, which was different for her.
...
"Well I hope you learned your lesson, Alex," Jack said, as they were cleaning up.
"I sure did," she replied. "I'll never even speak about the Scottish play again as long as I live."
"And the moral of the story is..." Ginger said, smiling to herself as she sat on the edge of the stage supervising.
"Where should we go next time, Doc?" Alex asked.
The Doctor was leaning against a wall not far from where Ginger was sitting. "I dunno, hadn't really thought about it."
"Oh come on, I'm sure you have!" Ginger rolled her eyes. "Probably intending to show me some old punk shows and tell me how the Ramones were the only real punk band or something."
The Doctor pushed up his glasses, stepped away from the wall, and walked right up to her. The stage was quite tall, so it made up for how he was quite a bit taller than her. Sitting there with her legs danging put them eye to eye for the very first time. "You calling me a poser, Ginger?" he asked, in a way that was clearly not that serious.
"Not for the first time," she teased.
"Why would I call the Ramones the 'only real punk band'? White boys from Queens?" he scoffed, face mere. "The genre was pioneered by African Americans in Detroit and perfected by the Riot Girl movement in the 90s. The Ramones were fine, but women and other minorities really tapped into the meaning of the movement."
Ginger felt as if she were really properly seeing the Doctor for the first time, and momentarily forgot to breathe. "Eh...yeah that's..." She swallowed hard. "That's the right answer."
"So are we going to be doing that next week?" the Doctor asked, oblivious to Ginger's reaction.
"Next week?" Ginger asked, as if having forgotten entirely about the concept of time. She started coming back to herself and felt a tiny hint of panic. "Oh, yeah, no I'll be super busy. Thanks for all your help tonight, though."
"So when will we see you again?" the Doctor asked, still not getting it.
"Uh...why don't you come back for a Sunday matinee some time?" Ginger asked, scrambling for something.
"Week after next, then?" the Doctor asked.
"No I don't...uh..." She spotted an abandoned flyer on the floor and picked it up. "The 18th. That's a good day for me, the 18th."
"That's more than 2 weeks from now," the Doctor said.
"I'm very busy," she said, hopping down onto the main floor and backing away. "I'll take care of the rest of this. You guys can go ahead home. I'll see you on the 18th." And without another word, she disappeared back up into her tech booth.
Alex appeared next to him and tugged on his arm so he'd have to bend down slightly for her to whisper in his ear. "That was the look," she said, before grinning cryptically and turning to go.
...