Being in the wood felt strange to Lorna, like she was somewhere more alien than even the Doctor could go. She'd been to forests before, of course – a lot of them, when she was younger – but not one that was this far from anything human at all. It felt to her like nature might in a world where people had never existed, or been wiped out a long time before they could do any damage. For a second that was exactly what she needed, to feel distant, to feel distant from her species and her life.
"It's like Narnia," she said.
The Fleuris smiled. "A wood in a wardrobe where you walk between the worlds. Where do you think you'd get all those ideas?"
Chris gasped. "You mean the man who wrote those books knew"—
"Oh no," said the Fleuris. "It's just a coincidence. It wouldn't do if everyone with an imagination was just writing down things that they'd seen."
Lorna gritted her teeth. "Are you why the Doctor's so exasperating?" she said.
"Partially," said the Fleurlis.
"Is this going to take much longer?" said Chris. "We've been walking for a very long time."
"All of time and space is here," said the Fleurlis. "It can take a while to get places."
Chris glared at him with a look that could even melt wood.
"But there might be a shortcut," he added hastily. "Although one you would need to go looking for. If you could find mushrooms with caps in the shape of that dome, they would point the way to the place where it hangs in the sky."
"And you can't see them right now?" said Chris. "You said you were everywhere."
"No one sees everything," said the Fleurlis. "And I'm in no hurry to get where we're going. Time doesn't pass in this wood, not in that way. It could be eight hundred years if we go the long way round. You won't age, but you might get very bored."
"I'll look for the mushrooms," said Chris, sounding defeated.
She ran on a little way ahead, searching the long grass on the ground with her eyes and fingers.
"Eight hundred years?" said Lorna as her daughter ran away. "It is quite nice here, but that's a long time to walk in the woods."
"That was a lie," said the Fleurlis. "It's not going to take long at all."
Lorna looked at them. "But the mushrooms"—
"Are far enough away that your daughter won't find them for a while. Time isn't quite real here, I was telling the truth about that. Yet we'll still need enough of it, to talk about what she can't hear."
Lorna groaned.
"Not that," she said. "I've kept far too much from her already. There's only so many secrets I'm able to keep."
The bark face of the Fleurlis creaked as he gave a smile.
"I'm not about to give up any of my secrets," he said. "I only wanted to say that you need to keep a promise. Not to me, or the Doctor, or anyone who annoys you like us. But to her, Chris. To your daughter."
"I'm not in the mood for parenting tips," said Lorna curtly.
"And I'm not one to be giving them. I'm a tree, all we do is fling off our seeds and hope. I always imagined it'd be harder, to be a human being."
"It's awful," said Lorna. "It's harder than anyone says."
"I wouldn't know," said the Fleurlis. "I'm not someone who knows about anything difficult, like how to bring up a child or face work in the morning again. Only little things, like what you need to do to save the universe. And to do that"—
He stopped and listened to the forest for a little while.
—"you need to be honest with your little girl," he said.
Lorna looked out to the forest, feeling calm despite herself. Her body felt oddly at rest, given how she'd just run from a war.
"The Doctor said the opposite of that," she said. "That if the Daleks were coming and nobody could stop them, it'd destroy Christina if she knew. The way she was with the nuclear bomb… she was terrified."
"Perhaps she was right to be."
"Well, yes. Or perhaps it's to no end. The Doctor said it was wrong, to terrify a child when there's nothing that could reassure them. And if I'd trust her with anything, it's that she knows about children and fear. Why shouldn't I listen to her, instead of you?"
"There's no good reason to listen to either of us," said the Fleurlis. "We're a pair of idiots from a very long way away. Neither of us know anything about what your life's really like."
"The Doctor isn't always an idiot, though," said Lorna. "She's saved my life more times than I even know. But you still think that I should listen to you."
"No," said the Fleurlis. "I think you should listen to yourself."
Lorna sighed to herself very subtly, though of course the tree would be able to hear. He was good at this, she knew; at manipulating her whole pretending that he wasn't. He was right, though. And he'd know how that would made her feel.
"It's not on," she said softly. "I didn't listen to Christina before when she told me she was in danger; it nearly killed her. I promised myself back then that I had to stop hiding things from her. It doesn't do, when it's something as big as this. But"—
"The Doctor saved her," said the Fleurlis, finishing her sentence. "If it had only been down to you, Chris would have died."
"I would've too. And the planet! But that… it seems less real, somehow. I got used to failing myself and the rest of the world. I can't let myself be fine with failing her."
"And the Doctor didn't fail her," said the Fleurlis.
"She failed us both," said Lorna. "More times than I can count. I trusted her with my child, and she let us down. I hadn't thought of it that way, not about this. That it might be her in the wrong, rather than me..."
She looked up at the Fleurlis's face as a ladybird crawled up his nose.
"You know"— she started to say.
"I do," said the Fleurlis. "I am very good at this."
Lorna laughed before she could stop herself.
"I hate you," she said. "But I expect you know that too."
"We'll have to be alone," she added. "I don't want you there listening to us with your woody ears."
"Yes," said the Fleurlis. "I'm everywhere in space and time. But perhaps this once I can make an exception. I won't be here until both of you are done."
Lorna turned to say something to that, but the Fleurlis had already gone; evaporated just like a police box without even making a sound.
"Perhaps he's not so bad," she said to herself. "Unless he's lying, and listening to me right now. In that case, he is so bad. He's probably worse."
But he wasn't listening, she somehow knew. Without her noticing he was doing it, he'd managed to make her trust her. All he had to do was to say she should do the hardest thing in the world.
She stood in the bright wood alone, waiting for her daughter to arrive.