And came to a dead stop.

Half a dozen men were standing at the top of the rise in front of them. They were dressed in several layers of heavy, dark clothes, proof against the cold.

They wore hoods and mittens and cleated snow boots, and carried hefty farm tools: rakes, hoes and forks.

Amy couldn’t help noticing how grim and wary the men looked. How intent.

‘Is this the lovely Christmas-y welcome you were looking for?’ Amy whispered.

The Doctor looked a little uneasy. He regarded the heavy farm tools that were being aimed at them in a manner that unpleasantly suggested spears.

He spread his arms in an open, friendly gesture and took a step forward.

‘Hoe hoe hoe?’ he tried.

Chapter

2

Let Nothing You Dismay

Rory stepped out of the TARDIS, pulling on a pair of thick gloves to go with the parka he’d borrowed. He carefully locked the TARDIS door behind him.

Amy?’ he called, setting off in the direction they had been walking. ‘Doctor?’

It was definitely the right way. He could see the three tracks of footprints, plus the fourth he’d left doubling back. The snow cover was perfect. Apart from their footprints, not an inch of it had been disturbed.

‘Amy? Doctor?’

Rory made his way back to the rise where they had enjoyed the view. He stopped. There was no sign of his wife or the Doctor.

Rory wasn’t especially worried at first. He was used to this. It was the kind of thing that happened a lot.

People wandered off or got distracted. People didn’t wait for you where they said they’d wait (which was rubbish of them, in his opinion, because he’d once waited in more or less the same place for a couple of thousand years). Sometimes, people noticed more interesting things going on around the comer while you were looking the other way. And that was before you considered the equally likely idea that the Doctor and Amy might be behind some trees nearby, skilfully constructing snowballs with which to greet him.

‘Amy?’

Rory started to hunt around. He thought about scrunching together a pre-emptive snowball of his own.

He saw the tracks, the footprints of the Doctor and Amy, running a little way down the slope and back. On the top of the rise, was a mass of footprints that had arrived from the left along the line of the hill and apparently departed the same way.

Rory registered the very first twinge of worry.

‘There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,’ Rory told himself. ‘They’ve met some nice people and gone off with them. Some… carol singers. They’ve gone carolling.’

He didn’t stop to examine the logic holes in that statement. He set off after the footprints. He’d been gone ten minutes at most. How far could they have got?

After a few minutes’ walk, it became evident that

‘far enough to be out of sight’ was the basic answer to that. Rory felt a little bit more worry. The heavy parka and the effort of tramping through the snow was actually making him feel a little warm. He stopped and took stock.

‘Amy? Doctor?’

The bare trees with their heavy burdens of snow echoed his calls back to him.

Something moved.

Rory saw figures up ahead. He stepped forward, starting to smile in relief, ready to scold them for leaving him behind.

He froze in his tracks. His newborn smile froze too.

It wasn’t the Doctor. It wasn’t Amy. It wasn’t any nice friendly people they might have met along the way, either.

Rory knew that a snowball wasn’t really going to cut it in the circumstances. He realised he needed to hide, very well and very quickly.

He skipped right past worry and went straight to feeling properly, deeply scared.

‘Who in Guide’s name are they?’ asked Bill Groan.

Old Winnowner shook her head.

‘They’re not faces I ever knew, Elect,’ she said.

Winnowner Cropper was the oldest Morphan in Beside, the last of her generation. She was also the wisest of Bill Groan’s councillors. If anyone knew, Bill Groan reasoned, it would be her.

‘Bet they’ll be from one of the other plantnations, Elect,’ said Samewell.

Bill Groan looked at the young man. Samewell Crook saw the good side in everything. Bill Groan had an uneasy feeling that there wasn’t much of a good side to anything just now.

‘They don’t look like Morphans,’ said Bel Flurrish.

Her voice was small and hard, as though it was huddling from the cold inside her.

‘They have all kind of different fashions,’ said Samewell. ‘In Seeside, they have real hats. I heard that.

Guide’s truth.’

‘We haven’t had well wishers at the festival for three years,’ said Old Winnowner. ‘Not since the ice started coming.’

‘Well, they’re making an effort this year, then, aren’t they?’ said Samewell.

‘They’re not wearing hats,’ said Bel.

‘Jack Duggat’s party found them over at the top end of Would Be,’ said Bill Groan.

‘Then maybe they can say where my sister is,’ said Bel.

Jack Duggat’s men, their farm tools hefted like the weapons the old martials carried in Guide’s books of Earth before, were leading the two visitors into the main yard. Quite a crowd of folk who were not labouring or searching had come out of their houses to watch.

One of the two strangers was tall and alert, smiling and looking at everything around him. He reminded Bel Flurrish of an inquisitive cockerel, walking comb-up into everything, heedless of its own safety. There was something in his openness that slightly reassured her. A person whose face could hold that kind of expression was not, in her opinion, a person who could do harm to another person.

The second visitor was a girl. She looked cautious, but there was a strength in her. She had red hair. Bel had never seen red hair. She’d never seen anything like it, except in Guide’s books. How could something that had only ever been known of on Earth before find its way to Hereafter?

‘I want to talk to them, Elect,’ said Bel.

‘I think you’ll find it’s my job,’ said Bill Groan.

‘I think you’ll find it’s my sister,’ Bel replied.

Bill Groan was the elected leader of the Beside plantnation. He was a good man, with dark hair and a beard that had started to show grey the first year the winter wore white. He looked at Bel, right into her hard, angry eyes.

‘You know I’m taking this serious, Arabel,’ he said.

‘Your sister disappearing is a Cat A matter. And now these strangers arrive? It’s a concern. But there’s a process. I got to do this right.’

‘Then I want to be present,’ she said. ‘Guide help me, I deserve to be present.’

Bill glanced at Old Winnowner, saw the tiny nod she made, and told Bel Flurrish yes.

‘Take them on into the assembly,’ he told Jack Duggat.

The tall visitor heard him say this, and turned towards Bill Groan with a smile.

‘Hello, I’m the Doctor!’ he announced, stepping towards Bill. A hoe and a pitching fork crossed in front of him to block his way. ‘Oh, dear!’ he said, recoiling from the heavy wooden shafts. ‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding. I really do. Are you in charge? I’d love to go out and come back in again. You know? Start over! How would that be?’

‘That’s a funny accent, Elect,’ Winnowner said, sidelong, to Bill Groan.

‘Indeed.’

The Doctor and Amy watched the locals muttering about them.

‘You’re freaking them out, and they’ve got the pointy forks,’ Amy whispered to the Doctor.

‘Yes, they have,’ he mused. ‘Am I?’

‘You really are,’ said Amy. ‘Could we just play along for now?’

She was shivering slightly, her arms folded tight across her chest. ‘On the bright side, they might take us in the warm before they stab us to death with gardening implements.’