Chapter 1.

The Doctor stood in front of the doors, blocking his eager companion from running out.

Her unchecked enthusiasm had almost sent her over the railing at the Library, where she would have plummeted fourteen stories and come out significantly flatter.

Grace tried to figure a way around him – she might consider tunneling through him. "Are we there? Is this the past? I want to see!"

"You weren't nearly this excited at the library."

"Well, it was a library. Seen those. But I've never seen Earth a thousand years ago!"

"It was the biggest library in the universe, and you barely blinked at it!"

"I almost died. I was recuperating."

"You have to change before we can go out. I only said it a dozen times. You can't go to pre-Civil-War North Carolina wearing that!"

Grace looked down at her outfit. "What's wrong with it?"

"For one, your shorts are too short, and they're made of a fabric that doesn't exist yet. Two, you're wearing a tank top, and these people barely accept seeing shoulders. Three, you're wearing make-up. Four-"

"I'm not wearing make-up." She framed her face dramatically. "I'm just naturally this gorgeous."

"Right. Well you have to change your clothes."

Grace sulked, doing a hard twist and retreating into the hall. Despite having limited downtime between their destinations, she had managed to wander into just about every area he asked her not to go to. She had a nose for trouble. It was like inviting a toddler onto his ship – only it was a clever toddler who seemed to be pushing his buttons on purpose.

When she returned, she was wearing the long, dense period dress he had provided. It was suitably dull and covered up enough to make her presentable without giving her heat stroke.

He came over and patted her hair down. It usually rested in a serious of spikes and curls – she had admitted to lopping it off when she got tired of caring for it. "None of that. Women had long hair in this time. I don't suppose you would wear a wig."

"Only if you do." She pushed by him, going to the doors and hesitating with her hands on them. She looked back at him. "Come on! You're my tour guide!"

The Doctor followed her out into a barren field. It was bordered by a forest, on the edge of a town called New Fountain. It was small, quaint, and doomed to be completely destroyed when the Civil War started up. It had a healthy population of a little over sixty people, a public schoolhouse, a courtroom, a town hall, and a few beautiful modern amenities like wide, paved roads, leveled sidewalks, and intricate brick mosaics in the walls that surrounded the houses – and, most importantly, there was a family of Smiths living above the tailor in the center of town.

But as he turned to marvel at the first house alongside the field, which was an architectural masterpiece of its own, Grace pulled him in the opposite direction. She dragged him around in circles, gawking at everything, giving audible gasps and grinning at a world she would consider very ancient. Her focus was on the forest.

"Birds!" She jumped when something flew out of the trees, giggling, and nearly wrenched his arm out of socket to get his attention. "Did you see that? Look at how green the leaves are! And what is that smell? Doctor?"

"Uh, fresh air."

"Fresh air!"

It was entertaining.

What he found annoying in the TARDIS became endearing outdoors. She shared his equal-opportunity fascination for the mundane. She found beauty in the littlest things. He was suddenly glad he had not landed in the middle of town, so the people could not behold the spectacle of this strange girl.

She hit her knees in the dirt, digging up a few worms and holding them out in her palm. "Look at that! Segmented and everything!"

Grace came from a century with very little value for nature. Sure, the corrupted version of her world had featured a snowy forest, but the air was infested with pollution and the tree limbs were bare and dead. In her new home, every house in the neighborhood had grass, but it was artificial. It grew in a cycle, lengthening and shortening, darkening and lightening, on timers that followed the seasons. What little green resources they had remaining were shut away in museums, in domes that people could visit, but it was nothing like this. It was nothing like a real, proper forest.

He was glad he could show her this. Whatever had been bothering her before, whether it be the silence or something she still refused to tell him, was off her mind now.

"You know, I read about these. I read about all of this. But I never got to see it." She dumped the worm back into the soil, burying it carefully, conscientiously, and then patting the top. "All my professors, the people who teach us about the world… just think of all the things they never saw!"

She got up, dusting her dress off, and then she tackled the Doctor. She wrapped him in a tight hug.

"Thank you!"

Should he really be thanks for bringing her to a field full of dirt? He smiled, echoing her enthusiasm. "There's loads more to see. We only just got here."

"Yeah. You're right." She released him, dusting his suit. "Sorry. Where were we?" Finally, she looked at the nearby town, and smiled again. "Am I presentable?"

He held out his hand. "Always. Let me show you around."

"Have you been here before?"

"Oh, decades ago. New Fountain was actually built right after the Revolution."

"What revolution?"

"Don't they teach you any of your own history? You don't have an English accent, so I assumed Johnston was a derivative of this area."

"It is. Was. Will be. I think." She skipped along beside him, taking her first step on the sidewalk and laughing. "Feels like home. Looks a lot like home, but older."

"Architecture is immortal."

"What revolution was it, anyway?"

Was it possible to suppress that much history into a few statements? It seemed important for her to know, since they might be spending a little time here.

"Well… you know what a colony is, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, England – that's across the ocean, there – had a lot of colonies all over. It got a few on this continent, and they rebelled. They wanted to be their own country. So the thirteen of them all joined up and staged a revolution. They declared their rights to sovereignty in a very famous document – it was a time when human rights were just emerging. Before that, there wasn't really a concept of 'universal rights.' In your time, that concept starts getting skewered because of the presence of aliens, like me. But during the Revolution, it came right to the forefront. Whole world was talking about it."

"That happened here?"

"Right here, actually. Not far away. Not long ago. Okay, a century or so. But not that long ago. Point is, this place was built on the back of that war. It was a model for how they wanted their new nation to look, how they wanted it to feel. New Fountain was the World of Tomorrow, before Disney made his own version."

"Huh?"

"Oh, right, sorry. Am I rambling?"

"I like listening to you talk." She squeezed his hand, smiled at him disarmingly, and then pointed across the street. "Is that an ice-cream shop?"

"Looks like it. Fancy a bowl? It might taste different than what you're used to."

Grace was already halfway across the street. "Come on!"

He jogged after her. "Let me handle it. I got a handy little trick for getting samples." He took out his psychic paper, flashing it to her. "Shows people what I want them to see."

"It says you work for the president. What president?"

"Um, it's 1851, so I suppose that would be Millard Fillmore. Ooh. I love Fillmore. Not for anything he did, but for his odd place in history. 13th president of the United States, and the last president to not be associated with the two major parties. He was a Whig!"

"What a strange object to elect."

He frowned at her. "No. He wasn't really a… never mind. Carry on."

Grace went into the shop first, taking a deep breath and smiling like she had just won the lottery. It was easy to see why. The Doctor got a whiff of fresh pastries, lemon ice-cream, and caramel penny candies. His eyes lit up and his stomach growled.

"Penny candies! I love those!" He stood at the counter, admiring the pile of them behind the glass. "You just got 'em in, eh?"

The shopkeeper gave him a strange look, probably for his accent, but he seemed friendly. He came over and leaned across the counter, folding his arms under himself, giving his magnificent beard a stroke. "Yes, sir. We just got them off the wagon from Buffalo."

The Doctor looked at Grace. "Penny candies were the first widely distributed candy. They originated in London, I think, at the Great Exhibition, just this year!"

She approached, looking wearily at the shopkeeper. "How much are they?"

"We sell 'em by weight." He gave Grace a strange look as well. She was wearing the proper attire, but not the right way, and her accent was far from southern. Her hair just piled on the oddities, because out of all the women he had probably ever met, she had the least.

The Doctor held out his psychic paper. "Am I correct in assuming that you, sir, are the proprietor of this fine establishment?"

The man's eyes bugged. "Uh, yessir. What can I do for you?"

"As you can see, I come on official business. President Fillmore is planning a trip down south and he would like to stop in New Fountain, considering how much of a model it is for the rest of this fine country. I'm here planning his stops and when I saw your shop I couldn't help but wonder if the President could enjoy some of your sweets on his way through."

"Yes! Of course he can! I would be honored to have him here!"

Patriotism. Nationalism. It was rampant in the United States after the Revolution. Being a representative of the President here, at this time, held the same weight as being a representative of the Queen in London in 1953.

"If that's the case, I would like to sample some of your items, if that's alright. If I'm going to recommend it, I have to have something to say about it, eh?"

"Oh course, sir. Let me get you a platter. Go on and have a seat and I'll bring it out."

The Doctor winked at Grace and led her to one of two tables in the little shop. It was wooden, probably carved by hand. Grace sat across from him, positively giddy.

"He talks funny," she whispered.

"Well, you'll hear a lot of that here. To them, I talk funny."

"You sound funny to me, too, for the record."

He smiled. "Right. And leave it to you to find a sweets shop in 1851."

"I sensed the sugar. It was calling to me."

"I should tell you more about this time period, before we explore too much. But after this." He nodded to the shopkeeper, who was doling out samples of his different types of candy. "Some of it might be… hard to swallow."

"Why is that?"

"It just might seem very… archaic to you. I need you to be sensitive to the culture here."

"Fine."

She had no idea what she was agreeing to, and the Doctor let it be for now.

She ate a little of everything the shopkeeper brought to them, complimenting him on every morsel. He enjoyed the praise and ended up sitting with them. Grace drilled him on the town, but she smartly avoided mentions of the future. She caught on quickly. Her questions focused instead on the Smith family, who were presently out of town and would return within the next two days. She also asked about their government, how they had acquired the streets and mosaic walls, and what types of animals they kept.

She surprised the Doctor with everything she said – he had assumed she was narrowly interested in the forest and the sweet shop, but her interests were much broader. She wanted to know everything. It was all piecing together in that odd head of hers.

When they left the shop, they strolled through town, admiring the brick walls the surrounded the beautiful homes. Up above, the streets were lined with colorful trees, and squirrels dashed in and out of their path. Everything was perfectly picturesque – the way the leaves cast shaded patterns on the sidewalk, the way the clouds streaked and blocked out the worst of the sunlight.

Near the last row of houses, where the pavement dropped abruptly into a dirt road, Grace dropped into a crouch and started whistling. From behind one of the houses, a black-and-golden dog trotted out, approaching cautiously with its head low.

"How did you know it was there?" the Doctor asked.

Grace shrugged, getting onto her knees when the dog refused to come any closer. She held both hands out, making kissing noises. "Come here. Hi. Hello. Look at you."

When she got her hands on it, she gave its head a good scratch, and the dog lost its cautious. The Doctor joined her, searching for a collar. "Could be a stray, or it could belong to any of the farms around here. Dogs actually played a pivotal role in agriculture in this region. This one looks like a herder." He couldn't help himself. He scratched its ear. "Oh yes you do. Yes you do!"

The dog had its fill of attention and wandered off. Grace nudged him. "So you like animals?"

"Love em. Most of the time."

"Unless they try to eat you, I suppose."

"No. They're just being honest to their nature."

"I've never had a dog, but other families around the neighborhood do. Before – in the other world – there weren't any."

They started walking again, right through the town center, which featured a pretty fountain, and headed down a road that ended at the lake. The Doctor found himself babbling for the sake of keeping his companion entertained. She seemed awfully sad about the dog.

"Fun fact about ice-cream: It was served in the court of Louis XIV – the king of France – in the seventeenth century. Here in the United States, it took a little longer to catch on, but once it did the most popular flavor was lemon."

"Is that what that puffy yellow stuff was?"

"Yeah, well, the texture would be a lot different from what you're used to. Funny thing, though, chocolate was a known and well-loved thing in these times, and yet they seemed to shy away from it when it came to ice-cream."

"Oh, I love chocolate."

"I know. That's why I brought it up."

"What else was it you wanted to tell me about this place?"

The Doctor stopped at the lake, guiding her to a bench. The sun was starting to set, producing silhouettes of fishermen and houses along the water. It looked like a postcard.

"Do you see that out there in the distance?"

"The big house?"

"Not a house. That's a plantation. North Carolina, for years before now and for centuries after, was one of this nation's biggest exporters of two key crops – cotton and tobacco."

"Okay. And?"

"And… Okay, let me start again. In 1829 a man named David Walker wrote a pamphlet… No. That's no good. Uh. Okay. Well, in this time, people sort of… owned other people. They had slaves who did their work for them, who cooked and cleaned and never got paid."

Grace waited. "Slavery. Is that what you're so caught up on?"

"I know you've heard of it, but not like this. Not quite like this, anyway. In your time, mentions of slavery are about aliens, mostly. And it's done with no regard for anything other than situation. If a person is stuck in their bills, they become a slave. Right?"

"Right."

"Here, it wasn't like that. People were scooped up and sold from other countries and taken here to work. Specifically, brown-skinned people from parts of Africa and other colonial territories."

"So?"

"Honestly I thought you would be more broken up about it."

It was strange. In her time slavery was a punishment. It was well-known and understood as something people had brought on themselves – and though he disagreed with it, it was accepted in that context. But here it was radically different. It was violent. It was terrible. It was obviously not clicking for her – or it did click, and she didn't care either way.

He hoped she was just not grasping it.

"Well, that was it, then." He cleared his throat. "That was the thing I wanted to tell you."

"No, hold on, what about the pamphlet? You said there was a guy and a pamphlet."

"David Walker. He was a free black man. He wrote and published a pamphlet calling for the immediate freedom of all slaves and urging them to rebel as a group. He was born here. Copies of his pamphlet spread through the state and made slave owners fear that their slaves would rebel."

"What happened then?"

For all of her childish distractions, Grace was very intent on stories. She liked to listen.

"Uh, well, in 1830 North Carolina passed a law against distributing the pamphlet."

"Was that it?"

"No. They also passed a law that made it illegal to teach slaves to read or write."

"Why?"

"Knowledge is power." He wondered if he might make the topic clearer to her. She was interested enough. "Five years later they passed a law preventing free blacks from voting, attending school, or even preaching in public."

"I wanted to say 'why' again, but I figured you would repeat that first thing."

"I would have. Because that's why they did it. They brought them here, and they put them to work, and they silenced them and took away their rights – what little they might have had. For decades upon decades, they were a pivotal, but hated population. It wasn't illegal to hurt them, or even to kill them. They were bought and sold like cattle at auction – whole families."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because when you see one, and I'm certain you will, I want you to understand the atmosphere of the times. You have a good heart. It'll sting."

"But they eventually got away, right? Because it's not like that in my time."

"I suppose you could say that. It took a very long time, but eventually they changed their own circumstances. In a few years' time a war will rock these lands, and the topic is slavery. In fact, this little town gets obliterated."

Grace turned around, looking back at the edges of the town as the sinking sun showed them.

Finally, she seemed to grasp the gravity of time travel. She leaned into his shoulder for a while, thinking on his words, and then her eyes got a little glassy. "How can you do it? How can you sit here and know that, and do nothing about it?"

"Because it already happened." He shifted his arm from the bench to her shoulders, giving her a gentle hug. "And it had to happen. It was a war that changed this country for the better. It was a war that allowed them to participate in others, in the future, and that allowed you to live in your time, and a billion, billion others to live in their times. Not all of those lives were happy, but they were all necessary."

She sighed. "Do you have to make everything sound so grand?"

"It's my specialty."

Grace tilted her head, "We got nothing done today."

"I thought we could make it a leisure day. We can be productive tomorrow."

She nodded. "Sounds perfect."

Just before the sun set, the moment had to end.

Something rumbled all around them, as deep and resonant as thunder. But the Doctor detected it was something else. Grace jumped straight to her feet.

He stood up as well, more cautious, and watched the lake change before his eyes. Mist, as thick as smoke, clawed its way up from the water. It filled the sky. It was dark out, but the mist made it that much darker. It was advancing, growing, and rumbling.

"Doctor?" Grace backed to the other side of the bench.

"What is that?" He squinted, wishing it had come before the sunset. The rumble struck even louder, making his hearts skip a few beats each.

Grace grabbed him. "Run!"

He fled with her, but he doubted anyone could escape an entity moving that fast. It overwhelmed them, and covered the sky, and shook the ground, and made the world extraordinarily smaller.

But as they reached the street, and as the mist reached the edge of the lake, it stopped. It formed a barrier, a sort of shifting wall, that went up above them, and seemed to encircle the whole town. People emerged from the shops and from their homes. The Doctor and Grace backed into the town square, where everyone seemed apt to gather.

They stood there, completely surrounded, and stared into the mist.