Chapter Four
It was probably a bad idea, Amy thought, to leave Jane Austen (Jane Austen!) standing by the TARDIS door in a torn nightdress, drenched from head-to-toe and gawping, wide-eyed, at the interior of the Doctor's beloved spaceship. However, as much of a bad idea this was, there was nothing much else to be done for it. They had a blasted creature from outerspace trying to break down their door and they had to do something about it.
The Doctor always said that the TARDIS was impenetrable, but the Doctor also said that he could fly the TARDIS properly. Right now, it looked like he wasn't going to risk his door getting smashed open.
"Hold on to something!" he shouted, running up to the console and flicking the first switches he came to.
The engine whooshed to life as Amy and Rory sat down on the nearest seat and held on to the railing.
Jane was still standing still, gawking.
"Jane!" Amy exclaimed.
The TARDIS disappeared from Steventon, Hampshire 1797 and flung itself at full-force into the time vortex.
Jane Austen promptly fainted.
The Doctor looked panicked; take-offs were usually bumpy, no matter what he did. But then a fire started on the console and he was trying to put it out while smacking two levers with the hammer and his attention was wholly occupied by his rickety ship.
Amy caught Rory's eye.
Together, they sprinted from the safety of their seats, crossed the console room and picked up Jane's limp form. Though the floor and the ceiling were shaking enough to make their footing extremely uneven, Amy and Rory managed to carry her back across the room without dropping her or falling over. They set her down as gently as they could on the couch they had just vacated, and held on to the railings for dear life.
The shaking ceased once the fire was put out.
"Oh, well, that was a lot simpler than I expected," the Doctor said, turning around and grinning.
Rory coughed. "Er, your hair is… sort of on fire."
"Oh?" Slightly panicky, the Doctor reached for the fire extinguisher.
Amy wasn't sure whether she should laugh or not, but she decided not to mention anything about fire extinguishers again until the Time Lord's hair settled down to something normal.
"Well," the Doctor said casually, "that was exciting, don't you think?"
Amy brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "She doesn't look very good."
"Yes, well, you wouldn't look very good either if you had Draghs living in your house for a week, Draghs living off every thought, every emotion, Draghs chasing you down–" He stopped. "Actually, she looks a lot better, considering," he said, shrugging.
"We should probably look after her," Rory said. "She didn't have any shoes, so her feet are cut and bruised; she's lucky she didn't step on any glass after her window exploded."
"There should be a room where she can rest up," the Doctor said. "Out back there somewhere."
Amy nodded. "By the swimming pool?"
The Doctor sighed. "Wherever."
"Or the library?"
"I don't know!" the Doctor said irritably. "Since the TARDIS crashed and got reset, she can't make up her mind where she wants what! It changes each time I go back there!" He shot a glare at the console.
The TARDIS continued to thrum, the engines working smoothly.
They eventually found a rather spacious bedroom with a convenient bathroom for Jane, one that happened to be closer to the swimming pool than the library. After searching for the first aid box, Rory managed to clean up the worst of her cuts and bruises. Amy attempted to search through the selection of period dresses, but could not find anything suitable aside from the ruined dress she was already wearing. Giving up, Amy pulled some clothes and a pair of shoes out of her own closet for their late eighteenth century guest and threw in a poncho along with it.
Amy had a feeling that once Jane figured out how to dress herself in twenty-first century clothes, she would want to wear the poncho.
She scribbled a note for Jane and quickly sketched out a map as to how to find the console room, hoping that the TARDIS didn't decide to rearrange the rooms anytime soon. She left the note on top of the pile of clothes.
Now that their trip was complete, she and Rory left to change back into their ordinary clothes. Amy knew that her muddy dress was not something she wanted to wear while sitting around the TARDIS for the next few hours.
"She'll be okay?" Amy asked later as they made their way back.
"Yeah," Rory answered. "She'll live. A bit shocked, a bit scared, confused… lost. I suppose that's why you don't bring people from 1797 on to a spaceship."
"Still," Amy said, slowly to a halt just outside the console room.
"What?"
She turned and grinned, her eyes blazing with excitement. "Jane Austen!"
"I know!"
"Jane Austen! It's like… it's like meeting Shakespeare!"
"Yeah, Shakespeare's cool," the Doctor commented as they entered the console room. He was fighting with the controls again; the console was sparking. He hit it with the hammer.
It sparked some more.
"I don't think that's helping," Rory said.
"Probably not," the Doctor said, discarding the hammer. "It was worth a go, though."
"Though, I suppose," Amy continued, "she's not as impressive as I thought she'd be. I dunno, I thought she'd be, you know, wordier."
"She called my bow-tie an 'oddly-shaped cravat,'" the Doctor said. He actually sounded disappointed.
Amy snorted with laughter. "Good on her!"
"She's a lot younger than I expected," Rory said. "Though that was before I knew it was 1797 – she hasn't been published yet, then?"
"No, no, she's got ages to go before she reaches that point," the Doctor said. "Pride and Prejudice is still First Impressions and Northanger Abbey is still Susan."
"You know, I never really liked her," Amy said, sitting down. "They tried to make us read Pride and Prejudice in school and I found it insufferably stuffy. I gagged every other paragraph."
"And then you tried to flush your copy down the toilet," Rory said. "I remember."
"You what?" the Doctor exclaimed.
"I tried to flush Pride and Prejudice down the toilet," Amy said, shrugging.
"But… but… how…" He was stuttering with shock. "That's a classic, Pond! A classic!"
"Just because it's a classic doesn't mean that I have to like it," Amy replied. "I think her stories are better suited for movies and miniseries. Like that one with Colin Firth. That's when I realised the nineteenth century could be sexy."
The Doctor apparently didn't hear that as he was still acting apoplectic at the thought of someone daring to flush Pride and Prejudice down the toilet. "You get the chance not only to meet the greatest novelist of her time, but rescue the greatest novelist of her time, and all you can say is that you tried to flush her greatest novel down the toilet?"
Amy glanced at Rory. "He's not going to forgive me for that one, is he?"
"Nope."
"Great. Thanks." She punched his shoulder.
"Ow. You're welcome."
Amy crossed her legs and twisted a strand of hair around her finger, watching the Doctor continue to splutter about her treatment of fine English literature. "So, Doctor, you still haven't explained what Draghs are."
He disregarded her, suddenly fascinated by a bright button on the TARDIS console that changed colour depending from which angle you viewed it. "They're interesting, mildly horrible things, Amy, that also happen to be invisible, for the most part. I do love a good, invisible thing. Of course, you can sort of see them when you shine a bright light on them, so they're not entirely invisible. Oh, but their breath also happens to turn Venellium string a bright blue," he added excitedly, fetching a piece of blue string out of his pocket and holding it up as proof.
"Right, because the universe can be saved by a piece of blue string," Amy said, exasperated.
"You'd be surprised," the Doctor said.
"I'd be more surprised if you ever got around to telling us about Draghs," Amy countered.
"All you did earlier was shout 'Draghs! Get a torch! Get some paint! Let's go!' without any sort of explanation," Rory added.
"Well, I say 'jump' and you say 'how high?'" the Doctor said unapologetically. "That's how this works… most of the time."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Invisible creatures! Oh so scary until you throw a bucket of paint on them and they become visible, in a paint-y sort of way. What do they want with Jane?"
The Doctor flicked a few controls and spun around. "Draghs are a kind of spectre, Amy," he said. "Big, flying humanoid things. They float around the universe and are pretty harmless most of the time. Every planet's got at least a few of them. They form psychic links with the inhabitants, and every so often they stay in one place long enough to start messing around with things. You know a Dragh's been around for too long if you start hearing howling that no one else can hear and if you lack the motivation to do just about anything. It's rather depressing to stick around a Dragh. They're not evil, they just make you feel rather pathetic." He paused. "They do have one peculiarity. Unlike most sentient beings, they don't live off food – they're sustained by sound."
"Sound?" Rory said. "How on earth is that supposed to work?"
"Haven't a bloody clue," the Doctor aid. "Never bothered to look it up. They're ancient creatures, Draghs. Evidently evolution sort of gave up on the whole sound-as-sustenance thing because they're the only people like that. Unfortunately, 'sound' and 'noise' are two very different things. Not all sound is good for them; they can't just sit around listening to anything. Voices are good for them. Human voices, in particular. Draghs are quite sensitive, when you get right down to it. They need the power of the spoken word to survive. Anything else is just noise, and is either unimportant or irritating. Think of it like the difference between eating dirt and eating steak."
"If they like human voices, then how come you told Amy to scream?" Rory asked.
"Not all types of voices are good for them, either," the Doctor said. "To them, screaming is an alteration of the voice and they don't particularly like listening to it."
Amy smiled. "They didn't like that very much. Gave them a right old shock, I think."
"It's like an allergy," the Doctor said. He chuckled. "Imagine that… allergic to screaming."
"And Jane?" Rory asked.
"These particular Draghs are near the end of their life cycle," the Doctor said. "They're weak, desperate. They've probably been on Earth for a couple thousand years, living off scraps of human voices that barely sustain them. If they're going to continue living, they're going to need something a bit stronger than listening to idle village gossip. They've just happened to find what they need in Jane: not just a lovely voice, but also a brilliant mind and a creator of wonderful stories. To them, her voice isn't just the sound she makes when she speaks; it's also the quality of what she talks about. They've been with her for at least a week, probably more. She's been having trouble writing because they've had the time to create a psychic link with her and they've been feeding off that energy. I could tell from the way they reacted when I shouted her name really loudly earlier. They're convinced that her voice is the only one that can save them, and they'll continue to haunt her until there's nothing left but an empty shell."
"What do we do, then?" Amy asked. "Scream at them until they run away?"
"They can't help what they're doing, Amy," the Doctor said. "They're just trying to survive. No… we can't just kick them out, they'll come back and finish Jane off as soon as she's on her own. We need another solution, and I haven't figured out what it is just yet."