Furies from the Deep
by Richard Dinnick

Episode One:

Ruby liked it when the Doctor pottered about. It meant he was in a good mood and that it was unlikely he was about to rush off on another crusade against the notorious Kuang-Shi or any other of the myriad races and beings about which the UNIT cook had heard so much. She suspected that half of it was exaggerated nonsense, but she had been in UNIT long enough to know that alien races did exist and that – from time to time – they did threaten the earth.

Gently humming to himself, the Doctor was standing over a large wooden globe, its upper hemisphere hinged backwards to reveal its true nature – that of a drinks cabinet. Instead of the more obvious decanters and crystal glasses, a disparate collection of crockery, an empty cake stand and a white coffee maker were housed within. Two things Ruby had in common with the Doctor were a fondness for coffee and a good book – both of which the TARDIS seemed to have in abundance.

That morning, Ruby had spent hours browsing along the spines of the books in the library as her travelling companion leant against the oak panelling or zoomed along the shelves on a moving ladder, pointing out items of interest and telling some of the tallest stories she had ever heard.

The Doctor had promised Ruby that she could borrow a few tomes for when she got home and his collection of books was incredible. But it was the cornucopia of names that amazed her the most. Some were famous, some were infamous and some were just plain unpronounceable. Finally she had settled on a very short but wonderfully written book by Elizabeth Smart.

‘Jamaican Blue Mountain,’ said the Doctor, lifting the coffee pot away from the machine.

‘Eh?’ Ruby looked up from the book.

‘Finest coffee on earth. And not bad when compared to the rest of the universe, either!’ The Doctor passed Ruby a chipped mug of the exclusive brown liquid and lowered himself into one of the worn chairs that dotted the room. He crossed his legs and took a first tentative sip of his beloved Jamaican Blue Mountain. They sat in silence for a while, as if they were a happily married couple, just content to share each other’s company.

‘One day I must get round to dusting,’ announced the Doctor over the rim of his “Greatest Granddad in the Universe” mug. ‘ Funny how things like that just… slip away from one in all the hustle and bustle of life.’

Without warning, he stood up and cocked his head, as if listening for something.

‘Doctor, I don’t mean any offence, but are you all right? Should we put something a bit stronger in that coffee?’ asked Ruby.

‘Stronger?’ replied the Doctor absently. Then he looked down at her with a most uncharacteristic stern expression ‘Are you implying that I am weak in some way?’

‘Perhaps in the head,’ said Ruby, bristling at his sudden venom. ‘Have you gone mad?’

‘Possibly,’ muttered the Doctor regaining his composure. Then, placing his mug on a convenient reading table, he ran from the library, scaring Missy half to death as she sauntered in to see if there was any chance of food.

Ruby quickly put her cup on the floor and followed the Doctor. She emerged into a console room she had not seen for a while. She gazed round the wooden chamber. The Doctor was already tapping furiously at the controls, a little shaving mirror spinning away in front of him.

‘Some sort of explanation would be nice,’ said Ruby breathlessly. ‘And what is this?’

The Doctor looked up. Ruby spread her arms to indicate her surroundings.

He muttered returning his attention to the controls, ‘Nearer to the library then the main one.’

‘Right,’ said Ruby. ‘And the explanation, please?’

‘Something is wrong,’ replied the Doctor, fiddling with the lapel of his black jacket as if his fingers were searching for something. They found the Gallifreyan flower of Remembrance and settled there. Calm once more, the Doctor moved round the wooden console and pressed yet another of its multi-coloured buttons. The twin lids of the scanner drew apart to reveal a 1970s-style test card. A little girl of mixed race and a creepy jack-in-the-box were frozen in a tableau, playing noughts and crosses.

‘Well,’ he exclaimed. ‘That has never happened before.’ Not even looking at his new companion, the Doctor operated the door control and said: ‘Stay here.’

‘I will not!’ Ruby grabbed her fawn mackintosh from the hat stand and started to wrestle herself into it.

‘Ruby, please,’ the Doctor spoke without turning. ‘We have not materialised, we have not stalled and yet we are… somewhere.’ Finally he faced her. ‘I know you think half my stories are bombast, but there lurk in this universe very real dangers. I just want to see what is outside and I do not want to put you at risk. I would like you to keep an eye on the scanner and give me a shout if the image, ah, changes at all.’

‘All right then,’ said Ruby. ‘But you just take a peep, mind. Don’t be wandering off for ages.’

The Doctor gave a brief, watery smile, then strode up the stairs and disappeared through the darkened doorway…

The TARDIS appeared to be standing in a graveyard. It was a glorious summer’s day with the sound of birdsong blending with the gentle whispering of the wind in the trees and the laconic droning of several bees as they moved among a posy of yellow flowers on a nearby grave. The Doctor called out but no one answered. Leaving the safety of the TARDIS doorstep, he started to explore his new surroundings.

The churchyard was immaculately kept. Between the various grey headstones and taller, granite crosses, recently mown lawns stretched away to the graveyard’s boundaries. Evergreen trees dotted the landscape and an immaculate gravel path ran beside the mediaeval church. In one direction it led to a gate beyond which was a tree-lined avenue. In the other it led to a heavy wooden door set in high wall of mottled grey stone.

Puzzled by the apparent ordinariness of the environment, the Doctor stooped to clear the lichen away from the nearest gravestone, but either no name had been engraved or else time and nature had worn it away. That was the inherent nature of the universe, he mused. Everything gives in to entropy sooner or later.

He rose and started to move around the graves, looking at their inscriptions. Some were illegible, like the first, but others had clearer engravings. The names where unfamiliar to the Doctor and he was on verge of returning to the TARDIS and Ruby when a strange tombstone caught his eye. It was gravestone-shaped all right, but the decoration was oddly unnerving, to say the least.

Among the curlicues around the edge of the headstone were what would have been bizarre carvings. Would have been, if the Doctor had not recognised them. Here was a horsebox; there a grandfather clock. A sedan chair adorned one corner and an ionic column another. There was even a Concorde hidden among fleur-de-lys. The inscription read simply “Magister”. Frowning at this little revelation, the Doctor moved on. Despite a growing sense of unease, he had to admit it was all most intriguing.

On the far side of the church he discovered the entrance to a small crypt. Its iron gates were chained together and secured with a padlock, but there was something about the keyhole that seemed strangely familiar. The Doctor thrust his right hand into his jacket pocket and produced the TARDIS key. Hesitating for just a moment, he inserted it, crossed his fingers and turned it in the lock. The padlock sprang open and the chain fell noisily to the stone floor.

As the Doctor pushed the gates open they groaned as if they had been left unattended for some time. A flight of stone steps ran from the gate down into the gloom.

‘Hello?’ called the Doctor, immediately feeling a little foolish. Who could possibly answer him?

Once more fishing in his pockets, the Doctor produced a succession of bric-a-brac objects; the mouthpiece of a child’s recorder, a small bar of fruit and nut, a yo-yo, a phial of salt (then one of sugar), before finally unearthing a box of everlasting matches. He struck one of them alight and holding it aloft proceeded down the stairs.

In the sphere of light cast by the match the Doctor soon found himself in the crypt itself. It was rectangular with a marble floor on which sat five sarcophagi in a neat row. The Doctor could just about make out that the nearest one to him – the second from the left – bore a roman numeral on the end facing him. He moved closer and could see that it was a “V”. With a pout of his lips as if to say, “I wonder what that means”, the Doctor moved round to examine the clammy white marble relief of whoever was interred within.

Working his way up the sculpture from its feet, there were no clues to the person’s identity – just loose fitting fatigues of some kind – and the butt of some ominous looking gun was clasped in his hands in the same way a mediaeval knight would have been depicted lying with his sword. When he reached the face, though, the Doctor gasped and almost dropped the match. It was the face of the Doctor he had met a long time ago. The one who had become violent. He recognised the scar running down his face over his right eye.

‘Me,’ said the Doctor quietly, remembering this alternate version of himself.

Returning the foot of the sarcophagus, the Doctor moved along all the other in turn. Sure enough they read “IV” to “VIII.” Checking the faces, he also recognised numbers “VII” and “VIII”. “IV” and “VI” were unknown to him, but it did not take a genius to realise who they were. So, his alternate selves appeared to be entombed here. The question was, by whom? He was about to leave them to their eternal rest, when he noticed a little alcove in the wall to his left. In the recess sat a small urn. It looked like plain earthenware pottery rather then anything more elaborate and bore the Roman numeral “III”. This gave the Doctor pause for thought, but he stored the questions he had for later. He assumed there would be answers.

Outside once more, the Doctor started patrolling the graves, looking for any clue as to where exactly he was. Instead, he simply found more disturbing memories stirred by the headstones. He was now back on the side of the church nearest the TARDIS and was contemplating returning to Ruby to explain what he had found. But then he saw a plinth with a bust atop it. The plinth itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but the bust was unmistakeably a representation of Brad.

When the Doctor edged round the statuette, he found that, to his surprise, there were two inscriptions on the headstone in front of the plinth. The first read:

The second was identical apart from the second date, which read, “December 23rd 2101”. The Doctor’s eyes misted for a moment as he remembered Bradley and the way he had abandoned him – all so he could have a cup of tea! He shook his head. What was this place? It was beginning to take on the semblance of a very personal nightmare.

Yet there was more to come. Not far from the grave purporting to be Brad’s, the Doctor found a freshly dug grave overlooked by a plain gravestone. On it, recently carved and highlighted in crimson, were the words:

A shadow passed over the Doctor’s face and he raised his head to see a nasty black cloud passing across the sun. It was even more incongruous than the Police Box nestled nearby; for the sky had been completely clear a moment before. As the dark interloper drifted away to the horizon, there came a sound of creaking hinges. The Doctor looked round at the door in the far wall. As it opened, a girl of no more than about ten stepped through and started stepping carefully between the graves.

The lace-trimmed dress she wore was identical in hue to the bunch of yellow Daffodils she clasped in her arms – the same flowers that adorned a number of the graves, the Doctor realised. Her flame red hair was kept in place by a starched white Alice-band and, despite her obvious familiarity with the graveyard, she seemed nervous.

Somehow it felt intrusive to call to her, so the Doctor just watched as she bent down beside one of the graves and placed the bunch of flowers in a metal urn. Without ceremony, she stood once more and made her way back the way she had come - towards the door in the wall. As she did so, the Doctor realised she seemed somehow unreal, as if he were watching a film in which the colours had been enhanced by computer.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he muttered. Intrigued, the Doctor strolled over to the grave she had visited. From the rear, he could see that the headstone was another new one, but this one was highly polished black granite. In moments he was standing at the foot of the grave. He squinted against the fierce sunshine and lifted a hand to shade his eyes, allowing him to read the clearly chiselled inscription. Its words chilled him to the core of his being.

Ruby was becoming increasingly bored. She had been staring at the stupid test card for so long she had started to work out the various moves that were left in the game of noughts and crosses. On balance, it seemed to her that the creepy jack-in-the-box was destined to lose, but the expression on the little girl’s face showed no pleasure in her potential victory. Somehow she seemed sad. Or maybe annoyed. Or both.

Just then Missy sidled into the console room, mewing as she saw her mistress. Ruby smiled and bent to pick up the cat as she approached.

‘Hello Missy Moo,’ she said, stroking the ebony cat with her free hand. ‘You hungry, pet?’ The cat looked at her. ‘Awww. Well, I think you’ll have to make do with that crunchy stuff I put down earlier. You see, the Doctor’s gone missing – again - and I think it’s up to little old me to find out what trouble he’s got himself into.’ She gave one final stroke of the sleek fur and placed Missy back on the floor. The cat stuck her tail in the air and left the console room in evident high dudgeon.

Ruby watched her go and shook her head. ‘Just a peek!’ she said and blew her cheeks out in annoyance. ‘Well I want a peek, too!’ She thrust her jaw out in a determined expression and tied the belt of her Mac loosely about her ample frame before clumping up the stairs and out into the world beyond.

As she did so, the image on the scanner flickered and a handsome blonde woman with piercing blue eyes replaced the jack-in-a-box.

‘Noughts and crosses?’ she asked indignantly, regarding the little girl with a scowl. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence!’ With that she made the rather simple move that Ruby had missed, blocking any possibility of the little girl winning. It would have to be a stalemate - for the time being...

Ruby had the breath knocked out of her as she left the TARDIS. Searing heat caused beads of sweat to form on her forehead and the sulphurous atmosphere made her cough violently. She clutched at the side of the time machine for support, but she had to snatch her hand away from the smouldering exterior of the Police Box. Cradling her burnt palm, Ruby looked up to examine the fierce landscape around her.

Ugly, charred rock formations jutted into the starless, tawny sky at lurid angles. Molten lava oozed sluggishly along ravines that scarred the hard baked surface and, in the distance, Ruby could see blowholes sending jets of steam – and sometimes more lava - high into the stultifying air. A wall of sound akin to a thousand steam engines battered the lone human figure and Ruby collapsed to the ground.

Nausea racked her body, but she managed to stand again. She had to get back inside the TARDIS. She turned to do so, but found the blue paint on the TARDIS was blistering and a wisp of smoke was rising from the keyhole in the door. Ruby knew she would not be able to touch the surface. She was trapped in the open vista of what was surely hell.

The Doctor had not lingered at the grave that bore his name. Instead, he had followed the little girl through the wooden door and had found himself in a pleasant orchard. Beside the door, like arboreal guards, stood a pair of weeping willows and through the bowed branches of the right hand tree, he could see the form of a marble statue. Puzzled why anyone would place a statue under a tree, out of sight, he lifted aside a handful of tendrils and stepped through the curtain of green to examine it.

At first glance, the statue appeared to be that of an angel, petrified in a never-ending vigil over the garden beyond, its face frozen in a permanent grimace. Olive brown tracks of grubby rainwater lined its face as if the statue had been weeping for an eternity and ivy had crept up over its body, all the way to its head, as if the plant were the angel’s long flowing hair.

‘An angel with a dirty face, eh?’ the Doctor mused. He started to clear the creepers away from the stony visage and found that the angel was, in fact, bald. Nonplussed, he decided to press on with his renovation of the statue. Producing a polka dot handkerchief from his breast pocket he stood eyeball to eyeball with the angel and started to wipe away the years of grime that had accumulated on the marble. Finally, he stood back to admire his handiwork and once more felt a shiver run down his spine. It was not an angel at all. It was a perfect representation of a Dommervoy.

Before the Doctor could even begin to form the myriad extra questions this threw up, the sound of laughter made him jump. Not the evil guffawing he might have expected; instead the light tinkle of children’s giggling was coming from beyond the willow, somewhere in the orchard. Replacing the now grubby handkerchief in his pocket, the Doctor straightened up, dusted himself down and turned to peer out between the drooping fronds, searching for the source of the laughter.

The scent of apple blossom wafted over him on the light breeze and he caught a flash of blue as a little black girl darted behind a tree trunk and out of sight. Almost immediately a second girl, dressed in bright pink, appeared in the gap between two neat privet hedges on the far side of the orchard. She paused, framed in green, as she surveyed her surroundings. Away to his right, the Doctor could see the first girl he had encountered – the redhead in the yellow dress. She was squatting beside a wooden apple cart, every now and then bobbing her head to look through the spokes on its wheels. Despite his recent experiences, the Doctor could not help but smile at their game of hide and seek.

‘I see you,’ the girl in pink called out as she started moving about the garden, peering up into branches or bowing down to look under the hedge. Her voice had an oriental lilt to it and the Doctor could now see that her pink dress was actually a kimono, kept in place by a sash of royal blue.

He suddenly become aware that he was holding his breath as if he, too, were playing the game. Then he realised that he was indeed hidden from view under the willow tree and he frowned at the simple quandary in which he found himself. Should he remain concealed or should he step out of his hiding place and announce his presence? The first felt somehow wrong, yet the second would probably curtail the girls’ game. He sighed. If only all his decisions were so innocent.

Clearing his throat, the Doctor emerged from his hiding place and beamed at the girl in the pink dress.

‘Do not be afraid,’ he called.

The girl who had hidden behind the tree stepped forward and approached him.

‘Of course not,’ she said earnestly. She seemed slightly older then the other two and wore far more contemporary clothing – jeans and a denim jacket. As she came closer, the Doctor realised that she was the girl he had seen playing noughts and crosses on the TARDIS scanner. The other two girls joined her and they came to a halt a few feet from the Doctor, their hands behind their backs.

‘I was just in the graveyard and, ah, curiosity led me….’ His explanation was cut short as the girls recited an odd nursery rhyme.

‘We do not like thee, Doctor Shell;
The reasons why we cannot tell,
But this we know, we know full well,
We do not like thee, Doctor Shell. ‘

Having removed her mackintosh, Ruby felt a bit less hot – not cool, mind. Just less hot. No wonder the Doctor had not returned. He, too, would have been unable to open the super-heated TARDIS door. But where had he gone? She had been walking down the slight incline away from the time and space machine for some time now, and not only was there no apparent sign of life, the landscape had changed very little too.

As she trekked down the slope, she looked from side to side, hoping to glimpse something – anything - between the rock outcrops that might be of help to her. Finally something did present itself, but it was not what she was expecting. Down a side path, she saw the ruins of what looked like a Greek temple.

Several of its ionic columns had collapsed onto the ground and those that were still standing supported the remains of a rounded roof. As she approached the building, she was amazed to see tufts of grass – albeit dried – sprouting from the bases of the pillars and what had once been a fountain in a raised pool of stagnant water.

Her final steps were rushed and she collapsed at the side of the fountain. Without thinking to test the water, she thrust her hand into its murky depths and sighed with relief as the relatively cool liquid soothed the burn she had received from the TARDIS exterior.

She withdrew her arm and removed the belt from her Mac. This she placed in the pool until it was soaked and then took it out and started to wrap it around her injured hand. The heat and pain made her squint as tears mingled with sweat and dripped from her chin to the ground below, each hitting the scorched earth with a violent hiss. This time travel malarkey definitely was not all it was cracked up to be.

‘Ruby Mundy!’ she said to herself. ‘Pull yourself together! All we have to do is poke around a bit. Something’ll turn up, pet!’ Forcing herself to whistle the theme tune from "Clear Waters", she sat cradling her hand and gazing around at the barren landscape.

She felt so helpless…

‘Doctor Shell fell down the well
And broke his collarbone.
Doctors should attend the sick
And leave the well alone.’

The three girls finished their second nursery rhyme and stared at the Doctor as if the verse had been a question to which he alone held the answer. He just smiled again and began rubbing his right earlobe.

‘Very nice,’ he managed. ‘Look, I was wondering if you know this area well?’

‘We accept the homage you pay us,’ said the Asian child, a strange half smile forming on her face.

‘It has been a long time coming,’ added the third girl timidly, fiddling with her Alice-band and shifting her feet as if eager to be elsewhere.

The Doctor got the impression they were toying with him. Children could be so cliquey! He frowned. ‘I am afraid I do not know your game,’ he explained squatting down so he could make proper eye contact with the three children.

‘You will,’ said the first girl with a smile that illuminated her face. ‘Come and play with us.’

In the console room of the TARDIS, all was far from normal. The panelled roundels seemed to be melting slowly and a swirling mist of smoke filled the hexagonal chamber. The scanner was no longer functioning and the hat stand was drooping in the heat like a wilting Lilly.

Slowly, the smoke around the console began to swirl in little eddies and gradually parted to leave a human shaped hole of clean air. Imperceptibly at first, but with increasing intensity, a figure began to form in the space.

When she had fully materialised, the refined woman with long, blonde hair looked about as if she was examining herself in a mirror.

‘This will never do,’ she said. ‘I am not just going to sit idly by and let you destroy me!’ she announced to the world in general. ‘You should be aware that I have self-defence capabilities.’ She let the threat hang in the air for a few seconds and then when no answer came, Tardis moved towards the console and made contact with the ship’s mechanisms. ‘HADS, for example,’ she said with a prim smile. The time rotor began to rise and fall. The TARDIS would be safe for the moment, but Tardis knew that she would have to leave the safety of her world soon enough and venture out into their realm.

The Doctor was being led across the orchard by two of the girls. The black girl in the denim held his right hand and the oriental girl in the pink kimono held his left. Where the redhead had disappeared to, the Doctor had no idea.

‘I am the Doctor, by the way,’ he said, hoping to initiate a more straightforward conversation that might lead to some explanations.

‘Yes,’ said the older girl looking up at him.

‘Yes?’ replied the Doctor, snatching his hands away from the little girls. ‘I do not know the circumstances of your upbringing, but it would be polite if you were to give me your names.’

‘You haven’t given us yours,’ replied the Asian with a shrug.

‘No matter,’ said the older girl sternly. ‘He should know our names if he is to play with us…’

‘Indeed,’ nodded the Doctor.

‘OK then,’ said the oriental girl. ‘I am Meg.’

‘And I am Alex,’ added the black girl.

‘Excellent!’ the Doctor beamed. ‘And your friend?’

Ruby was sitting on a collapsed stone pillar in the ruins of the temple. Somehow the shrine seemed to block the heat and noise of its surroundings. Indeed, she found it wonderfully peaceful, but that was really no help in her search for the Doctor. She stared at her plump hand, bandaged with the belt from her Mac and began to swing her legs back and forth, willing inspiration to come. It did not.

Instead, a little girl appeared between two of the upright pillars and peered round a buttress at her. She must have been about ten or so with deep orange hair. She looked cheeky. Despite the oddity of this vision, Ruby smiled – the little girl’s expression reminded her of the photos of herself at that age.

‘Hello, little one’ she said, broadening her lop-sided smile. The little girl stared at her doe-eyed for a moment and then stepped into the temple.

‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘Whatchoo doing here?’

Ruby blew out her cheeks and swung her legs again. ‘I’m meant to be looking for a friend of mine, but I’m not having much luck.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ruby,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s pretty,’ said the girl.

‘Thank you.’ What a sweet little thing. ‘And what’s yours?’

‘I’m Tisi. What’s your friend’s name?’

‘Well, he calls himself the Doctor,’

‘That’s not a name,’ complained Tisi, moving closer to the former chef.

‘I know. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

The little redhead hopped up onto the pillar on which Ruby was sitting and started to fiddle with the Alice-band in her hair. Ruby had a thousand questions to ask the strange little girl, but she had no idea where to start. How did such an innocent tot come to be in such a hellish place? Why did she seem oblivious to the heat?

‘Do you live here?’ Ruby blurted out.

‘Not here,’ said Tisi reproachfully, as if this was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. ‘In the orchard.’

Ruby looked at the charred landscape once more and doubted very much whether any trees could grow there, let alone bear fruit. Suddenly she felt that the little girl sitting beside her was either mad or a much bigger threat than she first appeared. ‘The orchard?’ Ruby ventured.

‘It’s back that way.’ The girl turned and pointed at the direction from which she had approached. Ruby stared and felt the tingle of some sixth sense down her spine as she spied what looked like a cave hewn into the cliff face behind the temple. Perhaps the girl’s parents called the cave “the orchard” to give it a more homely ring. It was what Ruby might have done.

‘Do your parents live there, too?’

‘Don’t have any parents,’ Tisi smiled.

Ruby grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, pet,’ she cooed.

‘They all say that,’ replied Tisi with a shrug. ‘Eventually.’

Beneath one of the largest apple trees the Doctor had ever seen was a Wendy House. It was not the usual plastic thing that parents erected in their 20th century gardens, but a wooden hut, complete with working door and windows. Beside the playhouse was a high-backed, wicker chair. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. It was of the type favoured by the White Guardian.

‘You can sit there,’ said Alex.

‘It used to belong to an old man,’ chipped in Meg.

‘But he doesn’t need it anymore,’ finished the older girl as she opened the Wendy house door.

The Doctor straightened his cravat. ‘I see,’ he said and sat down, crossing his legs.

‘We’ve got lots of games here,’ said Alex.

‘I bet,’ replied the Doctor.

‘I wanna play snakes and ladders,’ announced Meg solemnly.

Alex looked at her and then at the Doctor. ‘Yeah,’ she said and disappeared inside. A couple of moments later she emerged with a battered old box, sticking tape adorning its edges and a faded image on the lid.

‘No tiddlywinks?’ Asked the Doctor archly.

‘That’s a stupid game,’ said Meg, flouncing on the ground to sit with her legs neatly tucked under her kimono.

‘A great many things appear to you to be “stupid” or “silly”, do they not?’

‘She’s just unwilling to do anything she doesn’t want to.’ Alex was setting up the board on the grass and placed two different coloured counters on the bottom left hand square.

‘So I see.’ The Doctor regarded the game. ‘Only two?’

‘One for you and one for us,’ sighed Meg, her tone belying her opinion of the newcomer.

‘Before we start, I would like to clear up a few things,’ said the Doctor, leaning forward in the wicker chair. The girls looked at him with wide-eyed innocence. ‘In the graveyard I found a grave…’

Alex laughed. ‘Of course you did! That’s what graveyards are for, aren’t they?’

‘But this one was mine.’ The Doctor’s voice became steely. ‘Or rather, a representation of it.’

‘That was Alex’s idea,’ smirked Meg unnervingly.

Alex leered at the Doctor, here eyes flashing with anger. ‘Did it unsettle you, Time Lord?’

The Doctor sat back in his chair and smiled wistfully. ‘No. But I wonder why you would go to the trouble.’

‘To remind you that you shouldn’t even exist,’ spat Alex, evidently annoyed by the Doctor’s composure – the desired response.

‘Why?’

‘You are an anomaly.’ Meg shrugged.

‘By rights, you should be dead,’ clarified Alex. ‘Twice over.’

‘Yes. Who was it who said, “ You have nasty habit of surviving”?’ The Doctor’s face wrinkled in simulated thought. ‘Well, whoever it was, he could have been talking about me…’

‘You are skilful in the art of diversion.’

‘Well, you know,’ the Doctor waved away the statement as if it were a compliment.

‘It was not well meant,’ hissed Meg.

‘He is aware of that,’ said Alex calmly. ‘He is merely proving my point.’

‘Which is…?’ the Doctor raised both his eyebrows this time.

‘You are in violation of the natural order of things.’

‘Really?’ gasped the Doctor in mock horror. ‘No, no, no. You must have me mistaken for someone else. Last time I checked I was a fully paid up member of reality.’

Meg laughed. ‘You are funny!’ she said.

‘He won’t be for long,’ said Alex. Meg fell silent, staring intently at the Doctor.

‘You know, I have been threatened before…’ he said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

‘We know.’

‘But never – to my recollection at least – by little girls.’

‘You should have died on earth when the Master killed you.’

‘You really are remarkably well informed.’

‘You are the ultimate anomaly. You should not exist.’

‘And by rights, neither should you,’ replied the Doctor. The two little girls looked at one other. ‘Of course I know who you are! But you are a myth, a legend.’

‘So are you. Clone!’ Meg shouted, suddenly red in the face.

‘Calm yourself, Megara. I believe you are in control here, are you not?’

Alex shot her sibling a dark look before addressing the Doctor. ‘You are as perceptive as we knew you would be.’

‘So you are the embodiment of the Furies.’

‘That is our essence, yes.’

‘A sort of offshoot from the Dommervoy, I presume? Hence the nice little statue? Or was that meant to “unsettle” me, too?’

‘You are to be punished. All perjurers of this reality are so dealt with,’ replied Alex, ignoring the question.

‘I see,’ said the Doctor. ‘And that involves playing snakes and ladders does it, Alecto?’

‘In your case, yes.’

‘Horses for courses, eh? Let the punishment fit the crime? How very poetic. Appropriate metaphors all round. Bravo!’

The Doctor brought his hands together in a slow clap. He knew this was going to be difficult. He knew he could only put off the inevitable for so long, but he needed thinking time. He just hoped Ruby had stayed in the TARDIS…

Ruby knew she was in trouble, but she had to find the Doctor and the strange little girl was her only hope. Their conversation had been stilted to say the least and Tisi had been both vague and elusive – not to mention downright weird – in her answers to Ruby’s questioning. Finally, the young redhead turned to the former cook and looked her straight in the eye.

‘We have no disagreement with you, Ruby Mundy,’ she said, a sympathetic smile playing on her chubby lips.

Ruby almost fell off the ionic column. ‘What?’ she asked hoarsely. She coughed and said again: ‘What?’

‘You are here through no fault of your own.’

‘How do you know my name?’ Ruby asked. The tremor in her voice was plainly evident.

‘We know everything about the Doctor,’ replied Tisi absently, as if this should be taken as read.

‘I see,’ said Ruby. ‘Did you bring us here?’

Tisi nodded. ‘Yes. He is guilty of murder.’

‘The Doctor?’ Ruby gasped. Again Tisi nodded, this time looking at her feet. ‘But the Doctor is a good man.’

The little girl looked up and her eyes seemed to have taken on the same colouring as her hair. ‘He is anything but, Ruby Mundy, he is anything but.’

‘No, pet. You’ve got it wrong,’ whispered Ruby, her eyes searching the girl’s face for some sign that this was a joke.

‘No, Ruby. It is you who have got it wrong. Like all his companions before you, you have been hoodwinked, fooled - deceived. The Doctor has spent the entire span of his existence killing. He professes to save lives, but he does nothing but take them. Whole species of sentient life have been erased because of his actions. And for that, he must be punished.’

Ruby was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘No,’ she said.

‘It is true. I can show you if you want?’

Ruby glowered at the girl. ‘I know he walked away from UNIT when the Nestene invaded, but he helped us with the Kuang-Shi. He helped us with the Cybermen. He’s a hero!’

‘Whether through his action or inaction, countless millions have lost their lives,’ Tisi explained, as if she were the adult and Ruby the uncomprehending child. ‘He is not a hero. He is the biggest mass murderer the universe has ever seen.’

In the orchard, the Doctor had come to a decision. He knew these “Furies” had probably been brought into existence in the same way the Dommervoy had been, but he did not know what powers they possessed. They were clearly a lot more talkative then most Dommervoy, but then there were Dommervoy Loci as well. Perhaps, he mused, these being were akin to them. Whatever, he had to test their strength.

‘I do not recognise your authority either to bring me here or to “punish” me.’ The Doctor stood up. ‘I am leaving.’

‘You are not!’ screeched Alex rising from the lawn.

For a moment, the Doctor found himself rooted to the spot, but then, with the force of a wrecking ball, he was thrown across the orchard. He collided with a tree and cried out in pain as he felt several ribs break. He crumpled to the ground.

‘You are powerless, Time Lord,’ roared Alex as a mighty wind buffeted the trees around her. ‘And you will answer for your crimes.’