Chapter 8.
The Rumbling.
At the risk of being thrown out again, the Doctor took the stage. He saw all the desperation and fear these people had experienced in the beginning amplified by their hunger, their exhaustion, and their confusion. It had been too long for any of them to see a war, and they lived in a place that had been silent for almost a century, so this kind of captivity was unknown to them – to most of them, at least. In the back, wearing their rags and looking up for once, the line of slaves was much less reactive. Captivity was their reality every day. The Doctor had to wonder, briefly, if any of the townspeople would see the symmetry in that.
He doubted it.
He raised his voice above the murmur. "I know you're all afraid, but I need to pose a question to the group. Has anyone died recently?"
The people glanced at each other in silence, but it was not their words he needed. He surveyed their faces, seeing if anyone reacted to his words. He was looking for a grief so strong that it could make the wish-makers swarm, and he wasn't finding it. His eyes poured last over the group at the back, dismissing one set of placid brown eyes at a time, until he came to the littlest of them.
Henry had lost his wife. Polly had lost her mother. No grief was more profound than theirs, so they had to be the source. What else was there?
"Uh, carry on." He jumped from the stage and ran down the aisle. Grace was sitting with Polly, saying something sweet to her, and the Doctor cut her off. "I need to talk to her. Henry?"
Henry frowned. "Why?"
"She lost her mum." The Doctor scooped the little girl up. "I just need a moment alone with her."
When he got approval from Henry, he took the girl to the little storage room and set her in a parlor chair, examining her face. She looked sad – she looked monumentally sad – but was that really enough to spark something like this?
"Polly, I heard you lost your mummy."
The little girl shrugged.
"Do you miss her?"
Her eyes showed nothing. "I don't remember."
"You don't remember her?" But how could that be? Polly was without a doubt the saddest person in that room. If the wish-makers were looking for powerful emotions, she was the one to latch onto. Mentions of her mother barely stirred her.
Polly shook her head, and shrugged away, looking at the floor.
Grace came into the room, crouching by the little girl. "Was it her mom?"
"No. It was something else." The Doctor scratched his head. "Maybe someone else."
"What about your dog?" Grace stroked her hand over the girl's hair, nodding to her. "You told me you lost your dog. What was her name?"
Polly smiled, and then it became a deep frown. "Lovely."
"And you miss her, right?"
"Yeah." Her lip trembled. "I miss her."
The Doctor let his hand drop off his head. Of course. What could be more powerful than a child missing her precious pet? How could he be so stupid?
Henry came in. "What happened? Polly?"
His head was cluttered. "It was the dog. It was your dog, Lovely. What happened to her?"
Grace was the one to answer. "John shot her. She's dead."
The Doctor pulled his companion aside, speaking to her in a whisper. "She wants her dog back more than anything in the world, and she's too little to understand that it's impossible. That's beyond the wish-makers' power. Nothing can do that – nothing can defy death like that. But Polly can't understand that. She's just a little girl. No, no. The swarm won't stop. It won't stop, and it'll consume everything."
Henry managed to listen in. He put his hands on Polly's knees and pleaded with her. "We'll get you a new puppy. I'm sure we can find one."
Polly broke into a sob. "No! I want Lovely!"
"It won't work." The Doctor watched the little girl suffer, knowing that only time could heal a wound like that. Right now, in the midst of this swarm, their time was too short. "Death is an abstract concept to children. We have to find another way to fix this."
Grace grabbed his arm, "Why can't they bring the dog back?"
"Because it died. It's gone. I don't know exactly what the limits of their abilities are, but that's beyond it. It's beyond everything. It should never happen."
Grace seemed to be feeling the agony radiating from the child. As Polly screamed at her father, declaring over and over that she wanted Lovely back, tears formed in Grace's eyes. It would have seemed like empathy, but the Doctor got a different impression from it. She was feeling it. He put his arm over her shoulder and hugged her.
He might have been right about her species after all. She was somewhat like the wish-makers, an emotional being very sensitive to the world around her, to the creatures who suffered.
Grace looked up at him, teary-eyed, and whispered, "It's not fair. All she had was a dog, and he took it away."
"I know. I know."
And suddenly, to add a sense of dread to this moment, as if it lacked the depth of fear, the rumbling came again, sharper and louder this time. It made the ground heave so severely that the Doctor almost hit the wall. He held Grace up, and helped Henry up, and the four of them went back into the main hall. Up above, the chandelier was shaking. People were murmuring, fearful, and holding their loved ones. The candles were flickering.
In their panic, someone went for the door. It burst open and the floodgates fell away. The crowd streamed outside.
"No! Stop!" The Doctor could not get a hand on anyone. They slipped out, screaming, into the road, where the mist had become even thicker, so thick the end of the crowd could no longer be seen. The rumbling shook them all to their knees.
He could identify the sound now.
It was the sound of a gunshot. It was a memory. It was the moment the girl had lost her dog, played out over and over again, amplified by her fear.
He stopped on the stoop, looking out at them all, and Grace clung to his arm. Henry held his daughter tight, shouting at the others to get back inside. She was still crying. It turned into screaming as her fear grew. Up above, the barrier shifted into storm clouds, and it began to rain. The sound of water striking the street echoed like a dream.
"What's happening?" Grace shouted. Her voice was right in his ear, but it sounded far away.
"It's her fear! The wish-makers are reacting to what she's feeling!"
Someone at the base of the steps heard them and whipped around. "What? The girl is doing it?"
"No, that's not what I said!"
The man who heard them began spreading those words around, and the eyes of the group came to the four people standing on the stoop. It was too loud to hear most of what they were saying, but their expressions were not promising.
The first man charged up, and Grace stepped up and pushed him right back down.
"Stay away from her!"
He tripped and hit the street hard, dazed. Grace stood her ground, little, but completely prepared to tackle anyone who came near that girl. The Doctor was proud of her.
No one else came up, but it was not because of her display of aggression.
The rumbling came, and with it, the mist changed. Ghostly barking came from all around. Behind them, the town hall doors slammed shut. In every direction, at every feasible escape point, the mist ruffled up into hundreds of vicious dogs.
And they charged.