Part 18 (1/2)

So they were building their raft and preparing themselves to go white watering or black watering or whatever it is they call it. Plunging headlong and heedlessly I call it, giving yourself up to the recklessness of water. I myself like to be in command of where I'm going and the means by which I'm getting there.

I'm Iris, remember? We're back in my journals - these cramped, recollected notes cribbed after the event which, of course, might well lessen your suspense, dearest reader, in that my narrating from the future, back on past events, alerts you to the fact that I at least survived!

Ah, but in what form? That's what you have to ask yourself. The thing about someone of my gifts and faculties is that even now, when I speak to you from the future, you still don't know how I came through these shenanigans. Or if I even did. So back up goes the suspense level.

Crank it up. The Doctor and I were in dire peril again - naturally.

Because it was round about this time, during our peregrinations in the gaudy and perplexing Forest of Kestheven that we were gathered up and captured - ah, captured; how that verb makes your ears p.r.i.c.k up -by certain birds of paradise.

I call them that, but I never knew their true name. I was never very scientific. Not like the Doctor who, seemingly without effort, could pull out of his hat the preferred and correct race name, species type etc., etc., of any of the creatures and peoples he encountered. It was he who gave me a ticking off for still calling (rather picturesquely, I thought) the Earth Reptiles we had both encountered Silurians and Sea Devils. Very incorrect, he said solemnly - as bad as those creatures calling human beings ape primitives.Well.

What these birds looked like to me, at any rate, were birds of paradise.

Each one distinct and gorgeously arrayed. They alighted in a loose and splendid ring about us one day when we were a fair distance from the sanctuary of my bus. The Doctor had decided that we ought to forage on ahead, checking out the backwaters of the woods, where the bus couldn't penetrate the gloom. The air whirred, buzzed and hummed as the birds riffled heavily down through the lofty branches. Each stared at us beadily, the tallest of them fully seven feet high. What a hat I could make, I found myself thinking, just by plucking up the golden, crimson, aquamarine plumes they had shed as they settled on the ground around us. But I suppressed the thought. It seemed that we were in rather grave danger.

Beside me the Doctor was rigid with surprise and a certain wariness. I looked and this time was struck by the savage hooked bills of the birds.

Each was dull black and gold and they were sharp as knives. Their claws were lizard-like and dextrous as those of any humanoid species.

So we stood for some moments, appraising each other. Then our stillness was broken by the Doctor's sudden, violent sneezing.'I must be allergic,' he said, frowning, and sneezing again.

Then one of the birds, a shabby brown wren, said in a nasal and bored-sounding voice,'Bring these two aloft.'

And before we could say a word in our defence or protest, we were gripped by those scaled, prehensile claws and the air was whisked up into a feathery, leafy storm once more, as we were borne high up into the trees, where the birds had established a society and a city of their own. It was quite absurd; I clutched my bag and my clothing to me as I was lifted, quite gently, really, and focused on the Doctor as he sneezed and sneezed, bundled into the ample breast of an equally stricken-looking and disdainful roc.

When we were set down again, it was on to a surprisingly steady platform constructed from a kind of grey wattle and daub. The birds had built themselves an intricate system of tree houses and walkways from the detritus of the forest floor. We were bullied wordlessly into a covered pen, some several hundred feet up an ancient tree, and forced to sit in the company of a family of terrifled-looking swine.

Wearily the Doctor rubbed his nose and blew it hard into his hanky.'I think that's the first animal allergy I've ever developed.'

I wasn't surprised. There was a hothouse stink in this canopy of trees.

The pigs stank, too. They were huddled in a dark corner of the straw-filled pen, glaring at us with alarm.

'I think we're in the larder,' I said.

The Doctor shushed me in case I alarmed the pigs any more. He addressed them.'How long have you been here?'

'I don't think they can talk.'

'Jo Grant once told me that about a bunch of chickens we met. She laughed at me for being overly polite.'

'Those chickens that picked us up aren't very polite.'

'Exactly.'

The black, hairy pigs snuffled and shuffled in the straw and never said a word.

'I hate being derailed like this,' the Doctor said.

'I imagine,' I said, stretching out on the lumpy floor.'that they'll let us know soon what they have in mind for us.'

'Sometimes all of life seems to be about who takes whom prisoner,' he complained.

”That's the company you keep.'

'I think I've become addicted to that wonderful moment when you spring free of a trap. When you think the game is up and you'll never get out.

Then, suddenly, you're out, clean as a whistle, and a player again.'

'Oh, Doctor,' I chuckled at him.

'What?' I shrugged. 'You're laughing at me.'

'Perhaps.'

'Well, don't: 'You know,' I said.'I'm probably one of the few people who knew you when you were in that very first incarnation of yours. Newly on the run from Gallifrey. So young. So impetuous.Your hair not even white yet.You looked younger then than you do now. A bit of a bruiser you looked. A hothead.'

'Was I really?'

'You'd flung yourself into the French Revolution.You'd freed yourself from dungeon after dungeon. A proper Scarlet Pimpernel. And back then you said exactly the same thing to me. You told me what you've just told me now. That your biggest thrill was magicking yourself out of captivity.'

'So I haven't changed much?'

'Not at all,' I said, and he sighed.

'I'm not as much of a... what did you call it? A bruiser?'

'Your first self was.When he was young, at any rate. A touch of the old Empire about him. No, you're not the same as that. More so than your other selves, I get the impression that now you are more...

magnanimous, perhaps. You go out of your way to get to know people, in a way that you never did before. You're much less of the mystery man.'

'There's only so long,' he said,'that you can hold yourself apart from the rest of the world.'

I must admit, I felt my hearts jump up daringly at his words.Yet I still couldn't ask him what he felt about me. It would be ridiculous and grotesque, perhaps, to even try. I didn't want to become just one more thing for him to escape.

Then I thought, How ridiculous. That we're stuck in a roomful of pigs bred for fodder by a race of b.l.o.o.d.y parrots and I'm thinking about a man I've loved for hundreds of years. And it became a whole lot more ridiculous when we were dragged, under protest, into the birds' council chamber and made to talk. The birds, it seemed were fond of stories.

And we were made to talk for our lives.

The self-satisfied wren-like leader sat on a plinth, surrounded by a motley guard and listened to us as we were forced to blether on in a ragged, improvised duet. The rafters were full of brilliant birds, all listening to us. I thought of Scheherazade in the old, old tale, talking for her life and that of her sister, bargaining with the bloodthirsty sultan, who was just as fond of tall tales. That night the Doctor and I racked our brains. We had a lot of stories to tell.

Already they had travelled some miles aboard the uncomfortable craft that Gila had knocked together from bits and pieces. There was something quite balmy and relaxing about simply letting themselves be tugged along by the boiling current like that. They hardly needed to punt themselves at all. Gila stretched out and dozed, content to give himself up to the elements.

Sam lay beside him. It was like being in somebody's bloodstream and heading for the heart. She couldn't quite be sure if it was any lighter yet.

Her eyes were playing tricks on her, and maybe she was just becoming used to this gloom.

A noise roused her out of her half-sleep. She saw those pale metal hands clutching themselves together again, flapping and wheeling like a rainbird. The eyeb.a.l.l.s goggled curiously on the ends of their digits at Sam and the still-sleeping alligator man. The hands of the d.u.c.h.ess winged effortlessly over them, and then pa.s.sed on ahead into the tunnel, as if showing them the way. Then the hands were swallowed up in the dark.