Work Text:
If anybody asked, he would tell them that he came here to relax, to putter around, work with his hands a bit whilst soaking in the sunlight. Not that anyone could ask, mind you. He’d been careful, made sure that no one ever saw him come here. It meant he’d only get at most six or seven hours now and then, stolen from his busy life when he hadn’t other responsibilities to attend to and while his human companions were getting their much-needed sleep. He’d always felt sorry for them that a third of their lives was lost to daily recuperation, but it did give him treasured time to himself.
The perk of having a time machine was that even if he couldn’t return for days or weeks or months as far as he was concerned, he could, if he wanted, come back to just after he’d left and pick right back up. Local time plodded along as usual and he could pretend he’d been here all along. He’d even taken to occasionally leaving his things out, if the day was young and the weather seemed likely to hold, but he tried not to do that too often. It didn’t do to leave someone else’s home a mess.
The first day, he’d spent hours setting up. He’d searched the distant mountains for a large chunk of granite with a wide face worn flat by the wind and rain, then piloted the TARDIS around it to move it to the base of an enormous shady oak - or at least what passed for an oak on this world - that dominated a glade hidden deep in the forest, to set it up as a worktable. The thought that an explorer, centuries in the future, might misinterpret it as a cairn or altar and wonder how “primitives” had managed to move a multi-tonne slab so far had brought a smirk to his lips. The next time, he’d searched the TARDIS for the supplies he needed. The work would be delicate, requiring an artisan’s skilled touch, and thus he’d eschewed his usual high-tech tools as too bulky, too brute-force. An injudicious application of even the sonic screwdriver could ruin days of work in a hundredth of a microspan.
Once laid out, the work progressed steadily, if slowly. He’d written no design, relying instead on his intuition of how it should work and look and feel. He’d made occasional mistakes, polishing this plate a little too thin or introducing a kink in that rod instead of a gentle curve, but he didn’t view them as failures or setbacks. They simply meant that he would spend more time here.
She moved like a soft breeze, silent and unseen except for the trembling of the leaves as she passed. Still, he knew she was there, sensed her the moment she’d entered the glade. He laid aside his tools and stood to help her to the table, and she selected a vantage point from which she could observe his expressions but not view his work. He only resumed his seat and his tools when he was assured she was comfortable and content.
“You returned so quickly this time. The sun’s barely moved two handspans.” Her laughter trilled like birdsong.
He peered up at the blinding orb above them. “That little? I aimed for tomorrow, give you the leisure of a quiet night. Must give the old girl a talking to.” He punctuated his words with gentle taps of a jeweler’s hammer.
“Not on my account, I hope. I have been enjoying your visits.”
"Bit of a distraction, am I? Something different from the regular routine of, er, whatever it is you do. Dancing in the forest, I suppose. Or talking to the bees. If you have bees. What world doesn’t have bees?”
“The others, they think I should not trust one such as you.”
“They do, do they? And what ‘such’ am I?”
“They call you the shapeshifter, the wise old fool, the thief. You come here with one face, then another, and you swaddle yourself in illusion and pretty words designed to distract, to lead the eye elsewhere as you sneak behind and steal our treasures. More importantly,” she continued, clapping her hands together, “you are simply not us. We do not tolerate outsiders much. They kill the forest and steal the land. They bring pain and greed and suffering.”
“But you, you’re of a different mind. You don’t think that at all.”
She laughed, pulling a coppery lock forward to twine it around her fingers. “I shall tell you the truth, as I always do, though perhaps I am rarely as straightforward as I shall be now. I agree with much of it. You lie, well and often, that is plain to me. You deceive all you encounter, even your few friends, out of long habit, because you cannot bear the thought of anyone seeing you truly.”
His brow tightened.
“But you are not a thief. You are not like the men from the Far Lands. You do not kill. You do not covet. I saw that in you the moment you first arrived two moons ago. Since then, you have had ample opportunity to prove me wrong, as you have left and returned many, many times, and still, you come back to this very spot and resume your work and seek only to enjoy the sunshine and the cool air. You had my trust from the beginning, but since then, you have also earned it.”
He made no comment, but continued to concentrate on his work.
“Ah,” she sighed, “when you are done, and I expect it shall be soon, you will leave and never return. I shall miss you greatly.”
“Nonsense,” he replied, flourishing with a tiny pair of pliers. “I’ll be back to check on you, of course. You’re likely to get sick of me, popping in three times before breakfast.”
She laughed, clapping happily. “And there, you lie again. I have never been so entertained. But now, I believe, it is time for payment. Yes.”
“No payment,” he exclaimed, slapping the pliers on the rock face. “I don’t want anything, not a drop. Don’t need money, and anything else just adds to the clutter. No space for it. You’ve seen my box. Full to the brim. Already spent a lifetime thin as a rake just to get in the door.”
“It is not your choice. We demand payment for our favours, and in turn, we must pay our benefactors. There is no other way.”
“I’ll just bin it, whatever it is. Or give it away.”
“What you do with it matters not, though I expect that you will keep my payment forever.”
He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand and dove back into his work.
She sat up straight and arranged her shift over her lap before she asked, “Do you know of the day the demons took the Mother of Night?”
“Can’t say I do. Never heard of this Mother of Night, though if you’re having a problem with demons, I might have a trick or two that could help.”
She laughed. “We did once, but no more.”
Mother of Night rules the darkness because the brilliance of Father of Day would drown her pale beauty. She wanders every night and joins us in our revels, and she aids those men who are brave enough to venture out of their villages and open themselves to her. When the morning comes, she wanders still, unseen in the harsh light and silenced by the rule of Father of Day.
That is when the demons came, in the daytime, for they knew no one would see her taken, no one would hear her screams, and she would not be missed until Father of Day returned to his sleep.
When dusk approached, we were the first to notice her absence. She joins us every night, though the time of her arrival is subject to her whims. We waited the night through and she never appeared, and we were quite despondent when the first rays of dawn broke over the distant mountains. We applied to Father of Day for her whereabouts but received no answer, for he cares not for her. All we knew was that Mother of Night was beyond our reach, and we were powerless to help her.
The second night came and went, then the third, then more. It took many nights for the men to notice she was gone and then to talk about it and convince themselves that what they had seen was true, as men do. Their scholars searched for her, over land and sea, and in the sky, and consulted their great tomes for clues as to where she might have gone, but they found nothing, for this was beyond their ken. Their magicians cast their divinations to the heavens, to the abyss, to the Land of the Future and the Land of the Past, and confirmed what we suspected, that the demons had taken her to the heavens. Moreover, they learnt that the demons had taken other puissant beings, twenty-seven in all, for together, they would form the Great Lens, which could focus the power of the universe back on itself. The demons would take that power for their own and use it to destroy our world and all others.
When the men were thus convinced, they vowed to wrest Mother of Night from the clutches of the demons and bring her home, and they prepared for war. They called for all who were willing to fight and once assembled, their commander, Lord Aion, led them up, into the heavens, to the vast Cauldron where the demons were building the Great Lens. However, the moment they arrived, ready for battle, the demons captured Lord Aion and stripped him of his power, forcing him to watch as they destroyed his domain.
The leader of the soldiers, the Captain, aimed his greatest weapon, the Star of Annihilation, at the Cauldron, for without the Cauldron, the Lens could not be built. The demons laughed and captured the Captain and his soldiers. What good is a weapon with no one to wield it?
The leader of the scholars, the Farwalker, held her magical blade, the World’s Defender, to the throat of one of the Twenty-Seven. ‘Behold, demons!’ she cried. ‘If you do not stand down, I shall kill this one. With only twenty-six, you cannot build the Lens, and you shall fail.’ The demons laughed and captured the Farwalker, and her blade fell to the ground.
The men despaired of finding a warrior or a weapon that could defeat the demons. We thought all was lost, when the least of them all stepped forward. Amongst the men, she was nobody, less than that, for they did not even know she was there. She possessed no power and did not know how to wield a weapon or how to fight. However, the Lady realised that which no other saw, that they could not hope to defeat the demons with force, that their weakness lay elsewhere, in their hatred and their hubris.
Thus, she combined within herself the wisdom of Lord Aion and the spirit of the humanfolk, and turned the demons’ plan against them. She used the Lens to disable the demons and send them back into the Howling Void. She released Lord Aion and with him, restored the Twenty-Seven to their realms. Then, she closed her eyes for her final rest, comforted by the thoughts that her tasks were done and that Mother of Night had once again returned to us.
The men have returned to their cities and their petty squabbles, and think on the conflict no more. Mother of Night wanders again, silent and graceful as ever. But the folk of the wilds still remember, in celebrations across the stars of the Lady’s wisdom and sacrifice.
Setting his tools aside, he climbed to feet and bowed to her formally. “Thank you, my lady. An excellent tale!” he proclaimed as he returned to his seat. “You’re right, you know. I’ll keep it in my hearts forever. Where’d you hear it? A fable exchanged during your revels?”
“My tale is true, from the first word to the last.”
He wagged a finger at her. “You do know, that’s not how it happened.”
“Ah,” she sighed, leaning forward with a taunting smile. “You mistake fact for truth. A common failing amongst men. I should not let it bother you.”
“I shan’t, for I’m done here. Ready to see it? Take it for a spin?”
Sweeping her hair back, she squared her shoulders and stood, then picked her way across the worktable, skirting tools and discarded materials. After a last hop over a crystal-tipped rod of ivory, copper, and steel, she kept her eyes averted from the device in the palm of his hand as she spun in place and pulled off her shift to expose her back to him. He set the silver filigree framework fitted with panes of gossamer over the two protruding scarred stumps and held them there as she buckled the straps around her torso. She pulled her shift on, taking care to make sure the slits in the back flowed around the contraption, then, with a great breath, willed her new wings to flutter. She rose into the air, hovered for many heartbeats, then lightly touched back down.
He stood watching, hunched over the worktable and fingers twitching in front of him in anticipation, but said nothing.
“It… it will do, I suppose,” she stated, her head bowed away from him. “It is heavier than… than it used to be. It will take getting used to.”
“You’ve quite a bit of strength to build back up. Daily calisthenics,” he advised, “and a bit of physical therapy, and you’ll be right as rain in no time. Don’t overreach yourself.”
She faced him, standing tall as she adjusted the straps under her shift. “You do not need to fix problems caused by others’ malice or carelessness.”
“Something to do while I enjoyed the sunlight. Kept my hands busy. If I don’t, they’re liable to wander off.” Indeed, his right hand had crept behind his back and the other grabbed the elbow to pull it forward, but he dropped his antics when she glared at him.
He sat back down and held a finger out to her. “Yes, I do. If I don’t, no one will.”
“It is not your responsibility.”
“Yes, it is.”
She placed her hand on the pad of his finger. “I thank you, Doctor. We all thank you, my brothers and sisters, and Mother of Night most of all.”
“Well.” He leapt from his seat and clapped. “Time to clean up. Literal spring cleaning. I won’t leave a trace, not a single lost piece nor leaf bent. Except the table. I’m leaving the table, but I’m sure you won’t notice. But first, I need a box. A box from a box.” He bounded off toward the TARDIS, and she called after him.
“Doctor?”
He spun on his heel, twirling into a low bow. “Yes?”
“You will return, yes? Just once?”
His eyes sparkled. “Got to make sure it’s still fitting right.”
Her smile brightened the glade. “Come in the autumn. Poosh is always most beautiful in the autumn, when Father of Day tires of his journey and he paints the trees the colours of his dreams.”
“I certainly will.”