First Steps: Chapter Four
May. 13th, 2011 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charameiTitle: First Steps (4/5)
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 9,276. Fic: 21,925
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.
Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?
Beta'ed by the amazingin_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
writethisfanfic.
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
The three Loomlings cluster around the gate in awful silence. Snail wants to tell Tagalong off, but Tagalong's gone so pale that he doesn't have the hearts. Anyway, it was Snail's fault too.
"They'll be all right," Flabbaduckarusa says, but Snail can hear that it's nothing more than a desperate lie.
"It kills people," Tagalong whispers. His eyes are enormous; Snail puts an arm around him, but Tagalong yelps in pain and pulls away.
"We need to go and warn them," Snail decides. After all, they can't just go back to the nursery, can they? It could be ages before the grown-ups on Gallifrey realise that the gate's fixed, and meanwhile the grown-ups beyond the gate are in trouble. They were in trouble even before Snail accidentally set the Thing on them. Warning them is the least he can do.
He's curious, too, but he tries to keep that out of his mind as the desperation in Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts solidifies into fear. He doesn't think Flabbaduckarusa would approve.
Flabbaduckarusa, lips pinched together, shakes his head mutely and moves so that he's between Snail and the gate.
Tagalong makes the barest of nods, leans towards the gate and quavers, "Hello?"
There's no response. He tries again, his voice stronger, then inches closer to the gate and tries yet again. Snail doubts that anyone on the other side can hear them; the Loomlings can't hear the Thing any more, after all. If they want to warn the grown-ups, they need to go through the gate to do it.
He dodges around Flabbaduckarusa and sprints for the gate. The wall of translucent indigo shimmers and contorts as he gets closer to it; he squeezes his eyes tight shut, half-expecting to bounce off it.
Flabbaduckarusa's yells become a distant garble. The floor turns soft and springy under Snail's feet: the air dampens and warms. He doesn't dare to open his eyes. Without warning, the soft ground becomes slippery; he goes flying into something cold and wet that squelches up into his nose and mouth, filling them with wet, grainy yuck.
He swallows some by reflex before he manages to haul himself into a sitting position, spitting and pawing at his face until he's wiped most of it off. Then he opens his eyes.
The sparse yellow grass quivers as some small animal darts away from him. A strong breeze tugs at his hair, sending ripples through every muddy puddle like the one he's just fallen into and distorting their off-colour reflections of the heavy grey clouds up above.
The Thing is a dark shape receding on the horizon. There's no noise but the tweeting of alien birds and Flabbaduckarusa's garbled shouts, which are becoming closer and less garbled by the nanosecond. Moments later their originator hurtles through the gate, dragging Tagalong behind him.
"Stop running off," Flabbaduckarusa half-scolds, half-whines.
"No," Snail says, as Tagalong's gaze fixes on the distant Thing. "We've got to find them."
"Yes, but not like this!" Flabbaduckarusa throws his arms as wide as they'll go. "It's enormous!"
He does have a point. Snail trails his hands through the mud and tries to think, but Tagalong's so guilty and scared that it keeps putting him off. He wishes he could go up and hug Tagalong, but Tagalong's in too much pain as it is.
Pain or no pain, it's Tagalong who suddenly says, "I can hear them," and points in the opposite direction to the Thing. The Loomlings share relieved grins, but Tagalong's disappears so fast that Snail wouldn't have believed it was ever there at all if he hadn't seen it. He looks glumly back down at the mud, and has an idea.
The mudball hits Flabbaduckarusa with a squelch; Snail doesn't see where it lands because he's already on his feet and running towards the grown-ups.
"Can't get me!" he yells, and knows it's worked when he hears another splat, an outraged roar from Flabbaduckarusa, and Tagalong trying to laugh and run away at the same time.
Seconds later, another mudball grazes the top of his head, spattering a little on his cheek as it goes, and he's just opening his mouth to call a taunt back to Tagalong for his poor aim when Tagalong yelps and splutters indignantly; Snail turns to see Flabbaduckarusa, grinning enormously, legging it behind a tree for cover. What can he and Tagalong do but give chase?
Pelting one another, laughing and shouting, they just barely remember to head towards the grown-ups. Snail begins to gain on Flabbaduckarusa as his brother stumbles while climbing through a large patch of shrub; they emerge into a circle of spindly bushes surrounding a large, flat area of soft ground. With a yell of, "Ha!", Snail drops a particularly slimy ball down the back of his brother's collar before noticing the grown-ups staring at him in surprise.
There are three of them: a young man with a beard long enough to trail in the mud surrounding his thighs, a white-haired woman and an aghast gentleman in wire-frame glasses, holding a clipboard. They're all real – there's a moment when Snail's not sure of that, but then he catches the buzz and flow of their thoughts and knows that they must be. They've found the grown-ups. It's over.
"I say," says the Beard-Man, at the same time as the elderly woman demands, "Where did you come from?"
"And," Glasses adds, "what have you done to your clothes?"
Snail just grins. He's still grinning when Tagalong erupts from the bush behind him, shouts, "Ha!", and something cold and wet slithers down the back of Snail's neck. Then Tagalong stops moving, one hand still holding Snail's collar. "Oh! Hello."
He pauses; Snail hears him go from overjoyed to confused, and then Tagalong asks cautiously, "Why are you all buried in mud?"
Snail doesn't really care why grown-ups do what they do; that's their business, and he's just glad to have found them. That is, until a flurry of faint, deliberately distorted telepathy fills the air above the grown-ups' heads. Snail can't counter whatever the grown-ups are doing to block him well enough to know what they're saying, but he does pick up on one thing that they're trying to hide. He's seen fear a lot since he was born.
He'd never even thought that the grown-ups might be trapped by something besides a broken gate, or that there was anything they couldn't handle with the right equipment. The idea makes him feel a bit sick; he reaches for Flabbaduckarusa's hand, only to find that Flabbaduckarusa's reaching for his as well.
The grown-ups' exchange is over in a matter of seconds. The elderly woman swivels her torso to face them; the mud sucking at her legs makes it hard for her to move properly. Her voice is level, but Snail's seen the fear now and it's impossible to ignore. "Wherever you came from, I assume you can get back there. Please go. Find an adult –"
"But –" Flabbaduckarusa begins.
"I haven't finished speaking. Tell them we need a rescue. You won't get in trouble." This last is probably meant to be reassuring, but Snail can't think of anything less reassuring than grown-ups who need Loomlings to rescue them.
"But we can't," Flabbaduckarusa says again, as soon as she's finished. "They locked the building before we were born, when the Thing got through. You're the first grown-ups we've seen. And all the Drudges are dead because it was hungry, so we're going to have to help you ourselves."
There's a pause while the grown-ups take this in. Then Glasses leans towards them, peering over his spectacles. "You're from the Looming House. How old are you?"
Flabbaduckarusa looks helplessly at Snail, who guesses, "About two hours?"
"Told you," the beard-man says.
"Oh, shut up, Beadle," the woman snaps. "This is all your fault in the first place." She turns back to the Loomlings. "Are you saying you've no way of contacting an adult?"
"We were sort of hoping you would." Tagalong sounds disgusted. The woman raises an eyebrow at his tone, but doesn't say anything. Perhaps she realises how desperately the Loomlings have been looking for somebody.
"In that case, you are going to have to help us," Glasses says. "Have you names? I'm Quillon, and my colleagues here are Elleira and Beadle."
"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and that's Tagalong and Snail. We're going to change them," Flabbaduckarusa adds hastily. "We just needed something to call each other."
Quillon nods briskly. "As you can see, we're all a bit stuck, and we're sinking."
"Sinking?" Flabbaduckarusa asks shrilly. Snail knows his brother's wondering what else can go wrong. That doesn't sound helpful to him. It's disappointing that the grown-ups need rescuing, but if they do, well, then he'll just have to do it. They should at least be able to give him ideas.
But they're scared.
"Yes, sinking." Elleira gestures irritably to the mud surrounding her hips. "I'm not standing in this because it's good for the skin, you know. I'm here because young Beadle can't follow a simple navigation program."
"The mapper was out of alignment," Beadle says, in a tone that suggests he's been saying this a lot lately.
"Yes, and since you've now dropped it, it will never work again."
"It was also our communicator and the emergency call beacon for a rescue TARDIS," Quillon interrupts hastily, "so if you can make a new one, then we can all get out of here." He taps his fingers on the back of his clipboard, sizing the three of them up. His gaze lingers on Tagalong's burned hands and Snail's dishevelled hair; finally, he turns to Flabbaduckarusa. "You seem responsible. Do you think you can find your way back to the gate?"
"Of course I can," Flabbaduckarusa says, swelling visibly at the compliment.
Tagalong leans forward and takes Snail's hand, the better to aim his telepathy without accidentally broadcasting to everyone around them. Do you suppose all grown-ups are this stupid?
I don't know, Snail thinks back. Privately, he's glad that Quillon has taken over, but there's no denying that Flabbaduckarusa's an odd choice. I hope not.
Quillon looks over his glasses at them. "That's very rude, children."
"Sorry," Tagalong says, but he keeps hold of Snail's hand just the same.
"Good. We can show you how to disassemble some of our other equipment to build a new communicator, but we'll need tools, so you'll have to find some."
"Oh!" Suddenly remembering, Snail digs into his pocket and pulls out the toy screwdriver that he stuffed in there before going through the gate. "I've got this; will it do?"
He fidgets as Quillon squints at it. "Hm. Well, it is a toy. Not the most functional tool I've ever seen, but it'll do. I don't suppose you have the rest of the box with you?"
"No; we left it in the Looming House."
Quillon nods. "Flabbaduckarusa should run and fetch it, then."
"Yes, of course," Flabbaduckarusa says, and runs off. As Elleira calls an admonition to be careful, Quillon beckons Snail and Tagalong forward. They edge closer, wary of the soft ground underfoot.
"Now you two. Our equipment is behind those bushes. I want you to bring out everything you can carry – never mind the heavy bits – and put it where we can see it."
They do as they're told. There's not much there: a couple of locked metal boxes, already half-buried in the bog, that turn out to be 'the heavy bits'; a tarpaulin and a small open crate of assorted exciting gadgetry. They can't lift the crate either, so settle for lifting the pieces out of it and bringing them over as fast as they can. Quillon watches closely, directing them to put everything in orderly rows on the tarpaulin. The arrangement doesn't make any sense to Snail, but he supposes Quillon must know what he's doing. Tagalong's not so sure.
"Stupid and nonsensical," he mutters to Snail as Snail staggers past him with an armful of loose wires, and earns himself a glare from Elleira.
On his fifth and final trip Snail notices that Beadle's beard, which was previously only just grazing the top of the mud, is now several inches deep in it. He sneaks a glance at Elleira and Quillon: he's not sure, but they seem a bit lower too.
"How fast are you sinking?" he blurts, before realising that he doesn't really want to know.
Elleira doesn't quite manage to keep the tremor out of her voice as she answers, "About eleven inches an hour."
That's fast, isn't it? Tagalong must think the same, because he stops reorganising the equipment that he's just dumped unceremoniously on the tarpaulin and looks anxiously after Flabbaduckarusa.
"It's all right." Quillon sounds impossibly calm for somebody who's sinking at eleven inches an hour. He gestures to his clipboard. "By my calculations, we've got a little under three hours before any of us begin to drown."
Three hours?
"You can do a lot in three hours," Quillon says sternly. Snail must have thought a bit too loudly. "It's only been two and a half hours since you three were born, hasn't it? That's your entire lifespan again and then some. And I'm sure you had to do a lot to find us."
"Well, maybe," Tagalong says doubtfully.
Quillon studies the pair of them for a moment, then looks straight at Snail. "Some of you more than others, perhaps."
That's unfair, Snail thinks, especially considering what happened to Tagalong. He says so: the next thing he knows he's telling Quillon everything, with Tagalong filling in the bits that Snail doesn't know or doesn't want to remember. When they get to the bit where Snail left the nursery, Elleira tuts; when the Drudge gets eaten, Beadle looks fascinated; and when Tagalong tells them about the Loom and the dead baby, and pulls up his top to show his burns, Quillon is horrified.
"And you haven't had them treated at all? Poor boy, you must be in agony!"
Tagalong shrugs. Snail can see that he still doesn't properly remember before being burned. He squeezes Tagalong's hand; Tagalong looks at him in bemusement.
Elleira recovers her composure first, and claps her hands briskly. "All the more reason to get everyone out of here. What've you got on that tarpaulin, then? I can scarcely see over there."
Quillon starts listing things off for her. He's only a few items in when Flabbaduckarusa clatters through the bushes at full tilt, panting and wild-eyed. He's holding the toolkit so tightly that Snail has to prise it out of his fingers as he babbles, "I saw the Thing! It chased me, but I ran and after a bit it stopped following, or at least, I think it did –"
"You think it did?" Tagalong asks urgently. Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his eyes shut and nods.
Snail throws his arms around his brother, who is shaking violently as he clings on to Snail. He shouldn't have let Flabbaduckarusa go without the screwdriver, not when he knew the Thing was out there. If it's followed Flabbaduckarusa back, it'll all be Snail's fault when they get eaten, the Loomlings and the grown-ups too: Beadle keeps touching his hair and even Quillon is breathing deliberately slowly, so Snail doesn't think there's much chance of them being able to fight it off.
Elleira, however, says thoughtfully, "You said it was telepathic?"
The Loomlings all nod.
"Then we'd all have heard it coming if it had followed Flabbaduckarusa, and probably seen it as well if it's as big as you say. I'd wager it's safe enough at present."
She's right. The Thing's telepathic range isn't huge, but it's got to be at least four storeys' worth of the Looming House. That's ages of warning. He squeezes Flabbaduckarusa's shoulders, trying to let him know it's all right. Flabbaduckarusa's grip tightens on Snail's arms, so hard that it hurts, then he takes a big heaving sniff and reluctantly lets go.
"We should still hurry up, though," Elleira says. "Quillon, this is your territory."
Quillon bows his head briefly in her direction. "Of course. The first thing to do is to strip all of this down to get the parts we need –" He gives Flabbaduckarusa an encouraging smile. "– and now we have a toolkit, we can go much faster. Thank you. Now, you and Tagalong take those –" he points to a few of the things on the tarpaulin "– over to Elleira and Beadle, and Snail, bring me that auxiliary receiver and I'll show you what we need from it."
He explains what's needed to Elleira and Beadle while Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong disperse around the edges of the mudhole. Snail picks up the receiver when Quillon points it out to him, and sits down with it as close to the edge of the mud as he dares.
It's a sphere about two inches in diameter, and deceptively heavy. Snail has to hold it in both hands as he turns it over, looking closely for the case opening. Quillon watches until he's successfully popped the case off to reveal the tightly-packed circuitry inside, then, to Snail's astonishment, begins to give him a proper lesson in how the receiver works. Snail tries to listen, but Quillon's going so slowly, and there's so little time, especially now the Thing's coming. He spends half of the lecture glancing nervously at the horizon and the other half trying to gauge how fast the grown-ups are sinking by looking at Beadle's beard. It's barely been five minutes when Quillon suddenly claps his hands together and Snail nearly jumps out of his skin.
"Am I boring you?" Quillon asks archly.
"No, but we need to hurry up!" Snail points at Beadle, who has already talked Tagalong through dismantling his first digital key. "Like they are."
Quillon follows his gaze, tuts, and turns back to Snail. His voice low, he says, "You know, Beadle's very young. Obviously not as young as you, but he's barely in triple figures."
Snail shrugs, not seeing what this has to do with anything. All grown-ups are impossibly ancient.
"Sit still and shush," Quillon says. "For one minute."
"But we've got to –"
"Sit still."
It's probably the fastest way back to the important stuff, so Snail obeys. He fixes his gaze on the spot where Beadle's beard meets the bog-mud, and waits for Quillon to let him talk again so he can say how stupid this is.
Sullenness quickly turns into boredom. There's no noise except a few birds and the sounds of Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa being shown useful things too quietly for Snail to hear. The grass is still damp, and the moisture is beginning to seep through his clothes, but despite that the ground is still hard enough to make him sore if he doesn't move about. There's a sharp pebble digging into his bottom. Quillon's put his head back and is examining the darkening sky with a practised calm that only makes Snail more agitated.
It goes on and on. Snail opens his mouth to speak several times: each time, Quillon gives him a sharp look and he closes it again. Finally, after forever, Quillon says, "See? One minute."
"That was never one minute! That was ages!"
"It was one minute," Quillon says firmly. "I should know. When you're young, and when you're scared, you never seem to have enough time. But really, a minute is almost forever, isn't it? There's so much that you can do in a minute. Even more in three hours." He adjusts his glasses. "It would take any one of us adults perhaps twenty minutes to make this beacon. We've got time to teach you properly, and I intend to use it."
"What about the Thing?"
"We'll worry about that if it shows up," Quillon says. "It's rude to stare."
Snail can't help it. Anyway, it's rude not to look at someone when you're talking to them, too. "Aren't you afraid of anything?"
"I make a habit of never panicking when there are children around," Quillon says. "Are you ready to learn how to take that apart yet? I can't get myself out of this, you know."
His tone brooks no more argument, not that Snail can think of much to say to that. Snail picks up the screwdriver again, and does his best to put the Thing, the bog and eleven inches an hour out of his mind and follow Quillon's lesson.
Even with Quillon and Elleira's insistence on giving proper lessons, Beadle's beard hasn't sunk much at all before the three Loomlings have got all the pieces the grown-ups want. Snail supposes it's because there are three of them, though he can't help but notice that Tagalong has contributed far more to the pile on the tarpaulin than either he or Flabbaduckarusa have.
The shadows are starting to lengthen as Quillon waves the other two back around to his side of the mud-hole and starts talking them all through rebuilding their stripped components into communicator parts, and the parts into a communicator. He makes it very easy, although Snail suspects that he's simplifying a lot.
Elleira and Beadle spectate for a bit, throwing in advice where needed, but soon get sidetracked into a discussion that Snail couldn't follow even if he wanted to. Quillon ignores them so the Loomlings do too, and keep going as fast as they can.
Tagalong's slowed right down now. He keeps making Quillon stop and go over things that seem obvious to Snail and Flabbaduckarusa, until eventually Flabbaduckarusa snaps, "Are you stupid?"
"No, he's not," Quillon says sharply, before Tagalong can retaliate. "He's just had a terrible teacher." He shoots a glare at Beadle; it goes unnoticed in the latter's debate with Elleira. "Nobody told him what he was doing when he was taking things apart, so now he doesn't know what he's doing to put them together, either." He smiles reassuringly at Tagalong. "You'll pick it up... oh, be careful with that wire. If it comes loose unexpectedly it could take your eye out."
"Right," Tagalong says, and manoeuvres his foot on top of it. Quillon throws up his hands in mock despair.
From that point on, Flabbaduckarusa does his best to help Tagalong. He points to things when Quillon mentions them, takes things out of Tagalong's hands to show him how to do them properly, and finishes Tagalong's work when Tagalong's not looking. Snail can see Tagalong getting angrier and angrier as Flabbaduckarusa, interpreting it as frustration, gets more and more helpful; but Snail's won the right to put the components together by dint of owning the screwdriver, so he's got more important things to worry about right now.
With heaps of time to spare – the mud's only up to Beadle's hips – Snail finishes putting the last circuit into the casing. His hands are trembling as he presses the switch to test it. It hums into life, warming slightly in his grasp, and Snail whoops excitedly. They're all going home! Quillon gives a little sigh of relief; Elleira and Beadle stop their bickering to congratulate him; Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa hug one another and cheer.
The communicator shudders in Snail's hand, whines a bit, then chokes and dies. The Loomlings' cheering comes to an abrupt halt as Snail stares in horror at his useless project.
"Oh, wonderful," Beadle mutters.
"I thought that was rather good for a first attempt," Elleira says. Snail wishes that was reassuring, but he's going to have to do it all again now, and there's even less time –
"I told you you should have let me build it," Flabbaduckarusa whines at Quillon.
Quillon ignores all of them; his focus is entirely on Snail. "Just take it apart and see what went wrong. Everybody makes mistakes; it's what you do with them that counts."
Snail dries his wet eyes on his sleeve and carries his work a bit closer to the edge of the quagmire so that Quillon can see it better. Flabbaduckarusa comes over to take a better look at what he's doing, blocking Snail's view as he does so.
"Is that what's wrong?" He points at something, but Snail can't see what it is because Flabbaduckarusa's hand is in the way. "It doesn't look right."
"You don't even know what it's meant to look like," Tagalong says sourly.
"There's sticky tape on it."
"Oh, Quillon, you didn't," Elleira says.
"Nothing wrong with a little sticky tape," Quillon says.
Snail tugs the communicator away from Flabbaduckarusa's prying fingers and closer to his face. The sunlight has almost completely gone now and he's finding it harder and harder to make things out, but he doesn't think the sticky tape is the problem. As he looks it over, he notices that the battery's changed colour: before, it was a luminous magenta, and now it's a dull greyish-purple. He shows it to Quillon, who mutters something that Snail's not allowed to repeat.
"What's wrong?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, his voice shaking.
"It's dead. If I recall correctly, that was the only battery we had. Tagalong, have you seen another?"
Quillon's sharp question jolts Tagalong out of a glassy-eyed panic. "Another what?" he asks, and shakes his head when Snail shows him. "I've seen lots of red ones of those?"
It takes Quillon a moment to decipher that one. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, that's a laser scanner. Completely different."
Elleira folds her arms over her chest, rubbing them absently. "We've got plenty of matter coils; can't we use those?"
Quillon shakes his head. "The time-space interphase would loop out of control."
"Can't we build it without one?" Beadle asks. He's beginning to shiver in the lowering temperatures. "I'm sure I read a paper about working around the Bartis-Meyin Law of Energy Conservation. One simply reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, then uses percussive maintenance to – yes, what is it?"
Snail lowers his hand. "We're three hours old."
"Oh." Beadle rubs his beard, looking embarrassed. "So you are."
"There's probably one in the Looming House," Elleira muses. "You said one of the Looms was broken up?"
"Yes," says Snail, not failing to notice the way Tagalong tenses at the idea of going back there. "But it's really scary in there."
Tagalong nods mutely. Quillon looks from one Loomling to the next, taking in their solemn expressions, and his face softens.
"We can't make you go. You've all seen things that nobody should have to see, and if you don't want to go back, I understand. But I think that Loom's our best chance for finding the piece we need to fix the communicator and get everyone out of here. If you can be brave for just a bit longer, we'd all be very grateful." A slight smirk. "Even Beadle."
Snail looks at his friends. Flabbaduckarusa's unhappy but determined, a thought pattern that Snail recognises from the last time. He'll come if Snail goes, and that's good, because Snail doesn't want to go alone. Tagalong... Tagalong's eyes are huge and his mouth puckered at the very idea of going back into that room. His thoughts going round and round as he rubs absent-mindedly at his burned arms.
Snail shares a glance with Flabbaduckarusa, who shrugs and makes a valiant attempt at targeted telepathy. It'd be mean.
"What'd be mean?" Tagalong snaps. Flabbaduckarusa winces and opens his mouth to defend himself, but Snail has a sudden idea and jumps in with:
"Making you stay here to look after the grown-ups. It'd be mean. They're all boring and I bet they'll make you take samples or something."
He's sure Quillon grins at him. Flabbaduckarusa blinks at Snail for a moment, then adds, "Yes, exactly."
"Oh," Tagalong says. He sounds a bit suspicious, but not enough to not seize his chance. "Well... I don't mind."
"Someone's got to do it," Elleira adds helpfully.
"Yes, someone's got to do it."
"All right, then," Snail says, and gives him the screwdriver. "You stay here and look after them, and we'll go and find a battery." He tugs lightly on Flabbaduckarusa's sleeve, and they hurry off before Tagalong can find his sense of pride and change his mind.
"Be careful!" Elleira calls as they leave.
The two Loomlings hasten back over the bog, Flabbaduckarusa slipping and sliding in the lead. Left, then right, then past yet another thicket... Snail barely recognises the route his brother's taking. The bog looks completely different under a dark, moonless sky; the grass, now more grey than yellow, rises out of gloopy mud-puddles like the spines on the Thing's oily back. He hopes they don't run into the Thing again. How far had Flabbaduckarusa run before he lost it?
And how far have they run now? It feels like they're going on and on, splashing through puddles, circling bushes that spring out of the black like aliens waiting to eat them up. It didn't take them this long to get from the gate to the grown-ups the first time, but Snail can see where Flabbaduckarusa's going; there's a bright pinprick of light on the horizon that can only be the gate.
Funny thing, it's been on the horizon for ages now.
He slows, calling to Flabbaduckarusa. Flabbaduckarusa stops, then immediately disappears with a squawk. Snail tries to stop too, and the next thing he knows his leg has slipped in a patch of mud and he's fallen straight into Flabbaduckarusa, who falls bodily into the mud with a squelch.
Snail carefully stands up and backs away to give Flabbaduckarusa room to get to safety, peering through the dark in frustration. All he can hear are splashes and Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts, both becoming increasingly urgent. He's stuck. Snail, terrified, grabs for him, but Flabbaduckarusa is yelling and thrashing about so much that Snail can't get a grip on him at all. The one time he does, Flabbaduckarusa bats his hand away in the same movement as he grabs for Snail's arm, almost pulling Snail in too.
"Hold still!" Snail roars in frustration. Quivering with the effort, Flabbaduckarusa obeys; Snail grabs his brother's hand and pulls as hard as he can, but he's got no traction on the mud. He has to stop or else pull himself in, and eventually sits down heavily on the bank to think of what else he can do.
"Don't bother," Flabbaduckarusa says, and sniffles. "We're lost anyway. I don't think that's the gate."
Snail stares at him in disbelief. "Why didn't you say so?"
"Because!" Flabbaduckarusa gives an enormous sniff and there's a flash of white as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "You always know what to do. It was nice, having you need me for something."
"How silly!" The words are out of Snail's mouth before he can stop them. As Flabbaduckarusa's threatens to cry again, he explains hastily, "I never know what I'm doing. The only reason we got this far is that you and Tagalong helped."
"Oh," Flabbaduckarusa says, after a pause.
"Bufflehead," Snail adds, and draws his knees up to his chest. He doesn't know what to do; doesn't even have the vaguest glimmer of an idea. If he knew where they were then he could go and get the battery, take it to the grown-ups and make sure Flabbaduckarusa got rescued with them, but he can't, because Flabbaduckarusa's got them lost.
How long have they been out here, anyway? He doesn't know any more, and has a sudden vision of Quillon and the others drowning while Tagalong screams for him to hurry up. Maybe even Tagalong will drown eventually, or starve. Maybe they'll become feral children and have to spend the rest of their lives in this grotty old bog and never find the gate again. It's not as if anybody cares about them yet, except Quillon and Elleira and Beadle, and they're all going to die because he and Flabbaduckarusa are so useless.
He's so busy feeling sorry for himself that he doesn't notice the ground shaking beneath him until Flabbaduckarusa yells and staggers backwards, falling over into the mud with a horrible squelch. Snail, jolted into action, grabs for Flabbaduckarusa again, but he's far too slow. The Thing – no, a Thing, it's far bigger than their Thing ever was – leans over his head and swats one massive paw at Flabbaduckarusa, who screams even louder and tries to roll out of the way. The Big Thing almost treads on Snail as it lumbers closer to the mud's edge, its enormous feet sinking deep into the silty ground; Snail rolls underneath it and grabs hold of its tail as it clears him, pulling and pulling at it until it hits him in the face, sending him flying into a bush two feet away.
Its branches crack in quick succession, stabbing into him as he falls. His entire left side is oddly numb until he leaps to his feet, then it's suddenly a blaze of agony as the world tilts and his bruised leg gives out under him, forcing him to grab onto the bush to keep himself upright. He can't fall over now: the Big Thing is still tormenting Flabbaduckarusa, who's screaming and thrashing about, sinking ever deeper into the bog. Snail has tottered two steps towards him when another Thing comes charging out of the bushes. It's their Thing; woozy and bleeding and telepathically screeching, and it's coming right at him, wailing and keening as the Big Thing harries Flabbaduckarusa. Snail backs away, but he's forgotten the bush behind him and gets stuck in its branches. The Little Thing only just checks its charge in time to avoid doing the same, but that doesn't stop it from moving slowly forwards as Snail scrabbles to get away from confining branches of the bush.
Flabbaduckarusa suddenly goes quiet, audibly at least; telepathically, he's screaming all the louder, and he's stuck, and he can't breathe, and Snail can't get to him because the Little Thing's put its nose right in his face, and it stinks of mud and Drudgewood and Gallifrey and it's licking him, trailing slimy blue saliva all over the bruises the Big Thing's tail made when it hit him –
There's a splash and a deep sucking noise that must come from Flabbaduckarusa's mudhole, but Snail can't see what it is because the Little Thing's still licking his face. He shoves it out of the way when he hears a thump and gasp a moment later, and to his surprise the Thing backs away and lets him get out of the bush and crawl to Flabbaduckarusa.
Flabbaduckarusa's lying on his front, covered in mud from head to foot. The Big Thing is licking him like the small one did Snail, its tongue moving in slow, steady swoops as Flabbaduckarusa coughs and struggles to get up. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's collar and drags him out of the way, but the Big Thing follows them as he hauls his brother to safety. That's when he realises the Little Thing is following him too. It goes over to the Big Thing; the two of them blend into one dark smudge against the landscape as Snail helps Flabbaduckarusa to sit up, bangs him on the back a couple of times, and asks anxiously, "Are you all right?"
"I think so." Flabbaduckarusa sounds almost as surprised as Snail feels. He coughs again and rubs a hand across his face, wiping away mud and Thing-spit in equal quantities. "It just sort of scooped me up and dropped me here. I might get bruises, but I'm not dead. What about you?"
Snail's suddenly thankful for the dark. Flabbaduckarusa worries too much anyway, without Snail telling him that it hurts every time he moves or even breathes with his chest at the wrong angle. He settles for, "I'm not dead either."
The Things are still there, merged into one dark shape against the darkness. Snail's sure they're staring at him and Flabbaduckarusa, but they haven't attacked again. Even their telepathic signals are calmer; still unnatural and alien, but being near them isn't making Snail feel sick any more.
"They don't look much like they're going to eat us, do they?" Flabbaduckarusa says. He cocks his head, inspecting the Things. "You know what? I think it's a baby."
Snail's about to call him a bufflehead again when he sees what Flabbaduckarusa means. From the way their silhouettes are moving, it looks like the Big Thing's licking the little one's wounded head with the same weirdly gentle care as the Little Thing was using on Snail just now.
"It got lost." Flabbaduckarusa speaks slowly; Snail can hear him working it out as he goes. "And it went through the gate and the forcefield must've triggered too late, so it couldn't get back. And then it must've got scared like we did."
"And then it killed all the Drudges and that baby Tagalong saw, and tried to kill us too," Snail counters in disbelief. "It might be a baby, but it's still horrible."
"It might not have been trying to kill us," Flabbaduckarusa says. "We just assumed that."
"Because it ate the Drudges!"
"The Drudges were made of wood, though. That needs a completely different type of teeth. I saw it on a documentary while I was waiting for you in the nursery." Flabbaduckarusa starts pulling up the grass underneath him, frowning down at it as he thinks. "They're big enough to eat trees, aren't they? So maybe it got hungry, and when it couldn't find any trees in the Looming House it ate the Drudges instead. It wouldn't know any better, would it? It's not as if it's intelligent."
The Big Thing snorts and begins to plod towards them. Snail tries to shuffle backwards, but Flabbaduckarusa jumps to his feet, pulling Snail with him. When Snail nearly falls over again, Flabbaduckarusa plants a hand in the small of Snail's back and propels him towards the Things. He doesn't remove his hand until they're surrounded by the hot, grassy guff of the Big Thing's breath; then he immediately reaches up to touch the Big Thing's face.
"What are you doing?" Snail hisses, as the Thing lowers its head to meet Flabbaduckarusa's outstretched hand.
"Well, it can't talk, can it?" Flabbaduckarusa slowly rubs the Thing's nose, then wrinkles his own. "That feels weird. Go on, you try."
Snail's half-convinced that his brother's gone mad, but nevertheless he lays a hand lightly on the Big Thing's nose. It does feel weird: it's wrinkled and leathery underneath a thin film of moisture, and as he makes contact a warm, grateful sensation fills his mind. It's a little clearer and a lot friendlier than the Baby Thing's telepathy was, but still not right... not natural.
The grown-up Thing huffs in amusement, and Snail realises too late that he's let it see that impression of it. He's lucky it didn't take offence, he thinks, and pats it gently with his free hand in apology. The Big Thing coos; it's realised he's a baby. Snail isn't sure whether to be glad or offended that it thinks he's so childish. Glad, maybe. Maybe that's why it's not eating him: because he's too young.
He claps his free hand over his nose as the Thing snorts humid, grassy air all over him again. A moment later, it wheezes and projects an image of itself eating trees.
Snail refuses to let Flabbaduckarusa catch his eye.
Why was it following them, then, if not to eat them? The Thing-eating-trees vanishes, replaced by the grateful feeling again and a picture of the Baby Thing. Thank you for the baby?
Oh. Snail immediately feels guilty. Well, they did help send the Baby Thing home, even if it wasn't exactly intentional. And at least the Big Thing seems to find the notion of the Loomlings running in terror from its baby funny.
Flabbaduckarusa closes his eyes, the better to concentrate. It takes Snail a second to work out what his brother's trying to say, but when he does he takes Flabbaduckarusa's spare hand in his own and does his best to help,
If they don't manage to convey gratitude then at least they don't accidentally insult it either, and the Thing seems to get the gist of their clumsy joint telepathy. It huffs again; to both their surprise, an image of the three grown-ups comes into their minds. The grown-ups! Snail had almost forgotten them, what with Flabbaduckarusa nearly drowning and then thinking they were going to get eaten, but now all his worry comes crashing back. How long have they been out here for? He looks at Flabbaduckarusa, who stares back with wide eyes.
The Thinn follows up its image with a series of bushes and puddles that they eventually interpret as directions.
"Oh!", Flabbaduckarusa says. "No, we've already found them," and he makes a picture of the gate instead.
The Thing is bemused – at least, 'bemused' is the closest match Snail can think of – but then it noses the Baby Thing, which drops its head to the ground, and there's... it's not an image so much as a sensation. I, you, there...
Snail and Flabbaduckarusa look helplessly at one another.
"It can carry us?" Flabbaduckarusa suggests. Snail shakes his head.
"Can't be. It didn't offer to carry us to the grown-ups, did it?" And besides, it's all spiky, but he buries that thought as deep as he can so as not to hurt its feelings.
The Thing signals yes, then shows them a rock, then mud, then a rock again. It takes the two Loomlings a long time to work that one out: the ground is harder by the gate, and therefore safer for Thing-kind. Maybe that's how the baby one got lost in the first place, if it ran off somewhere its grown-up couldn't follow.
The grown-up Thing coos at them again, and the Baby Thing keens a little in embarrassment. It's still got its head down, as though it's waiting for them to climb on; Snail bows to it a bit awkwardly and tugs Flabbaduckarusa away.
"I know," his brother says gloomily. "It's going to hurt like anything."
Said aloud like that, it's an awful reason to let everyone die, and it's not as if they have time to waste any more. Snail swallows. "It's got its spines down. We might be all right. We've got to try."
"I knew you'd say that," Flabbaduckarusa says heavily, and turns back to the Big Thing. "I suppose you're right."
He's not in any hurry to get on, though, so Snail crawls carefully up the Baby Thing's wide, flat face to the top of its head. Its spines are surprisingly pliant; not soft exactly, but not as cruel as the Big Thing's look either. He tries to sit astride it, but the pain in his bruised left leg rears from a dull ache into new agony, and in the end he has to kneel behind Flabbaduckarusa, wrapping his arms around his brother for support. The Things stand patiently until the Loomlings stop moving about on the Baby Thing's back, then set off at a jolting, limping gallop.
The night air whips through Snail's hair as he bounces uncontrollably on the Thing's back, holding on to Flabbaduckarusa for dear life. He can't see at all, pain arcs through his whole body with each bounce, and he doesn't dare to ask the Things to slow down because the grown-ups are all dying, yet he's got no idea whether the sounds coming out of his mouth are screams or laughter.
He knows when they've arrived at the gate because its soft bluish glow illuminates the bog around it for several hundred yards. The Things lurch to a halt; Snail lets go of Flabbaduckarusa and half-jumps, half-falls to the ground. Flabbaduckarusa jumps down after him and dashes through the gate, leaving Snail to pull himself upright using the Big Thing as a prop and try to find some way to say thank you.
It nudges him towards the gate as he's trying to find the right way to express himself to it. He gives up, bows to it, and limps after Flabbaduckarusa.
The bright artificial lights in the Looming House blind him. Blinking away light spots and rubbing his eyes, he feels his way along the wall to the empty Looming room, where he can hear Flabbaduckarusa sorting frantically through the remains of the Loom.
He stops when he sees Snail in the doorway. "You said you weren't hurt!"
"I said I wasn't dead," Snail says. "I'm quite a lot hurt." Sensing that Flabbaduckarusa's about to start crying, or worse, fussing, he adds hastily, "I can't get fixed until we get the grown-ups out, and nor can Tagalong. Come on."
Flabbaduckarusa's lip wobbles a bit, then he takes a deep breath and says, "All right. You start over there."
The Looming House is oddly still without the Baby Thing crashing about everywhere; the two Loomlings clamber all over the wreckage in search of the elusive purple battery, and there's not a single sound except the ones they make themselves.
It's Flabbaduckarusa who thinks it first, and he voices the thought moments later. "How are we going to get back? We might get lost again."
"Yes." Snail crawls into a jumble of debris in case there's something useful hidden under it, patting around in search of odd shapes. "Maybe we could find a torch somewhere. You didn't have any trouble when it was still daytime, did you?"
"No." Flabbaduckarusa frowns at the small, neatly organised piles in front of him, then scoops the next lot of bits towards him and starts over. A moment later, his triumphant whoop indicates that he's found it. "Got one!"
"Oh, good," Snail says, and carefully crawls out of his junk pile again. "We still need a torch, though."
"There was one in the toolbox," Flabbaduckarusa says. "I bet there's another in the nursery somewhere." Without waiting for a reply, he hands Snail the battery and runs off.
He returns a few minutes later, grinning and waving a Loomling-sized torch. "I think that was the easiest thing I've ever done."
"Let's go, then." Snail grins back at him, reaches for his hand, and leads him back through the gate.
The cold, damp night air hits him the instant he emerges into the bog; he gasps and shivers, curling his fingers up inside Flabbaduckarusa's warm hand. Even in the dim light thrown out by the gate, the only thing he can see before Flabbaduckarusa turns the torch on is that the Things have gone, hopefully to somewhere with harder ground and more trees.
The torch beam isn't strong or wide. Whoever designed the torch clearly wasn't expecting it to be used outside of a nursery shadow-puppet show. Nothing looks familiar in isolation under its spotlight, and after last time neither Snail nor Flabbaduckarusa wants to take the risk of picking a direction at random.
It's only when he starts listening properly for them that Snail realises he can't hear the grown-ups this time, not like he could before. A horrible lump settles into the pit of his stomach. They're too late.
He doesn't know what to do now. He can't even seem to cry properly, although he's distantly aware of his eyes welling up. It's not fair. He's done everything, and he was so close –
Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his hand. He's pale, but he looks surprisingly determined for a Loomling who's just lost his grown-ups. "I can hear someone crying."
"Sorry," Snail says, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Not you," Flabbaduckarusa says. "Not Tagalong, either. It's... it's Beadle!" He leaps forwards, dragging Snail with him. "Come on!"
Ignoring the torch beam, barely avoiding several mud-holes, they sprint for Beadle's telepathic signal. Snail's got no idea what a grown-up is doing crying like a baby, but he doesn't care, either – it's Beadle, and Snail can hear him, and that means Beadle's still alive.
His leg's about to give out again when at long last there's a shout, and Tagalong comes charging out of the bushes to meet them.
"Hurry up!" He grabs Snail's arm and tows him towards the bushes with surprising strength.
Flabbaduckarusa breaks through the final bushes and collapses into an exhausted heap on the ground. Between pants, he says, "We got lost. It was my fault... but the Thing saved us. It's really nice after all; it's only a baby, and it was scared, and –"
His voice trails off as the torchlight lands on the mudhole. For an instant Snail thinks the grown-ups have disappeared completely, but he's wrong; their heads are still visible, tilted back at ghastly angles trying to breathe. The mud's covering Elleira's mouth already, lapping up into her nostrils every time she takes a breath; Quillon and Beadle are only a little better off. If they open their mouths, the mud will get in, and then they'll die, and it'll all have been for nothing.
Beadle's stopped crying now, but his eyes are open and following them, so Snail knows he's still alive. He makes eye contact with Beadle for an instant; that's enough for Beadle to say Thought you might hear that. Get on with it, will you?
"I don't care where you've been," Tagalong snaps tearfully at Flabbaduckarusa, and starts digging through Snail's pockets. "Where is it?"
"Flabbaduckarusa's got it," Snail says, and dashes to get the communicator as Tagalong turns on his brother.
If he looks at the grown-ups then he might start crying, so he focuses on the communicator instead. It's better-made now; the sticky tape's gone, for one thing. Tagalong must have rebuilt it while they were away. Snail hands it over and Tagalong snaps the battery in like a pro.
"I've been practising," he says in answer to their astonishment, and turns the communicator on. It beeps gently and starts broadcasting a telepathic signal; Snail lets out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding.
Barely a second has passed before the wind picks up around them and an impossibly familiar rending noise fills the air not six feet away from where Tagalong is standing. The Loomlings back away from the landing site, drawing together instinctively. As it fades into view under the torchlight, the TARDIS changes; the first pass, it's a box, the second, a tree – but a tree'll sink, Snail thinks, and it clearly agrees, because on the third and final pass it's a bright yellow bush almost identical to the one next to it. It's even damp from the rainfall.
The branches rustle. A gigantic green and gold feather emerges, then the helmet it's attached to, and then the long, surprised face beneath it. "I say! Children?"
"You need to transmat them out of the bog," Flabbaduckarusa says, and points. "They're sinking."
The man's gaze follows Flabbaduckarusa's finger, and his eyes widen. "Right away! Come in, all of you." His head disappears into the TARDIS again, and he can be heard barking orders at his crew as the Loomlings follow him in.
Inside, the TARDIS's console room is white and businesslike, filled with six people who all look up in varying degrees of surprise and horror as the Loomlings crawl through the bush opening and crowd together nervously.
"Goodness, what grubby children," one of the women says.
"Never mind them," Silly Hat snaps. "Get those people in here." He looks down at the Loomlings as his crew hasten to operate the transmat. "I'm Captain Margarelon, and that's Yalae, Thidias, Zavary, Karis and Orsic."
"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and this is Snail and Tagalong."
Margarelon raises a disapproving eyebrow. "I see."
There's a bright blue flash and the three grown-ups are suddenly standing in the console room, gasping for breath; Elleira collapses even before the crew cluster around to check on them. Snail makes to go and see for himself, but Margarelon plants himself in the way. "They're safe. Now tell me, where did you three come from? You're a long way from school."
"We weren't in school," Tagalong says, "we've just been born."
"Get off me!" Quillon snaps as he extricates himself from the attentions of the TARDIS crew. "I assure you, I'm fine." He gestures at Elleira, who is still unmoving on the floor. "She needs help regenerating; worry about her. Captain, these Loomlings are astounding."
He explains. At times, he makes everything sound so incredible that even Snail isn't sure he believes it, and the captain obviously thinks Quillon's exaggerating a bit, but Snail finds he doesn't really care whether Margarelon believes them or not. Tagalong takes his hand when it starts to get boring and leads him off to play hide-and-seek in the TARDIS corridors, and Flabbaduckarusa joins them not long after; the next thing they know of it is when Quillon comes to find them.
"Is Elleira all right?" Snail asks as soon as he sees him.
"Fine," Quillon says, and smiles. "They couldn't save the body, but you got her out just in time to save the person, and that's what's really important. And we're going home. They've closed the rift and moved all our equipment for us, and I called the council myself; your families will be waiting when we get back."
"Really?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, a little timidly. Snail can't blame him; in all the excitement, he'd forgotten that he's going to have to meet his family today. That's a completely different sort of adventure.
"Really," Quillon says. His face turns stern again, but they're beginning to recognise Quillon's fake-stern face now. "However. First things first. You all need medical attention, and you are also all filthy."
It's true: Tagalong's the cleanest, but even he's got the odd mud spatter, and Flabbaduckarusa and Snail are both caked in it.
Quillon's not too clean himself, what with having been sinking in a bog. When Snail opens his mouth to mention this, Quillon points in the direction of the bath-house. "If I have to, so do you. Come on."
Flabbaduckarusa runs off at once. Sighing and dragging their feet, Snail and Tagalong follow as slowly as they possibly can.
"I hope it's not all going to be baths and school," Tagalong mutters.
Quillon, who has annoyingly sharp ears, laughs. "It is for a while. But don't worry; it gets better."
The End
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 9,276. Fic: 21,925
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.
Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?
Beta'ed by the amazing
in_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at writethisfanfic.Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
The three Loomlings cluster around the gate in awful silence. Snail wants to tell Tagalong off, but Tagalong's gone so pale that he doesn't have the hearts. Anyway, it was Snail's fault too.
"They'll be all right," Flabbaduckarusa says, but Snail can hear that it's nothing more than a desperate lie.
"It kills people," Tagalong whispers. His eyes are enormous; Snail puts an arm around him, but Tagalong yelps in pain and pulls away.
"We need to go and warn them," Snail decides. After all, they can't just go back to the nursery, can they? It could be ages before the grown-ups on Gallifrey realise that the gate's fixed, and meanwhile the grown-ups beyond the gate are in trouble. They were in trouble even before Snail accidentally set the Thing on them. Warning them is the least he can do.
He's curious, too, but he tries to keep that out of his mind as the desperation in Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts solidifies into fear. He doesn't think Flabbaduckarusa would approve.
Flabbaduckarusa, lips pinched together, shakes his head mutely and moves so that he's between Snail and the gate.
Tagalong makes the barest of nods, leans towards the gate and quavers, "Hello?"
There's no response. He tries again, his voice stronger, then inches closer to the gate and tries yet again. Snail doubts that anyone on the other side can hear them; the Loomlings can't hear the Thing any more, after all. If they want to warn the grown-ups, they need to go through the gate to do it.
He dodges around Flabbaduckarusa and sprints for the gate. The wall of translucent indigo shimmers and contorts as he gets closer to it; he squeezes his eyes tight shut, half-expecting to bounce off it.
Flabbaduckarusa's yells become a distant garble. The floor turns soft and springy under Snail's feet: the air dampens and warms. He doesn't dare to open his eyes. Without warning, the soft ground becomes slippery; he goes flying into something cold and wet that squelches up into his nose and mouth, filling them with wet, grainy yuck.
He swallows some by reflex before he manages to haul himself into a sitting position, spitting and pawing at his face until he's wiped most of it off. Then he opens his eyes.
The sparse yellow grass quivers as some small animal darts away from him. A strong breeze tugs at his hair, sending ripples through every muddy puddle like the one he's just fallen into and distorting their off-colour reflections of the heavy grey clouds up above.
The Thing is a dark shape receding on the horizon. There's no noise but the tweeting of alien birds and Flabbaduckarusa's garbled shouts, which are becoming closer and less garbled by the nanosecond. Moments later their originator hurtles through the gate, dragging Tagalong behind him.
"Stop running off," Flabbaduckarusa half-scolds, half-whines.
"No," Snail says, as Tagalong's gaze fixes on the distant Thing. "We've got to find them."
"Yes, but not like this!" Flabbaduckarusa throws his arms as wide as they'll go. "It's enormous!"
He does have a point. Snail trails his hands through the mud and tries to think, but Tagalong's so guilty and scared that it keeps putting him off. He wishes he could go up and hug Tagalong, but Tagalong's in too much pain as it is.
Pain or no pain, it's Tagalong who suddenly says, "I can hear them," and points in the opposite direction to the Thing. The Loomlings share relieved grins, but Tagalong's disappears so fast that Snail wouldn't have believed it was ever there at all if he hadn't seen it. He looks glumly back down at the mud, and has an idea.
The mudball hits Flabbaduckarusa with a squelch; Snail doesn't see where it lands because he's already on his feet and running towards the grown-ups.
"Can't get me!" he yells, and knows it's worked when he hears another splat, an outraged roar from Flabbaduckarusa, and Tagalong trying to laugh and run away at the same time.
Seconds later, another mudball grazes the top of his head, spattering a little on his cheek as it goes, and he's just opening his mouth to call a taunt back to Tagalong for his poor aim when Tagalong yelps and splutters indignantly; Snail turns to see Flabbaduckarusa, grinning enormously, legging it behind a tree for cover. What can he and Tagalong do but give chase?
Pelting one another, laughing and shouting, they just barely remember to head towards the grown-ups. Snail begins to gain on Flabbaduckarusa as his brother stumbles while climbing through a large patch of shrub; they emerge into a circle of spindly bushes surrounding a large, flat area of soft ground. With a yell of, "Ha!", Snail drops a particularly slimy ball down the back of his brother's collar before noticing the grown-ups staring at him in surprise.
There are three of them: a young man with a beard long enough to trail in the mud surrounding his thighs, a white-haired woman and an aghast gentleman in wire-frame glasses, holding a clipboard. They're all real – there's a moment when Snail's not sure of that, but then he catches the buzz and flow of their thoughts and knows that they must be. They've found the grown-ups. It's over.
"I say," says the Beard-Man, at the same time as the elderly woman demands, "Where did you come from?"
"And," Glasses adds, "what have you done to your clothes?"
Snail just grins. He's still grinning when Tagalong erupts from the bush behind him, shouts, "Ha!", and something cold and wet slithers down the back of Snail's neck. Then Tagalong stops moving, one hand still holding Snail's collar. "Oh! Hello."
He pauses; Snail hears him go from overjoyed to confused, and then Tagalong asks cautiously, "Why are you all buried in mud?"
Snail doesn't really care why grown-ups do what they do; that's their business, and he's just glad to have found them. That is, until a flurry of faint, deliberately distorted telepathy fills the air above the grown-ups' heads. Snail can't counter whatever the grown-ups are doing to block him well enough to know what they're saying, but he does pick up on one thing that they're trying to hide. He's seen fear a lot since he was born.
He'd never even thought that the grown-ups might be trapped by something besides a broken gate, or that there was anything they couldn't handle with the right equipment. The idea makes him feel a bit sick; he reaches for Flabbaduckarusa's hand, only to find that Flabbaduckarusa's reaching for his as well.
The grown-ups' exchange is over in a matter of seconds. The elderly woman swivels her torso to face them; the mud sucking at her legs makes it hard for her to move properly. Her voice is level, but Snail's seen the fear now and it's impossible to ignore. "Wherever you came from, I assume you can get back there. Please go. Find an adult –"
"But –" Flabbaduckarusa begins.
"I haven't finished speaking. Tell them we need a rescue. You won't get in trouble." This last is probably meant to be reassuring, but Snail can't think of anything less reassuring than grown-ups who need Loomlings to rescue them.
"But we can't," Flabbaduckarusa says again, as soon as she's finished. "They locked the building before we were born, when the Thing got through. You're the first grown-ups we've seen. And all the Drudges are dead because it was hungry, so we're going to have to help you ourselves."
There's a pause while the grown-ups take this in. Then Glasses leans towards them, peering over his spectacles. "You're from the Looming House. How old are you?"
Flabbaduckarusa looks helplessly at Snail, who guesses, "About two hours?"
"Told you," the beard-man says.
"Oh, shut up, Beadle," the woman snaps. "This is all your fault in the first place." She turns back to the Loomlings. "Are you saying you've no way of contacting an adult?"
"We were sort of hoping you would." Tagalong sounds disgusted. The woman raises an eyebrow at his tone, but doesn't say anything. Perhaps she realises how desperately the Loomlings have been looking for somebody.
"In that case, you are going to have to help us," Glasses says. "Have you names? I'm Quillon, and my colleagues here are Elleira and Beadle."
"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and that's Tagalong and Snail. We're going to change them," Flabbaduckarusa adds hastily. "We just needed something to call each other."
Quillon nods briskly. "As you can see, we're all a bit stuck, and we're sinking."
"Sinking?" Flabbaduckarusa asks shrilly. Snail knows his brother's wondering what else can go wrong. That doesn't sound helpful to him. It's disappointing that the grown-ups need rescuing, but if they do, well, then he'll just have to do it. They should at least be able to give him ideas.
But they're scared.
"Yes, sinking." Elleira gestures irritably to the mud surrounding her hips. "I'm not standing in this because it's good for the skin, you know. I'm here because young Beadle can't follow a simple navigation program."
"The mapper was out of alignment," Beadle says, in a tone that suggests he's been saying this a lot lately.
"Yes, and since you've now dropped it, it will never work again."
"It was also our communicator and the emergency call beacon for a rescue TARDIS," Quillon interrupts hastily, "so if you can make a new one, then we can all get out of here." He taps his fingers on the back of his clipboard, sizing the three of them up. His gaze lingers on Tagalong's burned hands and Snail's dishevelled hair; finally, he turns to Flabbaduckarusa. "You seem responsible. Do you think you can find your way back to the gate?"
"Of course I can," Flabbaduckarusa says, swelling visibly at the compliment.
Tagalong leans forward and takes Snail's hand, the better to aim his telepathy without accidentally broadcasting to everyone around them. Do you suppose all grown-ups are this stupid?
I don't know, Snail thinks back. Privately, he's glad that Quillon has taken over, but there's no denying that Flabbaduckarusa's an odd choice. I hope not.
Quillon looks over his glasses at them. "That's very rude, children."
"Sorry," Tagalong says, but he keeps hold of Snail's hand just the same.
"Good. We can show you how to disassemble some of our other equipment to build a new communicator, but we'll need tools, so you'll have to find some."
"Oh!" Suddenly remembering, Snail digs into his pocket and pulls out the toy screwdriver that he stuffed in there before going through the gate. "I've got this; will it do?"
He fidgets as Quillon squints at it. "Hm. Well, it is a toy. Not the most functional tool I've ever seen, but it'll do. I don't suppose you have the rest of the box with you?"
"No; we left it in the Looming House."
Quillon nods. "Flabbaduckarusa should run and fetch it, then."
"Yes, of course," Flabbaduckarusa says, and runs off. As Elleira calls an admonition to be careful, Quillon beckons Snail and Tagalong forward. They edge closer, wary of the soft ground underfoot.
"Now you two. Our equipment is behind those bushes. I want you to bring out everything you can carry – never mind the heavy bits – and put it where we can see it."
They do as they're told. There's not much there: a couple of locked metal boxes, already half-buried in the bog, that turn out to be 'the heavy bits'; a tarpaulin and a small open crate of assorted exciting gadgetry. They can't lift the crate either, so settle for lifting the pieces out of it and bringing them over as fast as they can. Quillon watches closely, directing them to put everything in orderly rows on the tarpaulin. The arrangement doesn't make any sense to Snail, but he supposes Quillon must know what he's doing. Tagalong's not so sure.
"Stupid and nonsensical," he mutters to Snail as Snail staggers past him with an armful of loose wires, and earns himself a glare from Elleira.
On his fifth and final trip Snail notices that Beadle's beard, which was previously only just grazing the top of the mud, is now several inches deep in it. He sneaks a glance at Elleira and Quillon: he's not sure, but they seem a bit lower too.
"How fast are you sinking?" he blurts, before realising that he doesn't really want to know.
Elleira doesn't quite manage to keep the tremor out of her voice as she answers, "About eleven inches an hour."
That's fast, isn't it? Tagalong must think the same, because he stops reorganising the equipment that he's just dumped unceremoniously on the tarpaulin and looks anxiously after Flabbaduckarusa.
"It's all right." Quillon sounds impossibly calm for somebody who's sinking at eleven inches an hour. He gestures to his clipboard. "By my calculations, we've got a little under three hours before any of us begin to drown."
Three hours?
"You can do a lot in three hours," Quillon says sternly. Snail must have thought a bit too loudly. "It's only been two and a half hours since you three were born, hasn't it? That's your entire lifespan again and then some. And I'm sure you had to do a lot to find us."
"Well, maybe," Tagalong says doubtfully.
Quillon studies the pair of them for a moment, then looks straight at Snail. "Some of you more than others, perhaps."
That's unfair, Snail thinks, especially considering what happened to Tagalong. He says so: the next thing he knows he's telling Quillon everything, with Tagalong filling in the bits that Snail doesn't know or doesn't want to remember. When they get to the bit where Snail left the nursery, Elleira tuts; when the Drudge gets eaten, Beadle looks fascinated; and when Tagalong tells them about the Loom and the dead baby, and pulls up his top to show his burns, Quillon is horrified.
"And you haven't had them treated at all? Poor boy, you must be in agony!"
Tagalong shrugs. Snail can see that he still doesn't properly remember before being burned. He squeezes Tagalong's hand; Tagalong looks at him in bemusement.
Elleira recovers her composure first, and claps her hands briskly. "All the more reason to get everyone out of here. What've you got on that tarpaulin, then? I can scarcely see over there."
Quillon starts listing things off for her. He's only a few items in when Flabbaduckarusa clatters through the bushes at full tilt, panting and wild-eyed. He's holding the toolkit so tightly that Snail has to prise it out of his fingers as he babbles, "I saw the Thing! It chased me, but I ran and after a bit it stopped following, or at least, I think it did –"
"You think it did?" Tagalong asks urgently. Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his eyes shut and nods.
Snail throws his arms around his brother, who is shaking violently as he clings on to Snail. He shouldn't have let Flabbaduckarusa go without the screwdriver, not when he knew the Thing was out there. If it's followed Flabbaduckarusa back, it'll all be Snail's fault when they get eaten, the Loomlings and the grown-ups too: Beadle keeps touching his hair and even Quillon is breathing deliberately slowly, so Snail doesn't think there's much chance of them being able to fight it off.
Elleira, however, says thoughtfully, "You said it was telepathic?"
The Loomlings all nod.
"Then we'd all have heard it coming if it had followed Flabbaduckarusa, and probably seen it as well if it's as big as you say. I'd wager it's safe enough at present."
She's right. The Thing's telepathic range isn't huge, but it's got to be at least four storeys' worth of the Looming House. That's ages of warning. He squeezes Flabbaduckarusa's shoulders, trying to let him know it's all right. Flabbaduckarusa's grip tightens on Snail's arms, so hard that it hurts, then he takes a big heaving sniff and reluctantly lets go.
"We should still hurry up, though," Elleira says. "Quillon, this is your territory."
Quillon bows his head briefly in her direction. "Of course. The first thing to do is to strip all of this down to get the parts we need –" He gives Flabbaduckarusa an encouraging smile. "– and now we have a toolkit, we can go much faster. Thank you. Now, you and Tagalong take those –" he points to a few of the things on the tarpaulin "– over to Elleira and Beadle, and Snail, bring me that auxiliary receiver and I'll show you what we need from it."
He explains what's needed to Elleira and Beadle while Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong disperse around the edges of the mudhole. Snail picks up the receiver when Quillon points it out to him, and sits down with it as close to the edge of the mud as he dares.
It's a sphere about two inches in diameter, and deceptively heavy. Snail has to hold it in both hands as he turns it over, looking closely for the case opening. Quillon watches until he's successfully popped the case off to reveal the tightly-packed circuitry inside, then, to Snail's astonishment, begins to give him a proper lesson in how the receiver works. Snail tries to listen, but Quillon's going so slowly, and there's so little time, especially now the Thing's coming. He spends half of the lecture glancing nervously at the horizon and the other half trying to gauge how fast the grown-ups are sinking by looking at Beadle's beard. It's barely been five minutes when Quillon suddenly claps his hands together and Snail nearly jumps out of his skin.
"Am I boring you?" Quillon asks archly.
"No, but we need to hurry up!" Snail points at Beadle, who has already talked Tagalong through dismantling his first digital key. "Like they are."
Quillon follows his gaze, tuts, and turns back to Snail. His voice low, he says, "You know, Beadle's very young. Obviously not as young as you, but he's barely in triple figures."
Snail shrugs, not seeing what this has to do with anything. All grown-ups are impossibly ancient.
"Sit still and shush," Quillon says. "For one minute."
"But we've got to –"
"Sit still."
It's probably the fastest way back to the important stuff, so Snail obeys. He fixes his gaze on the spot where Beadle's beard meets the bog-mud, and waits for Quillon to let him talk again so he can say how stupid this is.
Sullenness quickly turns into boredom. There's no noise except a few birds and the sounds of Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa being shown useful things too quietly for Snail to hear. The grass is still damp, and the moisture is beginning to seep through his clothes, but despite that the ground is still hard enough to make him sore if he doesn't move about. There's a sharp pebble digging into his bottom. Quillon's put his head back and is examining the darkening sky with a practised calm that only makes Snail more agitated.
It goes on and on. Snail opens his mouth to speak several times: each time, Quillon gives him a sharp look and he closes it again. Finally, after forever, Quillon says, "See? One minute."
"That was never one minute! That was ages!"
"It was one minute," Quillon says firmly. "I should know. When you're young, and when you're scared, you never seem to have enough time. But really, a minute is almost forever, isn't it? There's so much that you can do in a minute. Even more in three hours." He adjusts his glasses. "It would take any one of us adults perhaps twenty minutes to make this beacon. We've got time to teach you properly, and I intend to use it."
"What about the Thing?"
"We'll worry about that if it shows up," Quillon says. "It's rude to stare."
Snail can't help it. Anyway, it's rude not to look at someone when you're talking to them, too. "Aren't you afraid of anything?"
"I make a habit of never panicking when there are children around," Quillon says. "Are you ready to learn how to take that apart yet? I can't get myself out of this, you know."
His tone brooks no more argument, not that Snail can think of much to say to that. Snail picks up the screwdriver again, and does his best to put the Thing, the bog and eleven inches an hour out of his mind and follow Quillon's lesson.
Even with Quillon and Elleira's insistence on giving proper lessons, Beadle's beard hasn't sunk much at all before the three Loomlings have got all the pieces the grown-ups want. Snail supposes it's because there are three of them, though he can't help but notice that Tagalong has contributed far more to the pile on the tarpaulin than either he or Flabbaduckarusa have.
The shadows are starting to lengthen as Quillon waves the other two back around to his side of the mud-hole and starts talking them all through rebuilding their stripped components into communicator parts, and the parts into a communicator. He makes it very easy, although Snail suspects that he's simplifying a lot.
Elleira and Beadle spectate for a bit, throwing in advice where needed, but soon get sidetracked into a discussion that Snail couldn't follow even if he wanted to. Quillon ignores them so the Loomlings do too, and keep going as fast as they can.
Tagalong's slowed right down now. He keeps making Quillon stop and go over things that seem obvious to Snail and Flabbaduckarusa, until eventually Flabbaduckarusa snaps, "Are you stupid?"
"No, he's not," Quillon says sharply, before Tagalong can retaliate. "He's just had a terrible teacher." He shoots a glare at Beadle; it goes unnoticed in the latter's debate with Elleira. "Nobody told him what he was doing when he was taking things apart, so now he doesn't know what he's doing to put them together, either." He smiles reassuringly at Tagalong. "You'll pick it up... oh, be careful with that wire. If it comes loose unexpectedly it could take your eye out."
"Right," Tagalong says, and manoeuvres his foot on top of it. Quillon throws up his hands in mock despair.
From that point on, Flabbaduckarusa does his best to help Tagalong. He points to things when Quillon mentions them, takes things out of Tagalong's hands to show him how to do them properly, and finishes Tagalong's work when Tagalong's not looking. Snail can see Tagalong getting angrier and angrier as Flabbaduckarusa, interpreting it as frustration, gets more and more helpful; but Snail's won the right to put the components together by dint of owning the screwdriver, so he's got more important things to worry about right now.
With heaps of time to spare – the mud's only up to Beadle's hips – Snail finishes putting the last circuit into the casing. His hands are trembling as he presses the switch to test it. It hums into life, warming slightly in his grasp, and Snail whoops excitedly. They're all going home! Quillon gives a little sigh of relief; Elleira and Beadle stop their bickering to congratulate him; Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa hug one another and cheer.
The communicator shudders in Snail's hand, whines a bit, then chokes and dies. The Loomlings' cheering comes to an abrupt halt as Snail stares in horror at his useless project.
"Oh, wonderful," Beadle mutters.
"I thought that was rather good for a first attempt," Elleira says. Snail wishes that was reassuring, but he's going to have to do it all again now, and there's even less time –
"I told you you should have let me build it," Flabbaduckarusa whines at Quillon.
Quillon ignores all of them; his focus is entirely on Snail. "Just take it apart and see what went wrong. Everybody makes mistakes; it's what you do with them that counts."
Snail dries his wet eyes on his sleeve and carries his work a bit closer to the edge of the quagmire so that Quillon can see it better. Flabbaduckarusa comes over to take a better look at what he's doing, blocking Snail's view as he does so.
"Is that what's wrong?" He points at something, but Snail can't see what it is because Flabbaduckarusa's hand is in the way. "It doesn't look right."
"You don't even know what it's meant to look like," Tagalong says sourly.
"There's sticky tape on it."
"Oh, Quillon, you didn't," Elleira says.
"Nothing wrong with a little sticky tape," Quillon says.
Snail tugs the communicator away from Flabbaduckarusa's prying fingers and closer to his face. The sunlight has almost completely gone now and he's finding it harder and harder to make things out, but he doesn't think the sticky tape is the problem. As he looks it over, he notices that the battery's changed colour: before, it was a luminous magenta, and now it's a dull greyish-purple. He shows it to Quillon, who mutters something that Snail's not allowed to repeat.
"What's wrong?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, his voice shaking.
"It's dead. If I recall correctly, that was the only battery we had. Tagalong, have you seen another?"
Quillon's sharp question jolts Tagalong out of a glassy-eyed panic. "Another what?" he asks, and shakes his head when Snail shows him. "I've seen lots of red ones of those?"
It takes Quillon a moment to decipher that one. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, that's a laser scanner. Completely different."
Elleira folds her arms over her chest, rubbing them absently. "We've got plenty of matter coils; can't we use those?"
Quillon shakes his head. "The time-space interphase would loop out of control."
"Can't we build it without one?" Beadle asks. He's beginning to shiver in the lowering temperatures. "I'm sure I read a paper about working around the Bartis-Meyin Law of Energy Conservation. One simply reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, then uses percussive maintenance to – yes, what is it?"
Snail lowers his hand. "We're three hours old."
"Oh." Beadle rubs his beard, looking embarrassed. "So you are."
"There's probably one in the Looming House," Elleira muses. "You said one of the Looms was broken up?"
"Yes," says Snail, not failing to notice the way Tagalong tenses at the idea of going back there. "But it's really scary in there."
Tagalong nods mutely. Quillon looks from one Loomling to the next, taking in their solemn expressions, and his face softens.
"We can't make you go. You've all seen things that nobody should have to see, and if you don't want to go back, I understand. But I think that Loom's our best chance for finding the piece we need to fix the communicator and get everyone out of here. If you can be brave for just a bit longer, we'd all be very grateful." A slight smirk. "Even Beadle."
Snail looks at his friends. Flabbaduckarusa's unhappy but determined, a thought pattern that Snail recognises from the last time. He'll come if Snail goes, and that's good, because Snail doesn't want to go alone. Tagalong... Tagalong's eyes are huge and his mouth puckered at the very idea of going back into that room. His thoughts going round and round as he rubs absent-mindedly at his burned arms.
Snail shares a glance with Flabbaduckarusa, who shrugs and makes a valiant attempt at targeted telepathy. It'd be mean.
"What'd be mean?" Tagalong snaps. Flabbaduckarusa winces and opens his mouth to defend himself, but Snail has a sudden idea and jumps in with:
"Making you stay here to look after the grown-ups. It'd be mean. They're all boring and I bet they'll make you take samples or something."
He's sure Quillon grins at him. Flabbaduckarusa blinks at Snail for a moment, then adds, "Yes, exactly."
"Oh," Tagalong says. He sounds a bit suspicious, but not enough to not seize his chance. "Well... I don't mind."
"Someone's got to do it," Elleira adds helpfully.
"Yes, someone's got to do it."
"All right, then," Snail says, and gives him the screwdriver. "You stay here and look after them, and we'll go and find a battery." He tugs lightly on Flabbaduckarusa's sleeve, and they hurry off before Tagalong can find his sense of pride and change his mind.
"Be careful!" Elleira calls as they leave.
The two Loomlings hasten back over the bog, Flabbaduckarusa slipping and sliding in the lead. Left, then right, then past yet another thicket... Snail barely recognises the route his brother's taking. The bog looks completely different under a dark, moonless sky; the grass, now more grey than yellow, rises out of gloopy mud-puddles like the spines on the Thing's oily back. He hopes they don't run into the Thing again. How far had Flabbaduckarusa run before he lost it?
And how far have they run now? It feels like they're going on and on, splashing through puddles, circling bushes that spring out of the black like aliens waiting to eat them up. It didn't take them this long to get from the gate to the grown-ups the first time, but Snail can see where Flabbaduckarusa's going; there's a bright pinprick of light on the horizon that can only be the gate.
Funny thing, it's been on the horizon for ages now.
He slows, calling to Flabbaduckarusa. Flabbaduckarusa stops, then immediately disappears with a squawk. Snail tries to stop too, and the next thing he knows his leg has slipped in a patch of mud and he's fallen straight into Flabbaduckarusa, who falls bodily into the mud with a squelch.
Snail carefully stands up and backs away to give Flabbaduckarusa room to get to safety, peering through the dark in frustration. All he can hear are splashes and Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts, both becoming increasingly urgent. He's stuck. Snail, terrified, grabs for him, but Flabbaduckarusa is yelling and thrashing about so much that Snail can't get a grip on him at all. The one time he does, Flabbaduckarusa bats his hand away in the same movement as he grabs for Snail's arm, almost pulling Snail in too.
"Hold still!" Snail roars in frustration. Quivering with the effort, Flabbaduckarusa obeys; Snail grabs his brother's hand and pulls as hard as he can, but he's got no traction on the mud. He has to stop or else pull himself in, and eventually sits down heavily on the bank to think of what else he can do.
"Don't bother," Flabbaduckarusa says, and sniffles. "We're lost anyway. I don't think that's the gate."
Snail stares at him in disbelief. "Why didn't you say so?"
"Because!" Flabbaduckarusa gives an enormous sniff and there's a flash of white as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "You always know what to do. It was nice, having you need me for something."
"How silly!" The words are out of Snail's mouth before he can stop them. As Flabbaduckarusa's threatens to cry again, he explains hastily, "I never know what I'm doing. The only reason we got this far is that you and Tagalong helped."
"Oh," Flabbaduckarusa says, after a pause.
"Bufflehead," Snail adds, and draws his knees up to his chest. He doesn't know what to do; doesn't even have the vaguest glimmer of an idea. If he knew where they were then he could go and get the battery, take it to the grown-ups and make sure Flabbaduckarusa got rescued with them, but he can't, because Flabbaduckarusa's got them lost.
How long have they been out here, anyway? He doesn't know any more, and has a sudden vision of Quillon and the others drowning while Tagalong screams for him to hurry up. Maybe even Tagalong will drown eventually, or starve. Maybe they'll become feral children and have to spend the rest of their lives in this grotty old bog and never find the gate again. It's not as if anybody cares about them yet, except Quillon and Elleira and Beadle, and they're all going to die because he and Flabbaduckarusa are so useless.
He's so busy feeling sorry for himself that he doesn't notice the ground shaking beneath him until Flabbaduckarusa yells and staggers backwards, falling over into the mud with a horrible squelch. Snail, jolted into action, grabs for Flabbaduckarusa again, but he's far too slow. The Thing – no, a Thing, it's far bigger than their Thing ever was – leans over his head and swats one massive paw at Flabbaduckarusa, who screams even louder and tries to roll out of the way. The Big Thing almost treads on Snail as it lumbers closer to the mud's edge, its enormous feet sinking deep into the silty ground; Snail rolls underneath it and grabs hold of its tail as it clears him, pulling and pulling at it until it hits him in the face, sending him flying into a bush two feet away.
Its branches crack in quick succession, stabbing into him as he falls. His entire left side is oddly numb until he leaps to his feet, then it's suddenly a blaze of agony as the world tilts and his bruised leg gives out under him, forcing him to grab onto the bush to keep himself upright. He can't fall over now: the Big Thing is still tormenting Flabbaduckarusa, who's screaming and thrashing about, sinking ever deeper into the bog. Snail has tottered two steps towards him when another Thing comes charging out of the bushes. It's their Thing; woozy and bleeding and telepathically screeching, and it's coming right at him, wailing and keening as the Big Thing harries Flabbaduckarusa. Snail backs away, but he's forgotten the bush behind him and gets stuck in its branches. The Little Thing only just checks its charge in time to avoid doing the same, but that doesn't stop it from moving slowly forwards as Snail scrabbles to get away from confining branches of the bush.
Flabbaduckarusa suddenly goes quiet, audibly at least; telepathically, he's screaming all the louder, and he's stuck, and he can't breathe, and Snail can't get to him because the Little Thing's put its nose right in his face, and it stinks of mud and Drudgewood and Gallifrey and it's licking him, trailing slimy blue saliva all over the bruises the Big Thing's tail made when it hit him –
There's a splash and a deep sucking noise that must come from Flabbaduckarusa's mudhole, but Snail can't see what it is because the Little Thing's still licking his face. He shoves it out of the way when he hears a thump and gasp a moment later, and to his surprise the Thing backs away and lets him get out of the bush and crawl to Flabbaduckarusa.
Flabbaduckarusa's lying on his front, covered in mud from head to foot. The Big Thing is licking him like the small one did Snail, its tongue moving in slow, steady swoops as Flabbaduckarusa coughs and struggles to get up. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's collar and drags him out of the way, but the Big Thing follows them as he hauls his brother to safety. That's when he realises the Little Thing is following him too. It goes over to the Big Thing; the two of them blend into one dark smudge against the landscape as Snail helps Flabbaduckarusa to sit up, bangs him on the back a couple of times, and asks anxiously, "Are you all right?"
"I think so." Flabbaduckarusa sounds almost as surprised as Snail feels. He coughs again and rubs a hand across his face, wiping away mud and Thing-spit in equal quantities. "It just sort of scooped me up and dropped me here. I might get bruises, but I'm not dead. What about you?"
Snail's suddenly thankful for the dark. Flabbaduckarusa worries too much anyway, without Snail telling him that it hurts every time he moves or even breathes with his chest at the wrong angle. He settles for, "I'm not dead either."
The Things are still there, merged into one dark shape against the darkness. Snail's sure they're staring at him and Flabbaduckarusa, but they haven't attacked again. Even their telepathic signals are calmer; still unnatural and alien, but being near them isn't making Snail feel sick any more.
"They don't look much like they're going to eat us, do they?" Flabbaduckarusa says. He cocks his head, inspecting the Things. "You know what? I think it's a baby."
Snail's about to call him a bufflehead again when he sees what Flabbaduckarusa means. From the way their silhouettes are moving, it looks like the Big Thing's licking the little one's wounded head with the same weirdly gentle care as the Little Thing was using on Snail just now.
"It got lost." Flabbaduckarusa speaks slowly; Snail can hear him working it out as he goes. "And it went through the gate and the forcefield must've triggered too late, so it couldn't get back. And then it must've got scared like we did."
"And then it killed all the Drudges and that baby Tagalong saw, and tried to kill us too," Snail counters in disbelief. "It might be a baby, but it's still horrible."
"It might not have been trying to kill us," Flabbaduckarusa says. "We just assumed that."
"Because it ate the Drudges!"
"The Drudges were made of wood, though. That needs a completely different type of teeth. I saw it on a documentary while I was waiting for you in the nursery." Flabbaduckarusa starts pulling up the grass underneath him, frowning down at it as he thinks. "They're big enough to eat trees, aren't they? So maybe it got hungry, and when it couldn't find any trees in the Looming House it ate the Drudges instead. It wouldn't know any better, would it? It's not as if it's intelligent."
The Big Thing snorts and begins to plod towards them. Snail tries to shuffle backwards, but Flabbaduckarusa jumps to his feet, pulling Snail with him. When Snail nearly falls over again, Flabbaduckarusa plants a hand in the small of Snail's back and propels him towards the Things. He doesn't remove his hand until they're surrounded by the hot, grassy guff of the Big Thing's breath; then he immediately reaches up to touch the Big Thing's face.
"What are you doing?" Snail hisses, as the Thing lowers its head to meet Flabbaduckarusa's outstretched hand.
"Well, it can't talk, can it?" Flabbaduckarusa slowly rubs the Thing's nose, then wrinkles his own. "That feels weird. Go on, you try."
Snail's half-convinced that his brother's gone mad, but nevertheless he lays a hand lightly on the Big Thing's nose. It does feel weird: it's wrinkled and leathery underneath a thin film of moisture, and as he makes contact a warm, grateful sensation fills his mind. It's a little clearer and a lot friendlier than the Baby Thing's telepathy was, but still not right... not natural.
The grown-up Thing huffs in amusement, and Snail realises too late that he's let it see that impression of it. He's lucky it didn't take offence, he thinks, and pats it gently with his free hand in apology. The Big Thing coos; it's realised he's a baby. Snail isn't sure whether to be glad or offended that it thinks he's so childish. Glad, maybe. Maybe that's why it's not eating him: because he's too young.
He claps his free hand over his nose as the Thing snorts humid, grassy air all over him again. A moment later, it wheezes and projects an image of itself eating trees.
Snail refuses to let Flabbaduckarusa catch his eye.
Why was it following them, then, if not to eat them? The Thing-eating-trees vanishes, replaced by the grateful feeling again and a picture of the Baby Thing. Thank you for the baby?
Oh. Snail immediately feels guilty. Well, they did help send the Baby Thing home, even if it wasn't exactly intentional. And at least the Big Thing seems to find the notion of the Loomlings running in terror from its baby funny.
Flabbaduckarusa closes his eyes, the better to concentrate. It takes Snail a second to work out what his brother's trying to say, but when he does he takes Flabbaduckarusa's spare hand in his own and does his best to help,
If they don't manage to convey gratitude then at least they don't accidentally insult it either, and the Thing seems to get the gist of their clumsy joint telepathy. It huffs again; to both their surprise, an image of the three grown-ups comes into their minds. The grown-ups! Snail had almost forgotten them, what with Flabbaduckarusa nearly drowning and then thinking they were going to get eaten, but now all his worry comes crashing back. How long have they been out here for? He looks at Flabbaduckarusa, who stares back with wide eyes.
The Thinn follows up its image with a series of bushes and puddles that they eventually interpret as directions.
"Oh!", Flabbaduckarusa says. "No, we've already found them," and he makes a picture of the gate instead.
The Thing is bemused – at least, 'bemused' is the closest match Snail can think of – but then it noses the Baby Thing, which drops its head to the ground, and there's... it's not an image so much as a sensation. I, you, there...
Snail and Flabbaduckarusa look helplessly at one another.
"It can carry us?" Flabbaduckarusa suggests. Snail shakes his head.
"Can't be. It didn't offer to carry us to the grown-ups, did it?" And besides, it's all spiky, but he buries that thought as deep as he can so as not to hurt its feelings.
The Thing signals yes, then shows them a rock, then mud, then a rock again. It takes the two Loomlings a long time to work that one out: the ground is harder by the gate, and therefore safer for Thing-kind. Maybe that's how the baby one got lost in the first place, if it ran off somewhere its grown-up couldn't follow.
The grown-up Thing coos at them again, and the Baby Thing keens a little in embarrassment. It's still got its head down, as though it's waiting for them to climb on; Snail bows to it a bit awkwardly and tugs Flabbaduckarusa away.
"I know," his brother says gloomily. "It's going to hurt like anything."
Said aloud like that, it's an awful reason to let everyone die, and it's not as if they have time to waste any more. Snail swallows. "It's got its spines down. We might be all right. We've got to try."
"I knew you'd say that," Flabbaduckarusa says heavily, and turns back to the Big Thing. "I suppose you're right."
He's not in any hurry to get on, though, so Snail crawls carefully up the Baby Thing's wide, flat face to the top of its head. Its spines are surprisingly pliant; not soft exactly, but not as cruel as the Big Thing's look either. He tries to sit astride it, but the pain in his bruised left leg rears from a dull ache into new agony, and in the end he has to kneel behind Flabbaduckarusa, wrapping his arms around his brother for support. The Things stand patiently until the Loomlings stop moving about on the Baby Thing's back, then set off at a jolting, limping gallop.
The night air whips through Snail's hair as he bounces uncontrollably on the Thing's back, holding on to Flabbaduckarusa for dear life. He can't see at all, pain arcs through his whole body with each bounce, and he doesn't dare to ask the Things to slow down because the grown-ups are all dying, yet he's got no idea whether the sounds coming out of his mouth are screams or laughter.
He knows when they've arrived at the gate because its soft bluish glow illuminates the bog around it for several hundred yards. The Things lurch to a halt; Snail lets go of Flabbaduckarusa and half-jumps, half-falls to the ground. Flabbaduckarusa jumps down after him and dashes through the gate, leaving Snail to pull himself upright using the Big Thing as a prop and try to find some way to say thank you.
It nudges him towards the gate as he's trying to find the right way to express himself to it. He gives up, bows to it, and limps after Flabbaduckarusa.
The bright artificial lights in the Looming House blind him. Blinking away light spots and rubbing his eyes, he feels his way along the wall to the empty Looming room, where he can hear Flabbaduckarusa sorting frantically through the remains of the Loom.
He stops when he sees Snail in the doorway. "You said you weren't hurt!"
"I said I wasn't dead," Snail says. "I'm quite a lot hurt." Sensing that Flabbaduckarusa's about to start crying, or worse, fussing, he adds hastily, "I can't get fixed until we get the grown-ups out, and nor can Tagalong. Come on."
Flabbaduckarusa's lip wobbles a bit, then he takes a deep breath and says, "All right. You start over there."
The Looming House is oddly still without the Baby Thing crashing about everywhere; the two Loomlings clamber all over the wreckage in search of the elusive purple battery, and there's not a single sound except the ones they make themselves.
It's Flabbaduckarusa who thinks it first, and he voices the thought moments later. "How are we going to get back? We might get lost again."
"Yes." Snail crawls into a jumble of debris in case there's something useful hidden under it, patting around in search of odd shapes. "Maybe we could find a torch somewhere. You didn't have any trouble when it was still daytime, did you?"
"No." Flabbaduckarusa frowns at the small, neatly organised piles in front of him, then scoops the next lot of bits towards him and starts over. A moment later, his triumphant whoop indicates that he's found it. "Got one!"
"Oh, good," Snail says, and carefully crawls out of his junk pile again. "We still need a torch, though."
"There was one in the toolbox," Flabbaduckarusa says. "I bet there's another in the nursery somewhere." Without waiting for a reply, he hands Snail the battery and runs off.
He returns a few minutes later, grinning and waving a Loomling-sized torch. "I think that was the easiest thing I've ever done."
"Let's go, then." Snail grins back at him, reaches for his hand, and leads him back through the gate.
The cold, damp night air hits him the instant he emerges into the bog; he gasps and shivers, curling his fingers up inside Flabbaduckarusa's warm hand. Even in the dim light thrown out by the gate, the only thing he can see before Flabbaduckarusa turns the torch on is that the Things have gone, hopefully to somewhere with harder ground and more trees.
The torch beam isn't strong or wide. Whoever designed the torch clearly wasn't expecting it to be used outside of a nursery shadow-puppet show. Nothing looks familiar in isolation under its spotlight, and after last time neither Snail nor Flabbaduckarusa wants to take the risk of picking a direction at random.
It's only when he starts listening properly for them that Snail realises he can't hear the grown-ups this time, not like he could before. A horrible lump settles into the pit of his stomach. They're too late.
He doesn't know what to do now. He can't even seem to cry properly, although he's distantly aware of his eyes welling up. It's not fair. He's done everything, and he was so close –
Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his hand. He's pale, but he looks surprisingly determined for a Loomling who's just lost his grown-ups. "I can hear someone crying."
"Sorry," Snail says, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Not you," Flabbaduckarusa says. "Not Tagalong, either. It's... it's Beadle!" He leaps forwards, dragging Snail with him. "Come on!"
Ignoring the torch beam, barely avoiding several mud-holes, they sprint for Beadle's telepathic signal. Snail's got no idea what a grown-up is doing crying like a baby, but he doesn't care, either – it's Beadle, and Snail can hear him, and that means Beadle's still alive.
His leg's about to give out again when at long last there's a shout, and Tagalong comes charging out of the bushes to meet them.
"Hurry up!" He grabs Snail's arm and tows him towards the bushes with surprising strength.
Flabbaduckarusa breaks through the final bushes and collapses into an exhausted heap on the ground. Between pants, he says, "We got lost. It was my fault... but the Thing saved us. It's really nice after all; it's only a baby, and it was scared, and –"
His voice trails off as the torchlight lands on the mudhole. For an instant Snail thinks the grown-ups have disappeared completely, but he's wrong; their heads are still visible, tilted back at ghastly angles trying to breathe. The mud's covering Elleira's mouth already, lapping up into her nostrils every time she takes a breath; Quillon and Beadle are only a little better off. If they open their mouths, the mud will get in, and then they'll die, and it'll all have been for nothing.
Beadle's stopped crying now, but his eyes are open and following them, so Snail knows he's still alive. He makes eye contact with Beadle for an instant; that's enough for Beadle to say Thought you might hear that. Get on with it, will you?
"I don't care where you've been," Tagalong snaps tearfully at Flabbaduckarusa, and starts digging through Snail's pockets. "Where is it?"
"Flabbaduckarusa's got it," Snail says, and dashes to get the communicator as Tagalong turns on his brother.
If he looks at the grown-ups then he might start crying, so he focuses on the communicator instead. It's better-made now; the sticky tape's gone, for one thing. Tagalong must have rebuilt it while they were away. Snail hands it over and Tagalong snaps the battery in like a pro.
"I've been practising," he says in answer to their astonishment, and turns the communicator on. It beeps gently and starts broadcasting a telepathic signal; Snail lets out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding.
Barely a second has passed before the wind picks up around them and an impossibly familiar rending noise fills the air not six feet away from where Tagalong is standing. The Loomlings back away from the landing site, drawing together instinctively. As it fades into view under the torchlight, the TARDIS changes; the first pass, it's a box, the second, a tree – but a tree'll sink, Snail thinks, and it clearly agrees, because on the third and final pass it's a bright yellow bush almost identical to the one next to it. It's even damp from the rainfall.
The branches rustle. A gigantic green and gold feather emerges, then the helmet it's attached to, and then the long, surprised face beneath it. "I say! Children?"
"You need to transmat them out of the bog," Flabbaduckarusa says, and points. "They're sinking."
The man's gaze follows Flabbaduckarusa's finger, and his eyes widen. "Right away! Come in, all of you." His head disappears into the TARDIS again, and he can be heard barking orders at his crew as the Loomlings follow him in.
Inside, the TARDIS's console room is white and businesslike, filled with six people who all look up in varying degrees of surprise and horror as the Loomlings crawl through the bush opening and crowd together nervously.
"Goodness, what grubby children," one of the women says.
"Never mind them," Silly Hat snaps. "Get those people in here." He looks down at the Loomlings as his crew hasten to operate the transmat. "I'm Captain Margarelon, and that's Yalae, Thidias, Zavary, Karis and Orsic."
"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and this is Snail and Tagalong."
Margarelon raises a disapproving eyebrow. "I see."
There's a bright blue flash and the three grown-ups are suddenly standing in the console room, gasping for breath; Elleira collapses even before the crew cluster around to check on them. Snail makes to go and see for himself, but Margarelon plants himself in the way. "They're safe. Now tell me, where did you three come from? You're a long way from school."
"We weren't in school," Tagalong says, "we've just been born."
"Get off me!" Quillon snaps as he extricates himself from the attentions of the TARDIS crew. "I assure you, I'm fine." He gestures at Elleira, who is still unmoving on the floor. "She needs help regenerating; worry about her. Captain, these Loomlings are astounding."
He explains. At times, he makes everything sound so incredible that even Snail isn't sure he believes it, and the captain obviously thinks Quillon's exaggerating a bit, but Snail finds he doesn't really care whether Margarelon believes them or not. Tagalong takes his hand when it starts to get boring and leads him off to play hide-and-seek in the TARDIS corridors, and Flabbaduckarusa joins them not long after; the next thing they know of it is when Quillon comes to find them.
"Is Elleira all right?" Snail asks as soon as he sees him.
"Fine," Quillon says, and smiles. "They couldn't save the body, but you got her out just in time to save the person, and that's what's really important. And we're going home. They've closed the rift and moved all our equipment for us, and I called the council myself; your families will be waiting when we get back."
"Really?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, a little timidly. Snail can't blame him; in all the excitement, he'd forgotten that he's going to have to meet his family today. That's a completely different sort of adventure.
"Really," Quillon says. His face turns stern again, but they're beginning to recognise Quillon's fake-stern face now. "However. First things first. You all need medical attention, and you are also all filthy."
It's true: Tagalong's the cleanest, but even he's got the odd mud spatter, and Flabbaduckarusa and Snail are both caked in it.
Quillon's not too clean himself, what with having been sinking in a bog. When Snail opens his mouth to mention this, Quillon points in the direction of the bath-house. "If I have to, so do you. Come on."
Flabbaduckarusa runs off at once. Sighing and dragging their feet, Snail and Tagalong follow as slowly as they possibly can.
"I hope it's not all going to be baths and school," Tagalong mutters.
Quillon, who has annoyingly sharp ears, laughs. "It is for a while. But don't worry; it gets better."
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
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Date: 2012-04-30 06:52 pm (UTC)He really does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in bodies that don't work properly, doesn't he? Even more so if you count the Trakenite one for being the wrong species...