Oscar grinned. ‘Wonderful! Now, my dear boy, have you ever considered taking up the art of writing?’

Nick blinked, caught off-guard by the non sequitur. ‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘Me, writing? Uh… no.’

‘And why not?’

‘Well, I’m no good at it. I mean, I’m not like you.’

‘There is no one like me,’ Oscar grinned. ‘Every young man should take up writing, if only for his own amusement. I’d suggest you start with something simple, like a diary. I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train! You, it seems, travel a lot - and I know you have many stories to tell.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe,’ Nick smiled, flattered. ‘What about you? I’ve only ever seen “Earnest”; what else have you written?’

‘Only seen “Earnest”? Your education, Nick, is sadly lacking. Shall I recite something to you? One of my fairy tales perhaps?’

‘If you like,’ Nick invited.

Oscar paused for a moment in thought, and then began speaking again, in the slightly affected voice anyone uses when saying something from memory. Nick settled back on the chaise, allowing himself to relax to the soothing lilt of Oscar’s voice. ‘Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden. It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars…’

As he spoke, Oscar’s painting looked down on the two of them. It may only have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to smile.




‘Just down here, Alf, and then we turn into the Rue des Beaux Arts,’ the Doctor called back. Alf was amazed that, despite their comparative apparent states of fitness, the Doctor managed to keep ahead of her. ‘There’s a poem about that street,’ he continued, ‘but I suppose you don’t want to hear about that, either.’

As the Doctor continued to fill the silence between them with useless detail, Alf looked beyond the Time Lord. That wasn’t right - this street wasn’t full of ivy covered buildings when they were here last night.

‘Doctor, look!’ Alf pointed to a lamppost, which appeared to be almost smothered in climbing plants.

But as the Doctor looked where she was pointing, it was no longer a lamppost. Instead there stood a large tree, obviously well established. Its boughs were laden with pink and pearl blossoms, and the air held a sweet scent like a peach.

Looking away from the peach tree, the Doctor and Alf found that they were no longer on the Rue Bonaparte, but were instead in a large lovely garden. The ground was covered in long, soft grass and here and there stood beautiful flowers, like stars.

There were eleven other peach trees, and flitting between the branches were small birds that filled the garden with sweet song. Beyond the peach trees was a large house with a rustic appearance.

All in all it was exactly what shouldn’t have been around that last corner.

‘What the hell happened?’ asked Alf. ‘Did we pass through one of those portal things I saw you come out of at Highgate?’

‘It felt nothing like that, I’m afraid,’ replied the Doctor. ‘More importantly, it wasn’t a sudden transition from Paris to here. The detail of the street we were in changed a little and then suddenly…’ He waved his hands at the garden.

‘Is this what you meant by the boundaries between fact and fiction blurring? Are we in some kind of fairy tale world now?’

‘In the Land of Fiction, you think?’ The Doctor looked concerned. ‘If so, I’ve been here before.’

I sometimes wonder if you ever left it, thought Alf. ‘So how’d you get out?’ she said aloud.

‘We just sort of did. The mist rolled in and the TARDIS reformed around us…’ The Doctor’s voice tailed off, not sounding convinced. ‘I don’t see how we could have travelled here without something considerably more powerful than the time amulets. And, in any case, they can’t function without Nick’s being here as well. Maybe we aren’t in the Land of Fiction after all.’

‘Okay - time to take stock. What do we know?’ Alf counted off on her fingers. ‘One: characters of Oscar Wilde’s are coming to life. Two: they look human, but don’t quite manage to pass for us. Three: the card of the guy who painted Wilde’s picture just turned into mist and vanished. Four: the landlady of the painter knew who he was, and then denied it. Five: we appear to be in some sort of storybook garden when we should be in Paris. What’s that tell us?’

‘Mind control, reality manipulation, possible interdimensional teleportation… A lot of unrelated paranormal activity, with Oscar somehow at the centre of it.’

‘That’s what I said!’ Alf cried out triumphantly.

‘Being at the centre doesn’t make him responsible, ‘the Doctor answered sharply. ‘Something could be focussing on him. These manifestations are more typical of an ancient power from the dawn of time than anything an ill man could cause. We still need more information. Let’s explore.’

The two of them set off into the grove of cherry trees. Alf was keen to get to the building, but the Doctor held her back. He plucked a flower from the grass and handed it to her. ‘What do you make of this?’

‘It’s a flower!’ she said impatiently, but suddenly stopped and examined the flower closely. ‘Wait a minute… there’s something wrong with this. Look - it hasn’t got a pistil or any stamens.’ She glanced up at the Doctor. ‘Yes, I did pay attention in school! Well, sometimes. Anyway, this thing can’t breed. It’s like a - I dunno - a cartoon flower?’

‘It is no more a real flower than Virginia Otis was a real girl or Dr Chasuble was a real priest - or Basil Hallward a real painter. In fact, I doubt it has any more substance to it than Hallward’s card. Look at those birds. What species are they?’

‘They look sort of like a sparrow or a swallow. Or a starling. But the song isn’t right. You think someone’s faking all this? Can they do it on this scale? There’s a lot more to this garden than a card…’

‘I suspect we have seen a lot more of this faux reality than we’ve realised!’

‘The house, then?’

‘It’s different from the rest of the garden, so I think it warrants a closer examination,’ the Doctor confirmed.

Alf became aware that there was something wrong with the perspective of the garden. It was taking less time than she expected to get to the building, and if it was closer, wouldn’t that mean it must be larger than a normal human-sized dwelling? Or was it just a failure to understand how perspective worked on the part of whoever was behind this?

The answer to her thoughts was quick in coming.

The door to the house swung open and a giant stepped out. He was plainly enormous because he towered above the trees. He appeared to be listening for something, and looked around with squinting eyes, as if searching for something small.

And then he saw them. An expression of rage twisted his coarse features, and he turned back and reached inside the house, taking a large cudgel from just inside the door. He turned back to them and, raising the cudgel and striding forward, bellowed: ‘My own garden is my own garden!’