28

‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ I say, scrambling back.

A fat, spotted seal just down from where I’m standing raises its head high as I stumble backwards and I can feel its fear. It startles, moving fast and darting into the waves.

These seals have been saving up all their energy just to survive, and I’m making them use it to run away from me. I’m just the same as the jet-skiers we saw when we rescued Liquorice, or the tourists who threw their chip papers into the water, and that thought makes a giant balloon of shame expand in my heart.

I dive over the rocks again, rolling so the sharp points snag and tear at Nana’s coat. My fingers are bleeding when I finally fall back onto the shingle the other side, but I don’t care. I’m just desperately hoping that the seals stop being scared and go back to sleep. ‘Please, no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I whisper, over and over.

The scuffles on the other side of the rocks stop, but my heart feels like it’s pumping poison. I run, one hundred metres away and more, until I can be sure that they can’t see me, or hear the cries and gasps coming out of me that I can’t seem to stop.

This is their island and I came here and ruined it. I don’t belong to them and they don’t belong to me – just like everything that’s magic about Middlesea doesn’t belong to anyone. I’ve done everything Nana is always warning against.

And even though that hurts enough, there’s another truth in there, glinting. It’s a truth that makes the ground rumble and crack. It makes the waves roar, and my chest squeeze, and my breaths pant. I squeeze my eyes shut and bite my tongue, because even now I don’t want to face it.

Instead, I wrap Nana’s coat to me, tight. My breaths are jagged and I try to match them with the waves coming in and out, trying to ignore how the ground seems to be splitting under my boots.

I hunt for a story, but instead, I find a memory. Nana used to wear this coat. She had it before I was born, and I’d watch her change into it whenever she got back from a morning’s potting – taking off her wet oilskins and folding herself into her soft land-skin.

Back then, nothing was more magical than sitting with Nana when she was wearing that coat – listening to her wild stories and feeling her fur-wrapped arms tight around me. Her stories made me feel like nothing bad could ever happen. And the coat felt like the world was soft and wearable and mine for the taking.

I stand and step forward, keeping my eyes closed, tight. The rocks are slippery and the sea rushes up to claw at my boots, dragging its sharp little nails into my calves. I shiver, but take another step and another and another – until the waves are sucking on the coat edges and making them heavy.

‘Long ago, my great-great-great-great-nana was a seal.’

The sea roars on the rocks beside me and tries to turn me over, but I keep my eyes closed and picture Nana – telling me this story again and again, so its magic seeped into the coat.

‘A Selkie,’ I say, louder. ‘She lived in the world beneath the waves, catching fish in her jaws and swimming in forests of kelp. One night, she came up onto land to dance in the light of the moon. She unzipped her sealskin and underneath was the body of a human being.’

I shout the last part and take another step forward, finally feeling the magic start to spit and froth at my feet – more powerful and real here than it’s ever felt, because I’ve never needed it to be more true than I do now. And as I step forward, I feel the seabed fall away beneath my feet so my tiptoes are just dancing now, and my stomach flips with that not-quite-falling feeling you get when you jump into the sea.

But then a wave swallows me for a moment and I gasp, opening my eyes to see a never-ending stretch of wild, black sea. And when I spin around, I see that Seal Rock seems to be floating further and further away from me – the coat feeling heavier and heavier.

For a moment, I wonder if this is part of the magic working. But then my stomach sinks as I understand what I’ve just stepped into.

A rip tide.