‘We’re too far out, Mags – there aren’t any crabs here.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ my sister said. ‘This is where you find the really big ones, Pet. Just drop your line a bit lower.’
I looked in the bucket at our collection of dead-eyed, razor-clawed creatures, all spider-legged and snapping and clambering over each other. I shuddered. I didn’t want to catch any really big ones.
‘Let’s try here.’ Mags pulled on the left oar and reversed with the right, skilfully spinning us around so that we faced away from the coast and towards the open sea. The water was different out here – darker, deeper; it whirlpooled thickly around the oars.
I glanced back towards Dragon Bay. Most of the children from the village were out in little boats, just like us, dangling their crabbing lines into the water. We were the furthest out, though, by a long way; their shouts of laughter were distant. I had a bad feeling about this.
‘We’re getting too close to the Wyrm, Mags,’ I said, aware that my voice sounded childish and complaining.
‘The sandbank? That won’t do us any harm, Pet,’ she insisted. ‘We’re in a rowing boat, not a galleon. We’re not going to capsize or anything. The worst that will happen is that we’ll get grounded for a while until the tide rises again.’
‘Brilliant,’ I muttered under my breath. I fixed the next scrap of bacon rind on to my line, silently cursing my competitive sister. She was always getting me into ridiculous scrapes. The idea of being stranded on the back of the Wyrm sent a pang of fear through my stomach.
Some people think the sandbank is called the Wyrm because you have to learn its twists and turns if you want to sail this coast: you have to ‘worm’ your way around the cliffs to the harbour. But Pa told us that wyrm is the Old English word for dragon. So many ships were wrecked here over the centuries that sailors used to believe the sandbank was actually a sea dragon that lurked beneath the waves, waiting patiently for sacrifices to sail into its path. It would overturn each ship with a flip of its scaly tail, before twisting around to swallow it whole.
I have a very cruel imagination. In my darkest, most lonely moments, it likes to torture me by playing out the most frightening things I have ever seen or heard. Since Pa first told me the legend of our coast, I had developed a recurring nightmare about the Wyrm. It didn’t suck my soul into the sea or turn me to stone like it did to the Daughters; instead, it crawled right out of the water to get me. In my nightmare, the Wyrm was a real, hungry sea dragon, with rows of needle-sharp teeth that reeked of rotten fish. And it wanted to eat me alive. I saw it emerge from the waves, its scaled skin pale, translucent and dripping wet. It hissed and dripped and clawed its way up the cliffs to the Castle. I ran as fast as I could, into the lighthouse and up the stairs until I found myself in the lantern room – panting and shaking – and there was nowhere else to run to. I always tried to hide, but I knew it was no use. The Wyrm was coming for me. I would be its next sacrifice. The most terrifying thing about this dream was the noise – the slow, wet footsteps; the scraping of its scales against the walls as it squeezed its way up the narrow stairs; the hissing of its foul breath as it got closer and closer, and I couldn’t move . . .
I always woke up just before the Wyrm actually appeared in the lantern room, though. Always.
I took a deep breath of sea air and tried to force the hideous Wyrm out of my mind. I looked towards our Castle – a dark silhouette on the clifftop above us. The Daughters of Stone seemed to glitter in the soft, white light, and I felt my heart become a little calmer. I measured out an extra few yards on my crabbing line and started to lower the bacon rind into the water.
‘Longer than that,’ Mags said.
‘You do the rowing, I’ll do the fishing,’ I said, turning to look her in the eye. My sister was wearing one of Mutti’s winter hats, her brown hair peeking out from beneath it in glossy curls. She didn’t normally wear a hat when she went out rowing or sailing – her hair was usually a tangled, salty, windswept mess, and Mutti despaired of ever getting the knots out of it. ‘Why are you wearing a hat today, Mags?’ I asked. ‘It’s not cold.’
‘I just felt like it,’ she said unconvincingly. She pulled the hat down a bit more, suddenly self-conscious.
‘Is it to keep your ears in?’ I teased. Mags had inherited Pa’s most distinctive feature.
‘Shut up, Pet,’ she snapped, pulling hard on the left oar again. She was fighting the current.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered. Her sticking-out ears had never bothered her before. Why was she suddenly worried about them now?
I leant over the side of the boat to try to see if the bait was dropping deeply enough. She was right – I did need to let out a bit more line, and I probably needed to add a bit more weight too, to get it to sink rather than drifting with the current. I watched the white scrap of meat slowly disappearing through the depths of murky water.
Thinking about Pa’s sticking-out ears made me think about the hidden wedding photograph again. Perhaps I should mention it to Mags after all, I thought. It would be a mystery we could solve together. It might even help to close that strange gap that seemed to be opening up between us. If nothing else, it would stop thoughts of the Wyrm from slithering back into my head.
I was just about to say something when Mags shouted, ‘What the hell is THAT?’
The fishing line dropped through my fingers. I had already got myself into a state by thinking too much about the Wyrm, so the effect of this sudden panic was rather like being harpooned with fear. I stood up to try to see what she was looking at but, before I knew it, she leant forwards, the boat gave a great lurch, and I was sent tumbling sideways. I made a frantic grab at the side of the boat – ripping my nails on the splintery wood – but it was too late: I was flying into the water. I gasped at the air and closed my eyes tightly, but nothing could have prepared me for the jolt of freezing salt water as it slapped my face and body and closed in all around me. I felt the sudden, sodden weight of my clothes dragging me down, and somehow managed to wriggle out of my woollen sweater. It was Pa’s voice in my head, I think, calmly telling me what to do, but the rest of me was a terrified mess of panicking child. My legs were kicking helplessly in the water, my lungs were screaming. I could just hear Mags’s muted voice above the surface – ‘PET!’ – and I kicked out again, craning my face upwards until at last the muffling roar of water popped clear in my ears and I felt air on my face. I took an enormous gasping breath, my eyes and nose and throat burning with salt-water.
‘Pet – hold on!’ Mags was reaching down towards me, and my slippery-fish hand found hers, strong and warm. But she couldn’t pull me up high enough and the boat rocked towards me; she had to let go and I dropped back into the water again. ‘Hold on to this!’ She threw me a loop of coarse rope and I clung on to it. ‘I’ll move us closer to the sandbank, Pet, so you can stand up and climb back in.’
‘NO!’ I called, but it was too late – she was already heaving the boat around. My feet flailed helplessly, and I was aware of the fathoms of dark water beneath me – the fish and eels and monsters that lay, waiting, at the bottom of the sea. I imagined the Wyrm waking from a century-long slumber, sniffing at the water, turning hungrily in my direction, reaching up with its filthy claws, opening its jaws of needle-pointed teeth . . . Something brushed against my foot and I screamed. My breathing was ragged and choking – ‘Get me out, Mags! Get me OUT!’ The cold water and the terror were freezing my limbs so that my fingers could barely keep their grip on the rope.
‘Hold ON, Pet!’
I was the same as the lump of bacon rind, dangling there in the water: I was a piece of bait, and the foul jaws were about to close around me. Something was under my foot – something solid – I shrieked and kicked desperately against it, and found myself rising up against the hull. I pushed down again, pulling on the rope with numb hands, and I managed to get my head and chest over the side of the boat. I had one last terrifying vision of something dragging me back into the water before Mags grabbed my hand and hauled me all the way in.
We lay there in the bottom of the boat for a minute, catching our breath. The relief was overwhelming, and I felt tears welling up in my stinging eyes, sobs rising in my raw, burning throat. A shallow pool of seawater swilled gently up and down in the hull beneath us.
‘Sorry, Pet,’ Mags half-laughed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘All right,’ I managed to say.
She took off her dry jumper and helped me into it. ‘Keep warm,’ she said. ‘I’ll take us back in.’
Just before we got to shore, Michael Baron’s boat met us.
‘I heard screaming – did you catch a whopper?’ he asked. Then he saw me, all wet and shivering like a half-drowned kitten. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Man overboard?’
‘What happened?’
Mags answered: ‘I saw something in the water and I moved to get a better look and—’
‘And the boat wobbled, and Pet fell in?’ Michael laughed. ‘Poor little Pet. Never mind – you’ll be home and all warm and dry before you know it.’ Then he looked back at Mags. ‘What did you see?’
‘Sorry?’
‘In the water. What did you see?’
Mags looked embarrassed for a second. ‘I don’t really know. Just this huge dark shape under the surface. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
I started shaking again, but it wasn’t because I was cold. A monster, I thought. There really was a monster out there – and it nearly got me.
Mags laughed a little. ‘I thought it was a whale or something.’
‘That big?’ Michael looked at her with a strangely serious expression on his face. ‘You know what it could have been, don’t you, Mags?’
‘What?’
His green eyes shone with boyish excitement. ‘A German U-boat.’