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Phryne has been in London for three days and is already bored. She’s ordered her summer wardrobe, strolled through Hyde Park, gone to a matinee at the Aldwych, and called on five school chums. (Two are in the country, one was taken by the influenza, and two are young mothers more concerned with their household than a woman they’ve not seen in years.) She’s danced and dined and danced again, waved off the last ship of Australian soldiers going home, gone to a party with her mother, and promptly slipped out an hour later when Lady Moorscroft starts in on proper young ladies for the third time.
Now, walking through Mayfair like an improper young lady, Phryne wonders who the war has changed more: her, or England?
In the lane ahead, something shuffles. A footman or a kitchen maid, most likely, doing their nightly chores. She walks a bit faster, all the same. When the shuffling begins again, in fits and starts but clearly following her, she begins to wonder if walking to the Tube was truly that wise.
The footsteps, if one can call them that, are joined by a second pair, then a third. There’s a smell now, thick, damp, and not unlike a battlefield. Phryne pauses just long enough to pick up a loose cobble, then continues walking until she’s in her third pool of streetlight.
At first she doesn’t see her pursuers. Outside the light, everything is still and dark and quiet. Then a lump of the night, a shape as tall as a man but twice as broad, looms up at the edge of the light. Phryne can’t make out features, only blurred creases where the face ought to be.
Two more lumps join it. The creases of their mouths widen and somehow the black inside them is darker than the London night.
Phryne spares a moment to muse on wishes fulfilled, and another on the unsuitableness of her gown, and then she throws the cobblestone.
It hits the leading lump with a glop and disappears into the creature’s chest.
In the silence that follows, she gathers her skirt above her knees and runs. The shuffling starts immediately, louder and faster than before. She’s made them angry.
Phryne rounds the corner and collides with a man, knocking them both to the ground. He’s gangly, with hair too short and ears too large and an expression of delight that Phryne decides is entirely inappropriate to the situation. She wrestles herself off him and grabs his wrist with a “Get up, get up!”
This only makes his grin wider, but he pushes himself to his feet with his free arm.
“Hullo,” he says. “I’m the Doctor. Delighted. One moment.”
He strides to the corner and peers round it, brandishing some sort of wand that buzzes in his hand. Phryne’s torn between running onwards and saving herself, and staying because this doctor clearly doesn’t know what’s good for him and may need someone to save the day. She slips off her shoes and checks their weight in her hand.
“Ashkonelli,” the man calls over his shoulder. “From the Thulobaran System. And you found them first. Fantastic!”
“They’re coming!” Phryne hisses.
He looks round the corner again. “So they are. Run!”
*
They end up in a blind alley, with the creatures shuffling towards them. There are six of them now, maybe more, and the alley smells of mud and gas and gunpowder. The man pulls ahead of her and vanishes in the gloom.
Phryne runs faster, hoping there’ll be some weapon down there she can use to hold them off. Instead, there’s only a blue wooden box with a door in one side. She tries it. It doesn’t open.
Behind her, there’s a noise, deep and animal and oddly metallic. Phryne spins to face the monsters. They’re gaining, and she has nowhere to go.
She tries the door again, just in case, then casts around for something, anything, she can use. She has lived through Jane and her father, war and epidemic. She’ll be damned if these lumps get her without a fight.
The door of the box opens in a shaft of golden light. The doctor is there, holding out a red canister that looks vaguely familiar.
“Here,” he says. “Like this, facing them. On my count.” He raises the canister in his other arm, for demonstration. “And … now!”
Phryne pulls the trigger. White foam shoots out, scads of it, covering the monsters from probably-head to must-be-feet. Their shrieking grows higher, more pitiful, and they go still. They look smaller too, but that could be because Phryne’s not afraid anymore.
She and the doctor dance between the creatures until their canisters are empty. He’s laughing. She’s laughing — and when was the last time she did that?
The doctor disappears into his box again, and she follows because she’s always been one to ask questions. Inside, it’s … glorious. There’s no other word. Glorious and golden, domed like a cathedral and far, far larger than she expected. It feels safe and welcoming and infinitely loved. Phryne adores it in an instant.
“Very nice,” she tells the doctor, because he’s clearly expecting her to be surprised. “Care to explain what just happened?”
“The Ashkonelli are colony psychovores,” he says, crossing to a gap in one wall. “Mildly telepathic. They feed on fear. Not too fond of cold, though. Sends them into hibernation.”
He pokes his head into the gap, shoots the ceiling a disappointed look, then peers into the gap again. This time, he sounds satisfied and drags out a large white crate. Phryne follows him back outside with it, then helps him load the frozen Ashkonelli into it one by one. Between each, he does something with his magic wand and they break up into small black beads.
She keeps asking questions, of course, the whole time.
*
Afterwards, the Doctor—because he isn’t just any doctor, that’s very clear—takes Phryne to the Thulabaran System, where they tip the crate of Ashkonelli onto purple stones under a glittering sky. Then there is a world of people with two heads who eat nothing but water, then a jungle temple where aliens are posing as gods. There are Valkyries and Cybermen, Voolenathyarians and Celts. They topple governments, rescue women and children, run through too many corridors to count. It is, as the Doctor is fond of saying, fantastic.
But he won’t take her to a circus performance in Melbourne, no matter how many times she asks. He says it’s a bad idea. Eventually, the thought of having a time machine and still not knowing, and worry for her family and general homesickness, grows bigger than the thought of the next adventure, and she leaves.
Later, there’s Australia, an ending and a beginning, and a man named Jack who’s nearly as haunted by life now as she was back then—but that’s a story for another time. For now, Phryne is going to do everything she missed while travelling with the Doctor, and then she has work to do.