issue fiction 19: whistle stop page 4

I did not even try to understand. ‘How long will the locomotive keep going?’

‘Either until it runs out of fuel or reaches the end of the line, I suppose.’ I swallowed deeply.

‘We have to stop it, don’t we?’

‘Do we?’

I hesitated. He knew the future, didn’t he? He knew what happened to the train… didn’t he?

‘D-didn’t I tell you? I mean, won’t I tell you?’ I was still mighty unclear about how all that worked.

‘Not entirely, no,’ he conceded. ‘More fun this way, don’t you think?’

If this was his idea of fun... ‘And you wouldn’t tell me if you did.’

He tapped a forefinger against the side of his nose. That I understood.

‘All right then. What do we need to stop a train?’

‘Dunno. What do we have to work with?’

I picked up the hat full of inconsequential items, tokens from the boys. I remembered now. They’d each given me something before they left with their new families. Marbles, a Jacob’s Ladder, knucklebones, a Bilbo catcher, a deck of cards, some small toy soldiers, a small knife, a handful of seeds, several tangled moon winders and Miss McCrimmon’s jar of apple butter. Where, I wondered, had she gone? ‘What do you have?’

The Doctor whipped some sort of tool from his pocket. ‘Screwdriver.’

It was by far the strangest screwdriver I’d ever seen, but the Doctor was the strangest man I’d ever met. It seemed only fitting.

The noise in the locomotive was horrible, but the Doctor was right. No one else seemed to be on board. That left it up to us to stop the train. The Doctor ignored the noise and smoke and the snow being cast in every direction by the cow catcher up front. On we plowed through winter’s grip, chugging deeper and deeper into the Michigan wilderness, the Doctor setting his attention on dismantling what he identified as a broken valve. I asked him how many trains he had worked on and he grinned at me and told me to break the seal on the apple butter.

‘What do you need me to do?’

The Doctor tipped the contents of the jar into the exposed cylinder.

‘After I seal this up, I need you to open the valve to re-pressurize the system; then we haul on the hand brake, hold on for dear life, and pray. Think you can handle that?’

I wrapped my fingers around the brake handle and the Doctor wrapped his hands around mine. The pressure valve sputtered and I gave it a swift kick, never letting go of the brake.

‘A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,’ I pointed out.

The Doctor grinned. ‘I can live with that.’

I didn’t know why he thought it was so funny, but I had every intention of doing exactly what he said. Remember? I really was an obedient child in those days.

‘Is this going to work?’ I asked, laughing at myself. ‘I guess it had to have worked, right? Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it, right?’

‘Dunno,’ he told me, adjusting his hold on the brake handle. ‘Things are changing every step of the way, small things. Should all work out in the end, but you never know. We might crash.’

‘We might not,’ I pointed out, knowing that if wishes were fishes, no one would ever go hungry again. ‘Doctor, tell me one thing. The boys—the real ones, I mean. Are they all right?’ I had to shout to be heard over the squealing as we hauled on the brakes for all we were worth.

‘Right as rain,’ he grinned back at me, pulling the whistle cord to announce our impending arrival. ‘I always wanted to do that.’

‘Your story isn’t over yet, and neither is theirs.’

Snow whispered to the ground, glistening like starlight across the open fields.

The train crew, no worse for wear after our adventure, stumbled out of the caboose after the great steel behemoth had ground to a trembling halt. Confused, they stumped along the rails in heavy coats and tall boots, inspecting the damage to the Number Nine. All considering, the train looked good and the nervous conductor congratulated the Doctor for his heroism. Another few miles and we would have reached the end of the line, quite literally. The Doctor thanked them as he hopped down, swinging me down to the ground as the porters began the struggle of unloading the Tardis. Alerted by the terrific noise, a farmer and his wife had arrived in a mule-drawn sleigh and offered to take us into town where they said an agent from St. Luke’s, a Miss Carolyn McCrimmon, waited for me.

It was now or never. I turned to the Doctor. ‘You ever left anyone behind?’

He laughed a bit. I took that to mean that he had, often.

‘Anyone you wish you hadn’t?’

‘All the time, well,’ he amended, ‘sometimes. And some people more than other people. Some people a lot more. But I don’t beg. I’m not desperate, you know. I like being on my own. Set my own schedule. Go... where I want to.’

I kept nodding. I wasn’t sure which one of us he was trying to convince.

‘Anyway, that was ages ago. She’s probably back to working in a shop somewhere, married to that dumb lug by now.’

I wasn’t sure what a dumb lug was, but it didn’t sound very romantic. Not one bit. I lowered my voice. ‘But didn’t you say this was a time machine?’

‘Just because it’s a time machine doesn’t mean I can just pop back and change things. It doesn’t work that way. Not always,’ he said, gazing off into the distance. “There are things we can’t change. Not even me.’

‘Like Adric?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Sometimes I can change things. But I don’t go back for people who say no. She made her choice and I left her right there in that alley with Mickey the Idiot,” the Doctor said, arms folded across his chest. He looked miserable. ‘Her name was Rose, too. Rose Tyler.’

Oh. Oh, my. The woman in the snow, the pretty woman with the man in the long coat who found me in the coal shed and took me to the local parish and gave me the locket and told me that when my turn came to ride the train I was to write that name in the window; every town, every station, every whistle stop. Someone would find me, someone indeed. But if the Doctor left her standing in an alley, none of this would ever happen. I thought of Miss McCrimmon, the real Miss McCrimmon waiting for me—for me! – And her speech about Second Chances.

‘Maybe you could give her a second chance.’ He had to. He just had to. I looked at the Tardis. ‘Maybe you should tell her it’s a time machine?’

The Doctor’s eyebrows drew slowly together as if he were deep in thought. Slowly, a pained expression worked over his soot-stained face.

‘She told you, didn’t she? Rose Tyler told you to write your name so I’d see it.’

‘No,’ I told him, taking the locket from around my neck and handing it to him. ‘She told me to write this name.’

He snapped open the locket. I knew what it said. I’d looked at it so many times. “To Rose”

‘She gave this to you?’

‘On the way to the parish,’ I nodded. ‘They found me in the – ‘

The Doctor shushed me. ‘Not another word. It hasn’t happened yet.’

I blinked. Hadn’t happened? How could it not have happened? ‘But that was years ago!’

‘Ahem!’ the Doctor put his hands over his ears. It was just then I noticed how big they were.

‘Not for me!’

‘But...?’

The Doctor jerked a thumb at the blue box.

‘Ooh. Yes, I see.’ But I was lying. I didn’t understand. I thought about it hard. It didn’t help.

‘Doctor, why do I remember Rose and not you?’

‘You wouldn’t,’ he told me, sweeping me up into the sleigh with the nice people who had come to our aid. ‘You haven’t met me yet.’

‘So you said.’

‘But you will, a long time from now. And you’ll tell me the story of the Number 9 bound for Michigan – but I won’t remember it, because for me it wouldn’t have happened yet. And I must have told Rose later, which means I went back for her.’

He said it so matter-of-factly that all I could do was nod. Then he looked crestfallen. ‘Thing is, she might not come with me. It could change everything. Funny thing, the life of a time traveller. Do you understand?’

I nodded, and then slowly shook my head. The nice lady had bundled me up in a blanket and given me a proper winter hat. The nice man shook the mule harness and the sleigh began to move.

‘All you need to know is…‘ He furrowed his brow. ‘Wait. What is your name?’

‘Emily,’ I told him.

‘Emily Rose,’ he emphasized the second name, ‘you’re going to have a fantastic life.’

I wanted to tell him the same thing, but why spoil the fun?

And do you know what? I did have a fantastic life. Oh, it wasn’t all wine and song. No sir. But those are stories for another day and I can see that you’re ready to be on your way. Places to go, people to see? No, you aren’t being rude at all. You asked for a story and I told you one. Well, no, I didn’t tell you everything, but then a girl has to have some secrets, doesn’t she? That’s right. Even at my age. Just know this: it was a good life and one I’m not ready to stop living yet. How’s that for a pearl of wisdom?

Oh, one more thing before you go. You’ll need this. See the lovely inscription inside? Yes, I suppose I will miss it, dear, but I’ve had it long enough, don’t you think? Time it was given to a younger girl.

Go on now. You have so much to do and the Doctor was right. Sometimes the best stories of our lives are the ones we haven’t written yet. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

written by

MEG MacDONALD

artwork by

COLIN JOHN

also from the pen of Meg MacDonald...

< PAGE 3 CONTENTS >