TURLOUGH'S TALE
Chapter Eight
I pick up a package. "Bread."
Tegan picks one up. "Cheese! Oh, Époisses. Stinky."
"I promise not to kiss you," I joke. She glares at me.
"Dried, salted beef," says the Doctor, happily. He pulls the tea kettle out of his pocket, along with a damp plastic shrink-wrapped box of Twinings Earl Grey. "Look what else I found." It takes him but a moment to construct a little platform on which to boil some snow.
We tuck in.
"Aren't we going to examine the lock box?" I ask, my mouth full of beef.
"Eat first," mumbles the Doctor, through a mouthful of cheese.
"And what are we supposed to drink the tea out of… our hands?" I regret my tone right away as the Doctor looks crestfallen, but then he smiles and leaps back up. He's rapidly away and back with a plastic pail and shovel. "I hope hot tea won't melt that."
"It's sturdy," says the Doctor, sitting once more. "We can pass it around." He takes another bite of stinky cheese and offers me some. I decline. "There have been earthlings here, perhaps a colony. This is French cheese. The tea is British."
"Perhaps the contents of that box will tell us more." I reach for it, can't lift it, scoot over to it instead. "Lots of paper."
"Some of it may be currency," suggests the Doctor.
"Could be." I pick up a paper and read aloud: "My dear Alexandra. This is to inform you that we have been denied permission to marry. My love for you has not abated but I cannot come to you until next year, as I am still indentured here. We can go to Leringham and marry there when I am free. Will you wait for me? All my love, Gavin."
"How sad and romantic!" Tegan's sympathetic exclamation is somewhat marred by an extraordinarily loud burp that makes her laugh. "Excuse me!"
I lift up the stack of paper and find, under it, some small, plain cardboard boxes (shaped like ring boxes but not bleached white or dyed black), one of which I open: inside I find a tooth. ("Baby tooth," guesses the Doctor.) The next box I try contains strands of dark blonde hair, bundled and secured with green string. I try one more and there at last is the expected ring, tiny, too tiny even for my pinky, too tiny for Tegan's (she tries it on too), just a little silver band with a white pearl set in a little silver loop and a black pearl cattycornered from that in an identical loop. It's lovely and it's obviously a child's ring. Tegan hands it back and I place it carefully into its slot in the dowdy box. The Doctor is no longer paying attention; he is absorbed in a much longer letter than the one I'd read aloud. My own attention is caught by what lies beneath the little boxes: folded cloth, wrapped in clear plastic, whose flap I carefully lift. The cloth turns out to be a toddler-sized dress, with a white collar, short puffy white sleeves piped in navy blue, a navy blue bodice with three small pearly white decorative buttons from collar to waist, and a flouncy white skirt in layers, each also piped in navy blue.
"That looks hand-made," murmurs Tegan, handling it gently and describing each feature aloud, which is why I am able to do so now (I wouldn't know a flounce or piping from a flounder or a pike).
"What's that, Doctor?" I ask, repackaging the little dress. The Doctor quickly folds up what he is reading and replies,
"Oh…." Then his face lights up. "Since we're camping and it's dark now, why don't we tell ghost stories? Gosh I wish we had some marshmallows."
"Ghost stories?" This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I've had enough of ghostly apparitions; that's why we're hiding.
"All right." Tegan sounds a bit doubtful too but since she is going along with it and I'd rather liked it when she almost smiled at me, I agree to this new activity.
"Who starts? Not me," I add.
"Why not you?" Tegan wants to know.
"Because."
"All right, all right, how about you, then, Tegan?"
We both look expectantly at Tegan and under our gaze she closes her eyes and lifts her chin, either considering whether to comply or actually thinking of a story; I can't tell which. Then she opens her eyes and says, "Does it count if there's no actual ghost in it but it's spooky?"
"Why not?" smiles the Doctor.
"Well," starts Tegan, "I had the strangest dream, and I wasn't even asleep. It was about you, Doctor, and, well, we hadn't actually met yet." The Doctor looks a bit startled at that. "In fact, I only just realized, this minute. I'd forgotten about that dream. That's odd, isn't it?"
"Me now," asks the Doctor, "or me as you met me, I mean when you finally did meet me?"
"You now, and you… not yet."
"My regeneration," whispers the Doctor.
"In a dream," I remind him, as he looks shaken, and we haven't even heard the story yet.
"Yes, of course." The Doctor seems somewhat reassured. "Go on, Tegan."
"Well," she continues, then breaks off. "No, maybe I shouldn't go on. This was a distressing dream when I didn't know who I was dreaming about. Now that I know it's you, I don't know if I can even tell it."
"I can take it," says the Doctor, in that manner he adopts whenever he's trying to hide his feelings, raising his eyebrows and jutting his chin out a bit. I almost laugh; it's so transparent. "After all, it was only a dream."
"Okay," says Tegan. "if you can, I guess I can. You were dying on the TARDIS floor, and you were thinking you might not regenerate. You were giving up. You looked… drained. I was afraid for you. I told you to have a brave heart, the way you always tell me, except I hadn't met you yet when I had this dream, remember, so I didn't know you were going to say that. I said it to you first, in the dream! And you became another guy, differently from how your other self became you. Quite differently."
"How," the Doctor begins, then ducks his head and doesn't ask. Then he lifts his head again and smiles. "So who was the ghost, you or me? Or… new me?" He gives me a strange look and I realize that he is wondering whether I am going to kill him after all – and damned if I'm not wondering the same thing.
"I cried," Tegan continues. "I cried and I was driving at the time. I don't know why I had a dream while I was driving, it wasn't a daydream, that's different, this was a real dream, like… like a hallucination. I almost crashed because of it. The other guy swerved or I wouldn't be here telling you about it now. How could I forget that?" The Doctor is still looking at me. "Doctor?"
"Hmm? Oh, I don't know. Strange things happen sometimes." He ducks his head again but comes up grinning. "Tea, anyone?"
We pass the plastic pail around.
"Your turn, Doctor," I say, before Tegan can declare otherwise. I don't know what I'm going to talk about but it sure can't be the Black Guardian.
The Doctor looks thoughtful. This storytelling session was his idea but apparently he had nothing in mind when he suggested it. He rocks back on his heels and looks up, then suddenly we all nearly jump out of our skins, uttering a collective gasp as we realize we are not alone. There's a shadow cast large on the thin blanket-wall opposite the fireplace. "Who's there?" the Doctor asks in a normal tone of voice. The blanket is lifted and under it slips a fur-enveloped figure which slowly straightens and looks at us. I can barely make out its features, distorted as they are by the flickering firelight and obscured as they are by the fur hood, but I can see that the figure is not as tall as its shadow suggested.