Part III

The tunnel was pitch-black and echoed with the sound of dripping water. The walls weren't wet, though; the dripping had to be a sound effect added by the Vishklar to create a spooky ambience. The Doctor couldn't see or hear Rose; he started to get worried until he saw her a few metres behind him by the light of the sonic screwdriver.

'Rose! Stay close,' he warned. 'No telling what evil beasties may be down here waiting to attack us.' Rose nodded. She stayed a couple of paces behind the Doctor as they continued down the tunnel.

It was hard enough to see where they were going without added obstacles. The Doctor kept on tripping over irregularities in the floor, obviously put there by the Vishklar to make their passage more difficult. The way was long and winding, but at least it was only a single passageway. The Doctor knew he wouldn't have been able to find his way through a complex warren of tunnels, any more than he could have found the TARDIS in the maze the Vishklar had created.

They made their way carefully through the darkness, not speaking a word to each other. The Doctor vaguely wondered why they hadn't encountered anything yet besides potholes in the floor.

'What are we going to do?' Rose asked after they had been walking in silence for a while.

'What do you mean?' asked the Doctor, narrowly avoiding losing his footing when he stumbled over a protrusion of rock.

'When we get out of this tunnel. What are we going to do?'

'Well—' The Doctor sucked in a breath and admitted, 'I really don't know.' He twirled the sonic screwdriver between his fingers. 'I don't know how we're going to find Emily, I don't know how we can get away from the Vishklar—'

'The old Doctor would have known what to do.'

'What?' The Doctor turned to Rose in surprise. 'But... I'm him, and he's me. How could he—I mean, I—have done any better than I'm doing now?'

Rose's expression was cold. 'I told you before that I wanted you to change back.'

'And I told you before that I can't,' the Doctor replied coolly.

'He was so much better than you,' Rose muttered, narrowing her eyes. 'Smart, and funny, and brave... He always protected me.'

'Protected you? What do you think I'm trying to do now?'

'You're leading me into danger!'

'You were the one who volunteered to go to the Seretti dimension—by yourself, I might add!'

'You care more about Emily Dickinson than you care about me,' Rose retorted. 'You're swanning off to save her with no thought about the risk involved!'

'That's not true!' the Doctor insisted angrily. 'I'm not—'

'Before you changed, you were a better person,' Rose cut him off. 'My Doctor knew how to treat people kindly. My Doctor always knew what to do in a crisis. My Doctor loved me.' She drew herself up to her full height. 'My Doctor died to save me, and he left me with you—' she spat out the last word—'a stupid old madman who thinks danger is just a game!'

'It's me, Rose!' The Doctor was shocked at how her words could sting his centuries-old hearts, how much she was hurting him. 'I never left you, I'm still here—and you're still my friend!'

'You aren't what I want,' Rose snapped. 'I loved my Doctor, and now he's gone. You couldn't hope to compare with him.'

The Doctor could only stutter helplessly. 'But—I'm—'

'I want to go home,' Rose yelled at him. 'Back to my mum and Ricky! They were right about you! You only cause trouble wherever you go!'

'Wait—' The Doctor's face went slack with confusion. 'Ricky?'

'Yes, Ricky, who's loads better than you even though he's a coward and doesn't have a flying blue box—'

'His name is Mickey,' the Doctor said quietly.

'No, his name's Ricky, that's what you're always saying—'

The Doctor interrupted her. 'Where's a Sontaran's weak point?'

'Back of the neck,' Rose said without hesitation.

'What was my name at the Academy on Gallifrey?'

Rose cocked her head to one side. 'Theta Sigma.'

'What's the name of my granddaughter?'

'Susan Foreman.'

The Doctor stared Rose in the eye. 'I never told Rose any of those things,' he said slowly. 'And I know Ricky's name from the alternate universe, but Rose doesn't know about that—she always calls him Mickey. You aren't Rose.'

The figure that looked like Rose began to laugh. 'And you didn't even notice until now! How easy it is to pluck your insecurities and shortcomings from your mind...' Her grin widened; her eyes flashed. 'The real Rose is gone.'

'I don't believe you,' the Doctor said shortly.

'Well, where is she, then?' she—it—cackled. 'You've lost her! Failed her when she was depending on you to keep her safe!'

The Doctor sprinted back toward the entrance of the tunnel, aiming the sonic screwdriver around. 'Rose? Rose!'

He almost tripped over the body that was slumped against the tunnel wall. The Doctor felt his blood turn to ice. 'No...'

Rose's eyes were open, staring with terror into the distance, but they saw nothing. She wasn't breathing. The other Rose continued laughing.

The Doctor gritted his teeth. 'That isn't the real Rose either!' he shouted. 'I know she's here somewhere—where are you keeping her?'

'Doctor!' a voice called faintly in the distance. The Doctor continued at a stumbling run, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. He left the two fake Roses behind.

He eventually came upon a vast black pit that hadn't been there before. He only barely managed to avoid falling into it because of a lucky glance at the tunnel floor, which dropped off abruptly to an unfathomable distance below. 'Rose!'

'I'm over here, Doctor!' The voice didn't come from down in the pit; it came from across. The Doctor lifted the sonic screwdriver to try to cast as much light as possible to the other side of the rift, but he still couldn't see anything.

There didn't seem to be any way to cross the deep chasm. The Doctor thought hard, drumming his fingers against his chin. He couldn't manipulate the dream space, so he couldn't make a bridge... Rose would be able to do it if she concentrated hard enough, but she seemed to be panicking and unable to focus on reworking her surroundings.

He twirled the sonic screwdriver again in agitation, trying to think of a solution—and dropped it. He lunged for it, trying desperately to catch it before it fell into the abyss, but it fell too quickly for him. He was shocked when it clattered to the ground, even though there was no ground beneath it.

'Oh! Of course, it's an illusion!' He carefully poked his foot out over the cliff edge and found that the ground, though invisible, was perfectly solid. He grabbed the sonic screwdriver and ran across.

Rose was very pale and shivering. 'Doctor! Why were you gone for so long? What happened?'

He shook his head. 'The Vishklar tricked me. It made a copy of you—I thought you were with me—' He took her hands. 'I'm sorry.'

'I was so scared... I thought you'd left me.'

'Never.' He shook his head fervently. 'You know I'd never. Now come on, let's get out of here.'

'But how—?'

'It isn't really a pit,' the Doctor explained. He tapped his shoe against the invisible tunnel floor, seemingly over empty space. 'See? Solid ground.'

Rose nodded, though she looked uneasy. She held the Doctor's hand tightly as they ran across the ravine, not daring to look down. When they made it to the other side, the Doctor suddenly turned to her.

'How do I know you're really Rose?'

She frowned. 'Because I'll kick your arse if you're implying I'm some sort of hallucination!'

'That's my Rose.' He grinned. 'Onward and upward! I think we've gotten through the worst of it—as long as we're together, nothing else can trick us.'

Rose nodded. 'We can't get separated again like that.'

Still holding hands, they walked along the tunnel for several more minutes (thirty-eight seconds, the Doctor counted in normal spacetime) before reaching a wide portal leading to a stone staircase. Grey light faintly filtered through.

'It's got to be a passageway leading to the surface,' Rose said, hopping up onto the stairs.

'The Vishklar's been expecting us,' said the Doctor grimly as he climbed up behind her.

They emerged into glaring sunlight. Shielding her eyes, Rose saw that they were in a wide meadow that was pockmarked with trenches, littered with corpses and piles of earth. It was a battlefield.

'We must be in Emily's dream,' she shouted to the Doctor over the noise of exploding shells and gunfire. The Doctor nodded, trying to see where Emily was.

'There she is,' he said suddenly, pointing some distance to their left. She stood motionless, looking blankly horrified, but seeming somehow unafraid of the gunshots bursting around her.

Rose was curious. 'Doctor, can you get hurt or killed in a dream?'

'Well...' The Doctor considered for a moment, furrowing his brow. 'Theoretically, it would be impossible for you to come to any real harm while inside your own dream. That's why Emily can just stand there in the middle of a battlefield and not get hurt. But since we're in someone else's dream... there's a possibility that we could die.'

'Oh, great,' Rose said faintly. 'Let's try our best not to do that, then.'

'Emily!' the Doctor called. 'Over here!' She didn't turn toward them; she must not have been able to hear them over the blasts of gunfire. She just walked slowly across the meadow, staring around at the scattered shrapnel and bodies.

The Doctor and Rose followed behind her at a zigzagging run. They had to get out of the line of fire. 'Let's go behind there,' Rose panted, pointing to a row of trenches nearby. Far across the meadow they could see another series of ditches, where the volleys of gunshots must have been coming from.

When they reached the relative safety of the edge of the battlefield, they looked around for Emily again. They saw her kneeling at the side of a dead soldier in a blue uniform, tears streaking the dirt on her face.

'Do you think that's someone she knows?' Rose asked as they carefully approached her.

'No idea,' the Doctor said with a shake of his head, but Rose's question was answered soon enough when they got close enough to hear what Emily was saying.

'Oh, Mr Sam,' she sobbed, gripping the dead man's hand and kissing it gently. Rose and the Doctor stared at the man who must have been Samuel Bowles, Emily's dear friend. He had a thick beard and sandy hair; his blue uniform was covered in earth and blood.

After gently closing Samuel's eyelids and taking a shaky breath, Emily stood up and began walking toward a large hill directly beyond the battlefield. They followed her over the crest of the hill and ran down into a valley scattered with several large white tents. Rose squinted at them. 'What is this place?'

The Doctor pointed to a queue of wounded soldiers leading into one of the tents. 'Maybe it's some sort of field hospital. Let's have a look.'

Rose nodded. She stayed very close to the Doctor as they tailed Emily to the entrance of the tent. The soldiers standing outside wore tattered, bloodstained uniforms; they seemed to have no facial features except for eerily blank eyes. They stared at Rose and the Doctor but didn't say a word.

'They aren't real people. They're projections of Emily's imagination,' the Doctor said in a loud whisper.

Rose muttered back, 'How can her imagination extend this far? It looks like it goes on for miles!'

The Doctor shrugged. 'The Vishklar must have constructed most of this dream. That's why the dream space is so big. But it took all the images from Emily's mind.' He smiled wryly. 'And anyway, Emily said it herself in one of her poems: The brain is wider than the sky.'

They carefully pushed back the flap of the tent and followed Emily inside. Silent nurses dressed in black briskly made their rounds between long aisles of cots. On top of every cot was a gravely injured soldier. Several had bandages wrapped around their heads; a few were missing arms or legs. The only sounds were hacking coughs, pained groans, and the loud buzzing of hundreds of flies. Rose swallowed hard and walked close behind the Doctor, watching Emily make her way down a row.

Suddenly, Emily let out a cry and ran to a soldier's bedside. When Rose and the Doctor caught up with her, they saw that the man on the cot was close to death. His eyes were glazed over and his breath came in wheezes; his uniform was dark with blood around a bullet hole in his chest. Emily was tenderly stroking his grey hair and weeping.

'Emily!' Rose shouted, almost in her ear. 'Please, Emily, look at me. You're dreaming!'

Emily didn't react to the statement except to raise her face, red and blotchy with tears, and cry out to the nearby nurses. 'Don't just stand there. Help them! Can't you see they're all dying?'

'The Doctor is here,' Rose said soothingly. 'He can help!'

'A doctor!' Emily responded, hearing the words but not noticing who had spoken them. 'No, not a doctor, all they do is maim and kill the wounded—they'll kill them all! They cut off his leg!' she sobbed, pointing to the next cot over and covering her face with her hands. A dark-haired man lay there, breathing shallowly, eyes screwed shut.

Rose looked closely at the man and saw that his features looked somewhat familiar. 'Oh my god... is that her brother?' His lips were bleeding; it looked as though he had bitten them to keep himself from screaming.

'Austin!' Emily cried. 'I thought you wouldn't fight, I thought you would be safe...' Austin let out a whimper and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Rose's stomach churned as she looked away from him.

The Doctor approached Emily and placed his hand gently on her shoulder, looking at the dying man on the cot. 'Who is this?' he asked.

Emily brought her awareness back in front of her and saw that the old man on the cot had breathed his last. She nearly collapsed in tears. 'Father!' she screamed. 'Father, no! You can't be dead!'

'It's your fault.'

Rose looked up, startled. One of the nearby nurses was glaring at Emily. 'You could have prevented it. Why didn't you get here faster?'

'No, mother, please...' Emily moaned.

The Doctor stood up and glanced between Emily and her mother, eyes shining with unshed tears. 'Emily, no,' he said softly. 'It's not your fault. None of this is real.'

Emily only continued to weep, rocking back and forth. Mrs. Dickinson spoke to her icily. 'You good-for-nothing girl. You are a disappointment, you and your so-called poetry. A failure!'

'Oh—that's it!' The Doctor brightened up suddenly and clapped his hands together. 'Poetry! The sound of her own poems might break through—it could get her to listen to us!'

'Quick, recite one, then!'

The Doctor began to chant in a strong, steady voice. 'I came to buy a smile—today— / But just a single smile— / The smallest one upon your face— / Will suit me just as well—' Emily stirred slightly, but she didn't quite hear him.

Rose began to recite a half-remembered verse she had read in one of her schoolbooks. 'These are the days when birds come back—' Emily's eyes were still bright with tears as she looked up. 'A very few—a Bird or two— / To take a backward look...'

'I shall keep singing!' the Doctor said in earnest. 'Birds will pass me / On their way to Yellower Climes—' Emily was shaking her head, as though trying to clear it. Some of the poetry had to be getting through.

All of a sudden Rose remembered a poem by Emily Dickinson she had learned as a child, a poem she had always loved.

'If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in vain.'

'Yes! Brilliant!' The Doctor smiled at her. 'That's the ticket!'

Emily blinked; her eyes softened. 'That's so beautiful,' she whispered, turning to Rose. 'Who wrote that?'

'You did,' Rose replied, nonplussed. 'Oh—maybe you haven't yet—'

'What?' Emily frowned in confusion.

Rose looked straight into her eyes. 'We're time travellers, me and the Doctor. You met us today. Do you remember, Emily?'

Her expression cleared. 'Of course. The Time Lord and his companion. What are you doing here?'

'You're dreaming, Emily,' the Doctor said, crouching down beside her. 'None of this is really happening.'

'You don't have to be afraid any more,' Rose murmured, taking her hand. The dream all around them wavered like an image in water. The buzzing of the flies got louder.

'A dream...' Emily glanced about the hospital tent, then down at her lap, where bloodstains were fading out of the white fabric of her dress. 'This is a nightmare...'

The Doctor smiled kindly. 'That's right.'

'So that means the ghost will come back.'

'Ghost?' He looked slightly alarmed at her statement. 'What ghost?'

Rose gasped as the figure in white lace suddenly appeared beside them. It leaned close to Emily, seeming to stare intently at her even though it had no face. How do you do, my dear, it cooed softly. Emily shuddered.

'It must have come back here because it was weakened by Emily realising she was dreaming,' the Doctor whispered to Rose. 'It's trying to make her afraid again!'

'Emily, listen to me,' Rose shouted. 'It's not a ghost! It's just trying to make you scared of it!'

'What are you?' Emily asked tremulously. The Vishklar merely cocked its head and made a wide sweeping gesture. The hospital tent and everything in it disappeared; they were in black space once more. The Vishklar glowed with ethereal light, and though it was small, it looked decidedly menacing.

It began to step softly in a circle around the three of them. Emily, Rose, and the Doctor warily tracked its movements. Abruptly, its form began to change; it grew taller and its pale lacy garment turned as dark as the void around them. The Vishklar was now a skeletal, hooded apparition with bony fingers and a long black robe.

Emily set her jaw. 'I am not afraid of death,' she shouted defiantly, though shakily. 'You can't frighten me with that appearance!'

You do not fear your own death. The Vishklar laughed, and the sound was like a faint gust of wind. But I know what you do fear...

In a flash of light, a vast field of tall grass appeared. The grass was withered and brown, seeming to extend for several kilometres in all directions. Indistinct human figures began to float down from the blue sky; they resolved themselves into Emily's mother and father, her brother Austin, Samuel Bowles, Lavinia, and a beautiful woman with dark hair holding a sleeping infant.

'Sue...' Emily's face went white. The woman's head turned toward them as she fell, and the Doctor and Rose could see that her eyes were large and sad. Her dark brown hair billowed about her as she twisted in midair. All of the bodies fell silently, one by one, among the blades of grass.

'What's happening?' Rose asked the Doctor worriedly. He began to shake his head in confusion.

He quickly grabbed Rose and held a protective arm about her when a sharp, icy wind came rushing over the meadow, carrying a dark fog. Silver tendrils extended from the mist and reached toward the places where the bodies had fallen. Above the roar of the wind, Rose could hear the faint sound of a baby crying.

From out of the grass, glowing white shapes arose and dissolved into the fog. The last one to be sucked away into the mist was the smallest shape—a tiny ghost. Rose shivered and knew that it was the soul of the infant in the dark-haired woman's arms. The wind ceased; a dead silence fell over the field. The sky was black and starless now.

All things must die, murmured the Vishklar. All the people you love... You can do nothing to save them...

Emily shuddered, tears once more streaking down her face. But she remained straight-backed and resolute. 'This is only a dream. A dream!'

The war is no dream, the hissing voice said. Thousands will die... How do you know that your loved ones will not be among the fallen? The dead grass bent down in a sudden gale, revealing the bodies of hundreds of soldiers staring up at the pitch-black sky.

'No, Emily! They don't die,' the Doctor asserted. 'Your family and friends survive the war. I promise you that!'

An empty promise, the Vishklar sneered. He does not know. Flames burst up around them, consuming the grass and the corpses in an orange inferno. The country will burn... All will be lost...

Emily set her jaw, her lips trembling, as the fire was replaced by torrents of cold water crashing around them that quickly coalesced into an ocean. Waves towered above Rose, Emily, and the Doctor, waiting to submerge them.

'Concentrate, Emily,' the Doctor said in an urgent whisper. 'Rose and I can't do anything here, but you can. Focus! Manipulate the dream!'

'I don't know how,' she said helplessly, panic in her eyes. 'I have always been powerless to stop my nightmares!'

'Emily,' Rose pleaded, 'if you don't fight against it, the Vishklar will get too strong. It'll trap you in here forever!'

'It'll make everyone in the world fall asleep,' the Doctor continued. 'All the humans on the planet—they'll all have nightmares until their bodies waste away. But you can stop it if you just concentrate. Fight it!'

'I can't!' Emily cried.

The waves crashed on top of them. Rose felt herself getting dragged down with the undertow; she coughed and spluttered, trying to keep her head out of the water, but she was sinking. Strong arms grabbed hold of her and dragged her to the surface. She gasped for breath and got her bearings. 'Thanks.'

The Doctor shook his sopping hair out of his eyes. 'I think Emily's safe. She can't drown in her own dream...'

Some distance away, they saw Emily's head pop out of the water. She didn't seem to be struggling to breathe or keep afloat, but she looked terrified. The Vishklar looked on silently, standing calmly on the heaving surface of the sea.

Look at all of those you could not save, it intoned, pointing with a bony finger to the waves billowing around them. Ghastly faces appeared under the water, the faces of all of Emily's loved ones. Their eyes were clouded white, their cheeks hollow, their lips blue. Emily reached out her hands with a cry when the dark-haired woman and her baby appeared.

'Sue! Sue!'

She is dead, the Vishklar said in sepulchral tones, and her son as well. She killed herself after your brother died in battle...

'It isn't true, Emily!' the Doctor yelled. Emily paid no heed.

You have no hope left, the Vishklar whispered nastily. I can taste it...

'Hope,' the Doctor muttered frantically as he treaded water. 'Hope... she needs hope...'

'But she won't listen to anything we say to her!' Rose groaned, struggling to keep moving her arms and legs in the icy water. 'How can we convince her to have hope? It's like her hope just up and flew away!'

The Doctor's eyes widened. 'Rose... Rose, that's it! Birds, Emily loves birds. Oh, this is brilliant. Emily!'

Emily didn't turn to the Doctor; she was still staring miserably at the dead faces in the water. 'What?'

'A bird, Emily!' he bellowed at her. 'Picture a bird. That's your hope!'

She tilted her head, thinking. 'A bird... Are you saying that my hope has wings and claws and feathers?'

'Yes!' The Doctor beamed. 'Hope has feathers. Hope definitely has feathers!'

'So hope is a bird...' Emily furrowed her brow in thought. 'A bird that lives inside of one's soul—'

'And it sings,' said Rose, catching on. 'It never stops singing.'

'It sings a tune, a tune with no words...' Emily's eyes were bright with an idea. 'Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul... And sings the tune without the words... And never stops—'

'At all?' Rose finished for her. Emily's eyes crinkled in a smile.

'Yes!' the Doctor shouted. 'Keep saying that!'

'Why?' asked Emily.

The Doctor kicked his legs agitatedly in the water. 'Just do it. It'll help!' Emily nodded and took a breath.

'Hope is the thing with feathers—that perches in the soul,' Emily and Rose repeated together. 'And sings the tune without the words—and never stops—at all—'

'That's it! Good!' the Doctor encouraged them. 'Now Emily, come on, imagine the bird! Picture it!'

Emily continued to speak the verse in unison with Rose as she closed her eyes, tilting her head upward. A small brown bird with short wings slowly materialised above them.

'A wren,' the Doctor said admiringly, gazing up at it. 'Yes! Keep concentrating, Emily!'

Rose looked at the bird and saw that it was perfectly detailed. The brown feathers fading to white on its belly; the long beak; the beady eyes; the six tiny toes ending in claws—everything was exact, as though Emily had spent long hours looking at a particular bird and memorising its every feature. The wren was alive.

'And sings the tune without the words—' The wren opened its beak and began to sing.

At the first sound of the bird's shrill chirping, the Vishklar recoiled and snarled. With a wave of its arms, it blackened the sky and the sea and caused the wind to howl. The wren faltered in its song.

Rose grabbed Emily's hand and held it tightly. 'And never stops at all—come on—'

The Doctor joined in the chant, gripping Emily's other hand as the sea began to subside around them. They stood on an island in the middle of the windstorm that the Vishklar hurled at them.

'Hope is the thing with feathers—'

'Sue and Ned, and Vinnie and Austin, and mother and father, and Mr Sam...' Emily murmured while the Doctor and Rose continued reciting the verse. 'They aren't going to die, are they?' The Doctor stopped and turned his face to her.

'Not for a long time yet,' he reassured her. 'They won't all live longer than you, but I hope you expected that.' Emily's lip quirked up.

The wren she had conjured sang louder; the sound pierced clearly through the dying wind. The Vishklar was shrinking and flailing as it was cut off from its source of energy. Soon it was no bigger than a puppy standing on its hind legs. The dream space was completely black and empty now, except for the singing wren.

'We did it!' Rose shouted happily.

Why have you done this to me? the Vishklar whimpered. I am so hungry... Let me taste your fear...

The Doctor's eyes blazed. 'You've had enough.'

Emily strode forward with a dangerous scowl. 'I will make sure that you never haunt anyone's nightmares again, ghost.' It was still shrinking, turning into a fluid shape that would have fit inside a two-litre bottle. A small metal cage began to flicker into existence around the now tiny and wretched Vishklar, enclosing it along with the wren. It weakly threw itself at the bars of its prison, then crumpled to the cage's floor.

No... it keened, letting out an eerie wail. The wren warbled in response.

With one last glare at the cage, Emily squared her shoulders, turned around, and walked away. The Doctor and Rose looked at the piteous Vishklar for a moment before following, leaving it and the still-singing bird behind in the dark.

They had walked far enough that they could no longer hear the wren's song. Emily stopped and her expression softened. 'I am finally free. Free from the terror... You saved me.'

'You saved yourself,' the Doctor corrected. 'We just watched.' Emily gave a small smile.

'Now how do we get out of here?' Rose asked, shivering in her wet clothing.

'You just have to wake up.' The Doctor shrugged. 'Should be easy now that you don't have a Vishklar controlling your sleep.'

Rose huffed. 'How do you wake up in a dream? Pinch yourself?' She tried it. 'Ow! Nope, didn't think that would work.'

'Maybe we should try simply closing our eyes and thinking ourselves awake,' Emily suggested.

'Wait, no! Rose, don't wake up yet!' the Doctor cut in urgently. 'I need you to help me get back to the TARDIS.'

'The TARDIS?' Emily looked bewildered.

'The—er—the way I got here,' he explained. 'My time machine.'

'What does it look like?' Emily asked curiously.

'Blue,' said Rose.

'Rectangular,' said the Doctor.

'It's got a little light on top, and a sign that says POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX,' Rose added.

Emily shook her head. 'How peculiar.' She gestured around them. 'We no longer seem to be inside my dream, so both of you are capable of manipulating the landscape now, yes?'

'Well, actually—' the Doctor began, then thought better of it. Emily had met time travellers and battled a monster today; she'd had enough of a shock without also learning that one of the aforementioned time travellers was an alien.

'I think,' said Rose, 'if I concentrate hard enough, I can shift the dream landscape to where we were before we ran into the Vishklar, back where that maze is.' The Doctor nodded at her to go ahead.

She stared hard into the blank distance. It didn't seem as though anything was happening, but suddenly a huge black wall rushed toward them—or they rushed toward it.

'Molto bene,' said the Doctor with a grin, rubbing his hands together. 'And now we just need a series of doors.'

Rose made the door appear just as she had done before. They walked through the front door of Rose's mum's flat thirteen times before finally reaching the centre of the maze. The TARDIS was waiting for them there.

Emily looked appraisingly at the TARDIS. 'Why, it doesn't appear at all how I would have expected.'

'Told you it was a blue box,' Rose said with a grin.

The Doctor pushed open the door. 'Want to have a quick peek?' he asked Emily, smiling playfully. She hesitated, brushing nervously at her dress before walking forward and stepping inside.

When she first entered, she gasped and her eyes went impossibly wide. Staring open-mouthed at the console, she clutched the Doctor's arm, but she didn't scream or faint as many others had done when first introduced to bigger-on-the-inside Time Lord technology.

Her eyes lit up with wonder. 'This... is the most beautiful, strange, and terrifying thing I have ever seen,' she said reverently.

There was a noise from the console, and Rose came around and skipped down the stairs. 'It is marvellous, isn't it?' she said to Emily.

Emily raised her eyebrows. 'How did you come to be over there? Weren't you just—' She looked behind her, outside the TARDIS, and saw no one there.

'I woke up,' Rose said with a grin. 'The TARDIS isn't part of the dream dimension, so my body can move around only in here. Out there was just my consciousness.'

Emily could only shake her head in amazement. 'How did you wake up?'

'Like you said. I closed my eyes and just concentrated on waking up. It helps if you think of it as falling asleep... but it's quicker than that.'

'I suppose this means it is time for me to take my leave, Doctor,' Emily said, taking a step back. 'When I awaken, I assume I will be back in my sitting room at the Homestead?'

The Doctor nodded, smiling. 'Emily, it's been brilliant meeting you.'

'Even though most of our interaction has occurred while we have been asleep?'

'I'd say so.'

'Emily,' Rose said, 'we never got the chance to tell you how much we love your poems.'

Emily looked startled. 'My poems? You have read them?' She narrowed her eyes at the Doctor. 'Do they get published in my name after my death?'

He shrugged. 'Some. The ones you included in letters to your friends and to your sister-in-law.'

She shook her head, laughing softly. 'How strange it is to speak with someone who knows what hasn't happened yet. You know everything about me, and yet I know nothing of you...' She curtseyed gracefully. 'Whoever you are, Doctor, it is an honour to have met you.'

'Honour!' The Doctor laughed. 'I'm a time traveller, not a king.' Emily smiled.

'I am also honoured to have met you, Rose Tyler,' she said with a small bow of her head. 'You give me hope for the women of the future.'

Rose waved to her as Emily stepped back out of the TARDIS. In the next moment, the woman closed her eyes and began fading away...

Emily opened her eyes to the sleepy sunlight of the Homestead's drawing room. She blinked, trying to remember what she had been dreaming about.

Lavinia stepped softly into the room. 'Emily! Your sleepiness must have infected all of us. Mother, father, the maids, the groundskeepers—we all just fell asleep in the middle of the day!' She looked about the room. 'Where have that Doctor and the French girl gone?'

'Oh...' Emily yawned and stood up. 'You mean they were really here? I didn't just dream that?'

'Of course they were really here.' Lavinia frowned. 'What's the matter?'

'Vinnie—I'm afraid. I don't know what's happened...'

Her sister gave her a quick hug. 'Come on, let's go upstairs. You can write about it. And maybe have a nice cup of soothing tea.' She coaxed Emily out of the sitting room, leading her to the stairs and calling for Eleanor.

Back in her room, sitting at her desk and looking out the window at the trees, Emily was still restless and tense from her half-remembered nightmare. She shook her head and fished for a scrap of paper and a pencil in the untidy desk drawer. As she haltingly began to write, trying to condense the contents of her racing mind into rhythmic lines of verse, she smiled wistfully at the sound of distant birdsong.

Before leaving the Seretti dimension, the Doctor wanted to go find something in the TARDIS's library. Rose waited in the console room for twenty minutes—or was it only one minute? Anyway, it took a bloody long time to find anything in that library.

The Doctor reappeared with a shout. 'Here it is!' He waved a book in the air; Rose saw that the bottom right corner had a large brown stain on it. 'The complete works of Emily Dickinson, edited by Jassa Oongl'var, copyright 3425.'

'The one you spilled coffee on?'

'That's the one.' The Doctor handed it to her.

Rose hefted the book, which was at least five hundred pages long. 'So all her poems are in here?'

'Yep. Every last one—even the ones that are only two lines.'

'But you just told her that only some of her poems were published. The ones she sent in her letters.'

He laughed. 'I couldn't very well tell her that her sister made public every single poem that was stuffed in her desk, could I? She might have wanted to hide them, or burn them!'

'Why?' Rose asked, taken aback.

'I think she must've written a lot of these poems only for herself,' the Doctor said, taking the book back from Rose and flipping slowly through the yellowed pages. 'She dedicated her life to creating them, binding them up in little booklets, rewriting them over and over again...' He let the book fall open to a page about a fifth of the way through. 'But she chose to show only a fraction of them to her friends and family. The ones that she kept to herself—maybe she wasn't satisfied with them. Or maybe she just wanted to keep them private.'

'She did seem to be a very private person.' Rose smirked. 'But definitely not mad.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Rose,' he said softly, 'I wanted you to look at this poem.' He pointed to a verse marked #314, and Rose bent down closer to read it.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

'So she wrote it down!' Rose exclaimed. 'And she added to it...' She continued to read the poem, smiling wider at each line.

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet—never—in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of me.

'It's so beautiful,' Rose said with a sigh, handing the book back to him. 'I'm glad we got to meet her.'

'So am I.' The Doctor smiled fondly at her, then walked to a small alcove and placed the book there to take back to the TARDIS's library later. 'Well, I'd say that our trip was overall a success. What d'you think?—oof!'

He was suddenly winded by a bone-crushing hug from Rose, who had launched herself at him so fast that he could have sworn she'd caused a small thunderclap in her wake. 'Thank you, Doctor. Thank you,' she mumbled into his shoulder.

Slightly nonplussed, he returned the hug. 'For what?'

'For taking me to meet Emily. And for saving the planet again, obviously.' She happily rocked back and forth in his arms. 'It's awfully sweet of you to keep doing that.'

'You were brilliant, too.' He reached up his hand to absently stroke her hair. 'And the planet probably isn't going to stay saved for long, you know. I wouldn't thank me too soon.'

'You wouldn't thank you anyway,' Rose murmured, still squeezing him tightly. 'No one ever thanks you—that's why I have to do it. And at least that particular Vishklar won't be bothering the human race ever again.' She pulled back from him with a grin. 'So, now that our adventure's over... when are you ever going to take me to Barcelona?'

'Barcelona, eh? Let's go right now!' The Doctor grinned back at her and nimbly leapt over the railing. 'Or next week. Or in an hour, or yesterday, or five hundred years ago...'

She watched him run eagerly about the console. 'Any time will do,' she called. 'But if you have a suggestion for somewhere more interesting, we can go there first.'

'Somewhere more interesting!' He laughed gaily as he flipped switches and jabbed at buttons. 'I've plenty of suggestions. But we're in the TARDIS, my dear... There's plenty of time to go anywhere!'

Rose, beaming, held on tight in anticipation of the jolt of takeoff. The time rotor fired up and began its telltale pulse; the engines' thrumming intensified to a roar—and with a loud whoop of unrestrained joy, the Doctor pulled down on a lever and took them careening into the Vortex.

Fin