After that, she made her way to the neighbors, the Tullys, and gave them gifts of sweets and scarves from Idiria, as well as set a time for her father and her to retrieve the hawk-chickens. Mrs. Tully gave her a basket of eggs, claiming that the increased flock was laying too many for her family to eat.
She returned home and grabbed a big bowl to gather ripe buckleberries, some of which she would dry in the racks and some of which she would store in the cellar. At the end of an hour and a half, she had a full load, purple-stained hands, and a complete set of scratches on her hands, arms, and lower legs. Satisfied with a good day’s work, she decided a swim would be a good reward. She grabbed an old towel and a change of clothes, as hers were sweaty and quite dirty. Then she set off for the old path, preferring to swim in the little cove rather than the bigger beach where her father kept his skiff and crab gear.
“Hello,” she called out at the cave’s edge, hoping to get a response, but the crash of the waves was her only answer. With a sigh, she stepped carefully down to the rocky beach and, with a quick glance around, began to disrobe.
The ocean was cold, but not quite as cold as she remembered. The crab men had been saying the waters were warmer the last few years, and she could well believe it. Quickly she was submerged and swimming in neck-deep water, being careful to avoid the rip current that habitually ran farther out. The sweat and grime came out of her hair and the saltwater made her berry scratches sting and burn, but it was a minor pain that quickly faded, although a few had been a little bloody. The women’s council, who took charge of teaching the island’s children to read, write, and handle their numbers, among a myriad score of other life lessons, had always said that ocean water was good for the skin and any cuts, scratches, or small sores.
She dove and splashed and jumped with the waves, delighted to be back in the ocean she hadn’t realized she had missed so much. As she sputtered to the surface after one particularly large set of waves had knocked her about, a huge shadow passed in front of her, her skin feeling the pressure of the water the creature displaced.
Alarm raced through her body, knowing that only predatory fish grew that large. Generally, the ones this size stayed more to the south, although it appeared that no one had told this one that fact. She backpedaled toward shore, keeping her eyes out for the dark menace yet not seeing where it could be. She thought of her dad, coming home to find her missing, eventually making his way to her hidden cove and finding her clothes but nothing else of her. She thought of all the things she’d hoped to do with her life, of travels not yet taken, of peoples not yet met, as she stumbled backward, the weight of the water slowing her to a crawl.
Then the shadow reappeared, out in front of her, not three man lengths away, headed toward her, too fast to avoid.
The smooth ocean surface above the deadly shadow suddenly exploded as a gigantic volume of water was shoved away by the impact of a speeding object from above—an object that she couldn’t see any part of. All she could see was a huge depression in the water and then the exposed body of the massive siorcfish that had been arrowing straight for her. The area of displaced water was several times larger than the grayback siorcfish and that specimen was as large as any she had ever heard of. The water was only up to her chest and the fish, whose body was as big around as a horse, was shoved down violently into the sandy ocean floor. Two sets of bloody claw prints, each as wide as a wagon seat, bloomed across its back and pectoral fin before the entire fish was lifted and thrown through the air to slam onto the rocky shore.
Warm-scaled skin touched her bare leg and then color suddenly filled in the beast that stood beside her, every detail of the invisible creature now exposed just as the water rushed back into the void it had created. The dragon was small for her kind, just a bit longer than a delivery wagon and a brace of oxen. She was, when visible, the color of Nira’s bronze knife, and she had grown slightly since Nira had last seen her just a few months ago.
Nira shook with the shock of the encounter, the sudden violence of it. A nose the size of a small pumpkin sniffed her wet skin and hair and then bumped her shoulder, pushing her toward the shore. The siorcfish was writhing and jumping, there on the rocks of the beach, and she couldn’t make her feet move toward it. The big snout pushed her again, slowly, this time in her lower back, and the irresistible force of it moved her bodily, forcing her feet to step forward.
Once started, she picked up speed, angling her ocean exit away from where the deadly fish was still struggling. The dragon watched her for a moment, its apple-sized eye studying her while the big head tilted to one side. When she was thigh deep,
