Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [11]
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He stared down at his toes, distorted through the rippling water. It had scared him, what he had so nearly become. Scared him more than he cared to admit to Ace – or himself.
There was a splash in front of him. He looked up to see a young boy sitting in the shallow water, washing shells and placing them in a large plastic bucket. He was absorbed in his task and didn’t hear the Doctor approach.
‘Hello.’
The boy looked up, squinting in the bright sunlight. ‘’Lo,’ he said.
He returned to his shells. The Doctor squatted down next to him. He remembered that the boy hadn’t joined in with the kite flying, preferring to scrabble through the soft sand. A loner. The Doctor let his mind drift back a long way, to his own childhood. His own magpie nature.
‘I’m the Doctor. And you are...?’
‘Troy.’ The boy continued scrubbing at the shells. Then he stopped and stared at the Doctor. ‘What sort of doctor?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Every sort.’ That seemed to satisfy Troy, and his attention wandered back to the task in hand.
The bucket was full of shells, a huge collection of different shapes and colours. The Doctor picked out a cowri-like shell, admiring it.
‘You’ve been busy.’
Troy nodded. ‘I collect them from all over the place.’ He looked at the one in the Doctor’s hand. ‘That one’s good, but it’s not the best.’
He rummaged in the bucket, pulling out a long twisted shell. He swished it in the shallow water, making it glint under the suns.
‘This one’s the best.’
He held it out to the Doctor who took it gingerly, his brow furrowing. The shell was long and concave, the tip wickedly sharp. It was a dull ivory colour and felt cool – more like a piece of metal than a shell. The Doctor turned it over in his hand, running his fingers over the grooves in its surface.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘Over there: Troy pointed to the far end of the beach. ‘The sea brings all sorts of things in. They get caught up in the old shuttle wreck.’
The Doctor stared down the beach, his eyes narrowing. He turned the shell over and over in his hand.
‘I don’t suppose I could keep this, could I?’
Troy snatched the shell back. ‘No! I told you, it’s the best one!’
The Doctor fixed him with a piercing stare, his eyes twinkling wildly
‘I’ll swap you for it!’
Troy eyed him suspiciously ‘Swap it for what?’
The Doctor rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a large fluff-21
covered toffee apple. He held it out proudly then noticed the fluff and began cleaning it in the water. Troy looked at it with distaste.
‘If that’s the best you can do...’ He began to put the shells away.
‘No! No, wait a minute!’
The Doctor proceeded to pull a variety of increasingly alien and increasingly useless objects from his pocket, his frustration mounting as each was inspected meticulously by Troy and then discarded with a curt shake of the head.
Eventually the Doctor could pull nothing more from his trouser pockets and slumped back on the sand in exasperation.
‘Well, is there anything that I’ve got that you do want?’
Troy turned and solemnly pointed up the beach.
The Doctor sighed.
Ace watched as Troy vanished down the beach, a huge smile on his face and the Doctor’s kite clutched in his arms. The other kids gathered around him like a cloud, pleading with him to let them play.
‘How to win friends and influence people, eh, Professor?’
‘Hmm...?’
The Doctor had his eyeglass in and was examining a shell. His brow was creased with concentration and he had a look that Ace knew all too well.
‘Professor...’ Her voice was accusing and the Doctor looked up.
‘What...?