Rising From The Ashes (Book Five of the Bad Wolf Chronicles)

Vincent and the Time Lords

Oh, my God, I loved reading your reactions to the ending scene of the last interlude!!! So many people are wondering just what kind of relationship Rory and Jemma had. Well, you'll find out either at the end of this book or towards the very beginning of the next. If I get enough comments to go to the end, I just might put it in the end here . . . *wink wink*

Here, Jessie enjoys an artist, she shares a few things in common with Vincent, and what does our favorite painter see in her?

Enjoy "Vincent and the Time Lords!"

***

"So this is one of the last painting Van Gogh ever painted," the man in charge of the art museum, Dr. Black, was saying as Jessie and the Doctor listened intently, Amy dashing from painting to painting in excitement. "Those final months of his life were probably the most astonishing artistic outpouring in history. It was like Shakespeare knocking off Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear over the summer hols. And especially astonishing because Van Gogh did it with no hope of praise or reward. He is now - "

Amy bounded over to the two of them with a grin. "Thanks for bringing me," she said.

"You're welcome," Jessie smiled.

Amy frowned a bit, though. "You're being so nice to me. Why are you being so nice to me?"

"We're always nice to you!" the Doctor protested.

"Not like this," she shook her head. "These places you're taking me. Arcadia, the Trojan Gardens, now this. I think it's suspicious."

"It's not, OK?" Jessie raised an eyebrow at her. "Nothing to be suspicious about."

"OK," Amy held up her hands quickly. "I was joking." Jessie just sighed and turned back to the paintings. "Why aren't you?"

"Each of these pictures now is worth tens of millions of pounds, yet in his lifetime, he was a commercial disaster," Dr. Black continued. "Sold only one painting, and that to the sister of a friend. We have here possibly the greatest artist of all time, but when he died, you could sold his entire body of work, and got about enough money to buy a sofa and a couple of chairs." The group laughed, and he led them on. "If you follow me now - "

"Who is it?" a child asked behind them.

"It's the doctor," another one said.

The two Time Lords turned around in unison, surprised, only to see the second one was talking about the painting of Dr. Gachet. "He was the doctor who took care of Van Gogh when he started to go mad."

"I knew that."

"Look!" Amy squealed, running over to a painting, holding up her exhibition book to compare. "There it is! The actual one."

"Yes," the Doctor nodded, walking up to the painting of the Church at Auvers. "You can almost feel his hand painting it right in front of you, carving the colors into shapes - "

"Hang on," Jessie narrowed her eyes.

"What?" Amy frowned.

"What is that?" Jessie pointed to one of the windows.

"What?" Amy repeated.

The Doctor blinked. "Oh, something very not good indeed."

"What thing very not good?"

"Look there, in the window of the church."

Amy peered closer, seeing a dragon-like image. "Is it a face?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded. "And not a nice face at all. I know evil when I see it, and I see it in that window."

"It has changed hands for something in the region of twenty - " Dr. Black was saying as the Doctor hurried over to him, the man in front of the Still Life with Twelve Sunflowers.