-Chapter 7-

"Well he certainly didn't stick around long," Melody remarked, studying the place in the clearing where the ghost named Rigelax had stood just moments before. It was smoldering, as if he had burnt away. But he hadn't. The vision had just faded. She didn't let go of her stick. Best to keep her wits – and stick – about her at all times now that the sequence of events seemed to be moving again.

"Well," the Doctor said distantly, pacing around the smoking patch of ground, then crouching beside it. He wiped his index finger along the dirt, licked it, and began to cough violently, falling onto his side. He spasmed, coughing too frequently to yell, as if having an extreme allergic reaction. Then, as quickly as it began, it stopped. The Doctor sat up, non-perturbed.

"Just as I expected," the Doctor said, smiling as if nothing had happened, "he was an echo – well, a shadow – well, a ghost – well, he was a 6th dimensional echo casting a 5th dimensional shadow into the 4th dimensional aspect of the TARDIS; a ghost to us." Melody nodded, hoping that would speed things along. At least this was better than the Doctor answering questions she hadn't thought to ask yet – maybe.

"There are hundreds of beings like him, swooping around this planet," the Doctor went on, standing at the TARDIS console which itself was embedded crookedly in the soil of the clearing. He leaned on his knuckles as his haggard expression was magnified tenfold by his wispy beard.

"I can hear them now, all rattling about, moaning, whispering," the Doctor looked around, the haunted look not leaving his eyes – could he see things Melody couldn't? – and then went on, "chaotic, directionless, quantum, haunted by the puzzle of their own non-existence. We only saw this particular shadow because the TARDIS flared on. Creates some interesting temporal side-affects. Especially when she's still cooking. Rigelax is still here. All of them are still here." Melody looked around. She didn't see anything other than the sky, the suns, the tops of those blue trees, the pile of bones left over from weeks of midnight snacks. The colors were all still saturated, as if in the wake of a thunderstorm. Was that them? Her resolve to keep her stick about her at all times galvanized.

"Is that important?" Melody asked.

"Important?" the Doctor balked, "there's not supposed to be this level of Time Manipulation – well, any level of Time Manipulation – on Alfalfa-Matraxis for," the Doctor paused, licked his finger, and held it up as if testing the wind, "ever," he finished.

"Even just one of these quantum ghosts is problematic," the Doctor went on. "I'm the only one who gets to play boss with Time. I may have cheated on my exam, but the license office is closed – well, blown up. Whoever is causing this doesn't realize that they're weakening the very fabric of time itself. The time-stream is stretched thin. like tissue – wet tissue." The Doctor touched his chin, balked at the beard he must have forgotten about, then stroked it thoughtfully. "Actually, that's a rubbish metaphor. Disregard. It's more like Time is cheese and they're all bacterial colonies, causing holes." Melody didn't know what bacterial colonies were – wait, wasn't that was Anthrax was? She gulped. Were quantum ghosts some temporal form of germ warfare? Why would someone want to infect cheese? Whoever this Half-King was, he was obviously a brilliant tactician.

"So are we going to do something clever and save the day?" Melody asked, the plots of dozens of comic books flashing around in the back of her head. It was better than that creepy voice ratting off gruesome details about the flesh-eating bacteria, that was sure. The Doctor turned to her and smiled. Gone were the old haunted eyes and the defeated slouch. He exhaled sharply, as if containing a sharp laugh, and picked her up. Somehow, despite weeks of living in an alien forrest, he still smelled of peppermint.

"Of course we are," the Doctor said, his sudden enthusiasm resulting in a shout. He swung Melody onto his shoulders where she watched the Doctor play with the dials, buttons, and household appliances which protruded from what remained of the TARDIS.

"This seems to be a kind-of, sort-of, fantastically amazing job and we are kind-of, sort-of, fantastically amazing individuals," he said, happily, punctuating each and every syllable with the pressing of a button or the turning of a dial.

"And how are we going to do that? Do we have any kind of plan whatsoever?" Melody asked, smiling herself. People who abandoned her in an alien forrest for weeks and still hadn't given her half of the answers she was looking for weren't supposed to be able to make her smile like that. But the Doctor appeared to be a category of people all his own and she was just about through with fighting it.

"Don't know yet," the Doctor said, just as happily as ever, "but we'll figure it out. We know it has something to do with this 'Half-King' our ghostly fellow Rigelax was fretting over. Find him and we find the problem. Find the problem, we can fix it. Probably."

He spun suddenly, and Melody almost fell off of his shoulders. She hung on tighter with her legs.

"Oh! That was a plan!" the Doctor went on, not noticing Melody's efforts to stay upright, "see what happens when I talk?"

"I'm beginning to get the idea," Melody said, partially to herself, partially to the Doctor.

"So we're finding this Half-King?" she asked.

"No," the Doctor answered, still playing with buttons, "we're going to find Canton." Melody had forgotten Canton. They had met so briefly. Where had he gone?

"Why?" Melody asked, "I thought you said this Ghosts and Time-Cheese thing was important."

"Because I made a vow, a long, long time ago to someone very special, to never leave anyone behind again," Melody was silent for moment. Shocked by the weight of the statement by his grandeur - Wait. She rapped him on the head with her stick. Hard.

"Agggggh," the Doctor yelped, "what was that for?"

"That was me!" Melody yelled, "you vowed that to me! Ten minutes ago!"

"Time is relative," the Doctor said, shrugging a shrug that lifted Melody slightly. She couldn't see his face, but she envisioned a sort of knowing smile which would just make her more annoyed, "you'll learn that. Now hold tight. Without the exterior, this is going to be a bumpy ride." He patted the console, laughing, "but you can take it, can't you, Sexy?"

The Doctor flipped a switch and the TARDIS sprung to life. It whooped. It wheezed.

They faded. They vanished.