Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [1]
And then more tall ones arrived: two of them, their bodies the colour of the leaves behind which the pigeon was now perching. She had not seen them approach – perhaps they too had swooped down from the sky.
She was tired, so tired, and scared, and hopeless, but still she tried to run. It was no good. The leaf‐animals were both calm and fast, and seemed to be in front of her whatever way she turned. Suddenly she felt pressure round her waist, and she was raised from the ground. This was it; this was when she went the same way as her babies and her mate – but she didn’t give up, she desperately tried to turn her head, knowing her giant beak, hooked and sharp, was her greatest weapon against these soft, fleshy creatures.
Had she been less scared, she might have realised the difference between the gentle, soothing noises these creatures made and, the harsh, cruel cries of the death‐dealers. But fear had consumed her now.
One creature said: There’s no need to be scared.
The other creature said: We’re not going to hurt you.
The first said: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about what’s happened. But at least we can save you.
He lifted a small, square device that was like nothing she had ever seen before, and held it before her.
And the last of the dodos knew nothing else for 400 years.
ONE
Hello, Martha here! Question time for you. Tell me, do you have someone who’s your best friend? Someone you thought was great from the minute you met? Someone you have such fun with? I mean, I’m not saying they have to be perfect. But they’re pretty much everything you want in a friend. You laugh a lot when you’re together – good laughter: laughing with, not laughing at. He’s not mean, you see, never mean. And he cares about you, that’s important. (By the way, I’m not saying your friend has to be a he. A she will do. Or, as I’m learning as I travel the universe, an it. But my friend, the one I’m going to be talking about when I get on to specifics in a minute, he’s a he.)
Where was I? Oh yes, do you have someone, blah de blah de blah etc. Because, as I just revealed (although you’d probably guessed already), I do. I haven’t known him very long, actually, not that that’s important. But this is the real question: have you ever upset your friend, someone you thought was unupsetable (that’s not really a word, but you know what I mean), not in the middle of a row or anything like that (even the best of friends have rows sometimes) but totally out of the blue? Because I just did that. And I wondered what you did to make it up to your friend, especially if you’re not even sure what you did wrong.
It might help if I told you what happened. Don’t get too excited, it’s not like it’s a huge drama. In fact, it’s a tiny, tiny little thing. Maybe that’s the point. Sometimes it’s the little things that are worse.
He’s a smiley sort of person, my friend (he’s called the Doctor, by the way – yes, I know that’s not really a name. But you get used to it), and like I say, we laugh a lot. And enthusiastic! He loves everything. He gets excited at all sorts of things, and what’s brilliant is he makes you see how exciting they are, too.
Oh, I have to tell you something else, or none of the rest of it will make sense. The Doctor and I, we travel together in a ship called the TARDIS. It’s bigger on the inside than the outside, and can go anywhere in time and space. Anywhere. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me, but, well, it’s true and that’s all there is to it.
‘Anywhere’ is such an enormous concept, though. Sometimes it can be a bit too much. Try to imagine this: your mum says to you, would you like an apple or a Milky Way? I’d usually say ‘an apple, please’ (no, really, I love apples), but some days I might say, ‘Ooh, a Milky Way, thank you’, because I felt in a bit of a chocolatey mood.
Now imagine this: your mum says to you: would you like an apple, or an orange, or a pear, or a peach, or a plum, or a pomegranate – and she goes on to name every sort of fruit in the world. And then she says,