Trick or Treat: The ficlets
I had four trick-or-treaters this year, and here are the results: in all cases, Whoniverse ficlets.
Those familiar with the Unconventional Courtship prompt list will perhaps recognise prompt 128 as an inspiration for this ficlet.
The woods were chilly, dark and damp. Huddled morosely over an exiguous fire, Clyde was not in a good mood.
"That bloke in the shop really needs to keep an eye on his stock," he grumbled. "Seems every time we go near the place he's had some insanely dangerous artefact nicked. And who's he send into history to get it, every time?"
"You don't know it's always us he sends," Rani said. She cautiously placed another branch on the fire.
"If he doesn't, that means he's even worse at hanging onto stuff, doesn't it? Seriously, if I was that parrot I'd sack him and get someone who knew what they were doing."
"Be careful what you wish for. Maybe the parrot'd pick you, and you'd be doing this full time." Rani shivered, and pulled her coat tighter. "I hope that Earl gets a move on. The sooner we can get that chronostuff off him, the sooner we can get back to the twenty-first century and get something to eat."
"'Get that chronostuff off him,'" Clyde repeated. "Sounds really easy, doesn't it, when you put it like that? 'Oh, sorry, your lordship, can we search you in case you've got something that could be disguised as anything metal?' He'd have his footmen thrash us. And probably have me locked up as an escaped slave."
"Well, we'd better think of something." Rani got to her feet. "I'm starving - I'll see if I can find some berries or something. Can I borrow your torch?"
"Here." Clyde tossed the slender cylinder to her. "Take care."
"Of course. See if you can come up with a plan by the time I come back."
She disappeared between the trees. For a few minutes the beam of the torch could be seen, but then it was lost to view. Clyde bent over the fire, trying vainly to coax flame from damp wood and leaves.
Something hard and metallic was pressed against his back.
"Stand and deliver!" a hoarse voice croaked. "Stay where you are, boy. Hands in the air."
Clyde stiffened, and raised his hands, to be met with the sound of Rani's laughter.
"I really had you going there, didn't I?" she said, walking around the fire. She held out a handful of blackberries. "Want one?"
"Stop mucking around, Rani. I'm not in the mood for it."
"I'm not mucking around." Rani helped herself to a blackberry. "You really thought I was a highwayman, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Right. So that's what I'll do when the Earl comes by. I stick him up, grab his gun or whatever, and search him for valuables. You hide in the trees and if there's any trouble, I'll call you."
Clyde looked dubious. "I hate this plan. You'll get yourself killed. Why can't I be the one that holds him up?"
"You'd be in a lot more danger than I would. Like you said, he might think you're an escaped slave or something. But if he catches me... well, you know what happens in books whenever a highwayman turns out to be a girl in disguise."
"Specially if she's an exotic foreign beauty," Clyde said. "Those are books. Things like that don't happen in real life."
"Says the boy two hundred years in his own past." Rani suddenly put a finger to her lips. "I can hear horses. That's got to be the Earl coming now."
"Right." Clyde squared his shoulders. "We'd better get going, then."
Rani kicked dirt onto the fire, extinguishing it with pitiful ease. "Ready when you are. Oh, and thanks."
"Thanks for what?"
"'Exotic foreign beauty.'" Rani gave him a teasing smile. "Nice to know you think of me like that."
(This one got away from me rather)
"Letter for you," Mrs Jones said, setting it down on the breakfast table beside Rachel Defwydd's plate of bacon and eggs.
Ray picked up the envelope and turned it over in her hands. There was no address, and no stamp: only her name.
"But no-one knows I'm staying here," she said, more to herself than Mrs Jones. "It's only because I had that puncture yesterday. Otherwise I'd be on the other side of Dolgellau by now."
Speculation proving fruitless, she opened the envelope. Inside was a picture postcard of a lake surrounded by rocky cliffs, unmarked except for a cross and the simple text "7pm".
"That looks like Llyn Cau," Mrs Jones remarked, looking over Ray's shoulder. "What's that all about, then?"
Ray shook her head. "I wish I knew." She set the mysterious postcard aside and returned to her breakfast. "He didn't post it - he put it through the door. Why didn't he just come in and talk to me?"
"He?" the landlady repeated. From her tone it was clear that she suspected romance, and was determined not to permit it under her roof.
"Or she," Ray said. "Whoever sent it."
Mrs Jones was bent over the teapot, but it was clear she was tending it with less than complete attention. "You don't know who it was who sent you this, then?"
"No," Ray said, firmly suppressing any guesses she might have.
⁂
Ray had left the guesthouse that morning firmly telling herself that she was going to ignore the mysterious postcard, and continue her journey as she'd planned. A few miles down the road, she had conceded that she might, at least, break her journey in the area of Llyn Cau. By the time she parked the Vincent at the end of a rutted lane and set off up the steep mountain trail, she was certainly open to the possibility that she might hang around until the time stated on the postcard. And long before she reached the lake itself, her rational side had thrown in the towel altogether.
She walked along the shore of the lake until she found the spot from which the picture on the postcard had been taken. Then she walked to the rock that had been marked. Close to, it was just a rock, unremarkable in every way. On the postcard, the sky had been clear, the peak of Cader Idris sharply outlined against it, but now the summit was lost in cloud.
Ray decided that, while she certainly wasn't going to stay till evening, it would do no harm to rest for a while beside the lake before setting out on the return journey. She perched on a nearby rock, pulled off her boots and socks, and dipped her feet in the chilly water of the lake. As she waited for her feet to dry again, she looked up at the mountain: the clouds concealing its summit definitely looked lower. By the time her feet were dry and her boots were back on, the banks of cloud were rolling down the mountain slopes, and the trail by which she'd arrived was already lost to view. Ray looked around, but it seemed that no other hikers had been similarly caught: she was alone in this hollow of the hills, with the fog and darkness closing in around her.
For want of anything better to do, Ray spent the next few hours forcing herself to pace to and fro, fighting to keep warm in the cold air and the damp mist. She'd left her helmet with the Vincent and had brought no other hat; there was a scarf in her pocket, but tying that around her head had not made a brilliant substitute.
When the fog suddenly blazed with golden-red light behind her, accompanied by the crackling of burning wood, she instinctively checked her watch. It was exactly seven o'clock. Slowly, she turned. A rock she'd walked past a few seconds before now had a small bonfire burning at its base. And, sitting on a larger rock close at hand was a familiar figure. His face was shadowed by the cream-coloured hat on his head, but the red-handled umbrella in his hand could only have belonged to one person.
Ray slowly approached the fire, and cleared her throat.
"Doctor?" she said.
The man looked up. Without question he was the Doctor, though he looked a few years older than the last time Ray had seen him.
"Rachel Defwydd," he replied. "Whatever brings you here?"
Ray folded her arms. "Don't play games with me, Doctor. You sent me that postcard - only you could have done that. No-one else knew I was staying there."
"I haven't sent you anything." The Doctor poked at the fire with his umbrella. "Or rather, I haven't sent you anything yet. You say you received a postcard?"
Ray dug in her jacket and held it out to him. "There."
"Ah." The Doctor turned the card over in his hands, then briefly held it to his ear. "I see. Well, it appears one of us was quite anxious that we should meet here tonight."
"What do you mean, 'one of us'?" Ray asked. "You're the one who sent that card. I didn't know you were going to be here."
The Doctor made no answer.
"All right, I guessed it was you," Ray went on. "And then I thought I might as well..." She groaned. "I might as well hang around for hours on the off-chance that you'd show up. Could I be any more obvious?"
"If you'd like to be, I've got a coat somewhere that would help," the Doctor said. "It might be a bit large for you, though."
Before Ray could answer, she was caught unawares by a sneeze. The Doctor hurried round to her side of the fire.
"On second thoughts, put this on," he said, taking off his own overcoat and draping it round her shoulders. "I presume you're not planning to stay on this mountain all night?"
Ray tried to laugh, but it sounded far more nervous than she'd expected. "They say if you do, you go mad. Or become a poet."
"Well, then, if you want to go, the path's in that direction." The Doctor pointed at a patch of darker shadow in the mist. "Walk in that direction and you'll come to a cairn: that's the start of the path. It's all straightforward from there as long as you remember not to take the right turn by the marsh. If you need a torch there's one in the coat."
Ray showed no sign of following his directions. "What if I don't want to go?"
"Then you had better be prepared."
"Prepared?" Ray looked up at the Doctor. "What for?"
"Whatever comes out of the dark," the Doctor said. "Madness, or poetry. Maybe nothing more than a nasty little cyborg, perhaps something that was ancient and terrible when this galaxy was young." He pointed his umbrella in the opposite direction from the path that led down. "There's something living here, Rachel. Something that does not belong. I thought I'd have a little chat with it."
Ray swallowed. "Then I'm staying with you. Maybe there's something I can do to help."
"Good to have you around." The Doctor gave her an approving smile. "But don't say you weren't warned."
This was for an unfilled Obscure & British prompt: Mel Bush, Sabalom Glitz, Wedding
"You're up to something, Sabbie," Mel said, planting a good-morning kiss on her husband's cheek.
Glitz gave her a look which had deflected the suspicions of countless inquisitive policemen and customs officials. "Who, me?"
"I can tell." Mel crossed to the refrigerator and poured herself the glass of unsweetened apple juice that comprised her entire breakfast. "What's it this time?"
"Well, nothing dodgy, obviously," Glitz said, falling deftly back to his next line of defence.
"Obviously." Mel sipped her apple juice. "Because you know I'd never stand for anything like that."
"Right. This is a dead cert, all above-board. We could really make a go of this ship as a wedding venue. That's where the smart money's going, these days. Put us in synchronous orbit round the Scarlet Moon of Galthunia, set up the chairs and stuff in the astrodome, and you'd have couples lining up to tie the knot. If the novelty wears off, take the ship somewhere else and start again." He pushed a tablet computer across the table to her. "Look, here's the paperwork."
Mel took her seat and paged through several screens of legalese. "Sabbie, this is all in my name."
"Sorry, love, that's the only way it'll work. You see, owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding - before I met you, of course -"
"- You're not allowed to do business in the Galthunia system." Mel continued reading. "Hang on, you want me to do the actual marrying bit? Don't you need to be an approved registrar or a vicar or something?"
Glitz waved his hand. "Don't worry. I know this hermit on Rosway who does the right courses. Get you the certificate, no trouble."
"He's a hermit and he takes courses?"
"Always useful to have a sideline."
"And it does save on hiring a proper registrar." Mel was by now absorbed in the details. "Well, I suppose it might work. But we'll have to make sure we do things properly. It'll be these people's big day, Sabbie. If we cut corners it'll ruin everything for them."
"Well, of course it's got to look all right..."
"We'll need purple drapes," Mel said firmly. "And gold leaf. And cherubs. And you can leave the publicity material to me, I'm a whizz at desktop publishing. Remember I told you I did all the posters for the Pease Pottage summer fete?"
Glitz nodded. He'd never seen the posters in question, but he could easily picture them. His wife had never seen a piece of clipart she didn't want to use, and even on something as simple as a shopping list made sure to include every font in the computer's repertoire.
"Ooh, are these the prices?" Mel went on, momentarily distracted. "You've thought it all out, haven't you? Bells extra. Singers extra. Exotic dancer extra... that had just better not be me."
"Nah," Glitz said, hastily making a few mental adjustments to his business plan. "I know a bloke who runs an agency. Exotic dancers, racing drivers, robot angels, midget butlers... you name them, he can find them."
"I was wondering why those butlers were on the list. Is there a lot of call for them?"
Glitz shrugged. "I s'pose there's got to be a market. Never had much to do with them myself."
"Photos extra," Mel went on. "Video extra. Holograms extra. These are quite expensive prices, Sabbie."
"That's the business model, love. Cheap and cheerful basics, rake it in on the extras."
"Cake extra." Mel frowned at the tablet. "I don't see how you can generate that sort of margin, unless... Sabalom Glitz! It's Hold 2, isn't it? That load of frozen cakes you can't shift. Which isn't surprising, they taste like cotton wool, only cotton wool would be more nutritious. You can't seriously expect to pass them off as wedding cake!"
Glitz gave her a wry smile. "It's that or eat them all yourself."
"You know I'd never touch them with a bargepole. Ten bargepoles."
"There you are, then." Glitz's smile broadened. "So you're up for it?"
"As long as we do a dry run first, to check it out. Reaffirm our vows, against the eternal stars." Mel sighed happily, and her eyes drifted to the fanfold banner reading TWO LOVEBIRDS BUILT THIS NEST, which hung on the far wall of the room. "We'll have a full ceremony with all the extras." Her eyes narrowed. "Except the cake."
"You're sure, sweetheart?"
Mel nodded firmly. "Even true love has its limitations, Sabbie."
Leela found the Doctor in the office where they'd agreed to meet. He was sitting in the largest and most comfortable chair, with both his feet on the desk, and was - as usual - giving the impression that he was the owner of the entire building.
"Ah," he said. "Miss Leela. Come in and take dictation."
"I have already come in," Leela said, closing the door behind her. "And what is this 'dictation' that you want to give me?"
"Oh, only a letter to the Editor of Concrete Weekly." The Doctor held up a glossy magazine. "That article on carbon-chromium reinforcing rods was really beyond the pale. I'm surprised anyone lets him print such filth." With a grin, he tossed the offending magazine onto his desk. "I must say you're blending in superbly."
Leela shook her head. "This plan will not work."
"Why do you say that?"
"As you say, when a hunter wishes to stalk his prey, he must disguise himself. So in the forest, I would wear green, but in the snow I would wear white. And to hunt in this office, I must wear these foolish clothes." She gestured at her jacket and blouse. "I must appear to be a secretary."
"And you look very convincing," the Doctor reassured her.
"But I cannot be a secretary," Leela countered. "I cannot operate the typewriters. I do not know what an 'appropriation' is, or how reports may be 'collated'. I cannot bake 'shorthand.'"
"Well, I always say a little confidence goes a long... Did you just say 'bake' shorthand?"
An expression of realisation crossed Leela's face. "Is shorthand then not a sacrificial meal made from the severed hands of one's enemies?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Not in this part of Acton."
"Ah." Leela nodded. "That explains why Mrs Fisher will no longer speak to me in the canteen."
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