ABOUT THE BOOK

A companion: explores time and space with the Doctor, gets into trouble with the Doctor, fights enemies with the Doctor … And – more often than not – has to save his life.

Here are four fantastic new adventures with the Doctor, starring Rose, Sarah-Jane, Clara and Bill. Written by Jenny Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Dorothy Koomson and Susan Calman, these stories are a celebration of the Doctor’s fantastic female friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jacqueline Rayner has written many books, audio plays and comic strips, many of them set in the world of Doctor Who, including the number-one bestseller The Stone Rose and two ‘Quick Reads’ for World Book Day. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked at BBC Books as an editor on their Doctor Who range.

Jenny T. Colgan has written twenty-five novels under the name Jenny Colgan and, as Jenny T. Colgan, has published extensively in the Doctor Who universe, including the novels In the Blood and Dark Horizons, and the Big Finish audio drama, Time Reaver, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

Susan Calman is a comedian, actor, presenter and writer. A regular on The News Quiz, Susan has written four series for BBC Radio 4 and her last tour, The Calman Before The Storm, sold out nationally. On TV she presents The Boss, Armchair Detectives and Top Class. In 2016 she published her memoir, Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate, and in 2017, she quickstepped into the nation’s hearts as maybe the most joyful contestant ever on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. An advocate for LGBT and mental health issues, Susan lives in Glasgow with her wife, Lee, and their cats.

Dorothy Koomson is the award-winning author of twelve novels. Her third book, My Best Friend’s Girl, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club 2006 Summer Reads and sold more than 500,000 copies. Dorothy’s books The Ice Cream Girls and The Rose Petal Beach were both shortlisted for the British Book Awards, and in 2013 a television adaptation of The Ice Cream Girls appeared on ITV1. Since her early days of buying comics and working in a well-known comic store, Dorothy has been a die-hard science fiction fan, so she was delighted to work on this anthology.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Kelly Wagner is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Milwaukee, WI, USA. Most of her projects involve branding, product development, illustration, typography and promotional print materials. The foundation of Kelly’s work is the belief that all great design should strongly engage, inspire and communicate. It is her main ambition to consistently deliver deeply intentional solutions that are both beneficial and relevant. Her primary medium of choice is Adobe Illustrator.

Sarah Jane and the Temple of Eyes

BY JACQUELINE RAYNER

‘Have you ever heard the phrase “Caesar’s wife”?’ the Doctor asked Sarah Jane, as they strolled through the marketplace.

All about them, stallholders in tunics exhorted them to buy pastries, bread, silks and jewellery. Some stalls boasted rows of amphorae containing oil or wine; others displayed baskets of figs, dates and raisins. If Sarah closed her eyes, the smell of cinnamon and cloves from the spice stalls transported her to a twentieth-century English Christmas with mulled wine and mince pies. The heat of the day, however, gave the lie to those imaginings.

Julius Caesar might have been as far in the past for the people at this market as Queen Anne was to Sarah, but the Doctor had nonetheless been inspired by the surroundings to regale Sarah with various nuggets of Ancient Roman trivia.

‘Yes, I have,’ Sarah replied. ‘It means someone who’s pure, perfect. Above suspicion.’

‘That’s how it’s used, yes, but it doesn’t actually mean that at all,’ the Doctor said, to Sarah’s annoyance – she prided herself on her wide-ranging knowledge (an essential asset, she believed, for a good journalist). The Doctor looped his scarf round his neck a couple of times. ‘Caesar’s wife, Pompeia, was hosting a festival of the Bona Dea – cakes, fizzy pop, no men allowed – and a man called Clodius sneaked in. So Caesar divorced his wife.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because gossips would have been able to say anything they liked about what had gone on at the party, and Caesar wouldn’t have been able to prove otherwise, so she was for the chop. It didn’t matter whether she’d done anything or not, because, as Caesar himself said, his wife must be “above suspicion”.’

Sarah drew herself to her full height – which, owing to the flat Roman sandals she was wearing, brought her up to about the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘Of all the male chauvinist pigs –’

The Doctor raised his hands. ‘You don’t think he had a point, then? Some of the things I’ve seen at parties – pass the parcel, musical chairs, blind man’s buff …’

Sarah gave an involuntary shudder and pulled her Roman cloak tighter round her, although she didn’t need it for warmth. The Doctor immediately noticed, of course. That was just like him, Sarah thought: he’d be completely oblivious when she was sure her feelings were as obvious as the nose on her face, then immediately pounce upon the thing she was trying very concertedly to keep hidden.

‘Nothing. It’s nothing,’ she said, defending herself before he could even ask. He was looking so intently at her that she couldn’t help elaborating, although staying silent might have been more sensible. ‘It’s silly. You’d laugh.’

‘Well of course I’d laugh! If it’s a joke. Is it a joke?’

A sharp shake of her head.

He was staring right into her eyes, no smile, and she knew that he was already well aware it wasn’t funny to her. How did he know her so well? How did her tiniest gesture give away the unspoken fear that lay beneath her smiles?

‘Blind man’s buff …’ he repeated, his eyes boring into hers.

And she did it again. She shuddered! It made her angry, and even more defensive. ‘Well, if you already know, why ask?’ she said, crossing her arms defiantly and ignoring the fact that he hadn’t asked her anything at all.

During her travels with the Doctor, Sarah had been nearly killed a dozen or more times – actually, definitely more, now she came to think about it. Recently, an attack that had been meant to kill her had instead blinded her, and it had scared her more than she wanted to admit. The powerlessness, the sudden tearing away of one of her senses, had left her terrified. She hadn’t said anything about it to the Doctor, but it seemed she didn’t need to.

‘Look, everyone has silly little fears,’ she went on. ‘Mine happens to be going blind. Well, that and snakes,’ she added after a second, remembering a horrifying experiment involving a the illusion of a snake that she’d been put through during another adventure with the Doctor. Going blind and snakes were now two of her top-three fears, but she would never admit the third to the Doctor, not even under duress – and she knew he would never guess what it was, either.

‘You’re not scared of Daleks, or Sontarans, or giant spiders?’ the Doctor asked her.

‘No.’ She paused, trying to find the right words. ‘Those are all … extraordinary things. Of course they’re terrifying – really terrifying – but they’re extreme. It’s the little things, the things that could still happen when I’m back home and there are no aliens for a million miles. Things like going blind, or being bitten by a snake – an ordinary Earth snake.

‘Look, tell me more about the – what was it? The Bona Dea,’ she said, desperate to change the subject.

‘The Bona Dea? It means the Good Goddess. Most of the details of her and her cult – including her real name – are lost to history, though. Do you know why?’

‘Seeing as I hadn’t heard of her until three minutes ago, no,’ said Sarah.

‘Go on.’ The Doctor showed all his teeth, his eyes inviting her into the game. ‘Have a guess!’

A challenge to her journalistic reasoning! Sarah couldn’t resist.

‘Oh!’ She concentrated hard for a moment. ‘Of course! Because hers was a women-only cult, but all the Ancient Roman historians were men, so they didn’t have any information to pass on for posterity.’

‘Good girl!’ said the Doctor. It was a pretty patronising comment, but the Doctor was about 719 years older than her and probably the cleverest person ever to walk the Earth, so she’d let it be; anyone else – the Brigadier, say, or Harry Sullivan – would have known her wrath.

‘Maybe we could investigate the Bona Dea cult while we’re here,’ Sarah suggested. ‘Cause a storm in historical circles when we get back to the twentieth century.’

The Doctor gestured down at himself. ‘I don’t think they’d let me in.’

‘Oh, come on. With a ribbon in your hair, maybe …’ Sarah tried to look serious, but couldn’t help herself – a laugh burst out. ‘Okay, fair point. Not exactly your look. I’ll just have to do it myself, then.’

‘Well, yes, if you want to visit a temple or two. Of course, the Bona Dea is not only a goddess of women. She’s also a goddess of healing, and the symbol of healing –’

‘Is a snake. Great. Thanks for the warning. She’ll just have to remain a mystery for ever.’

The Doctor grinned. ‘Have I ever told you about the time I met the three-headed serpent of Orestian Major – oof!’

They’d been so intent on their conversation that neither of them had noticed the woman running towards them until she cannoned into the Doctor, knocking him into a basket of cabbages. Hooking his scarf round the stall’s corner post, the Doctor pulled himself up. As he did so, one flailing arm caught the door of a wicker birdcage and burst it open. The stallholder shouted furiously as a dozen tiny birds hopped tentatively towards liberty, then took to their wings and flew out in a single, joyful mass, twittering gleefully.

‘Are you all right?’ Sarah said, helping the woman, who had also fallen, to her feet. Then she gasped. The woman’s eyes were solid white and blank. Unseeing. ‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said hurriedly, embarrassed at having reacted so obviously. ‘Has someone hurt you? Is someone chasing you?’

By now a crowd had gathered around them, eager for the slightest touch of drama to colour their workaday lives. The stallholder even stopped shouting about his fly-away profits and came round the front of his booth to see more clearly what was going on.

‘I need a doctor,’ the woman said desperately, panicky breaths punctuating her speech. ‘Please, someone, find me a doctor.’

Sarah nudged the Doctor hard in the ribs.

‘I’m not that sort of doctor,’ he hissed under his breath, but the woman realised he was talking and turned towards his voice.

‘Are you a doctor? Can you help me? Please.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah, as the Doctor shook his head at her. She spoke softly, trying to calm the woman. ‘Can you tell me what happened to you? Are you lost? Were you attacked?’

The woman’s breathing only grew more frantic. ‘I … I can’t see!’

Sarah and the Doctor exchanged a look.

‘Do you mean you suddenly went blind? Just now?’ Sarah said.

‘Yes!’ A bewildered expression crossed the woman’s face. ‘But I don’t … I don’t know what happened,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember? Oh, Fortuna, what has happened to me?’

Sarah helped the woman to a nearby seat and put a hand on her arm. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said soothingly. ‘Try to keep calm.’

Sarah could tell that the Doctor’s mind had already moved on, that rather than worrying about caring for this woman he was trying to work out what was going on. No, that wasn’t quite right. He did care; he just didn’t see the need for small gestures. No cups of tea or sympathy from him when he could be out there, fighting the monsters, instead. It made perfect sense, pragmatically – anyone could offer a drink and a shoulder to cry on, but very few people could defeat an invasion from another world. Therefore, his time was more profitably spent on the latter. This clinical approach to any crisis or problem only served to emphasise his alien nature. The Doctor was Sarah’s best friend, and she was his, but sometimes she wondered how she’d feel if she were one of the people he left behind. How unbearable that would be.

The stallholder, standing nearby, pointed at the woman. ‘I know who you are!’ he said in a smug tone. ‘You’re Titus Fabius’s wife! Lucilla, that’s it. He’s offered five denarii to anyone with information on your whereabouts.’ Then he added, in an aside to Sarah, ‘Missing for a couple of days, she’s been.’

It was a foolish thing to say if he’d been hoping to get the reward for himself. Suddenly the crowd swarmed in even closer, each person determined to be the one to claim the bounty. People grabbed at the woman’s sleeves, trying to pull her to them.

Sarah slapped their hands away, putting herself between Lucilla and the mob. Her eyes fell on a boy loitering near the edge of the horde. ‘Hey! Do you know this Titus Fabius?’

He nodded eagerly.

‘Then go and find him, and tell him his wife is here.’

The boy slipped away.

‘And that means none of you will be getting the reward, so you might as well make tracks,’ Sarah told those who remained. Grumpily, they moved off, although they didn’t go far, possibly hoping there might still be more entertainment to come.

Sarah turned back to Lucilla, whose milky-white eyes were wet with tears. ‘Your husband will be here soon to take you home,’ Sarah said. She paused, knowing her next words wouldn’t be so comforting. ‘Look –’ she winced at the careless phrasing – ‘I mean, I know something terrible has happened to you and you probably don’t want to think about it, but please try. See if you can remember something. Anything. It might help.’

‘I can’t remember anything. I can’t!’ Lucilla’s breath became fast and shallow again, and Sarah spent a few more minutes calming her down. When she was breathing normally once more, Sarah tried a different tack.

‘Think back. Were you at home? Or outside?’

A tiny nod from Lucilla.

‘Outside. Right. Here, in the market?’

A shake of the head.

‘Somewhere in the town?’

Again, the tiniest of nods, then a sudden cry. ‘The harbour!’

‘The harbour?’ echoed Sarah. ‘Tell me about that.’

A deep breath from Lucilla. ‘I had been … visiting. Yes, that was it. And I walked back home by the water.’

‘What do you remember about that? Put yourself back there. The sounds, the smells …’

‘There was the sound of the seagulls, the smell of the sea. I went on a boat once – one of my husband’s merchant ships – and it made me feel ill, so at first I thought the gulls and the ocean were bringing back those memories, but then I realised I was actually feeling ill. I felt pain. A lot of pain.’

‘In your eyes?’

‘No. In my stomach.’

‘What happened then?’

Lucilla’s breathing grew agitated again. ‘I don’t know! I just don’t know. I can’t remember anything else before I found myself here … and I don’t even know where I am now! Is this even Ostia?’

Realising she had no idea either, Sarah jumped up and dragged the Doctor off to one side. ‘Is this Ostia?’ she whispered.

He took a deep sniff of the air. ‘Yes, it smells like Ostia to me. Spices, fish and salt. A port just south-west of Rome,’ he added. ‘Important port. Like Dover. But without the white cliffs. Or the bluebirds.’

Sarah hurried back to Lucilla. ‘Yes, this is Ostia,’ she said.

They were interrupted by the arrival of a tall, rather pompous-looking man accompanied by a retinue of slaves. ‘Lucilla! Is it true?’ he cried. ‘Have the gods struck you blind?’

Sarah felt her anger rise. ‘Ooh, don’t you get all Caesar’s wife and use this as an excuse to divorce her,’ she said, jumping up and waving a finger in the man’s surprised face. ‘The gods aren’t punishing her. She hasn’t done anything wrong!’

As Lucilla rose wearily, she stumbled. Her husband dashed forward and caught her in his arms, then turned to look at Sarah as he held his wife close. ‘I have no intention of divorcing my wife. She cannot and will not be blamed for the whims of the gods.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah, slightly cowed. ‘Well, that’s good. Goodbye, Lucilla. I hope –’ She broke off. What to say? ‘I hope you get better soon’ hardly felt appropriate.

‘Thank you for helping me,’ said Lucilla, cutting across Sarah’s stumbling words. ‘I will be forever grateful.’

The Doctor and Sarah watched the couple and their entourage walk away. After a second, Sarah realised the stallholder was still standing with them. He clicked his tongue. ‘Who’d’ve thought it?’ he said. ‘Another one.’

The Doctor rounded on him. ‘Another one? You mean this has happened before?’

‘Might have, might have,’ said the man.

‘Well, has it or hasn’t it?’

The man took a deep breath, then let it out with a sigh. ‘So hard to remember the details, when all I can think of is that five-denarii reward slipping through my fingers. Not to mention watching my profits fly away …’ He moved back behind his stall, looking pointedly at the empty birdcage.

The Doctor stared at him, unsmiling. ‘How much do you charge for a cage of birds?’

‘Two sestertii.’ The trader looked down at the large coin that landed on the counter in front of him. ‘That’s not a –’

‘Golden Delphonian mega-dollar. Solid gold. Now talk.’

The man’s hand shot out and grabbed the coin. ‘Well, it’s been happening all over – people turning up blind. At least three others I’ve heard of, could be more. Probably looked at something they shouldn’t have. Weak minds, women have. Can’t handle stuff.’

‘I’ll give you weak minds –’ Sarah began, then felt the Doctor give her arm a restraining squeeze.

‘Do you know who these others are? Where they live?’ he barked at the stallholder, who looked slightly alarmed at the ferocity of the Doctor’s voice and took a step back.

‘Well, I might do,’ he began, clearly trying to regain control of the situation. ‘If I thought hard.’

Another Delphonian mega-dollar landed in front of him.

‘Yeah, I think I can remember.’ Names and addresses spilled from his lips. Then, his fingers stroking the two huge coins, he added, ‘For another one of these, I could even take you there.’

‘We can find our own way,’ said the Doctor. His eyes swept the stall. ‘I’ve already paid more than the information was worth. In fact, I think I’ve paid enough for all these birdcages too …’

As the stallholder watched in dismay, the Doctor moved along the stall, opening all of the birdcages and shooing out the little creatures within.

Sarah clapped her hands in delight, ducking as a cloud of chaffinches swooped over her head.

‘I don’t like things in cages,’ the Doctor said.

The Doctor and Sarah went to visit the homes of the people the stallholder had named: Lucius Sestius, a silk importer; Gaius Helvius, a grain trader; and Manius Salvius, an ivory supplier. At every house they found a blind woman – each time, the merchant’s wife – and all their stories were the same: pain, then a sudden awakening to blindness, with no knowledge of what had happened in between. Each woman had come to herself alone, frightened and sightless, somewhere in the streets of Ostia, and on her arrival home had discovered she’d been gone for days.

‘Could it simply be an illness?’ Sarah suggested, as she and the Doctor walked back towards the marketplace. ‘There are diseases that can cause blindness, aren’t there? Measles and things like that? Or – oh! I know! There’s river blindness. Flies that live near water pass that on, and Lucilla did say she was near the harbour when she became unwell.’

‘An impressive fly, to ignore everyone who works at the waterside in favour of a few merchants’ wives.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘All right, I didn’t claim it was plausible. So let’s accept that someone’s deliberately targeting these women. Who, or what? And why? We don’t have a lot of leads.’

‘We need to work out who the next victim could be,’ said the Doctor.

‘Okay, so let’s find other women who are in similar positions to the previous victims,’ Sarah said, eager to start digging and already drawing connections. ‘We know they were all married to Ostian merchants – and, going by their houses and their clothes, pretty successful ones too.’

‘I know just the person to ask,’ said the Doctor.

As soon as they were back in the market, the Doctor headed straight for their old friend, the stallholder. It would be a lie to say the man looked happy to see them.

‘You again,’ he snapped.

‘Ah, good, you remember me,’ said the Doctor.

‘How could he forget you, Doctor?’ Sarah said with a smile.

‘Doctor? Doctor! Well, that makes sense. A foreigner.’

‘Are you a foreigner, Doctor?’ asked Sarah, wide-eyed and mock surprised.

‘Ah, most of the doctors in Ancient Rome were Greeks, you see,’ the Doctor explained. ‘So were most of the philosophers and mathematicians, of course, so, well –’ he smiled at the stallholder – ‘it’s not that surprising that I’d be mistaken for one.’ He pulled an empty box from under the stall and stood on it, one hand holding his coat lapel and the other stretched out to an imaginary crowd, as he declaimed, ‘I think, therefore I am the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Take 3.14159265 tablets before meals with a glass of water.’

Sarah burst out laughing, and the Doctor climbed off the box. The stallholder didn’t seem to find it quite as funny, but he sulkily gave the Doctor the information he asked for. Titus Fabius, Lucius Sestius, Gaius Helvius and Manius Salvius were undoubtedly some of the most powerful and important merchants in Ostia; according to the stallholder, there were only four others who could come close to matching them. He gave the Doctor their names and addresses.

‘You take two. I’ll take two,’ the Doctor said to Sarah. ‘Talk to the wives, find out their plans for the next few days. See if anything leaps out at you. See if they have any connection to the other women, besides being merchants’ wives. I’ll meet you back here.’

At the first house Sarah visited, she was granted an audience with Aulus Pumidius’s wife, Marcia. As they sat drinking honeyed wine, Sarah did her best to explain the situation. Marcia was older than the other women they’d met that day, and didn’t seem inclined to take Sarah’s warnings seriously.

‘Yes, I’d heard that Lucilla and the others had met with misfortune – my slaves keep me well informed – but are you seriously trying to tell me I might be in danger too?’ she drawled, incredulity clear in her voice. ‘Sweet of you to advise me, but I think I’ll take my chances. Besides, my husband is away in Carthage, carrying out some very important business negotiations, and I am kept extremely busy in his absence. I’ve no time to go gadding about Ostia, waiting for someone to strike me blind.’

Sarah persisted. ‘We don’t know what happened to the other women. Whatever it is could just as easily happen to you here, at home.’

Marcia rolled her eyes. ‘I’m surrounded by slaves at all times. Nothing and no one can get in to my house without my knowledge.’

Sarah realised Marcia wasn’t going to take the threat seriously, no matter what she said, so she took a different angle. ‘Do you know the four victims socially?’ she asked.

‘Yes, we meet from time to time.’

‘Well, can you think of anything they all have in common? Perhaps something that’s relevant to you too? Apart from the fact you’re all married to merchants.’ This was just the sort of thing Sarah enjoyed: interviewing sources, searching for that tiny scrap of information that might make a story, that little clue that might link one thing to another and bring about a breakthrough.

‘Apart from our husbands, and apart from the fact we are all women, no. I can think of nothing.’

All women. A switch suddenly flicked in Sarah’s mind. It was probably nothing. No more than the merest hunch … but a journalist had to follow her hunches. ‘Is there a temple of the Bona Dea in Ostia?’ she asked.

‘Yes, down by the harbour. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s just that it’s the only place I’ve heard of here that’s for women only, and as you say all the victims have been women,’ said Sarah. ‘Sick women. Women who might be taken to a place of healing.’

‘Oh, that seems very far-fetched,’ said Marcia, with a supercilious air. ‘More wine?’

‘No thanks,’ said Sarah, still caught up in her hypothesis. ‘I’d better be going. It probably is far-fetched, but I think I’m going to ask a few more questions of the other women.’ She drained her cup and stood up. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. And please – stay safe.’

Meanwhile, the Doctor was finding Caelina, the wife of Sextus Icilius, an ivory merchant, much more willing to talk. In fact, he could barely get her to stop talking. She was half his height, twice his width and full of pity for the four women who had been blinded.

‘That poor Lucilla,’ she said. ‘And to think I was only sitting chatting with her the other day and she had no idea what the gods were about to visit upon her. And with her just having had a little boy too. Imagine never seeing his chubby little cheeks again! I don’t like to think of it, that’s a fact.’

By this point, the Doctor had been listening for twenty minutes to tales of all the misfortunes that had been visited upon Caelina, her children, her friends, her friends’ children and pretty much anyone else she’d ever come across. ‘You don’t know of anyone who might have wished harm to these women?’ he asked, trying to steer her back to the topic at hand.

‘There’s not a single person who’d want to hurt a hair on any of their heads,’ Caelina informed him. ‘If we were talking about their husbands, though …’

The Doctor leapt on this. ‘Someone might want to hurt their husbands?’

‘Well, not actually hurt them – I’m not saying that – but that Aulus Pumidius, he’s right jealous of the lot of them, and that’s including my Sextus. All more successful than him, and he doesn’t like it. He’d do them a bad turn if he could. But he can’t have had anything to do with this, because he’s been gone for, ooh … about ten days. Off trying to undercut someone else’s deals, probably.’

‘Aulus Pumidius? My friend’s gone to speak to his wife.’

Caelina snorted. ‘I wish your friend joy. That Marcia’s a stuck-up one and no mistake. Lording it over us at our little gatherings when she’s got nothing to be superior about.’

The Doctor’s ears pricked up. ‘Little gatherings? You and the other merchants’ wives meet up?’

‘Well, wasn’t I telling you only now how I was sitting with Lucilla just the other day? Every few days we have a little get-together – a bit of a gossip and a few honey cakes. Only with those from our own sphere of life, of course.’

The Doctor questioned her urgently, and learned that every single one of the victims had vanished shortly after one of these get-togethers – but none of them had mentioned it. Why? Were they too traumatised to put two and two together? Or was he the one who was leaping to conclusions?

The Doctor jumped up abruptly. ‘I need to find my friend,’ he told Caelina.

‘Well, good luck to you. And don’t you worry about me. I’m not going to let anyone blind me, the gods’ will or no.’

Sarah was trying to find the house of the second merchant on her list. Marcia had told her about a shortcut, but it didn’t seem to be taking her where she wanted to go. She was hardly an expert in Ostian geography, though, so she shrugged and carried on hopefully.

She winced at a twinge of pain – a brief dart across her stomach. Then another twinge, not as brief. She stumbled forward, looking for a place to sit down. As the noise of gulls filled her ears and she breathed in the smell of salt, she realised she was near the harbour. The pain was getting worse, her stomach cramping so much she couldn’t take another step. Then a hand grabbed her arm, and a familiar voice said, ‘You look ill. Let me take you to find help.’

As she was dragged away, the tiny part of Sarah that was still conscious sobbed inside her head, Not me. Don’t let me go blind. Oh please, don’t let me go blind.

The Doctor thumped his fist against the wall of Aulus Pumidius’s house. He was too late. Sarah had already left, the young slave on the door had informed him, and Marcia, the mistress of the house, had gone out shortly afterwards. The Doctor was frustrated, and he was worried.

‘Did you hear anything of their conversation?’ the Doctor asked the slave.

The boy shook his head, but the Doctor wasn’t convinced. He knew the Ancient Romans treated their slaves like furniture; it wouldn’t have crossed Marcia’s mind to keep quiet in front of this boy.

‘Come on, you can tell me,’ he said, with a winning smile, hypnotic eyes boring into the slave’s nervous ones. ‘Have a jelly baby.’

The boy shook his head again, both at the question and at the offer of the strange green sweet. ‘I dare not,’ he whispered.

‘Because you’d be punished,’ the Doctor said. ‘I understand, but I need your help. It’s critical. My friend could be in great danger, and any information you give me could save her life.’

‘They talked of the Bona Dea,’ said the slave, still whispering. He was staring down at his bare feet, as though by not looking at the Doctor he could pretend he was telling his secrets to the air. ‘The mistress put herbs in the lady’s cup. After the lady left, the mistress followed her.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Oh, and here’s something for you.’ He held out another of the golden coins. ‘For caring more about my friend’s safety than about your own. That should be enough to buy your freedom. I think you deserve it just as much as a chaffinch.’

Ostia’s temple of the Bona Dea was surrounded by a high wall. Even standing on tiptoes, the Doctor wasn’t tall enough to look over it. He walked alongside the wall until he found a gate, then gave a firm rat-a-tat. A few moments later, a girl of about ten years of age opened the gate, bowed her head and asked the Doctor his business.

‘I’m the Doctor,’ he announced. ‘I have heard that the priestesses here are healers, and since I am feeling rather poorly – a bad dormouse or rotten lark’s tongue at lunch, no doubt – I thought I’d pop in for a bit of healing.’ He gave the girl one of his most charming grins.

She bowed her head again. ‘I regret that men are not allowed within the temple, sir,’ she said. ‘But if you will wait here, I will fetch you herbs that should ease your pain.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘Of course you can’t let a man in the temple, but perhaps I could walk in your grounds while I wait? I see you have a lot of fascinating snakes slithering about in there that I’d very much like to take a look at.’

The girl shook her head. ‘I regret, you may not step inside our walls, even to examine the sacred snakes. Please wait here.’

The gate closed in his face.

The Doctor sighed. ‘Maybe I should have tried a ribbon in my hair after all.’

Sarah awoke to the sounds of an argument. She still felt weak, but the crippling pains had gone. Thank goodness. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so ill.

‘What do we do with her now?’ she heard a voice say.

‘The same as we did with all the others,’ said another.

‘But she has no knowledge that we need.’

‘Maybe not, but her memory must be taken away.’

Sarah risked opening an eye. Two figures swam into focus: Marcia, the merchant’s wife, and an elderly woman in the simple white robes of a priestess. They were standing in front of – and Sarah had to blink a few times to make sure this wasn’t a fever dream – one of the most complicated pieces of machinery she’d ever seen. A machine that surely shouldn’t be anywhere within a few thousand years of Ancient Rome. So what was it doing here? But, before she could solve that mystery, Sarah’s priority had to be getting away. She glanced around for any escape routes, and spotted two doors – one on either side of the room.

Sarah shut her eyes again and considered her options. She was almost certainly physically stronger and faster than her captors, so making a break for it before they realised she was awake seemed the obvious course of action.

Sarah waited, watching the two women through nearly closed eyes, until they both turned away from her. Then she leapt up and dived for the nearest door. She was through it, she was running –

But the goddess Fortuna was not on her side. Sarah hadn’t realised until she was up and moving how weak her body still was from whatever it was that had struck her down. Poison, she now suspected, slipped into her wine by Marcia. She forced herself desperately forward, step by painful step, but the walls had begun to swim around her and she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. She had thought she was still running, but when Marcia and the other woman grabbed her arms she realised she was actually on her knees on the floor. She decided it was definitely time for Plan B; it was just a shame she hadn’t come up with one.

Well, her escape attempt might have been foiled, but there were still things she could do. The Doctor always said that nine out of ten times evil-doers were happy to explain their plans – not necessarily for grandstanding reasons, but because putting things into words acted as validation for them. Time for Sarah to put that theory to the test.

‘I like your machine,’ she said, as cheerfully as she could manage with burning needles of pain sticking into her stomach. ‘Very impressive. Did you make it yourselves?’

‘It was a gift from the gods,’ Marcia said in the same condescending tone from earlier. Sarah thought she detected a hint of sarcasm there too.

‘How very generous of them,’ said Sarah. ‘I hope the gods gave you an instruction manual. Perhaps you could explain what it does? Besides blinding people and wiping their memories, that is.’

‘Do not mock our gods!’ The priestess turned on Sarah – and Sarah saw her milky-white eyes.

‘You’re blind!’ she exclaimed. ‘This machine – whatever it does, it did it to you too.’ She made her voice deliberately soft, sympathetic, persuasive. ‘I’m sorry for mocking your gods. Tell me what happened to you. Please.’

‘Do not indulge her, sister,’ said Marcia imperiously. ‘Let us get this task over with.’

But the other woman shook her head. ‘No, it is fair to tell her what we know. After all, the gods granted me the gift of knowledge before they took my sight. I will pass on the favour.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘Child, know that I am Orbiana, servant of the Bona Dea. I will tell you of the gods’ visit to us.

‘The gods came to us in disguise, just as Jupiter and Mercury came to Baucis and Philemon. They told us that, to them, the female is the personification of knowledge, so their search for wisdom had led them here.’

‘A pity the gods have never passed on this opinion to the men of our city,’ commented Marcia, with a sniff. Despite the fact that Sarah was predisposed to dislike her – the poisoning and the imprisonment had rather coloured her feelings – she had to agree that Marcia had a point.

‘They brought with them this device,’ Orbiana continued. ‘It is a way for the gods to know the affairs of our world. They share the eyes of mortals, taking all that they have seen and sealing it forever into a crystal for the gods to consult.’

‘Deity TV,’ murmured Sarah.

Orbiana went on. ‘But, once the gods have seen through our eyes, it would be blasphemous for us to look through them again. So they took my sight away from me, but left me the gift of the memories of others.’

Sarah was working this out in her head as Orbiana spoke. These visitors must have been aliens of some sort. A female-dominant race, perhaps? That would explain why they had targeted this temple, rather than the more obvious seats of power, and had come to Orbiana, who was presumably in charge.

The machine must be some sort of memory-harvester, Sarah figured, her mind racing. A device that reads minds in some way and can record what it finds there – but for what? Exploration purposes? Simple knowledge gathering? Military intelligence? And it appeared to have the side-effect of leaving its subjects sightless. Damage to the optic nerve during the process, perhaps? But what about ‘the gift of the memories of others’ that Orbiana spoke of?

‘What does that mean?’ Sarah asked the priestess. ‘Can you access other recordings made by the machine? I mean, can you see other visions that the gods have stored?’

Orbiana nodded, a rapturous expression spreading across her face. ‘That is so,’ she said. ‘Oh, the things I have seen! The paths trodden by the gods! Truly, I have been blessed!’

‘Hang on,’ said Sarah suddenly. ‘The women I’ve met, the other ones who’ve gone blind, they didn’t seem to have been blessed. They didn’t know anything about seeing the paths trodden by the gods. In fact, they didn’t seem to know what had happened to them at all.’

Orbiana’s cheeks flushed, but it was Marcia who answered. ‘They were not servants of the gods as my sister is,’ she said defensively. ‘Why should they share her blessing?’

‘Oh, I don’t think that’s the whole story,’ Sarah said. ‘Would you like to explain to me how they got their memories wiped, but your sister here didn’t?’ Another question leapt into her head, one she kicked herself for not asking earlier. ‘Actually, there’s something else I want to know. Where are these aliens now?’

The two women looked puzzled.

Sarah sighed. ‘The gods. Where are the gods now?’

Orbiana bent her head piously. ‘The gods returned from whence they came.’

‘Leaving their big, important machine behind, with all its big, important data?’

‘They had a task for me to complete.’

‘What task?’

‘To gather more memories, to create a record of our time for them, which they would return to collect. A glorious task.’ Her face shone. ‘And such a boon to me, as I may so rarely leave our temple. To share the memories of others and see life as I have never seen it before! All of the temple can share in the life of the Empire, at last!’

Sarah saw Marcia’s expression, and she understood. ‘And by a strange coincidence, the first few memories you harvested were from the heads of merchants’ wives, rooting out little nuggets of business information.’ She looked at Marcia with disdain. ‘The aliens didn’t leave you with a task. Entrust their machine to primitives? I don’t think so. They died – or did you kill them? – and you decided to turn it to your advantage.’

Orbiana was struggling to take all this in. Her head turned from side to side, seeking her sister. ‘Marcia? What does she mean? You told me the gods had left us after entrusting me with their task.’

‘I expect they died,’ Sarah went on, still addressing Marcia. ‘I don’t know if even you would have the courage to murder a god. I suspect they usually erased their subjects’ memories, but they died before they could do that to Orbiana. Did they tell you how the machine worked?’

Marcia snorted. She didn’t seem ashamed or embarrassed, just irritated at the inconvenience of it all. ‘I visited my sister and found her as you see her now, but sleeping. Those creatures were not gods – how could they be gods?! They were dying from a disease they had caught from one of the sick within these walls, a disease they said was unknown to them. As Orbiana slept, one of the creatures told me how their device worked, begged me to use it to take the knowledge of what they had done to my sister from her mind, then to destroy it.’ She shrugged. ‘Then the creature died.’

‘And you didn’t carry out its wishes? I don’t blame you for that bit.’ Sarah stared at Marcia, her face hard. ‘I do blame you for what you did to those women, though. How could you?’

Marcia flung up her hands. ‘You ask me that? You, a woman, ask me that? I have intelligence, I have imagination, I have so many skills and gifts that my husband lacks, yet I can wield no power in this world of ours! I dream of a world such as those creatures came from, a world where the female is acknowledged as superior, yet in Rome the best I can hope for is to gain influence by persuading Pumidius to do this or do that. And he is a stupid man – so stupid! To be tied to him, to be told to run the household, to amuse myself with wine and honey cakes, while he fumbles his way through feeble business deals …’

‘But how does sniffing out a few business tricks help you?’

‘It will not give me power – not power of my own – but, if I can give Pumidius more wealth, more influence, elevate him to a higher place in society, then I will rise too, through him. Can you blame me for grabbing such a chance with both hands? A chance that not one in a thousand women has been granted?’

When she heard it put like that, Sarah could understand where Marcia was coming from – even though she couldn’t excuse her actions. Inequalities certainly existed in modern-day England, where Sarah came from, but it wasn’t a patch on Ancient Rome. And, given that women here had so few rights, what could they possibly do about it? Ancient Roman suffragettes throwing themselves under the Emperor’s horse would probably find themselves and their families thrown to the lions instead.

‘How do you feel about that?’ Sarah turned to Orbiana. ‘Knowing your sister here’s been blinding women not for some heavenly purpose but so her husband can undercut others’ trade deals, or steal their suppliers, or whatever? Not all that spiritual, you have to agree. This machine must be destroyed.’

Orbiana’s indecision showed on her face, different emotions registering fleetingly, before settling on a determined expression. ‘No. This device will not be destroyed. No one will take it away from me. I have already lost my eyes. You will not take the sights that the gods have given me in exchange.’

Sarah opened her mouth to argue, but before she could do so a young woman also in white robes hurried in. She curtseyed before Orbiana, then almost screeched, ‘A man! A man in the temple!’

‘A man?’

‘A stranger. Strange in face, garments and manner.’

Well, I think I can guess who that is, Sarah thought.

‘Has he been apprehended?’ demanded Marcia.

‘He has.’

‘Then take him to the inner sanctum,’ said Orbiana.

Sarah realised that the three women’s attention was focused away from her. She had to make another attempt to escape. Praying that she had now recovered from the poison, she got up slowly and quietly, and slipped out of the room’s second door. As she was closing it, Marcia spotted her and started to run towards her. To her delight, Sarah found a key in the lock on the other side of the door. Thud! She slammed the door and locked it in the nick of time.

Sarah pulled her white wool cloak over her hair. She was thankful that it was similar to what many of the women in the temple wore; unless someone looked closely, they wouldn’t realise she didn’t belong here.

With no idea where the inner sanctum was (or the exit, either, for that matter – but she wasn’t about to desert the Doctor), she began to explore. A turn to the right, a turn to the left, up a stairway. In the distance she heard cries: the high voices of women, answered by a deep bass rumble. She couldn’t make out any words, but she instantly knew that was where she must head.

As she got closer to the voices, she noticed other white-clad women going in the same direction, and she silently joined the back of a group of them. They soon entered a large chamber. On a raised platform in the centre of the room, the Doctor was tied to a wooden chair, priestesses flanking him with their daggers held high. Sarah was pretty sure they didn’t practise human sacrifice in Ancient Rome – she hoped very much that she wasn’t mistaken – but whatever was going on didn’t look good for the Doctor.

Orbiana was being helped on to the platform by a young priestess. ‘Stranger,’ she said to the Doctor, ‘you have defiled our temple. Do you plead ignorance of our law?’

The Doctor waved a hand, smiling ruefully. ‘It’s not so much a plea as a way of life.’

‘He knows our law.’ The young girl from the gate stepped forward. ‘I informed him but a short time ago that no male was allowed inside, not even into the precincts.’

‘Then he has no excuse,’ said Orbiana. ‘Fetch the vipers.’

As Sarah watched in horror, two priestesses moved on to the platform and each picked up a tall amphora. Out of the necks of the jars poked snakes’ heads, some pale pink, some dark brown, all with massive yellow eyes and darting tongues. Sarah thrust her fist into her mouth to stop herself from gasping audibly.

‘The goddess will judge you,’ announced Orbiana. ‘If she favours you, the bite of the snake will give you only pain. If you are condemned, the venom will be deadly. I have never known the goddess to favour any man. Release the vipers!’

‘No!’ Before Sarah realised what she was doing, she found herself striding towards the platform. ‘Let him go,’ she said to Orbiana. ‘He is a good man. He only forced his way in here so he could find me.’

‘A typical man,’ sneered Marcia. ‘He assumes no woman can cope without him.’

‘Er, actually,’ began the Doctor in his most deferential voice, ‘I’m sorry to contradict you, being a man and so forth, but I have every faith in Sarah. It’s the rest of you I’m not so sure of.’

‘Child, he came here knowing that men are not permitted,’ Orbiana said to Sarah. ‘Our temple is contaminated, and only his punishment will cleanse it.’

‘Please,’ Sarah said, trying not to look at the writhing snakes’ heads below her. The vipers were clearly desperate to be set loose. ‘Please, let him go. If you free the Doctor –’ she took a very deep breath – ‘if you free him, I will give you my memories.’

Orbiana seemed surprised. ‘But I do not need your memories. We have all those that the gods collected.’

‘Oh, you won’t have any like mine. You see, mine include the Doctor. And you have never met anyone like the Doctor.’

Orbiana appeared to consider this. ‘You would do this?’ she said. ‘You would give your sight for his life?’

‘If you could see my memories, you’d understand.’

The Doctor jumped to his feet, bringing the chair up with him. ‘No one is giving up their sight for me!’

But Marcia had clearly had enough. ‘Release the vipers!’ she cried.

Yet this time, Orbiana turned on her sister, a stern expression on her face. ‘You forget your place. You have no rights in this holy sanctum. Save your cares for the world outside.’ She turned her unseeing eyes towards the crowd of priestesses. ‘The ceremony is postponed. You may leave us now. I wish to see the memories of this young lady, and her so-called Doctor. Then I shall decide their fate.’

As the priestesses filed out, Sarah untied the Doctor’s bonds, keeping a wary eye on the two abandoned amphorae. Frustrated hisses and slithery sounds came from within. She shuddered.

As Orbiana and a fuming Marcia led Sarah and the Doctor to the room where the machine was kept, Sarah told the Doctor what she believed had happened. He nodded thoughtfully in reply.

As soon as they entered the room, the Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and bolted straight for the great machine.

‘What is you doing?’ cried Marcia.

‘Sorting out this mess!’ replied the Doctor.

Tears suddenly welled up in Orbiana’s white eyes, as she realised what the Doctor was about to do. ‘Don’t destroy it, I beg you. It has opened up the world to me!’

The Doctor opened a panel on the side of the machine and began to root around inside. ‘I’m not destroying it. I’m fixing it. You’re not blinding anyone again, ever.’

Within a few short seconds, the machine was emitting a new, ethereal humming noise.

‘There. Done,’ he said. ‘Sarah?’

‘Sarah what?’ asked Sarah.

‘Would you care to try it?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ she said breezily. (She wasn’t delighted, and her breeziness was all part of the show. The Doctor wouldn’t risk her losing her sight. He wouldn’t … would he?)

He connected Sarah with the machine and she felt a sort of tickle in her mind, a rush of memories speeding past too quickly for her to take in: a kindly woman in a scientist’s lab coat, a glimpse of a man with curly white hair, a brief ‘Exterminate!’, and, as the memories went on, a long scarf, a floppy hat and the biggest grin in the world weaving in and out of everything until her head was full of nothing but DOCTOR DOCTOR DOCTOR …

When the recording was complete, the Doctor turned to Orbiana and handed her the memory crystal.

‘Now, here’s a show for you.’

Sarah watched Orbiana’s face as snatches of her memories played inside the priestess’s head. Expressions sped across her face: excitement, apprehension, fear, relief, joy … Then tears came again to her blank eyes.

‘Still want to kill the Doctor?’ Sarah asked, as Orbiana put down the memory crystal at last. The priestess couldn’t speak. She just shook her head.

‘Sister, he is a man in your temple. He –’ began Marcia.

‘It is not my temple. It is the temple of the goddess, and I do not believe she would have him die in her name,’ Orbiana snapped. She went on, speaking softly, ‘He serves the gods – I have seen it in each and every one of his actions.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t claim in each and every action …’ said the Doctor, glancing up at the ceiling. ‘But think about who was with me throughout those adventures you watched. Think about who saved me time and again, just as she saved me today, willing to face her two greatest fears to ensure my freedom.’

He turned to look at Sarah, and she glowed.

Only, those weren’t her two greatest fears. There was one above them, one which she would willingly give up her eyes for, that she would face every snake in the world in order to prevent. The thing she feared most was being without the Doctor. Oh, she could survive without him – she’d suffered losses already in her life, and she knew she was strong enough to survive more – but what could compare to the life they had together?

Orbiana, seemingly guided by a sixth sense, rested her milky gaze upon Sarah. ‘Perhaps once again a god has walked among us in disguise,’ she said.

Sarah opened her mouth to contradict the priestess, but the Doctor shook his head and put a finger to his mouth.

‘Fear not,’ continued Orbiana. ‘I will not use this machine again.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ said the Doctor. ‘No more industrial espionage, perhaps, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Share the memories. Make more memories. See other people’s points of view. Let women realise that the universe is a much bigger place than it might seem to them right here, right now. And, if they ever doubt a single woman can live her own life, by her own rules and not those of her husband or other men, that she can be brave and curious and confident and clever and hard-working and loyal … well, just show them Sarah, and they’ll change their minds.’

‘Well, that was another fine mess you got us out of,’ said the Doctor, as he and Sarah walked back to the TARDIS.

‘You made me blush,’ said Sarah.

The Doctor waved a hand dismissively. ‘Oh, I probably exaggerated.’ But he gave her a grin that said otherwise.

‘I hope Lucilla and the others will be all right,’ Sarah mused. ‘Being blind …’ But as she spoke, she realised she wasn’t so terrified of the notion any more. Why should she be? If it ever happened – well, it would just be something to deal with. There were worse things. Losing her sight wouldn’t make her a lesser person, it wouldn’t make her someone to pity – just like being born female in Ancient Rome didn’t make the women there lesser people either.

If she lost her sight, she would still, in every possible way, be Sarah Jane Smith, time-travelling with the Doctor. And so Lucilla was still Lucilla, and the others were still themselves, and she would not patronise them by feeling pity towards them. She would merely wish them well.

As they reached the police box, Sarah wondered aloud, ‘Was that a good idea, though? Leaving a huge piece of alien tech in Ancient Rome?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied airily. ‘How much of what went on in the Bona Dea cult do we know about?’

‘Well, practically nothing. We said that earlier … Oh. Right. Fair enough.’

‘After all, if we can’t trust a bunch of women with all the secrets of the universe, who can we trust?’ said the Doctor.

Sarah smiled at him, and led the way into the TARDIS.

Rose and the Snow Window

BY JENNY T. COLGAN

Rotating round the Earth is a giddying experience, particularly when you have to go slowly enough to see what you’re looking for – but fast enough to avoid being noticed by the International Space Station.

‘It’s all right,’ said the Doctor, concentrating fiercely as they swung by the station, causing its sensors to spin wildly. ‘I’ll send them another guitar.’

Rose crouched next to him over the monitor, trying to see what he was staring at on the familiar blue-and-green planet below. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

‘Well, is it, like, a mountain? A panda? Spaghetti? What?’

‘A puncture,’ said the Doctor, as the TARDIS screen zoomed in on the Himalayas, the monitor’s picture sharp enough for them to spot the mountain climbers in their bright jackets.

‘A puncture?’

‘In time. A slow leak. It’s small, but if you don’t patch it up –’

‘Your bike falls over,’ said Rose, at the exact same moment as the Doctor said, ‘The universe implodes.’ He added one of those grins that seemed slightly larger than his mouth. She could never quite tell if he was joking when he grinned like that.

‘Aha!’ he pointed a finger at the north-eastern part of North America. ‘There we are!’

The TARDIS dematerialised just as they were about to cross the path of the blinking ISS again. On board the station, a woman thought she’d seen a strange blue light out of the corner of her eye, but she dismissed it as wishful thinking, which it was.

‘New York?’ said Rose, excited. She’d never been there.

‘Toronto!’ said the Doctor. He looked at Rose’s disappointed face. ‘Don’t be daft! It’s just as good as New York. Go, Maple Leafs!’

Outside it was freezing. Entrancingly cold. The snow had set hard against the pavements, and the cars moved almost silently under the crystal-spotted sky. The high-rise buildings downtown were incredibly dense and rose, glittering, into the air. There were very few people on the streets; Toronto had an entire underground city that made it possible to travel across town without ever having to brave the ferociously cold winter air.

‘Ooh, it’s nice,’ said Rose.

‘Course it’s nice,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Everywhere is. Come on. We’ll be able to see everything from where we’re heading.’

The Doctor sniffed the air, then set off towards a huge, brightly lit residential tower. They bundled into the lobby behind a large man, then presented themselves to the doorman.

The Doctor engaged that grin again. He had a tendency to think it more charming than it actually was. ‘Hello! We’re here to see … apartment 2714.’

The doorman smiled politely. ‘Let me just call up –’

‘No need!’ said the Doctor, flicking out his psychic paper. ‘We’re –’

He looked up at the bland building, out of ideas for once.

‘The birthday surprise,’ said Rose quickly, noting how kind the doorman looked. ‘Please don’t spoil it!’

‘Oh, a birthday, eh?’ he said, smiling. ‘You know, I’ve got some left-over helium balloons from an office party through here in the back …’ He bustled off behind his desk.

‘Um. We do … we do a dance,’ Rose called after him. ‘He’s the clown.’

‘I see that!’ the doorman replied, returning with several floating balloons, which Rose gratefully accepted. ‘Do something funny!’ He looked expectantly at the Doctor.

The Doctor glared at Rose.

‘He’s only funny when he’s being paid,’ said Rose, before running after the Doctor who had walked huffily into the lift and grumpily started pressing buttons at random.

‘This TARDIS is rubbish,’ he said. He pressed a few more buttons.

The elevator stopped on every floor. Each time the doors opened, the Doctor would stick his head out, sniff surreptitiously, then lean back inside again.

‘What are you sniffing for?’ said Rose.

‘I’ll know it when I sniff it,’ replied the Doctor.

‘What, time has a smell?’

‘Of course time has a smell! Yours is of diesel and hair gel and satellite trails.’

Rose wrinkled her nose.

They hit the ninth floor, and the Doctor stuck his head out again.

‘Come on, then!’ he said.

As she stepped into the corridor, Rose took a deep sniff. Sure enough, there was a faint … something. Was she imagining it? It was like the faintest trace of candle smoke on the air. Not scented candles, but something rougher, greasier … Then it was gone again.

They carefully walked up and down the corridor, listening at each of the doors, until they found an empty corner apartment. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and the door unlocked and swung open.

‘Right,’ said the Doctor. ‘This will do.’

‘Ooh,’ said Rose, taking in their luxurious surroundings. ‘Tell you what, the high-rises on my estate are nothing like this.’

She wandered through the open-plan sitting room. It was sumptuous, but it was fitted out rather like a hotel, in shades of beige. There was no sign of personal photographs or knick-knacks. Rose wondered if it was a rental apartment, or perhaps someone had simply bought it as a glass box to store their money in? It didn’t feel like a place to love or call home; it felt more like something to have. The thought saddened her.

One corner of the sitting room was just two walls of glass, and snow flurried past the windows. The views were indeed astonishing. Skyscraper after skyscraper glistened all around, great towers of steel and glass. It was dizzying at this height, like being in a city of lights in the sky, with the honking of the cars wafting up from far below.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ the Doctor said from behind her. ‘It’s not ours.’

‘You just broke in!’

‘Yes, to save the universe.’

‘Would the universe really mind if I made myself a cup of tea?’

The Doctor pursed his lips.

‘Glass of water, then?’ said Rose.

The Doctor seemed to consider this, then nodded, before returning to setting up the telescope he’d brought with him.

‘Would you look at that,’ he said, when Rose returned with water for each of them. He gestured out of the enormous windows.

Rose stared out in wonder. From where she stood, she could see into hundreds of other people’s apartments, right into their lives. Some people were getting changed, some were eating, and in other rooms the blue lights of televisions flickered. It was captivating.

‘Life unfolding,’ the Doctor said. ‘In the dawn of the twenty-first century, everyone blissfully unaware of what … Well, never mind about that right now.’

‘You sound like David Attenborough,’ Rose said. ‘Is that what you do? Look on us as just another species?’

The Doctor blinked, which, since it was something she never thought he did quite often enough, Rose noticed whenever it happened. ‘But you are,’ he said.

‘Just animals in the wild?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re all animals in the wild, Rose.’

Rose pressed her nose to the glass, catching sight of her own reflection. She grimaced. It was harder than you’d think to get your roots done while travelling through the whole of time and space. ‘So, what are we looking for?’

‘Not sure.’ The Doctor came and stood close to her. They gazed out across the frosted city. ‘It’s not in this building, but it isn’t far, and from here we can see just about everything. A panopticon.’

‘A panopti-what?’ said Rose. ‘Never mind. Here’s a question: what are we looking for that’s nine storeys off the ground?’

The Doctor glanced at her and she prepared, as usual, to feel stupid.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is an excellent question. Either something from a period where the geology of the region was different –’

‘What, like a caveman or something?’ said Rose.

‘Could be. Or the thing itself could be geographically off.’ He frowned. ‘Then we’re really in trouble.’

‘Worse than the universe imploding?’

The Doctor thought for a moment. ‘Faster.’

Night came and the city settled into a quiet hum, as the lights in the apartments all over steadily turned themselves off. The Doctor didn’t move from his position in front of the telescope. Eventually, Rose lay down on the immaculate and very comfortable sofa, pulled a cashmere blanket over herself, and fell asleep.

When she woke to a chilly, perfectly pink-and-white dawn, the Doctor still knelt, unmoving, in front of the telescope. He looked like a sniper at his post – so much so that Rose felt an uncharacteristic stab of fear looking at the black-clad figure.

‘Do you want me to take over for a while so you can rest?’ Rose said.

The Doctor looked at her as if he hadn’t understood the question, because he hadn’t.

But they took turns at the telescope regardless, the windows all around them waking up to the new day. Rose wondered about the people getting ready in the rooms she saw: the young woman who ate half a grapefruit and did sit-ups before getting dressed; the old man who got dressed in a full suit and tie, then sat down by the window (Rose thought he was looking back at her, but he wasn’t – he was staring at nothing); the two young men, clearly in love, making breakfast together.

‘I have to eat,’ Rose said eventually. ‘I’m going to go out and find something. Do you think they’ll take pounds?’

‘Give me your bank card,’ said the Doctor, sonicking it.

‘What, so breaking and entering isn’t a crime, and stealing from banks isn’t a crime, but taking a teabag is?’

‘Trust me,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ll pay the banks back.’

Rose blinked and turned to go.

‘Also, get me a blueberry muffin!’ shouted the Doctor.

Inside the coffee shop at the bottom of the building Rose stared at the incredible choice. The array of coffees, doughnuts, pastries and buns available was stunning. She could, she thought, learn to like Toronto. Although, she could also do with a scarf and a hat …

As she reached out to collect her takeaway coffee, she suddenly caught it again, just for an instant, lingering above the smell of fresh bread that filled the coffee shop: candle wax, but greasier, somehow more insistent than a normal candle. She glanced around but it seemed no one else could smell it; everyone else was busy with their papers and their coffees.

She rushed out of the café, and found the scent was stronger outside. She looked around, then bent her head back to gaze up at the huge skyscraper directly opposite.

‘It’s across there!’ Rose yelled, tumbling through the apartment door, coffee slopping over the side of her paper cup.

The Doctor glanced up from the telescope.

‘That building! Just across the road! Look at it! Look in there! Let me do it!’

She shoved the Doctor aside and positioned herself in front of the telescope.

‘This isn’t blueberry,’ he said, rustling around in the bag she had thrust at him.

Rose didn’t answer. She was scanning the apartments opposite one by one through the telescope. Some had the blinds or curtains drawn, but most didn’t. Empty … Empty … A mother with a child clambering around the sitting room. A woman working on a computer, fingers dancing over the keyboard. A man doing weights – Rose swung the telescope quickly back to that one. Nice.

Then she carried on. She panned down. She panned back up. Ooh, bit fancy, that one.

‘How do you tune this in?’ She fidgeted desperately with the dials on the telescope.

‘You don’t tune it in. You focus it,’ said the Doctor, effortlessly twisting a knob on the side.

Instantly the fancy place that had caught Rose’s eye jumped towards her through the viewfinder, and she flapped her arms furiously.

‘Doctor! That room, there!’

He rushed to the window and put his hands around his eyes to see what he’d missed.

Toronto seemed to be a clean, orderly place. The apartments were tidy, up to date and fashionable. But the fancy apartment opposite, it was different. The room looked oddly as though it was far too large for its big wooden-framed window. It wasn’t a neat room, either – unlike the room they were currently standing in and all the others in the modern glass buildings. What she was looking at was a vast salon. Its red-painted walls were lined with wooden-panelled doors that led who only knew where. A fire burned in the grate, although Rose hadn’t seen any sign of chimneys on the outside of the apartment building. A long dining table with flickering candles and silver plates up its length showed a recently abandoned dinner. What’s more, it didn’t seem to be morning in the room, but rather evening; the windows to the side of the room (which, now Rose thought of it, shouldn’t have been there at all) looked out on to darkness. Grand oil paintings hung from the walls, and a sideboard on the back wall was covered in papers and seemed to be in some disarray.

It was as though this apartment existed outside of the Toronto that surrounded it; almost as though it existed outside of time altogether.

As she gazed into the room, a solitary figure emerged through one of the doors.

Rose pulled away from the telescope and blinked, suddenly chilled. Then she steeled herself and lowered her eye to the telescope again.

The figure who had entered the room was male. His hair was long on top, short at the sides and pale, as was his skin. He had very high cheekbones, and his eyes were bright blue and hooded, his expression distracted. He pored over something on the sideboard, reading it very intently. Then, he straightened up and glanced at the door he had come through – had someone knocked? – and strode across to it. He was wearing an embroidered topcoat over a waistcoat and what looked to Rose like jodhpurs and riding boots. He pulled open the door and, just as Rose caught a tantalising glimpse of a candlelit hallway beyond, vanished from sight.

‘Did you see? Did you see?’ said Rose, jumping up. She had witnessed many things with the Doctor, but peering into the past from the present – this was something new.

The Doctor looked through the telescope himself then, arms folded. ‘Russian. Early nineteenth century. If he’s this high above sea level I’d say –’ he snapped his fingers – ‘the Orekhovaya hill. Saint Petersburg. Epaulettes, but soft hands. He hasn’t served. Yet.’

Rose was already pulling on her coat. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Come on, then. Are we going?’

The Doctor frowned. ‘It might not be that simple. Don’t just go stomping in like you usually do.’

‘You can talk!’

Outside on the street, the Doctor and Rose ran across the road to the apartment building opposite. The road was now busy with long lanes of cabs and honking cars, the winter sun glinting off the windscreens.

Inside the lobby, they were again greeted by a doorman. The Doctor cheerfully held out his psychic paper, and the doorman nodded and ushered them towards the elevators without further ado. As they entered the elevator, Rose sniffed so loudly that the people already in it looked strangely at her, but she could no longer detect the scent of candle wax. Someone asked Rose what button she wanted pressed, and she realised she hadn’t thought to count how high up the salon had been.

‘He knows,’ she said, pointing to the Doctor, who was leaning against the back of the elevator with his arms folded.

‘Eight,’ he said smugly.

The eighth-floor corridor was long and silent when they stepped out into it. The Doctor counted the doors as they walked, until they reached the right one. He glanced at Rose. She could smell it again, and it was much stronger: an earthy, guttering flame.

The Doctor knocked. ‘Hello? Zdravstvuyte? Bonjour?’

There was no answer. With Rose right behind him, he sonicked the door and threw it open to reveal … nothing. There was nothing there at all; or rather, it was just a normal apartment, quite small. It looked like a young woman lived there, Rose thought. Fairy lights festooned the walls, and there was a fluffy throw on the couch. It was very much the kind of place she might live in herself. She ran to the large window and gazed back at the building they’d come from. She could even see the telescope glinting in the sunlight.

‘Sure you have the right room?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor crossly. ‘Why don’t you check it against your own calculations?’

‘But where’s the man we saw?’

The Doctor quickly scanned every inch of the small apartment with his sonic screwdriver, looking concerned. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Wherever the puncture is, we can’t access it from here.’

‘Well, can we get the TARDIS to take us back in time to it?’

‘No, because then we’d be there, and there’s not where the problem is.’

Rose frowned. Then she rummaged in her pockets, and took out a lipstick.

‘What are you doing?’

She wrote on the window in big, bright red letters: LOOK. Then she wrote it again in Russian.

‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘I will never get tired of that TARDIS translation circuit.’

‘You’re going to really freak out some twenty-two-year-old marketing graduate with that, you know,’ said the Doctor.

‘Not as much as the universe imploding would,’ said Rose, adding a lipstick arrow in the direction of their building for good measure.

Back in front of the telescope, freshly armed with paper and pens, Rose squinted across the street.

‘Why?’ mused the Doctor, pacing up and down the immaculate rug. ‘Why can we see it here and not there? That’s not how it should work. Holes have two sides.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Mind you, I have more or less given up on knowing how anything should work …’

Rose looked at him askance. ‘What, you? Universe’s biggest know-it-all?’

‘What do you call a know-it-all who’s wrong about everything?’

‘He doesn’t appear to have a name,’ said Rose, smiling.

She continued to watch the room across the street. It was still evening there; although, thankfully, the heavy red-velvet curtains were not yet drawn.

As she watched, one of the wooden doors flew open, and the pale young man from earlier stormed back in. He sat down at the table and dropped his head in his hands. If he wasn’t weeping, he was certainly deeply distressed.

‘There you are!’ said Rose.

She scribbled ‘HERE’ on a piece of paper and held it up, waving frantically. Some of the other inhabitants in the other apartments opposite caught sight of her and waved back enthusiastically.

‘Not you!’ she shouted. ‘Not you! You! Come on! You!’

At long last the man looked up, his face white and drawn. He poured himself a glass of wine from a jug in front of him on the table, gulped it down, then sighed.

‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ shouted Rose, jumping up and down even more fiercely.

‘You’re attracting attention,’ observed the Doctor.

‘Good!’ said Rose. ‘HEY!’ She leapt even more furiously up and down.

Slowly, the young man lifted his head once more. His eyes were red-rimmed. He stared straight ahead, unseeing, into their world.

‘Hey! HEY!’

At last, his eyes caught hers.

‘Hello,’ she mouthed.

The Doctor started and moved closer. ‘It’s leaking. The puncture.’ He shook his head. ‘This is going to get worse before it gets better.’

But Rose wasn’t listening. She placed the palm of her hand against the window-pane, stretching her fingers up in greeting. She barely dared to blink or breathe, desperate not to break the young man’s gaze. From across time and space, he squinted back at her, looking incredibly puzzled.

‘Paper!’ she hissed out of the side of her mouth at the Doctor.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, already in the process of handing her a piece of paper on which he’d already written ‘Hello’ in English, Russian and French. Rose didn’t even glance down, didn’t notice the unusual beauty of the handwriting.

Across the road, the young man very gradually lifted one hand to his window in response. Rose could see the details of his palm through the glass, even across the centuries. She smiled tentatively.

‘More paper!’

‘What do you want it to say?’

‘Um. “Hello” again. And “Where are you?”’

‘He knows where he is. Just like you know where you are. You just shouldn’t be able to see each other, that’s all.’

‘How about asking if he can smell something weird. If he’s out of time?’

‘All of this is going to be a bit much for him. As far as he can tell, you’re just an oddly dressed child across the street.’

‘I’m not a child!’

The Doctor glanced over. ‘Everyone’s a child to me.’

Rose shot him a look. ‘Just write my name, then.’

The young man across the way read the new sign as she held it up, then turned round. Holding up a finger telling her to wait, he turned to the sideboard against the wall.

‘Oh, look! He’s got an ink pot!’ said Rose. ‘And a quill!’

‘Yes, there were very few pre-revolutionary Russian biros,’ said the Doctor.

Rose gave him a look.

‘And well done,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Keep at it.’

The strange Cyrillic letters on the piece of paper the young man held up to his window seemed to swim and reorganise themselves in front of Rose’s eyes. ‘Count Nikolai Artem Livosich,’ she read aloud. ‘Wow. I should probably have put more than just “Rose”.’

Rose noticed how the young man’s long eyelashes cast shadows along his high, pale cheekbones. The count lifted his glass of wine from the table and held it up to her in a toast. She giggled and, casting about, grabbed one of the helium balloons from the doorman and shook it.

The effect on the count was almost comical. His eyes widened and he appeared completely astonished. Quickly he scratched out ‘Montgolfier?’ on a scrap of paper.

‘What does he mean?’ said Rose.

‘Montgolfier. It’s what they call hot-air balloons,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Quite the rage back then. And brand new. Not normally something you’d find in a house. He’s astonished by you. You look like you’re holding up a car.’

Rose found herself grinning, even as the count was shaking his head in disbelief. Then he laughed too. On his piece of paper, the Russian now being translated into English by the TARDIS, he wrote ‘Show me?’ and made a beckoning motion.

Rose turned round. ‘Shall I go?’

The Doctor rubbed his short hair. ‘I can’t think of a worse idea. Or,’ he added gloomily, ‘a better one. But he can’t have made a hole in time. They don’t even have clocks that work properly.’

‘When is he?’

The Doctor squinted through the telescope at the newspaper on the count’s table. ‘1812.’ He blinked and straightened up. ‘The Corsican Crocodile is already on his way. Napoleon,’ he said to Rose’s querying face. ‘Not a chap I like.’

But Rose was transfixed watching the count again. Bent over, she saw one of the doors behind him open. Beyond the salon, young men and women were flooding along the candlelit corridor, dressed in the highest finery. Rose turned to the Doctor, eyes shining. ‘It’s a ball!’

‘Or a wake,’ said the Doctor, with feeling.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor was still pondering the time-puncture problem when Rose emerged from the wardrobe.

‘How?’ she exclaimed, twirling round, her heavy skirts rustling. ‘How did women manage being dressed like this? All this stuff?’

‘It was a very ornate period,’ said the Doctor, without looking up. ‘If you were rich, ostentation was the name of the game. Of course, if you weren’t, you were lying frozen in a field without a headstone.’

‘This is my night out at a Russian ball,’ said Rose. ‘Can we save the downers for later?’

She smoothed out the long silk gloves she was wearing. Her dress left her shoulders bare, with wide satin straps across her upper arms; the weighty silk was cinched in at the waist over a corset, and the skirt was deep red and inlaid with brocade. It was incredibly heavy, made her stand up very straight, and Rose had no idea how she was going to go to the toilet in it.

She loved it.

‘Well, what do you think?’ she said, displaying neat little boots with ankle buttons.

‘In human terms, breathtaking, I’m sure,’ he said, looking at her at last, and she grinned. He squinted at her. ‘Put your hair up.’

‘What?’

‘Women of the era wore their hair up.’

‘Oh, did they?’ said Rose, pleased he’d referred to her as a woman rather than a child.

Firmly, the Doctor took hold of her blonde ponytail, quickly braided it round the back of her neck, then deftly did something with his sonic screwdriver so that it all stayed up on top of her head.

‘What did you just do?’ said Rose. She tried to see her reflection in the TARDIS console. ‘Are you actually an intergalactic hairdresser? Is that why you never mention your job?’

‘Here, take this.’ He handed her one end of a long red ribbon. Then he took the ends of it, sonicked them together, then broke them apart again.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘I got the TARDIS to give you a sonic time loop. Tug on the ribbon and you’ll get back to this time – back to this apartment. Back to safety. Even if I can’t see you. Even if I’m hundreds of years away. Pre-revolutionary Russia is not a place I’d want you stranded.’ He paused. ‘There isn’t any place I’d want you stranded.’

Rose tied the ribbon carefully to the top of her dress. ‘Okay,’ she announced brightly. ‘I’m ready.’

‘And you have to get home before midnight.’

‘Seriously?’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘Time is an imaginary construct. Midnight doubly so.’

Rose gave him a look.

‘Don’t be nervous,’ said the Doctor. ‘Talk to the count. Find out what he knows, if anything strange has been happening recently. I’ll scout around, see if the puncture really is on their side. I’ll be inconspicuous.’

‘Dressed like that?’

‘I’ll be the stable boy. You can be Cinderella.’

The Doctor and Rose were both quiet as the TARDIS heaved to a landing. When they stepped outside once more, all the lights of the big city were gone. Saint Petersburg was lit by oil lamps and candles at the windows, and shadows flickered on the snow. It was magical. It was also shockingly cold, even colder than Toronto.

Rose turned to see that the TARDIS’s lamp had altered its usual steady beam and now flickered too.

People passed here and there on sleighs, covered in thick furs, and the bells tinkled as they came and went, their laughter frosting the air. Rose noticed others, less fortunate, not dressed for the weather, skulking in side alleys. She sighed. She hadn’t yet been anywhere in time or space where there weren’t people suffering. She wondered what it was like where the Doctor came from. Maybe there was nobody like that. Maybe that’s why he felt such an urge to fix things for everyone else.

They came to the main door of the palace, and the Doctor shot off round the side of the building searching for the hole. Rose took a deep breath. Normally, she went to parties with Mickey and Shareen, and they’d grab some cheap cider, then turn up en masse and know everyone. Rose would no more go to a party by herself than she’d … well, than she’d speak to the reanimated spirit of a dead Welsh person or meet Charles Dickens, and she’d done both of those things. She had, she realised, changed quite a lot.

She presented the Doctor’s psychic paper to the guard on the door. The guard immediately bowed so deeply she wondered who, exactly, the paper had claimed she was. Then she stepped through the door into a courtyard lit with great braziers. Glowing windows on all sides exuded laughter and chattering, and she could hear the strains of violins. On the other side of the courtyard, great French doors had been flung wide open on to the freezing cold of the Russian night. The clicking of soldiers’ boot heels resounded from the floor of the ballroom beyond, and the air was heavy with the scent of candle wax and cigars.

Rose climbed the staircase to the glittering doors, then turned and stood for a moment, looking back over the courtyard. She took one more deep breath, then entered the ball.

Heads turned to stare at Rose, and she swallowed and tried to remember to stand up straight as she walked into the ballroom. The music launched into a dreamy waltz, and she felt her face flush as she suddenly caught his eye. Because there he was in front of her: the count. Nikolai.

He was one of the taller men in the room. There were still purple shadows smudged beneath his eyes, but the second he saw her his face broke into a broad smile that he immediately attempted to hide. A footman in a wig presented Rose with a glass of champagne, but she waved it away.

Carefully, in case she tripped, she walked towards the young count, and he was beside her in a second, lending her his arm.

‘You changed into a gown,’ he said, as she took his hand gratefully. ‘I liked your casual attire.’

Rose’s face fell.

‘A joke: excuse me,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful, mademoiselle. You have a dance card?’ he said.

Rose was suddenly aware of an older man watching them both like a hawk. He scowled at them. ‘Who’s that, then?’ she asked.

‘My father,’ said the count.

‘Bit over-protective?’

The older man started to make his way over to them.

‘Let’s dance! Quickly,’ said the count with a smile, putting his hand on her waist and whirling her across the huge, sparkling ballroom floor, out of his father’s way.

The music was beautiful and Rose was acutely conscious of how close she was to the count. She soon found that, if she simply followed his lead, she was able to lose herself in the dance. Until she stumbled over another lady’s long train, that is.

The woman turned and began to say, in a rather shocked tone of voice, ‘Nikolai Artem, shouldn’t you –’

‘Come on!’ he said, and waltzed Rose right on out of one of the ballroom’s side doors.

In the corridor beyond, which ran the length of the ballroom, Rose collapsed, exhausted and giggling, beside Nikolai on a low chaise longue. Male servants wearing wigs rushed past with glasses, large plates of food, and huge bowls of flowers. Rose watched them.

The count was looking at her. ‘Tell me, where are you from?’ he said. ‘I looked out in the village square, but that strange space of yours was suddenly there … and I thought I knew everyone in Saint Petersburg.’

Rose shook her head. ‘I’m from London.’

‘London! How goes your war against that demon?’

Rose wished she’d studied harder at school. ‘Um … up and down.’

The count nodded. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Anyway.’ Rose sat up straighter, reminding herself why she was there. ‘What have things been like around Saint Petersburg? Have you noticed anything new around town? Anything, you know, out of the ordinary?’

‘Apart from you?’ replied the count. ‘Oh, and that place you live. Is it a greenhouse?’

‘Something like that …’

‘It seems very strange to me.’

‘Um, yeah. But anything else?’

‘I like both the colours of your hair,’ said the count, then put his hand to his mouth, flushing slightly, as though he’d said too much.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Rose. ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant, but …’

They looked at each other for an instant, and Rose smiled awkwardly, feeling her cheeks warm and her heart beat fractionally faster.

Then the count sighed. ‘Oh. I wish … I wish I had …’

‘What?’ Rose said softly. ‘What is it?’

At that moment, the side door they had escaped through burst open.

‘Nikolai Artem!’ It was the count’s father. ‘The lady is arriving. It is time!’

Nikolai’s pale face blushed bright red, and Rose recalled seeing him in the room, the despairing expression he’d had on his face.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Ah?’ said his father, moving forward, ignoring Rose completely. ‘You understand how important this is. You know how much I have borrowed to put this on for you tonight. This is our last hope.’

‘But, Father –’

‘No,’ said his father firmly. ‘I don’t care what your feelings are. This family is close to ruin. It is on the edge, Nikolai. Either you make this marriage or –’

Suddenly there was a blast of trumpets. The noise made Rose jump.

‘And she is here,’ said the older man. ‘The priest is arriving, the whole of Saint Petersburg is here. Nikolai Artem, it is time!’

Meanwhile, the Doctor was still outside, carefully examining the salon window that he and Rose had spied through the telescope. He jerked his head up as a woman, with two men in huge fur hats following closely behind like bodyguards, glided up the gravel path past where he stood. The palace butlers and footmen rushed out to greet her.

She was very beautiful. She wore a flouncing white dress and clutched a bouquet of lilies that were wilting in the frosted air. Her skin was pale as milk, almost wax-like in the moonlight.

The Doctor lifted his nose and sniffed. Then he immediately turned and charged back round to the main door of the palace to get Rose.

Among the throng in the ballroom, the Doctor couldn’t see Rose. He kept tripping over the ladies’ huge dresses and bumping into the people about him, who were taking their places for what looked very much like a wedding.

‘Rose!’ he shouted, but his voice was inaudible above the orchestra playing sweeping, romantic tunes as the guests found their places. ‘Rose!’

Suddenly he felt a strong, heavy hand grab the back of his collar.

‘Oi!’

Nikolai’s father sternly marched off, and Rose glanced up at Nikolai, whose face betrayed the truth.

‘You’re getting married?’ she asked. ‘Like, now? I have to tell you: this was a really terrible time to invite me over …’

Nikolai swallowed. ‘I was going to tell you. She is … she is rich. My family is on the edge of ruin, but my bloodline is good … she chose me.’

‘Can’t you just say no?’

Nikolai went even paler than he already was. ‘If I do, then I must join the army. It is the only way open to me. And, Rose, Bonaparte’s men are already nearing the gates of Moscow. They say the people are blocking up their windows with the bodies of the dead just to keep warm.’

Rose grimaced. ‘I see. Who is she?’

‘She is new to Saint Petersburg, just like you are. She has money.’ A thought appeared to occur to him. ‘You don’t have any money, do you?’

‘Not a rouble,’ said Rose. ‘Sorry, mate. I work in a shop.’

Nikolai looked surprised at this. ‘Oh well, no matter.’ He turned to go. ‘I have given my word as a gentleman, after all. It is not just me who needs saving – I have five sisters and … so on.’

As he stood and attempted to put on a brave face, a strange man wearing a large fur hat that almost obscured his waxen face entered the room.

‘And here is one of her footmen, to bear me to my fate!’ Nikolai said, trying to sound jovial.

The man ignored the young man, however, and headed directly towards Rose. ‘Anomaly,’ he said in a low voice that was almost a growl.

Rose blinked and jumped up. This was interesting. ‘Uh, it’s Rose actually.’

‘Anomaly detected.’

‘Ooh. I’m not sure people say that in whenever we are,’ said Rose.

The count looked confused.

Rose leaned forward to peer more closely at the approaching man’s very white face. ‘So what are you?’ she mused.

The man didn’t answer. Instead, he said again, ‘Anomaly detected’, and drew from his coat a large weapon shaped like a mace that blinked with a small red light. It didn’t belong in the nineteenth century any more than Rose herself did.

‘Aha!’ said Rose. ‘I’ve found it! Doctor!’

‘You need a physician?’ said the count, his brow crinkling, before the man harshly shoved him out of the way to get to Rose.

‘Get your hands off me!’ said the Doctor.

He had noticed straight away that the two men following the lady were either identical twins – or they were wearing the exact same version of a face. This one had extraordinary strength. He manhandled the Doctor through the crowd and eventually deposited him in the salon he and Rose had first seen through the telescope. From far away, down the end of the corridor, the Doctor could hear Rose shouting for him.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the large man, twisting neatly out of his jacket and bounding aside. ‘I really have to go.’

‘Anomaly detected,’ said the man.

The Doctor grinned. ‘Oh, and how!’

He was almost at the door when he found himself face-to-face with a large mace.

The man rushed at Rose. He gave off a clammy, damp smell, like something wet around the edges. She wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t a smell she recognised. He put out a moist hand. ‘You are an anomaly.’

Rose kicked him in the shin. It was like kicking a block of wood, and she recoiled, hopping about in agony. ‘Oww! Oww!’

‘Unhand her!’ Nikolai had drawn his sword.

The man gazed at the count with contempt, not letting his tight grip of Rose drop. The count slashed at his arm. Without flinching, the man grabbed the count’s sword in his free hand and, showing no sign of pain, tore it from the young man’s grasp and whirled it across the room.

Startled, Rose twisted to see it, forgetting her voluminous skirts and knocking a nearby candelabra over as she did so. The candles instantly fell on to the papers beneath, which whooshed up in flames.

The man backed away a little. Apparently, he wasn’t comfortable with fire.

Rose seized her opportunity and grabbed the candelabra, brandishing it at him. ‘Stay back!’

But the man, sweat dripping from his forehead, pushed aside his fear and lunged at her – just as Nikolai retrieved his sword and launched himself at the both of them. The three of them overbalanced, and the man caught hold of the long red ribbon tucked into Rose’s dress. He pulled hard and, as he did so, the room seemed to shimmy around them. The candles wavered and vanished, the walls contracted and squeezed, and Rose found herself standing next to a window, alongside Nikolai. The man in the fur hat had vanished; all that remained was the long length of red ribbon, torn at the end.

To her horror, Rose spotted the telescope and realised where they were: back in 2005, in the bright daylight of modern Toronto. Together, she and the count looked out of the window and down. Nine storeys below, embedded in the snow, lay a brown, horribly twisted shape.

Instinctively, Rose did the first thing that crossed her mind: she pulled the blinds shut, blocking out the great shining view of the city beyond.

‘What happened to him?’ Nikolai asked.

‘We …’ Rose flapped her hands. ‘We moved. To a different space. But he must have been on the other side of the window. Whatever he was, he’s gone.’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘He would –’ She forced herself to slow her breathing. ‘He would have killed us. He was trying to kill me.’

But by now Nikolai was looking about the apartment, utterly astonished. He had grabbed a television remote, and stared at it blankly, then felt the shape of it almost reverently.

He can’t have ever seen plastic before, Rose realised. And that, it occurred to her, was only the start of it.

‘What? What is this? Am I –’ He clutched his head.

Rose desperately wished that the Doctor was there; partly to help, but mostly to do the explaining bit that he was so good at.

‘Um, maybe you’re …’ She wanted to lie and say ‘concussed’, but instead she blurted out, ‘I’m sorry. We’ve moved forward in time.’

Nikolai shook his head, his face contorted.

‘Um, you know, time travel?’ Rose tried.

‘I never … What could that be?’

‘Well, you know “today”?’ Rose started, feeling this was only going from bad to worse.

Nikolai looked at her.

‘It is no longer the same …?’ He sniffed suddenly. ‘What is that smell?’

‘Not sure,’ said Rose, sniffing too. ‘Coffee? Diesel?’

Nikolai sniffed again. Then he twisted round. ‘Oh my,’ he exclaimed, his face incredulous. ‘It’s me!’

Rose couldn’t help it: she smiled.

Rose sat next to the telescope, amused by the sounds of extraordinary happiness emanating from the bathroom, even as she was conscious that she’d left her phone in the TARDIS and didn’t know how on earth she was going to contact the Doctor.

‘Oh my … oh. This is the best … this is …’

‘It’s just a shower,’ she called. ‘Okay, a power shower, but still!’

Nikolai could barely find the words for his joy. ‘It is … oh. I have never known such …’

‘You’ll have to get out.’

‘Never!’

‘You will! I’ve put your towel on the radiator.’

‘What’s a radiator?’

Covering her eyes, Rose edged the bathroom door open just a touch, then thrust her arm through the small gap to hand him the warm, fluffy towel.

‘Ooooh!’

The Doctor felt something twinge. He looked down. The red ribbon he had been carrying had glowed briefly, and now the colour had all gone out of it. Rose had gone. Thank goodness. She was safe.

He, on the other hand, was still staring at the big man’s large, curved mace.

‘Now,’ the Doctor said quickly, ‘I’m sure you don’t mean to be trying to blow a hole in the fabric of space and time, so why don’t we sit down and talk things through.’

‘I must kill the anomaly.’

‘I like that name,’ said the Doctor. ‘The Anomaly. That could work – if only anyone could spell it.’

The man raised his weapon above his head and prepared to strike.

Nikolai came out into the sitting room, blinking. He turned the lights on and off over and over again, marvelling anew each time.

‘I’m definitely not showing you the internet,’ said Rose.

Nikolai looked across the room, frowning slightly. ‘Where is the rest of this palace? Where are all the servants and footmen?’

‘Ah,’ said Rose. ‘Don’t worry about that for now.’

There was one muffin left from that morning. She handed it to Nikolai, just to see his face as he ate it, and laughed when she did, vowing that the first modern item she would buy him was a toothbrush.

The Doctor frantically scanned the room, looking for something to use in self-defence, but there wasn’t much beyond sealing wax and parchment. Aha! He spied a large pewter jug on the table, and quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver and increased its magnetism. Instantly the mace curved over the man’s shoulders like a fat scimitar, then plunged into the jug.

The Doctor had bought himself several seconds. He had to get to that window. Now.

‘Rose,’ he breathed, as he peered out of it. ‘Can you see me?’

He centred himself, using his intense powers of focus to tune out everything that was in the foreground and bring up what was lurking just below the surface. The pedlars, the flower sellers, the shivering footmen stamping their feet as they stood by their horses, the steam rising from the beasts’ noses: he tuned it all out.

And then he saw it. Just a glimpse, a mere blip, but clearer now than ever. The hole. It must be growing larger. He could see the apartment window quite entirely now, the skyscraper outlined behind.

‘Rose!’ he mouthed, even as he heard the figure behind him grunt and pull the mace out of the pewter jug. ‘ROSE!’

Rose was once more at the telescope, even as Nikolai had exclaimed his way around the contemporary apartment. She spotted the Doctor straight away. The window in Russia, its sill covered with a thick layer of snow, flickered softly; it was dark there, where everywhere else was light. She could see the Doctor was calling her name, and behind him a huge man was bearing down on him …

‘Oh no! We have to go back!’ She jumped up. ‘Come on!’

Nikolai didn’t move. ‘I don’t want to.’ He was dressed, his blond hair wet and flopping in his eyes. He had his back against the radiator. ‘Can’t I stay?’

Rose was so tempted. She looked at him sitting there, clean and content. She could leave Nikolai there while she went back to the Doctor, then they could come back for him … But what if they didn’t?

She glanced out of the window again. Amidst the honking traffic below, suddenly a sleigh careered, driven by a very, very confused-looking man and pulled by four terrified horses, with a screaming woman in a ball gown seated inside. The sleigh sluiced across eight lanes of traffic, before finally coming to a halt at High Park.

‘No,’ Rose said firmly, tugging Nikolai roughly up from where he rested. ‘We have to go. Now. This isn’t good, and it’s getting worse and … you being here. I think that might be part of it.’

Rose was in such a desperate hurry to get back to the Doctor that she couldn’t think of a story to tell the doorman in the lobby of the apartment building across the road. The doorman looked at her and Nikolai – and, in particular, at Nikolai’s sword – askance as they rushed past him.

‘We don’t mean any harm!’ Rose shouted over her shoulder, but it was already too late. The doorman had pressed the panic button, and the elevators, Rose instantly saw, had all frozen in place. She cursed under her breath and banged through the fire-escape door into the stairwell.

Climbing eight flights of stairs is the kind of thing that would be a challenge when you’ve warmed up and are wearing sweatpants and trainers, let alone when you’re wearing a tightly laced corset and have a very confused Russian count in tow. Rose’s lungs were bursting by the time they reached the eighth floor, and the sirens were blaring in their ears. Nikolai was having no trouble keeping up, but the look on his face indicated just how very, very difficult he was finding it all.

Rose dragged him along the corridor to the correct door and, gathering the last of her strength, she kicked it open. But it opened on the wrong room. There it was: the small sofa, the furry throw, the fairy lights. This time, though, a young woman was sitting on the sofa with her laptop. She rose up, terrified.

‘Oh my gawwwwwd! Was it you who put the lipstick on my window?’

‘Sorry. Sorry! Sorry!’ said Rose, retreating in a panic and closing the door behind her.

Oh god. What now? The Doctor needed her.

Then she smelled it again. It was wafting off Nikolai, even after a shower: that whiff of tallow wax and parchment. The whiff of time.

She thought about it. Then turned towards him.

‘You open the door,’ she said.

‘Will it take me back?’

‘I think so.’

‘Will you come with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Rose.

She could tell he didn’t want to do it, but he did it anyway. This time, when the door swung open, Rose was not surprised to see the salon there. The Doctor, looking exhausted, had shinned up one of the heavy velvet curtains, while below him a large man feinted and swiped at him with the point of a huge mace.

‘Help us!’ shouted Rose, charging in.

‘Which one?!’ said Nikolai.

‘The one with the nose!’

‘Oi!’ The Doctor’s relieved but nonetheless offended voice called from the curtain.

Wielding his sword, Nikolai leapt on to the back of the man with the mace, even as Rose had gone for his ankles to try and knock him off balance. The man reared up with a roar that sounded distinctly unhuman, dropped his mace, and Nikolai tore half the shirt off his back, exposing blue, nobbled reptilian flesh under a white carapace of what looked like wax.

‘Ooh,’ said Rose, grabbing the rest of it.

The Doctor jumped lightly to the floor. ‘Causubus!’ he cried, as Rose kicked out at the creature’s knees before it could swing its mace back round, bringing it crashing to the floor. Nikolai held the point of his sword at the creature’s neck, and the Doctor came over to them. The fake skin the monster was wearing – the wax-like carapace – was peeling off.

‘Causubus origina. Oh, how you little souls cling on.’

‘What foul thing is this?’ said Nikolai.

‘Something you should definitely keep pointing your sword at for now,’ said the Doctor, grabbing the creature’s mace from where it had clattered to the floor nearby and holding it alongside the count’s sword. ‘This too, for good measure. It’s a parasite,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Steals little bits of time energy from all over the universe to use as fuel by binding itself with a host. I have no idea how he’s ended up here.’

Rose looked at the creature, then back at Nikolai, as an idea dawned.

‘Um, when you say “bind”,’ she asked, ‘could that also mean “marry”?’

The Doctor turned to her.

‘It could do. Why?’

Meanwhile, the creature’s face was melting off, pieces of wax falling to the floor. It groaned.

‘Shall I kill it?’ asked Nikolai, still standing there. There was a tremor in his voice and, Rose noticed, he was shaking.

‘Are you built for killing, do you think?’ the Doctor asked the young man.

‘No,’ said the count, his face turning pink. ‘I have no stomach for it.’

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Quite right too.’

‘But of little consequence,’ said a voice behind them. In the doorway stood the beautiful woman in a white dress, clutching a small bouquet of wilted lilies.

‘You,’ the Doctor said, before turning back to the creature on the floor. ‘Of course. This is just one of your goons.’

Rose looked closely at the woman’s beautiful, perfect skin, at her waxy complexion.

‘My love.’ The woman turned to Nikolai. ‘It is time for us to be wed. Ignore my pet.’

Rose laughed. ‘I don’t think he’s up for it, mate.’

The woman ignored Rose. ‘Your family,’ she cooed to Nikolai, ‘has lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years. Land and titles and fealties passed down. You are rooted in time. You are delicious, a fertile well … You shall have money. Your family will be safe and cared for. There will be no offspring. No harm.’

Nikolai blinked.

‘Look. He just doesn’t fancy yours much,’ said Rose. ‘Really. Aren’t you all blue and scaly under there too?’

The woman made to move away, but she kept her eyes on the young count, her beautiful face outlined in the firelight. ‘No, I am not,’ she said to him. ‘Come now, Nikolai. Everyone you know is out there, waiting for you. But you and your family may starve, if you prefer, or die on the slaughter fields of Russian winter.’

The Doctor’s eyes blazed. ‘You, Causubus. Parasite. I know what you are. I’m here to stop you.’

The woman smirked. ‘But this is a wedding! You cannot stop a binding when both parties are willing. And we shall be bound.’

She opened a purse she carried on her belt. Inside, it glistened with gold and jewels.

Nikolai’s eyes widened.

‘All yours, my love,’ she said. ‘The instant we are bound.’

‘Money,’ the Doctor muttered to himself. ‘Why money gets people to do such extraordinarily stupid things will always remain a mystery to me.’

The woman still had her eyes fixed on Nikolai.

‘Come, my love.’

And she disappeared through the door and glided back into the ballroom.

The Doctor, Rose and Nikolai glanced at one another, then charged after her.

As the three of them clattered into the ballroom, the music stopped. Everyone turned to stare at them, and also at a very old man dressed in black, with a long beard and a curved crucifix hanging heavy round his neck, who had walked into the ballroom at that same moment. As he shuffled by, the assembled guests sank to their knees.

‘The priest!’ said Nikolai, looking panicked.

The woman in white was already in front of the assembled guests, kneeling as she waited for the priest to reach her. Rose hung back and grabbed the count.

‘Run!’ said Rose.

‘Where?’ said Nikolai.

Outside, a freezing gale blew off the lake and rattled every door and every shutter.

Rose looked imploringly at the Doctor. ‘Can’t he come with us?’

Nikolai’s face lit up. ‘I would like that very much. To come where the lights glow and the water falls and where there are tumbling, sweet fountains of steam. Yes, I would like that very much.’

The Doctor’s face was absolute granite. He refused to make eye contact with either Rose or Nikolai.

Then, from far away, there came the sound of a police siren. Rose didn’t notice the anachronism at first, until Nikolai stiffened. He had no idea what the siren was.

‘It’s getting worse,’ Rose said to the Doctor in a low voice.

‘Yes, it’s getting worse every second, and we’re all part of the problem. We need to seal both ends. With everyone in their right end.’

Rose blinked. Her mouth moved, but barely any sound came out.

The Doctor folded his arms and bent down to listen to her.

‘To send him to war …’ she was saying.

‘Sometimes, people go to war.’

‘You could stay here, for me,’ Nikolai beseeched Rose. ‘We could be happy.’

‘There is,’ said the Doctor, speaking so quietly only Rose could hear, ‘something of a time limit on happy Russian aristocrats.’

Rose remained as frozen as the statues outside in the winter garden, and avoided meeting Nikolai’s pleading eyes. Looking forlorn, he turned his attention to the assembled guests, and in particular to the front row. There they were, anxiously gazing back at him: his father, his mother, looking fretful, and what were obviously his five sisters. He glanced once more at Rose, who still did not move.

There was no way out.

The candlelight gleamed on the beautiful woman in white’s hair, flickered over the purse hanging from her waist, and Nikolai found himself moving forward like a man in a trance. He knelt obediently opposite the woman.

Rose lifted her head and sniffed. There was that soggy scent in the air again. What was it?

‘Mud. Mud, decay and earth,’ the Doctor whispered to her. ‘It’s all they have.’

The priest withdrew a long piece of material to bind the count and the woman’s hands together. It was a long strip of red ribbon. As he wound it round and round the couple’s wrists, he intoned the ancient words of the marriage ritual over their bowed heads.

Rose couldn’t bear to watch. Instead, as if hypnotised, she watched a long drip of molten wax run slowly down the back of the woman’s white neck. The woman flinched, but did not look up.

‘Repeat after me,’ the priest commanded her. ‘I take you as my husband, to be with you always, in wealth and in poverty, in disease and in health, in happiness and in grief, from this day until death separates us.’

The woman parroted the vows.

‘And now you.’ The priest turned to Nikolai, who repeated them.

‘And now,’ said the priest, ‘if anyone here knows any reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony …’

‘I do!’ shouted Rose, bounding up. ‘Don’t! Don’t you dare!’

There was a gasp from the crowd as Rose tried to pull the woman away, but she simply smiled her beautiful smile and turned to the assembled company.

‘Ah,’ the woman said. ‘An uninvited guest. A jealous one. And who can be surprised? Guards!’

Several men with large lances stepped forward. Two of them picked up Rose, still wriggling and shouting, and started to bear her away.

Nikolai glanced up at Rose from where he knelt. Then he looked back at the woman in white. He looked at his family. Then he took a very deep breath, and he lifted his sword and sliced through the red ribbon that bound their hands together. Then he jumped to his feet to run after Rose.

The woman let out a loud screech, an unholy noise, and the Doctor leapt towards her, in his hands a torch. The deep, dark, muddy smell of decay hung all about her, and there was death in her eyes.

‘Nikolai, my darling,’ she attempted, but the count’s face was a mask of horror as the Doctor waved the torch closer. Her mouth opened – and then kept on opening, until the skin around her mouth began to crack like wax, all over her perfect white face. Her mouth opened still wider, into a horrifying stretch. Bits of skin started to flake off, revealing blue scales beneath.

There were terrified gasps from the throng. The soldiers holding Rose froze in terror and let her go.

‘If I cannot have it, I can still take it!’ the woman screamed. ‘Give me your hand! Give it to me!’

She had by now morphed completely into a hideous, flaking, ancient monster, its mouth a gaping hole in a white-and-blue face. The creature turned its attention on the painted throng. ‘YOU HAVE NO FUTURES!’ it hissed at them. ‘You. You. You. You. You will all die. This will all crumble into dust. We know this.’ The creature’s voice was a cracked husk, a rasp in the ballroom.

‘Go,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or the humans will rip you to shreds, and you know it.’

‘Yeah!’ shouted Rose, grabbing a sword from the nearest, rather confused-looking chap.

The creature looked around, as the crowd shrank back. But already the guards were recovering from their initial shock and drawing their swords, and those guests in military uniform were edging closer. The creature looked back at the Doctor, who simply sighed.

‘I’ll take you in the TAR–’ he began, as a phalanx of guards moved to block the ballroom door. Not all of them, the Doctor realised to his alarm, were Russian, nor even men. There was now also a group of extremely confused-looking Canadian Mounted Police just beyond the doors, their horses kicking up the snow in the garden, and the wind was blowing stronger and stronger

There was no time left. No time at all. The two worlds were about to collide and pull everything else along with them, like soap suds down a plughole …

The Doctor’s eyes travelled to the red ribbon, still half-tied round the creature’s wrist. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked.

‘You will bind to me?’ hissed the creature.

‘Well, don’t go getting any ideas …’

There was a sudden commotion beyond the doors. The soldiers inside were moving closer, and the Mounties and the guards at the door were trying to communicate with each other. The Doctor had to hurry.

‘I can give you enough energy to get you home,’ he said. ‘Not enough for you to move again. Not an ounce more.’

The creature looked at him. ‘Do you have enough?’

‘Far too much,’ said the Doctor curtly. He grabbed the remnants of the red ribbon from the startled priest and, with a swift motion, bound his wrist to the monster’s.

In an instant, they both vanished from the ballroom.

Rose took the opportunity of the commotion at the doors to dash back outside. She headed straight for the TARDIS. As she stepped out the main door at the front of the palace, she skidded to a halt. Nikolai was standing at the bottom of the stairs in front of her, head bowed, but he was not alone. He was surrounded by his family. His father was shouting at him. His mother was crying. His five sisters looked forlorn. Nikolai glanced up and caught Rose’s eye. She slowly raised one hand.

A look of determination crossed his face, and he strode over to her. Behind them, the crowd of ball guests had begun charging out of the palace and down the front steps.

‘I can’t take you with me,’ Rose said, feeling her resolve wobble and thinking, But he’s just one man. It wouldn’t really matter, would it? The Doctor would be able to fix it, wouldn’t he?

But Nikolai was nodding his head. ‘I understand. I realise I cannot go with you,’ he said. ‘You have shown me what I have to do. You have shown me what I need to fight for: a happier world. The world you come from.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that my world is ha–’ Rose began, but Nikolai had bent down quickly and taken her hand. He kissed it gently and firmly, and his lips lingered. Then he straightened up and, with one last look into her eyes, he marched away from her, out alone into the cold, cold night, the crowd parting to let him through.

The Doctor was already back in the TARDIS by the time Rose got there, returned from the sudden journey to the Causubus ship, and possibly the shortest marriage in his history. He was preparing what he called a ‘puncture repair kit’. Rose was too tired to ask him what it really was. He seemed tired. He looked older. Rose asked him what he had had to give; but he did not answer, and there was silence as he busied himself tidying up the edges of Saint Petersburg.

She sat in silence as they travelled back to 2005, and the Doctor did the same thing there – carefully repairing the puncture in time while she listlessly packed up the telescope and tidied the apartment. Finally, Rose changed back into her jeans, which felt strange to her now. She picked out the biggest, warmest coat in the TARDIS wardrobe, then made one request of the Doctor.

Before long, the Doctor and Rose were standing together in front of the Alexander Column, which stands in Palace Square in Saint Petersburg and was raised to commemorate Russia’s victory over France in the Napoleonic wars. From there, they then went to visit the archives of the war dead.

When they returned to the TARDIS, Rose disappeared inside before emerging once more into the frosted air. She was holding a helium balloon. She let go of the ribbon and let the balloon float off up into the air.

Silently, she and the Doctor watched it until it vanished into the sky far, far above.

Clara and the Maze of Cui Palta

BY SUSAN CALMAN

The Doctor stood at the door of the living room, his head cocked to one side like a curious sparrow.

Clara sighed heavily, turned to face him, placed her hands very deliberately on her hips and spoke in a tone that warned of impending annoyance. ‘What? Why do you keep staring at me? Have I grown a horn from the middle of my forehead?’

As Clara glowered at him, the Doctor tried in vain to diffuse the tension by saying all the words in his head at once. ‘No, no! Of course you haven’t. And, even if you did have a horn in the middle of your head, you wouldn’t need me to tell you about it. For a start, the force of keeping your head in an upright position would put extra strain on your neck, meaning that you would have already realised you were staring at the floor a lot, what with the big, heavy horn in the middle of your face.’

Clara narrowed her eyes as the Doctor babbled on.

‘On the other hand, if you did have a horn on your head, imagine how useful that would be! You could store bits of paper on it, eat sushi with it – I know you like sushi. It’s healthy and tasty at the same time, and so very tiny and perfect. In fact, I often think how good it would be if I could eat it on the go, you know. Perhaps if I had a horn growing from the middle of my forehead to keep it on …’

His stream of consciousness slowly ground to a halt as Clara started tapping her foot. The Doctor knew that hands on hips and a tapping foot were signs of a dangerous level of annoyance for Clara.

‘Well? What is it then?’ she said. ‘What’s so fascinating about my face?’

The Doctor gulped, carefully choosing his words. ‘Well, it’s not so much your face as your hair, actually. You just appear to have something in it. It’s all sort of … lumpy.’

Clara put her hands to her head and ran them through her hair. As she did so, a shower of popcorn cascaded to the floor. One little bit remained fixed in place though, and stood proudly on the top of her head, making her look like a cupcake with a cherry on top.

‘Great! Now I have to clean this up as well!’

Clara flopped down on to the sofa and sighed. The Doctor quickly sat down next to her, taking the bit of popcorn from her head and eating it before she realised it was there.

‘I love Artie and Angie, but sometimes I feel like all I do is clean up after them!’

The Doctor nodded, because he knew that’s what he was supposed to do. Meanwhile, he was quietly and slowly chewing what was turning out to be a very stale piece of toffee popcorn that refused to be eaten no matter how hard he tried.

‘I got excited the other day trying out a new fabric softener. Can you imagine? A new fabric softener! Life on Earth can be pretty dull sometimes …’

The Doctor nodded again. Somehow the toffee had made a bond between his teeth – his jaws felt like they were being superglued together. He grinned manically, trying desperately to prise his molars apart.

Clara appeared to take this as an encouraging sign. ‘But the solution is right here, isn’t it? Well, not right here but right outside. The TARDIS. We should go somewhere new! Mix things up a bit.’

The Doctor’s teeth remained firmly stuck together. He had no choice but to continue to nod. The more he did so, the more excited Clara got.

‘Yes!’ she enthused. ‘Somewhere beautiful, somewhere magnificent! As far away from fabric softener as you can get.’ She jumped up, put on her jacket and went to the front door. ‘Come on then! We’ve got an adventure to go on! And you can stop nodding now. You’re excited – I get it.’

Clara disappeared through the front door, and walked purposefully towards the TARDIS.

At last, with an aggressive and somewhat uncomfortable wrench, the Doctor managed to disconnect his mandibles from the sticky treat. He let out a huge gasp of relief, and rubbed his jaw.

‘Looks like we’re going on a trip then,’ he muttered.

On his way to the front door, he stopped, turned suddenly and eyed the pile of popcorn on the floor. He bent down quickly and stuffed a handful in his pocket.

‘Just in case I need a snack. We are going on an adventure, after all …’

Inside the TARDIS, Clara clapped her hands gleefully. This was her favourite bit of any adventure: the not knowing exactly what was about to happen.

She watched as the Doctor flicked switches and knobs on the console, moving from one to the other in a seemingly random order. It was like he was dancing to an ethereal tune only he could hear.

‘Beautiful and magnificent, you say?’ he said. ‘Away from everyday life, I hear you ask? I think I have just the place!’

Clara gripped the railing as the TARDIS tumbled and turned its way through space and time. She was sure that the Doctor was making the ship fly with even more speed and vigour than usual just to cheer her up.

‘So where are we going?’ she asked.

The Doctor threw another piece of popcorn into his mouth and started chewing. Fortunately for him, this piece wasn’t as stale – or as sticky – as its predecessor, and he happily chewed and swallowed it before taking another piece and popping it in his mouth. ‘That’s more like it!’ he said to himself, and Clara glanced at him quizzically.

He spun the TARDIS monitor round, revealing a message on the screen: IT’S A SURPRISE!

They bumped to a halt and Clara whooped, punching the air with delight. This was what she loved – time away from babysitting and laundry and all the boring bits of everyday life. Laughing, she ran across the control room, ready for the TARDIS door to swing open. When it did, though, she had to turn away suddenly, covering her eyes. The interior of the ship had been flooded with the brightest sunlight she’d ever seen.

‘Use these, Miss Oswald.’ The Doctor threw her a pair of sunglasses, which she put on. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the sunlight, and the Doctor joined her at the door, wearing a matching pair.

‘Sunglasses are cool,’ said the Doctor, as he stepped out into the sunshine.

Clara could barely conceal her joy as she took in their surroundings. Everything sparkled and shimmered, and vibrant colours sprang from every nook and cranny of the bright white buildings that littered the landscape. Houses and shops rose out of the terracotta earth, and it was as though a giant had looked down on the planet and dropped the buildings in a pretty arrangement. A vast, glowing city spread out in front of them like ripples from the waves.

The Doctor stood in the middle of the street and opened his arms wide. ‘Welcome to Cui Palta! Voted Most Beautiful City in the Galaxy three years in a row by readers of Space Health Monthly.’

‘You made that up, Doctor.’

‘I did not! How do you think I keep in such exceptional shape? I particularly enjoy Space Health’s pull-out sections on exercise while in zero gravity. Amazing what you can do with a bag of rice and some rope!’

Clara hugged the Doctor quickly and started to walk down the street. Together, they wandered slowly through the city, peering into doorways, standing at the top of winding stairways, breathing in the fresh air deeply. There were signs everywhere for treatments and spas, deckchair rentals and sweet treats. But, as they explored, Clara grew increasingly uneasy. Something very important was very obviously missing from this beautiful place.

After a while they came to a small, shady square. As the Doctor moved forward, Clara grabbed his arm.

‘Doctor, don’t you think there’s something strange about this place?’

The Doctor shrugged, apparently unconcerned. ‘It seems perfectly lovely to me. Maybe a little warm for my liking, but I’ll get used to it.’

Clara shook her head. ‘No, not the weather. There’s no one else here! Not a single soul. We’ve been past all these spas and things, so why isn’t there anyone in them? Customers, staff – anyone?’

The Doctor seemed to reconsider. He narrowed his eyes and slowly swept the horizon with them. ‘Hmmm … I suppose it is a little odd. It was a lot busier the last time I was here. The queue for the hot tubs went right round the block. Maybe it’s a bank-holiday weekend?’

Clara smiled. The idea of an alien planet having a bank holiday seemed ridiculous. She was still uneasy, though. It was so very quiet. More than that – it was completely deserted.

Seeing her frown, the Doctor tried to lighten her mood. ‘Sometimes people just move on. Maybe they found the constant sunshine a bit too much. I may even have to take my jacket off soon, which as you know is a very occasional event. Now, let me show you the bluest water you’ll ever see!’

He held out his hand and Clara took it. They trotted down some steps carved from stone. On either side was a stream that gurgled and stuttered its way to a pool so blue it looked like it had been painted by an artist.

Nothing should be that perfect a shade of blue, Clara thought, but she kept it to herself. The Doctor didn’t seem worried. She was probably being too cautious.

They carried on, and eventually reached the crest of a hill. From where they stood, the Doctor pointed out the various temples below, each ornate and intricate in its design. Here and there between the white buildings of the city were forests of tall bushes laden with yellow flowers. Some stood as high as the buildings themselves, and they waved as one with the gentle breeze, like reeds in the water.

The Doctor took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. Clara did the same, taking in a huge lungful of air. She immediately sneezed – a violent, noisy sneeze that reverberated around the streets like a small explosion.

‘Oh dear! That was a loud one. Take this.’ The Doctor pulled his handkerchief from his top pocket and passed it to Clara. ‘You seem to need it more than I do.’

Clara dabbed her nose with the hankie, then put it in her jacket pocket.

The Doctor scrunched up his face, looking out over the bright, sunlit city. Putting one hand on his hip, he placed a foot upon a convenient rock and gestured with his free hand at the great outdoors.

‘Sometimes, Clara,’ he said grandly, ‘it’s important to stop and smell the flowers. To get away from all the rush and bother. To take a deep breath and enjoy the beauty. Lovely, isn’t it, Clara? Clara!’

She had disappeared from the Doctor’s side. He spotted a shady alleyway behind him – the only place Clara could’ve gone – and walked quickly down it, calling her name. The alleyway soon broadened out and he spotted her, sunglasses in her hand, squinting at a wooden sign. It was weatherworn and obviously very old, with faded writing that was only just legible.

‘The Maze of Cui Palta,’ Clara read aloud. ‘How exciting! A puzzle to solve!’ Clara grinned at the Doctor, who had come to stand beside her. ‘This place is gorgeous, but there’s not much else to do, is there? Let’s go in!’

The Doctor groaned.

‘Oh, come on, Doctor! Mazes are fun!’

‘Fun!’ he scoffed. ‘Hardly! Not much of a challenge, are they? Mazes are a simple matter of mathematics. I could solve any maze in the galaxy quicker than you could say “Daleks smell”. Mazes are rubbish. Let’s look in the temples instead. Lots of lovely temples around here.’

The Doctor turned to walk on, but Clara stopped him in his tracks with one sentence.

‘Are you worried you won’t be able to solve it, Doctor? Is that it?’ She gasped theatrically. ‘What if this is the ONE maze that defeats the Doctor? I mean, if you don’t want to take it on, that’s fine. It’s a pretty big-looking maze. I suppose someone else will come along and solve it eventually …’

The Doctor turned round slowly, narrowing his eyes at Clara. Then, without a word, he took her hand and dragged her into the maze, his face splitting into a big grin as they ran. The sound of Clara’s laughter echoed off the empty city’s walls.

Clara and the Doctor only stopped running when they found themselves suddenly faced with a wall. Tall by any measurements, it was dwarfed by the gigantic yellow flowers that created an archway just in front of it. They could choose one of two options: go left or go right.

‘Well, Doctor,’ Clara said, ‘show me how easy this maze-solving is, then!’

Smirking, the Doctor walked confidently along the left-hand passage, gesturing for Clara to follow.

They wandered for a while in companionable silence. It was pleasantly cool, far nicer than being in the blazing sunshine, and Clara felt herself relaxing; even the fact that Cui Palta was so quiet stopped bothering her. This was fun!

At the Doctor’s instruction, they took every left-hand turn available. The Doctor seemed pretty confident with his strategy, even waggling his eyebrows at Clara occasionally as if to remind her of his genius. But Clara soon started to have her doubts. When they passed a rock that looked like a grumpy frog for what she felt sure was the third time since they had entered the maze, she stopped. The Doctor was a few paces up ahead of her; without him noticing, she bent down and gently turned the stone so that the ‘frog’ was facing the wall. Then she stood up again and hurried after the Doctor.

Just a few minutes later, they rounded another corner – and there it was! The little frog with its face turned to the wall, looking as though it had been banished to the corner for misbehaving.

‘Doctor! Stop!’

‘What? We’re nearly there!’

‘No, we’re not! We’ve been this way already. Look at the frog!’

The Doctor moved towards Clara, a concerned look on his face. ‘Have you had too much sun? I knew I should have brought the fez … Or are you hungry? I have lots of popcorn.’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of toffee popcorn, sticky and oozing in the heat, bits of pocket fluff all over it.

‘I’m not hungry, and I don’t have heatstroke! I’ve seen this rock before,’ Clara insisted, pointing at the rock. ‘The last time we passed it, I turned it to face the wall so I could be absolutely sure that we are definitely going round in circles!’

The Doctor made a noise that sounded rather like Pshaw! He shook his head. ‘Of course we aren’t lost! This is a tiny little maze in a tiny part of the city. Look!’ He pointed to the top of the wall next to them. ‘We can still see the big yellow flowers and the tops of the temples! This maze can’t be more than half a mile long at best. We just need to find the right formula and we’ll be out in a jiffy, okay?’

They set off again, this time taking every right-hand path, turning and turning and turning, and with every passing moment Clara became ever more uneasy. Before long, they turned another corner … and found themselves staring at the frog again.

Clara couldn’t help it now: she was starting to panic. Her worst fear as a child had been of getting lost, and here they were on an alien planet, in a maze, with no exit to be found.

‘Can’t you just use the screwdriver to locate the TARDIS and find a way out?’ she said.

‘What, already?’ the Doctor replied. ‘You’re such a maze killjoy! We’ve hardly even started enjoying ourselves.’

‘I think I’d like to get back to the TARDIS now. We must have been in here for at least an hour …’

‘All right,’ the Doctor said petulantly. ‘But only if you acknowledge that I definitely could have solved this maze very easily, but you were the one who wanted to give up.’

‘Fine.’ Clara folded her arms. ‘You know exactly what you’re doing. I believe you.’

‘And …?’

‘And what?’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

‘You are the king of the maze! Are you happy now? Can we please go?’

The Doctor grinned and nodded vigorously. ‘Since you have admitted I am the maze-solver supreme, we can leave. Let’s go and have a good laugh about this over a nice, cooling lemonade.’

He pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and held it above his head triumphantly. A persistent beeping emanated from it, but the tone of the beeps didn’t change as the Doctor walked slowly along the path. There was no sign at all to indicate whether they were getting closer to the TARDIS or not. It was as if the world outside the maze simply didn’t exist.

‘Hmm. Something seems to be broken,’ the Doctor said, holding the sonic in front of him and peering closely at it. ‘It isn’t connecting with the TARDIS.’ He hit the screwdriver a few times with his hand, then held it aloft once more, and walked onwards … but still the tone of the beeps didn’t change. The Doctor switched the sonic off and on again. ‘Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best!’

But the sonic still wasn’t behaving as it should.

They walked for another twenty minutes, with the sonic’s constant, unchanging beeping accompanying every step, and yet the TARDIS seemed to stay out of reach.

Clara leaned against a wall, defeated and tired.

The Doctor tried to lift her spirits. He crouched down beside her and smiled. ‘Sometimes even Time Lord technology can be temperamental. Don’t despair! You forget, I have at my disposal the most powerful weapon in the universe.’ With a flourish, he pulled from his pocket a small piece of white chalk. ‘Let’s do things the old-fashioned way, shall we?’

The Doctor scrawled on the wall: THE DOCTOR WOZ HERE. He then drew an arrow pointing left, along the passage they then took.

As they rounded each corner, the Doctor marked their progress with a different message – things like TARDIS 4EVA, and DALEKS SUCK – every time throwing a big smile in Clara’s direction. She couldn’t help but be comforted by his apparent nonchalance, drawn into his irresistible orbit. But when they rounded a corner to find their original message – THE DOCTOR WOZ HERE – waiting for them, Clara started to feel very uneasy again.

‘That’s fine. It just means we have to go the other way. To the right!’ cried the Doctor, and they ran on.

By this time, the sun had started to set, casting long shadows around them; dark corners loomed towards them, and their pace quickened. They turned yet another corner and read: TARDIS 4EVA. Then, round the next: CYBERMEN JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN.

There was no denying it now. This was no ordinary maze. They were trapped, walking round and round in endless circles.

The Doctor had stopped smiling now, and his face looked uncharacteristically grim. A heavy silence descended between the two of them and, without uttering a word, they stumbled on through the shadows until they found themselves facing a wall twice as high as any they had seen so far. Clara gasped when she saw what was drawn on it: arrows. Hundreds and hundreds of arrows, of all sizes, pointing in every direction.

‘Clara?’

‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘I think this maze might not be as simple as I first thought.’

‘You think?’

‘What we need to do is keep going. Perhaps just a little bit more quickly than before.’

The Doctor held out his hand, and Clara took it. In his other hand, he held the sonic screwdriver. He lifted it up, and a beam of light lit the now-darkened path ahead of them. Together, they ran onwards. Gradually, the maze started to change. Small yellow flowers – miniatures of those that surrounded the city – appeared on the walls, in the gaps between stones, and in the crevices of the ground.

Suddenly Clara stopped and let out a cry. ‘Doctor, look!’

She pointed to the end of the long passageway in front of them, where a figure was sitting on the ground, one arm outstretched as if warning strangers to stay away.

The Doctor held his sonic screwdriver higher, throwing light over the figure. ‘Hello there!’ he called, but the figure remained motionless.

‘Why aren’t they moving?’ Clara whispered.

‘Maybe they’re just a bit tired,’ the Doctor replied, but he didn’t sound very convincing. They inched towards the figure and the Doctor called out another cheerful greeting, but there was still no reply. In fact, it was so quiet that Clara was sure she could hear her heart beating through her chest, louder than a drum.

‘Are they … dead?’ she whispered fearfully, as they neared the motionless figure.

The Doctor reached out with the sonic to illuminate the shape slumped against the wall … only to discover it wasn’t a person at all. It was a skeleton.

The tatters of clothes hung off the bones. One knee was propped up, supporting an arm, which was perpetually stretched out as if to indicate to passersby an escape route from the maze that the skeleton would never find.

The Doctor gulped. ‘If he’s not dead, then he’s very much in need of a good dinner.’

Clara reached forward and gently touched the middle finger of the bony hand. The entire finger wobbled, then fell and hit the ground with a thud.

‘Doctor, I don’t think this is a good sign.’

There was a small crunching noise, and the Doctor and Clara watched in horror as the skeleton’s skull shuddered, as though nodding in agreement, then dropped from the body and slowly rolled away into the darkness.

‘Not everyone is cut out for puzzles, Clara. This fellow just didn’t keep his head.’

Clara stared at the Doctor. Not even his terrible jokes could stop her from being frightened now.

Seeing the look on her face, his weak smile faded. ‘Come on. Let’s keep moving.’

They ran in step with each other, checking over their shoulders every few seconds, as though to make sure an invisible enemy wasn’t on their heels. Everywhere Clara looked, she saw evidence of others who had also become trapped in the maze: a discarded shoe, a notebook, lines that looked horribly like fingernail marks on the walls …

Darker and darker and darker it got; deeper and deeper and deeper they ran.

At the entrance to a familiar-looking passage, the Doctor stopped. ‘This is new,’ he remarked, breathing heavily. ‘We’ve definitely been here before, but this wall wasn’t here last time.’

He approached the new obstacle: a wall lower than the others within the maze, which only came up to his shoulder, but which cut directly across their path. He peeked over the top to check what was on the other side, then turned to Clara and shrugged.

‘Well, this is interesting. On the other side, the path simply carries on. The wall is definitely new, though.’

‘Should we go over it?’

‘Of course! When a wall like this appears in a devious, tricksy maze, its purpose must be to prevent people from getting to the exit.’

The Doctor pulled himself to the top of the wall, scrabbling and groaning as he heaved himself aloft.

‘See – king of the maze!’ he exclaimed, throwing his arms up, then quickly regretting the move when he started to wobble.

‘Doctor! This is not the time for messing about!’

‘Sorry! The time for messing about is first thing in the morning, as everyone knows. Right, give me your hand and I’ll help you over the top.’

Clara stood so the toes of her shoes were brushing the wall. She stretched her arms up as the Doctor leaned down, but just as their hands touched there was a noise. A rumble. It started quietly, then grew and grew until the vibrations were shaking Clara’s teeth.

‘What’s happening?’ she shouted.

‘I have no idea!’ the Doctor yelled in return.

‘Maybe you should come down from that wall!’

‘What? I can’t hear you!’

‘I said maybe you should come down from that wall!’

‘I’ll need to come down from this wall! I can’t hear a thing!’

The Doctor moved to jump back down, when he was suddenly thrown into the air. Initially, he felt as though he was floating, like he had somehow been catapulted into the atmosphere, but after only a split second he realised that the wall itself was rising. With incredible speed, it shot higher and higher into the sky. He hugged the bricks tightly, his cheeks wobbling as the air rushed past him, the temperature dropping as he watched the city fall away below him.

‘Claraaaaaaaaaaaa!’ he yelled as far, far below him she became a dot barely bigger than a speck of dust.

On the ground, Clara watched the Doctor fly up and away from her.

‘Come back! Don’t you dare leave me here!’

She stretched an arm out towards him, but snatched it back when she realised that she was echoing the skeleton, that poor person who had ended up trapped in the maze forever.

‘DOCTOR!’

The Doctor couldn’t hear Clara’s cry. He was still ascending, faster and faster. Then, as suddenly as he had started climbing, he stopped.

Carefully, he raised his head, looking around nervously in case the wall started to move again. It didn’t, so he risked looking down to see where he was, shaking his head to clear it. Everything was topsy-turvy and his senses were dulled. As he focused his eyes, he saw that, despite feeling as though he should be in the clouds, he wasn’t actually that high above the city at all. He searched for landmarks, for anything he had seen before – temples or markets – but there was nothing familiar. Instead, stretching from horizon to horizon was the maze, twisting and turning and flowing seemingly without end. It was as if the whole planet was a maze … but how could that be? When they’d landed here, the maze hadn’t even been visible – not even from the hilltops in the city.

Though reluctant to admit he’d been defeated by the maze, the Doctor decided it was probably time to put his secret ‘Plan B’ in motion: to call the TARDIS into the maze, using the key in his pocket, and get off this planet as soon as possible. Things were getting a bit too dangerous, even by his standards.

The Doctor was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the wall begin to slowly descend again. Only when he heard Clara shouting did he realise that he was moving gradually downwards, a gentle breeze ruffling his hair. At last, the wall came to a halt back in its original position.

Clara was eager for information. ‘What could you see from up there? Could you see the way out?’

She was clearly still frightened, so the Doctor made a decision – one of the decisions he often had to make when he needed to protect the people he loved. ‘Yes. I could,’ he replied confidently. ‘It’s not far away, but I think we should take a shortcut and call the TARDIS for a lift.’

Clara clasped her hands together in relief. ‘You’ve got the key in your pocket! Why didn’t you say so?’

‘Well, since I am the maze-master extraordinaire, I don’t like to take the easy way out. But it is rather dark in here now, and I could do with a cup of tea … and this doesn’t appear to be your usual sort of maze.’

Clara sighed in exasperation. ‘You don’t say!’

The Doctor ignored her. ‘First thing, though, let’s get over this wall in case it decides to move again.’

The Doctor held out his hand, but this time Clara hesitated.

‘Trust me,’ the Doctor said.

She took hold of his hand and he hoisted her up. The two of them tumbled over the wall, ending up in a heap on the ground. Clara laughed, and it was a good feeling – a nice change from the fear the maze had churned up inside her.

The Doctor smiled. ‘Right then. TARDIS?’

‘Yes please.’

The Doctor put his hand in his pocket … but, to his horror, the key wasn’t there. Perhaps he had put it in the other pocket, or in the inside pocket for safekeeping? He searched, keeping the smile on his face. But, as his scrabbling became more and more desperate, Clara realised something was wrong.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost it!’

The Doctor dropped to the ground and started to search around in the dirt. ‘Must have dropped out of my pocket when the wall moved. Has to be here somewhere!’

Clara looked around desperately, hoping to spot a glint of metal in the dirt. ‘Maybe it’s on the other side of the wall?’ she said hopefully.

The Doctor threw his hands up. ‘Of course it is!’

He walked towards the wall, but as he did it moved once more, shooting into the air and blocking any chance of getting to the other side. The Doctor turned slowly back to Clara. Even he was going to struggle to put a positive spin on the latest developments.

‘Clara. I think we may have to consider that we might be just a little bit lost.’

Clara sighed and shook her head, wiping the dirt from her hands.

‘Come on, Oswald. Chin up. A maze is simply a puzzle, and this just happens to be a very, very good one. This is absolutely not the time to panic. We need to find the way out.’

Clara looked exhausted, but the Doctor persisted.

‘Come on! We’ve been in worse scrapes than this! A brick wall can’t be more frightening than a Dalek, can it?’

Clara raised her eyebrows.

The Doctor simply pointed down the passageway ahead of them. ‘Onwards!’

They set off in silence, Clara’s face set in a steely expression of grim determination. As they walked, she felt sweat trickling down her brow. The air seemed to be closing in around them, and even though the maze remained shrouded in darkness it felt as though it was getting warmer. The walls, all partially covered with great blossoms of the ever-present yellow flowers, seemed nearer and tighter than before, the turns more frequent and extreme. Clara started to feel lightheaded and sick; it was as if the maze was whirling around her. Then she saw something move a little way up ahead.

‘Doctor, stop,’ she whispered, grabbing him.

‘What is it? Why are we whispering?’

‘I don’t think we’re alone,’ she said, pointing to where she’d seen the movement. ‘I saw something up there. Maybe it’s someone else trapped in here? We could ask them for help finding the way out.’

She suddenly sneezed again, trying to stifle the noise with the Doctor’s hankie as best as she could. Now was really not the time to be making sudden loud noises!

The Doctor shook his head. ‘No! If they’re trapped in here, they won’t know where the exit is, will they?’

Clara was determined. She spoke quietly and firmly. ‘I’m going over. You can wait and see what happens. If I need rescuing, you can jump in.’

Before the Doctor could argue, Clara started to edge slowly towards where she had seen the movement.

‘Hello?’ she said, trying to keep her voice light and cheerful. ‘Hello? Is there someone there?’

As she moved closer, she was sure she could discern a figure shrouded behind the yellow flowers covering the wall. With every step, the figure seemed to move closer and became more clearly human in form.

‘Are you trapped here as well? We don’t want to hurt you. We just need some help.’ Clara hesitated. ‘Say something? Please?’

The Doctor, who had crept along behind Clara, was ready to pounce at the slightest whiff of danger.

Clara was now within touching distance of the figure, with only the hanging curtain of yellow flowers between them. With one swift move, she reached out a hand and brushed the flowers to one side – and screamed.

The Doctor shot forward, gangly limbs tangling with each other, making his attack seem more like a puppy running for its dinner than anything that might threaten someone.

‘CLARA, OUT OF THE WAY!’ he shouted, as he struck out at the figure.

He yelped as his knuckles made contact with something solid, the impact reverberating through his body.

‘Doctor, it’s me!’

‘What do you mean it’s you?’ he said, hopping around in the dirt and clutching his hand to his chest.

‘Look, it’s me! It’s a mirror!’

Still wincing, the Doctor watched as Clara moved the flowers aside and gestured at the wall. It was indeed a mirror – and, as he looked around, he saw that mirrors had appeared everywhere. The walls of the maze were now made of glass instead of stone. There were even some reflective surfaces on the ground.

‘It’s like the funfair in Brighton,’ Clara said. ‘A hall of mirrors!’

She was right.

The mirrors varied vastly. They weren’t all flat and perfect. Some were warped, and the reflections were contorted, ugly, squat and stretched.

‘Clara. This is far more than a normal maze. This is something far worse than a normal maze …’

Clara moved to the Doctor’s side. ‘Would now be the time to panic?’

He looked at her. ‘Panic is a strong word, Clara. Let’s move to “be more concerned” first, shall we?’

Short of any better ideas by this time, the Doctor and Clara carried on through the maze, but the mirrors made their progress difficult. They soon became dizzy and disoriented, as they whirled and lurched round corner after corner.

Clara heard her breathing becoming louder and louder, and it echoed in her eardrums until there was a constant hum in her ears. It was unbearable. Lungs almost bursting from the effort, she shouted, ‘I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t!’

‘Don’t look at the walls!’ the Doctor called back. ‘Keep your eyes on the ground. It’ll stop you from feeling sick.’

It was like being stuck in a terrible nightmare. It began to seem they had been trapped in this awful maze forever, and indeed it soon became evident they had been running around in circles for several hours as, eventually, the gentle light of a new day started to illuminate the pathways and passages ahead of them.

Abruptly, the mirrors disappeared, and the Doctor and Clara stepped into an area that was definitely new: a courtyard brilliantly lit with sunshine, the walls solid and bright white as if freshly painted. Clara could suddenly see and breathe and think clearly again.

‘Well, look at this,’ the Doctor said, pointing at one wall of the courtyard. Three sturdy doorways, each identical in structure and each with a large exit sign hanging above it, faced them.

‘Three doors. Which is the right one?’ the Doctor muttered, stroking his chin thoughtfully. This was clearly another puzzle, but as with all the other obstacles they had faced in this maze there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It was chaotic, like the maze itself had been left to dream up its own twisted, nonsensical challenges.

Knowing how important it was that Clara believe they were going to get out of here – and that he believe it too – he stated with certainty, ‘It’s the middle one, of course!’

‘Doctor, it can’t be as simple as just picking the middle door.’

‘Of course it can. It’s always the middle one. This maze just wants you to think this puzzle is more complicated than it actually is. Mark my words, when faced with three doors, always go through the middle one. Every time. No doubt.’

Clara sighed. ‘We should go through together, just in case anything happens.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. Together.’

He put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It rotated easily, and they both heard the click of a lock opening.

‘See,’ he said. ‘It’s always the middle door!’

He opened the door as far as it would go, but all that waited for them on the other side was darkness. Hand in hand, the Doctor and Clara stepped through it.

After a few seconds in the darkness, the Doctor bumped into something solid in front of him.

‘Seems we’ve got another door here,’ he hissed to Clara.

He turned the handle until they heard the familiar click, then opened this new door. They were immediately blinded by sunlight. They’d finally made it out! Clara cheered and hugged the Doctor.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the light. Shading her face from the glare, Clara saw the Doctor doing the same thing – and then she realised what had really happened.

They hadn’t escaped.

They had walked through the middle door and then come back through the exact same door.

They were back in the courtyard again, in front of the three doors, exactly where they’d started.

‘We didn’t turn round, did we?’ Clara asked.

‘Maybe we did. It was dark. Let’s try again.’

Once more they walked through the middle door, and a few seconds later walked out into the courtyard again.

‘I’m not sure it is always the middle door, Doctor.’ Clara walked towards the door on the left. ‘Maybe we should try the others?’

She turned the doorknob and gestured to the Doctor to follow her into the now-familiar darkness, then opened the door that they found beyond … and walked through the middle door again, back into the courtyard.

‘This is fine,’ Clara said, in a deliberately calm, controlled tone. ‘It just means that the real exit must be this one.’ She walked purposefully to the door to the right of the middle door and opened it.

The Doctor stayed where he was, watching Clara disappear through the right-hand door. Almost immediately she bumped straight into him, as she reappeared through the middle door.

For a moment, their eyes locked.

Is this it? Clara wondered. After everything that they had been through, would this be the end?

The Doctor was the one who had brought them here; he thought that this place would be fun, beautiful, even relaxing. But when Clara looked at him now she only felt fear, because for maybe the first time since they’d travelled together he looked lost – as lost as she was.

Then the Doctor turned his head sharply. He’d spied something in his peripheral vision; something he hadn’t noticed before. Had it been in the courtyard all this time? It was a narrow passageway between two walls covered in yellow flowers – tiny, but definitely there.

‘Clara! Over here!’ he said, walking over to the passageway. As he peered down it, he could see another courtyard a short distance away.

‘This could be it,’ he whispered to himself, turning back to Clara – but Clara was nowhere to be seen.

On the opposite side of the courtyard, he saw that another passageway had appeared. It was the mirror-image of the one he stood next to. Doors, mirrors, passageways, mirror-passageways – the maze was throwing everything it had at them!

‘CLARA!’ the Doctor yelled, sprinting across the courtyard, desperate to catch her before they lost each other for good. He tore down the passageway, gasping for breath as he reached the mirror-courtyard, and gave another enormous cry, every ounce of his being behind it. ‘CLARA OSWALD! ANSWER ME!’

He listened. Nothing but silence. And then he heard it. Far away and quiet, but definitely there.

‘Doctor! Where are you?’

‘Clara! I’m here! Move towards my voice!’

Clara was in another part of the maze. She had gone through the middle door again and this time found herself in a different courtyard. When she had turned to look for the three doors, however, she had discovered to her horror that they had disappeared. She was sitting on the ground trying to work out her next move when she heard the Doctor calling her name.

‘Keep talking!’ she called back. ‘I’ll try to find you!’

She stood up and listened carefully.

‘Okay … erm, hello! I’m in a maze,’ she heard him saying, and despite her fear she smiled. He was rambling. ‘It’s not the kind of maze that I like. Usually I prefer one in the garden of a nice castle or something. Somewhere you can get an ice cream if it gets too hot. I mean, it’s not my fault. Well, it kind of is my fault. But last time I was here I got an amazing pedicure – I didn’t think I’d like it, but once you’ve had your toenails clipped by a tiny air-breathing shark-like creature who uses his actual teeth you’ll never go back …’

As the Doctor rattled on, Clara worked her way towards him. Finally, she was sure that she was right beside him, but between them stood a wall that was too tall to climb over and too thick to knock down.

‘Doctor!’ she interrupted him. ‘I’m here! Can you hear me?’

On the other side of the wall, the Doctor pressed his hands to the brick, as if by touching them he could get closer to her. ‘Clara, I can hear you. Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. I can’t see a way of getting through this wall to you, though. Is there a way through it on your side?’

‘I’ll see.’ The Doctor had already started patting the bricks and working his way methodically along the wall, searching for any sign of a potential weak point or gap. ‘Sing a song so I can tell where you are.’

‘Why do I need to sing? Can’t I just talk?’

‘No. Sing. Singing is easier to follow than talking. That is a fact.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Clara reluctantly started humming a tune.

‘Louder than that!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Give it some welly!’

Clara started to sing loudly. Amplified by the echoes, her voice seemed to stretch up to the sky. She stopped to cough and suddenly sneezed. She took out the Doctor’s hankie and blew her nose. She sneezed again.

‘Keep singing, Clara!’ The Doctor sounded further away, so she started singing again, but her nose was blocked.

‘Doctor, come back!’ she called, coughing. ‘You’re going the wrong way!’

She was seized by a fit of sneezing. How strange. What could be making her sneeze? She didn’t feel like she was coming down with a cold.

She coughed with such force that she had to grab on to the wall to steady herself. As she did so, she brushed against one of the yellow flowers. From it cascaded a waterfall of yellow dust, a shower of tiny pellets that floated in the air around her like a mist.

It couldn’t be as simple as that, could it?

Clara dropped to the ground, immediately placing the hankie over her nose and mouth. As she took shallow breaths, things slowly began to change in front of her eyes. The walls started to shimmer and became more and more transparent.

That was it!

The very flowers that the Doctor had insisted they should stop to smell were trapping them. Clara wasn’t sure whether it was a hallucinogenic effect or not – all she knew was that the longer she stayed on the ground breathing through the hankie the more the walls disappeared.

In the distance she could see a figure: it was the Doctor. He was running round and round in a circle. It would have been comical to watch if it wasn’t so terrifying. Clara now realised that there were no walls – there had never been any walls – but the Doctor was still seeing them.

‘Doctor! I know what’s happened!’ she called.

‘I’m coming for you, Clara!’ He looked blindly in the direction of her voice. ‘Don’t worry! I’m coming for you!’

‘Doctor, listen to me. You need to get on the ground and breathe through your hankie!’ As Clara finished her sentence, she realised that she had the Doctor’s hankie.

‘I’m nearly with you!’ the Doctor shouted, still running round in a circle.

‘Doctor, use your shirt sleeve. Breathe through it. It’s the flowers! They’re doing something to us!’

‘Nonsense!’ he scoffed. ‘It’s a simple puzzle. I’ll have it all worked out in a jiffy!’

‘STOP!’ Clara shouted.

Hearing the tone of her voice, the Doctor skidded to an abrupt halt.

‘Do you trust me, Doctor?’ she asked slowly and deliberately.

The Doctor turned his head towards the direction of her voice and she saw him smiling. ‘Always, Clara.’

‘Then get on the ground and breathe through your sleeve.’

‘I think a hankie would be more appropriate,’ the Doctor said. ‘I always carry a spare one for just such an occasion.’

‘Doctor, I’ve got y–’ Clara began, but she stopped short and shook her head in amused disbelief as she watched him pull a massive spotted cloth out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He shook it with a flourish, then placed it over his mouth and nose and dropped to the ground.

Within moments, the Doctor saw the walls of the maze shimmer and start to disappear. He could at last see that they were in a small courtyard just beside the alleyway in which they had first entered the maze. All they had been doing for all this time was walking round and round in circles. He set eyes on Clara, and scurried across to her on his hands and knees.

‘It seems that there may have been a reason why the people abandoned Cui Palta,’ he said. ‘What say we do the same?’

Clara didn’t need asking twice. Still holding their hankies over their faces, they both got to their feet and ran – back up the stairs, past the temples, until they saw the TARDIS. It was right where they had left it.

Thrusting his hand into his pocket, the Doctor pulled out the TARDIS key and held it up.

‘It must have been here all along,’ he said, scrutinising it, as though making extra sure that what he was looking at was indeed really there. ‘And the sonic must have been connected with the TARDIS all along too. That pollen did such a thorough job of clouding our senses that we weren’t able to see it. Except clever old you worked it out, Clara.’

He pushed the key into the TARDIS’s door, then threw the door open. ‘After you,’ he said, as Clara burst through it. Once they were both inside, she slammed the door shut, taking a deep breath as she sank to the floor.

‘Thanks for the relaxing day,’ she said, the glimmer of a smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. ‘I really needed that.’

The Doctor seemed thoughtful, leaning against the central console with his head bent down. ‘All those people, having fun, relaxing … driven away by the visions the flowers created, maybe even driven mad …’ He turned to her and fixed her with a serious look. ‘Clara, I was wrong to not listen to you sooner. It was the maze, doing funny things to my judgement … But I really do trust you. I hope you know that.’

Still catching her breath, she reassured him with a smile in return. ‘I do, Doctor. And it’s okay. You can owe me: one proper spa break, to be redeemed any time of my choosing.’

The Doctor laughed. ‘We’ll come back here for a pedicure, shall we?’

‘No thanks!’ Clara replied emphatically. ‘So much for stopping to smell the flowers, eh? I’d find a battle on a planet that’s about to self-destruct from fabric-softener overload more relaxing.’ She thought of Artie and Angie, and how pleased she was that she’d get to see them again – messy habits and all. ‘How about we just go home for a cup of tea?’

‘Oh, yes! And, for the trip home, snacks!’ The Doctor pulled the remaining popcorn from his pockets, looking rather proud of himself. It had by this time melted together into one big, messy toffee-and-popcorn lump, and bits of grey lint fuzzed the outside edges. Clara grimaced. As the Doctor held it out towards her, a tiny yellow flower detached itself from the sticky mess and floated innocently to the floor of the TARDIS.

The two of them watched it land between their feet, then looked at one another.

‘Maybe some biscuits instead …’ the Doctor conceded.

Bill and the Three Jackets

BY DOROTHY KOOMSON

‘I’m telling you, Bill – there are rooms and rooms of jackets in this TARDIS. In fact, I think there’s a whole level devoted to jackets. Jackets created by some of the most important and noteworthy designers of the modern age! Nardole will help you choose one. You do not need to go out there and shop.’ The Doctor navigated the console of the TARDIS, an ever-watchful eye concentrating on one multi-coloured control panel while he talked to Bill Potts.

‘Yeah, but it’s not the same,’ Bill replied. Stood on the other side of the main console, she looked at the readings on the screen in front of her but wasn’t really paying attention. The readings were usually interesting, sure, and if the Doctor asked, she would obviously monitor them. But to Bill, the TARDIS felt alive. The console room was its beating heart. Like there was always someone there with her, looking out for its passengers – even when she was by herself.

Bill was tempted to lean down and whisper to the TARDIS how excited she was about her date that evening, but instead she spoke to the Doctor.

‘Thing is, Doctor, you can have too much choice. I could go down there, or up there, or out there, or wherever your rooms full of jackets are … but too much choice means I might not find anything. If I go into town, I’ve got to decide what I like, by myself, in a normal amount of time. Trust me – it’s the best way to pick a perfect outfit for a perfect date.’

‘Perfect dates don’t exist,’ the Doctor snorted. ‘I’ve witnessed many dates on many planets and none of them were perfect. Some have come close, I’ll give you that, but my advice would be to expect imperfection. Embrace it!’

‘Maybe your standards are just too high,’ Bill shrugged.

The Doctor ignored her. ‘I don’t understand why you need anything new to wear. Did you not meet this “perfect date” when you were dressed in clothes? Was she not interested in you then? Why do you imagine that what you choose to put on your body will change in any way what happens tonight?’

‘Oh, come on, I know you’re not fashion-phobic. I’ve seen you wear a hoodie,’ Bill grinned. ‘What you wear changes how you feel. When I look better, I feel better – know what I mean?’

‘But you look fine.’ The Doctor looked over Bill, with her mass of curly black hair tied up in a red scarf, her features as inquisitive as always, her unique smile lighting up her face. ‘In fact, I’d go as far as to say adequate.’

Bill sighed as she headed for the door. ‘That’s the thing about you, Doctor. You understand all this amazing stuff. Time and relative dimension in space! You’ve been to all these different planets and yet, still, when it comes to emotions, feelings … you can be a bit clueless.’

‘I don’t think that’s true.’ The Doctor sounded offended by the suggestion that he might not know everything about human beings. For a wise, two-thousand-year-old Time Lord who had spent a lot of time on Earth, what Bill was saying was quite a big insult.

‘It’s totally true,’ Bill said with a laugh. ‘It’s not a bad thing. Just the way it is, isn’t it? Anyway. Standing here chatting won’t get me any closer to finding a new jacket.’

She pushed open the TARDIS’s heavy door.

‘Bill?’ the Doctor called, just before she stepped outside.

‘Yes?’

‘What you look like tonight really isn’t important,’ said the Doctor seriously. ‘The most important thing is who you are. I may not know everything about emotional stuff, but I do know that. Who you are, the strength of your character … that’s the most important thing.’

‘Yeah. Thanks, Doctor,’ Bill replied with a small smile, before she left.

‘And you wouldn’t be travelling in the TARDIS with me if you didn’t have that,’ the Doctor added, when the door had shut behind Bill and she had no chance of hearing.

‘Well, that looks awesome on you,’ said the sales assistant, whose name badge read ‘Ziggy’.

Earlier, Bill had spotted a shop on a small street on the outskirts of Bristol city centre, mysteriously called O & Ohhh. It looked like there were loads of cool clothes inside, but it had been the gold jacket with buckles in the window that had caught her eye and made her decide to come back.

Inside, Bill had discovered a whole rack of colourful jackets, each as unique as the next. Ziggy had insisted that Bill pick three she loved best and only try those on. ‘You want to narrow it down straight away. You can have too much choice, you know,’ Ziggy had said, nodding sagely.

‘Exactly,’ Bill had replied.

This first jacket was the colour of amethyst, a glorious purple, and when the light hit it, it shone like it had been carved from the precious rock too.

Bill stood in front of the mirror, twisting this way and that, looking at herself in the jacket. Each time she caught a glimpse of herself from a different angle, she liked the look of it even more.

‘It could have been made for you!’ Ziggy said, beaming.

Bill went to her own denim jacket and took out her mobile phone from the pocket. She returned to the mirror and was about to snap a photo when Ziggy stepped in front of the mirror.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I’m not allowed to let anyone take photos of the clothes – these are exclusive designs, so people come in all the time posing as customers and then they steal the ideas. My boss left strict instructions: no selfies.’

‘Oh,’ Bill said. ‘Okay. No selfies makes it harder to decide, though. I can’t work out which jacket looks best against the others.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ziggy said, regretfully. Bill looked at her. There was something about her … Bill couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Ziggy was beautiful, there was no doubt – her dark brown skin was smooth and flawless, her large eyes were a deep, hazel brown and her large lips made her look even more stunning whenever she smiled or, as she was doing now, twisted them in worry.

‘I feel really bad!’ Ziggy sighed. After a second or two she seemed to make a decision. ‘Look, don’t tell anyone I did this …’ She nipped behind the counter and bobbed down out of sight for a few seconds before reappearing with an old-fashioned instant camera in her hands and a conspiratorial grin on her face. Placing the camera on the counter, Ziggy ran to the door and switched the sign to ‘Closed’ before she locked it. ‘At least this way you haven’t technically taken any selfies on your phone … but we have to be quick!’

She grabbed the camera again and held it up. ‘Strike a pose!’ she said to Bill with a giggle. Bill smiled, her hands in the purple jacket’s pockets. ‘Perfect,’ Ziggy said. ‘Absolutely perfect.’

Ziggy pushed the button at the front of the camera and the image of Bill was captured. There was a whirl and a slow, soft buzz as a white square sheet came out of the front of the camera. Ziggy took the photo and stared at it, like she was willing it to develop faster. ‘Quick, try on the next one and we’ll get them all photographed before my boss comes back.’

Bill shrugged off the jacket and went to the other she had chosen. It was a rich emerald green with red roses embroidered all over it. As she reached for it, she felt a bit light-headed. Must be the excitement of getting ready for the date, she thought. That and the secret photoshoot.

She slipped on the second jacket and, like the other one, it fitted like it was made for her. She stepped back in front of the mirror as Ziggy gasped. ‘Wow! That looks perfect on you. Maybe even more so than the other one.’ The helpful shop assistant raised the camera again.

Still unsteady, Bill did as she was told as Ziggy took another photo. Again she stared at it, smiling as it developed and placing it carefully on the counter next to the first. ‘One more for luck?’ Ziggy said with a mischievous smile. Bill was starting to really like her – there was something about Ziggy that made Bill think they would’ve spent a lot of time getting into trouble together if they’d met at school.

Bill reached for the final jacket – the gold one from the window. The leather was butter-soft under her fingers, and Ziggy gasped when Bill slipped it on. ‘I’m really, really glad I’m not the one who has to choose between those three,’ she said as she raised the camera again. ‘They all look fab on you. Whoever you’re going on a date with is very lucky!’

When Ziggy had taken the last photo and laid it beside the other two, Bill took off the jacket and another wave of dizziness almost knocked her over. She had to stand very, very still for a moment and squeeze her eyes shut.

‘Are you all right?’ Ziggy asked.

‘Yeah,’ Bill replied. ‘Just didn’t have a proper breakfast, and no lunch. Must just be desperate to get this outfit sorted for tonight!’

‘Hmm. I can tell you need a rest,’ Ziggy said kindly. ‘Why don’t you go get a coffee and something to eat, and clear your head? When you come back, the photos will be developed and you can decide which jacket you want.’

Bill wobbled again, then smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’

Ziggy gently helped Bill to the door. ‘You should take better care of yourself! Come back in a bit and we’ll choose together. Although, have to say, that gold one is definitely my current fave …’

At a nearby café, Bill still didn’t feel better. She was sat outside with a coffee that she couldn’t drink without feeling even more dizzy, and a sandwich that turned her stomach. She wished she’d just kept the photos Ziggy had taken. She could do with looking at something to take her mind off how sick and weak she felt.

Well, if I’m gonna sit here, totally useless, I’ll close my eyes for a sec … she thought. Rest them for just one teeny-tiny moment.

Bill suddenly jerked awake, and sat up. The clock on the face of the building opposite told her that fifty-five minutes had passed since she first sat down. Blinking fast, she tried to get her eyes to focus. That can’t be right, Bill thought, squinting at the clock. I’ve been here five minutes at most.

‘Where’d she go?’ The waiter asked her suddenly, his voice with an angry edge to it.

‘Who?’ Bill asked.

‘The girl who was sitting there about half an hour ago.’

‘I’ve been here for nearly an hour,’ Bill replied.

‘No, the other one.’

‘What other one?’

The waiter tutted. ‘The other girl. You know, curly hair, light brown skin, big smile. Where’d she go?’

‘What was she wearing?’

He frowned. ‘A bit like your outfit, really. Red headscarf, denim jacket, black-and-white t-shirt, nice pair of trainers on her, like yours … but her outfit suited her much better.’

‘Oh, well, thanks. At least you like my trainers.’ Bill rolled her eyes.

‘No, I liked your trainers on her. Where’d she go?’

‘Okay. Big hair, red headscarf, brown skin, sick trainers and big smile? Totally cute face?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s ME.’

‘It’s not,’ the waiter replied, exasperated. ‘And I need to know where the other girl went because she hasn’t paid her bill.’

‘What did she order?’

‘Coffee, fish finger sandwich with chips, juice.’

‘That’s what I ordered!’

‘Fine, good for you! But it’s the other girl who ordered all that and then left without paying the bill that I need to know about!’

‘I didn’t leave! I’m right here!’

He sighed. ‘Look, if you want to play silly idiots, I give up. The manager’s going to kill me for her doing a runner …’

As confused as he seemed to be, Bill felt bad for the waiter grumbling to himself as he walked away. She took money from her pocket and put it down on the table to pay her bill and got to her feet. Why do I still feel so odd? she wondered as she started to walk back towards the shop. She hadn’t decided which jacket to buy yet, but it seemed like a good idea to choose any of them and get back to the TARDIS for a lie-down, fast.

Bill turned a corner towards the shop, stopping for a moment to let a wave of wooziness wash over her. She closed her eyes as she swayed and a barrage of images went through her mind: faces she didn’t recognise, her hands in chains, a man in white shouting at her and then waving his hands to tell guards to take her away.

Bill’s eyes snapped open. Whoa! she thought. What on earth was that?

This day was becoming too weird. Never mind the jackets – she had to go back to the Doctor right now and work out what was up. Strange visions were not a good sign.

Outside the TARDIS, Bill placed her hand on the door and pushed, but it didn’t swing open as usual. She sighed with frustration – the Doctor must have gone somewhere on foot, starting an adventure without her! She reached into her pocket, pulled out her TARDIS key and slotted it into the lock. Nothing. The door still wouldn’t budge. Bill took a step back and looked at the blue box. Why was this day getting weirder and weirder?

A sudden fear clenched her heart and stomach. The visions she’d had … Now the TARDIS wouldn’t open, and the strange waiter had thought she was someone else … What if someone was messing with her mind?

‘Doctor! Nardole!’ Bill yelled, hammering on the door of the TARDIS. ‘Come on! Let me in.’

Finally, the blue door opened and Bill almost collapsed in relief.

‘I have had the weirdest day,’ she said, moving to step inside. ‘You’re the king of weird days, I know, but this one’s been weird even by your standards.’

But the Doctor didn’t move from the doorway. Instead he just frowned, blocking Bill’s way. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Who are you?’ he demanded.

Bill was starting to lose her patience. ‘It’s me, obviously!’ she said. ‘Your friend, Bill?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You look nothing like Bill.’

‘Not funny, Doctor, not today,’ Bill said. ‘Move over. I need a rest.’

‘Well, you’d better go on home then!’ the Doctor replied.

Bill sighed. ‘I know it’s not really my home, but I love the TARDIS like a really fancy, time-travelling second home. And I think the TARDIS quite likes me too!’

The Doctor looked at her with eyebrows furrowed, as though trying to work out where he’d seen her before. ‘How do you know about my TARDIS? Did Bill tell you about it?’

‘I am Bill. Why would I tell myself something? And you know I wouldn’t tell anyone about the TARDIS.’

‘For the last time: You. Are. Not. Bill.’

‘Yes, I am!’

‘Then who’s this?’ The Doctor stepped aside and pointed to the person standing beside the console of the TARDIS. Bill’s mouth slowly dropped open because inside the TARDIS was … Bill.

Bill stared with her mouth open at the girl standing beside the console. Her curly hair framed her face, and she was wearing the gold jacket Bill had tried on in the shop – and she also wore one of Bill’s favourite tops, her jeans and her platform shoes. That’s the exact outfit I was going to wear on my date tonight! Bill thought. She wondered for a moment if perhaps she had a secret twin she’d never known about – but that wasn’t it. This person wasn’t her twin. She was an exact replica, an imposter wearing Bill’s face and body.

‘Doctor, that’s not me!’ Bill insisted. ‘I’m me. I’m Bill.’

‘Just stop talking, okay?’ the Doctor replied. ‘As you can see, Bill is standing right there. Whatever it is you’re playing at, we’re not interested. And DON’T tell anyone else about my TARDIS!’ With that, the Doctor slammed the door.

Okay, Bill thought. Try very, very hard not to panic. She scrabbled around in her pocket for her phone, then took it out and held it up to her face.

In the black screen, she could see that she was … not Bill. She was Bill on the inside, but not on the outside! Quickly, she unlocked the screen, opened the camera and took a selfie. The image froze in front of her – her skin was a darker brown, her eyes were large and pretty but nothing like her own. Her face had become rounder, and her nose was small and flatter. Bill stared and stared.

Somehow, her selfie was not of her self. Her selfie was of Ziggy, the oh-so-friendly and helpful sales assistant from the clothes shop.

‘Ziggy stole my face!’ Bill exclaimed. She whirled back around to hammer on the TARDIS door. ‘DOCTOR! NARDOLE! ZIGGY STOLE MY FACE!’ She banged and banged on the police box, but even as she did it, she knew that the Doctor wasn’t going to open it to her. He thought the imposter was the real Bill! And the fact that the TARDIS wouldn’t let her in meant that even the Doctor’s time machine didn’t recognise her.

Feeling fear rising again inside her, Bill wandered away from the TARDIS in a daze.

What am I going to do? she asked herself, slumping down on to a nearby park bench.

‘What you look like doesn’t matter,’ the Doctor had told her. But that’s so not true, is it? The Doctor didn’t recognise her. The TARDIS didn’t recognise her. Right at that moment, how she looked was the only thing that mattered.

How had Ziggy managed to steal her face and body? And how could she possibly know enough about being Bill to be able to fool not only the Doctor but the TARDIS too? The Doctor wouldn’t believe the imposter was Bill simply by looking at her – he would speak to her, listen. Ziggy, the fake Bill, must be able to act perfectly to get away with it. She had to be an alien of some kind, didn’t she?

Her mind still fuzzy and her stomach churning, Bill realised she was going to need help to convince the Doctor that she was the real Bill – but who could help? As far as she knew, Nardole was in the TARDIS with the Doctor. Anyone else Bill could potentially tell this story to would never believe her – and they probably wouldn’t even speak to her in the first place, because they wouldn’t recognise her!

Perhaps she could convince someone of who she was by sharing a secret – a secret only Bill could possibly know. In fact, what she really needed was someone to whom she could reveal a secret so trivial, that person would know that Bill would have never bothered to share it with anyone else. There has to be someone out there like that, Bill thought, searching her memory. When she’d worked in the university canteen, she’d met loads of people. But none of them had really noticed her. And none of them would help her even if somehow they did believe her.

Her shoulders sagged. It was hopeless. There was no one, except … Of course! Bill jumped to her feet. She knew who would help her. At least, who she hoped would help her …

At the university, Bill ran to the canteen. She hoped she’d got there at the right time. She searched frantically amongst the faces – and there she was! A round-faced girl, sitting on her own, reading.

Bill sprinted over to the table and threw herself down in one of the seats. The girl looked up from the book she was reading in surprise. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, eyebrows raised.

‘Hi, Lou. Look – this is going to sound really odd, and I don’t have a lot of time to explain it properly. Well, I do have a lot of time – we’ve all got a lot of time, because time is relative and everything is happening all at once – but in real, everyday, me-and-you terms, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to tell you something and I’d really like you to listen. Please?’

Lou was a beautiful girl who Bill used to give extra portions of chips to every time she served her lunch in the university canteen. There had always been a spark between them. Bill was hoping with all her heart that Lou would still feel that spark, even though Bill now wore a different face.

Lou said nothing, but simply stared, so Bill carried on talking, launching into the best explanation she could give. ‘This is going to sound really out there, but it’s the truth. The absolute truth.

‘Basically, I used to be Bill. I mean, I used to look like Bill. I still am Bill, but I don’t look like me any more. Somehow, an alien stole my face and my body, so now no one recognises me.’

Lou’s face did not move – not one millimetre.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

Lou shook her head.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I think the quickest way to get rid of you, whoever you are, is to listen to what you’ve got to say, and then politely ask you to leave.’

‘Fine. Well, I’m Bill. That’s who I am. I used to work here. Behind the counter, on chips.’

‘No you didn’t,’ Lou frowned. ‘I remember the girl who used to work on chips. She was lovely, and she looked nothing like you.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Someone stole my face!’ Bill paused, because what she said next would be the only way to get Lou to help her. She lowered her voice and leant forwards. ‘I used to give you extra chips. You’d give me the nod, a little look – like you knew what I was doing. Extra chips. It was our thing.’

Lou’s eyes widened. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘I never told anyone.’

‘And neither did I!’ Bill replied. ‘Well, I told the Doctor, but he doesn’t count. I didn’t tell anyone else!’ Bill thought about it. ‘And really, who would I tell? It’s not exactly the most interesting thing – I gave a woman extra chips, because I liked her. No one’s going to want to hear that, or remember it for more than five minutes.’

Lou folded her arms and sat back, looking over Bill again. After a few long seconds she said: ‘What did you say had happened to you?’

Bill breathed a sigh of relief. Lou might just be starting to believe her. ‘I went into this shop, and there was this really nice assistant – except she wasn’t nice, because about an hour later, I fell asleep in a coffee shop and woke up looking like this. Like her. And then I went to see my friend, the Doctor, and she was there, looking like me. I know that sounds crazy and made up, but that’s what happened.’

Lou frowned, and then smiled. ‘You’re lucky that I read a lot of sci-fi,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’ Bill brightened up.

‘Don’t get me wrong. You still sound completely crazy. But I’ve read enough alien stories to know how body-snatching works.’ She waved the copy of the book she was reading, which Bill now saw featured a glowing spaceship on the cover.

‘So you kind of believe me?’

Lou shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I haven’t got any lectures this afternoon, and I’m interested enough to help you out, if you really need it.’ A bright smile suddenly lit up her round face. ‘I assume the first thing you want is to get your body back?’

‘Yeah!’ said Bill. ‘But it’s not just my appearance. She must’ve taken part of my personality too, otherwise the Doctor would never have been fooled. She took everything about me!’

‘Not your memories, though, if you remember giving me extra chips.’

‘No.’ Bill blinked. ‘You’re right. Not my memories.’

As she said this, the barrage of images from before – visions of things Bill had not experienced, people she didn’t know, being dragged away by guards – galloped through her mind. She swayed for a moment, but recovered quickly. These things she was seeing – they must have something to do with Ziggy, what she’d done and where she’d come from. Was she now seeing Ziggy’s memories, while Ziggy saw hers?

‘Talk me through exactly what happened in the shop,’ Lou said.

Shaking slightly, Bill concentrated on her explanation: about trying on the jackets, Ziggy insisting on taking photographs, how she started to feel woozy, about falling asleep, going to the Doctor and finding the other Bill had taken her place.

‘Could it be something to do with Ziggy’s camera?’ Bill said, feeling more exhausted than ever once she had finished her tale. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’

‘Hmmm,’ Lou said. ‘This shop, was it just off the high street? A sort of cool, boutique-type shop that you never really noticed – and then you suddenly saw it one day and decided to go in?’

‘Yes! That’s exactly what happened. I only noticed it today, when I needed a jacket for a date tonight.’

Lou frowned. ‘It sounds like the same shop I went to last time I was going on a date and I needed a new outfit. First time I noticed it too. The woman in there did look like you do now, come to think of it. But she told me she didn’t think they had anything for me. I asked her what she meant and she said they only had clothes for people “keen to make a good impression on a date”.’

‘Oh!’ said Bill. ‘She mentioned my date to me too, actually.’

‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but I wasn’t sure –’

‘How she knew you were going on a date?’ Bill finished. ‘I never told her about it.’

‘Exactly. Me neither.’

Bill knew that some alien species could read your emotions, even feed off them. Is that what Ziggy had done?

‘You know,’ said Lou, ‘a few other people told me that she wasn’t interested in them buying things from her shop too. Not just me.’

‘So why was I okay, when everyone else wasn’t?’

The pair of them fell silent. What had made Ziggy keep Bill and steal her identity, while rejecting Lou?

‘Were you nervous about your date?’ Bill asked.

‘Not really. I was there to buy an outfit for fun, really. I wasn’t nervous about the date. I just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t sell me anything!’

‘I was worried about looking perfect. Having the right jacket seemed important at the time.’

‘Maybe that’s it, then!’ Lou grinned. ‘I wasn’t stressed about how I looked. Sometimes clothes suit me and sometimes they don’t, but basically, I’m happy as I am.’

Bill looked at Lou. She remembered, embarrassed, that at one point she’d told the Doctor that she’d ‘fatted’ Lou. That she’d stopped her from being good-looking by giving her extra chips. But Lou didn’t see it that way. Lou liked the way she looked, and it was clear from the way she spoke that she didn’t mind what other people thought of her either.

She’s right, Bill thought. That’s the difference. Ziggy couldn’t steal the identity of someone who was happy in their own skin. Psychic energy, nervous and obvious, must be the thing that Ziggy could latch on to. Ziggy must have thought she’d won the lottery having Bill in the shop that day. She was overflowing with nervousness, with wanting to be perfect, and so she gave Ziggy the perfect body to steal. Not to mention giving her the added bonus of getting to travel in time and space with the Doctor …

Bill’s heart suddenly dropped. If Ziggy got to travel with the Doctor, to all those different places and times and worlds, all those bodies to snatch … There was no limit to the havoc she could cause.

‘We have to go,’ Bill said, standing up suddenly. ‘The Doctor needs me. The real me. And fast.’

Outside, the chill of a breeze moved across Bill’s skin as they ran from the canteen, which felt odd.

But everything felt odd. This body didn’t move in the same way hers had. The feet went out at a different angle – she wasn’t properly steady with each step. She was aware of every blink, every swallow, every breath that went in and out. She’d never noticed what it was like to be in a body before – how important it was to feel comfortable, to not be aware of every little thing your body did. Now, when she didn’t have the luxury of being herself, she appreciated herself so much more. When I fix this, she decided silently, I am never ever going to complain about my brilliant old body again.

‘Where do you want to start looking?’ Lou panted, as they ran from the university grounds.

Bill spoke raggedly through hard breaths. ‘The shop. There might be clues there – clues about how she’s done this. How to stop her.’

As they neared the high street, Bill kept catching glimpses of herself in windows, shuddering as she was reminded what she looked like now. It wasn’t that Ziggy looked bad – she was beautiful – just that Bill had never so badly wanted to see her own face, and not someone else’s.

The shop was empty, of course – Ziggy must still be off with the Doctor in the TARDIS. As they looked around for an entry point, Bill gave Lou her theory.

‘When I went into the shop, I wasn’t completely happy with what I looked like. Maybe that’s what allowed Ziggy to do this to me,’ Bill said as she peered into the darkened shop.

‘No one’s happy with themselves all the time,’ Lou said, looking up at a window on the first floor of the building.

‘But this was different. When I walked in, I was thinking about being perfect,’ Bill said. She hadn’t admitted this to anyone before, but desperate times called for full honesty. ‘And for just a second, I wanted to change who I was – I wanted to be someone else.’

‘Welcome to being human,’ Lou said sympathetically. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Bill. It’s just bad luck that Ziggy ran into you at an anxious moment.’ She sighed, looking over the building. ‘We might have to smash the window. Unless … Hang on – have you tried the door?’ She reached for the handle, and the door swung open.

In partial darkness, the shop had an even stranger feel to it. Bill noticed that the three jackets she’d tried on were missing from the rail. She went to the counter and ducked down behind it, searching for the camera. It was there, on a shelf – but the photos were nowhere to be seen. Bill had guessed right, then – somehow the camera and the photos were connected to how Ziggy had stolen her body.

And now she’s taken them with her, Bill thought. So the photos must still be important somehow …

‘There’s something else I should mention,’ Lou said. ‘The other girls came back from the shop and said they’d felt funny after trying on one or two things, before Ziggy had made them leave.’

‘Really?’

Lou nodded. ‘That wasn’t the weird thing. Thinking about it now, one girl was ill for quite a while afterwards. She said she didn’t feel like herself. Like, after that day, she couldn’t stack playing cards any more – and that was her party trick. It was like someone had reached into her head and plucked it out. She put it down to a virus. But maybe it was a milder version of what happened to you.’

Bill nodded. ‘Spot on, I reckon.’

If the Doctor was here, Bill realised, he’d have a neat theory all worked out by now. He would say: ‘Ziggy is from a noble and ancient alien race, Bill! And the jackets are visually cloaked devices that can siphon away a person’s energy and emotional qualities! And the camera is either a necessary part of the siphoning process – OR a clever way of keeping people in the jackets long enough to make sure the process completes!’

Hang on, Bill thought. That’s a pretty good theory!

Bill didn’t need to wait to speak to the Doctor – she’d come up with this theory on her own! And if she’d learned anything from the Doctor, it was that a theory led straight to a plan.

‘How about we play Ziggy at her own game?’ Bill said, grabbing Lou by the arm. ‘We get the jackets, get the camera and then I take a picture of HER in the jackets to get my body back?’

‘Could work!’ Lou replied. ‘You’ll need to be careful, though. It seems like a pretty unstable process. She got your looks and bits of your personality – but you still know you’re you. You still have your memories. Don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Bill replied. ‘But I kept getting these flashes of things – things I know I haven’t experienced. Ziggy’s memories, not mine. Maybe the longer I have this body and this face, the more I’ll become Ziggy until there’s nothing of me left and I’m just … her.’

‘Okay. It’s important that we don’t panic …’ Lou said, looking around the room. ‘We just need to find Ziggy, fast. How are we going to track her down?’

Bill took a deep breath. ‘I have an idea,’ she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her mobile phone. ‘I just need to make a call.’

‘How did you get this number?’ the Doctor asked when he answered the TARDIS phone.

‘You’re going to have to come and meet me to find out,’ Bill said. That’s when she heard it: her voice, which had remained her own, suddenly broke and sounded exactly like Ziggy’s. She was becoming more and more like Ziggy by the moment. Soon, there’d be nothing of Bill left. She glanced at Lou who looked worried too.

‘I don’t have time for games,’ the Doctor replied.

‘That’s not true, is it, Doctor?’ Bill said, grasping for facts that would convince the Doctor of her true identity. ‘You always have time for fun stuff. Like playing your electric guitar!’

Bill wanted to tell him more about himself – the real things that only the real Bill would know about the Doctor – but the words wouldn’t come. Her mind was a fuzz, a blur, and she found herself unable to explain how much she knew about the Doctor, the things they’d done together, the places they’d been. They’d done amazing things. They’d seen so much. But at that moment, all Bill could remember was that he travelled in a big blue box and played an electric guitar. Everything else was slipping away. Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy. And more of those other images, the barrages of a life she hadn’t lived, came rushing through her head.

‘Lots of people play electric guitar.’

‘But do they know about the Daleks, and Nardole and … and …?’ Panic exploded in Bill’s chest – she couldn’t remember anything. ‘And the girl with the star in her eye,’ Bill blurted out.

The Doctor said nothing on the other end of the phone, but Bill could tell she’d said the right thing. He was puzzled, curious even. That was how the Doctor’s mind worked, how her mind worked too: neither of them usually took things at face value. She remembered that about herself at least.

‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious about how I know all these things?’ Bill said. ‘Don’t you want to know how I know that you travel through time and to different planets? In a big blue box?’ She spoke quickly, the words rushing out of her mouth before they were forgotten, lost into the soup of Ziggy that was becoming her mind. ‘If you meet me, I’ll tell you the answer. The park near the university – you know which one. As soon as you can get there.’

Lou tried her hardest to steady her nerves, as she hid behind the tree close to where Bill stood waiting for the Doctor.

She was scared by how quickly Bill seemed to be slipping away – she was losing that thing, the essence that made her who she was. Even though Bill had looked different that morning, Lou had still felt the connection between them. She’d first felt it a long time ago – Lou liked the extra chips, but more than that, she liked to see Bill behind the chip counter. She’d been a comforting sight – a face that was welcoming and kind, friendly and caring, no matter what. And even when Lou had put on weight, and other people had started to give her sideways looks, Bill had still given her extra chips and a smile.

Lou didn’t understand how it could be possible, but Bill was clearly in danger. And Lou was going to stick with her, even though she looked nothing like the Bill she used to know.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered loudly to Bill. ‘The Doctor will be here soon.’

Bill turned unsteadily towards the tree. ‘What will we do when the Doctor gets here?’ she asked loudly. And then, after a moment, ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I ill?’

Lou was alarmed, but forced herself to stay calm. ‘We need to get the jackets. Remember? The jackets will turn you back into Bill. You’ll be Bill again! Bill who served me extra chips? Remember?’

Bill blinked a couple of times, and the fog cleared. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I remember.’

Across the park, Bill saw the Doctor walking towards her. Followed by the fake Bill. The person wearing the body that used to be and was still rightfully hers.

‘I can’t see the photos,’ Bill whispered loudly enough for Lou to hear. ‘But she’s still wearing one of the jackets. That’s going to have to be enough. I’ll try to talk to her, and somehow convince the Doctor to help me try it on.’

‘Good plan.’

Bill started waving, to make sure the Doctor remembered who he was meeting. He frowned deeper than Bill had ever seen him frown before as he approached her – this person who, to him, looked like a total stranger.

‘I don’t have much time, so tell me how you know all those things, sharpish, and we can all carry on with our lives,’ the Doctor snapped, before Bill had a chance to say hello.

‘Liar,’ she said instead, gathering her strength and clinging to her memories. ‘You know time doesn’t run out. You know time isn’t set. Everything happens at the same time, and one thing after the other. You know that time is everything and time is nothing. Time and relative dimension in space. Means life. You taught me that.’

‘I did not,’ the Doctor replied. ‘I mean, it’s technically, partially true, but incredibly simplistic.’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Do I know you?’

He recognises me, Bill thought. Not the body I’m in, but the real me, inside.

‘Come on, Doctor, we haven’t got time for this,’ the fake Bill said, stepping forward.

‘She’s not me!’ Bill cried. ‘She’s a fake. Come on, Doctor, deep down you must know that.’ Bill stared right at the Doctor. ‘This morning – you told me the perfect date doesn’t exist!’

‘And I said that your standards were too high,’ Fake Bill cut in.

Bewildered, Bill looked at the creature that had stolen her body and life. For her to know that, she must be becoming more and more like Bill. Stealing her memories. ‘Okay, how did I get your phone number on the, the, you know …?’ She’d forgotten the word. ‘The ship! The box!’

‘Bill here explained she lost her phone. She said it might even have been stolen,’ the Doctor said, eyebrows raised.

‘Let me try your jacket on,’ Bill said desperately to Fake Bill. ‘I mean, it’s fabulous and I’d love one just like it.’

‘No!’ Fake Bill almost shouted. ‘You’re so weird. I’m not letting you anywhere near me or my clothes.’

Bill looked pleadingly at the Doctor. ‘If she’s the real Bill, why won’t she let me try on her jacket? You know the real Bill – you know I’d be kinder than that, to anyone!’

‘Not necessarily to someone who claims you’re a liar,’ the Doctor said. ‘And if you were really Bill, you would know that wearing clothes can be a very dangerous business. Psychic energy is transferred on to our clothing – and if certain alien species got hold of your stuff, they could do almost anything with that psychic energy.’

‘Including stealing your identity?’ Bill said, almost in a whisper.

The Doctor’s eyes widened. ‘Well, yes. If they had access to your psychic energy and a mechanism to capture it, they might create a connection that could continue to siphon off psychic energy, as long as the thief kept a bond with the item, a fixer of some sort …’

‘So you could, say, steal someone’s identity with a jacket and a camera, loaded with, for example, psychic paper?’ Bill said.

The Doctor looked at Fake Bill, his frown deepening. ‘What was the name of the woman with the star in her eye?’ he asked.

Fake Bill looked at him blankly, then scoffed. ‘Why are you asking me that? You don’t actually believe this girl, do you?’

The Doctor turned to Bill and asked the same question. Bill opened her mouth to answer and nothing came out. She couldn’t remember. It was a flower. It was a flower and the woman was beautiful. She remembered so much about her, how she felt about her … Water – there was water. She was a flower. But she couldn’t remember her name. It was there, on the tip of her tongue.

‘Heather,’ Fake Bill said. ‘Her name was Heather.’

Bill’s heart sank. ‘Doctor, don’t you recognise this jacket?’ she said, grabbing at the denim jacket she was still wearing, with badges she’d sewn on herself. ‘It’s the one I always wear. If she’s me, then wouldn’t she have it?’

‘I already told the Doctor – I decided to leave it at the shop because I didn’t need it any more.’

‘Doctor! Come on! Do you really think I’d do that?’

The Doctor frowned again.

Suddenly, from nowhere, Lou sprang out from behind her tree, running towards them. She barrelled into Fake Bill, causing the both of them to come crashing down on to the ground.

‘Quick, Bill!’ she shouted. ‘Grab the jacket!’

Stunned for a second, Bill stared at the two women wrestling on the ground. Then she came to life and ran to them and began to tug at the jacket. Out of the pocket tumbled the three photos of Bill that Ziggy had taken earlier. She stared at them – they had to be psychic paper, the fixers keeping the connection between her and Ziggy going!

Bill snatched the photos up. This was her chance to get her body back – but if she destroyed the photos, would she be hurt too? Possibly, but she could feel herself fading fast, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She chose the picture with the first jacket she tried on, the amethyst one, and ripped it a little.

A jolt ripped through Bill’s body and a barrage of images, memories, thoughts, feelings came rushing into her brain, her body at the same time. Not the strange ones she’d been getting all day, but her own memories. Her own personality. Bill, Bill, Bill. The psychic connection Fake Bill was using had been damaged by that initial rip and Bill’s mind was starting to clear.

‘Hurry up!’ Lou shouted. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can hold her.’

Bill ripped the photo in two and her whole body jolted, while a deep, dark amethyst colour lit up her hair, face and body in a glorious display.

Bill. I am Bill. I really am. Through blurring vision, Bill could see that Fake Bill was lit up with an amethyst glow too – in fact, there was so much energy coursing through her that Lou was thrown back, letting her go for a moment.

‘GIVE THEM TO ME!’ Fake Bill roared, pushing Lou aside. She scrambled to her feet and leapt forward, ready to snatch the photos from Bill’s hands.

Bill used every ounce of her remaining strength to rip the second and third photos cleanly in two, tearing apart the images of herself in the jackets, and setting herself free. She dropped the pieces as her whole body lit up with dazzling green light, and then a sun-like burst of gold. Fake Bill glowed in the same colours as Bill, howling with rage as the psychic connection was severed.

When the blinding light finally dimmed, Bill could tell she was back to normal. She had use of her brilliant body again, long limbs and all, and when she moved, everything felt normal. She was Bill again.

‘No! No!’ Ziggy sobbed, throwing herself to her knees to try to gather the torn pieces of her three photographs.

‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor said and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the pieces, causing them first to flicker and then the images of Bill to completely disappear.

Bill turned to the Doctor, wondering what he’d done. ‘Severed the signal between the jacket and the photographs,’ he said, his expression serious. ‘No more fixers, and now, no more siphoning device either.’

‘What have you done?’ Ziggy wailed, pressing the pieces of the now-empty photographs to her heart. ‘This was my only chance … My final chance …’

Bill knew she should be furious with Ziggy for what she had done – but Ziggy looked so distressed, so heartbroken, that all Bill felt for her was pity.

To the Doctor and Lou’s surprise, Bill got down on her knees beside Ziggy and spoke quietly.

‘Why did you do this?’

Ziggy seemed startled by Bill’s tone, which was full of kindness and understanding. She looked up, tears soaking her face. ‘I just wanted to go home. I didn’t want to harm you. Not really. I have been here such a long, long time … I just want to go home.’

The Doctor stood with his arms folded, glaring down at Ziggy. ‘And where is home, exactly?’

‘I’m an Ohcho. My planet is Onhwhie.’

‘I know it,’ the Doctor said. ‘The planet of shape-shifters.’

Ziggy wiped her face, but tears still fell from her eyes. ‘I was banished here,’ she explained. ‘Our planet elected a new and dangerous leader. He ruled us with fear, and with pain, and every morning we woke up terrified, our friends and family going missing in the night. Until a number of us decided: no more. We formed groups, we protested, we started to get others to protest too.

‘People across the planet began to wake up, taking notice of what we were saying. They started to feel powerful. And then one night, I was taken from my house, dragged in chains to see the new leader, and banished. Sent out across the galaxies, landing on Earth by chance. They wanted to crush the resistance, but I hope my friends have stayed strong, that they have carried on our good work.’

She turned to Bill. ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you. But I have been so lonely, trapped here for hundreds of Earth years. I discovered a Time Lord had visited this planet and I tracked him down as best I could. I set up my shop in many different places where I sensed an alien presence, and waited for a chance. A chance to meet you, Doctor – to beg you to take me home.’

‘If you just wanted to ask him for a lift, why did you steal Bill’s face?’ Lou said, her eyes narrowed as she stood with her arms folded next to the Doctor. ‘How would that encourage him to help you?’

Ziggy’s shoulders sagged. ‘Over time, I built the little psychic technology I had into my camera and my jackets. I would practise on ordinary people who walked into my shop, making sure the psychic link worked, but always ripping up the photographs later. I learned that it worked best on those who were nervous, brimming with negative psychic energy – so that’s why I waited until Bill was going on a date to draw her in.

‘More importantly, in all that time, I listened for tales of the Doctor. And the more I learned, the more I suspected he would not break the laws of time for just one person. He who had stood by while whole peoples were destroyed, in the name of justice … I could not risk him saying no. I knew my best chance was to ask him as his friend. His greatest weakness.’

She looked desperately first at Bill, then at Lou and then, finally, at the Doctor. ‘I would have told you the truth, Doctor, and given the photographs and the jacket back so you could restore Bill. I would never have kept her trapped. I know how that feels, all too well. I hope you believe me.’ Ziggy began to cry again. ‘I am truly sorry.’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Bill carefully stretched her arm around Ziggy’s shoulder.

‘We have to help her, Doctor,’ she said, looking up at him, hoping he would understand.

The Doctor looked thoughtfully at Bill.

‘She was wronged,’ Bill went on. ‘They punished her for standing up for the right thing. You were the one talking about character this morning. Did you not believe all that? Ziggy was punished for having character. Don’t punish her more.’

The Doctor said nothing, but narrowed his eyes – yet Bill looked at Lou, and she was smiling.

‘I might be new to this whole aliens-time-travelling-in-space business,’ she said, with a grin. ‘But really, what’s the point in having the power to travel across the universe through time and space if you can’t help good people?’

‘All right, all right.’ The Doctor put away his sonic screwdriver. ‘Look. Zaggy, or whatever your name is. Your planet, Onhwhie – it exists in a completely different era to Earth. By now, your galaxy won’t have existed for thousands of years.’

‘Doctor,’ Bill hissed. ‘Don’t tell her awful news just like that! Show some compassion!’

The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘I just mean we’ll have to travel through space and time to get there. If we were to travel to the planet’s coordinates right now – nothing but clear space. But if we move through time, we’ll find it.’

‘You’ll help me?’ Ziggy asked, a smile breaking across her stricken, tear-streaked face. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. Now come on, Zoggy, and Bill – back to the TARDIS now – before I change my mind.’

With that, he stomped off across the lawn of the park, with Ziggy dazedly in tow.

Bill shook her head as she watched him, and then turned to Lou.

‘“Thank you” isn’t enough, I know,’ Bill said to her, beaming. ‘But thank you. You’re a life-saver, Lou. Quite literally.’

‘It was no bother,’ Lou said, her cheeks glowing a faint pink. ‘It was fun, actually. Like I said, alien body-snatching, planets with evil leaders, mysterious time-travel machines … all right up my street.’

Before she could stop herself, Bill threw her arms around Lou. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ she said with a smile. ‘And that tackle to the ground, that was pretty impressive.’

‘There’s more to me than meets the eye,’ Lou replied. ‘You and me both.’

‘Well, thank you, anyway. And triple chips next time.’

‘Gotcha.’

‘So, Bill – now will you make use of my many jacket rooms?’ the Doctor asked as he set the coordinates for Ziggy’s home planet, and as Ziggy examined the TARDIS’s glowing control panels with wonder.

‘Absolutely,’ Bill replied. She smiled, thinking of Lou. ‘Even if I don’t find the perfect one, who cares, eh? You were right – it’s character that counts. And anyone I go on a date with in the future should believe that too.’

With those words, the Doctor’s frown turned to a soft smile, and the TARDIS slowly dematerialised.

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First published 2018

Sarah Jane and the Temple of Eyes copyright © Jacqueline Rayner and BBC Worldwide Limited, 2018

Rose and the Snow Window copyright © Jenny T. Colgan and BBC Worldwide Limited, 2018

Clara and the Maze of Cui Palta copyright © Susan Calman and BBC Worldwide Limited, 2018

Bill and the Three Jackets copyright © Dorothy Koomson and BBC Worldwide Limited, 2018

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Cover illustration by Kelly Wagner

ISBN: 978–1–405–93347–6

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