Dead of Winter - James Goss [68]
I stood up and realised my dress was covered in sand. I brushed it off me and looked about. The beach was covered with sleeping bodies. Amy and Rory were holding each other, the patients lay dotted about in clumps. It was a beautiful clear morning. The first I can remember in ever so long. The sea stretched out for miles to a clear blue horizon. Gulls bobbed lazily on the surface of the water.
I went over to help the Doctor with his sandcastle, but he held up a stern finger. ‘Now then, Maria, these things have to be done properly…’ he explained. I looked. It was a marvellous castle with battlements and turrets and windows.
Sadly, I said, ‘Monsieur, it is finished, is it not?’
He shook his head. ‘What good is a castle without people?’
So we built some people out of sand.
He made a princess which looked a little bit like me. I tried making some soldiers, but they were very lumpy. I got better. ‘What about the other people on the beach?’
The Doctor looked up and down the beach. ‘They’re sleeping off a vast psychic trauma, so best not to be moved. But they’ll be fine. I’ve checked. I popped back inside and borrowed the odd blanket. After all they’ve been through, it seemed a shame to let them catch cold.’ He sighed and patted down a brave knight on a horse.
We carried on making sand people. ‘There. All lovely and perfect.’ He paused. ‘What are those, Maria?’
I pointed to my forces. ‘This is the invading army that’s attacking the castle. You’ve got to have them.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘Yes, I guess you must.’
He looked so sad that I said, ‘Monsieur, I can just get rid of them if you want. They’re only sand.’
He shook his head, and seemed so old and tired. ‘No Maria, you’re right.’
We sat in silence for a bit.
‘What about Amy and Rory?’ I asked.
The Doctor smiled. ‘They’re too old for sandcastles.’
‘What’s the point of this castle?’ I asked. ‘Won’t the sea wash it away?’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Just the kind of thing Amy would say,’ he sighed. ‘Maybe you’re getting too old for sandcastles too.’ He tapped me on the nose and smiled sadly.
I shook my head. He was a funny man.
He started to dig a moat. ‘You make a good enough moat, it holds the sea off for a little while longer. It’s not great, but it’s the best I can manage.’ He leaned back on his heels. ‘Sometimes that’s the most you can hope for.’
‘What happened to everyone?’ I asked him.
‘Oh,’ he looked as though he wished I hadn’t asked him. ‘Ah. Well. The sea was host to a rare and beautiful creature. It was trying its best. But it wasn’t well. It was wounded. It was reaching out, trying to find a mind to control it – that’s what it’s used to. First it found Dr Bloom, but he wasn’t strong enough. And then it found Prince Boris. It made him… well, it made him everything he’d never got around to being. It cured his illness, but also his laziness. Which sounds silly. But really all that was stopping him from being very unpleasant was thinking there wasn’t much point in bothering. You people are strange and silly.’
(Yes, Mother, he really did say ‘you people’, which was ever such an odd thing to say when you think about it.)
‘As soon as I arrived, I could sense that creature poking around in my head – and I knew what it was and that it mustn’t be allowed to read my mind. It really mustn’t. The things I’ve lost, the things I’ve seen… trying to make those tore it apart. It was such a lovely, noble, gentle creature, really. I tried to save it.’ He let out a long breath, almost a wail. ‘I didn’t do very well.’ He peered out to the sea, to the tiniest, faintest green shimmer on the surface. ‘There’s only perhaps the ghost of it left.’
I patted him on the arm. ‘You tried, monsieur.’
He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Thank you.’
With a loud skitter of sand, Amy came running up, spraying sand into the moat as she thudded to a halt.
‘Oi!’ she cried out to the Doctor. ‘Making sandcastles? What are you, five?’
Extract from a Letter from Prince Boris
… and so ended, my dear Andrei, your brother’s plan to take over the world!
Up until today,