One Magic Word

By

Nighthowler

Sarah Jane Smith, journalist extraordinary, was upset.

Actually, that was an understatement. She was absolutely livid, rock chewing, spitting mad.

And it was all the Doctor's fault.

He had just left her here! Bundled her out of the TARDIS as soon as it had materialized without so much as a by your leave! Well, to be honest, he had told her to wait and have

patience before shutting the doors and leaving her here.

Where here was, Sarah had no idea. It was too dark. A growing touch of orange on the horizon hinted at the approaching sunrise. The high mountain ridges being outlined did not bode well for civilization being anywhere close. And the air. It was clean and crisp. Not a hint of pollution.

And it was cold.

Very, very cold.

At least he had left her with a warm parka. Not that such a small kindness earned him any forgiveness. When she saw him again, if he was lucky, he would still be wearing that red velvet jacket. It would match the blood. When she was finished with him there was going to be a great deal of it.

Sighing, she picked out a nearby rock -she hoped it was a rock- and sat down. Since it didn't squeal, protest, or indicate anything other than its inanimate state, she relaxed.

Wait and have patience, the Doctor had told her.

Waiting, she could do.

Patience on the other hand, was a lesson Sarah Jane Smith had never learned very well.

Learned.

A lesson.

That was how this had all started.

********************

"Doctor, there is no such thing as magic," she had stated firmly, quite proud of her certainty.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Of course I'm sure!"

The Doctor smiled. That smug, arrogant, grandfatherly, I-Know-It-All-And-You-

Don't smile that always left her ready to scream paint off the walls. She didn't though. She had been with the Doctor long enough to know it wouldn't do much good.

That annoying smile was still there when he said, "You're too young to be full of such certainties. You have a great deal to learn, my girl."

Screaming was definitely becoming an option.

"Don't patronize me, Doctor! Yes, I'm certain! Lady Eleanor thought you were a sorcerer! All you had were a few bangs and flashes. And a stink bomb I'm sure would have been the pride of any juvenile boy's chemistry set."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." Sarah was on a roll. "It was a con job. That's all magic ever is. You used your superior knowledge to impress and frighten a few ignorant outlaws. Even Sir Edward and his wife were as scared as Irongron and his men. And you enjoyed it!"

"You make me sound practically Machiavellian," the Doctor sounded hurt. "Those bangs and flashes did save lives after all."

Sarah refused to be made to feel like she was kicking a puppy. "It did," she admitted. "But was it really any different from what Ortron did? Aggedor wasn't real."

"That's hardly a fair argument."

"But it still wasn't magic! That's my point!"

The Doctor sighed. "Sarah, my dear girl. You've seen too little of the universe to dismiss so casually one of its major facets without evidence to the contrary."

That little patronizing statement wasn't going to win him any points, not with Sarah. If he had followed it with a pat on the head, she probably would have bitten his hand off.

Sarah's faith in her conclusion was unshakable. "I'm too busy watching the magician's hands, Doctor," she said. "Magic is for children."

The Doctor gave her a long, searching look. His usually mobile features were now set and calculating. His eyes, up to then merry and vibrant, had become old and tired, as if he had looked into her soul and found her wanting.

For a brief moment, Sarah felt an absurd sensed of loss, any pride in the validity of her argument forgotten as she finally recognized what she saw in that ancient gaze.

Disappointment.

The Doctor came to a sudden decision.

"So magic's for children, is it?" he smiled, but there was nothing patronizing in this one, only adventure and a promise of things to come. Like he was about to hand her a beautifully wrapped present and couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she opened it.

"Then come along, child," the Doctor took her hand and led her towards the TARDIS. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

********************

So here she was.

Alone on a mountainside, God knew where, with the rising sun slowly bathing her surroundings in a soft glow. She was cold, hungry, and more than mildly irritated.

What was so magical about this? The rising sun? The purity of the air? The snow? There were certainly lots of it. Everything was so clean and untouched it made her teeth hurt.

What was the Doctor trying to prove?

It was then that Sarah began to sense something. You couldn't travel with the Doctor very long without developing it. A sixth sense. The awareness of being scanned, hunted, manipulated, and otherwise observed by bug-eyed or non-bug-eyed creatures out to do extremely nasty things to you.

The companion's lot was not an easy one.

She was being watched.

"Who's there?" she called, hoping her voice sounded braver to the what-ever-it-was than it did to her.

Sarah couldn't see much of anything. The soft morning light wasn't enough to reveal her surroundings. She seemed to be sitting on her happily inanimate rock at the opening of a ravine that cut deeply into the mountainside. Its depths were in deep shadow, probably never seeing the full light of day.

"I know you're there," she tried again.

The direct approach didn't work. Still no answer. But her TARDIS trained; companion essential survival radar told her something was in there.

Time to try apologetic.

"Look, I'm sorry if I'm trespassing. My friend just left me here. He told me there was someone here he wanted me to meet."

There. Blame the Doctor. It was his fault after all.

Something shifted in the darkness.

Something BIG.

Suddenly, Sarah wasn't cold anymore.

Or hungry.

Or irritated.

She closed her eyes and made a promise. "Doctor," she vowed, voice just above a whisper, "When I get my hands on you..." Sarah prided herself on her imagination. It wasn't going to be pretty.

Apparently, the BIG something had extremely acute hearing. A deep, resonant voice echoed softly out of the shadows, "Doctor?" It was both statement and question, the tone firm but friendly.

At least Sarah hoped it was friendly. It seemed to know the Doctor.

She took a deep breath. "My friend, I think. You're not going to...eat me or anything, are you?" She realized she was beginning to babble but once started couldn't quite stop. "I mean, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't really taste very good. And if its my brains you want, to suck them out or something, the Doctor's not very impressed with those either, so I guess that's out too."

The laughter she now heard was rich, flowing, like a child skipping along the beach for the first time and finding joy in the simplest of things. Free.

It was a start.

Sarah relaxed. Even the rock under her frozen posterior seemed relieved. "So dinner's off?"

Another deep chuckle. "Dinner is off."

"And my brains?"

"Are quite safe."

Sarah drew a shaky breath. Brains and body now safe, she felt a little more confident. "Who are you?" she asked him, having established in her own mind that her mysterious companion was definitely male.

The question seemed to startle him, as if he'd expected her to know already. It was either that or her audacity for asking in the first place.

"Have I a name? For you, I think, it would be meaningless, its magic faded. For me," his voice became a whisper, lost if not for the acoustics of the ravine, "it is now sorrow and loneliness."

"What are you?"

The sun had finally cleared the mountain ridges, but its light couldn't penetrate the deep shadows of the ravine. Sarah could only hear the voice, the shifting of some massive form, and feel his presence through sheer force of personality.

The mystery remained.

And her companion did not seem inclined to satisfy her curiosity. "Ahhh, what a question you ask. That you dare ask is in itself a wonderment. What am I? It would take but one word you know. But the magic! The mystery! The glory!"

The deep, melodious voice paused for a moment. Sarah could feel unseen eyes calculating her worth, like the Doctor had. "Could one puny word tell the tale?" he asked. "Perhaps, if I am the one to tell it."

The pause was longer this time, full of possibilities, truths and unspoken secrets. Sarah squirmed on her little rock, the need to know and to understand almost overwhelming.

"Would you listen?"

Sarah shook her head vigorously. "Yes! Oh, yes!" she practically shouted. "Please!"

"With one word, I could fill your minds eye with such as dreams are made of. Crystal blue skies seen from the very edge of creation. Gossamer clouds opening as a window onto verdant fields. Rivers running free and unhindered to the sea."

Sarah's eyes closed as the words carried her away. He wove with language images that filled her with a poetry of emotion, letting her see as a child would see a world she had never really looked at before. Her world, no longer a thing but a living, breathing entity whose beauty she had always taken for granted.

She no longer felt the cold, or her hunger.

Only wonder.

She listened, as she had never done before.

With her soul.

"But it's the mountains I love the best" the voice continued. "Mountains whose pinnacles only I have seen. The wind singing mournfully through gorges that will never know the step of man."

His voice lost its softer quality, becoming harsher. "Man, the herald of doom."

Sarah flinched, her eyes widening with guilty shock at the accusing tone. The spell hadn't quite been broken, but reality could not be ignored or pushed away. It was the truth after all. An ugly truth and one she felt sure had hurt him somehow. Deeply and cruelly.

For her race, for herself, Sarah wanted to apologize.

He seemed to sense this and relented.

But only a little.

"Oh, yes. I know your race well. Your loves. Your hates. Your moments of fleeting tenderness and caring that vanish as quickly as a snowflake melts in your hand. I know you so well," his sigh was deep, almost a rumble, weighed with mournful sorrow and ancient grief. "So full of questions you are. Like children. You are children, you know. Indignant, arrogant children. Wanting. Craving. Forever searching. Crusading, conquering. Grinding what is mysterious and so infinitely magical beneath your feet."

"Can you deny it?" he demanded.

"I can't," Sarah whispered. More than most, she understood the power of truth.

And now its pain.

"I thought not. And all for answers. For glory. It never changes. Are you any different? Have you earned the right to the truth? To that one word?"

"I'd like to think so," Sarah answered lamely. "I try."

What more could anyone do?

That massive form shifted again in the darkness, closer this time, almost to the sunlight's edge. Was he coming out? Would he reveal himself? Leave the darkness for the light of day? Without regret, certainly none from her frozen seat, Sarah abandoned her faithful little rock and stood up.

Waiting.

"You had a question, Child. What am I? Have you guessed? Can you guess?"

Sarah shook her head. She had no more words. Only the need to know. To see with her own eyes the mystery.

The revelation was so close.

He was so close.

But not yet.

"Or have I become so much dust in your hands? Am I forgotten? Unbelieved?" his voice was pleading. "One word, Child. Such a grand and glorious tale for one word."

He stepped into the light.

With a delicacy that put lie to his immense size, he towered over her. His great clawed feet barely stirred the snow and rock as the morning sunlight glinted off his silvered hide. From the tip of his tail, down the body and up the long, graceful neck to the intelligent, triangular head, he was beauty incarnate. Every myth, every legend, every story Sarah had heard or read as child or adult was there, inherent in the very line of his being. The noble and ancient gaze, his eyes full of knowledge and sorrow regarded her with quiet expectation. For him, life in all its cruelty and joy held no secrets.

And wings.

Dear Lord, he had wings.

Sarah did the only thing she could do.

She wept.

She wept for herself and for a childhood forgotten but now remembered. She wept for the little girl who now looked out through adult eyes to behold a dream come true, a myth become reality. She wept for the loss of simple innocence and wonder, the child's ability to accept without question. Something she had never known she had lost and therefore never missed.

Until now.

That noble head, nearly as long as she was tall, came down and observed her with puzzled interest. Sarah found herself looking in the golden, swirling depths of one huge eye.

She didn't flinch as a massive foot extended towards her. Gently brushing her cheek, one great claw captured a single tear on its deadly tip. Like a gem, precious and rare, that one liquid diamond sparkled in the sunlight.

He regarded it with stunned amazement.

"Tears?" he whispered, now looking at her with that same amazed wonder. "Oh, Child. For this. For you, I could forgive so much."

The ground shuddered slightly as he brought his foot down. Turning, he began to climb the ravine wall, muscles rippling as he effortlessly moved up its sheer sides. Within moments he had reached an outcropping and gracefully pulled himself over the edge.

From this height, his golden eyes looked down on her one last time. There was no censure in that gaze. Only a gentle humor, tempered by time and almost destroyed by sorrow, but given life again by the tears of one small human. An infinite depth of understanding was in that gaze.

And gratitude.

"Behold, Human Child!" his voice boomed. It echoed off the cliffs, bouncing from mountaintop to mountaintop, only to return and shake Sarah down to the very bottom of her soul. "A Gift!"

He spread his wings.

Sarah was beyond joy. For her, time had stopped and nothing else mattered. At this moment there was for her only this one, magnificent sight. A parting gift from an ancient, lonely being who for so brief a time had shared with her a glimpse of infinite possibilities.

As a child would, Sarah laughed and clapped her hands. Tears still flowing, she laughed as she had never laughed before.

Heart and soul, she laughed.

And he laughed with her.

"Carry this image in your heart, Child," he called. "Cherish it. There is truth in magic, and magic in truth."

"Remember," was his final request.

He launched himself into the air, his powerful wings beating only twice before catching the morning updrafts that carried him higher. He circled three times, then dipped one wing and banked, soaring off towards the mist-shrouded horizon.

Then he was gone.

Laughing and crying, Sarah threw wide her arms to embrace the morning sunlight. One word, he had said. One glorious, grand word to tell the tale.

One word.

One Magic Word.

Dragon.

********************

Sarah Jane Smith was alone once more.

Sitting once again on her friendly little rock, she waited. When she heard the sound of the TARDIS materializing, she wasn't really surprised. Deep down she had known the Doctor would come back for her. A good mad, however, is a thing of beauty and not to be wasted. It had been fun while it lasted, she reflected, as the TARDIS finished its landing with its signature thump.

The Doctor's timing was perfect.

That surprised her.

She stood up as he stepped out and casually strolled towards her. His lively eyes were full of questions, but he didn't say or ask anything, not yet. He just gazed off into the distance, a stiff breeze ruffling his snowy white hair as he waited by her side.

Finally, he asked, "Well?"

Sarah turned and gave him a hug, pouring everything she felt into one good, heartfelt squeeze. "Thank you," she told him, her face pressed into the velvet of his jacket.

It was the red one, she noted.

"Your welcome," he said, holding her tightly for a moment before stepping back.

Sarah smiled and looked up into the bright, clear sky. A sky which from now through her last day would forever hold precious mystery and wonder.

And Magic.

"I'll never forget this, Doctor. Ever."

She felt his fingers gently brush her cheek. "That was the point," his smile was neither patronizing nor smug, simply understanding.

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"There is such a thing as magic."

"I know."

That was smug.

No matter.

Sarah had time to work on it.

The End