Doctor Who - Past Doctor Adventures - 08 - Eye of Heaven (4th Doctor) by Jim Mortimore

Author:Jim Mortimore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Doctor Who (Fictitious Character), Fiction
ISBN: 9780563405672
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 1998-03-14T07:00:00+00:00

December 1872

„I approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.‟

Robert Louis Stevenson,

Treasure Island

15

Vortex

I first experienced the power of the Xaust wind when I was eight summers old. I remember how it moved through the jungle, disturbing the web-tree spinners in their high nests, pushing between branches and undergrowth, unrolling the ground in thin strips of earth and leaves and small animals. I had been practising with father‟s crossbow near the edge of the village, the common land between the furthest huts and bordering the nearest edge of the Beyond. Now I dropped the weapon, laughing and clapping, jumping into the air and clutching at the whirling stuff, feeling the prickle of webs brushing against my hands and face, the spindly jab of wriggling spinner limbs. Then I saw a medium-sized webspinner whirl up into the sky trailing webstuff and the unravelling skin of a bark-skipper which it had caught only moments before and was in the process of disembowelling. I remember being amazed that such a vast change could happen so quickly. It was as if the world had changed for my amusement.

At first the Xaust wind was gentle. It played with me, whirling branches and the lighter web-tree spinners into the air, peeling them away from the jungle like pollen, a gossamer rain that fell upwards into the darkening sky. The loose webs caught the darkening sun, casting a red rainbow across the black hills surrounding the village. The air darkened even further with the tiny wriggling specks that were the spinners. The world turned red and black in moments.

Then the wind took one of the children I had been practising with.

Sooly was smaller than I was, one of the smallest children in the village for his age. I watched him go into the air, wrapped in webstuff so that he looked like a seed trailing its wind-catchers. I grabbed for his foot as he passed, clutched nothing but web, fell back as the wind grew around me.

I called out a warning to the other children. It was then that I realised the wind was louder than my voice, louder than I could shout. And its fingers, which only moments before had been playfully tugging at the ground, were now ripping large chunks of undergrowth into the air along with the walls and roofs of the nearby huts. A branch tore loose from the ground beside me and snapped upward. I fell aside, blood streaming from a leg scraped raw by its passing. The blood was caught up in the wind and whirled skyward. I fought to get closer to the ground, grabbing handfuls of dirt that crumbled between my fingers and was sucked away, trying to pull myself further down into the ground, trying to burrow into the ground the way the bark-skippers burrowed into trees.

I was big for my age, and heavy. Our family had eaten well because we were good hunters.

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