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She didn’t recognize the stars out the window. She hadn’t for days. At the end of the long, rusted corridor an old, grey man stood half-shadowed by the bulk-head above him.
“I heard the story from my father,” he told her. “He heard it from his father, who heard it from his father. And the story gets passed on in such a way. Father to son. Father to son.”
“You’re not my father,” Yaz said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Is the story not for me?”
“The story is for everyone,” he said. She couldn’t quite make out his face. He was only quite grey. He was only mostly shadows. “Stories are for sharing. Songs are for singing. That’s why we’re here, you know.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“On this ship,” she pressed.
“In this life,” he corrected.
“I’ve not seen you before,” she said. Her breath didn’t condense in front of her. It ought to have condensed in front of her. The ship was dead weight, drifting through space. Cold. She wasn’t cold now. She wasn’t cold now and she couldn’t see the old man’s face.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that all of this might not be entirely real.
“Are you sure?” he asked her.
“No,” she admitted.
“Not to worry,” he comforted. “Perhaps we just haven’t met yet.”
“We’re meeting now, I thought.”
“Are we?”
“Aren’t we?”
“I think,” the old man on the corner said, “that this is all a dream. And when the dreamer wakes,” he smiled at her kindly, “we’ll turn to dust.”
“Am I the dreamer?” Yaz wondered.
“Open your eyes, bach,” he told her. “And I suppose then we’ll see.”
Yaz opened her eyes. Her hand found empty space beside her on the thin bedroll.
“BARD,” she said immediately, before she’d even struggled upwards. “Where’s the Doctor?”
“To find your friend the Doctor,” BARD said, “the route that you must ponder—”
“Y’could just tell me,” she interrupted fruitlessly.
“—Zone Five is where you’ll find her.”
“Don’t even rhyme properly,” she muttered. “What’s the point, when you don’t even rhyme properly?”
“If you think you could do better than me,” BARD said, blinking serenely green above her, “be my guest and please do try. I would love to see you cry.”
“When hell freezes over,” she said, scraping a hand down her face. Her breath condensed before her. She shivered. “Or maybe it has done already. BARD,” she said. She stood and pulled her boots on over her socks. She’d slept in her jacket. It was too cold for anything else. “Are we still the only life signs on board this ship?”
BARD chimed an affirmative.
“And you’ll tell me,” she said, “if that changes?”
“I will,” said BARD. “I will, I will.”
It rhymed in threes, but sometimes seven, sometimes nine. Sometimes ten, and then the rhythm changed. She couldn’t always work it out. The pattern never stayed the same. It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that it could never be bothered to say anything outright. The rhyming was worse than riddles. When she complained, it simply claimed she wasn’t hearing it right.
“BARD,” she said. “What time is it?”
“The hour of darkness rises,” it said. “The moon would keep her prizes. If only we were earthly, we’d be early — now surmise.”
“Surmise this,” Yaz said, flinging an errant boot at the wall as she passed. It only hurt her toes. “Have you tried just saying it’s night? Don’t answer that.”
She trudged tiredly through Zones One through Four, breath trailing like fog. They hadn’t ventured beyond Five, so far. Zone One was empty but for the bedroll and a window into space. Zone Two was the galley, Zone Three was the control room, Zone Four, washing facilities, was so dark and smelly that she tended to cling to the wall on her way through and do her best not to breathe—and Zone Five, of course, was the observatory.
She found the Doctor there sitting on the lip of it with her coat in her lap. Her breath didn’t fog like Yaz’s did. If she was ever cold, she didn’t let on.
Her feet dangled into the chasm. Yaz watched her precariously laced boots with mild judgement and for a moment said nothing at all.
She spoke when it seemed right. “It’s night.”
“There’s no time in space,” the Doctor said.
“Pretty sure the TARDIS would beg to differ,” she said, playing along. She liked playing along. Life was easy, when she played along. “Time and space being relative dimensions and all that.”
“Time and space are relative,” the Doctor agreed, kicking her feet. Yaz watched her left boot loosen inch by inch and bit her tongue. The river below them gushed pleasantly. It disappeared—less pleasantly, Yaz thought—into infinite darkness between the chasm’s steep iron-soaked rocks and moss and brush. “They’re not in each other, so to speak.”
“Now you’ve lost me,” Yaz said. She sat down beside her reluctantly, if only to put herself in reaching distance of the boot about to make a break for it. She didn’t like the observatory. She didn’t like the chasm. She didn’t like sitting down in a spaceship and dangling her legs into something else, but the Doctor was delighted by it, and even more delighted by the fact that she couldn’t explain it.
Or she had been, at least.
“Time,” the Doctor said, spreading her bare palm upwards on Yaz’s thigh. Cold fingers through the fabric of her jeans. Cold fingers, when she grabbed Yaz’s hand without asking and placed it on top so their fingers filled the spaces of the other. “Space. See? Relative dimensions. There’s no time in space, but they’re holding hands.”
“And what’s this, then?” Yaz asked, tilting her head at the lush green beyond them. Stale spaceship air behind her. Birdsong in the distance. Damp, rotting forest. She didn’t take her hand away and hated herself a little for it. “Or do you still not have an answer?”
“Door,” the Doctor mused, tilting her head to mirror Yaz. Some of her hair fell into her face. She didn’t move it out of the way. Her eyes flicked speculatively to Yaz. “Mouth?”
Yaz swallowed dryly. She disentangled their hands.
“To what?” she asked raspily. She cleared her throat. The Doctor broke her gaze and glanced fleetingly down at her empty palm. She slipped it back into her own lap. Then she stared once more into the lush darkness.
“What else is a mouth for?” she said.
“Thought you said it might be a door.”
“Door, mouth. Same difference.”
“Relative dimensions, is it?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Yaz looked out with her into the green. On first glance, it was beautiful. The infinite darkness lurked below, the longer you stared at it. Iron—and it was iron, the Doctor had explained patiently, not blood—dripped from the lichen-covered rocks. There was sunlight glinting off the Doctor’s boots but just below them the chasm ate it up. Cool air drifted from beneath.
“We’re getting closer,” she observed. The rocks were in a slightly different position today. “Were you right?”
“I’m always right.”
Yaz said nothing. She only stared placidly into the dark.
“Alright, okay, I’m mostly always right,” the Doctor went on. “I was right about this. The relative position of the spaceship corresponds on a fractional level with the movement through the door. We move through space,” she kicked her feet, “and the door moves with us, infinitesimally. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres shrunk down to millimetres. It’s absolutely stunnin’. Makes no sense though.” Her hungry gaze never left the river. “Makes absolutely zero sense.”
“You were right,” Yaz said steadily. “So you can fix it?”
“Fix what?” the Doctor said, distracted.
“The TARDIS,” Yaz said. Another waft of cool, mossy air drifted up. She breathed it in and hated it. “Yesterday, you said the temporal crunchage—that were an actual word that you used, crunchage—caused by whatever made this possible was what was messing with it.”
“Her.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Maybe,” the Doctor said. She tilted her head the other way. “Might not be deliberate. Might be something natural, something random. Little rips in space and time. Hands joining where they shouldn’t. I reckon,” she mused, “that adjusting the coordinates of the ship must adjust the coordinates of whatever’s through this door.”
Yaz swallowed. “So?”
“So,” the Doctor said, as if it were obvious, “if I set a course a few hundred thousand kilometres to the left, it’ll move us thataway.” She jerked a thumb to the left. “Where there’s a bridge. There’s just a glimpse of it, if you lean through the door.”
“You’ve been leaning through the door,” Yaz said flatly. “All that ‘oh, Yaz, by the way, don’t lean through the door’, that was just for me, was it.”
“Didn’t know what it was before,” the Doctor said breezily.
“You still don’t.”
“Didn’t want to lose you down the river. I’d never live it down!”
“What, losing me down a river?”
“Just embarrassing.”
At the latest and greatest movement of her left foot, her left boot abandoned ship and slipped off to disappear delicately into the darkness beneath them. It clunked on the rocks—once, twice.
Yaz listened for a splash that never came.
The Doctor leaned over with interest, eyebrows raised. The sun caught in the thin pieces of hair that framed her face. Her eyes were as black as the chasm.
“Hmm,” she said. “Shame, that.”
They’d been chasing distress signals, of course. Good practice, the Doctor had said, breath cool down the back of her neck as she showed her how to align the zigzag plotter. When people need help, we never refuse. Pluck the space-time vectors from the origin point of the signal, plot the course, press all the right buttons in all the right order, don’t blow up the universe. Easy as breathing. Well, it would be, one day. For now, she still needed her notebook full of post-its and the Doctor over her shoulder. Universe being so fragile and all that.
She’d landed well this time. No shuddering, no alarms blaring. Universe intact. Not that it had mattered in the end. The spaceship Harmony was empty but for BARD. The distress signal had been signalling, the Doctor had reckoned, for a thousand years or more. A little echo into the dark. Empty rusted corridors and BARD blinking green. Nothing left behind.
“What happened here, BARD?” Yaz asked, not for the first time. She’d leaned herself against the arch of the entrance to Zone Three and crossed her arms against the cold. From there, she watched the Doctor tinker, one socked foot slipping against the rusted metal floor, one suspender down by her elbow. Coat wrapped around Yaz like a blanket. It wasn’t quite wearing it, like this. It wouldn’t have been right, to wear it.
“The way lay shut, the world line shrunk,” BARD said, very helpfully.
The Doctor hummed appreciatively.
“Very nice,” she said.
“Not very specific,” Yaz pointed out, not for the first time.
“Physics is just poetry,” the Doctor said, unbothered. She pressed a button contemplatively and gave a small jump of delight when nothing happened. Yaz presumed she’d been expecting something catastrophic and resolved to pay less attention for the sake of her own blood pressure. “Nice to talk to something that gets it, for once. The temporal crunchage—”
“Crunchage,” muttered Yaz.
“—roundabout these parts means there’s only a few safe ways to get through this region of space. When whoever was piloting this ship entered it,” she glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised, “the possible temporal and spatial parameters of where they could go diminished catastrophically.”
Her eyebrows stayed raised.
“Their world line shrunk,” Yaz said, defeated. The Doctor beamed at her and turned back to the controls. BARD chimed happily and ran a spiral of green lights along the ceiling. Dog chasing its tail. It liked the Doctor better than her. It had since they’d both scrambled out of the TARDIS. The fact of it sat oddly sour in her gut.
“Were you lonely?” Yaz asked next, without thinking. “All those years with no one?”
For a moment, BARD was silent. At the controls, the Doctor stilled.
“In the wellspring of my mind,” it said, finally, “stagnant water you would find. In darkness I was sleeping. But for asking, you are kind.”
A little ashamed, Yaz pressed herself more firmly into the archway. The scent of the Doctor’s coat lingered under her nose. Engine oil, chamomile. Sweat. She ground her fingers into the meat of her forearm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll try to help you. Promise.”
“A helping hand,” BARD said. “A hand that helps.”
The ship groaned beneath them.
The Doctor sighed happily.
“There,” she said, sounding very pleased with herself. She stepped away from the control panel, socked foot slipping. She glanced at Yaz over her shoulder. Watching. Waiting, Yaz thought, for her to be impressed. “I think that’s done it.”
“Now what?” Yaz asked and watched in turn as her face fell by millimetres. Shame burned in her like a candle again. She wasn’t quite sure why.
“Now,” the Doctor said, rallying,”…we wait.”
She didn’t recognize the stars out the window. She watched them anyway, the Doctor’s coat still draped like a cloak around her. Drifting. The TARDIS lurked behind her, solid and still. Harmony’s controls were rusted, damaged, ancient. Once, the Doctor had told her, it could have travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometres in seconds. Not anymore.
Waiting wasn’t either of their strong suits.
“Are we even moving?” she wondered quietly. The stars beyond looked unnervingly still. She twisted back to look at the Doctor.
“Go back to sleep,” the Doctor suggested from the archway into Zone Two. Her silhouette was backlit by the faint green behind her. The entire ship was unsettlingly dark. Emergency lights only. Reserve power. Only BARD to light the way. She was squinting down into the sonic, although Yaz doubted it would tell her anything new. “We are moving. Slowly.”
“What about you?”
The Doctor didn’t look up.
“I’ll wait,” she said.
Yaz watched her for a moment longer. There was green light caught in the edges of her, across the top of her cheeks. It made her look faintly sallow. Her eyelashes cast long, spindly shadows. Her lips were parted. Relaxed, nearly. She went somewhere, sometimes, where Yaz couldn’t follow—when her lips were pressed, when her eyes were dark. She wasn’t there now, Yaz didn’t think. Where she might have been instead, Yaz couldn’t say.
“The temporal crunchage,” Yaz tried.
Now, the Doctor’s gaze flicked up at her. Watching in turn.
“Not a problem anymore,” she said. “For me. Very much a problem, generally speaking. Generally speaking, it’s massively inconvenient.”
“You never said what’s causing it,” Yaz ventured.
“Had to have a squiz at the controls. Nearby, there’s a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Messy eating. Perfectly natural,” she said, in what wasn’t quite a reassuring tone, “but…messy.”
The TARDIS, still behind her, was terribly loud in its conspicuous silence.
“Can you fix it?”
The Doctor only looked back at her. Green and open and very unworried. Something sour twisted again in the pit of her. Maybe it was shame, still.
“Go to sleep,” the Doctor said again. She went back to frowning down at the sonic. “At least by the morning we’ll have moved.”
“Right,” Yaz said. Into what? she didn’t bother asking. She pulled the Doctor’s coat closer around her and went to the bedroll in the corner. It was all that was left of the ship’s original inhabitants, that corner—a bedroll, some rations, a rusted spoon. Whoever they had been, they’d travelled light. Or, she thought grimly, they’d taken everything else with them. These bits were left behind because whoever had once needed them had died. Only—
No corpses. Just dust and rust and BARD. She was sleeping in dead people’s blankets, that was all but indisputable, but she could at least rest safe in the knowledge that—probably—they hadn’t died in them.
She pressed herself down into the bedroll and closed her eyes. Underneath, she felt for the first time the gentle humming of the ship as it moved. It groaned faintly and the vibration rang at the back of her skull, all the way down into her breastbone.
She breathed in deeply the smell of rust and chamomile and fell asleep.
She dreamed of the sea—up to her ankles in water, waves sucking at her feet. Sand and rocks and shells sharp beneath her. Bells ringing. Dark, mossy groynes like long fingers reaching into the sea. Tide pools and sea pinks.
In the distance, the green hills waited patiently. That lush darkness was in there somewhere, she thought. The river and the chasm and she was at the edge of it where the water began.
A blackbird landed suddenly on the edge of the wooden groyne beside her.
“What makes a bridge?” it twittered. “What makes a mouth?”
“Hands make a bridge,” she replied, rote. Dream speech, confident nonsense. “A door makes a mouth.”
It tilted its head, black eyes gleaming.
“And what is a mouth for?” it wondered at her.
Her hands were dry and hot. She ground her bare feet into the sharp shells.
“Swallowing,” she said.
She woke.
The blackbird was still staring at her when she opened her eyes. Her tongue was painfully dry. She pressed her lips together and raised herself onto one elbow, watching as it pecked at a bent feather. Her leather jacket squeaked against the bedroll.
“Doors go both ways, is it?” she asked it.
It stopped its pecking and sang at her. Bird song, not words. Just an ordinary blackbird. On a spaceship. In her dreams. Its eyes were the same.
“BARD,” she said, without taking her eyes off it. “Where’s the Doctor?”
“There are only so many sound answers,” BARD said, “conjectures, guesses, theory. Where is she when she’s weary?”
“Either I’m starting to get the hang of this,” Yaz said, struggling to her feet on aching legs, “or your rhymes are gettin’ worse, mate.”
She looked down at the blackbird.
“Well,” she said. “Are you coming?”
It cheeped at her, indignant, and fluttered off in front of her, through the archway and into the darkness of Zone Two.
She waited a moment in the solemn, moody grey of Zone One. Her heart stammered in her chest. Her palms were still too hot. She took in a deep breath—swallowed.
Followed the bird into the dark.
Her breath trailed behind her as she walked. Zone Two, Three, Four, empty. Her footsteps echoed. The smell of rust followed her. Everywhere they stepped shook more dust into the air. BARD followed along above her, trailing green. She followed the blackbird through Zone Five and into whatever lay beyond, but at the observatory, she paused to look.
Lush darkness and the sound of the river below. They still hadn’t hit the bridge. She could see the edge of it, just barely, now. Leaves rustled and for a moment she breathed in cool, damp air. There was a hint of sea brine on the wind.
The blackbird sang and she ripped her gaze away. She squinted down the corridor. She couldn’t see it any longer. She couldn’t see anything. She stepped closer anyway.
She hesitated at the archway. Neither of them had ventured beyond Zone Five, so far.
“Doctor?” she tried, and listened to the sound of her own voice echoing. The blackbird chirped again. She sighed. “BARD,” she said, stepping through without bothering to finish the question. “Status?”
BARD chimed and ran lights ahead of her, which she took to mean that there was still oxygen and gravity. She’d learned the hard way over the past few months that it was never a guarantee. The old fear in her—the reasonable fear, the jolt of nervous energy before a new adventure—had grown steadily into something worse. Something resigned, something watchful. The Doctor, she knew, would never knowingly or willingly put her in danger.
There had been, she admitted quietly to herself as she stepped down into the depths of Zone Six, rather a lot of death traps lately, though. Occupational hazard, the Doctor might have told her. You’re looking for something that wants you dead, Yaz might have said in return. She had a lot of conversations like that, lately. One-sided. Imaginary. It was nice to pretend, sometimes, that she lived in a world where the Doctor told her things and she told the Doctor things and then they talked about those things. Reality, of course, was much simpler: they told each other nothing and talked about nothing and it was only when the Doctor looked at her, sometimes, over the gaping maw of the death trap of the week; half-chagrined, half-something-else; mouth open, eyes gleaming; on the cusp of it, Yaz thought, always—on the cusp of telling her.
But the moment always folded over and they always escaped the death trap and whatever the Doctor was combing through the universe for stayed as secret as everything else. That was fine. You had to love the secrets, too. You had to love the secrets and follow birds into the dark and every step that she took echoed disconcertingly into the empty corridor. No windows. No light but BARD’s eerie green. Sea brine under the metal. She could still hear the rustle of trees in the wind behind her.
The blackbird chirped, though she still couldn’t see it. She followed the sound and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. Once, as she turned a corner, her boot hushed over what she thought was a pile of sand. As her eyes adjusted, she caught more of them—perfectly triangular little piles. Sand or dust or dirt. Some together, some apart. She stepped over the rest of them carefully, all the way to the end of the very long corridor.
At the end of the very long corridor, there was finally a window. The Doctor was curled in front of it, bathed in solemn green.
“Are we there yet?” she wondered at Yaz’s approach.
Yaz came to the window and crouched down beside her.
“No,” she said. “What is this section?”
“Recreation? Maybe storage. Hard to say.”
“Not much left of it.”
“You’re gonna ask about the piles of dust.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t.”
“It’s people,” Yaz sighed, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. “Isn’t it.”
The Doctor swallowed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Must have been the crew.”
“You licked it.”
“I did, yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” You will keep putting things in your mouth, she didn’t say. “Not a nice way to find out.”
“Upsetting amount of umami.”
“Some things,” Yaz said firmly, “I could do without knowing.”
Now, the Doctor looked at her.
“Could you,” she said, very evenly. Green at the edges, black at the centre. Yaz stared for a moment too long at her reflection—at her gleaming black eyes, at the crooked shape of her lip—and then looked carefully out at the stars.
“What happened here?” she whispered. “What turns people to dust?”
“Lots of things,” the Doctor said. Her own gaze never wavered. Out of the corner of her eye Yaz watched her watching her in the reflection of the window. “…Lots of things.”
“Quite specific, that.” Yaz took a shallow breath. “Is it on the ship, still?”
“No,” the Doctor said, gaze drifting. “No, ‘course not. Probably. Hopefully. Nah, definitely not.” She tilted her head, as if listening. “…maybe,” she said, not sounding as worried as Yaz reckoned she probably ought to have. Then again, she tended not to. That was their song, now—the Doctor, blasé, Yaz, buzzkill. The Doctor, springing the deathtraps, Yaz, harshing the vibes. Their song and their dance around each other.
“I’m not enjoying the ‘maybe’,” Yaz said.
The Doctor tilted her head another degree and frowned, nose wrinkling.
“D’you hear that?” she asked.
“No,” said Yaz, who couldn’t hear anything but the barely audible thrum of the ship as it moved. Space was silent. That was sometimes the worst thing about it. Especially when it was making noise. “Hear what?”
The Doctor shook her head, like a dog leaving a swimming pool, and stood abruptly. One sock, sliding on the floor, suspender still down around her elbow. She spun towards the dark.
Yaz grabbed for her and rose to her feet.
“Doctor,” she said intently. “Hear what?”
Her pulses pounded beneath Yaz’s thumb, beneath the soft wool of her jumper sleeve. For a moment she didn’t move.
“Nothing,” she said finally, breaking free—carelessly, easily—from Yaz’s grasp. “Hearing things. Getting old. I am old, to be fair. I’m super old. Been old for a while. Even when I was young I was old.” Her mouth pinched painfully. “And when I was old I was young, except for when I wasn’t.”
Yaz couldn’t picture the Doctor young. She couldn’t picture her old, either. She existed timelessly at the back of her mind. Never changing. Only she had, hadn’t she? She’d changed, and so had Yaz. She would change, and so would Yaz. It was only their song and dance that kept it looking otherwise.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” the Doctor decided. She started forward into the dark. “I’m going to see if I can give us a boost.”
“Wait,” Yaz said. “Where’s the bird?”
The Doctor turned her head to frown at her.
“What bird?” she asked.
“There was a bird,” Yaz said. “I followed a bird.”
The Doctor raised her eyebrows.
“I didn’t see a bird.”
“There was a bird,” Yaz insisted.
The Doctor nodded, unbothered.
“Doors open both ways,” she said. “Come on, Yaz. Get a shift on.”
She went slip-sliding on, stepping carefully around the piles of ashes.
Yaz took one last look out the lonely window. They hadn’t moved an inch. The stars didn’t so much as blink.
“BARD,” she said quietly. “Are we alone?”
“Our long journey is lonesome,” BARD answered. “Some games end with zero sum. In the darkness of this place, there are those who hide their face. Be advised: all my systems are normal,” it chimed. “All my sins are nominal.”
“Yeah,” breathed Yaz. “…Mine too.”
While the Doctor worked, Yaz curled up in the corner and slowly froze to death. Felt like it, anyway. She dozed, surrounded by the fog of her own breath, the ice crystals and frost on the control centre gleaming faintly green in BARD’s glow. She ate with great reluctance the crumbling remains of a ration bar, and then another. They sat chalky in the pit of her stomach. She counted seams in the wall, and then prime numbers (only up to ninety-seven, which had taken an embarrassingly long eight and a half minutes), and then the amount of strange noises exiting the Doctor’s mouth while she worked (thirteen ‘hmms’, four ‘ahhhhhs’, a lone grumble, and one notable shriek of alarm when she’d tried plugging the auxiliary power supply into the main console and it had exploded in her face).
In the aftermath, she’d turned to Yaz, hair stood on end, black smudged across her cheek, incredulous. Yaz had grinned at her.
“Forgot the adaptor,” she’d pointed out. “On your left.”
“You didn’t say anything before,” the Doctor had accused.
Yaz had leaned back against the cool wall.
“All you would have done,” she’d replied, “was say you didn’t need it and plug it in anyway.”
The Doctor had conceded this with a wrinkled nose and turned back to the panel she was meticulously violating. Blunt ends of her fingers stuck in, heedless of sharp edges and sparks. Perfunctory, a little violent. Utterly confident. Not as gentle, when it wasn’t the TARDIS. Not as careful. Just as all-consuming, though. Yaz couldn’t be sure, but she was fairly certain hours passed while she waited. In the meantime, her fingers went numb. She ate another ration bar out of sheer boredom and shredded the metallic wrapper to small pieces to distract from the ensuing stomach ache while the Doctor lost herself in the wires of the control panel. Drifted off, finally, against the cold metal wall. In the haze of something that wasn’t quite sleep, she felt the Doctor’s hands slip under her and lift her with terrifying ease. Chamomile, engine oil, sweat. Cold fingers around her thigh. Hearts beating fast. It was over too soon. Her cheek touched the bed roll and the Doctor’s coat settled gently overtop. There was a scent she didn’t recognize, underneath all the ones that she did. Iron-rich and mossy. She tasted it at the back of her throat and fell asleep, mouth dry, fingers numb.
The bells were louder now. She’d thought that they were church bells, before—it had seemed like they ought to have been church bells. Now, she thought they sounded more like the TARDIS. Discordant chiming, like the world was ending. The TARDIS only sounded like that when the world was ending.
“Where shall I go?” said the blackbird, perched on the groyne. “From where did I come?”
“Why,” said Yaz, “can I only understand you when I’m dreaming? Can she hear you?” she pressed, stepping forward. Water sluiced around her ankles. The tide sucked at her feet. “Are you what she’s hearing?”
“Listen,” it sang. “Listen, listen.”
“I’m listening,” she insisted.
“Listen, listen,” it chirped. “You hear but you don’t listen.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, stung. “Are you hearing me? That’s not fair.”
“Love isn’t fair,” it twittered. “If it was, it wouldn’t be love.”
“You’re being difficult on purpose.”
“Listen,” it clipped. “Listen, listen. Don’t follow the candle, Yaz. Don’t follow.”
“I’m not following,” she said, frustrated. “I’m not following any of this, to be clear.”
“Don’t follow.”
“Why?”
“A candle in the dark.”
“Hopeful, isn’t it?”
“Bad luck,” it sang. “Bad luck, bad luck. Bad luck, Yaz.”
“You know my name,” she said. “But I don’t know yours.”
“I don’t need a name,” it said. “I’m just the messenger.”
It squawked—alarmed, Yaz thought—and fluttered away, wings beating. She turned, just so. Into the wind. Bare feet on sharp shells. At the end of the groyne, the grey old man stood watching her. He tilted his head in acknowledgement.
She woke—suddenly, bells ringing in her ears, ration bars lead in her stomach. The bird was nowhere to be seen. She was so tired, still, that she could feel the insides of her eyelids. Zone One was perfectly quiet.
“Doctor?” she called.
No reply.
Then again, she hadn’t been expecting one.
“BARD,” she snapped. She didn’t hesitate at the archway to Zone Six this time. “What’s past this zone?”
“Naturally, Zones Seven,” BARD answered. “Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven.”
“What’s in them?” she demanded, boots clattering against the floor. She dodged the piles of dead people irritably. “Engineering? System controls?”
“They are inoperable,” BARD said, chiming ahead of her, green dots on the ceiling. “Defunct, finished, unstable.”
“You do go on a bit,” she muttered at it, shivering as she left Zone Six. The frost was thicker here. There was another lone circular window at the end of the corridor, coated in ice. “Why not just say it once?”
BARD spun a circle lazily above her head, which felt like answer enough. Despite the frost, the smell from the observatory lingered under her nose. Damp, rotting earth. Birdsong, behind her. There was a ladybird crawling slowly on the wall beside her, half-frozen. Doors going both ways.
“BARD,” she snapped. She didn’t hesitate at the archway to Zone Six this time. “What’s past this zone?”
“Naturally, Zones Seven,” BARD answered. “Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven.”
“What’s in them?” she demanded, boots clattering against the floor. She dodged the piles of dead people irritably. “Engineering? System controls?”
“They are inoperable,” BARD said, chiming ahead of her, green dots on the ceiling. “Defunct, finished, unstable.”
“You do go on a bit,” she muttered at it, shivering as she left Zone Six. The frost was thicker here. There was another lone circular window at the end of the corridor, coated in ice. “Why not just say it once?”
BARD spun a circle lazily above her head, which felt like answer enough. Despite the frost, the smell from the observatory lingered under her nose. Damp, rotting earth. Birdsong, behind her. There was a ladybird crawling slowly on the wall beside her, half-frozen. Doors going both ways.
She glanced behind her at Zone Five and found to her surprise that it was gone.
“Where’s the door?” she demanded. “Where’s the archway?”
“You’ve gone beyond,” BARD said. “Step forward.”
“You’re not rhyming,” she said, heart pounding sickly.
“You’re not listening,” it said.
“BARD,” she snapped. She didn’t hesitate at the archway to Zone Six this time. “What’s past this zone?”
“Naturally, Zones Seven,” BARD answered. “Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven.”
“What’s in them?” she demanded, boots clattering against the floor. She dodged the piles of dead people irritably. “Engineering? System controls?”
“They are inoperable,” BARD said, chiming ahead of her, green dots on the ceiling. “Defunct, finished, unstable.”
“You do go on a bit,” she muttered at it, shivering as she left Zone Six. The frost was thicker here. There was another lone circular window at the end of the corridor, coated in ice. “Why not just say it once?”
BARD spun a circle lazily above her head, which felt like answer enough. Despite the frost, the smell from the observatory lingered under her nose. Damp, rotting earth. Birdsong, behind her. There was a ladybird crawling slowly on the wall beside her, half-frozen. Doors going both ways.
She stumbled against the wall, dizzy. Her boot dragged in the dead-people dust. At the end of the long, rusted corridor an old, grey man stood half-shadowed by the bulk-head above him.
“Now,” he said politely, “we’ve met.”
From behind her, from nowhere, the blackbird swooped. Feathers and rust. The old grey man smiled gently at her and crumbled into dust. The blackbird vanished into the dark.
She retched weakly into the corner and pressed her forehead to the freezing wall.
“BARD,” she whispered. “Life signs?”
“There are only two of you,” BARD said. “Not three of you, not twenty. Once,” it continued, “two of you were many.”
“Temporal crunchage?”
It arranged its lights into an exclamation mark above her head. She sighed.
“Great. Amazin’. Are we any closer?”
The exclamation mark morphed into a question mark.
“And the Doctor? Assuming we’re not about to do the time warp again.”
BARD chimed and ran ahead.
Head aching, stomach in knots, she followed.
At the entrance to Zone Eight, the corridor lights turned red, gleaming off the thick layers of frost. Incredibly reassuring. Not at all ominous.
“If I get sucked into the vacuum of space,” Yaz sighed, “I am gonna be so cross.”
“Not to mention dead,” the Doctor replied, sounding faintly muffled. Something loosened in Yaz’s chest and she followed her voice around the corner into the red-soaked gloom. At first, there was nothing. Then, she caught the gleam of something—orange and flickering. Candle, her brain supplied, even though the thought was ridiculous.
No, she realized. It was the sonic. Bobbing up and down in the dark, clenched between the Doctor’s teeth while she tore apart a panel in the lower wall. She was on her back, knees up, squinting into the tangled mess of wires. Her elbows had scraped lines in the frost on the floor. There were glinting ice particles caught in her eyelashes and sweat beaded at her hairline. The small, fine hairs at her widow’s peak were curled and damp with it.
“You’ve been at this for hours,” Yaz said, uneasy. She crouched down beside her and held out her hand until the Doctor spat the sonic into her palm. She wrapped her fingers around it. It hummed warmly in her grasp. “I don’t think I was asleep that long.”
“I told you, there’s no time in space.”
“Pretty sure we settled on it all being relative. What are you doing?”
“Boosting the engines. Couldn’t get to them from the controls, auxiliary power supply was rotted through, but I can bypass all that from here. Get us moving a bit quicker.”
“There’s no time in space,” Yaz said patiently, shining the sonic speculatively into the open panel, “but also we’re not moving fast enough. Is that it? Have I got it right?”
“And you’ve got a crumb,” the Doctor breathed, wires abandoned, reaching for the corner of her mouth. “Right…there.”
She brushed it away with her thumb.
“Bighead,” Yaz said. She turned her head away. “Don’t go off on your own without me.”
“Off on my own is without you, you don’t need to say it twice.”
“It got a bit weird in here,” Yaz said. “Like when we first arrived.”
“Temporal crunchage.”
“Is it?”
“Probably.” She took in an unsteady breath. It fogged around her when she exhaled. “Definitely. Mostly sure. Maybe.”
“Now who’s saying things twice?”
“Not twice though, is it. What’s thrice, but for four?”
“Quarce would be quite incorrect,” BARD chimed in, helpfully. “Fourfold, fivefold, sixfold next.”
“Don’t even rhyme,” Yaz muttered.
“It’s doin’ its best,” the Doctor protested.
“Why does it even rhyme in the first place?”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” the Doctor said. She laid her head back against the floor with a soft clunk. Her hair spread against the metal, caught red where it was lightest. “What’s the point of a story with no one to tell it?”
“It’s not telling,” Yaz said irritably. “And why does a story need to rhyme?”
“All stories rhyme.”
“Since we arrived, it’s said nowt about what happened here.”
The Doctor frowned up at her.
“You’re not listening,” she said.
“I am!” Yaz rose to her feet, mouth twisting. She turned away and caught her breath. “I am,” she said, more quietly. “I am.”
“Yaz,” the Doctor said evenly. “I can’t see.”
“You’re being really weird, too, you know.”
“Well, tell me down here, so I can see what I’m doing.”
Yaz scowled and crouched down beside her again. She stuck the sonic into the wall panel. It flickered forlornly, cast strange little shadows against the rusted out interior.
“Better?”
“Just lovely.”
The Doctor touched two wires together and yelped when they sparked. Her breath settled around her like a cloud. She pressed her lips together and replaced one of the wires carefully.
“Your breath don’t fog, normally,” Yaz said, swallowing. Her knees were beginning to ache. “You’re too cold.”
“That’s quite an eye for detail.”
“Stop distracting me,” she snapped. “What’s wrong with you? Really?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Don’t always breathe,” the Doctor said. She raised her chin, just slightly, and glanced away from her work. “Respiratory bypass system. So there’s not always fog.”
It put some things—the wet weekend with Houdini, the beeping red of her dwindling oxygen supply—in drastic context. Yaz’s scowl deepened.
“That ice festival on Copernicus Four—”
“—where I bought you not one, not two, but three Super Deluxe Hot Chocolates, you’re welcome—”
“—it were minus forty below zero and your breath didn’t fog. And you were breathing,” Yaz said steadily. “You won that ballon animal contest. And it were minus forty below zero, hence the need for three hot chocolates.”
“Super Deluxe Hot Chocolates. And you don’t need to say minus and below zero, each implies the other.”
“You were breathing,” Yaz insisted. “And you were breathing before.”
The Doctor’s eyes gleamed up at her.
“Sometimes I’m cold,” she said. “Sometimes I’m not.”
Face burning, stomach twisting, Yaz laid the back of her knuckles across the Doctor’s cheek. Warm skin. Nearly human. Deeply unnatural.
“Liar,” she breathed. “Come back to the TARDIS.”
“Can’t go in.”
“Come back anyway.”
“Work to do here.”
“You’ve made it go as fast as you can,” Yaz said. She pulled her hand away. The sourness was back again. Acid eating away at her. “What’s the rush? Why is the bridge so important? What happens when we reach it?”
The Doctor stared up at her like she was an idiot.
“We cross it,” she said. “Obviously.”
“Why?” Yaz demanded.
“Bridges are for crossing.”
“Why is this bridge even here?”
“This region of space,” the Doctor said, eyebrows raising, “is impassable. The—”
“The crunchage,” Yaz snapped. “You keep saying.”
“To get across, they needed a bridge.”
“The bridge in the observatory. But that’s not space,” Yaz said, frustrated. “That’s—”
“The west coast of Wales. I licked some moss. Don’t worry about it.”
Yaz closed her eyes tiredly.
“Why,” she said, very steadily, without opening her eyes, “is the west coast of Wales in this spaceship?”
“It’s not just a bridge, it’s a door. At the other end of that bridge in west Wales—”
“There’s never the other side of this galaxy.”
“Gold star for Yasmin Khan.”
“Why?”
When she opened her eyes, the Doctor was grinning.
“Why not?” she demanded. “The universe is amazin’. Ask and she provides.”
“The people on this ship,” Yaz enunciated, “are dust.”
The Doctor’s face fell marginally.
“Right. Yeah. Well. Universe isn’t perfect,” she said. “Working on that bit.” Her attention shifted again to the open panel. “Let me just—”
The wires in her hand sparked again. She yelped.
Irritably, Yaz stuck the sonic in her own mouth—warm against her tongue—and leaned over the Doctor to reach into the panel with both hands. She tore out the right wire from the panel wall and touched it carefully to the one between the Doctor’s fingers. Then, with great satisfaction, she slammed her other hand against the warp capacitor. It chimed encouragingly.
She ducked out of the wall and took the sonic out of her mouth. The Doctor stared up at her, lips parted. She pressed them together and swallowed carefully.
“I think,” Yaz said, “we’re done here.”
It was dawn through the door in the observatory. They weren’t quite there yet.
“See? A bridge,” the Doctor breathed into her ear. “A bridge between stars.”
“There’s three,” Yaz said, trying not to shiver. The Doctor’s breath was hot on the back of her neck. It smelled faintly metallic. Usually, it had no smell at all. “Three bridges.”
From this angle, the extent of the bridge—bridges, really—was finally visible. At the bottom, there was one made of stone, carefully built up and grown into the earth. Another overtop, and then another. Bridges on bridges. Overkill, maybe.
There was only a hint of daylight straining through the tree canopy. Birdsong echoed through the door. She hadn’t seen the blackbird for hours.
“Why have one when you could have three?” the Doctor said. “Same could be said for rations, I suppose.”
“I was bored,” Yaz said irritably. “And hungry.”
“Defeats the point of calling them rations, though, doesn’t it?”
“We’re not here for long.”
“Now who’s in a rush?”
Yaz turned to glare at her. She’d been bone white in the red glow of Zone Eight, but now the tops of her cheeks were faintly flushed. The tip of her nose, the top of her ears. Patchy red and white.
Frostbite, Yaz realized. She glanced down at her own hands and found the tips of her fingers in similar shape. Numb and tingling.
“All that time messing with the engines,” she said quietly, “and it never occurred to you to turn on the heat?”
The Doctor stared at her placidly. She still didn’t look worried at all.
“All reserve power’s being utilized,” she said. “Can’t spare a drop. Are you cold?”
“Yes,” said Yaz. “And so are you.”
“That’s not what you said earlier.”
“I’m changing my mind.”
“Is it one or the other?” The Doctor’s gaze drifted past her to the door. “I don’t feel cold.”
Yaz stared at her for a long moment.
“What do you feel?” she wondered.
The Doctor didn’t so much as look at her. She tilted her head to the side. Her nose wrinkled faintly.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“No,” Yaz said, and took her hand. “Come on.”
Yaz coaxed her down onto the bedroll, but the Doctor wouldn’t sleep.
“Time’s too crunchy,” she muttered, shifting, which was exactly the sort of stupid, nonsensical complaint Yaz needed to get over her gut-wrenching reluctance to lie beside her. “BARD? You there? ETA?”
“The morning birds have not stopped their singing,” BARD chimed. “Being that you want the time, all I have to give is rhyme.”
“It’s deeply imprecise,” the Doctor admitted, nose wrinkling in the gloom. “But I still really like it.”
“Well, I’m ambivalent about it, and I’m freezing,” Yaz hissed, wrapping herself in the Doctor’s coat, “so budge over, bighead.”
She budged as much as she was able—not much—and sighed theatrically. One sock, the sole of it nearly black with grime and—well. Dead people. She’d never fixed the suspender. Her elbows were sharp and she never really stopped moving.
“I want to cross it, Yaz,” she breathed. “I want to see what’s on the other side.”
“Y’can see it in the morning,” Yaz said, heart hammering in her throat. She was so tired she felt sick. She was so cold she could barely feel her fingers. It was unnaturally warm, where their legs pressed together, where the bare skin at the Doctor’s wrist brushed her own. Sweat curling the hair at her brow. It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. Maybe it was just that she was too cold. Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe she had it all wrong. “Go to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“I know.”
Their song and their dance. Elbows, and the bare skin at her wrist. Time crunch. Yaz breathed in the smell of her—and something else—and closed her eyes.
The sea rushed at her ankles. The TARDIS bell tolled. She stepped onto the sand and sharp shells and the beach collapsed into metal and rust and the sand was ashes, instead. She watched a candle make its lonely way through the darkness. BARD illuminated the way solemnly. It passed through the door and disappeared.
She heard the rustle of feathers. Black eyes gleamed down at her from the top of the door.
“Help me,” said the blackbird.
They passed another day—or what passed for one, anyway—between the observatory and the control room. The Doctor tinkered incessantly with no real effect. Yaz recognized it for the busywork that it was. Breaking things just to fix them. Hands at work, mind drifting. The TARDIS, silent as a monument. The Doctor hadn’t so much as looked at it since they’d arrived but to warn her off entering.
“Spatio-temporal anomalies and TARDISes don’t mix,” she’d said. “We’re safer out here. Trust me.”
The reddened skin on the top of her cheek was peeling and raw. The ends of some of her fingers were bleeding, but Yaz didn’t think she’d noticed yet. She wouldn’t put on her coat, so Yaz had wrapped herself in it like a cloak again, tucked against the wall. Watching. Drifting. Engine oil, chamomile. She refused to help with the busywork on principle, but the Doctor didn’t notice. Once, she dozed off and dreamt vividly of those bloodied fingers in her mouth. Woke with her heart in her throat, sweating. She’d waited nine painful minutes for the taste of rust to leave and in the end had swallowed back another ration bar out of desperation. They left a chalky film on her tongue. Crumbs in her lap, on her lips. At the sound of the wrapper crinkling, the Doctor looked back at her, eyebrows raised.
“Are we nearly there?” she asked raspily. “These taste really bad.”
“I’ve had worse,” the Doctor said without elaborating.
“You’ve not even tried them.”
“Don’t have to try them to know I’ve had worse.”
Fighting words from the universe’s most discerning dirt connoisseur, Yaz didn’t say. She swept some of the crumbs off her thigh and stood.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“I believe your exact words were ‘don’t go off on your own without me’,” the Doctor said mildly, turning back to her useless, violent tinkering.
“Redundant, you said.”
“I’m quoting you.”
“And I’m cold,” Yaz snapped. “I won’t go far. Just need to move my legs. I can’t feel my toes.”
The Doctor didn’t respond. Yaz watched her for a moment, sour again. Hot and cold. BARD circling above slowly. Black eyes far from her, and her lips pressed together.
From the depths of the ship, the blackbird called.
Yaz followed.
She couldn’t feel her toes, but she could feel everything else. Tips of her fingers, bottom of her stomach. Other places she didn’t care to give a name. She ground her teeth and barrelled her way through the darkened corridors, tangled in the Doctor’s coat. She’d had half a thought about returning to the TARDIS, throwing open the doors, heedless of the Doctor’s warning. She was cold and tired and her fingers were falling off. At least being dangled over acid was a sort of warm-weather activity. She worried, though; that she’d press at those doors and find them solid shut. Nothing in, nothing out. The only escape over the bridge. They were nearly there, now.
“Where are you?” she shouted into the gloom. “I know you’re here! What did you mean? Help you how?”
The old man, the blackbird, she didn’t care. Something had to give.
She stopped at the archway to Zone Seven. Birdsong echoed prettily. She followed it slowly to the frosted window, where the blackbird was perched. It sang at her sweetly. More ladybirds on their death march crawled slowly across the wall. The brine drifted in on the breeze.
She breathed in slowly—listening. Her breath fogged in front of her. The ship creaked and cracked and rushed like the sea. The blackbird looked her dead in the eye.
“What makes a bridge?” it twittered. “What makes a mouth?”
“Hands make a bridge,” she answered. “A door makes a mouth.”
It tilted its head, black eyes gleaming.
“And what is a mouth for?” it wondered at her.
Her hands were numb and tingling. The whole length of her ached.
“Swallowing,” she said.
Panic swooped in the pit of her stomach.
“Oh,” she breathed. “…shit.”
Her boots slid on the frost and the ashes. Archway to archway, she stumbled through, all the way to the observatory.
Through the door it was night. The moon shone brightly over the bridge. She watched the flickering orange of a candle weave an unsteady path through the dark.
“Doctor!” she shouted, crashing through into cool damp forest and road slick with rotting leaves. BARD blinked behind her, faintly green. The Milky Way glistened above them, impossibly. “Doctor?”
“There you are,” the Doctor said mildly, sonic hanging limp in her hand, still glowing. The breeze blew her hair from her face. Her cheek was still peeling. Her eyes were fever bright. “Wondered where you’d got off to. It’s been twenty-seven hours.”
“Thought there was no time in space.”
“This isn’t space, it’s the west coast of Wales.”
“I was only gone for twenty minutes,” Yaz insisted. She paused. “Twenty-seven hours? Did you look for me?”
“Of course. Once I noticed you were missing. About seven hours ago. Maybe six. Six and a half.”
Yaz stared at her tiredly.
“This bridge is gonna eat us,” she said.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed.
“Not at all the answer I was looking for,” Yaz said. She threw her frostbitten hands around the Doctor and hauled her back from the edge of the bridge with a grunt. They fell heavily, backwards into wet grass and rocks. Unbothered, the Doctor rose to her feet with ease. Yaz grabbed her around her bootless ankle and flung her back down again. With less regret than she felt was probably warranted, she clambered over and sat on her knees.
“Could you just,” Yaz hissed, grasping fruitlessly for her wrists, “stop being weird for once?”
The Doctor’s eyes gleamed up at her.
“I want to cross the bridge,” she said, very calmly.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s the crunchage,” Yaz said. She tightened her grasp. “You don’t want to cross the bridge, because, as I just said, it’s gonna eat us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The blackbird told me.”
“I’m being weird?”
“On a scale of one to ten on the scale of weird—”
“Redundant.”
“—I’m at a solid five, and you’re up in the stratosphere.”
“Your metaphors,” the Doctor said, straining, “could do with some work, Yaz.”
The Doctor, Yaz knew, was actually a bit scrappy in a pinch. She was stronger than she looked and she could do an awful lot with just her pinkie finger. Before she could do anything, Yaz reached behind her quickly, slipped off her remaining boot and bashed her across the face with it.
“Sorry,” she said, wincing, “sorry, sorry, sorry. But you will leave your laces undone.”
For the moment, at least, the Doctor was still. Raw cheek bruising, eyelids flickering. Yaz took a ragged breath, slightly stunned.
“Ah,” she heard. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”
She glanced behind her. At the end of the long, rusted bridge an old, grey man stood half-shadowed by the trees above him.
“Help me,” sang the blackbird.
The old man’s eyes followed it speculatively as it rustled from branch to branch.
“Troublesome thing,” he tutted. “But that’s nature for you, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Well, I always thought so. It’s all nature. Birds, bees. Even me.”
The moonlight glinted off him. Still, she couldn’t quite make him out.
“Even you,” he said.
“I’m not crossing the bridge,” Yaz said. She stood, still holding the Doctor’s boot in her hand.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Of course you don’t. It’s your choice, isn’t it? Cross, don’t cross. Cross…don’t cross.” He looked her dead in the eye. “This bit of space is tricky, isn’t it? A bit of a hard road. Difficult to make your way without my bridge.”
“I don’t want to cross,” Yaz said.
“Don’t cross, then,” he said affably. Easily. “But let her pass. Let her pass and walk away. That’s my offer to you, bach. That’s my offer. This is my bridge, after all.”
“Let you take her, you mean.”
“It’s not taking if she’s willing.”
“It’s not willing,” Yaz spat. “You’ve done summat to her.”
“She’s beautiful patchwork,” he said. “Threads twisted together. I could unwind her. I could unmake her so prettily and she’d thank me for it. I haven’t done anything to her that she hasn’t done to herself. Nobody crosses the bridge,” he said lowly, “without wanting to.”
“Bismillah,” she whispered on half a hunch, “you won’t take her.”
Even at such a distance, the old man flinched from her. He tilted his head curiously.
“You’re not religious, I don’t think.”
“Not really.”
“Why invoke the name of God?”
“Because,” she said. “I think in the right sort of story, it would keep you off.”
He smiled.
“In the right sort of story, it might.”
“What sort of story is this, then?” Yaz wondered.
“The kind of story,” he said, lingering on each word, “where each bridge has a toll.”
“The kind of story,” BARD echoed mournfully from behind her, “where the price is your soul.”
“Whose side are you on?” Yaz complained back at it.
“It doesn’t take sides,” the old man said. “It just rhymes.”
“You can’t have her,” Yaz insisted. “Neither of you.”
“Why?” the old man asked. “Is she yours? Your bridge to cross? Your soul to keep? She’ll change like the weather,” he said, “and you’ll crumble to dust long before you get what you’re asking for. It’s only natural.”
“Help me,” chirped the blackbird. The TARDIS clanged in the distance. End of the world.
“That’s fine,” Yaz rasped. “That’s good. Nothing lasts. That’s the first thing anyone learns.” She swallowed. “Nothing’s mine to keep. Not forever.”
“Then walk away, bach,” the old man said. “Walk away while you can. My gift to you. Turn away and let nature take its course.”
Behind her, she heard a faint groan and the rustle of the Doctor rising to her feet. Striped socks on rotting earth. Chamomile, engine oil, sweat. The shadow of her passed quietly. Toes on the edge of the bridge, where she paused. Beneath them, the river gushed loudly into the chasm. The Doctor sighed.
“There we are,” the old man said, smiling gently. “Come along. Nearly there.”
“If you walk over that bridge,” Yaz told her, nose to the back of her ear, straight into the darkness at the base of her neck, “I will never, ever, forgive you.”
“I won’t be there for you to forgive,” the blackbird said.
Not at all the answer she’d been looking for. This wouldn’t be at all regulation. Nothing was hers, and it wasn’t very fair at all.
“Sorry,” she whispered into the Doctor’s ear. “But I don’t feel like hitting you in the face again.”
Door, mouth. Same difference. Hands joining where they shouldn’t. She reached around for the back of her head. Was she swallowing or being swallowed? In the moment, it was impossible to tell. In the moment—frostbitten lips and warm tongue and iron—with her other hand she threw the Doctor’s boot into the river and heard the splash as it disappeared. The Doctor collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Yaz caught her around the waist and turned one last time to the bridge and the old grey man at the end of it. For a moment the air seemed to shimmer. Her skin prickled. The name of God lingered on her tongue.
“Well,” he said mildly. “Fair play to you.”
He vanished.
The midnight air smelled faintly sweet. Seagulls cried in the distance. The river sang below them. Moonlight gleamed in the Doctor’s hair.
“Gold star,” the blackbird chirped. “Time to go, Yaz.”
“Does any of this make sense to you, Yaz?” she asked herself. “Not really, no. Thanks for askin’.”
The blackbird trilled at her in what sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
“Yeah,” Yaz sighed, turning to leave. The Doctor roused only enough to trip over an exposed root. Yaz steadied them both with a groan and hoisted her a little higher. “Yeah, that seems about right.”
The Doctor hunched over the controls, one hand in a trouser pocket. Her coat swished around her bare ankles. “It’s gone,” she said, disturbed. “The anomaly. That black hole.”
“So the TARDIS is okay?” Yaz ventured. The door had closed behind her. They hadn’t seen so much as a ladybird since.
“Right as rain. Good as gold. Er,” she spun around on her heels and nearly fell flat on her face. She righted herself without missing a beat. “Just peachy.”
“Bit of a reach?”
The Doctor wrinkled her nose.
“A reach is better than not reaching at all,” she said. “Shoot for the moon, and you’ll land amongst the stars, Yaz.”
“Unless those stars are being eaten by a black hole.”
“Black holes are only natural. Part of the landscape.”
“And was that?” Yaz wondered, wandering from Zone Two into Zone One. The TARDIS loomed. Louder, now. Warmer. “Natural?”
The Doctor followed her, hands tucked into her armpits, coat wrapped tight. Cool again. No breath. The bootprint on her cheek was already fading.
“Hard to say.”
“Those people?”
“They’ve been gone for a long time.”
“Where were we?”
“Devil’s Bridge. Only it’s not, not really. Pontarfynach. Bridge over the river Mynach,” she said. “For the pilgrims heading to Strata Florida. And then another, and then another. That’s all. Bridges on top of bridges. Rivers on top of rivers. At the gorge, the Mynach flows into the Rheidol. From there it rushes into the sea.” She paused at the archway. “I wanted to cross the bridge, Yaz.”
“You didn’t.”
She swallowed. Yaz watched the dark hollows move at the base of her neck and tried not to shudder.
“I didn’t.” She stared across at her, eyes glassy. “Did you?”
“Did I cross it? Obviously not,” she said, “bighead.”
“Did you want to?”
“No.” The Doctor’s half-lidded eyes tracked her lazily. Out to lunch, a bit, still. Time crunched and tired. “Wanted something else,” she admitted quietly, half-certain that the Doctor wasn’t really listening anyway. She didn’t remember. She couldn’t remember. If she did, they wouldn’t talk about it. They were good at that.
“Did you get it?” the Doctor wondered.
Yaz thought of the taste of her. Ozone and rust. Lovely metal and salt. Not quite human, but then, she had never expected it to be. Had it been her or had it been something else?
She’d never know, now. She’d never know. That was fine. That was good. Nothing lasted. Nothing was hers to keep.
“Maybe,” she said.
From the depths of the ship, she heard the blackbird call.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The Doctor smiled at her—real and wide—and strode ahead. She pressed her palms reverently to the doors of the TARDIS. They creaked open easily. She disappeared inside.
Yaz glanced behind her, one last time.
“Goodbye, BARD,” she said. “Will you be alright, alone here?”
BARD chimed and ran a slow, lazy circle above her. Dog chasing its tail.
“You’re very kind to wonder. You’re very slow to guess. I’ll wait in perfect silence,” BARD said. “For whoever comes here next.”