Chapter
4: All You Need is Love
Mizradal sat in her chair, not
quite sure what to do when Holly and Kai left the room.
She looked at the open box of chocolates sitting on the table with
fascination. She had never seen
such delicacies before, but the truffles tempted her.
She had seen the way that Holly had enjoyed the taste of the chocolate,
slowly eating it, enjoying every single moment that the substance remained on
her sensitive taste buds. Mizradal
supposed the chocolate must be absolutely wonderful and something that people
ate purely for pleasure. However,
she knew she must not take one, for to do so would surely get her in trouble
with her new mistress who had not offered.
She should have learned long ago not to take things that weren’t
offered to her. However, she was
only a child and the chocolates had a sweet, pleasing aroma that was not easily
ignored. She waited for a few
minutes that seemed like an agonizing eternity.
Perhaps her new mistress would return and take them away so she would not
be tempted. Or perhaps she would
even offer her a chocolate. Holly
did seem nice. She was much nicer
than any of the people with whom Mizradal had previously dwelled.
Instead of expecting Mizradal to bring her things and clean things, Holly
had presented her with a bedroom filled with all kinds of delightful toys that
she had never seen before. And this
entire place where Holly lived seemed to her to be absolutely fantastic, and
even magical. She wondered if all
of those fairy tales loved and adored had a ring of truth to them after all.
Perhaps at long last, her wildest dreams and deepest hopes had come to
pass; she’d been rescued from a life of misery and been granted a room in the
palace as a fairytale princess. And
she didn’t want anything to ever take that away from her – ever.
She must be strong and resist the chocolates.
She couldn’t succumb to the temptation to partake of the forbidden
pleasure before her. True Holly had
not told her that she could not have a chocolate, but neither had she told her
that she could. But she hadn’t
told her that she couldn’t, had she? The
sweet aroma was intoxicating and everything about that box seemed to whisper,
“Try me. You know you want
one.”
“I can’t,” Mizradal
replied to the box of chocolates, which of course wasn’t really talking.
But it might as well have asked with words, for it surely knew what was
in her heart. “I haven’t been
offered. Besides I don’t want to
be thrown out again. I don’t want
it to be like my last place. They
weren’t too bad there and I didn’t think Grenda would mind if I played with
her doll. I didn’t even break it.
It was already broken when Grenda told me I could play with it.
I didn’t know she would blame me and then tell her parents she hated me
so that they would sell me.” A
tear started to roll down her cheek. “I
can’t, I can’t, I can’t! I’ve
already messed up and I can’t mess up again because I’ll never get a chance
like this again as long as I live!”
“But Holly will never know if
you take just one,” the box of chocolates seemed to reason.
“Do you think she’s going to miss one little chocolate? Look at this place. She
has plenty to spare. She won’t
miss one, I tell you she won’t.”
So Mizradal slowly reached
forward and took one tiny truffle from the box.
She hesitantly looked all around her to see if either Holly or Kai were
anywhere near returning to the room, but they weren’t.
She felt the smooth texture of the chocolate in her hand and it smelled
even sweeter the nearer her nose it reached.
She finally put the morsel in her mouth and slowly chewed it, allowing
her tongue to taste every single bit in the same way she had observed Holly do
it before. Never before had she
tasted such a wonder and at once she could see why the Time Lady was fond of
them. This taste was the most
wonderful sensation that had ever crossed her limited taste buds.
She simply had to have another and she quite forgot that she was only
going to have one. She reached into
the box and took another one and found with much delight that it tasted
different than the one before. Perhaps
each chocolate was filled with something different.
She tested her hypothesis and found it to be true, sampling each and
every chocolate until…until the box was completely empty!
And then she realized in horror that Holly would notice the missing
chocolates because the box had been full.
“No, no, no,” she said as
she stepped away from the box. “I
didn’t eat ALL of them, did I?”
“But you did,” the box
seemed to answer. “You were only
supposed to try one, weren’t you? But
you just couldn’t control yourself. Oh
well, you’ll be sent somewhere else. Maybe
your next family doesn’t have to learn what a bad little girl you are…”
“No,” Mizradal shouted.
“I’m never leaving here! Holly
doesn’t have to find me! This
place is big. I can hide!”
And with that she went off to explore the inner depths of the Time
Lady’s strange TARDIS. She would hide as far away from this place as possible.
Didn’t Holly say it had 522 rooms?
She couldn’t be in all of them at once and Mizradal could hide for a
very long time.
*
* *
“Look,” Kai said, trying to
be direct and ignore what Holly wanted. “I
really must be going. I can’t
stay.”
“Why?” Holly asked.
“I have things to do,” Kai
answered.
“Such as try to survive in
that awful jungle?” Holly inquired. “I
fail to see why you would willingly leave my TARDIS to return to that place! You don’t have a home, do you?
You don’t even have a working ship I hazard to guess or you would have
mentioned it. Am I correct in
assuming that you don’t even have a broken one?”
“It’s at the bottom of a
swamp,” Kai replied.
“Oh,” Holly replied.
“And is it the sort that’s worth salvaging?”
“Not particularly,” he
answered. “It was badly damaged or I wouldn’t have crashed it in
the first place.”
“Well then,” Holly began,
“what better things do you have to do than to hang around here?”
“I don’t suppose much,”
Kai answered, hating the way that his sensibilities had once again been reasoned
against by the conniving Time Lady. “It’s
just that you seem so strangely fascinated by Mizradal…” he began.
Truth be told, that wasn’t what bothered him near as much as his
fascination with her. He kept
finding himself attracted not only to her beauty, but also her mysterious and
alien nature. But he could tell
that she hadn’t even noticed him as her mind was on a multitude of other
things. In fact she tended to just
shove Kai around and tell him what to do that would be useful to her. He supposed he should object to being treated as such, but he
found that every time she looked into his eyes and smiled at him, he was
strangely compelled to do whatever she asked.
And this was no exception. He
couldn’t even finish his sentence describing just how she was strangely
fascinated by Mizradal because he’d quite forgotten it when she gave him that
look.
"Of course I'm fascinated
by Mizradal," Holly enthusiastically answered. "I once spent the
better part of thirty years studying the psychological developments and life
cycles of primitive humanoid races. I shall have to once again resume my studies
now that I have a genuine specimen..."
"Specimen?" Kai
asked, perturbed by the term.
"Example," she
corrected. "Don't worry, I don't intend to do anything that would harm her.
Far from it, I intend to give her advantages that exceed anything she could ever
have on this world. She shall never want for food, clothes, or shelter for as
long as she shall live. Furthermore, I shall give her an education far beyond
anything she could ever dream..."
"May I ask you a
question?" Kai interrupted.
"Of course," she
answered.
"How old are you?"
He'd been wondering that ever since he set foot in this wondrous place. The way
she spoke of decades of study as if it were a passing hobby or said that she
would take care of Mizradal for the rest of the child's life, implied that she
thought of things on a much larger scale.
"Oh," she casually
answered as if it were no big deal, "I am approximately 222.97 of your
years," quickly doing the math in her head.
"Is that all?" Kai
asked. "A S'o'h Maiyuoom would think of something that happened that long
ago as ancient history."
"I'm sure you would,"
she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “You
don’t live all that long.”
"And how long will you
live?" Kai asked.
"If I take good care of
myself I will live for several thousand years," she replied, as if it were
no big deal.
"We do not even know what
the S’o’h Maiyuoom were doing ten thousand years ago.
That was before we took our place among the stars,” Kai sighed in a
somewhat amazed tone. "Do you not find the prospect of living so long to be
frightening?"
"No," she answered.
"Why should I? As long as
there is more to learn, I don’t think I shall ever grow tired of living.
And I am fascinated by everything. I
seek to understand the highest of the high. As long as there are questions to be asked and answers to be
sought, I shall always have reason to live.”
“Is that why you travel?”
Kai asked her.
“Yes,” Holly replied.
“So far, I’ve spent my entire life being educated.
I learned many things in books and in classes and even through
experiments. But I learned only
what others taught me. And while
they taught me well and I learned much, they only whetted my appetite for
knowledge and gave me an insatiable desire to seek the highest possible truth
and meaning. I want to understand
the mysteries of the universe…”
“And you don’t already?”
Kai asked, looking around him in amazement.
“I would think that a civilization that possessed such power to do the
impossible, would know everything.”
“No Kai,” Holly answered.
“You do not understand the way science works. Every answer turned up by science invariably raises even more
questions. So while one may obtain
a deeper understanding of the cosmos, the cosmos becomes much deeper.
Even Time Lords do not know everything.”
“Time Lords?” Kai asked.
“Is that what your people are called?
It sounds very important.”
“It is,” Holly replied.
“And yet with all these
wonders that your race has achieved, have you not experienced love?” Kai
asked. He hadn’t meant to ask
that question of all questions, but it had been on his mind for quite some time.
He realized that such emotions that most beings, even the Seldati that he
loathed with a passion, experienced – seemed completely alien to this being,
this Time Lord, who looked upon the common things of the universe with a strange
sense of curiosity and wonder as if this were the first time she had seen them.
“What do you mean?” Holly
asked.
“Did you never grow up among
people who loved you? Did you never
fall asleep in the arms of your mother as she sweetly sang to you and vowed to
protect you from all that is evil and unjust in the universe?
Have you never loved someone so much that you would give up everything
you owned or every privilege that you had if it meant that they would never have
to suffer again? Have you never
seen anyone that would?”
“I don’t suppose I have,”
she replied in a strange tone. “Such
things are…”
“Alien to you?” Kai asked
as he looked at her. “Yes I can
tell. Perhaps you have scientific knowledge beyond the wildest
dreams of mortal minds, but despite all of this I pity you. I can tell in the way that you look at Mizradal that you
yourself have never experienced the one thing that child needs more than
anything else.”
“What do you mean?” Holly
asked.
“I mean I find it strange
that you do not hug her or try to comfort her,” he replied.
Holly thought for a moment. To
be honest such a thought had never occurred to her.
She realized from her studies that most humanoid species experienced a
certain level of affection towards one another.
But to her, such affections were completely and totally alien.
It would never have occurred to her in a thousand years to respond to
anyone’s pain with a hug or touch. In
fact she didn’t suppose that she had ever been hugged or told she was
“loved” in the sense that most other humanoid species were.
She had been trained to detach herself from such emotions, if they ever
existed in the first place. And she
was not without emotion – she experienced wonder, excitement, curiosity,
delight, and fascination, but she did not experience love or affection in the
sense Kai spoke. Nor did she
particularly want to. Not only was
it illogical to develop such feelings for beings that would wither and die
before her very eyes, but she found the idea almost repulsive.
Not because they were mortal, but because she didn’t particularly crave
the sensation of having either Mizradal or Kai touch her. The idea of holding the child was not only far from a natural
impulse, but even a discomforting notion when suggested to her.
Time Lords were used to
spending vast amounts of time alone, deep in thought.
The only way they really knew how to relate to each other or to other
beings was intellectually and it was the only way in which she felt comfortable. To be honest, even though she wanted Mizradal and Kai with
her, she also didn’t. She wanted
to take a long walk in her TARDIS corridors and enjoy the solitude of pondering
the many things that had happened to her today.
She wanted to deal with them later, at another more opportune time when
she had thought things through and perhaps had read a little more to prepare her
for the task of educating Mizradal. And
of course, she needed to run diagnostics and figure out how to make repairs so
she could leave this planet. She
didn’t intend on staying here forever and she saw no reason why Mizradal or
Kai should want to. After all, this
was not the best planet in the universe and surely they would agree that
traveling with her was best. But
she didn’t want to constantly be pestered with them either.
In fact, she wanted them to entertain themselves while she did whatever
it was that she normally did.
“Well Kai, I expect you know
how to best take care of Mizradal for the time being and she does seem to like
you,” Holly answered. “Why
don’t you play a game with her or something?
I’ve got things I need to…”
“Right,” Kai interrupted.
“Well someone has to go look after her.
You can’t just leave her alone.”
“Why?” Holly asked.
“It’s not a dangerous place.”
“Yes,” Kai replied, “but
she’s a child and she’s in a new environment.
She needs supervision. I’ll
go see what she’s up to and I’m sure we’ll get along.
What are you going to do?”
“Things,” Holly answered.
It was far too complicated to explain to Kai the sort of things she
normally did, particularly when she was so anxious to start on them.
“Fine,” Kai replied.
“I’ll go see what Mizradal is up to.”
He was somewhat annoyed by the strangeness of his companion and yet
strangely drawn to her yet again. There
was something in that look of hers when she said “things,” that compelled
him to stay on and do as she asked. So
he went directly back to where Mizradal was.
Only he didn’t see her – he saw an empty box of chocolates.
“Holly,” Kai yelled, not
one bit excited about the prospect of searching 522 rooms for the child.
“I think you should come here. Mizradal
has run away and I don’t even know where to begin looking.”
“Run away?” Holly asked, as
she entered the room.
“Yes,” Kai said, as he held
up the box of chocolates. “She
ate all the chocolates and now I don’t know where she is…”
“Well we should find her at
once,” Holly answered. “I
don’t like the idea of her just running around lose in here.”
Not so much that she was concerned for Mizradal as that it made her
uncomfortable to think of someone just wandering around her private dwellings.
Kai and Mizradal were the first non-Gallifreyans she had ever allowed in
her TARDIS and she wasn’t sure she wanted them poking around.
And she had no idea how Mizradal would react to anything because quite
frankly she had never seen a child before and she was nervous if anything about
how to treat Mizradal.
“Well of course we should
find her,” Kai retorted as he started down a corridor.
“I’d hate to think what she might find that could harm her!” He didn’t want to blurt it out, but it was what he thought.
The alien woman could have anything in here and he didn’t think a child
ought to be wandering around playing with it.
Meanwhile, Mizradal ran down
the corridor as fast she could, not sure where she had been or where she was
going…she just wanted never to be found by anyone.