The New Forest

Adelaide was alone in the console room because the Doctor had gone off looking for one particular device that he needed to fix something on the console. She was sitting and reading in the chair that had quickly started to become her designated chair in the upper level of the console room - the Doctor glared at anyone else who dared sit in it.

She looked up when someone knocked on the TARDIS door, moving down to open it. There was a little girl in what she was fairly certain was the Coal Hill uniform. "Hello?"

"I'm lost," the girl said. "Please, can you help me?"

But Adelaide got a bit distracted by the fact that it appeared they'd landed in a forest...after the Time Lords were meant to be parked in Trafalgar Square. "Are those trees?"

"I need the Doctor. Are you the Doctor? Please. Something's chasing me."

Adelaide stepped back. "Come in." She turned. "Doctor!" She looked back down to the girl. "Yes, it is bigger on the inside than the outside."

She shrugged. "I just thought it was supposed to be bigger on the inside, so I didn't say anything."

Adelaide frowned at her. "Most people are confused by that."

"I find everything confusing, nearly. So, I don't say anything. That's how come I'm in the woods. I thought Miss Oswald told me to find the Doctor. But it wasn't her. It was just in my head."

"You're with Miss Oswald?"

"Mr. Pink. I was in his group. Everyone says they're in love with each other."

"People should really learn to stop assuming how anyone feels about someone else," Adelaide mumbled, coming to a stop by the console. "I take it you're also not saying anything about the fact you're surprised I knew about Miss Oswald?"

She shrugged. "Everyone seems to know everything about everything, apart from me."

"Don't worry, it's impossible to know everything. For example, I don't know why when the terrestrial navigation starts up in this TARDIS, it closes down all the other systems."

"You should ask somebody who knows."

"Sadly, the only other member of my species left has no idea either." Adelaide turned to the hallway again, hitting a button on the console to make certain her voice transmitted to wherever the Doctor was. "Doctor! Come here!" She returned to the console, setting them into motion again, but the TARDIS stopped almost immediately.

"You have reached your destination."

Adelaide glanced at the girl. "What's your name?"

"Maebh."

"Where are we right now, Maebh?"

"The middle of London."

"The middle of London is in the middle of a forest?"

Maebh nodded, taking Adelaide's hand. "Come and see." She pulled the Time Lady out of the TARDIS, pointing up at the base of a statue that Adelaide hadn't noticed the first time she'd opened the door. "Nelson's Column. Do you like it?"

"The monument?"

"Do you like the forest being in Trafalgar Square? I think it's lovely."

The TARDIS door opened again behind them and the Doctor hung out the frame. "You called?"

"This is Maebh, she's part of Mr. Pink's class. Told by voices in her head to find the Doctor."

"Trees?"

Adelaide pointed back at the statue base. "We're in the middle of London." Her phone rang. "Mind Maebh, please." She stepped away from them as the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. "Yes?"

"You two are always showing me amazing things," Clara said. "Well, I, Adelaide, have finally got something amazing to show you."

"Does that amazing thing happen to be the brand new forest?"

"Brand new forest?"

"The forest that's covering London." Clara sighed. "Why don't you come here with Mr. Pink and collect Maebh, and then we can work on finding the source of the brand new forest?"

"Maebh? What's Maebh doing with you? Where are you?"

"Trafalgar Square. She's fine, don't worry."

"Will you bring her over?"

The Doctor seemed to be able to hear what Clara said over Adelaide's phone, as he stepped up to address the human. "No, we can't bring her over. We're Time Lords, not childminders."

"You've got a spaceship. All we've got are Oyster cards."

"And we've got a global rapid afforestation crisis to deal with."

Adelaide sighed. "We'll wait here for you, Clara. Maebh will be fine."

The Doctor climbed onto the lion's plinth as Adelaide hung up, scanning the trees, and Maebh took out her phone to watch something. "Why would there be no reading?"

Adelaide turned to the side, scanning the trees with her own sonic. "Because they're actually made of wood?"

He shrugged. "No circuits. No mechanism. Wood." He jumped back down.

"What's this for?" Maebh asked both of them, looking between the devices in their hands.

"This is a sonic screwdriver and that's a sonic pen. They interact with any form of communication you care to mention. Sadly, trees have no moving parts and don't communicate."

Maebh shrugged. "They communicate a bit, though."

The Doctor frowned. "What?"

"Otherwise they wouldn't all grow at the same time, would they."

"So, what, do you think that's how spring begins? With a group message on Tree Facebook? Do you think they send texts to each other?"

Maebh just shrugged again. "You don't need a phone to communicate, do you. I haven't phoned home and I know my mum is worried about me."

The Time Lords exchanged a look. Maebh was technically wrong, but she did have a point. Trees were technically living things and they had all, somehow, actually grown at the exact same time. Worthy of an investigation.

They stepped a bit more into the trees, frowning at them, but it didn't take long for there to be a rumble that had them both rushing back to where they'd left the TARDIS. Clara and Danny had arrived, surrounded by the rest of their students.

"No rings," one of the girls said, showing a branch to Danny and Clara. "Trees usually have rings to tell you how old they are. This one's got no rings. Why's that then, sir?"

"The rings mark the years of growth," the Doctor said. "One ring for each year. This grew up overnight. That whole tree is the result of just one night's growth, and they're still growing."

"Everyone, this is the Doctor and Adelaide," Clara told the students, "and they're going to sort everything out. Isn't that right, Doctor? It's what they do."

"Well," the Doctor shrugged, "having looked at things, I think, probably, the answer to that is no."

"He always says that," Clara waved a hand. "She's very clever, she always figures it out."

"Oh, yes, she is." The Doctor pointed at Adelaide, grinning. "Very clever. Extremely clever. The cleverest in any universe..." he turned back to the students. "But what use is clever against trees? They don't listen to reason, to logic. You can't plead with them. You can't lie to them. They have no moving parts, no circuits. This is a natural event."

Danny shook his head. "How can it be natural for a tree to grow in one night?"

"Exactly what they said about the Ice Age. How can whole glaciers just pop up out of nowhere? Well, they just did. That's how this planet grows – a series of catastrophes. Farewell to the Ice Age. Welcome to the Tree Age. Possibly. When the Ice Age was here, you lot managed to cook mammoth. Now there's a forest, you'll just have to eat nuts."

"I can't eat nuts," a boy said. "I've got an allergy."

"Don't worry. It's a thing he does. He pretends he's not interested and then he has an idea. She's theorizing and he's playing for time."

Adelaide frowned. "Time."

"See?" Clara nodded at her. "Clever kicking in."

"A tree is, essentially, a time machine. You can plant an acorn in 1795 and in 2016, there's an oak tree that has a small bit of 1795 left inside. It's impossible to create an overnight forest with 'extra special fertilizer'."

The Doctor nodded. "You have to mess with the fabric of time. And communicate with trees." The two Time Lords hurried back into the TARDIS, Clara leading Danny and the children inside right after them.

"So you're saying it's an act of aggression?"

"By trees?" the Doctor scoffed.

"Er," a girl said, the one who'd had the broken branch earlier, "trees clean the air."

Clara pointed at her. "Exactly. Well done, Ruby. Someone or something who's trying to scrub the atmosphere before colonizing or invading." The expression on the Doctor's face seemed to register. "Ah, yes, Doctor, Adelaide, ahem. This is Coal Hill Year Eight, Gifted and Talented Group."

"What are the round bits for?" a boy asked, pointing at the walls.

"Ask your teacher." He crossed his arms. "Come on! Down from there! Hey!" he moved forward, gesturing for a group of children to move back. "Away from the console. Come on. That's an antique. Get away from there! Don't touch that! Haven't any of you been struck by the fact that it's...look, it's bigger on the inside?"

"There wasn't a forest," Ruby said, crossing her arms. "Then there was a forest. Nothing surprises us anymore."

"Regardless," Adelaide said, "stay away from the console." She pulled out her teacher voice for that, strong enough that a majority of the children did actually back away. "Now, these trees appeared all at once. It most likely wasn't a coincidence; I've never encountered an arboreal coincidence before."

The Doctor nodded. "Something, someone, has coordinated this. To coordinate, you need to communicate." He flicked things on the console. "Every communication channel on the TARDIS is open, and nothing." He looked around at them, his gaze landing on a pile of exercise books that Clara had left in the TARDIS – Adelaide hadn't been happy about the mess – that Danny had also noticed. "Except..." he took the book Danny had been looking at. "Let me see that."

"Homework books," Danny frowned, looking at the rest of them. "Why are these here?"

He showed Adelaide the drawing – a forest with an angry sun – before looking at the name at the front. "Maebh Arden." He addressed the children. "Maebh Arden. Which one is Maebh Arden? Which one's Maebh? Maebh? Maebh? Maebh?" as he said the name, he looked at each child individually. "Maebh? Maebh? Maebh? Maebh? Maebh?"

"Oh, my God," Ruby gasped. "Maebh's gone! Maebh's lost in the forest. Maebh's going to die!"

"Ruby, that's enough!" Clara looked to the Time Lords. "Doctor, Adelaide?"

"We've got to find her!"

"Yes, I know that we have to find her." Clara took a breath. "Listen to me. Her sister went missing last year. She's on medication. The child is barely functioning. She hears voices. She's very vulnerable."

"What do the voices say?" Adelaide asked.

"I don't know. She takes tablets and they stop."

"You people," the Doctor sighed. "You never learn. If a child is speaking, listen to it."

"Oh," Danny scoffed, "like you listened to her?"

The Doctor turned on a scanner, Adelaide standing beside him, and they watched a large solar flare. "He's right. She was trying to tell us something and we ignored her. Maebh Arden is tuned to a different channel. She can lead us to the source, to the heart of the forest. We have to listen to her. We have to find her."

"Not everything can be fixed with a screwdriver or a pen," Clara reminded them. "They're not magic wands."

"She has a phone," Adelaide told her.

Clara blinked. "Well, yes, she does."

"And I presume you have her number."

"Er, yep..." Clara took out her phone and Adelaide soniced it.

"Maebh Arden. Five hundred yards south-east of here." She glanced at the Doctor. "We'll go get her." After all, a whole forest appearing all at once was about as textbook of a mystery as they'd ever encountered.

"I'll go with them," Danny said, stepping forward.

"Oh, I can go," Clara waved a hand, coming up beside the Time Lords. "You can..."

"You haven't seen them for months?"

The Time Lords left the TARDIS then, leaving the two humans to discuss the fact that Clara had yet to tell Danny the truth, though the Doctor did pop back in almost immediately as the thought of a bunch of children left in his TARDIS occurred to him. "Hey! Do not. Touch. Anything." He narrowed his eyes. "Anything. Okay?"

Ruby nodded. "Okay."

The Doctor stepped back out and, a moment later, Clara joined them. "Gifted and talented?" he asked Clara as they started walking through the forest, following the phone Adelaide had returned to Clara. "Really?"

"Furious, fearful, tongue-tied," Clara said. "They're all superpowers if you use them properly. Are they going to be all right?" Nearby, the traffic lights went out.

"They're in the TARDIS, the safest place on the planet..." but the rumble started up again, the entire group leaping to the side as a statue came crashing to the ground, just nearly hitting them. "If this is an invasion..."

"What?"

"It's over. They're here, they've won." The Doctor frowned, helping Adelaide stand. "What do they want?" The two of them started walking again, but Clara's drawn in breath behind them made them turn again.

"Look behind us. The path we just walked down. It's overgrown already."

Adelaide frowned at something on the ground, picking up a pink phone. "Clara, I found Maebh's phone."

Clara rushed over. "Why would she put her phone down?"

"Doesn't want to be followed?" Adelaide offered. "Left it as a clue so that we'd know where she was going?"

The Doctor pointed at her. "Trail of breadcrumbs. Hansel and Gretel."

Clara stepped closer. "I'm actually frightened. I never get frightened. Why am I frightened?"

"You just lost a little girl," the Doctor reminded her.

"Yes, that is a worry, but I know you'll find her. No, no, no. This is not a worry, this is a dread." She strode forward. "Maebh!"

The Doctor followed, the Time Lords moving to hold hands as they continued. "You're pursuing a little lost girl through a mysterious forest. The path has disappeared. You find yourself with a beautifully clever woman and a foolish..."

"Any minute now we're going to find a gingerbread cottage with a cannibal witch inside," Clara mumbled. "Maebh!"

"Exactly. The forest. It's in all the stories that kept you awake at night. The forest is mankind's nightmare."

A little bit further they found a bright red pencil case. "Maebh's?" Adelaide asked Clara, who nodded. "Clever girl."

Clara hurried forward, past a bus stop, and pushed aside a branch only to be confronted by someone in a hazmat suit. "Get back!" the man shouted, waving a hand. "We're burning here. Stay back!"

"We're looking for a little girl."

"Stay back. We're about to burn." The three of them watched as one of the other people with him directed a flamethrower at one of the trees, engulfing it in fire. "Good job!" But when the flamethrower went off, the tree was perfectly fine. "What's going on?" the men stepped together, examining the tree and their equipment.

The time travelers continued on. "Trees control the oxygen on this planet," Adelaide said, speaking as they walked.

The Doctor nodded. "They withhold it, they smother the fire. What sort of forest is clover? What sort of forest has its own in-built fire extinguisher?"

"What do they want?"

"Why now?"

Clara frowned at him. "What do you mean, why now?"

"The whole natural order is turning against this planet. But why? Why now?"

Clara shrugged. "Well, what else?"

The Doctor pulled Maebh's workbook from his pocket, finding the drawing he'd seen before to show to Clara. "How did she know this?"

"What is it?"

"This is a massive solar flare headed for Earth, like the one that destroyed the Bank of Karabraxos." He frowned at it. "I've got an entire TARDIS and I didn't notice this. But she knew. How?"

Clara saw the name on the book. "This is Maebh's. Where did you get this?"

"You left your marking in the TARDIS," Adelaide told her. "I was going to make you clean it up."

Clara sighed. "Oh, great, right, well, that's just brilliant, isn't it? You don't think Danny saw this, do you?"

"He was the one who opened it to this page," Adelaide told her, speaking without really thinking because of the situation.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was frowning at Clara. "I've just informed you that a solar flare is going to wipe out your planet. You're worried about a row with your boyfriend. How did she know this? She even put the date on it!"

"I always make them date their homework."

"Use your eyes. It's today's date."

Clara frowned, noticing it. "Well, there must be a way?"

"They want something. They're saying something. If there is a way, the way is Maebh Arden."

"Okay, you know they're not really gifted and talented, don't you? I just tell them that to make them feel good."

The Doctor waved a hand. "She's lost someone. People who've lost someone, they're always listening, always looking, always hoping. So, they notice more. They hear more."

They all froze when a wolf howled somewhere in the distance. "Was that a howl?" A second howl. "Was that a wolf? No. That is impossible. We're in London."

"London has a zoo, Clara," Adelaide reminded her. "A zoo with a pack of wolves, whose barriers and gates have almost definitely been destroyed by the trees."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, wolves are not impossible. Stick to the path, Red Riding Hood."

"There is no path."

The rest of the pack seemed to take up the howl. "Then we're lunch."

A/N: Adelaide got a chance to pull out her teacher voice again :)