Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark (novel)

Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark is the seventh novel in the Virgin New Adventures series and the final book in the Cat's Cradle arc. It was written by Andrew Hunt and features the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

Publisher's summary
"Spare no sympathy for those creatures. They were witches, they deserved to die."

A coach crashes on the M40. All the passengers are killed. The bodies carry no identification; they are wearing similar new clothes. And each has a suitcase full of banknotes.

A country vet delivers a foal. The mare has a deep wound in her forehead. In the straw, the vet finds a tapered horn.

In the darkening and doomed world known to its inhabitants as Tír na n-Óg, the besieged humans defend the walls of their citadel Dinorben against mythical beasts and demons.

The TARDIS's link with the Eye of Harmony is becoming ever more tenuous and is in urgent need of repair. But the time machine takes the Doctor and Ace to a village in rural Wales, and a gateway to another world.

Chapter Titles

 * Prologue
 * 1) Arrivals
 * 2) Strange Beasts
 * 3) Missing Persons
 * 4) Arawn's Wheel
 * 5) An Unexpected Party
 * 6) A Journey in the Dark
 * 7) Unwelcome Visitors
 * 8) Three Is Company
 * 9) Rissole Time
 * 10) Many Meetings
 * 11) Corn Circles
 * 12) Fire and Water
 * 13) The Land of Shadow
 * 14) There ...
 * 15) Dagda's Wheel
 * 16) Altered Flesh
 * 17) ... And Back Again

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * The Seventh Doctor
 * Ace
 * Lynx
 * Bat
 * Bathsheba
 * Chulainn
 * Daffyr
 * David
 * Dryfid
 * Emrys Hughes
 * Goibhnie
 * Inspector Graham Stevens
 * Herne
 * Hugh
 * Constable Hughes
 * Jack
 * Janet
 * Nuada
 * Old Davy
 * Rhys
 * Selwyn Hughes
 * Stuart Taylor

Books

 * The Book of Rassilon starts with "In the beginning...".

Foods and beverages

 * The Doctor and Ace eat potato and leek soup.
 * The Doctor fries up bacon for everyone.
 * Ace doesn't like Spam.
 * The Doctor claims that there's a fish and chip shop in Rhyl "whose Spam sandwiches can't be equalled this side of the Crab Nebula."

Individuals

 * Ace is not very religious.
 * Lynx, the silver cat which has been popping up, is generated by the TARDIS, and normally resides in a cat's cradle of mathematics in the time rotor when not needed.
 * Stuart Taylor is the local vet.

Organisations

 * Scotland Yard has a one-man Paranormal Investigations Team consisting of Inspector Stevens.

Planets

 * Earth is widely recognised as one of the causal nexus points of the galaxy.

Species

 * A speck of demonic protoplasm infects the TARDIS.

Continuity

 * Clones of the Doctor and Ace appear in PROSE: Return of the Living Dad.
 * The effects of the protoplasm on the Doctor are revealed in PROSE: Deceit.
 * The Doctor once again encounters a biomechanoid dragon, having previously met the Dragon of Iceworld. (TV: Dragonfire)
 * The Doctor comments that he recalls a spider almost killing him. (TV: Planet of the Spiders)
 * Gallifrey as a source of "morphologically unstable living organic matter" may refer to validium. (TV: Silver Nemesis)
 * The mention of King Arthur is an indirect reference to TV: Battlefield.
 * The Doctor refers to the time he took his past companion Mel to a Welsh holiday camp in the 1950s, and mentions acquaintance Goronwy. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)
 * Ace mentions that she used to be waitress (TV: Dragonfire) and remembers the time she met the Cheetah People. (TV: Survival) She also remembers the time she went to 1963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * Demons are fought off using faith, reminding Ace of the Haemovores. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)