“Well, hello.” She’d picked something quite… bohemian, hadn’t she? Short, knit, white on white on large bands of black beneath. He could basically see her whole stomach—not that he was looking for it. And suggestive as it was, he knew Amy would fit in rather well out there with the free spirits and the flower children. Hey, he was a free spirit too! The inner monologue made him frown slightly, adjust his bowtie again. Maybe he’d forgo the jacket.
Right, right. Where were they going. The great reveal. He threw his patchy tweed coat over the railing (it missed, of course, but he pretended he didn’t notice) and rolled up his sleeves methodically. “It’s nothing special,” he said. He walked backwards to the exit as he folded the cuffs over. “Small concert.” The Doctor had a terrible poker face when he was jumping around inside. Couldn’t contain himself. An old man and a child. “Not really, actually. Rather large concert.”
He was going to throw the doors open in a big, dramatic gesture—lay out the whole scene for her as quickly as possible—but when he got there, he changed his mind. He’d gotten a new idea he liked a lot better. The Doctor pulled one of them out just enough to slip through, and walked out of the box. Waited a couple of seconds, grinned, and popped his head back in. ”Well? Come along, Pond.”
It was bright. The grass was a bit swampy, but the rain had stopped for a few hours; given the position of the sun and the temperature and the general heaviness of the air, he put the time at around 15:00. They’d landed a ways away from the stage, towards the edge of one of the fields set up for camping. Tents, open sleeping bags, and makeshift shelters of sticks and cloth were strewn about. And there were people everywhere. A couple of women nearby, long-haired and topless, smiled at him. He tipped his hand in a wave.
“White Lake, New York, 1969. Loads of people gathered in a couple of fields to listen to a lot of bands and express their liberal lifestyle.” This was the lecture part. He made grand gestures, lots of flapping hands moving around. ”We skipped the first day ‘cause it was a bit crap, but today—oh, today! August 16th. Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Janet Joplin!” He’d rehearsed those names on cue cards while he’d waited for her to wake up. They had to come out effortlessly, like he knew exactly what he was talking about and he wasn’t at all out of his element in any way.“Woodstock, Amy,” he said. ”We’re at Woodstock.”
It dawned across her face slowly. “No,” she said, laughing, disbelieving while knowing that he wasn’t lying to her. It was too bizarre to be a lie. Amy put her hand against her forehead and she cocked her hip and she glared at him, smiling. “No. We are not at Woodstock.”
The Doctor looked at her, eyebrows up, grinning from stupid ear to stupid ear. Amy screamed.
Then there was the jumping around, the crazy hands, the hugging, and then the flat our running into the wild. Amy jaunted out into the trees. She breathed in comically loud. “It smells like inhibition!” she said loudly. She grabbed a hold of a particularly skinny tree—Why had she never noticed that the Doctor looked like a tree? He had that poofy brown hair and a willowy body, his big hands as leaves, and the way he just kind of moved around like being tossed in the wind—and leaned. “What are you waiting for, Doctor?” she shouted back to him. She ignored the fact she had been the one to run away from him.
When they’d caught up with each other, Amy was still laughing, looking around. She never lost her childish wonder. Amy seemed taken by both the fact that they were in America, the 1960’s, and “It’s Woodstock. It’s Woodstock! With all those lovely hippies and their hair, oh my gosh, their hair! Have you seen their haircuts? The fringe, Doctor!”
She loved him. She did. This was stupendous. Even if it was Janis, she didn’t care, wouldn’t care. Today, Amy Pond would be attending Woodstock. They were beginning to stumble upon a few scraggly looking attendees. Their blankets painted the ground. Open tin cans of food gathered flies as they baked in the sun. Mud coated boots were abandoned by a small stream darting through the grass. Probably to combat a lingering bovine smell a kind soul had left a burning stick of incense out. It was like a war zone, but everyone was smiling.
Amy shivered. “Excuse me!” she said, poking the side of a couple that stood amongst the rubble. Blankets hung from the man’s shoulders. “Mind if I borrow one of your quilts?” Amy asked, loudly. So Scottish. Amy had to stay warm. If she came home with a cold, Rory would kill her.
The girl pushed up her large, bronze-lensed glasses and smiled at Amy. “Sure, man,” the man said, taking a the blanket, splattered with light brown dirt, from his shoulders and hung it around Amy.
“You look like a queen,” the girl purred before going back into her man’s embrace.
“Well, thank you!” Amy said. She bounded back to the Doctor. “Hear that? I’m a queen here.”
