Episode FIVE
Welcome to Fairyland
Chapter Twenty-one
Irene
2:03 a.m
They have been arguing all night. Back and forth, back and forth the voices go. I sit on my bed hugging my pillow, and listening, listening, listening. I would fall asleep if I wasn't so scared they would make a decision and I won't be able to make them think twice.
What if he's not who he says he is? How can he be an alien? What if I die while travelling with him?
My parents have brought up some very valid points about The Doctor, but I just can't believe that this could all be a scam. Why would anyone bother? If he wanted to kidnap me, or hurt me, wouldn't he have done so already?
These arguments limit them slightly, but theirs limit me and soon it's clear that no one is going to win this.
Tony sits in the corner of my room in my beanbag, absently flipping through a Webster's Dictionary. Once when he was in ninth grade, I bet my brother that he couldn't write a book report on the dictionary. Long story short, I was out five dollars by the end of the month.
Dad finally sits down on my desk chair, and rubs his forehead. "Why are you so determined, Irene?" He snaps. Usually my father isn't quite so short with me, but it's been a long night for all of us. "You've only known him for a few days!"
"Because he's my friend! And in those few days, he saved me three times!" We've already hashed over every detail of where I've gone and what I've done since I met The Doctor. They have heard all of what I have to say and vice versa, but we still can't seem to come to a conclusion. I rub my eyes.
Weakly, I break the silence. "I'm determined because what other chance will I ever have? To do this? I mean, I'm going to die anyway. The world will move on, but maybe if I do this, I can make my life worth something before I lose it."
My dad objects, "You don't know you'll die, Irene."
"Dad, I Googled my diagnosis. I know how bad it is. Don't lie to me."
"Sweetie, the world won't just move on," Mom says, her eyes damp.
"Yes, it will. Maybe not at first, but it will move on and so will everyone living on it. Don't you see, my life doesn't mean anything while I'm here! I want to do something good before I go. I want to save someone, blow something up, live."
"Now you listen, young lady," my dad glares, standing up. "Your life means absolutely everything to us. You won't be forgotten. If you tell me one more time that the world will forget you, or move on, or whatever it is you want to say, then I will keep you home without a question. No one can save anyone with that mentality."
I'm cowering away from the icy lecture until I realize what it could mean. Scarcely daring to hope, I lift my eyes to reach his. "Are you saying that you'll let me go?"
"Only if you stop telling yourself the world will forget about you." Dad sits down next to me, and I sink towards the crater he makes in the mattress. "Even if you live under a rock for however long you have, we will never forget you."
I wrap my arms around his neck, and shut my eyes, fat tears spilling down my cheeks at an alarming rate.
"We can't let you go alone, though," Mom says hesitantly. "I could take off work." Since Mom works from home most of the time, her taking off wouldn't be a big deal. But I know that with all the treatments, they'll have to tug to make ends meet. I can't take more money away from them. I would rather just stay home.
"No, I don't want you to. You and Dad both need to work."
She seems to deflate. She already knew she couldn't do it. She was ready to sacrifice for me anyway, even if it meant we couldn't afford WiFi next month. It makes me feel awful about what a brat I've been about The Doctor, when they're already going through so much. Suddenly, the past few hours of arguing seem so pointless and void.
"Let me go," says an unexpected voice. I look over at my brother in surprise. He snaps shut the dictionary in his hands, and looks up at our parents from my beanbag. I hope I'm the only one who forgot he was there.
"Are you sure you want to?" Quizzes Mom skeptically. Tony has never enjoyed travelling. The whole process is, in his words, "just too busy".
"Sure," he smiles. I blink. I haven't seen my brother smile since the last time I spied on him and Megan and she cracked a chemistry joke that sent him reeling. In other words, it's been weeks.
"Tony, you actually mean it?" I ask.
"Yep. Do I need to pack anything, Renny?" And just like that, before anyone else can argue my brother has invited himself on board the TARDIS.
I call The Doctor the next morning, and tell him the new situation. He can come get us after I go shopping with Megan at ten this morning, and my parents want us both back by tonight. And because they specified, I have to add, "back in one piece." My parents are taking a huge risk to let both of their kids fly away from this place and time, and I don't intend to let them down.
By the time I get back from the stores with Megan, noon has come and gone without anyone taking particular notice. I jog up the stairs with a lightweight shopping bag, and stumble a little at the top of the stairs. I steady myself against the wall to stop the world from spinning around so fast, and slink into my room. Here I have to stop again, because of a tall blue barrier keeping me from my closet.
"Tony!" I shout. "He's here!"
I've never seen anyone make time from his room to mine as quickly as Tony just did. "If we go now, they don't have time to tell us how careful we ought to be," he exclaims, and dives through the doors like it's his box.
Mom runs through the door. "Where's your brother?" She asks.
"Already inside."
She nods, and gathers me into a hug. "Your dad is at the grocery store. I'll tell him that you left."
"Okay. Thanks."
She kneels down in front of me. "Be very, very careful. If you see something dangerous, stay away from it. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And keep a close eye on your brother. Keep each other safe."
"We will."
"All right. Be back by tonight, okay? No cheating with that big time machine."
I nod. "Okay."
The door opens, and Tony's head sticks out. "This is so cool!" He exclaims. "Hey, Mom."
She stands up, and kisses his forehead. "Be careful guys. Take care of each other."
"We will, Mom," Tony says, and disappears into the box after giving her a kindly smile. She's acting like we're going off to college. Which is an experience I suppose I won't have to deal with, now.
"Bye," I say. "I love you."
She gives me one last hug. "I love you too. Have fun."
I step in through the door. "Bye."
"Bye."
When the door shuts, the heaviness that follows lasts only a few seconds before I hear The Doctor's voice.
"So! Anywhere in time and space. You choose. The first Olympics. The fire breathing whale of Moscow. Aliens in Japan. Literally. Inside. The first plane!"
I walk up to the console, where Tony stands, breathing it all in.
"How does it work?" He asks. "How could we actually move through time?"
"Well I could give you the sum of the genius and really quite inspiring engineering and architecture, but frankly I don't think that's what you're here for. So go on, anywhere. What have you always wanted to see?"
Tony quiets, and thinks about it. Then he looks at me. "What do you think?"
"Well everywhere we went so far was Earth. Past Earth, future Earth. Earth, Earth, Earth. I want to see a new planet."
"A new planet it is," Tony decides. "As long as it's cool."
The Doctor smiles and jolts into action, swinging wildly around the console as we just try to hold on.
When we land, he checks out our surroundings on a scanner thing, and shoos us both to the wardrobe babbling about a famous party and ordering us to look like royalty by the time we returned.
The wardrobe has a warm, soft air to it. We walk through the cold metal door in the hallway to beat up hardwood floors that creak at every step. The cozy, safe nook of worn wood and fabric seems so wrong in such an otherwise cold environment. At first I think it is just one square room, small and square and lined with clothing racks and a low ceiling hanging overhead until Tony finds a short case of plush, carpeted stairs leading down to another hardwood floor.
"Well, why not?" I shrug. We scale down the stairs side by side, and come out in a small room just about the same, but the clothes on the racks and littered accessories late different from the floor above us.
Tony puts his hand on my shoulder, and we look back at the staircase. What steps should have been protruding from the ground, actually sink into the floor instead. My first thought is to check the doorway. It still leads to the hallway which leads to the same sun lounge. So we try this new staircase.
This network of rooms goes on until we give up and invest energy into finding clothes instead of climbing down stairs that would sink into the next floor down the moment we weren't the looking.
We return to the control room with my brother dresses in two parts of a three piece navy suit. He insisted on brandishing his gray hoodie over the collared shirt and sharp tie, and I somehow ended up in another dress while he was distracting me with arguments about the constructs of fashion and how aliens won't know a suit jacket from a zipper hoodie. Half the things that happen in this TARDIS will always remain a mystery to me, I guess.
The dress I've been saddled with this time is different than the Victorian, earthy look though. This dress is mostly loose, and carries the soft blue like the morning sky, streaks of pink sunset penetrating the shimmer. If I had to guess where it was from, I would pick good old lifeless Mars before I even considered Earth.
The Doctor claps once when he sees us, and spins towards the door.
"Why didn't you change?" I ask. Indignantly, he tugs on the lapel of his jacket.
"It's you two we're here for. Out we come." He swings the TARDIS door open for us. I lead Tony out into a blinding orange light. Once our eyes adjust, I fold my arms. The golden light has faded, and a narrow passage of puckered wood and shaky metal racks fills my vision.
"Well, this sucks."
The Doctor steps out behind us, and locks the door behind him. Tony nudges me, and corrects, "It isn't what we dressed for."
"Same thing."
"Guys. Come on. It's the baggage area. The party is through here." He leads us single file through a door and into a huge octagonal gazebo.
And when I say huge, I mean it's the size of an Italian Renaissance monument. The architecture, however, is nothing of the like. The peaked ceiling soars above sturdy pillars cut to give the illusion of rippling. These rippling columns seem to melt into the circular marble floor like butter. The wide, smooth, one-dimensional floor falters in a groove that cuts it's way cleanly through the center of the marble-like material. The longer I look at that four-foot deep pathway, the less sense it makes.
"Something's not right," The Doctor says quietly. I blink some sand out of my eyes after a breeze carries plenty to spare into my vision.
"Oh, it never is," I complain. The Doctor is right, of course.
With this kind of entrance you would expect glamor and beauty to explode in your face from the world beyond. Instead, all we find is jagged, rocky land and a surreal, blazing sky. And it feels wrong.
"We dressed for the occasion," Tony mocks under his breath. I raise my eyebrows at him. The distant chirping of some kind of bug and the screams of birds far overhead are the only sounds that manage to treat through the sharp gusts of dry wind.
"No. What?" The Doctor abandons the gazebo monument, and hops up and down on the ground. He inspects the sand, scans the pillars, gets down on his knees and presses his ear to the ground. "No. It is! This is the right planet. Right place. Right building." Then with a look of complete befuddlement, he exclaims,"Where's the rest of it?"
"Where are we?" Growls my brother. I start at his looming presence behind me. He looks ready to march me back into the TARDIS and fly away without the designated driver. The Doctor's behavior is strange, and he was already suspicious. He puts his hand on my shoulder heavily, and I know immediately if I move before he gives consent there'll be hell to pay. I glare at him.
Tony would never throw himself spontaneously into an adventure like this if it was his choice. But where family is concerned, he has the back of anyone, no matter their age. Despite being rather quiet, he fits our family like a glove. Nothing he does seems forced. I wish was more like that. No matter what I do or how I help, my family life always feels like a chore- and that makes me nothing at all like the rest of my kin.
"It's okay. This happens a lot, we don't get to the right place. It isn't a big deal."
"No, we're in the right place. Exactly the right place. But the rest of it isn't."
"If we aren't in the the right place, why are we still here?" Tony demands, and his tone simultaneously settles a chilly, hollow feeling in my chest and makes me angry that he's not giving this a chance to play out.
"No, no, we're in the right place. Are you even listening to me?"
They must have argued more, but I didn't notice, because my eyes landed on something much more fascinating than sharp retorts and hissing frustration. It wasn't more than a speck, but I'll take practically anything over listening to pointless banter. It looks like a blob in the distance, with sharp angles and broken bits scattered. "Is that a spaceship?" I ask out of pure hope, but neither hears me. My observations of the hoped-to-be spaceship don't get much further. The air wavers unnaturally, and as if emerging from another dimension, beauty emerges into this barren wasteland.
"Shh!" I jab my elbow into my brother's ribcage. He buckles just a little and punches my arm. After spreading my stance, I ram that same arm into him so he stumbles. Despite our little brawl, his other hand hasn't lifted from my left shoulder. But that doesn't seem to matter, because I'm staring wide-eyed at a real-life fairy. "Look. It's so beautiful."
And it certainly is. The silver figure seems to emit a soft light like moonlight reflects off it's skin, seemingly be untouched by the hot desert suns. It's figure is completely bare save for the strips of blue cloth floating aimlessly around its delicate figure, and exhibit few human characteristics besides the general shape of the limbs and head. Golden tassels dangle from the cloth in the air like they only have the vaguest idea of what the word "gravity" means. Its bare, elegant head seems to be ringed with eyes made entirely of pure gold, all blinking at different places and giving the strange yet wonderful impression of sentient glitter.
But really, it's the wings that take my breath away. Six in number and stemming from the figures back, they are like nothing I've ever seen before. The glorious creations of magenta flit carefully behind the fairy, decorated mainly with gold, green and black, but also adorned with every other color imaginable.
How did this anomaly appear? I don't know. One moment the hot atmosphere started shimmer like a desert mirage, and the next it stilled around this figure as if it had emerged somehow.
"Hello, hello," The Doctor creeps forward to examine the creature. "Who are you, then?"
The very air it sits in seems the glimmer. Then, the mesmerizing eyes all begin to blink at once, and it sinks from its floating position to what I think is it's knees. From it's eyes, tiny, shimmering tears start to trickle. The sight is horrible for a reason I couldn't explain to you once the liquid had evaporated in the heat. The Doctor kneels.
"Talk to me," he says it almost like it's a test. "Hm? Can you talk? Do you understand me? Irene, you saw it appear. How did it come?"
"Like through ripples. Like heat waves, or a mirage. The kind people think is water but never is when you get closer."
"That would be my fault. It was trapped elsewhere in a state of noise. Must have been. Which means if I add another wave length on top," he raises his sonic screwdriver to point it at the creature, "it should give it back its voice so we can hear it." The fairy looks up sort of in the direction of The Doctor, dozens of blank, hypnotic eyes blinking at him in unison. "Well now. Can you speak?Where are the others? Are there others?"
"Don't rush it. It looks really upset." The figure doesn't look upset, it looks startled. My instinct tells me to protect it though; the moment I saw it, I knew I would lay down my life for it. Something so beautiful as this should not be bothered by worry or shame. It's not like me to think like this, but I can only register it vaguely.
I look at Tony, but he looks more confused than mesmerized.
"My name is The Doctor," The Doctor says, coolly. "These are my friends. We are not going to hurt you. Where are you from?"
It wheezes in a breath, and I notice its shoulders rising and falling despite the distinct lack of a nose or mouth.
"We come from far, where to we would return?" Manages the creature.
"The language is mixed up," The Doctor only ever seems to explain things to me accidentally, while it sounds like he's only thinking aloud. This is one of those times. "It must be copying us, learning as it goes. That's incredible! How long have you been listening to us?"
"Your box awoke whom seek."
"We woke you up?"
"If it's copying us, how is it saying things I know I haven't said since we got here?" I ask.
Whatever answer he was planning on giving get a cut short when the fairy launches itself from its knees to hovering three feet above the ground, with one great fwap of its wings. With no warning, it roars, "The Angel of Natalie!"
I almost laugh at how suddenly this happens, but I catch myself on the slicing edge of fear. It remains, hovering, still as stone. Just like us, standing tiny and insignificant in comparison, sizing up this potential friend- or foe.
Finally, maybe just to break the dreaded silence, I pipe up, "I know for sure I haven't said that."
"Because it reads between the lines. It's not just learning English, it's reading how our language works from the inside. Working around the rules and regulations."
I snicker, forgetting myself briefly. "English? Rules? But, 'pony' rhymes with 'bologna'."
"What? You're saying this now?" The Doctor's voice implies that his jaw could have put a dent on the ground.
But I'm not done. I bring up another valid point, "But like won't it be confused? Because I'm American and you're British. Our words are all set up differently."
"Seriously? Now?"
Then, despite all his objections and nit-pickiness, Tony opens his mouth, and if my nerves weren't already shot would have sent me reeling into hysteria with the calmly delivered words, "Why, should we wait until tea-time?"
"Oh, it's hereditary! Lovely," The Doctor exclaims bitterly. My ribs hurt as I laugh, and I get off on the fact that he's annoyed when I have my brother at my elbow.
Then, with a suddenty that makes each of us jolt a different amount, more of the fairies begin to shimmer into existence. One, three, seven, ten. Dozens of the spectacular figures pass into our sight through waves like the exhaust of a hundred jet engines. They all form vast, elevated circles around the gazebo, like they're standing on surrounding invisible bleachers. Each is uniquely exquisite, and I feel the impulse to kneel.
Just as my joints are about to give out and send me tumbling to the ground, Tony grabs my wrist, but I can't tell if he's concerned more for himself or me. He pulls me back towards him. The Doctor holds up a stilling hand to us.
"It's okay. I think it's just passing the wave to the others."
"Others?" My brother's voice sounds suspiciously squeaky, like he's trying to communicate with a mouse. Mercifully, I take his hand. To my surprise, he doesn't even try to escape. He sounds breathless. "This is impossible. How many are there?"
"I don't know, but they don't belong here at all."
"Isn't it supposed to be paradise?"
"Fairies are crying," I tell my brother haughtily. "I wouldn't call it paradise."
"Okay," The Doctor's word to the beautiful creatures is more a breath. Then he raises his tone. "My name is The Doctor. Where are you from? What are you called? What happened to the rest of this planet?"
One fairy steps- flies? - forward, and waves its hand through the air. The air wavers around the fairy's lengthy, graceful fingers, and the tremor moves to surround us. When the atmosphere disturbance hovers in equal distance all around us, something emerges through it.
Not a fairy. More like... a movie screen? Yes. That's it. A surrounding screen. The screen hovers around us in a circle, enclosing The Doctor, me, and my brother in with the first angel, whose eyes begin blinking in sync once more.
"Oh, I hope it doesn't cry again," I murmur to Tony.
But it does cry again, and I feel the urge to cry with it. The white screen around us grows and melds together until it surrounds us completely. My brother grasps my hand tightly. Why does he not trust the fairy?
In my head, I hear a nagging voice that asks me once, Why do you?
But I can't answer it, and I don't like how it makes me feel. All wobbly and sad inside. So I ignore it until it goes away.
The white light around us flares brightly and fades.
"Irene, stay with your brother," The Doctor says, gazing around. As the light fades, a lush green landscape spans the glorious horizon which holds the fading colors of two sunsets at once. Sky-scraping monuments and temples made of glass and marble soar around us, some with walls, some with chimneys, some with floating candles or pools of water or rumbling waterfalls, all connected by smooth paths glowing golden with candlelight. Here we stand, in the same gazebo, but in a seemingly different dimension. The soft air smells like maple syrup, and every breeze of mint.
I'm so transfixed on the beauty spread out before me under a darkening silver sky that I don't notice the splashing sound behind me. I whirl around me, to find the strange groove cut through the floor of this gazebo. Only this time, it's filled to the brim with crystal clear water, and two women sit in it, giggling and speaking in a foreign tongue. Their hair is styled on their heads like something I've never seen. One of them sports purple and has it stacked and curled on top of her scalp, and the other's is dark brown and orange, gelled and woven into every kind of braid imaginable. Both of their hairdos are adorned with beads, charms, and metal chains. Through the water, I crisp white tails glint in the fading light of the setting suns.
"Doctor, why don't we understand them?" I ask softly, and am startled by the clarity and sharpness of my own voice. Every sound made in this world, the music, the laughter, the wind, is oddly muffled.
"I don't know," comes the answer.
All of a sudden, the candles around us go out. The mermaids, clearly alarmed, whisper to each other and dive away, following the now complete pathway from the gazebo to a different building. But the darkness follows them. As the seconds tick past, candles begin to go out faster and faster. By the time the last sliver of sun disappears over the horizon, every building, as far as the eye can see is submerged in darkness.
"What's happening?" I breathe. The muffled sound of rumbling, crashing chaos cascades from the buildings which used to be cloaked in light and music. The temperature seems to be dropping. Then a horrible, horrible sound penetrates the air- screaming. And not your regular scream. A wild, banshee-ripping-her-hair-out scream that bounces down from the domed night sky that slowly fills with stars, and penetrates not only your ear but your soul. The kind you have no choice but to fear.
I clasp my brother's hand, and squeeze my eyes shut tears make their way to my eyes, and slice at my eyelids. The scream gets louder and Tony puts his arm around me. I latch onto his torso, and pray for it to be over. And then- it is.
And the glaring desert sunlight on my eyelids is back. And the air is dry and broiling.
I hesitantly open my eyes, and find myself standing in the same gazebo, my arms around the same brother, with the desert and the audience of fairies encircling us.
"Our friends were taken. Our world lost," the first fairy informs us.
"And you're... what? The leftovers? And you want them back?" The Doctor sounds out of breath.
All at once, every single fairy around us inclines their head.
The first one, neck bent like the rest, says, "You are The Doctor. You will help us." It's phrased more like a question than a statement. Then in a heavenly chorus, the fairies all declare, "help us, help us," over and over again until their voices are one and the statement sends tremors through the gazebo floor with it's power.
Tony leans down and asks quietly in my ear, "is it always like this?"
I smile shakily, and nod. "Honestly? I think so."
So... I may have accidentally skipped a month of publishing. In my defense, I did lose my tablet, so it was difficult to write very much for a couple weeks there. Anyway, I'm sorry. I hope you enjoyed this chapter anyhow!
Read On, Awkward Ferrets!
~TheLivingParadox