PROLOGUE
Robin looked up into the sky of an unseasonably warm but cloudy London as she walked towards Harrods on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. No sign of a single snowflake. Perhaps another rainy Christmas. Oh well.
She was on a mission, but not for the Doctor, and the weather was of only minor concern.
This would be the first time she would celebrate Christmas after the loss of her husband Harry and their son Tommy on Christmas Eve three years ago, and she planned to do it twice: once, on Christmas Eve, with her strange new time-travelling “family” consisting of her angel Gabriel (or as he preferred, the Doctor), his sentient and mercurial TARDIS, and his hard to understand friend-not-friend, Autumn, and then again on Christmas Day, with her fiancé, Chris.
She smiled as she remembered her conversation with the Doctor:
“It’s time” he said to her in a rare moment of quiet in the Tardis control room.
“Time for what” she asked, wondering if he was playing with words, because Time, for the Doctor, could be any time and place in the history and geography of the universe.
“It’s time for Christmas.”
“But you told me you didn’t celebrate Christmas on the TARDIS” she responded with a bit of confusion. “You just pop in on someone else’s Christmas…like mine not so long ago…change lives and move on.”
“I am talking about YOUR Christmas.”
She looked into The Doctor’s eyes that were so much sadder than when she had first met him, yet still warm and bright.
“I think it’s time I broke my rule about celebrating Christmas on the Tardis. I think you are ready for it now and you deserve a Happy Christmas.”
He then led her to her room where a 6-foot tall and very real spruce tree stood in a large red planter, all ready for decorations.
“Three rules,” he said. “No presents, but you may decorate this tree and invite Autumn and myself to tea.”
Robin smiled and hugged the Doctor and he landed the Tardis in present day Knightsbridge, London, within walking distance of Harrods, and off she went shopping for decorations.
She thought of all this now as she walked past Harrods’ Christmas windows which glowed with great warmth in the waning daylight, with their red velvet curtains framing theatrical stage presentations of large dancing bear toys, life-sized marionette ballerinas dancing Swan Lake, and a very colourful display of Hansel and Gretel standing in awe before a delicious candy-covered gingerbread house. Beneath all of these, in the lower third of the windows, there was a dazzling parallel world of fez-wearing white mice, busily preparing their own Christmas festivities.
In a striking way, the windows reminded her of the two ongoing streams of her life: travelling with the Doctor since he crashed his TARDIS into her house roof one a sad and lonely Christmas Eve and living her “normal” life as a teacher and fiancée. But it also brought thoughts of her lost family, especially her son.
Tom would have loved this. Yes, she thought to herself, then with a deep intake of breath she added, Gabriel is right (she still called him that, at least to herself). I am ready. It is time to celebrate Christmas once again. Robin entered Harrods, took an escalator to the second floor, and soon found their Christmas shop.
Before her was a veritable forest of green artificial Christmas trees laden with lights and decorations that Robin found fascinating, beautiful, funny, diverse, delicate and expensive, but mostly sold out (the display tables beneath each tree had only a cluster of unsold decorations). None of them was what she was looking for, until she noticed one tree that attracted her attention: it was bare, but sitting on a display table next to a bowl filled with small green and red lights, each glowing brightly.
She watched as a sales clerk reached into the bowl and lifted up one red crystal followed immediately by a green light and a whole line of lights alternating between red and green, all rising up out of the bowl as if under the spell of the clerk. For a moment, she decided this must be a magic show for children, and wondered why it wasn’t in the third floor children’s toy section or, even more appropriately, in the 4th floor Christmas Grotto with Father Christmas.
“How do you do that? Is it a magic trick?” she asked, suddenly realizing that magicians never tell their secrets.
“No, it isn’t magic at all, miss… or is it ma’am?”
“Robin would be fine, just Robin”
“Robin it is. No. This isn’t magic. It’s the last of our cordless Christmas lights. Let me show you how they work.”
“By cordless you mean they aren’t connected to one another by an electrical cord or they don’t require plugging in?”
“Oh they are connected to each other,” he said as he encouraged her to move her forefinger in between the top two lights. She recoiled slightly in surprise (and the man chuckled reassuringly) when she felt a very thin, pliable and totally invisible thread joining the lights to each other.
“But in answer to your other question, that is correct: they do not require plugging into an electrical source.”
Robin nodded in acknowledgement, thinking to herself: That would be perfect. I can never find electrical outlets on the TARDIS when I need them and I am too embarrassed to ask Gabriel or the TARDIS for help about such a silly thing.
The salesman continued to raise up out of the bowl what Robin now could see more clearly were a string of glowing see-through crystals about the size of round, medium-sized pearls, but with facets like well-cut gems or diamonds. He gracefully applied the crystals to the tree and it shimmered with a vibrant pulsing of red and green, the individual crystals glowing so magnificently that they seemed to be much larger than they were. It was breathtaking to see.
“Are they for sale? They aren’t just demonstrators, are they?”
“Oh they are indeed for sale, ma’am, I mean, Robin! It’s our last set and we are selling it for a very reasonable price, if I may say. Forty pounds for a set of fifty. They had been selling for eighty pounds in the weeks leading up to today.”
Robin paused for a moment because normally she paid not much more than twenty pounds for a string of Christmas lights, but these were so much more than just Christmas lights; she wouldn’t need any other decorations for the tree. So she nodded.
“Yes, I will take them. Thank you. That is indeed an excellent price.”
Outside, with her small Harrods bag in hand and the lights nestled snugly in the bottom, Robin walked once more by the decorated windows and was startled to see a new figure peering out at her: a woman with a wondrous smile.
Then she realized it was her, her reflection, and knew that it was going to be a memorable Christmas!
********
Inside Harrods, a woman approached the clerk in the Christmas shop.
“Excuse me, sir. Was that really the last set of cordless lights that I saw just purchased by that young woman?”
The clerk looked at her, oddly.
“I am sorry, but we haven’t sold Christmas lights, cordless or otherwise, at Harrods for some time now. They’re all on the outside, lit up.” He chuckled smugly at his own joke.
The woman just stood there for a moment as she looked over to the empty space amongst the trees where the undecorated tree, lights, and display table had stood only moments before.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken,” the woman said and left.
She was on a mission, but not for the Doctor, and the weather was of only minor concern.
This would be the first time she would celebrate Christmas after the loss of her husband Harry and their son Tommy on Christmas Eve three years ago, and she planned to do it twice: once, on Christmas Eve, with her strange new time-travelling “family” consisting of her angel Gabriel (or as he preferred, the Doctor), his sentient and mercurial TARDIS, and his hard to understand friend-not-friend, Autumn, and then again on Christmas Day, with her fiancé, Chris.
She smiled as she remembered her conversation with the Doctor:
“It’s time” he said to her in a rare moment of quiet in the Tardis control room.
“Time for what” she asked, wondering if he was playing with words, because Time, for the Doctor, could be any time and place in the history and geography of the universe.
“It’s time for Christmas.”
“But you told me you didn’t celebrate Christmas on the TARDIS” she responded with a bit of confusion. “You just pop in on someone else’s Christmas…like mine not so long ago…change lives and move on.”
“I am talking about YOUR Christmas.”
She looked into The Doctor’s eyes that were so much sadder than when she had first met him, yet still warm and bright.
“I think it’s time I broke my rule about celebrating Christmas on the Tardis. I think you are ready for it now and you deserve a Happy Christmas.”
He then led her to her room where a 6-foot tall and very real spruce tree stood in a large red planter, all ready for decorations.
“Three rules,” he said. “No presents, but you may decorate this tree and invite Autumn and myself to tea.”
Robin smiled and hugged the Doctor and he landed the Tardis in present day Knightsbridge, London, within walking distance of Harrods, and off she went shopping for decorations.
She thought of all this now as she walked past Harrods’ Christmas windows which glowed with great warmth in the waning daylight, with their red velvet curtains framing theatrical stage presentations of large dancing bear toys, life-sized marionette ballerinas dancing Swan Lake, and a very colourful display of Hansel and Gretel standing in awe before a delicious candy-covered gingerbread house. Beneath all of these, in the lower third of the windows, there was a dazzling parallel world of fez-wearing white mice, busily preparing their own Christmas festivities.
In a striking way, the windows reminded her of the two ongoing streams of her life: travelling with the Doctor since he crashed his TARDIS into her house roof one a sad and lonely Christmas Eve and living her “normal” life as a teacher and fiancée. But it also brought thoughts of her lost family, especially her son.
Tom would have loved this. Yes, she thought to herself, then with a deep intake of breath she added, Gabriel is right (she still called him that, at least to herself). I am ready. It is time to celebrate Christmas once again. Robin entered Harrods, took an escalator to the second floor, and soon found their Christmas shop.
Before her was a veritable forest of green artificial Christmas trees laden with lights and decorations that Robin found fascinating, beautiful, funny, diverse, delicate and expensive, but mostly sold out (the display tables beneath each tree had only a cluster of unsold decorations). None of them was what she was looking for, until she noticed one tree that attracted her attention: it was bare, but sitting on a display table next to a bowl filled with small green and red lights, each glowing brightly.
She watched as a sales clerk reached into the bowl and lifted up one red crystal followed immediately by a green light and a whole line of lights alternating between red and green, all rising up out of the bowl as if under the spell of the clerk. For a moment, she decided this must be a magic show for children, and wondered why it wasn’t in the third floor children’s toy section or, even more appropriately, in the 4th floor Christmas Grotto with Father Christmas.
“How do you do that? Is it a magic trick?” she asked, suddenly realizing that magicians never tell their secrets.
“No, it isn’t magic at all, miss… or is it ma’am?”
“Robin would be fine, just Robin”
“Robin it is. No. This isn’t magic. It’s the last of our cordless Christmas lights. Let me show you how they work.”
“By cordless you mean they aren’t connected to one another by an electrical cord or they don’t require plugging in?”
“Oh they are connected to each other,” he said as he encouraged her to move her forefinger in between the top two lights. She recoiled slightly in surprise (and the man chuckled reassuringly) when she felt a very thin, pliable and totally invisible thread joining the lights to each other.
“But in answer to your other question, that is correct: they do not require plugging into an electrical source.”
Robin nodded in acknowledgement, thinking to herself: That would be perfect. I can never find electrical outlets on the TARDIS when I need them and I am too embarrassed to ask Gabriel or the TARDIS for help about such a silly thing.
The salesman continued to raise up out of the bowl what Robin now could see more clearly were a string of glowing see-through crystals about the size of round, medium-sized pearls, but with facets like well-cut gems or diamonds. He gracefully applied the crystals to the tree and it shimmered with a vibrant pulsing of red and green, the individual crystals glowing so magnificently that they seemed to be much larger than they were. It was breathtaking to see.
“Are they for sale? They aren’t just demonstrators, are they?”
“Oh they are indeed for sale, ma’am, I mean, Robin! It’s our last set and we are selling it for a very reasonable price, if I may say. Forty pounds for a set of fifty. They had been selling for eighty pounds in the weeks leading up to today.”
Robin paused for a moment because normally she paid not much more than twenty pounds for a string of Christmas lights, but these were so much more than just Christmas lights; she wouldn’t need any other decorations for the tree. So she nodded.
“Yes, I will take them. Thank you. That is indeed an excellent price.”
Outside, with her small Harrods bag in hand and the lights nestled snugly in the bottom, Robin walked once more by the decorated windows and was startled to see a new figure peering out at her: a woman with a wondrous smile.
Then she realized it was her, her reflection, and knew that it was going to be a memorable Christmas!
********
Inside Harrods, a woman approached the clerk in the Christmas shop.
“Excuse me, sir. Was that really the last set of cordless lights that I saw just purchased by that young woman?”
The clerk looked at her, oddly.
“I am sorry, but we haven’t sold Christmas lights, cordless or otherwise, at Harrods for some time now. They’re all on the outside, lit up.” He chuckled smugly at his own joke.
The woman just stood there for a moment as she looked over to the empty space amongst the trees where the undecorated tree, lights, and display table had stood only moments before.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken,” the woman said and left.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
The Infestation
Written by Clara Laurinda
As Robin approached the Tardis, key in hand, her smile froze. She’d been away for almost thirty minutes, but she could still hear the Doctor and Autumn as they continued their “loud discussion” (“We never argue, we just have loud discussions” both Autumn and the Doctor had told her more than once).
But when she opened the door, she was surprised to see only their two pairs of feet, protruding from underneath the console as their “discussion” continued unabated.
“Autumn, I need the screwdriver, the one I asked for five minutes ago, so will you please pass it to me now?”
“Well that’s much better. Now you’re being polite,” responded Autumn as she passed the Doctor his sonic.
“Not the sonic. The screwdriver!”
“It is your screwdriver, Doctor.”
“No no no no, the conventional screwdriver, in the toolbox next to you.”
“You’re kidding. You actually own and use a real screwdriver?”
“Both of them are real, Autumn, they just do different things.”
“I thought your sonic did everything!”
Robin tried to interrupt their continuous stream of chatter, but her verbal attempts failed, so she tried to get their attention by shaking her Harrods bag, with the string of green and red crystals glowing inside. Actually, they were now glowing outside, hanging over the sides of a bag they’d only halfway filled a few moments ago.
“A-HEM”, she said, as they still weren’t looking or listening. “I am back with my brand new cordless crystal Christmas lights. Want to see them?”
The Doctor and Autumn went silent briefly but still remained under the console; when they spoke, they spoke only to each other.
“Did she say cordless Christmas lights?” asked Autumn.
It was as if Robin wasn’t there, but her bag of lights pulsed so brightly that their light reflected everywhere, including under the console where the Doctor and Autumn remained. The Doctor did briefly acknowledge their presence, but not Robin’s.
“No….” he replied to Autumn, “I think she said cordless crystal lights… but… what is causing all that green and red flashing under here? Did you reconnect the wrong switch?”
Robin gave up trying, and moved past the console and the repair team’s protruding feet, through a doorway, and into the hallway leading to her room.
Honestly, she thought. They can be SO annoying sometimes! I never knew how lucky I was when I just had the one…
Autumn didn’t answer the Doctor right away and then said, with great restraint as the lights faded with Robin’s unseen exit. “No Doctor… I haven’t reconnected anything, right or wrong… and there are no green and red flashing lights.”
“You’re right. They’ve stopped now. Where’s the screwdriver?!”
*****
Alone in her room, Robin savoured the calm and quiet, as she pulled her new treasure out of its bag. The lights seemed brighter and more plentiful. Were there really only fifty? Had the sales clerk given her a bonus?
She didn’t give it much more thought, because she was dazzled by the beauty of the lights in their new setting of her tree as she arranged the crystal lights on the spruce (the Doctor had said it was called a blue spruce but it was in fact green; not everything in the TARDIS was blue like its exterior). She decided to start at the bottom branches and work her way up; she reached the top with the help of a small step stool (which was TARDIS blue!).
She climbed down and admired the results. The tree looked truly magnificent. Each of the crystals pulsed with their own powerful light, creating the illusion that they were much larger and plentiful than they were, and leaving no need or room for any other decorations.
***********
Satisfied, Robin crossed the hall to the small kitchen the Doctor had created for her (with the TARDIS’ assistance, of course; or was it the other way around?) so that she could cook her own meals and bake without getting lost on her way to the main kitchen she could never find on her own. Too many left-then-right-then-left turns. She could never understand the Doctor’s directions.
Her plan was to make two dozen jammie dodgers, Autumn’s favourites, except these dodgers would be homemade as a special Christmas treat not only for Autumn (who appeared to be addicted only to the kind you buy in red boxes) but her primary purpose was to convince the Doctor that jammie dodgers were worth his time. Although he had yet to eat any, he had said more than once that he hated them, an observation Robin felt was made mainly because Autumn rarely stopped eating them and he found that annoying. (Which is why Autumn was always eating them, or so Robin suspected.)
They were a strange pair. But they were her friends.
She opened the fridge and pulled out the dough she had prepared earlier that afternoon and had left chilling for a half hour while she’d gone shopping, and set to the delightful task of making her favourite homemade jammie dodgers in three different flavours: strawberry, raspberry and peach.
***********
The moment Robin had left her room and crossed the hall to the kitchen, the crystal lights had rearranged themselves on the tree. The first crystal that she had placed on the bottom of the tree was now much larger than the others and was at the top of the tree, glowing a brilliant red.
Each of the remaining 99 crystals on the original string (she had been right in noticing there were more than the 50 he had purchased; the string had in fact doubled in length and number of crystals), had sprouted at least three new strings of crystals, tendrils that silently spread not only down the tree but off of it, onto the floor and out the door, stealthily bypassing the kitchen.
**********
For almost an hour she was engrossed in her task and its many stages: rolling the dough and cutting out the top part of the dodger shape using a fluted edge cookie cutter with a heart shaped centre, cutting out what would be the bottom half of the biscuit using a round cutter, baking the two sets of shapes for twenty minutes and then adding the jam and the fluted-edged top biscuit to the round bottom, with the jam peeking through the heart and then re-baking them for a few more minutes.
She new nothing of the drama that was unfolding around her outside her kitchen and in her room.
***********
With relentless speed the strings of crystals continued to multiply and lengthen and had moved willfully, silently and extensively throughout the TARDIS’s innumerable corridors, wrapping themselves around the cloister bell to muffle any alarm and moving to and engulfing the control consoles in all the TARDIS’ control rooms (secondary and archived), including the main control room in which the Doctor and Autumn were still working.
Robin’s tree no longer resembled a Christmas tree. I had been encased in a webbing of green and red crystal strings that continued to mount in number moment by moment.
*********
Less than twenty minutes after Robin’s departure, the Doctor and Autumn were still on the control room floor, under the console.
“Do you hear something, Autumn?” asked the Doctor.
“Just you,” said Autumn, sarcastically. “Always you. Natter, natter, natter.”
“No, not me. It’s a kind of muffled sound, like a bell that’s being smothered, and I hear some sort of slithering noises right in this room.”
Autumn froze. She hated snakes.
“No Doctor, I don’t hear any muffled sounds and slithering”. She shuddered. “Wait! Yes I do. It sounds like the cloister bell is being smothered.”
Almost as one person, they sprang out from under the console and there were green and red Christmas lights everywhere: on the floors and walls, and most disturbingly wrapped around the time rotor and spreading over the entire console.
“Oh my God, Robin has lost her mind! She’s decorated everything in sight!” screamed Autumn.
“No… she hasn’t,” said the Doctor in the far-too- calm voice Autumn knew he used only when he was afraid. And the Doctor was rarely openly afraid.
“These are not Christmas decorations. Robin may have brought them on board but she didn’t do this. It reminds me of something but I can’t recall… something I encountered long ago… in a previous life.”
“For heaven’s sake Doctor. Now is not the time to reminisce! Do something!”
He pulled out his sonic and directed a high pitched whine at the crystals. Absolutely nothing happened. He tried another setting, and another, but nothing affected them.
He grabbed the conventional screwdriver nearby, held it by its business end and smashed the metal handle repeatedly on one fast moving cluster of crystals. They shattered, but immediately re-formed and continued their advance. He turned towards Autumn.
Horror crossed the Doctor’s face: the crystals were quietly winding themselves up from the floor and around Autumn in such a way that she wasn’t even aware.
“Autumn, what have you done now!” The Doctor was staring at her, in shock, shouting, doubting, confused. His thoughts were racing and jumbled: Could this be another one of Autumn’s crazy attempts at revenge that has backfired? Surely not. Robin would not have played along. And Harrods? It didn’t make any sense. How could these be sold at Harrods? Autumn was with him the whole time Robin was gone, so how could she be involved?
“What are you talking about?”
“Look.” He passed her a mirror that he’d pulled from one of his bottomless pockets. The crystals were appearing on her face and in her hair.
“Oh my God GET THEM OFF ME… NOW!”
“Stay calm, Autumn. Please stay calm. It’s not that simple. We already know they don’t respond to my sonic.”
“And why is that Doctor? They aren’t made of wood! They are crystals. Don’t you have a setting for deeply infuriating self-proliferating, sentient, crystalline, fake Christmas decorations?”
“Well, no I don’t… because they are not behaving like crystal or even glass and especially not as Christmas lights. For some reason my sonic cannot read their constituent elements let alone have any effect on them…Maybe there is such a thing as see-through wood?”
Autumn remembered that his sonic never worked on wood. He said as much far too frequently and yet he never did anything about it.
“Not funny, Doctor,” she said as she continued looking in the mirror, watching the crystals, or whatever the hell they were, spread across her face.
“What isn’t funny?” Robin had just entered the control room, having navigated her way from her room while carrying her tray of tea and twelve freshly baked jammie dodgers (the other twelve were still cooling in her kitchen) without once noticing the crystalline invasion which had been deliberately avoiding her for some unknown reason.
When Robin looked up and saw the entire control console, the time rotor, the control room and Autumn wrapped in her beloved Christmas decorations, she dropped her tea and dodgers.
“Autumn, what have you done?”
“We’ve already covered that territory,” responded Autumn. “ And why always the assumption that I have done something wrong? You brought these onto the Tardis in the first place!”
“Oh my goodness. Was it me? Did I do this??”
The Doctor’s calm voice responded: “Robin, where did you find these baubles anyway? Were they really for sale at Harrods?”
“Yes. At Harrods in downtown London, where you dropped me off. It’s a highly respected department store,” said Robin in a soft voice as her eyes widened in realization. “But why haven’t they wrapped themselves around me? I came straight from my kitchen and I didn’t see anything on my way at all.”
“Well,” she heard Autumn’s frightened and now-muffled voice say, as the crystals began spreading across her mouth (her arms were bound tightly by the tendrils and she could not brush or smash them away), “look around you. They are everywhere in here. Except, as you pointed out, on you and on the Doctor. Why is that Doctor? Robin?”
Have they found out my plan? Are they trying to stop me? Autumn’s thoughts raced, just like the Doctor’s.
Then Autumn went silent when she noticed the crystals had indeed begun winding their way around the Doctor, until he too could barely be heard beneath the strings of crystals wrapping around his head, right over his mouth.
But that didn’t stop him.
“Robin!”
She ran over to the Doctor and listened intently.
“The sonic doesn’t work on them.” That was the last complete sentence she heard, although she was able to hear six more isolated words that the Doctor gasped out with increasingly longer pauses in between: “LIBRARY… BOXES……CHESTERFIELD………DIARIES………… BERRIES……………...GO!”
And she went. Like a shot.
*********
The crystals were still focussed on everyone and everywhere but her. The floor and walls of the control room were covered in tracks of crystals but she leapt and crunched her way out the door of the control room and into the hallway, headed to one of the few other rooms she could find without getting lost.
The crystals were still ignoring her. She felt horribly guilty but didn’t stop moving until she got to the LIBRARY, the first of the Doctor’s single-word orders.
*********
In the control room, the Doctor and Autumn struggled to stay alive.
In unison, they fell to the floor, crushing a mass of the crystals beneath them and on them, using the fall to free one arm each so they could be able to place a single cupped hand (with fingers slightly spread apart) next to each other’s noses, hoping to keep the crystals from entering their respiratory system or completely blocking their noses externally and suffocating them.
They looked into each other’s eyes and tried to remain calm as the crystal strings wove them into the fabric of the now-crystalline floor.
********
The library was still blackened by the fires that had broken out during a recently disastrous incursion of Daleks into the TARDIS. Some books had been placed back on the towering shelves that had not been ruined, but there were stacks of BOXES, the Doctor’s second word, near the main entrance. The crystals had not bothered with the library or the boxes, so she was free to search for word three: CHESTERFIELD.
Did the Doctor mean a sofa? There were none in the library…. but then something came to mind: he had said BOXES, CHESTERFIELD, DIARIES, in that order could he possibly have meant that some boxes contained the diaries of Ian Chesterton, one of his first companions, whose name he often got wrong, something he had mentioned to her one time when he couldn’t remember her last name?
“YES!” she shouted out loud, scaring even herself with its force.
She could see a box with CHESTERTON’S SCIENTIFIC DIARIES printed on it in large red letters, but the Doctor under pressure had once again misremembered a name when he uttered his six words! Ian had been a science teacher, so she suspected she was on track. He would have kept diaries of the many life forms he had encountered in his many travels with the first Doctor.
There were three large boxes containing Chesterton’s diaries. She grabbed the top box and lifted it to the floor, but in so doing, knocked the second box down off the third and decided rather superstitiously to search that one first, since it had fallen and split open on the floor in front of her.
BERRIES was the Doctor’s fifth word. She opened the first of the diaries at her feet. Each was filled with notes and carefully detailed drawings, but in no chronological or alphabetical order. It wasn’t until she opened the last book, that she found a brilliantly coloured drawing of HER CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!
Above the drawing was the heading, “The Crystalberry Weed” with several warning words in red beneath it: “insidious, at least partially sentient, extremely dangerous alien weed of unknown origins, often exploited by other beings because of their programmable behaviour.”
Further down she read: “Although they appear to be crystalline in nature and unconnected to one another, the crystalberry weed is a cellulose or wood-based entity with bright green and red crystal berries that are, unbelievably, also wood and connected by an invisible thread-like vine. It seems utterly impossible, but in my travels with the Doctor, I have learned that almost anything is possible!”
She scanned further, aware that her Doctor and Autumn could be dead at this very moment, and her eyes found this: “We had a NASTY experience with the crystalberry on the planet Zygreth. The Doctor, Susan, Barbara and I almost died. We tried chopping it with an axe and smashing it with hammers and even our bare fists, but it always re-formed. It was Barbara who discovered THAT FIRE WAS THE ONLY ANSWER, but ONLY if you tracked down the original tuber root and set it alight.”
Robin knew where the original tuber root system was: ON HER TREE!
She felt in her pocket for the lighter that Chris had recently surrendered to her after he had stopped smoking; she had kept it as proof of his promise to stop.
With her only weapon in hand, Robin raced down the hallway to her room, but the hallway was now layered with crystals and she crunch-crunched her way along, smashing her feet down hard to stay upright on the slippery surface and keep moving forward at the necessary speed. Run, she thought to herself. And then she said it out loud: “Run, run, run!”
*******
It was quiet in the control room, except for a slow rhythmic sighing sound as if the Tardis itself was struggling to stay alive.
The Doctor and Autumn were alive, perhaps because of the few defensive actions they had taken including protecting their breathing, but they had become a part of the floor’s newly-woven mass of crystals even though they were still facing each other, their arms extended.
The Doctor, his mouth and eyes still bound by the crystals (like Autumn’s) and Autumn’s hand still bound to his face, began to hum the ancient “Song of the Universe” to comfort Autumn (and probably himself as well).
A single tear rolled out of Autumn’s one partially visible eye and down amongst the crystals on her face.
And then she closed both her eyes.
*****
Robin crunched around the corner, passed her private kitchen, and entered her room, holding the lighter aloft in full flame.
The crystalberries attacked Robin from all sides. The room and the tree that was the source of this nightmare, were cocooned in pulsing, writhing crystals, that now turned their full attention on her.
Clearly they were sentient: they seemed to know she was out to destroy them and fought her ferociously.
With her fists and feet smashing and kicking her way to and up the tree, she tore at the mass of new strings that grew from each crystal on the original string, to get to what she now knew was the starting point of the main tuber root: the pulsing red crystal on the top of the tree. The crystalberry strings wrapped and re-wrapped themselves around her flame-bearing hand no matter how often she smashed them off.
After ten minutes of intense and continuous battle, Robin was running out of time and energy.
She began to see images of the Doctor, her angel Gabriel with his beautiful, calm and kind eyes, of her son’s laughing face, of her husband’s and then Chris’s loving gaze.
“Am I strong enough? Can I do this?” she asked herself, smashing and re-smashing over and over again each strand of crystals as they wrapped around her legs, her arms her head and her hand as the crystals tried to stop the flame from reaching its goal at the top of the tree. Robin couldn’t reach her step stool, so she climbed the crystal-encrusted spruce branches, smashing her way up, her flame hand extended, her eyes closed as she set the large pulsing crystal on fire. The tuber root was burning.
She did not know what would happen next. She expected the tree to catch fire as well and engulf her in flame, but she was ready. She had failed to prevent the deaths of her husband and child, and she would be damned if she was going to allow a nasty plant to kill her new family, no matter what the cost.
*****
“Doctor!”
“Yes Autumn?”
“What’s happened? The crystals have either disappeared or are dead all around us, and the rotor and console and we, are freed and alive! There are a few of those evil things around still, but they are all shriveled and black as if….”
“As if they’ve been burned? That’s because they have been. As for what happened? That’s the wrong question. It should be who happened. It was Robin. She did this,” said the Doctor with relief and pride. And she did it by herself with, quite literally, with only a few scattered words from me. No sonic, no Doctor, no help. Just Robin. We need to go to her, now!”
“Where will she be? In the library on a chesterfield?” Autumn was still a little confused.
“No,” said the Doctor. “In her room. Hopefully unharmed, surrounded by dead cyrstalberries!”
The Doctor and Robin rushed through the corridors to Robin’s room.
*******
Robin was stunned, scratched and bleeding from her efforts and the many attacks of the crystalberries, but she was lying on the crystal-free floor, alive and still holding the flaming lighter. She turned it off and stared at the blue spruce, tremendously surprised to be alive, and relieved that the Doctor and Autumn were standing above her, alive and unharmed. She looked up at the tree in amazement.
“It’s unburned. How is that possible? I set the top crystal on fire and all the original tuber root strings burst into the flame and the others caught fire too or vanished completely, but the tree is still green and unharmed!”
“Fire retardant,” said the Doctor.
Autumn opened her eyes wide, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Fire retardant?”
“Yes. This tree is from my on-board forest and has been genetically altered to be fireproof like all the rest of the trees, or the TARDIS would never have allowed to me have a forest in the first place.”
Robin and Autumn were open-mouthed, speechless. This was a most unusual relationship, between the TARDIS and the Doctor.
Robin was the first to speak: “Thank you, Doctor.”
The Doctor walked over to Robin and embraced her warmly. So did Autumn.
“No, Robin. You saved us and we will be forever grateful.”
Even Autumn had to admit, silently and to herself, that she too was grateful. She had seen a new side to both the Doctor and Robin this Christmas Eve. She had never felt closer to either of them. But she said nothing for a moment, and then spoke, perhaps too cheerily:
“Anyone for tea and jammie dodgers?” She looked at Robin. “I mean Robin’s jammie dodgers? Do you have anymore? The ones you dropped in the control room were mashed by the crystals.”
“Yes, Autumn. I have a dozen left.”
******
It was midnight, and now officially Christmas Day, and their tea and jammie dodger feast was over.
“Robin, I have to say,” The Doctor paused and looked at Autumn, knowing he would never live this down, “Autumn may in fact be justified in her obsession with, I mean, love of the jammie dodger. I have to admit, they are quite lovely.”
Before Autumn could make some wise remark, Robin thanked the Doctor and the Doctor looked at Robin. “Now it’s your turn. I have a surprise for you.”
The Doctor walked over and flicked some switches on the console; the TARDIS was now humming, sounding healthy and even pleased, although perhaps a little overlooked. “I mean the TARDIS and I have a surprise.”
The Tardis wheezed away from Knightsbridge, London. Moments later she wheezed again and landed, her doors opened wide and, like the ending of the Doctor’s favourite Christmas film, “White Christmas,” it was snowing outside: large, exquisite, perfectly normal snowflakes falling on a field of white.
Robin was speechless.
“It’s England. Yorkshire. Christmas morning. And it’s snowing.”
The Doctor and Robin stood side by side surveying the landscape and the sky.
“This really is a memorable Christmas,” said Robin.
“Yes, indeed,” said the Doctor. “But maybe we’ll do something quieter next year?”
****
The Doctor had dropped Robin home to Chris and stood in the TARDIS, plotting the next coordinates with Autumn on the other side of the console. There were so many places he wanted to take her. He’d be promising the Rings of Akhaten for a while, but had never got around to timing it for the festival. Maybe now-
He stopped, shuddering, as something on the screen caught his eye. No.
“Are you okay?” asked Autumn, picking up instantly that something was wrong.
“No,” repeated the Doctor, this time out loud.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Autumn’s voice quivered. He knows, she realised. He knows.
“I thought the crystalberry thing was a bit weird, so I ran a scan. Checked the TARDIS’s most recent destinations. Though maybe we’d… stopped off somewhere a bit too long.” He pushed the monitor over to Autumn aggressively, staying where he was stood opposite her, and she examined it. “Care to tell me who Lord Dalta is? Actually, no. You don’t need to tell me. I’m not an idiot.”
“Doctor-“
“Don’t even-“
“Doctor!” insisted Autumn. “I’m sorry, I really am. But after everything… after everything…” she moved closer. “Did you really think it would be that easy?”
The Doctor took it all in, and the TARDIS fell silent; even the engines, as if they were listening in. Autumn knew the routine: first would come the apology. The begging. Then, he would try to ‘save’ her, from herself, perhaps, whilst he was the biggest danger of the lot.
She saw his face forming its reaction. She tried to predict the words. It’s not your fault. Or I understand. Or maybe, just maybe I give up. Just this once, she thought. Give up.
“Ten.” The Doctor pulled the monitor back towards him and re-programmed the coordinates. “Nine.”
“Uh…” Autumn tried to get his attention. “Doctor?”
The Doctor avoided eye contact. “Eight.”
“Doctor!” demanded Autumn. “Why are you counting down?”
“Seven. Oh.” The Doctor looked up and gave his pre-explanatory smile to Autumn. “It’s just the amount of time you have to get out of this ship before I kill you. Six.”
“Whatever happened to ‘this is all my fault and I’ll take whatever punishment I’m given’?”
“The Dalek Camp, Autumn!” roared the Doctor. “Four years of torture! The worst punishment possible for anyone in the universe. I accepted it with open arms, but after that day I was indebted to no one.”
Autumn paused, finding the right words. “You will always be indebted to me.”
“And with that mentality, you’ve lost everything I ever felt for you.” The Doctor scoffed, a laugh so detached that it unsettled Autumn to her core. She had broken the Doctor in the Dalek Camp: now she watched as the cracks began to show. “I mean, did you really think I’d grovel again?” He looked down over Autumn as he stepped up off the main console area. “I’m so sorry,” he mimicked, “it’s all my fault. Well it’s not. It’s your fault. I forgive you. No, no, no.” He shook his head. “People like you are monsters. Five.”
Autumn clapped mockingly. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“And I will come for you – four. Whatever you’re planning, I will stop it. Three. Why? Because I have nothing else to do and before you deserve it. Two. And one last thing.” He moved closer to Autumn, and as he did, she put her hand behind her back, ready to activate her vortex manipulator. “I hate you, Autumn Rivers. With every fibre of my being, I hate you for what you’ve done to me. I… will not forgive… you.” The only sound that could be heard now was Autumn’s rapid breathing. “One.”
Autumn switched on her vortex manipulator and disappeared, and the Doctor went back to the monitor and finished typing in the coordinates.
But when she opened the door, she was surprised to see only their two pairs of feet, protruding from underneath the console as their “discussion” continued unabated.
“Autumn, I need the screwdriver, the one I asked for five minutes ago, so will you please pass it to me now?”
“Well that’s much better. Now you’re being polite,” responded Autumn as she passed the Doctor his sonic.
“Not the sonic. The screwdriver!”
“It is your screwdriver, Doctor.”
“No no no no, the conventional screwdriver, in the toolbox next to you.”
“You’re kidding. You actually own and use a real screwdriver?”
“Both of them are real, Autumn, they just do different things.”
“I thought your sonic did everything!”
Robin tried to interrupt their continuous stream of chatter, but her verbal attempts failed, so she tried to get their attention by shaking her Harrods bag, with the string of green and red crystals glowing inside. Actually, they were now glowing outside, hanging over the sides of a bag they’d only halfway filled a few moments ago.
“A-HEM”, she said, as they still weren’t looking or listening. “I am back with my brand new cordless crystal Christmas lights. Want to see them?”
The Doctor and Autumn went silent briefly but still remained under the console; when they spoke, they spoke only to each other.
“Did she say cordless Christmas lights?” asked Autumn.
It was as if Robin wasn’t there, but her bag of lights pulsed so brightly that their light reflected everywhere, including under the console where the Doctor and Autumn remained. The Doctor did briefly acknowledge their presence, but not Robin’s.
“No….” he replied to Autumn, “I think she said cordless crystal lights… but… what is causing all that green and red flashing under here? Did you reconnect the wrong switch?”
Robin gave up trying, and moved past the console and the repair team’s protruding feet, through a doorway, and into the hallway leading to her room.
Honestly, she thought. They can be SO annoying sometimes! I never knew how lucky I was when I just had the one…
Autumn didn’t answer the Doctor right away and then said, with great restraint as the lights faded with Robin’s unseen exit. “No Doctor… I haven’t reconnected anything, right or wrong… and there are no green and red flashing lights.”
“You’re right. They’ve stopped now. Where’s the screwdriver?!”
*****
Alone in her room, Robin savoured the calm and quiet, as she pulled her new treasure out of its bag. The lights seemed brighter and more plentiful. Were there really only fifty? Had the sales clerk given her a bonus?
She didn’t give it much more thought, because she was dazzled by the beauty of the lights in their new setting of her tree as she arranged the crystal lights on the spruce (the Doctor had said it was called a blue spruce but it was in fact green; not everything in the TARDIS was blue like its exterior). She decided to start at the bottom branches and work her way up; she reached the top with the help of a small step stool (which was TARDIS blue!).
She climbed down and admired the results. The tree looked truly magnificent. Each of the crystals pulsed with their own powerful light, creating the illusion that they were much larger and plentiful than they were, and leaving no need or room for any other decorations.
***********
Satisfied, Robin crossed the hall to the small kitchen the Doctor had created for her (with the TARDIS’ assistance, of course; or was it the other way around?) so that she could cook her own meals and bake without getting lost on her way to the main kitchen she could never find on her own. Too many left-then-right-then-left turns. She could never understand the Doctor’s directions.
Her plan was to make two dozen jammie dodgers, Autumn’s favourites, except these dodgers would be homemade as a special Christmas treat not only for Autumn (who appeared to be addicted only to the kind you buy in red boxes) but her primary purpose was to convince the Doctor that jammie dodgers were worth his time. Although he had yet to eat any, he had said more than once that he hated them, an observation Robin felt was made mainly because Autumn rarely stopped eating them and he found that annoying. (Which is why Autumn was always eating them, or so Robin suspected.)
They were a strange pair. But they were her friends.
She opened the fridge and pulled out the dough she had prepared earlier that afternoon and had left chilling for a half hour while she’d gone shopping, and set to the delightful task of making her favourite homemade jammie dodgers in three different flavours: strawberry, raspberry and peach.
***********
The moment Robin had left her room and crossed the hall to the kitchen, the crystal lights had rearranged themselves on the tree. The first crystal that she had placed on the bottom of the tree was now much larger than the others and was at the top of the tree, glowing a brilliant red.
Each of the remaining 99 crystals on the original string (she had been right in noticing there were more than the 50 he had purchased; the string had in fact doubled in length and number of crystals), had sprouted at least three new strings of crystals, tendrils that silently spread not only down the tree but off of it, onto the floor and out the door, stealthily bypassing the kitchen.
**********
For almost an hour she was engrossed in her task and its many stages: rolling the dough and cutting out the top part of the dodger shape using a fluted edge cookie cutter with a heart shaped centre, cutting out what would be the bottom half of the biscuit using a round cutter, baking the two sets of shapes for twenty minutes and then adding the jam and the fluted-edged top biscuit to the round bottom, with the jam peeking through the heart and then re-baking them for a few more minutes.
She new nothing of the drama that was unfolding around her outside her kitchen and in her room.
***********
With relentless speed the strings of crystals continued to multiply and lengthen and had moved willfully, silently and extensively throughout the TARDIS’s innumerable corridors, wrapping themselves around the cloister bell to muffle any alarm and moving to and engulfing the control consoles in all the TARDIS’ control rooms (secondary and archived), including the main control room in which the Doctor and Autumn were still working.
Robin’s tree no longer resembled a Christmas tree. I had been encased in a webbing of green and red crystal strings that continued to mount in number moment by moment.
*********
Less than twenty minutes after Robin’s departure, the Doctor and Autumn were still on the control room floor, under the console.
“Do you hear something, Autumn?” asked the Doctor.
“Just you,” said Autumn, sarcastically. “Always you. Natter, natter, natter.”
“No, not me. It’s a kind of muffled sound, like a bell that’s being smothered, and I hear some sort of slithering noises right in this room.”
Autumn froze. She hated snakes.
“No Doctor, I don’t hear any muffled sounds and slithering”. She shuddered. “Wait! Yes I do. It sounds like the cloister bell is being smothered.”
Almost as one person, they sprang out from under the console and there were green and red Christmas lights everywhere: on the floors and walls, and most disturbingly wrapped around the time rotor and spreading over the entire console.
“Oh my God, Robin has lost her mind! She’s decorated everything in sight!” screamed Autumn.
“No… she hasn’t,” said the Doctor in the far-too- calm voice Autumn knew he used only when he was afraid. And the Doctor was rarely openly afraid.
“These are not Christmas decorations. Robin may have brought them on board but she didn’t do this. It reminds me of something but I can’t recall… something I encountered long ago… in a previous life.”
“For heaven’s sake Doctor. Now is not the time to reminisce! Do something!”
He pulled out his sonic and directed a high pitched whine at the crystals. Absolutely nothing happened. He tried another setting, and another, but nothing affected them.
He grabbed the conventional screwdriver nearby, held it by its business end and smashed the metal handle repeatedly on one fast moving cluster of crystals. They shattered, but immediately re-formed and continued their advance. He turned towards Autumn.
Horror crossed the Doctor’s face: the crystals were quietly winding themselves up from the floor and around Autumn in such a way that she wasn’t even aware.
“Autumn, what have you done now!” The Doctor was staring at her, in shock, shouting, doubting, confused. His thoughts were racing and jumbled: Could this be another one of Autumn’s crazy attempts at revenge that has backfired? Surely not. Robin would not have played along. And Harrods? It didn’t make any sense. How could these be sold at Harrods? Autumn was with him the whole time Robin was gone, so how could she be involved?
“What are you talking about?”
“Look.” He passed her a mirror that he’d pulled from one of his bottomless pockets. The crystals were appearing on her face and in her hair.
“Oh my God GET THEM OFF ME… NOW!”
“Stay calm, Autumn. Please stay calm. It’s not that simple. We already know they don’t respond to my sonic.”
“And why is that Doctor? They aren’t made of wood! They are crystals. Don’t you have a setting for deeply infuriating self-proliferating, sentient, crystalline, fake Christmas decorations?”
“Well, no I don’t… because they are not behaving like crystal or even glass and especially not as Christmas lights. For some reason my sonic cannot read their constituent elements let alone have any effect on them…Maybe there is such a thing as see-through wood?”
Autumn remembered that his sonic never worked on wood. He said as much far too frequently and yet he never did anything about it.
“Not funny, Doctor,” she said as she continued looking in the mirror, watching the crystals, or whatever the hell they were, spread across her face.
“What isn’t funny?” Robin had just entered the control room, having navigated her way from her room while carrying her tray of tea and twelve freshly baked jammie dodgers (the other twelve were still cooling in her kitchen) without once noticing the crystalline invasion which had been deliberately avoiding her for some unknown reason.
When Robin looked up and saw the entire control console, the time rotor, the control room and Autumn wrapped in her beloved Christmas decorations, she dropped her tea and dodgers.
“Autumn, what have you done?”
“We’ve already covered that territory,” responded Autumn. “ And why always the assumption that I have done something wrong? You brought these onto the Tardis in the first place!”
“Oh my goodness. Was it me? Did I do this??”
The Doctor’s calm voice responded: “Robin, where did you find these baubles anyway? Were they really for sale at Harrods?”
“Yes. At Harrods in downtown London, where you dropped me off. It’s a highly respected department store,” said Robin in a soft voice as her eyes widened in realization. “But why haven’t they wrapped themselves around me? I came straight from my kitchen and I didn’t see anything on my way at all.”
“Well,” she heard Autumn’s frightened and now-muffled voice say, as the crystals began spreading across her mouth (her arms were bound tightly by the tendrils and she could not brush or smash them away), “look around you. They are everywhere in here. Except, as you pointed out, on you and on the Doctor. Why is that Doctor? Robin?”
Have they found out my plan? Are they trying to stop me? Autumn’s thoughts raced, just like the Doctor’s.
Then Autumn went silent when she noticed the crystals had indeed begun winding their way around the Doctor, until he too could barely be heard beneath the strings of crystals wrapping around his head, right over his mouth.
But that didn’t stop him.
“Robin!”
She ran over to the Doctor and listened intently.
“The sonic doesn’t work on them.” That was the last complete sentence she heard, although she was able to hear six more isolated words that the Doctor gasped out with increasingly longer pauses in between: “LIBRARY… BOXES……CHESTERFIELD………DIARIES………… BERRIES……………...GO!”
And she went. Like a shot.
*********
The crystals were still focussed on everyone and everywhere but her. The floor and walls of the control room were covered in tracks of crystals but she leapt and crunched her way out the door of the control room and into the hallway, headed to one of the few other rooms she could find without getting lost.
The crystals were still ignoring her. She felt horribly guilty but didn’t stop moving until she got to the LIBRARY, the first of the Doctor’s single-word orders.
*********
In the control room, the Doctor and Autumn struggled to stay alive.
In unison, they fell to the floor, crushing a mass of the crystals beneath them and on them, using the fall to free one arm each so they could be able to place a single cupped hand (with fingers slightly spread apart) next to each other’s noses, hoping to keep the crystals from entering their respiratory system or completely blocking their noses externally and suffocating them.
They looked into each other’s eyes and tried to remain calm as the crystal strings wove them into the fabric of the now-crystalline floor.
********
The library was still blackened by the fires that had broken out during a recently disastrous incursion of Daleks into the TARDIS. Some books had been placed back on the towering shelves that had not been ruined, but there were stacks of BOXES, the Doctor’s second word, near the main entrance. The crystals had not bothered with the library or the boxes, so she was free to search for word three: CHESTERFIELD.
Did the Doctor mean a sofa? There were none in the library…. but then something came to mind: he had said BOXES, CHESTERFIELD, DIARIES, in that order could he possibly have meant that some boxes contained the diaries of Ian Chesterton, one of his first companions, whose name he often got wrong, something he had mentioned to her one time when he couldn’t remember her last name?
“YES!” she shouted out loud, scaring even herself with its force.
She could see a box with CHESTERTON’S SCIENTIFIC DIARIES printed on it in large red letters, but the Doctor under pressure had once again misremembered a name when he uttered his six words! Ian had been a science teacher, so she suspected she was on track. He would have kept diaries of the many life forms he had encountered in his many travels with the first Doctor.
There were three large boxes containing Chesterton’s diaries. She grabbed the top box and lifted it to the floor, but in so doing, knocked the second box down off the third and decided rather superstitiously to search that one first, since it had fallen and split open on the floor in front of her.
BERRIES was the Doctor’s fifth word. She opened the first of the diaries at her feet. Each was filled with notes and carefully detailed drawings, but in no chronological or alphabetical order. It wasn’t until she opened the last book, that she found a brilliantly coloured drawing of HER CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!
Above the drawing was the heading, “The Crystalberry Weed” with several warning words in red beneath it: “insidious, at least partially sentient, extremely dangerous alien weed of unknown origins, often exploited by other beings because of their programmable behaviour.”
Further down she read: “Although they appear to be crystalline in nature and unconnected to one another, the crystalberry weed is a cellulose or wood-based entity with bright green and red crystal berries that are, unbelievably, also wood and connected by an invisible thread-like vine. It seems utterly impossible, but in my travels with the Doctor, I have learned that almost anything is possible!”
She scanned further, aware that her Doctor and Autumn could be dead at this very moment, and her eyes found this: “We had a NASTY experience with the crystalberry on the planet Zygreth. The Doctor, Susan, Barbara and I almost died. We tried chopping it with an axe and smashing it with hammers and even our bare fists, but it always re-formed. It was Barbara who discovered THAT FIRE WAS THE ONLY ANSWER, but ONLY if you tracked down the original tuber root and set it alight.”
Robin knew where the original tuber root system was: ON HER TREE!
She felt in her pocket for the lighter that Chris had recently surrendered to her after he had stopped smoking; she had kept it as proof of his promise to stop.
With her only weapon in hand, Robin raced down the hallway to her room, but the hallway was now layered with crystals and she crunch-crunched her way along, smashing her feet down hard to stay upright on the slippery surface and keep moving forward at the necessary speed. Run, she thought to herself. And then she said it out loud: “Run, run, run!”
*******
It was quiet in the control room, except for a slow rhythmic sighing sound as if the Tardis itself was struggling to stay alive.
The Doctor and Autumn were alive, perhaps because of the few defensive actions they had taken including protecting their breathing, but they had become a part of the floor’s newly-woven mass of crystals even though they were still facing each other, their arms extended.
The Doctor, his mouth and eyes still bound by the crystals (like Autumn’s) and Autumn’s hand still bound to his face, began to hum the ancient “Song of the Universe” to comfort Autumn (and probably himself as well).
A single tear rolled out of Autumn’s one partially visible eye and down amongst the crystals on her face.
And then she closed both her eyes.
*****
Robin crunched around the corner, passed her private kitchen, and entered her room, holding the lighter aloft in full flame.
The crystalberries attacked Robin from all sides. The room and the tree that was the source of this nightmare, were cocooned in pulsing, writhing crystals, that now turned their full attention on her.
Clearly they were sentient: they seemed to know she was out to destroy them and fought her ferociously.
With her fists and feet smashing and kicking her way to and up the tree, she tore at the mass of new strings that grew from each crystal on the original string, to get to what she now knew was the starting point of the main tuber root: the pulsing red crystal on the top of the tree. The crystalberry strings wrapped and re-wrapped themselves around her flame-bearing hand no matter how often she smashed them off.
After ten minutes of intense and continuous battle, Robin was running out of time and energy.
She began to see images of the Doctor, her angel Gabriel with his beautiful, calm and kind eyes, of her son’s laughing face, of her husband’s and then Chris’s loving gaze.
“Am I strong enough? Can I do this?” she asked herself, smashing and re-smashing over and over again each strand of crystals as they wrapped around her legs, her arms her head and her hand as the crystals tried to stop the flame from reaching its goal at the top of the tree. Robin couldn’t reach her step stool, so she climbed the crystal-encrusted spruce branches, smashing her way up, her flame hand extended, her eyes closed as she set the large pulsing crystal on fire. The tuber root was burning.
She did not know what would happen next. She expected the tree to catch fire as well and engulf her in flame, but she was ready. She had failed to prevent the deaths of her husband and child, and she would be damned if she was going to allow a nasty plant to kill her new family, no matter what the cost.
*****
“Doctor!”
“Yes Autumn?”
“What’s happened? The crystals have either disappeared or are dead all around us, and the rotor and console and we, are freed and alive! There are a few of those evil things around still, but they are all shriveled and black as if….”
“As if they’ve been burned? That’s because they have been. As for what happened? That’s the wrong question. It should be who happened. It was Robin. She did this,” said the Doctor with relief and pride. And she did it by herself with, quite literally, with only a few scattered words from me. No sonic, no Doctor, no help. Just Robin. We need to go to her, now!”
“Where will she be? In the library on a chesterfield?” Autumn was still a little confused.
“No,” said the Doctor. “In her room. Hopefully unharmed, surrounded by dead cyrstalberries!”
The Doctor and Robin rushed through the corridors to Robin’s room.
*******
Robin was stunned, scratched and bleeding from her efforts and the many attacks of the crystalberries, but she was lying on the crystal-free floor, alive and still holding the flaming lighter. She turned it off and stared at the blue spruce, tremendously surprised to be alive, and relieved that the Doctor and Autumn were standing above her, alive and unharmed. She looked up at the tree in amazement.
“It’s unburned. How is that possible? I set the top crystal on fire and all the original tuber root strings burst into the flame and the others caught fire too or vanished completely, but the tree is still green and unharmed!”
“Fire retardant,” said the Doctor.
Autumn opened her eyes wide, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Fire retardant?”
“Yes. This tree is from my on-board forest and has been genetically altered to be fireproof like all the rest of the trees, or the TARDIS would never have allowed to me have a forest in the first place.”
Robin and Autumn were open-mouthed, speechless. This was a most unusual relationship, between the TARDIS and the Doctor.
Robin was the first to speak: “Thank you, Doctor.”
The Doctor walked over to Robin and embraced her warmly. So did Autumn.
“No, Robin. You saved us and we will be forever grateful.”
Even Autumn had to admit, silently and to herself, that she too was grateful. She had seen a new side to both the Doctor and Robin this Christmas Eve. She had never felt closer to either of them. But she said nothing for a moment, and then spoke, perhaps too cheerily:
“Anyone for tea and jammie dodgers?” She looked at Robin. “I mean Robin’s jammie dodgers? Do you have anymore? The ones you dropped in the control room were mashed by the crystals.”
“Yes, Autumn. I have a dozen left.”
******
It was midnight, and now officially Christmas Day, and their tea and jammie dodger feast was over.
“Robin, I have to say,” The Doctor paused and looked at Autumn, knowing he would never live this down, “Autumn may in fact be justified in her obsession with, I mean, love of the jammie dodger. I have to admit, they are quite lovely.”
Before Autumn could make some wise remark, Robin thanked the Doctor and the Doctor looked at Robin. “Now it’s your turn. I have a surprise for you.”
The Doctor walked over and flicked some switches on the console; the TARDIS was now humming, sounding healthy and even pleased, although perhaps a little overlooked. “I mean the TARDIS and I have a surprise.”
The Tardis wheezed away from Knightsbridge, London. Moments later she wheezed again and landed, her doors opened wide and, like the ending of the Doctor’s favourite Christmas film, “White Christmas,” it was snowing outside: large, exquisite, perfectly normal snowflakes falling on a field of white.
Robin was speechless.
“It’s England. Yorkshire. Christmas morning. And it’s snowing.”
The Doctor and Robin stood side by side surveying the landscape and the sky.
“This really is a memorable Christmas,” said Robin.
“Yes, indeed,” said the Doctor. “But maybe we’ll do something quieter next year?”
****
The Doctor had dropped Robin home to Chris and stood in the TARDIS, plotting the next coordinates with Autumn on the other side of the console. There were so many places he wanted to take her. He’d be promising the Rings of Akhaten for a while, but had never got around to timing it for the festival. Maybe now-
He stopped, shuddering, as something on the screen caught his eye. No.
“Are you okay?” asked Autumn, picking up instantly that something was wrong.
“No,” repeated the Doctor, this time out loud.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Autumn’s voice quivered. He knows, she realised. He knows.
“I thought the crystalberry thing was a bit weird, so I ran a scan. Checked the TARDIS’s most recent destinations. Though maybe we’d… stopped off somewhere a bit too long.” He pushed the monitor over to Autumn aggressively, staying where he was stood opposite her, and she examined it. “Care to tell me who Lord Dalta is? Actually, no. You don’t need to tell me. I’m not an idiot.”
“Doctor-“
“Don’t even-“
“Doctor!” insisted Autumn. “I’m sorry, I really am. But after everything… after everything…” she moved closer. “Did you really think it would be that easy?”
The Doctor took it all in, and the TARDIS fell silent; even the engines, as if they were listening in. Autumn knew the routine: first would come the apology. The begging. Then, he would try to ‘save’ her, from herself, perhaps, whilst he was the biggest danger of the lot.
She saw his face forming its reaction. She tried to predict the words. It’s not your fault. Or I understand. Or maybe, just maybe I give up. Just this once, she thought. Give up.
“Ten.” The Doctor pulled the monitor back towards him and re-programmed the coordinates. “Nine.”
“Uh…” Autumn tried to get his attention. “Doctor?”
The Doctor avoided eye contact. “Eight.”
“Doctor!” demanded Autumn. “Why are you counting down?”
“Seven. Oh.” The Doctor looked up and gave his pre-explanatory smile to Autumn. “It’s just the amount of time you have to get out of this ship before I kill you. Six.”
“Whatever happened to ‘this is all my fault and I’ll take whatever punishment I’m given’?”
“The Dalek Camp, Autumn!” roared the Doctor. “Four years of torture! The worst punishment possible for anyone in the universe. I accepted it with open arms, but after that day I was indebted to no one.”
Autumn paused, finding the right words. “You will always be indebted to me.”
“And with that mentality, you’ve lost everything I ever felt for you.” The Doctor scoffed, a laugh so detached that it unsettled Autumn to her core. She had broken the Doctor in the Dalek Camp: now she watched as the cracks began to show. “I mean, did you really think I’d grovel again?” He looked down over Autumn as he stepped up off the main console area. “I’m so sorry,” he mimicked, “it’s all my fault. Well it’s not. It’s your fault. I forgive you. No, no, no.” He shook his head. “People like you are monsters. Five.”
Autumn clapped mockingly. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“And I will come for you – four. Whatever you’re planning, I will stop it. Three. Why? Because I have nothing else to do and before you deserve it. Two. And one last thing.” He moved closer to Autumn, and as he did, she put her hand behind her back, ready to activate her vortex manipulator. “I hate you, Autumn Rivers. With every fibre of my being, I hate you for what you’ve done to me. I… will not forgive… you.” The only sound that could be heard now was Autumn’s rapid breathing. “One.”
Autumn switched on her vortex manipulator and disappeared, and the Doctor went back to the monitor and finished typing in the coordinates.
EPILOGUE
The Eighth Great and Bountiful Human Empire – Space Lane 23
The Doctor stepped out of his TARDIS at the pit-stop, carefully parking it next to the entrance to the supplies store. He was at the centre of the empire, and the planetary complexes gathered in spectacular formations around him, reflecting the light of man-made suns. A small screen broadcasted the Empire Channel to those at the pit stop – which, at the moment, was just him.
And on the screen, a face he’d only just stared at as it crawled in hatred of him. Autumn Rivers.
“I would like to thank you,” spoke the face. She was sat against a news office backdrop – the main broadcaster. “All those who have tuned in to my broadcasts – which is about 98% of the country – I would like to thank you. You have made this possible.” She cleared her throat. “Tomorrow night, at Athene’s Arena, I will be broadcasting to the Empire, and I will finally be broadcasting the truth.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened.
“I will be revealing the name of the man who destroyed my planet. A genocidal lunatic.” She looked directly at the camera, her eyes piercing once more into the Doctor’s soul – it had been some time. He had forgotten how sharp they were. “A monster. And with all your spacecrafts and timecrafts, justice is yours. You decide how he is punished. Any one of you. All of you. This ends tomorrow.”
“Yes,” whispered the Doctor. “Yes, it does.”
The Doctor stepped out of his TARDIS at the pit-stop, carefully parking it next to the entrance to the supplies store. He was at the centre of the empire, and the planetary complexes gathered in spectacular formations around him, reflecting the light of man-made suns. A small screen broadcasted the Empire Channel to those at the pit stop – which, at the moment, was just him.
And on the screen, a face he’d only just stared at as it crawled in hatred of him. Autumn Rivers.
“I would like to thank you,” spoke the face. She was sat against a news office backdrop – the main broadcaster. “All those who have tuned in to my broadcasts – which is about 98% of the country – I would like to thank you. You have made this possible.” She cleared her throat. “Tomorrow night, at Athene’s Arena, I will be broadcasting to the Empire, and I will finally be broadcasting the truth.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened.
“I will be revealing the name of the man who destroyed my planet. A genocidal lunatic.” She looked directly at the camera, her eyes piercing once more into the Doctor’s soul – it had been some time. He had forgotten how sharp they were. “A monster. And with all your spacecrafts and timecrafts, justice is yours. You decide how he is punished. Any one of you. All of you. This ends tomorrow.”
“Yes,” whispered the Doctor. “Yes, it does.”
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Next Time
On Air
Autumn and the Doctor both become more desperate in their battle against each other, making each move more personal. How long will it be before someone gets hurt in the crossfire? And which one of them will win? Episode list: 1. Shattered Time 2. Run 3. Rebirth 4. The Doctor Dyad 5. The Infestation 6. On Air |