I own no part of the Doctor Whoniverse. I'm only a lonely tourist who can't be held accountable for any damage I plan to do.


The Doctor chased the red-haired girl down the street and might have caught her, too, but this was no deserted dystopia, no alien world where people minded their own business. He couldn't look like he was chasing her. All he could do was keep to the shadows, following her, and hope that his longer legs could close the distance in time.

The streets of Zaragoza were labyrinthine, and the girl knew them better than he did. He followed her down winding roads, through alleyways and cut across back lots. Every time he thought he could catch her up, they passed a busy market street or sidewalk full of open-air cafes, and he would have to fall back. Eventually, the girl ducked through a gate onto a street, crossed over and hurried up the steps of a three-story crumbling, brick house.

The Doctor slowed to a walk and approached the building in a round-about way, pretending to examine the merchandise behind several shop windows along the way. Squeezing his way between a grocer and a housewife, and then around a cluster of workmen lounging in front of a hardware store, he made his way to a high, wooden wall pasted with adverts, things for sale and workers wanted. The Doctor stopped there a few minutes, pretending to be interested in the want-ads; he took out the sonic screwdriver and adjusted the range. He tried to scan the area around the boarding house, but no luck. There were too many people and too much going on for him to get a good reading. There was something there he thought, but he would have to get inside to be sure.

Slipping the device back into his pocket, the Doctor turned around and looked over the crowd. Every man and boy wore something on his head, a cap or a hat, beret or fedora. Most of the women wore a cap or scarf. The Doctor ran his hand through his loose, tousled hair and guessed that this was what had earned him so many suspicious looks and stink eyes since he'd first stepped out of the Tardis.

Across the street, a second-hand clothing shop was doing quick business and had several caps of various styles displayed prominently in the front window. The Doctor smiled. He'd never been one to question his uncanny good luck, and he didn't do so now as he pushed his way through the crowd and into the shop.

.

Ten minutes later, the Doctor emerged wearing a third-hand, green felt cap that only looked a little foolish when paired with his fine brown coat and blue suit. He had also learned that the boarding house next door was run by a Mrs. Sera Becerra Elizondo, a lovely old grandmother (and rather feisty, according to the winking, nudging old man in the shop) who just happened to have a single room to rent.

With a spring in his step, the Doctor tipped his new cap to a middle-aged mother pushing a pram and walked across to the boarding house; he took the stairs two at a time and straightened his tie before knocking on Mrs. Elizondo's door. He waited a few minutes impatiently, and then knocked again.

"¡Ya voy!" A woman shouted. There was a thump at the door, and then the latch turned. "¿Quien hizo esto? Who locked this door!?" She shouted again to no one in particular.

The door opened. Mrs. Elizondo was a short, fat woman with a round face and attractive, olive eyes that stared at him as if daring him to make trouble on her block. Her dress was plain and black, but a colorful apron in a floral print was tied around her waist, its single pocket stuffed with dust cloths. Her cap was pinned with a large, blue broach, and she crossed her arms under her ample bosom as she looked him over, taking in his good shoes, mud-stained trousers and cheap hat.

"Well, what do you want?" she demanded, but good-humouredly, seeing his colorful appearance.

"Señora Elizondo? I'm the Doctor." He took off his cap with a flourish. "I…"

"A doctor? Not here," she interrupted him. "We didn't send for no doctor here, sir. You might try next door, Mr. Alcocer's gout has been acting up on him."

"Ah, no, I'm not a... never mind," he sighed. "I heard you had a room to let, ma'am." He put his cap back on and took out a thin wallet from his pocket. "I'm in town for a few weeks on business, looking for a place to stay." He flashed her a glimpse of the psychic paper.

"Nordbahn Railroad?" The landlady frowned. "The railroad folks usually manage their own lodgings." She looked at him suspiciously. "What does the Nordbahn want with doctors, anyway? My Tomas helped them build the line and they made him get his own doctor when he weren't well. Didn't even pay him back the two dollars for the house call charge!"

"Ah, no. No, I'm not that sort of doctor..." the Doctor stammered. "I'm more of an independent contractor. Do you have a room? If not, could you suggest another place. My luggage is being held at the station until I have an address, and I'm really rather in a hurry…"

The old woman gave him a hard look, and then shrugged her shoulders. Money was money, and if it were railroad money, all the better. "It's a single room, rented by the week." She stepped aside and ushered him into the house. "Rent is due in full every Saturday, and one week to be paid in advance upon taking possession."

The Doctor looked around the entry. It was piled high with muddy boots and garlanded with a selection of ratty scarves and soot stained caps. The walls were cracked plastic and the floors splintered wood. One the farthest hook from the door, the Doctor recognized the black, straw hat that the red-haired woman had been wearing.

"This way, sir," Mrs. Elizondo said, pushing the Doctor out of the entryway. A narrow hall passed from the front door to the kitchen at the back, and on one side, looked into a small sitting room, on the other a dining room with two long tables and many mismatched chairs. A steep staircase was rose up to his left, and behind that was an open door to the kitchen where wood floor gave way to linoleum and the stale smell of smoke and cooking was soaked into the plaster walls. It was cleaner that Miss Karena's kitchen, at least, and better used.

"The room is upstairs," Mrs. Elizondo said, motioning him up the stairs that were as steep and narrow as a ladder.

The Doctor gripped the handrail as the dry wood creaked under his feet. Next to his hand, he heard a scratching in the walls as a rodent of unidentifiable nature scampered down behind the plaster lath.

"Breakfast is served promptly at five for the workmen," the landlady said. If she'd heard the rat, she made no sign of it. "There's supper on the table at seven if you want it. A few of the men come down for that. Eat in your own room as you like, we're not fancy here, but I find you're bringing in the roaches, you'll be out on your arse."

"I'm sure you'll have no problem with roaches here, ma'am…" he muttered. The rats would take care of them!

She glanced back at him, and he smiled as innocently as he could manage.

At the top of the stairs was the room she had to let, three doors down and right next to what must be - judging by the smell and the mold growing about the edges of the door - the water closet. The Doctor held his nose as Mrs. Elizondo unlocked the empty room and pushed open the door. The Doctor glanced inside.

It was cleaner than he would have thought, but still smelled of the damp. The white-washed walls were barely stained, and the single, cracked window had been recently washed. "Do you have many guests, Mrs. Elizondo?" he asked, scanning the room with the sonic while the woman stared at him.

"Four workmen and two families up above," she said, "plus my own, of course."

The Doctor looked out of the broken window. The room overlooked the shop next door. "And are all your boarders men, Señora?" the Doctor asked.

The landlady drew herself up. "I run a respectable house, sir. I'd not bring my family into any other!"

"No, of course not. I only ask who works for you. A maid for clearing up? A laundry service? That sort of thing?"

Mrs. Elizondo gave him a look that said what she thought of that. "We are a simple house, sir. If you want someone cleaning up after you, best to take a room at the Hotel Ria. My daughter does for me, and when she is too busy, my niece, Paola, takes her place. They sweep the halls and clean the kitchen, but your room is your own concern. An damages, I will add to your rent and I've every right to put you out if you cause any trouble."

"Yes, of course," the Doctor said, not paying too much attention. He didn't know whether the red-haired woman was a tenant here or one of Mrs. Elizondo's own family. He didn't know the woman's name, so he couldn't ask, but there was definitely signs of the same strange radiation in this house, coming from the floor below.

He remembered that several articles in Karena's clip-book mentioned voices coming from a wood or cook stoves. "There's no stove in this room," he said, looking around.

"We've a furnace, just installed," Mrs. Elizondo said. "It'll be warm enough."

"Yes, of course. Well, I'd like to see the kitchen next." Mrs. Elizondo raised an eyebrow. "I like to know where my food is coming from before I decide whether or not to eat it," the Doctor said, stepping out of the room again.

The old landlady shook her head at him, muttering imprecations against railroads and doctors and tenants in general. Down the stairs and down the hall again they went, to the kitchen at the back of the house. A new, electrical stove had been squeezed into one corner, but the original, wood stove was still active and the primary source of heat to the old building. It stood against the far wall, near the back door – outside stairs would lead down to the basement cellar where the winter firewood was stored.

The Doctor went straight to the wood stove and began scanning it with the sonic. He found more trace readings and something else. He put his head to the wall and listened, then looked behind the body of the stove itself and along the curved iron pipe. While Mrs. Elizondo looked on in amazement, he opened the door, knelt down and put his head inside.

"I don't think that is necessary!" she protested.

"Have you had any trouble with this device lately?" the Doctor asked, ignoring her. He used the light from the sonic to illuminate the inner belly of the stove; there was ash everywhere and bits of charred wood from last winter's burning.

"No trouble at all," the old woman said. "The furnace is down in the cellar now. I only use that one in winter when there's holiday cooking to be done. It has been smoking a bit..." she admitted, "but I had a man out last week and he says there's no block in the pipe. Probably just a bit of wind, or a bird's nest in the flue. We've never had any trouble in the winter months… Not that you'll be here as long as that... What exactly sort of doctor did you say you are, sir?" Mrs. Elizondo stared at him as he pulled a rubber glove from his pocket and snapped it on.

"I didn't."

A knock at the front door interrupted them before she could decide whether his money was worth the insult of an inspection. "I'll just see to that…" she said stiffly. "I won't be a moment." She hurried away, determined to summon the guardia civil if the strange gentleman wasn't out of the stove by the time she returned.

"Yes, do," the Doctor said, not really hearing her. He took a pen from his pocket and used it to sift through the ash at the bottom of the stove. Something familiar had caught his eye. It was probably just a chicken bone, he told himself, lifting the flat, white end of a broken femur. A very large chicken…

"You shouldn't do that," a high-pitched voice startled him. He nearly dropped his pen.

He pulled his arm out of the stove and turned around. A young girl, no more than five years old, was standing in the doorway, watching him. "It's alright," he assured her, dusting the ash off his sleeve. He took off his glove and held out his hand. "I'm the Doctor."

"Stoves don't need doctors," she said.

"No it doesn't. You're very right about that. What's your name?"

She looked past him into the belly of the stove. "The Goblin's gonna get you," she said.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The girl's eyes were so wide and afraid that he half expected to see a real goblin leaping out of the darkness. "What did you…?"

"Sofia!" A woman cried. "What are you doing? You know your grandmother doesn't want you in that room."

It was the red-haired woman in the grey dress. The Doctor saw her as she hurried down the hall toward the child, but she didn't see him until she was in the doorway. Sofia was pointing at him, and the woman followed the girl's finger. Her cheeks flushed red as she recognized him. She scooped up the little girl.

"Oh. I'm sorry, sir," she said quickly. "I didn't see you there. I'll take her out of your way." She turned go.

"No, wait!" The Doctor followed after the down the hall to the small sitting room where a second child, a boy, was engrossed in the construction of a pyramid of wood blocks. "I want to talk to you, Miss...?"

"You mustn't listen to the child, sir. She tells stories, her and her brother. Their last nurse liked to scare them with fairy stories. She meant no harm by it, of course. Pascualina just wanted to keep them amused."

"So, you haven't heard the voices coming from inside the wood stove?"

The woman gave a start. Her grip on the girl-child weakened enough that the child squirmed free and took up position beside her brother. She grinned at the Doctor and began bouncing up and down on her heels, singing: "Hiding 'round the corner, underneath your bed, it whispers in the shadows, it wants to eat your head..."

"Sofia!" The woman stared at her in horror. "Where did you hear such foolish rhymes?" she demanded.

"Pacho taught me!" Sofia was proud of the attention she was getting from the stranger, the English gentleman and she clasped her hands behind her back, beginning another verse. "The gap behind the bookcase, the crack inside the stove, its long arms'll grab you and its teeth'll eat your nose!"

"Be quiet! Here!" The woman took a small, tin box off a shelf and handed it to the little girl. "Take your brother outside. I've work to do."

Sofia squealed with delight, snatched the box from the woman's hands and hurried out the door. The little boy, still nameless, stood up and kicked over his tower of blocks. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, glanced up at the Doctor without curiosity and passed silently out of the room. Once the children were gone, the woman sighed and knelt down to gather the blocks back into their basket out of the way. "Pay them no mind, sir. It's just children's games. You mustn't encourage their imagination," she said.

"Why not?" the Doctor asked, surprised. "Imagination is some of the best protection we have. If you'd seen half the things I've seen and really believed in them..."

She looked at him warily.

"But that's not important. I'm sorry, I'm the Doctor," he said, holding out his hand. She didn't take it. "I didn't mean to frighten you earlier, miss. I just... I was going to meet a friend of mine at the shop, and I thought perhaps you knew her. Miss Karena?"

"You know Karena?" the woman asked.

He nodded and put on a friendly face. He had a hundred questions he'd rather ask, but settled for, "What's your name, miss?"

"Paola Becerra, sir."

"You're Mrs. Elizondo's daughter?"

"Her niece, sir," she said. "Great-niece. She is my mother's aunt."

"You don't believe the children are making up stories, do you?" he said, looking closely at her. "You've heard the voices." Paola pressed her lips together and said nothing. "What did Karena talk to you about?"

"She wanted to know about the Duende," Paola said finally.

"Duende?" The Doctor shook his head.

Paola sighed and motioned for him to sit on the narrow sofa. She sat in a chair nearby and sighed again. "It's only a story. That's what I told Pascualia, too, but she must have told Sofia and Miguel. It's just like her to make up rhymes like that to scare the children, but it's just a story. The Duende is a myth."

The Doctor sat down across from her and leaned forward eagerly to listen.

"Duende means goblin," Paola explained. "My grandmother… Not Mrs. Elizondo, la madre de mi padre, she was raised in the mountains and used to say that goblins haunted the woods near her home. They ate the mice in the barns and sometimes took infant sheep and goats from the field. When the weather was harsh, sometimes, she said, they would climb down the chimneys of folk or into the stove and whisper to the children, telling them to come inside and be warm. Mi abuela y sus hermanos, they were always anxious around a cold stove…"

Paola shook her head. "Karena is a... a strange woman, but kind. She has been very kind to me since my brother disappeared. And she was so kind to Ángel, too, after our father passed... but the Duende is a myth. I told her. It's like the Cottingley fairies, there is nothing in the stovepipe but soot and mice. It sounds like voices, sometimes, but that's just the wind whistling in the flue."

The Doctor nodded. It was simpler, safer, to imagine mice in the walls and wind in the flue than to believe in a creature stealing children for dinner. He remembered the sound he had heard in the stairwell, larger than a mouse, too large. He shook his head.

"When Miss Karena ask you about your grandmother's goblin," he asked her, "was it after your brother went missing?"

"I only met Karena after Ángel... after he was gone. I knew that she had been looking after him. She had given him books and some old clothes to wear. When he did not come home that night, I went to her house first, the professor's house. She has a room there, and I thought she might know where he'd gone.

"But she said she didn't know," the Doctor filled in for her.

Paola nodded. "Our Papa left our ma when Ángel was so little, and he took to the streets after that." Paola sniffled. "Karena seemed to guess already, she wasn't surprised that Ángel was taken. Children disappear all the time from the streets. They are taken into the factories to work or away to Barcelona to crew the foreign ships. I'd always hoped he had gone to the ships. Ángel always wanted to have an adventure. I always thought that he would write when he had a chance..." She sniffled again and took a handkerchief from her pocket to dab her eyes. "He has been gone these three years now and no letter. I thought I'd made my peace with that."

"Three years?" the Doctor said. Karena had told him that Ángel had gone missing three months ago. The dates in her clip-book were all from the past three months. "You were on your way to Karena's shop, weren't you? Did she ask you to meet her there?"

Paola nodded. "Sometimes she disappears for weeks on end. I don't know where she goes, but Anso brought me a note from her this morning, asking me to meet her at that address. I had not been to the shop before, but I knew she had it from her grandfather."

The Doctor thought about that for a moment. Had Karena sent word to Paola before he burst into her kitchen, or had she slipped away while running her errands to send the secret note? Did she know that the Doctor was following her? She might have arranged for him to meet Paola. It was pretty convenient that she had that clip-book on hand, just waiting to be given to him. He wouldn't put it past Karena to arrange for the Doctor to meet this woman as well, Ángel's sister. Hadn't Karena had told him to his face that Ángel had disappeared three months ago, but Paola said three years, and who was the more trustworthy woman?

Paola tucked her handkerchief back into her pocket and looked into the cold fireplace thoughtfully. "I still see Pascualia, sometimes, in the shops. She got a place on Gaston Gator Calle. She's been telling stories about voices in the stovepipe there, too, I've heard. She always said my abuela's Duende reminds her of the old German witch, the one who lured children into her oven to cook them?"

"Hm, what?" The Doctor gave a start, remembering the small bone he had found in the wood. "No, that's a Grunting. That species died out long ago in Austria…"

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. Just a story," he said quickly. "Miss Paola, when you hear these voices, what do they say to you? Have you ever spoken back, asked it questions, I mean?"

"There is no voice," Paola insisted. "It's just the wind."

"Of course, but have you tried speaking to it?"

She shook her head. "Sofia says that it won't answer her," she said quietly. "She says that the goblin only tells her little things, that it's cold, that it's lonely... that it's hungry."

The Doctor felt a shiver down his spine, a sensation that he wasn't used to feeling. In spite of her protests, Paola really did believe that there was something in the stove. She was afraid. Afraid for the children and afraid for herself. That Karena had believed her had been a relief, but the woman was unreliable, unstable. The Doctor wondered how much of what she had told him had been truth, and how much had been lies.

"Ah! There you are, sir," Mrs. Elizondo cried, appearing in the doorway like a rising bulwark. She spotted Paola, red-eyed and unhappy, sitting in the easy chair with the Doctor perched nearby, and her smile vanished. "Sobrina, you have work to do. Where are the children?"

"I sent them outside to play. I was just gathering up Miguel's playthings so they wouldn't get under the gentleman's feet." Paola dropped to her knees and snatched up one of the blocks that she'd missed earlier. "Lo Siento, tía," she said, dropping the block into the box and hurrying out of the room.

The older woman watched her go.

"You have a lovely family, Mrs. Elizondo," the Doctor said, standing up. He was eager to get out of the house and back onto the streets to investigate his new leads. "If you wouldn't mind, I have a few questions…?"

"Out!" the landlady shouted at him, pointing to the door. "¡Fuera de aquí! You're not here about the room. You are no doctor. We are a clean house, and safe. No gossip! No comment! I want no newspapermen here! I will not have my nephew's name dragged through the mud for some gossip column. Not again! Go!."

She shoved the Doctor down the hall and out the front door. Half an hour after he'd entered, he found himself back on the front steps to Mrs. Sara Becerra Elizondo's boarding house. Sofia and Miguel were on the sidewalk below him, drawing monsters on the pavement with stubs of colored chalk, but he didn't dare question them about the creatures they drew lest their grandmother appear and order him off again.

He didn't need any more stories, anyway. And he certainly didn't need a room in a building with rats crawling up and down inside the walls.

Rats, he mused as he made his way down the stairs, around the children and started down the street again. It was early afternoon and the crowds were heading home for lunch. Paola had told him more than enough to go on. He knew what he was looking for, and it was no goblin. He could find the creature easily enough with the Tadis sensors, but Miss Karena was a problem he hadn't seen coming. Her story was unraveling. The clues she'd given him were adding up to easily.

The Doctor took out the clippings book again and turned to the earliest pages. Above the article that reported Ángel Becerra's disappearance, Karena had penciled in the date: 06 09-19334. Earlier in the day, when he'd had little reason to suspect, he had missed that slip of her hand, the extra three where she had written the year, and what if that number four wasn't a number at all?

0609-1933A, and the next article would be dated 0644-1933A. He'd seen notation like that before, but it wasn't an Earth calendar date.

He snapped the book shut. First things first, he decided. The Duende was the simplest of his problems here, and if he was right, Ángel, Antonio and the others were already dead. He couldn't save them, but he could stop any more children from going missing. He would capture the goblin and save the day, and then he would have a quiet word with Miss Karena.


Response to Guest Reviewer: Dove - Thanks! Those are all very good guesses, but I'll never tell... at least not for a few more chapters. No spoilers! ;)

Happy New Year, Everyone! My resolutions are to keep up with this story and to learn how to cook something other than pizza and sandwiches. At least one of these I have some hope of completing ;P

-Paint