Counting with Fairies Ch 4

Chapter 4

He took Sally by the hand and led her to the door of the TARDIS. 

"We're here, already?" Sally was surprised at how short of time it took to travel several hundreds of years.

He pulled open the door and they stepped out.  "Welcome to France, 1642," the Doctor said.

The grass was green beneath their feet and the landscape rolled with green hills.  Homesteads and animals could occasionally be seen.  Sally took a few tentative steps away from the TARDIS and looked around.  She watched a boy with a herd of sheep go past her.  He stared at the strangers and the blue box for several moments before moving on.

The boy had made Sally uncomfortable.  She looked down at her clothes.  The brown bell-bottom dress suit and boots she was wearing was fine for working in 1971, but it was probably highly offensive clothes for a female in 1642.  She turned back to the Doctor, "I stick out like a sore thumb."

He looked at her for a moment and then led her back into the TARDIS.  He pointed to a door off the console room.  "Third door to your right is the wardrobe.  I'm sure you can find something suitable to wear in there."

"What? A wardrobe?" Sally asked.

"I'm sure you can find some 17th century clothing in there, but find something plain to wear.  Nothing too upper class and make sure you have on comfortable shoes.  Something you can run in, if needs be."

"Run?  Are we planning on running?" Sally turned to face him.  "Do you expect trouble?"

"No, not expecting any," the Doctor said innocently, "but it's always best to be prepared."

Sally turned and went down the hall.  The Doctor set about tinkering at the console.  Seeing there wasn't much to do, he decided to change clothes too and went to his own room.  He returned to the console room sixty seconds later.  He sat down in his favorite chair and flipped through a book that had been sitting on the table next to the chair.  Why did women take so long to change?

Sally appeared in the console room several minutes later.  She seemed tangled up in her over-tunic.  "Doctor," she called to him, "how does this work?"

He went to her and helped her get the tunic on properly and then he tied the laces for her.  She smiled sheepishly and thanked him.  "I'm a scientist," she said.  "I never was interested or paid much attention to my history lessons.  I have no idea what women wore, but I found a book in the wardrobe on European fashions through the centuries.  I found a page on the 17th century fashion and I tried to copy it."

"You look fine.  What about shoes?" the Doctor asked.

Sally lifted her skirts up to her knees, exposing the trainers beneath them.  The Doctor smiled.  "Let's go!" he said.  He ran to the door and pulled it open.  Sally stepped out into the sun-filled French countryside.  The Doctor joined her and shut the TARDIS door behind him.

"Aren't you going to change clothes Doctor?"

"I already did," he said.

Sally saw no difference.  He was wearing the exact same thing as far as she could tell, blue pants and a  leather jacket.  The Doctor opened his jacket to expose the white v-neck shirt underneath.  "See, new shirt."

Sally was amused by him.  He headed off down the hill.  Sally jogged to catch him up and then kept pace with him.  She loved seeing the countryside.  Farms and livestock were the only things they saw for a while.  Soon they found a well traveled road that seemed to lead to a distant village.  They turned down it and headed towards the village.

"Doctor," Sally finally said as they walked down the road.  "This is quite lovely and I'm thrilled to be here, but I thought we were going to see Blaise Pascal and his Pascaline."

"He's around here somewhere," the Doctor casually said.

"Doesn't your time machine take you to those places so you don't have to wander about the countryside?"  Sally asked.

"Well, I didn't have very specific coordinates for the TARDIS to follow.  France, 1642, Blaise Pascal only gets us so far.  Now, if you had told me his address or neighborhood, I could have gotten us quite a bit closer," the Doctor answered.

"I see," Sally said.  "Live and learn."

"Exactly," the Doctor answered.  He was impressed with Sally.  Her questions weren't asked with a complaint, they were asked with a thirst for knowledge.  He was liking having a scientist with him.  They see the world differently and asked questions with the purpose of getting true answers.

"You said TARDIS.  Is that the name of your machine?"

"Yes, it stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.  Oh, what do we have here?"  The Doctor nodded his head down the road slightly.  Sally looked where he indicated and saw a group of people huddled in a circle.  They seemed to be looking at the ground.

"Do you speak French, Doctor?" Sally asked, suddenly realizing that the few French phrases she knew wouldn't be enough to hold any kind of conversation in 17th century France.

"I can speak it well enough and don't worry, so can you."  They had almost reached the crowd.  "Just speak normally."

"But Doctor, I," Sally began.

"Trust me.  I'll explain later," he whispered at her.

"Good morning, friends," he said pleasantly.

They stood up quickly and regarded the strangers in front of them.  The Doctor took a step closer to see what everyone had been looking at moments before.

"This is interesting," he said.  Sally followed his gaze and looked at the ground.  She saw what looked like a child's toy carriage and horse.  The carriage was red and gold and ornately decorated.  She was about to dismiss it as nothing more than a child's toy lost on the road, when she saw the tiny brown horse move.  She inhaled quickly.  The toy horse was alive, but by the way it was laying on the ground, it was badly injured.

The Doctor pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapped it around the horse.  With the horse in his right hand and the carriage in the left, he gently lifted them off the ground.

"Sir, that is a fairy carriage!  You shouldn't touch it," the younger man in the group said.

"Why not?" the Doctor asked.  It was too late anyway, he was holding it.

"Fairies are no good.  They will curse you!" the man said backing away from the Doctor.

"What? Curse me for helping it?  I'll take my chances.  Here, Sally, help me."  The Doctor gave Sally the carriage to hold while he gently freed the horse from its reigns.  The horse made a lot of noise, but it didn't struggle.  Once freed, the Doctor wrapped the horse in the handkerchief and stuck it into an inner breast pocket of his jacket.    He took the carriage from Sally and opened the tiny door.  He looked in, but saw no one and closed the small door again.  The Doctor wasn't convinced that the carriage was empty.  He had seen wisps' of purple dust when he opened the door.  He suspected a fairy was hiding inside the carriage somewhere.  "What happened here?"  he asked the group of people.

A young woman, Sally guessed was in her late teens, spoke up.  "I was coming back along the road from the mill when I saw it.  It was flying low to the ground and it seemed with great difficulty, when it suddenly fell to the ground, right at my feet."

"It's a bad omen," the one younger man said.  He pointed at the girls mid-section, "You had better pray that your child hasn't been cursed by the fairy who fell at your feet."

The girl's hands flew to her belly, which, Sally noticed was slightly enlarged by pregnancy.  "Oh dear!" she cried.

Sally went to the girl and put an arm around her shoulders.  "Don't worry," Sally said.  "I'm sure your baby is fine."

"Fairies are no good," the young man said.  "There's been trouble in the village and they say it has been caused by fairies.  I don't want anything to do with them."  The man walked off down the road towards the village.

The Doctor watched the man walk off.  Maybe now he could get some answers out of the girl with him gone.  "What happened after the carriage fell?"  he asked the girl.

"Well, I didn't know what to do.  I was about to pick it up when that man," she pointed at the figure who was walking away from them, "came up the road and stopped me."

"And we arrived shortly after that," the second man said.  He was older and was accompanied by an elderly white haired woman. 

The Doctor took careful notice of the people who had gathered at the site of the crash.  The young woman and this older couple were most likely peasants or poor tradesmen.  The man who had just left had been dressed a little nicer.  The Doctor guessed he was either a higher skilled tradesman or a low level politician in the village. 

"What will you do now sir?" the older man asked.

"Well, I think we should find the fairy this horse and carriage belong too," the Doctor said.

"Good luck with that," the man laughed.  "Fairies are near impossible to find and could cause you quite a bit of mischief if you do find happen to find them.  Come along Mother," the man held out his arm to the elderly lady and slowly led her down the road.

Sally's arm was still around the girls shoulders and judging by the way the girl's shoulders were shaking, Sally guessed that she was crying.  "What's your name?" Sally asked the girl.

"Marie-Claire," the girl answered.

"Well, I'm Sally and this is the Doctor.  Don't worry about what that man said.  You're going to be fine."

Sally sobbed, "What if the fairies are planning on taking my baby and leaving a changeling instead?  It would be such a disgrace.  Pierre would lose business with his customers and then we'd have no money and no way to care for the children."

Sally really didn't understand much about fairies and didn't believe they were real at all, although the tiny horse and carriage were strange.  The Doctor was looking around for a clue of any kind as to where the carriage might have come from.  Marie-Claire was still crying quietly.  He took Marie-Claire by the arm and led her to a near-by tree.  He helped her to sit down in the shade.  Sally sat next to her.  The Doctor reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a leather pouch.  "Have some water, Marie-Claire.  You'll feel better." 

Marie-Claire took the pouch and began to drink.  The Doctor sat down between the two women and gently set the carriage in the grass.

"Feel better?" he asked the young girl.

Marie-Claire wiped some drops of water from her face, "Yes, thank you."

"What direction did the carriage fly from when you saw it?"  The Doctor asked.

She pointed in the direction of a grove of trees, "From over there."  Marie-Claire looked down at her stomach and laid her hands on the bulge.  She rubbed her stomach gently. "Are you really a doctor?"

The Doctor knew where this was headed.  It would just be easier to just agree than try to explain exactly what he was a doctor of.  He nodded.

"Do you think my baby has been cursed by the fairies?"

"No, I don't believe so.  I'd say your baby is doing very well."  The Doctor laid his hands on her belly and felt it.  He got a kick in the palm from a tiny foot. "Yes, your baby is very strong.  You felt it kick me just now."  Marie-Claire laughed.  "Now, don't worry about it anymore.  When you get home, try and get some rest. That is the best thing you can do."

"Thank you Doctor," Marie-Claire said.

"When is your baby expected to be born?" Sally asked. 

"In the fall.  The mid-wife said it would be in October," Sally explained.  "I hope it's a girl, but Pierre, that's my husband, he wants a boy."

"Well, that's natural for a father, isn't it?" Sally asked.

"Yes, but he has two sons already.  He and his first wife had two boys.  She died in childbirth with the second baby.  Boys are such noisy little things, but they make me laugh.  I'm hoping this one is a girl, but I don't dare tell that wish to Pierre."  Marie -Claire laughed.

The Doctor tried to bring the conversation back to the problem at hand.  He understood why this young girl was concerned for her child, but pregnant women made the Doctor slightly nervous.  For one thing, they couldn't run and he always seemed to be running.  He wanted to solve the fairy mystery.  "The first man you met on the road, he said there were some recent problems with the fairies?"  The Doctor asked.  "What do you know about that?"

Marie-Claire shook her head, "Not much.  I've heard a few stories from others.  Yves, the baker, said that some fairies came during the night and tore his bakery apart just a few days ago, and the butcher boy said that he saw a fairy ring not long ago in the woods there."

"Did you know that man?" the Doctor asked.

"No, if he is from the village, he lives in a different neighborhood.  I've not seen him before." Marie-Claire explained.

"Do fairies do that kind of thing?  Destroy personal property, I mean,"  Sally asked.

"Fairies are known to make mischief, but they don't often destroy things," the Doctor said, thoughtfully.

"How can you not know about fairies?" Marie-Claire asked Sally.

"Well, you don't often see them in London," Sally smiled.

"You're from London?"  Marie-Claire asked.  "I've heard it's a big town."

"Yes it is," Sally said.

"I've never left our village boundaries before, but next summer there will be a large fair on the other side of Rouen.  Pierre said we will go to the fair.  The baby will be big enough to travel by then.  I can't wait to go.  It will be so exciting."  Marie-Claire's enthusiasm made Sally laugh.

"I dare say it will," Sally said.

Marie-Claire took another sip of water before handing the pouch back to the Doctor.  "I had better be home.  My sister has my boys until I get back and I'm sure she is ready to send them home.  We take turns.  When she goes to the mill, I watch her young children and when I go to the mill, she keeps mine.  Thank you for the water, Doctor.  It was nice to meet you both."

The Doctor stood up and helped Marie-Claire up off the ground.  "Remember, try and get some rest today when you get back home."

"I will. Thank you Doctor."  She placed her hands on her back and stretched a bit before walking back to the road.  She picked up a large sack off the ground, hoisted it onto her back and started walking to the village.

Continue with Chapter 5