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  ‘We’re allowed to make up words now, are we?’ asked Rory.

  ‘I thought that was well established,’ said Amy.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ said Rory, following Amy down the control room stairs. ‘It wasn’t a complaint, the leaning thing.’

  ‘Lean-ish,’ the Doctor and Amy corrected him together.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Rory. ‘It wasn’t a complaint. I wasn’t complaining. Lean all you like. I just want to check that we’re in the right place. We can be leaning in the right place. That’s fine. As long as we’re in the right place. Are we in the right place?’

  The Doctor stopped at the TARDIS door, turned to face Rory, and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He peered into Rory’s eyes.

  ‘Rory Williams Pond,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Not my actual name,’ said Rory.

  ‘Rory Williams Pond, did I not promise to get you back home for Christmas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Back home to Earth for Christmas?’

  ‘Yes. Directly to Leadworth, near Gloucester f—’

  ‘Ub-bub-bub-bub!’ the Doctor chided. ‘Specifics, mere specifics. Home for Christmas, that was the deal, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rory agreed.

  ‘Doesn’t the margin for interpretation seem huge now?’ Amy asked him. She was pulling on wellies and a duffel coat. ‘I mean, he’s not even guaranteeing a street address, so which Christmas he’s talking about becomes a bit vague too.’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t even considered that,’ groaned Rory.

  ‘Home for Christmas is what I promised,’ declared the Doctor. ‘Home for Christmas is what I will deliver, even if there has to be some leaning involved.’

  He looked at Amy.

  ‘Duffel, Pond?’

  She was buttoning the toggles.

  ‘Hello? Christmas? Leadworth? Chilly?’ she replied.

  ‘Good point,’ said the Doctor. He looked thoughtful and twiddled his bow tie, as though it doubled as a thermostatic control.

  ‘I had a fur coat somewhere,’ he reflected. ‘Big fur coat. Very warm. I wonder where that went?’

  Amy glanced at Rory. ‘Just the cardy, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, zipping it up.

  ‘That’s your level of confidence?’

  ‘You can’t be disappointed if you don’t get your hopes up,’ said Rory.

  The Doctor opened the doors. A breath of cold air touched their faces, just a gentle gust as though someone had opened an upright freezer.

  ‘Wow,’ said Amy.

  ‘There, oh ye of little faith,’ smiled the Doctor. He took a deep breath. ‘You can almost smell the sleigh bells jingling.’

  They went outside into perfect, virgin snow that was half a metre deep. The sky was a peerless blue, and the sun had a fiercely bright clarity. Around them, the woodland was silent and sculptural with snow.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ said Amy, gazing and smiling.

  ‘Christmas-y, isn’t it?’ the Doctor agreed.

  ‘Christmas-ish,’ said Amy.

  ‘It’s great,’ said Rory. ‘I don’t think it’s Leadworth, but it’s great.’

  ‘Of course it’s Leadworth,’ said Amy. ‘It’s that bit of wood outside Leadworth. You know. That bit of wood?’

  ‘Really?’ asked Rory. ‘Listen.’

  ‘To what?’ she asked.

  ‘Just listen.’

  They listened.

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Amy said.

  Rory nodded significantly with his eyes narrowed.

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ said Amy.

  ‘No traffic? No… birds?’ Rory asked.

  ‘It’s early,’ said Amy. ‘It’s Christmas Day.’

  ‘It’s not that early. Look at the sun.’

  ‘The roads are closed because of the snow.’

  ‘There’s not that much snow.’

  ‘It’s Leadworth before there was traffic,’ said Amy.

  ‘So, not the right Leadworth, then,’ said Rory.

  Amy stomped over to the Doctor, kicking up swirls of snow with her wellies.

  ‘Tell him we’re in the right place!’ she insisted.

  The Doctor was examining the TARDIS. The blue police box was perched on the thick snow cover, tilted by the drift so that it stood at a slight angle to the vertical.

  ‘That explains the lean,’ said the Doctor. ‘We didn’t land on the flat. Never mind. It’s quite rakish. I’d say that was, in fact, lean-esque.’

  ‘Tell him we’re in the right place,’ she repeated.

  The Doctor turned to them.

  ‘Oh, we’re definitely in the right place!’ he declared. ‘Definitely! This is the right place! We’re slap bang in the middle of Christmas. Christmas is all around us! Xmas marks the spot! Can’t you feel it? Can’t you sense it? It’s all mince pies and brandy butter, and candied peel and anxious turkeys! It’s tinsel and carols, and baubles and egg nog! It’s—’

  ‘Is it Christmas, in Leadworth, on Earth, in 2011?’ asked Rory.

  The Doctor held up a thoughtful finger, and pursed his lips. He looked from side to side.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ he decided, and strode off.

  ‘If it isn’t,’ the Doctor called back to them over his shoulder, ‘and I’m just saying “if”, if it isn’t, then the TARDIS has at least transported us to the most Christmas-y Christmas-ness in the whole universe, which is really quite something, and doesn’t deserve any kind of criticism whatsoever!’

  ‘Making it all up as he goes along,’ Rory said to Amy as they scampered to keep up.

  ‘Or business as usual, as it’s also known,’ she replied.

  They began to ascend a slope through the trees. The glare of sunlight off the untouched snow was so bright they had to squint. It was hard going. Amy slipped and almost fell over. Rory chuckled so much, he did fall over. He slithered a bit too. Amy laughed, and gave him a hand to hoist him up. The Doctor kept straight on up the slope, swinging his lanky arms for balance, cheerfully singing ‘I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In’.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted encouragingly. ‘As a canon!’

  ‘We can’t even stand up,’ Amy shouted back, ‘let alone manage a three-part harmony!’

  ‘Come up here! Come on!’ the Doctor cried.

  They joined him at the top of the rise. The view spread out below them, bright in the sunlight: woodland and fields, hills, mountains, a glorious snowscape, peaceful and still, entirely serene.

  ‘That’s pretty stunning,’ said Amy.

  ‘It is,’ Rory agreed. ‘It really is. It’s not Leadworth, of course.’

  ‘No,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Unless Leadworth looked like this in, I don’t know, the ninth century?’ said Rory.

  ‘With those mountains?’ asked Amy.

  ‘So, in fairness, it’s not even Leadworth-ish, is it?’ asked Rory.

  ‘Yeah, but look at the pretty,’ said the Doctor.

  They were forced to agree that the pretty was really very pretty, and they looked at it admiringly for a while.

  ‘Is that a village down there?’ asked Amy.

  ‘There’s something very strange about those mountains,’ said Rory.

  ‘Village?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘Down there, through the trees,’ replied Amy, pointing. ‘There, you see? I dunno, about a mile away?’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘The mountains,’ said Rory, shielding his eyes from the glare. ‘Very odd.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s because they’re not mountains. I don’t think they’re mountains, anyway. Come on!’

  He set off down the slope.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Amy called after him.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t think they’re mountains?’ asked Rory.

  ‘We’re going to visit that village!’ the Doctor announced. ‘I mean, since we’re here! We might get a lovely Christmas-y welc
ome! That’d be worth the trip, wouldn’t it?’

  Rory and Amy looked at each other and then back at the Doctor.

  ‘What did you mean?’ Rory repeated. ‘Are you saying they’re mountain-ish?’

  ‘Come on!’ the Doctor cried, stretching out his arms as he strode down the bank. ‘Fill your lungs! Ahhhh! Taste that fresh air! Work up an appetite for all that Christmas pud!’

  Amy shook her head and set off after the Doctor. Rory paused for a moment and zipped his cardigan right up to the top.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘It really is ever so cold.’

  ‘Come on!’ called Amy.

  ‘It’s all right for you, duffel coat,’ said Rory. ‘I mean, it is very pretty, it really is. But it’s cold and it’s very… dead. There’s nothing around. It’s so still and quiet and… bleak.’

  The Doctor spun on his heels and pointed at Rory dramatically.

  ‘Exactly! And a bleak midwinter, cruel frost notwithstanding, is exactly the vicinity in which you’d expect to find a really Christmas-y Christmas! So let’s do that very thing!’

  ‘Could I go back and get a coat first?’ asked Rory. ‘Please? It’s really cold. And if this is the most Christmas-y Christmas to end all Christmases, I’d like to enjoy it and not be all dead of frostbite.’

  ‘He is turning blue,’ said Amy.

  ‘I’ll just be two minutes,’ said Rory. ‘Promise.’

  The Doctor smiled.

  ‘Of course. We’ll wait right here. We’ll be enjoying the view. Because it is, as you’ll agree, magnificent.’

  He took the TARDIS key out of his pocket and threw it to Rory. Rory caught it neatly and held up both index fingers

  ‘Two minutes,’ he repeated, and ran off down the rise behind him. Amy and the Doctor turned to stare at the beautiful scenery again. The sun was very bright. Amy turned her mittened hand into a peak over her eyes.

  ‘What did you mean about those mountains?’ she asked.

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ said the Doctor.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s only popped back to get a coat.’

  ‘We should have gone with him,’ she said.

  ‘I think he can manage a coat.’

  Amy glanced at him.

  ‘We should have stayed together,’ she said. ‘Don’t tut. We don’t know where we are, and we just separated. I’m all right with you, but he’s on his own. Which one of us is going to get into trouble and need rescuing? Come on, answer me that?’

  The Doctor lowered his chin and turned cautiously to meet her look.

  ‘Are you suggesting,’ he asked, ‘we could be setting ourselves up for some unnecessary shouting and running about later on?

  Amy nodded.

  ‘All right, we’ll go and keep him company,’ said the Doctor. They turned to head back over the slope after Rory.

  And came to a dead stop.

  Half a dozen men were standing at the top of the rise in front of them. They were dressed in several layers of heavy, dark clothes, proof against the cold. They wore hoods and mittens and cleated snow boots, and carried hefty farm tools: rakes, hoes and forks. Amy couldn’t help noticing how grim and wary the men looked. How intent.

  ‘Is this the lovely Christmas-y welcome you were looking for?’ Amy whispered.

  The Doctor looked a little uneasy. He regarded the heavy farm tools that were being aimed at them in a manner that unpleasantly suggested spears.

  He spread his arms in an open, friendly gesture and took a step forward.

  ‘Hoe hoe hoe?’ he tried.

  CHAPTER 2

  LET NOTHING YOU DISMAY

  Rory stepped out of the TARDIS, pulling on a pair of thick gloves to go with the parka he’d borrowed. He carefully locked the TARDIS door behind him.

  ‘Amy?’ he called, setting off in the direction they had been walking. ‘Doctor?’

  It was definitely the right way. He could see the three tracks of footprints, plus the fourth he’d left doubling back. The snow cover was perfect. Apart from their footprints, not an inch of it had been disturbed.

  ‘Amy? Doctor?’

  Rory made his way back to the rise where they had enjoyed the view. He stopped. There was no sign of his wife or the Doctor.

  Rory wasn’t especially worried at first. He was used to this. It was the kind of thing that happened a lot. People wandered off or got distracted. People didn’t wait for you where they said they’d wait (which was rubbish of them, in his opinion, because he’d once waited in more or less the same place for a couple of thousand years). Sometimes, people noticed more interesting things going on around the corner while you were looking the other way. And that was before you considered the equally likely idea that the Doctor and Amy might be behind some trees nearby, skilfully constructing snowballs with which to greet him.

  ‘Amy?’

  Rory started to hunt around. He thought about scrunching together a pre-emptive snowball of his own.

  He saw the tracks, the footprints of the Doctor and Amy, running a little way down the slope and back. On the top of the rise, was a mass of footprints that had arrived from the left along the line of the hill and apparently departed the same way.

  Rory registered the very first twinge of worry.

  ‘There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,’ Rory told himself. ‘They’ve met some nice people and gone off with them. Some… carol singers. They’ve gone carolling.’

  He didn’t stop to examine the logic holes in that statement. He set off after the footprints. He’d been gone ten minutes at most. How far could they have got?

  After a few minutes’ walk, it became evident that ‘far enough to be out of sight’ was the basic answer to that. Rory felt a little bit more worry. The heavy parka and the effort of tramping through the snow was actually making him feel a little warm. He stopped and took stock.

  ‘Amy? Doctor?’

  The bare trees with their heavy burdens of snow echoed his calls back to him.

  Something moved.

  Rory saw figures up ahead. He stepped forward, starting to smile in relief, ready to scold them for leaving him behind.

  He froze in his tracks. His newborn smile froze too.

  It wasn’t the Doctor. It wasn’t Amy. It wasn’t any nice friendly people they might have met along the way, either.

  Rory knew that a snowball wasn’t really going to cut it in the circumstances. He realised he needed to hide, very well and very quickly.

  He skipped right past worry and went straight to feeling properly, deeply scared.

  ‘Who in Guide’s name are they?’ asked Bill Groan.

  Old Winnowner shook her head.

  ‘They’re not faces I ever knew, Elect,’ she said. Winnowner Cropper was the oldest Morphan in Beside, the last of her generation. She was also the wisest of Bill Groan’s councillors. If anyone knew, Bill Groan reasoned, it would be her.

  ‘Bet they’ll be from one of the other plantnations, Elect,’ said Samewell.

  Bill Groan looked at the young man. Samewell Crook saw the good side in everything. Bill Groan had an uneasy feeling that there wasn’t much of a good side to anything just now.

  ‘They don’t look like Morphans,’ said Bel Flurrish. Her voice was small and hard, as though it was huddling from the cold inside her.

  ‘They have all kind of different fashions,’ said Samewell. ‘In Seeside, they have real hats. I heard that. Guide’s truth.’

  ‘We haven’t had wellwishers at the festival for three years,’ said Old Winnowner. ‘Not since the ice started coming.’

  ‘Well, they’re making an effort this year, then, aren’t they?’ said Samewell.

  ‘They’re not wearing hats,’ said Bel.

  ‘Jack Duggat’s party found them over at the top end of Would Be,’ said Bill Groan.

  ‘Then maybe they can say where my sister is,’ said Bel.

  Jack Duggat’s men,
their farm tools hefted like the weapons the old martials carried in Guide’s books of Earth before, were leading the two visitors into the main yard. Quite a crowd of folk who were not labouring or searching had come out of their houses to watch.

  One of the two strangers was tall and alert, smiling and looking at everything around him. He reminded Bel Flurrish of an inquisitive cockerel, walking comb-up into everything, heedless of its own safety. There was something in his openness that slightly reassured her. A person whose face could hold that kind of expression was not, in her opinion, a person who could do harm to another person.

  The second visitor was a girl. She looked cautious, but there was a strength in her. She had red hair. Bel had never seen red hair. She’d never seen anything like it, except in Guide’s books. How could something that had only ever been known of on Earth before find its way to Hereafter?

  ‘I want to talk to them, Elect,’ said Bel.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s my job,’ said Bill Groan.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s my sister,’ Bel replied.

  Bill Groan was the elected leader of the Beside plantnation. He was a good man, with dark hair and a beard that had started to show grey the first year the winter wore white. He looked at Bel, right into her hard, angry eyes.

  ‘You know I’m taking this serious, Arabel,’ he said. ‘Your sister disappearing is a Cat A matter. And now these strangers arrive? It’s a concern. But there’s a process. I got to do this right.’

  ‘Then I want to be present,’ she said. ‘Guide help me, I deserve to be present.’

  Bill glanced at Old Winnowner, saw the tiny nod she made, and told Bel Flurrish yes.

  ‘Take them on into the assembly,’ he told Jack Duggat.

  The tall visitor heard him say this, and turned towards Bill Groan with a smile.

  ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor!’ he announced, stepping towards Bill. A hoe and a pitching fork crossed in front of him to block his way. ‘Oh, dear!’ he said, recoiling from the heavy wooden shafts. ‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding. I really do. Are you in charge? I’d love to go out and come back in again. You know? Start over! How would that be?’

  ‘That’s a funny accent, Elect,’ Winnowner said, sidelong, to Bill Groan.

  ‘Indeed.’