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“ Ready! ”
“Doctor...”
The Doctor squeezes Rose’s hand--as well as he can, bound as they both are. Mostly he squeezes her fingertips.
“ Aim! ”
Around twenty men and women, their skin gleaming golden in the sunlight, aim arrows at them.
“Doctor!”
Rose’s voice is barely a squeak. He cannot turn his head to look at her, so he puts every reassuring tone he can into his voice as he says, “Do you trust me?”
He feels her body calm beside him.
“Yeah.”
“ Fire ! ”
The arrows loose.
three hours earlier
“Wrong again, Doctor. You said you were taking us somewhere blue .”
Rose follows Jack out of the TARDIS, shading her eyes from the bright sunlight. “Jack’s right, Doctor. Not blue. Rather yellow, actually.” The TARDIS is parked in a wide field of golden, waist high grain, waving gently under a bright yellow sun. Even the sky has a yellowish tint to it.
The Doctor pokes his head out the door. “This is definitely not right. Not enough water, for one thing. Hold on.” Jack and Rose stand amid the tall grain while he darts back to the console; they hear him pressing buttons and wiggling something and muttering to himself. After a minute or so he shouts out at them. “I was aiming for Rikon 7. Lots of water, blue grass, blue trees, most everything is blue. Even a particularly friendly bluish animal that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. Lovely place. But this is Sapiarbok. I know nothing at all about this planet. Except that it seems to be rather yellow, as you say. And my ship --” he punctuates this by poking hard at a button--“isn’t being very helpful.”
Rose and Jack exchange a look at his last comment, laughing silently. They enjoy when the Doctor and his TARDIS have little tiffs.
But then he’s there, striding out of the TARDIS, jacket billowing. “Come on. Let’s have a look. We can’t learn anything if we don’t explore.”
They follow, of course.
It’s about a mile walk to what seems to be the nearest town. The Doctor leads, says he can “smell civilization,” whatever that means. Rose and Jack just let him get on with it when he says things like that, especially when to them the entire landscape looks flat and golden. But he’s right; it’s not long before they start to see smudges on the horizon, and soon the smudges reveal themselves to be trees and buildings. When they get close enough they see that even the trees have golden leaves. “Scrooge McDuck would love this place,” Rose quips, but no one appreciates the joke.
And then there are the people, who soon emerge from fields and buildings to see the strangers. They have all shades of hair color--black, brown, blond, even a few orangey-red. But their skin is a pale yellow, the color of parchment or lemon chiffon, and Rose gasps when the sunlight hits them just right. “They sparkle!” she whispers to Jack. “It’s like they have glitter in their skin!”
Before Jack can reply, the Doctor steps between them, throwing his arms conspiratorially around the both of them. “Pretty amazing for humans, don’t you think?”
“ Humans ?” Jack and Rose ask in unison. They both stumble.
“Yes, humans,” says the Doctor, pulling them to their feet. “And shush, you don’t need to draw extra attention to us, there’s enough already.” He looks at Rose, then Jack, then back at Rose. “Didn’t I tell you it was a human colony? It’s the only bit of useful information I could get out of the TARDIS.”
Rose shakes her head. “Pretty sure we would have remembered that, Doctor.”
“And I don’t remember humans being quite so shiny,” Jack interjects. “Not last time I looked in the mirror, anyway.”
Pointing at Jack, the Doctor looks at Rose and says, “Why is he here again?”
Jack steps up close behind the Doctor, resting his chin on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Because you can’t resist my charm,” he says with a grin.
The Doctor rolls his eyes. Rose giggles.
“They’ve obviously evolved, Jack. This is an old colony. There must be some evolutionary advantage to the sparkly yellow skin, even if we can’t see it. Come on, let’s go make friends with the locals.”
Jack takes the lead with a swagger. “Allow me. I’m good at this part.”
“Should we pretend we don’t know him?” Rose asks the Doctor. He laughs; she takes his hand and they follow Jack into the town.
Rose lays back on the picnic blanket, groaning softly. “They really know how to take care of visitors here. I can’t remember the last time I ate like that.”
“They’re farmers,” says the Doctor. “They eat like that all the time. Good hearty bread, lots of protein, all specifically chosen to for energy and strength.”
“I meant they’re good cooks.”
“Ah. That too.”
They’d been welcomed by the townsfolk immediately, and with bright smiles. It turns out the small town is actually an outpost. There is a much larger, more modern city about thirty miles north, but they are alone out here, responsible for growing the aru-wheat that is the most consumed grain on the planet. As they’d walked into town, chatting about the wheat and their home, the visitors had been invited to a picnic lunch in the park in the center of town. “We always pack more than enough food.” “Off-worlders always land in the city, it’s wonderful to have someone new join us for a meal!”
Not long after they finished eating, Jack had wandered over, arms around the waists of a blond man on one side and a raven haired woman on the other. He winked at Rose then said, “Jacob and Isobel here are going to introduce me to the local pub. Wish me luck!” The Doctor had snorted. Soon after most of the locals had excused themselves--“lots to do, the northwest field is ready to plant!”--so Rose and the Doctor are alone on their blanket. A man and a woman work together quietly, picking up the remains of the meal. The Doctor fiddles with his sonic screwdriver, flipping it into the air and catching it just so so he can scan with it right off, as Rose stares through the tree branches at the strange yellow sky.
“There’s something odd about these trees.”
The Doctor doesn’t even look. “Yes, I noticed.”
She squints at the yellow, heart-shaped leaves and the long, wispy branches. “I can’t put my finger on what it is, though. They’re just...odd.”
He flips his sonic, scans again. “Look at the leaves.”
She stands, walks closer to the nearest tree. “What about them? I’ve never seen leaves that shape before, and the color is a bit strange, given it’s clearly summer, but everything seems to be yellow here. Even the buildings are yellow. The people even wear yellow clothes! But the leaves seem ordinary enough to me.”
“Look closer, Rose.”
She reaches a hand up toward a low branch. Then, suddenly, she jerks it back. “Doctor,” she says, shivering, “there isn’t any wind.”
“Nope.”
She walks backward to the blanket, still staring at the tree. “But those leaves are moving.”
“Yep.”
“Doctor?”
“The sonic is giving me very cryptic readings. It’s almost as if…” He makes a face, then points the screwdriver more directly at the nearest tree.
But the tree doesn’t like it.
It had been about eight feet away, but it somehow moves across the ground and plants itself directly in front of them. A whip-thin branch smacks the sonic out of the Doctor’s hand, sending it skidding across the ground. Rose, unthinking, jumps toward the tree, to put herself between it and the Doctor, ending up with a fistful of yellow leaves. There is a high pitched keening sound that seems to come from everywhere at once, and suddenly Rose and the Doctor are surrounded by sparkly humans.
“You have harmed a Tree.” The woman in front of them sounds more sad than anything.
“I--I’m sorry,” says Rose, still shaken. “I didn’t mean it. It startled me. Where I come from, back on Earth, the trees don’t move about like that.”
The woman nods, but no one backs away. “We protect the Trees. They give us the aru-wheat and our protection from the sun, and in return we offer them what little protection we can give.”
“Of course, the trees are sentient! Those are brain waves the sonic was picking up! Do they have a language? Do you actually speak with the--”
The woman’s glare stops him.
“Sorry. Not the time then. We’ll just collect Jack and be on our way?” He moves to take a step but the people move in closer to stop him, some brandishing farming implements, a few with knives.
“You have harmed a Tree. I’m sorry, truly sorry, but we have very strict laws. Your lives are forfeit.”
Rose hears a whooshing in her ears. She grips the Doctor’s hand more tightly-- when did she take his hand? --and her mind goes somewhere else. She thinks of a birthday party when she was six, the pink overalls she wore, and the birthday cake with the white icing and little silver sprinkles on it. The silver things were hard, and hurt her teeth, but the icing was good.
“I won’t let them hurt you, Rose,” the Doctor murmurs, and she snaps back to the present, and the feel of his fingers twined with hers.
Her heart beats a little faster. Turning to look into his eyes, icy in the warm sunshine, she feels the truth of his words. She squeezes his hand and gives him a tiny smile. He nods.
They don’t need words.
But the next hour passes in a blur. Jack comes back from the pub, arms linked with yet another man, to find Rose and the Doctor being marched across the square. The smile slips from his face when he realizes their arms are tied behind their backs. “Sorry mate,” he says to the man beside him. “I think this is my cue.”
Unfortunately, even Jack’s smile and charm can’t sway the locals. The trees are a vital part of the population. To harm a tree is death. And before he knows it, Jack is whisked out of town. “We would spare you from witnessing the deaths of your friends,” he is told. Thankfully before he leaves the Doctor manages to catch his eye and nod toward the park. He mouths, “Sonic,” and Jack understands. Jack makes an excuse about dropping his favorite pen in the park. The Doctor rolls his eyes, but is pleased when he sees Jack retrieve his screwdriver on his way back to the TARDIS.
The Doctor and Rose are tied to a hitching post in front of large building, something like a town hall. All the locals file inside, even a few children. Everyone looks sad. No one meets their eyes. Side by side, they are left to stare at the faded yellow town.
“I counted fifty-two, including the children.”
Rose doesn’t answer.
“Doesn’t help much, but it’s good information to have.”
She gazes at the park, at the trees.
“The trees are really alive? Like, thinking alive?”
“I’ve never seen it before, but the universe is a big place. You saw how that tree moved. And those were definite brain waves the sonic was picking up. Astonishing. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a tree goes and surprises you.”
A tear trickles down Rose’s cheek. “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Doctor.”
He reaches with his fingertips and just manages to grip hers. “I know, Rose. I know.”
“ Fire ! ”
The arrows loose.
Rose can see every one, can count the individual feathers on the ends as they fly towards them. It’s as if time itself has slowed down just so she can gather in every detail of her own execution.
And then there is a familiar grinding, wheezing noise, the Doctor lets out a loud whoop, and the TARDIS materializes around them.
“Took you long enough,” the Doctor says. Arrows thunk on the outside of the timeship. “Just had to be dramatic, Captain Jack. Had to wait until the last possible moment.”
“I don’t care,” says Rose. “Not a bit. Can you untie me please, Jack? That was too much, I can’t hold myself up anymore.”
Jack flips a switch on the TARDIS, sending her into the vortex. “It was a long walk. I actually had to run some of the way. And you’re lucky I’ve been learning to drive your ship, Doctor,” he says, going to work untying Rose’s bonds.
“Nah,” says the Doctor. “She’s a good girl. She would have taken you right where you needed to go even if you had no idea what you were doing. Which you probably didn’t.”
Finished with Rose, Jack stands over the Doctor. “Do you want me to untie you, or shall I just leave you there?”
Properly chastised, the Doctor grins. “Excellent timing, Jack. Well done. Glad to have you as backup.”
“Quite,” adds Rose, kissing Jack on the cheek.
“Do I get a kiss from you too, Doctor?” Jack asks with a wink.
“I’m not that easy,” the Doctor says. “Untie me first, then take me somewhere nice for dinner.”
Jack laughs.
“ Not somewhere yellow, please.” Rose puts her hands over her eyes. “I’d like to avoid the color yellow for awhile, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s too bad, really,” muses the Doctor. “I’d like to get to know those trees…”
“ Doctor! ” Jack and Rose shout it at the same time.
“Right,” the Doctor says. “Best just to find a new adventure.”