A/N: Thanks to everyone reviewing, you're all aaawwwweeessoooommmeee :D Hopefully there'll be less moaning and more action after this chapter heh.

Chapter Nine

Tea Break

Ashley leaned against a tree, hugging herself from the cold air and sighed impatiently. The forest was silent apart from the gurgling of the stream and Arnie loudly slurping on the water that flowed down the mild slope. They had only been walking for ten minutes or so after leaving Barry the tree before he insisted on a break. A break that seemed to be taking a lot longer than necessary.

'Are you nearly done?' she sighed, looking around to the horse.

Arnie looked up with a frown, water dripping from his chin. 'Oh yeah, right. Because it's okay for you to stop and have a chinwag with a tree, but if I want to stop and have a drink that's just ridiculous.'

Ashley rolled her eyes. 'Look, I really can't be bothered to argue with you anymore. Can we just get moving?'

Arnie shook his neck and shifted on his hooves. 'Fine. Whatever.' He stopped and looked around. 'Um… which way did we come again?'

Ashley looked at him for a moment. 'What do you mean which way did we come? I thought you knew where we were going?'

'Well the forest doesn't have any signs. I was just heading east and… well… I can't remember which way east is.'

'Oh that's just fantastic.' Ashley sighed heavily. 'Are you telling me that we're lost?'

Arnie scowled at the thought of being lost. 'Of course not! I know exactly where we are! I just… I'm not sure which direction we go now.' He stopped and looked around. 'Tell you what, you wait here and I'll go and have a little gallop around, see if I can get my bearings.'

Ashley nodded and massaged her head with her fingers. 'Okay, okay. Just try and make it quick, right?'

Arnie muttered something she didn't hear, probably calling her a thick tourist again she assumed, and then trotted off. 'Oh,' he called. 'And seriously, don't wander off. There's a reason I don't like these woods, right? And don't touch the apples.'

Without explaining anymore, Arnie disappeared through the foliage. Ashley sighed and looked around, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. It had been a couple of hours since the Doctor had been taken, and the voice in her head that was insisting that he was dead was only getting louder, playing on her already frayed nerves. She wanted to get to the castle now – no more standing talking to trees, no more arguing with an ill-tempered horse. When Arnie got back she was going to force him to give her a ride. If he had just let her get on his back in the first place they would probably already be there. And all he did was moan that she was too slow. God that horse moaned a lot.

She suddenly had a moment of clarity and wondered if this was what the Doctor felt like when all she did was moan and whine about things. She made a mental note not to do it so much anymore – unless she wanted him to leave her stranded on some moon somewhere.

Arnie seemed to be taking quite a long time and she was getting restless. She paced for a little while, and eventually her pacing turned into a regular walk and before she knew it, she was walking slowly through the forest, looking around for more enchanted trees or at least any signs of life other than that insufferable horse. He had warned her to stay in one place and really she should have understood why he said that, seeing as the Doctor often told her the exact same thing. But he had only warned her of apples and she didn't exactly think they would come swinging out of the trees and eat her or something.

Although she had come to be unsurprised by the unexpected.

The smell of burning reached her and Ashley came to a stop. Frowning, she sniffed the air. She wasn't an expert, but it smelled like burning wood. Or perhaps a coal fire. She looked around for the source and eventually something caught her eye through a clearing. She tentatively approached, pushing aside a leafy branch and gasped at what she saw.

A small, beautiful cottage stood in the clearing, with grey smoke puffing up from the red-bricked chimney. It was built on a little slope, giving it a quaint, hand-made look with unmatched bricks. The garden was penned in by a little picket fence and the garden was awash with bright colourful flowers. Ashley stood where she was for a moment, taking in the scene. She contemplated on going back to find Arnie and telling him they could ask for directions, but then decided that she didn't need to. She could just knock on the door, ask, and then go back and tell him herself. Maybe if she got the directions she could just carry on alone, and then everyone would be happy.

Ashley approached the house slowly and opened the small white gate. She had expected it to creak, but it had opened silently. She walked up the gravely path, pulling the mitten from her right hand ready to knock on the wooden door. She paused as something caught her eye. In the middle of the garden stood an apple tree, with the roundest, reddest apples she had ever seen. They looked beautiful and she suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to go and pick one, but Arnie's warning rang in her ears. And plus, she wasn't just going to nick someone's apples out of their garden. She wasn't a thief.

Ashley carried on up the path and hesitated at the door, before knocking twice. She had barely finished the second knock when the door opened suddenly, making her recoil in alarm. She blinked at the person who had opened the door for a moment, before managing a small smile.

'Hello. Um… I'm sorry to disturb you, but me and my, uh, friend are a bit lost and I was wondering if you could give us some directions?'

The little old woman cocked her wrinkled head and smiled kindly. 'Of course my dear,' she beamed, shuffling back and resting most of her weight on a knobbly walking stick. 'Come in, come in.'

Ashley hesitated on the doorstep. 'Well my friend is just out there, he doesn't know I'm here you see…'

'He'll find you, he'll find you.' The old woman replied. 'Come on in out of the cold. I've just put a pot of tea on. Warm yourself up, girl. You'll freeze to death out there.'

Ashley glanced over her shoulder again, searching for any signs of Arnie, but there was none. Half wincing, she stepped over the threshold. 'I'm kind of in a hurry.' She said.

'Nonsense!' the old woman replied with a wave of one frail hand. 'You have time to warm up, girl. You'll be able to move much quicker with a cup of tea down your neck.'

She disappeared through a low door. Ashley lingered near the front door for a moment, before finally closing it behind her and following the old woman. She had to stoop a little under the doorframe. The old woman was at the cupboard, getting out two small china cups while a black pot puffed silently on the stove. The kitchen was crammed with all the little things that old people always seemed to hoard over the years; like ornaments and photographs that sat on every single outcrop. There was a small dining table covered in a red tablecloth.

'Sit down, sit down,' the old woman crooned as she shuffled to the stove with the cups. 'I imagine you're exhausted.'

Ashley sat down at the table, feeling awkward. She always felt this way around old people. They made her uncomfortable. She never knew what she was supposed to say, or how she was supposed to act. She just hoped this would be a case of drink the tea, get the directions and leave. Arnie was going to have a right moan when she got back.

'Do you take sugar, girl?'

'Um, one please.' Then she added hastily. 'Thank you.'

'Oooh nice manners,' the old woman smiled, shuffling towards the table with the two steaming cups. 'It's not very often the children around here keep their manners. They start growing facial hair and wearing low-cut ball gowns and their manners just fly out of the window. As well as their brains.'

Ashley smiled politely and peered into the cup of tea set down in front of her. 'Well I'm not from around here to be honest.'

'Ah!' the old woman beamed, revealing a mouth of crooked teeth. 'A tourist! Well I'm sure you've already noticed that tourist season is cancelled this year. Shame. I like seeing them roaming around.'

Ashley nodded and took a small sip of the tea. It was hot and it burned her mouth, which distracted her from the tingling aftertaste it left. 'It started off as a kind of tourist thing,' she shrugged. 'But then… well… I lost my friend.'

The old woman looked sympathetic. 'Oh dear. Get split up did you?'

'You could say that. He got taken by a dragon.'

The old woman blinked for a moment. 'Oh… oh yes I heard about that.' She watched Ashley over the brim of her cup as she took a sip. Apparently her mouth was flame retardant. 'Well that is a shame.'

'He should be okay though,' Ashley smiled. 'He gets caught up in this kind of thing all the time. Although… well, he's never mentioned a dragon before… But I'm sure he's been in worse trouble.'

'Troublesome boy, eh?' the old woman arched a thin eyebrow. 'You seem like too nice a girl to be hanging around with troublesome boys.'

'Oh he's not troublesome.' Ashley chuckled. 'Trouble kind of finds him.'

The old woman nodded. 'So where is it you're off to then? I take it you're off to find your troublesome friend?'

'We think he might have been taken to a castle in the Dark Woods. Or at least that's where Arnie said it was. He's a bit useless to be honest, he's already got us lost.'

The old woman's expression darkened. 'The Dark Woods, you say?'

Ashley paused. 'Yeah. Do you know about it?'

'Everyone knows about that place. And everyone knows not to go there. Not since… well… not since they appeared.'

Ashley watched her, wide eyes. 'Who?'

The old woman took another sip of her tea. 'The Trolls.'

'Trolls?'

'Yes, girl. They appeared about three months ago. You can never trust a Troll. They're too big and brutish. They would rather eat you than anything else. We had never had a Troll problem here before. I tell you, I wrote a letter to the council about it, but they didn't even reply. Didn't even seem concerned when the dragon appeared! But then again the dragon did destroy the council house…'

Ashley tilted her head curiously. 'So the Trolls turned up just before the dragon?'

The old woman nodded. 'No offence, girl, but I don't particularly like talking about these kinds of things. Drink that tea up and I'll explain how you get to the Dark Woods from here.' She pushed herself up out of her seat with creaking bones. 'I think I'll have myself another.'

Ashley watched the old woman shuffle back to the stove and looked back down at her tea. She could picture Arnie stomping around in the forest looking for her, complaining and moaning. Actually, he probably would have just headed back to the town. He could do that, but Ashley doubted that he would. There wasn't really anywhere else for him to go. She picked up the cup and blew the top before taking a quick drink. This time she noticed the strange taste.

'What kind of tea is this?' she asked as she peered into the cup. 'It tastes… It's got a strange taste to it.'

The old woman poured another cup of tea. 'Oh, my own recipe.'

Ashley looked up, noticing the drastically dropped pitch in the woman's voice. Now it was deep and throaty. Ashley's vision shuddered in front of her eyes and she placed her hands on the table, blinking rapidly. Her eyesight only continued to blur.

'What… what was…' She blinked, looking up at the growling sound ahead of her.

The old woman was growing and swelling. It was hard for Ashley to see exactly what was happening, but brown hairs sprouted from the old woman's arms. Her face seemed to extend and stretch, splitting in half. Her dress popped at the seams and furry thighs burst out. Huge white teeth sprouted out of the hairy muzzle.

Ashley blinked, her head and vision swimming. She looked into the huge, cavernous toothy mouth and mumbled, 'That's some big teeth you got there.'