The Hunting of Leela

by Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

rated U

Doctor Who is copyright BBC

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brown eyes watched from the edge of the jungle.  They were the eyes of a
hunter.  An eager enjoyment of quick violence moved in their depths.  Yet
they had not become corrupted by that intimate familiarity with casual
slaughter and sudden death.  A youthful innocence softened that cruel
aspect.  But they remained the eyes of a killer.  They studied Leela with a
speculative intent.

Somewhere in the encroaching jungle a bird called mournfully.

The sound carried to where Leela stood in the middle of the deserted
village.  It was a familiar sound; she had grown up with it in her ears;
but she could not call to mind the bird that made it.  Nor could she find a
name in the teeming alien words that jostled for space inside her head.

They crowded out the words of childhood, the Tesh, the Evil One, Xoanon,
the God of the Tribe held in bondage.  The very stuff of the legends that
were the heart and soul of the Sevateem.  The telling and re-telling around
the feast fires had woven those tales into a cloak to throw about the
shoulders of the Tribe; to be pulled tight against the cold indifference of
the world.

Her body remembered the delicious sensations of fear that thrilled along
the spine at the telling of those stories, as she snuggled into the all
encompassing security of that cloak.

But the alien words had rubbed the cloak of the Sevateem threadbare,
letting in the cold drafts from the outside.  It seemed to have shrunk, and
would not now fit comfortably about her shoulders.  She could not recall
when or how she had out grown it; but its loss was an unremitting ache in
her heart.

She longed for that time of simplicity.  The time before the words had
begun to crowd out the meaning of her existence.  Surely with all those
words, there was no room any more for herself, for Leela of the Sevateem?

She drew the knife.  It felt good in her hand.  She looked around the
settlement at the huts, at the hearth fires, at the scattered equipment of
the Tribe.  It was all here; the only thing missing were the people.  She
listened.  The village was still and quiet, save for the calling of that
bird.

The mournful sound drifted among the vine festooned trunks, a sorrowing
lament.

She stooped and picked up a small shard of shiny material - Vena's mirror.
Vena had been so proud and possessive of that mirror, why had she abandoned
it here among the ashes of this dead hearth-fire?

Leela looked into it.  A pair of blue eyes looked up at her.  Blue?
Shouldn't they be brown?  The eyes questioned her from a pale face.  So
pale?  Surely it was not her face?

The thing in her hand felt wrong, treacherous, deceitful.  She cast it away
with a feeling of disgust, and wiped her hand on the ground, cleansing off
the memory of its touch in the mud.

She tightened her grip on the knife and studied the ground for signs of
what had happened.  Any place, even one as trampled as this, could tell a
tale - to those able to read the signs.  Any child of the Sevateem would
glance over this ground and state with certainty: 'This, and then that, and
so this.'

But she could not do it.  She could not.  Panic rose inside her.

The note of the bird changed to one of alarm.  Leela was instantly alert,
her eyes searching among the huts and trees.

There!  A slight movement betrayed a figure standing in the half light
under the trees.  As she caught sight of it, the form turned and slipped
away.

Leela considered a long moment, weighing the dangers and possibilities,
before sheathing the knife and unslinging her crossbow.  She set off at a
dead run, sprinting among the huts of the village in pursuit.

It felt good to run.  Her arms and legs moved with an easy, flowing grace.
Her breath came easily, in time to her long stride.  Adrenalin fired her
blood.  The thrill of the hunt was on her; and it felt good!

Ever before her went the figure.  Female, she determined, and then smiled
as she saw where the other was going.  She would have her by the pit, run
her to earth there.  Pity that - she was just beginning to enjoy the game.

breaking into the open by the pit she saw, in a glance, that the area was
empty.  The severed end of the pulley rope stirred in the slight breeze,
framed by the wicker surround.  The doors of the Horda pit were half open.
Leela moved to the edge and looked in.

A terrible stench of rotting flesh assailed her.  In the shadows of the pit
she could see the skeletal remains of a member of the tribe.  Despite the
condition, she could put a name to that sad remnant of humanity -
Sole, her father. Twined among his bones were the rotting corpses of the
Horda.

A great grief overtook her at the sight.  But it had little to do with this
single, sad body entwined with its murderers.  It was for something
grander, yet more diffuse, a thing of the alien words.

Those tumbling words told her it was the passing of the collective genius
that was the Tribe of the Sevateem, and the irrevocable loss of her place at
its centre; but, as ever, the words meant nothing.  The thing remained a
vague concept in her head; but she felt it strongly in her heart.

She turned away, and caught the flicker of movement as the woman broke cover.
She swung up the crossbow casually.  No need to aim - inside she remained
Leela, a hunter of the Tribe; she could not miss at this range.  The woman
was dead.

On an unaccountable impulse to mercy, she twitched the bow aside; and sent
the bolt thudding into the trunk of a tree.  Beyond it, the woman flitted
through a shaft of sunlight.

Leela had a momentary impression of dark hair, flaring suddenly brown in
the golden light.  A glimpse of a back clothed in skins, a short kilt,
long, brown legs pumping, then the woman was in shadow again and running
hard.  Leela dropped the crossbow, drew the knife, and took of in pursuit.
The answers to the insistent questions that were plaguing her lay with that
woman.  This she knew.

The quarry was heading back to the village.  A little half smile touched
Leela's lips as she saw the thicket of Janis Thorns looming ahead of the
running figure.  The hunt was over.  The woman was trapped.  But the woman
ran straight on at the deadly bushes.

At the very last moment she launched herself in a powerful leap.  A thrill
of horror ran through Leela as she saw the trailing leg brush the top most
part of the bushes.  One scratch would be fatal.

But it must just have been the leaves, for she heard the woman come to
earth beyond the thorns, roll, and come up running.

There was a time when she would not have hesitated.  But now, even in the
hot blood of the chase, Leela could not set foot to that perilous path.
She veered right to go around, bitterly begrudging the advantage conceded.

As she cleared the end of the bushes and dashed among the outlying huts of
the village, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the woman ducking into the
doorway of the Council Hut.

Reaching the door, Leela plunged inside.  She angled to the right to keep
in the shadows while her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior.
Dimly, she could see the tokens of power of the Sevateem, Andor's throne,
the oddments of the regalia; they shone dully in the dark.

A furtive sound brought her head around.  A flicker of movement in the
gloom caught her eye.  She moved cautiously over to the door of Neeva's
Sanctum.  The woman was there.

She had her back turned, expressing regret and sorrow in every dimly seen
line of her body.  Her emotional intensity was almost tangible in the close
air of the holy chamber.  She was regarding the rude bed along the wall.

It was the bed where they had put her after Calib had struck her down with
a Janis Thorn.  The bed where she ought to have died.

Ought to?  Leela felt a slight empathy with that other's regret.  It would
have at least been a fitting place for a member of the Sevateem to pass
beyond.  Had the Doctor saved her from an honorable death, only to doom her
to an intolerable life?

She did not know; she knew only that she had been Leela of the Sevateem,
giving in was not in her.

But an honorable death?

At last the figure stirred, sighing.  It was a gentle sound, full of regret
for a thing undone, and for the chance now lost to time's inexorable
passing.

The woman slowly turned to face her across the room.

Leela shrank back into the shadows, her hand gripping the hilt of the
knife.  The woman had nowhere left to run, it would end here, one way or
the other.

'Who are you?' Leela demanded.

The woman, half hidden in shadow, made no answer.

Leela took along breath to find the stillness, readying herself for the
confrontation.  She touched her throat, shoulder and hip in the ritual of
protection and stepped towards the figure.  The woman moved out of the
shadows at the same moment, coming to meet her.  As she stepped into the
light Leela stumbled to a halt, shocked.  Her eyes went wide in surprise.

It was herself.

'Why do you pursue me so Leela?' The figure asked her, speaking in Leela's
own voice.

Leela ignored the inquiry and stepped in close.  She was suddenly
overwhelmed by a mad desire to put the knife into the heart of that other.
She wanted to be up close, to feel the resistance as the blade cut, to feel
the blood running over her hand.

Again the figure spoke.  'Why do you pursue me so hard, Leela?  I have
nothing left to give you.' The woman spread her hands wide to emphasise
their emptiness.

Leela stopped, a single step between them.  She met the brown gaze full of
an innocent wildness and youthful eagerness for life with her own
troubled, blue eyes -  older but no wiser.

'Who are you?' she demanded again.

The face of the other broke into a sad smile.  'Surely, Leela, the question
is: who are you?'

'Don't play games with me.'

'Why?  Are you still so afraid that you will lose yourself in the words?'
The figure sighed and shook its head sadly.  'Oh!  Leela, Leela, where did
we go wrong?  Was it the words that tripped us up so.  We were never a
match for the words.  Or was it the treachery of our body in loving a Time
Lord?'  The woman paused a long moment before going on:    These
questions are not for Leela of the Sevateem. You cannot ask them of me.
These are things I cannot know.  They are for you, Leela, wife of Andred of
the Chancellery Guard.'

To forestall further words, Leela reached out a hand to the woman.  The
other's hand came up, stretching out to her.  Their fingers touched, palms
pressed together.  The touch was hard and cool, like a barrier of metal or
glass, dividing and isolating them in their own different worlds.

Once more the other put the question in that sad, searching voice.  'Who
are you?'

'I am Leela,' Leela said quietly.

'Who?'

'Leela,' she repeated, louder, more firmly.  Then again in a loud voice
that tried and failed, just, to find certainty.  'I am LEELA!  LEELA - of
the SEVATEEM?'

But it was not true, not any more.

The knife dropped from her lax fingers, forgotten.  It made hardly a sound
on the thick carpeting of the bedroom.  She dropped her hand from the
mirror and looked around the room she had shared with Andred now for so
many years.

'I am Leela of the Sevateem!' she said again, but the oppressive quiet of
the dead air swallowed up her declaration.

She backed away to the bed and sat down.  She fingered the animal skins
that covered her.  She thrilled to the touch of the coarse texture.  They
smelled of a younger self.  It was a wild, profoundly animal smell that the
dead air of this place had not quite sucked out of them.  She inhaled a
deep lung full, drawing the scent of her young life deep inside.  It was a
forlorn attempt to revitalise her being, with the scent of her own sweat.
She ached to recapture that earlier self.  But that younger, wilder
creature who had, all unknowing, made that heady perfume, was fled beyond
her grasp.

Leela let out her breath in a long sigh and fingered the tattered strips of
rich cloth strewn on the bed.  They were the remains of her Gallifreyan
robes, slashed to ribbons in a frenzy of rebellion against the stale
deadness of this place, of what her life had become.

Soon he would return.  That one who had engendered the treason of her body.
She struggled with confusion at the two warring emotions, the thought of
Andred stirred in her.  How was it possible to love someone so much, and
yet to hate them with a heart stopping ferocity?

What had he done to her?  Life had once been so simple.

Soon the door would open.  He would be there.  Of course, she would go to
him.  But when she did, would it be to throw herself into his arms and
cover his lips with kisses?  Or would she expertly slit his throat?

That at least would simplify the choices.  If she did that, then it would
come down to two alternatives - wait for them to come to take her to her
execution, or, she could go on before.

Simple choices.  She felt at home with simple choices, with action, direct,
effective and final.  She scooped up the knife and felt the point.  Yes,
simplify the choices.

The air in the room held its breath as the thing swung in the balance.

The door slid open with a quiet sigh.  The tall Gallifreyan came in, his
honest eyes seeking hers.  She rose from the bed holding the knife low.

He started to say something.  Then he noticed how she was dressed, the
knife in her hand, the tattered robe on the bed.

Leela watched the eyes, waiting for the fear.  She held the blade ready.
The handle felt good against her palm.  If there was fear, even so much as
a flicker across those eyes, then it would simplify the choices.  But there
was only a sudden puzzlement.

Leela watched as the puzzlement was replaced by a slow understanding.  A
gentle concern surfaced in his eyes.  Andred spoke carefully.

'What is it, Leela?'

She watched the eyes.  'I...I've been hunting.'

Andred let out his breath slowly.  'And what was the quarry?'

'Myself.'

'And did you run the quarry to earth?'

'No.  The hunting was bad - the prey out ran me.'

'Perhaps you will have better luck next time.'

'I shall not hunt again,' Leela said emphatically, for that damnable smile
was turning up the corners of his mouth, engendering that sweet treason of
her body.

The knife fell forgotten from her hand as she ran to the arms of her
husband.

He enfolded her in his arms, and remained impassive, thoughtful, as she
kissed him with a frantic intensity.  After a while he took hold of her
unruly hair and gently eased her head back.  There was a tender love in his
eyes.  It mingled and melded into a deep understanding, before giving way
to firm decisiveness.

'We will go to Jacalinda,' he said quietly.  'The third era.  A more savage
and barbaric place I do not know.'

Leela hugged him fiercely.  Her heart full of a sudden, wild joy. 'Oh!
Andred!  I -' She broke off at the sudden narrowing of his eyes. 'What is
it?'

A gentle smile suffused his face.  'Nothing.  It must have been a trick of
the light, but for a moment I thought your eyes were brown.'

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The end.

Comments or criticisms welcome.