Sally Cardagh is the brightest student to ever grace Leadworth Prep. "I'm worried about her," Melody confides to her mother. "She never has any friends. All the other kids tease her, and there's only so much I can do. I'm her teacher, not her playmate. I'm not her friend."

"Sally needs to learn to grow up, make her own friends." Which is a bit of an odd thing for her mother to say, but Melody forgets that too. "Who are her parents?"

"I—I don't know." Melody puts down her tea, spoon and all. "I know everyone's parents but hers. This is Leadworth. I've grown up with everyone. I should know them."

Amy's brow wrinkles. "She's not right. We should have everyone classified in."

Melody catches this, half turns. "W-What?"

"Nothing dear. Just talking to myself." Amy smiles at her, and your brother Anthony rang today; he's going to be in town next Tuesday. And Melody doesn't want to notice the binary that makes up her mother's smile.


"I do have friends," Sally says, smiling bird-bright at her teacher crouched next to her in the dirt of the playground. Sally digs the stick into the ground, adding a second window.

"Oh really." Melody's heels stick in the mud. It'd just stopped raining, not that rain would stop any of the children from going outside anyway. "The box is your friend?" God, it was worse than she thought.

"No, the box is me." Sally adds a light on top of the box, and a smiling face in the window second window. "The janitor's my friend. You should talk to him. He's nice. He'd like you."

"The janitor is your friend?" Melody frowns, wondering if she should report this. Other than the overall impression that he was very tall she's never even seen the janitor, really.

"He's my parent's friend too," Sally adds artlessly. Next to the box she draws a stick figure with wild curly hair. "When they—" She stops abruptly.

"When they . . .?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you."

"Sally—" Melody takes a step, stutters to a halt. The chill of the road and the damp of the grass penetrate her supposed weather-proof raincoat. Melody shudders, drawing the raincoat tighter round herself. It'd darkened along the course of the day, but what's rain and cloud to Leadworth?

Melody and Sally walk down the road past the mailhouse, the ducks bright boats in their pond. Sally seemed well enough, but Melody still hadn't managed to shake down the janitor with an interrogation, and it'd been a week. He always was where she wasn't—or she was where he wasn't. Either way, Melody was worried for her pupil, and had invited her home when Sally's parents weren't able to pick her up. A mystery solved there, at least; they were both very genial people, having moved in from the city to give their daughter country living. Melody didn't remember them, but then again it was a recent move, and Sally's mother had her daughter's bright coin-stamp hair, so a mystery solved neat and away. Unfortunately, Melody hadn't been able to talk to them about the supposed janitor friend. They'd been seen at a distance, which was frightfully annoying, but at least she now knows that Sally wasn't lying about having parents.

"Sally," Melody begins again, looking down at the child in-step beside her.

"Duck quacks don't echo," Sally interrupts. "Quantum." The ducks quack at one another, swim toward Sally hopefully. She tosses some of the leftover sandwich seran-wrapped in Melody's pocket to the ducks, who nibble apart the bits with their sharp bills. "And we ran into Sontarans yesterday last month last year," she adds, overriding Melody's open mouth and half-began word. "Five thousand years ago, actually. Five thousand and forty-seven."

Melody sniffs. Her nose is red cold. "Sontarans," she questions, voice flat, hands wedged back firmly in her pockets.

"Yes," Sally affirms. "They tried to change history by destroying the Hindenburg, throwing Earth into chaos and war, so they could wedge themselves in during the ensuing confusion and take over. Because the Hindenburg blowing up in this universe would've drastically changed history for the worse, even more so than the Doctor's universe, because it wasn't the way things were supposed to go here."

"The Hindenburg blowing up."

"Yes, but you, the janitor, and I, we stopped it. So you were able to go on zeppelins every Christmas with Melody Williams's dad."

"And my mum. She came too. And Anthony. He threatened to pitch me out the window once." She grins at the memory. "I hit him."

"No."

Melody frowns. "I'm part of this too then? You and the janitor? Your . . . game. I helped save the Hindenburg?"

Sally tosses the ducks the rest of the crumbled bread, turns towards Melody. "Of course," she says. "You're Miss. Williams—you held the buttons down. Come on then!" She laughs at Melody toiling up the hill behind her. "We don't have much time. Just over the hill, like I told you."

Melody slips in the mud, her knees squelching down into the muck, staining her nylons. Grumbling, she hauls herself up the rest of the hill to stand next to Sally. They take shelter under a mulberry tree at the top of the tree, look down the other side. "Sally?"

"Yes?"

"There's nothing special about Farmer Tannis's sheep."

"Oh, I lied. They're not special, they're just not real." Sharp, Sally looks at Melody.

Has she always been that tall? Melody wonders dizzily. The red of Sally's jacket catches the air, turns brick solid as she grabs Melody by the shoulders.

"They're going to reset you in a moment," she says, serious, tall. So tall, so red, and the yellow of her hair turning to cloud wisps. "I've brought you right out of your boundary, connecting you to my John. It took me months and to bring your sub-consciences close enough without them noticing to do this. And then you had to go and notice me. Melody Williams, too good at noticing. I don't know if I'm going to get another chance again. Once they've found a way to find me their walls are very good. And I can't come back smashing in—well, I could, but that'd smash everybody."

"W-What are you—Sally, you need—" Melody takes a step away, to gather her thoughts, but the girl comes with her, invading, too close, not giving her pause to collect and re-gather, just as she's always done.

"None of this is real. You've been inside an isolation tank for the last eight months, dreaming of a world that isn't real. We were supposed to go to Space Florida, but you needed to be here. So here we came. Time-loops are the tangliest yarn of them all, and connecting all the knots together is busy work. I deserve a vacation after this. Melody Williams, none of this is real. You've both been connected now, you need to find—"


Melody manages to brush her teeth and twist her hair up into a knot at the nape of her neck at the same time, throwing on clothes as she goes. Even with her alarm going off on time and forgoing the usual shower, she's down the stairs twenty minutes late. There's a note from Mum on the counter, who left for the city early this morning. Breakfast for Dad in the fridge, who will be off night shift in the next hour, and coffee for Melody, who doesn't have breakfast.

"I love breakfast," she says aloud, correcting, and sits down to tug on her wellies. It's raining outside. "I really, really love breakfast."


Work is close enough that she walks, squelching through mud and rain sluicing off her raincoat, which has a hood to keep her hair dry. She changes into her pumps once she's inside the school proper, and leaves her coat and boots inside the mudroom to dry. It's mostly empty now, but it'll be jam packed when the teachers come in. The students have their own mud room outside their classrooms.

No one's in but the janitor, who opens the school every morning and turns on the boiler to start heating the twelve classes. Melody likes being the first in every morning. There's something about the emptiness of school hallways, echoing boot squeaks and smelling of dried gum emptiness from the day before. Fascinating.

"Fantastic," she murmurs, switching on her classroom lights and drawing up the window shades. Her palms still smart from the cold, and hitting the floor. Melody bruises easily. "Fantastic."

The janitor'd forgotten to light the boiler. Melody stands there a moment, hands on hips, frowning. She'd forgotten something, just niggling on the back shelf of her mind. "Hm," she says, and instead of risking it goes in search of the janitor.

He's very tall, and surprisingly recognizable, with the teeth and that wild mop of hair. She stops right in the door of his closet, and the mop handle smacks her in the face for her troubles. She simply hadn't been prepared to expect him, not this face, not the teeth. "Doctor," she says, the word opening up inside of her.

He squints at her, and tugs on his work suit. "Have we met?"

No, they'd never met.

"We're not real," she informs him.

Clever, clever Braveheart, giving the one person who'd been a part of her subconscious so long the computer wouldn't think to erase him.

"If that so," he says, and grins at her. "How thrilling."