Sharp, insectile legs writhed around a clear bead-like body; a bulging head was crowned with fierce, hinged mandibles. The monster propelled itself between the other cells as if they were stepping stones.

The longer Alex watched, the more of the microscopic monsters he saw. They skimmed leisurely across the blood sample and wrestled with any of their own kind they encountered.

Alex swallowed the urge to be sick. “That’s probably not normal?” he said, lifting his head.

“I’m not a seal doctor, but I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be there,” Zoey confirmed.

Kraken rushed towards the microscope, but Anil beat her to it. After taking a brief look, he jumped away as if the monsters might swarm up the lens and attack him.

“It looks like some kind of parasite,” Anil said. “That must be why Loaf’s behaviour has changed.”

“Kraken and the otters haven’t been affected,” Alex said. “I kept them away from the sea as soon as I sensed something was wrong. So the parasites must have come from the water.”

Zoey grimaced. “What are they?”

“I might be able to answer that.”

Erasmus Argosy stood in the workshop’s open doorway, looking down his nose at the mess. His heavy jacket was buttoned to the neck and a chequered flat cap covered his head. Despite the wind outside, his thin white moustache still held the shape of a cat’s insolent smile. The otters hung stubbornly from his arms and legs and Grandpa huffed and puffed behind him, as if they’d tried to keep Argosy out.

“The old fart’s surprisingly strong,” Grandpa breathed.

Argosy ignored him. “I’ve heard of these things before. A plague tide that takes animals as its host.” He picked his way across the room and bowed to peer through the microscope. “I never knew if they were real or just…legend. They certainly haven’t been seen for an extraordinarily long time.”

Zoey pointed to Loaf, still wrapped up tight on her workbench. “Well, they’re here now.”

Once again, Alex tried to communicate with the seal. When he found the connection still blocked, he imagined the parasites clogging the thread between them, shredding his magic in their jaws. Disgust and despair swirled in his belly.

Argosy studied the seal. There was no sadness or sympathy on his face. This was simply a problem to be solved. Alex clenched his fists.

“What are you doing here?”

Argosy blinked. “Young Anil told me what you were planning. I already had my suspicions about what has been happening and I hoped you would prove me wrong. These parasites live in the ocean and infect any sea animal they encounter. They take control and make them behave aggressively to keep everything else away so that nothing can interfere.”

“Interfere with what?”

“Laying their eggs. The parasites use their hosts as incubators, multiplying many times over so they can seek and infect more animals.”

“I think that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” Zoey said.

“And we’ve heard a lot of disgusting things,” Anil added. “Remember that time you accidentally left your walkie-talkie in the toilet and—”

Alex cut him off. He was already feeling sick. “This can’t be Callis again, can it? The Water Dragon swallowed him whole.”

“Nature is a much more formidable foe than any villainous pirate,” Argosy said. “When the natural order becomes unbalanced, it also becomes fragile. Terrible things have a chance to thrive. The Water Dragon has done its best to sustain harmony, but without its kin, the fight is almost impossible. The dragon’s need for recovery time after Callis’s attack gave this foul scourge the opening it needed.”

Alex had learned so much about how the well-being of the ocean impacted the entire world, how the consequences of damaging it in one place could reverberate to the other side of the planet. The less the ocean was respected, the more the world would suffer.

Still, he had never expected to be faced by an army of microscopic monsters.

“Can we stop them?” he asked.

“There’s a story of a surge in infections once before.” Argosy twirled his moustache as he thought. “The records say it was stopped by a Water Dragon before the parasites spread too far to be contained.”

Zoey clenched her fists. “Does the record say how?”

Argosy shook his head. “The family archive has not been properly maintained for many years. If the answer is there, we’ll have our work cut out to find it.”

“If the parasites can infect any sea creature,” Alex said slowly, the words making him tremble as he spoke them, “could they infect the dragon?”

Zoey spun towards him in shock. Her hand knocked the jar of seafire from a nearby shelf and it crashed onto the bench, breaking open in front of Loaf. Cold green flames immediately sprang to life.

The seal thrashed as the light touched his skin, groaning and straining at his seaweed bonds as if the seafire glow dazzled him.

Anil smothered the flames with a blanket. As soon as the light was gone, Loaf settled back down into his grumbling reverie.

“You’re okay.” Zoey quickly checked over the seal’s skin. “Seafire doesn’t actually burn. You never minded it before…”

Argosy cleared his throat to regain their attention. “I don’t know if the dragon would be immune.”

“I have to try something.” Alex hurried across the workshop, the others springing to follow him, and made his way through the front office. The otters fell into step with them.

Outside, a gale continued to snatch at their clothes, but the lashing rain had stopped for now. Alex plucked Kraken from his shoulder, her arms flailing in protest, and handed her to Zoey.

“It might not be safe for you to get this close to the water.”

Then he made straight for one of the wooden jetties that pushed out into the sea. He paused at the end, toes over the edge, watching the agitated slap-slap of dark waves. The rest of the group stayed back to give him space.

Carefully, Alex dropped into a crouch and reached for the water. He hadn’t tried to contact the Water Dragon for weeks, leaving it to the joy of guiding its newly hatched baby dragon on a tour of their aquatic territory.

A stab of long-buried fear made him freeze before his fingertips touched the water. The ominous feeling that had been bothering him for the last few days lurched inside him.

Anil seemed to read his mind. “Do you think the parasites can infect humans?”

“People have been in the water and we haven’t noticed anything weird,” Zoey replied. “We could do an experiment or two on you. For science, obviously.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Don’t worry,” Argosy said. “The parasites are quite harmless to people.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t afford to feel scared of the ocean again. He plunged his hand into the waves.

The water was cold enough to turn his fingers numb. So when one of the countless threads that knitted the ocean together tickled his palm, he struggled to grip it at first. But then sea magic swelled inside him and he let it flow into the water.

Usually, it would zip along the thread and out into open sea like a radio signal through space. It would connect him to the Water Dragon, wherever it was, as if they were side by side. In the past, he had seen through the dragon’s eyes, and heard its voice call to him in the language of the sea across impossible distances.

Now, the magic sputtered as if the current was blocked. The thread squirmed in Alex’s hand, forcing him to grip it tighter. He pushed his magic as hard as he could, determined that it would make it through.

An image flashed across Alex’s mind: the depths of the ocean lit by a soft green glow. He felt the familiar connection with the dragon, but tenuous, like a rope hanging from a single thread.

Pain.

The dragon was hurting. Its magic blazed vividly like it would in the middle of a fight.

Are you injured? Alex called in his mind. Do you need help?

The questions seemed to get strangled away before they reached the dragon. Just like with Loaf and the other infected animals, a barrier stood between them.

Swallowing down his fear for the dragon, Alex reached out with his mind for its baby instead. Their bond had not developed yet but he was sure he could reach it. Except…

He couldn’t sense the baby dragon out there at all.

The thread flexed and thrashed in Alex’s hand. There was just time to hear the Water Dragon speak in the voice of the ocean: a surging current, howling wind rushing past his ears and snaps of lightning that all cried two words.

Stay away.

The pressure on their connection grew too strong. Alex tried to hold his magic firm but the thread fell away as if snipped.

The Water Dragon was gone.

“No,” Alex said, head swimming, stumbling sideways as if swiped by a wave.

“Your face suggests this is going to be bad news,” said Zoey.

Alex staggered upright. He felt seasick, the ground seeming to teeter under his feet like a storm-swept deck.

“I think the dragon might be—”

He was interrupted by a ringtone trilling from under Zoey’s waders. She reached inside and retrieved an oversized phone.

“It’s a satellite call,” she said. “From Meri.”

A video call window opened on the screen. It showed little more than a blur of green hair and panicked eyes as the signal faltered. Every other word was swallowed up by howling wind, crashing waves and a strange, constant click-clack in the background.

“…danger,” Meri said. “There’s something…water…”

They crowded around the screen and tried to understand.

“Are you okay?” Zoey asked.

“…chasing…baby dragon.” The picture briefly cleared as Meri glanced over her shoulder in panic, before looking straight into the camera. “You have to help us.”

The call disconnected. They stared at the blank screen as if Meri might magically reappear. Then Zoey growled and thumped a hand against the side of the phone.

“We can’t help if we don’t know what’s happening!”

“Did she say they were chasing the baby dragon?” Anil asked.

Zoey tried to call back, but the phone refused to connect. Her eyes shone with worry. “Maybe. She also said she’s in danger.”

Alex gazed out to sea. For a moment, he felt helpless. He had been cut off from the Water Dragon and all the ocean’s creatures were under threat. Meri, usually so brave, had begged for help he didn’t know how to give. It was too much.

Back on his shoulder now, Kraken nuzzled close to his face, lifting an arm to rest gently on his cheek. They remained connected. It grounded him, giving him the strength he needed to stand up to everything they faced.

Before he could turn back to his friends or ask Argosy more questions, a fizzing pink light launched from further around the curve of the bay, arcing into the sky against the wind. It erupted into a shimmering pink beacon above the town. Moments later, a gust of wind carried the boom of the flare bursting to them.

“Not again,” said Zoey.

The emergency flare lingered stubbornly on the air, defying the wind, before it faltered and faded.

The lifeboat had been summoned.

There was trouble at sea.