'Making it all up as he goes along,' Rory said to Amy as they scampered to keep up.
'Or business as usual, as it's also known,' she replied.
They began to ascend a slope through the trees. The glare of sunlight off the untouched snow was so bright they had to squint. It was hard going. Amy slipped and almost fell over. Rory chuckled so much, he did fall over. He slithered a bit too. Amy laughed, and gave him a hand to hoist him up. The Doctor kept straight on up the slope, swinging his lanky arms for balance, cheerfully singing 'I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In'.
'Come on!' he shouted encouragingly. 'As a canon!'
'We can't even stand up,' Amy shouted back, 'let alone manage a three-part harmony!'
'Come up here! Come on!' the Doctor cried.
They joined him at the top of the rise. The view spread out below them, bright in the sunlight: woodland and fields, hills, mountains, a glorious snowscape, peaceful and still, entirely serene.
'That's pretty stunning,' said Amy.
'It is,' Rory agreed. 'It really is. It's not Leadworth, of course.'
'No,' said the Doctor.
'Unless Leadworth looked like this in, I don't know, the ninth century?' said Rory.
'With those mountains?' asked Amy.
'So, in fairness, it's not even Leadworth- ish, is it?'
asked Rory.
'Yeah, but look at the pretty,' said the Doctor.
They were forced to agree that the pretty was really very pretty, and they looked at it admiringly for a while.
Ts that a village down there?' asked Amy.
'There's something very strange about those mountains,' said Rory.
'Village?' asked the Doctor.
'Down there, through the trees,' replied Amy, pointing. 'There, you see? I dunno, about a mile away?'
'I think you're right,' said the Doctor.
'The mountains,' said Rory, shielding his eyes from the glare. 'Very odd.'
'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'That's because they're not mountains. I don't think they're mountains, anyway.
Come on!'
He set off down the slope.
'Where are you going?' Amy called after him.
'What do you mean, you don't think they're mountains?' asked Rory.
'We're going to visit that village!' the Doctor announced. 'I mean, since we're here! We might get a lovely Christmas-y welcome! That'd be worth the trip, wouldn't it?'
Rory and Amy looked at each other and then back at the Doctor.
'What did you mean?' Rory repeated. 'Are you saying they're mountain- ish?'
'Come on!' the Doctor cried, stretching out his arms as he strode down the bank. 'Fill your lungs! Ahhhh!
Taste that fresh air! Work up an appetite for all that Christmas pud!'
Amy shook her head and set off after the Doctor.
Rory paused for a moment and zipped his cardigan right up to the top.
'You know what?' he said. 'It really is ever so cold.'
'Come on!' called Amy.
'It's all right for you, duffel coat,' said Rory. 'I mean, it is very pretty, it really is. But it's cold and it's very...
dead. There's nothing around. It's so still and quiet and... bleak.'
The Doctor spun on his heels and pointed at Rory dramatically.
'Exactly! And a bleak midwinter, cruel frost notwithstanding, is exactly the vicinity in which you'd expect to find a really Christmas-y Christmas! So let's do that very thing!'
'Could I go back and get a coat first?' asked Rory.
'Please? It's really cold. And if this is the most Christmas-y Christmas to end all Christmases, I'd like to enjoy it and not be all dead of frostbite.'
'He is turning blue,' said Amy.
'I'll just be two minutes,' said Rory. 'Promise.'
The Doctor smiled.
'Of course. Well wait right here. Well be enjoying the view. Because it is, as you'll agree, magnificent.'
He took the TARDIS key out of his pocket and threw it to Rory. Rory caught it neatly and held up both index fingers
'Two minutes,' he repeated, and ran off down the rise behind him. Amy and the Doctor turned to stare at the beautiful scenery again. The sun was very bright.
Amy turned her mittened hand into a peak over her eyes.
'What did you mean about those mountains?' she asked.
'Just thinking aloud,' said the Doctor.
There was a long pause.
'Will he be all right?' she asked.
'He's only popped back to get a coat.'
'We should have gone with him,' she said.
'I think he can manage a coat.'
Amy glanced at him.
'We should have stayed together,' she said. 'Don't tut. We don't know where we are, and we just separated. I'm all right with you, but he's on his own.
Which one of us is going to get into trouble and need rescuing? Come on, answer me that?'
The Doctor lowered his chin and turned cautiously to meet her look.
'Are you suggesting,' he asked, 'we could be setting ourselves up for some unnecessary shouting and running about later on?
Amy nodded.
'All right, well go and keep him company,' said the Doctor. They turned to head back over the slope after Rory.
And came to a dead stop.
Half a dozen men were standing at the top of the rise in front of them. They were dressed in several layers of heavy, dark clothes, proof against the cold.
They wore hoods and mittens and cleated snow boots, and carried hefty farm tools: rakes, hoes and forks.
Amy couldn't help noticing how grim and wary the men looked. How intent.
'Is this the lovely Christmas-y welcome you were looking for?' Amy whispered.
The Doctor looked a little uneasy. He regarded the heavy farm tools that were being aimed at them in a manner that unpleasantly suggested spears.
He spread his arms in an open, friendly gesture and took a step forward.
'Hoe hoe hoe?' he tried.
Chapter
2
Let Nothing You Dismay
Rory stepped out of the TARDIS, pulling on a pair of thick gloves to go with the parka he'd borrowed. He carefully locked the TARDIS door behind him.
Amy?' he called, setting off in the direction they had been walking. 'Doctor?'
It was definitely the right way. He could see the three tracks of footprints, plus the fourth he'd left doubling back. The snow cover was perfect. Apart from their footprints, not an inch of it had been disturbed.
'Amy? Doctor?'
Rory made his way back to the rise where they had enjoyed the view. He stopped. There was no sign of his wife or the Doctor.
Rory wasn't especially worried at first. He was used to this. It was the kind of thing that happened a lot.
People wandered off or got distracted. People didn't wait for you where they said they'd wait (which was rubbish of them, in his opinion, because he'd once waited in more or less the same place for a couple of thousand years). Sometimes, people noticed more interesting things going on around the comer while you were looking the other way. And that was before you considered the equally likely idea that the Doctor and Amy might be behind some trees nearby, skilfully constructing snowballs with which to greet him.
'Amy?'
Rory started to hunt around. He thought about scrunching together a pre-emptive snowball of his own.
He saw the tracks, the footprints of the Doctor and Amy, running a little way down the slope and back. On the top of the rise, was a mass of footprints that had arrived from the left along the line of the hill and apparently departed the same way.
Rory registered the very first twinge of worry.
'There's a perfectly reasonable explanation,' Rory told himself. 'They've met some nice people and gone off with them. Some... carol singers. They've gone carolling.'
He didn't stop to examine the logic holes in that statement. He set off after the footprints. He'd been gone ten minutes a
t most. How far could they have got?
After a few minutes' walk, it became evident that
'far enough to be out of sight' was the basic answer to that. Rory felt a little bit more worry. The heavy parka and the effort of tramping through the snow was actually making him feel a little warm. He stopped and took stock.
'Amy? Doctor?'
The bare trees with their heavy burdens of snow echoed his calls back to him.
Something moved.
Rory saw figures up ahead. He stepped forward, starting to smile in relief, ready to scold them for leaving him behind.
He froze in his tracks. His newborn smile froze too.
It wasn't the Doctor. It wasn't Amy. It wasn't any nice friendly people they might have met along the way, either.
Rory knew that a snowball wasn't really going to cut it in the circumstances. He realised he needed to hide, very well and very quickly.
He skipped right past worry and went straight to feeling properly, deeply scared.
'Who in Guide's name are they?' asked Bill Groan.
Old Winnowner shook her head.
'They're not faces I ever knew, Elect,' she said.
Winnowner Cropper was the oldest Morphan in Beside, the last of her generation. She was also the wisest of Bill Groan's councillors. If anyone knew, Bill Groan reasoned, it would be her.
'Bet they'll be from one of the other plantnations, Elect,' said Samewell.
Bill Groan looked at the young man. Samewell Crook saw the good side in everything. Bill Groan had an uneasy feeling that there wasn't much of a good side to anything just now.
'They don't look like Morphans,' said Bel Flurrish.
Her voice was small and hard, as though it was huddling from the cold inside her.
'They have all kind of different fashions,' said Samewell. 'In Seeside, they have real hats. I heard that.
Guide's truth.'
'We haven't had well wishers at the festival for three years,' said Old Winnowner. 'Not since the ice started coming.'
'Well, they're making an effort this year, then, aren't they?' said Samewell.
'They're not wearing hats,' said Bel.
'Jack Duggat's party found them over at the top end of Would Be,' said Bill Groan.
'Then maybe they can say where my sister is,' said Bel.
Jack Duggat's men, their farm tools hefted like the weapons the old martials carried in Guide's books of Earth before, were leading the two visitors into the main yard. Quite a crowd of folk who were not labouring or searching had come out of their houses to watch.
One of the two strangers was tall and alert, smiling and looking at everything around him. He reminded Bel Flurrish of an inquisitive cockerel, walking comb-up into everything, heedless of its own safety. There was something in his openness that slightly reassured her. A person whose face could hold that kind of expression was not, in her opinion, a person who could do harm to another person.
The second visitor was a girl. She looked cautious, but there was a strength in her. She had red hair. Bel had never seen red hair. She'd never seen anything like it, except in Guide's books. How could something that had only ever been known of on Earth before find its way to Hereafter?
'I want to talk to them, Elect,' said Bel.
'I think you'll find it's my job,' said Bill Groan.
'I think you'll find it's my sister,' Bel replied.
Bill Groan was the elected leader of the Beside plantnation. He was a good man, with dark hair and a beard that had started to show grey the first year the winter wore white. He looked at Bel, right into her hard, angry eyes.
'You know I'm taking this serious, Arabel,' he said.
'Your sister disappearing is a Cat A matter. And now these strangers arrive? It's a concern. But there's a process. I got to do this right.'
'Then I want to be present,' she said. 'Guide help me, I deserve to be present.'
Bill glanced at Old Winnowner, saw the tiny nod she made, and told Bel Flurrish yes.
'Take them on into the assembly,' he told Jack Duggat.
The tall visitor heard him say this, and turned towards Bill Groan with a smile.
'Hello, I'm the Doctor!' he announced, stepping towards Bill. A hoe and a pitching fork crossed in front of him to block his way. 'Oh, dear!' he said, recoiling from the heavy wooden shafts. 'I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. I really do. Are you in charge? I'd love to go out and come back in again. You know? Start over! How would that be?'
'That's a funny accent, Elect,' Winnowner said, sidelong, to Bill Groan.
'Indeed.'
The Doctor and Amy watched the locals muttering about them.
'You're freaking them out, and they've got the pointy forks,' Amy whispered to the Doctor.
'Yes, they have,' he mused. 'Am I?'
'You really are,' said Amy. 'Could we just play along for now?'
She was shivering slightly, her arms folded tight across her chest. 'On the bright side, they might take us in the warm before they stab us to death with gardening implements.'
The leader of the community council beckoned, and the two visitors were escorted across the snowy yard into the assembly. Firebuckets had been lit, and the solamps turned on. The hall was warm and brown: worn wood beams and seats, polished from years of use and care, floorboards gleaming from a history of footsteps. The nails and pegs that had been used in the building of the assembly were made of shipskin.
Amy stood as close to one of the sputtering firebuckets as she could, basking. She took off her mittens. They were looped inside the sleeves of her duffel coat on a piece of elastic.
The Doctor looked around. He gazed up at the beamed roof. He looked at the circular inlays of metal patterning the worn wooden floor, the metal seams in the beams and ceiling posts.
'This is old,' he said. 'Beautifully made.'
Amy watched him. He crouched down beside one of the wooden guard rails that surrounded the open space they had been led into. He ran an appreciative fingertip along it, like an antiques expert.
'Those nails,' he murmured.
Amy raised her eyebrows. 'The nails matter?
Really? Now? Do they really?'
The Doctor stood up. 'They might,' he said.
'Rory's out there. On his own. Looking for us,' said Amy. 'Can we get a move on, and persuade them to let us go?'
Jack Duggat's men took up a guard position at the assembly doors. Some Morphans filed in and took their seats. Bill Groan and other plantnation council members sat in the semicircle of chairs at the head of the chamber.
'Who are you?' Bill Groan asked.
'I'm the Doctor,' said the Doctor.
'You're a doctor?' asked Old Winnowner. 'Of what?
Physic? Medicine?'
'All sorts of things,' said the Doctor.
There was a murmur. The council conferred.
'This is Amy Pond,' said the Doctor.
'An honest Morphan name,' noted Chaunce Plowrite.
'Thank you,' said Amy. 'I think.'
'Is she your wife?' asked Old Winnowner.
'Oh no!' declared the Doctor.
'No need to sound so outraged. I could be,' Amy hissed at him. 'I'm not, though,' she said to the council.
'We're all kind of friends, really,' said the Doctor.
'It's very informal. We don't stand on ceremony, do we, Pond?'
'Almost never,' said Amy.
'But this is a more formal occasion,' the Doctor went on, pointing an expressive, flexible forefinger at Bill Groan. 'And you're in charge of this community, aren't you?'
'It's been my honour to serve Beside as Nurse Elect of the council for eight years,' said Bill Groan. 'It's not a burden I take lightly, as these people know.'
'Of course not, of course not,' said the Doctor.
'And Nurse, such an interesting word. From the Latin, nutricius, person who nourishes. Nurse as in nursery, as in a place where plants and animals are fostered and bred.'
The counci
l members started talking to each other animatedly.
'What are you doing?' Amy asked the Doctor, sidling up to him and whispering through the fixed grin she was aiming towards the council.
'Just establishing some context,' he replied. 'Nurse Elect. It's a high-status title. A leader. He's the chap with the beard.'
'They've all got beards, Doctor,' said Amy.
'Be fair. She hasn't.'
'Wait,' said Amy. 'That bloke's job title derives from Latin? How?'
'The usual way.'
'But Rory was right. This isn't Leadworth,' she whispered. 'This isn't even Earth. So how can they have a Latin name for something?'
'Wherever we are, it's Earth -ish,' said the Doctor.
'Very Earth-ish, in fact. My guess is it's getting more Earth-ish with every passing day. And these people are very much human.'
'Why are we wasting time with this chit-chat?' Bel Flurrish asked, her voice louder than any other in the hall. The place fell quiet. She stood up from her seat in the congregation, and glared at the council and the three visitors.
'Come now, Arabel,' said Bill Groan.
'As Guide is my witness, Elect,' said Bel, 'you're just chattering while time runs away. Why don't you ask them a proper question?'
'Oh, good idea!' said the Doctor enthusiastically. 'I like getting down to the nitty-gritty. Like what?'
Bel glowered at him, not at all warmed by his charm.
'Like where do you actually come from? You're not from Beside, so which plantnation are you from?'
Amy looked at the Doctor. 'Plant nation?' she mouthed.
The Doctor pulled a face and shrugged in a slightly convulsive way.
'That's... hard to answer, Bel,' he said.
'Really?' asked Bel. 'I wouldn't have thought it was.
There are only three plantnations on Hereafter, so it's not difficult to choose.'
'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'Next?'
'Very well,' said Bel. 'What have you done with my sister?'
Chapter
3
If Thou Knowst Thy Telling
'I think we should try to smooth things out,' said the Doctor, opening his hands in a gentle, calming gesture.
He turned slowly so that, one by one, he caught the eye of everyone in the assembly and shared a moment of his reassuring smile.
He fixed his gaze on Jack Duggat. Jack Duggat was a big man, tallest of all the Beside Morphans, and the hoe in his fists was big too. It looked substantial enough to skewer a humpback whale.