Nessa had always been very good at hide-and-seek. This was not, she felt, a trivial talent.
Among selkies, hiding involved considerably more than crouching behind a rock and hoping no one noticed your feet. It involved kelp forests, submerged caves, tidal pools, reefs, currents, gullies and, on one memorable occasion, the underside of a fishing boat belonging to a man who had been extremely surprised to discover three seals clinging to his hull.
That afternoon, Nessa intended to win.
The others scattered at the cry of Go!, silver bodies flashing through the green water as they plunged between the rocks.
Nessa swam farther.
Past the familiar caves.
Past the long shelf where crabs lived beneath the stones.
Past the narrow cleft her cousin Mara always used because Mara lacked imagination.
Then Nessa saw an opening she had never noticed before.
It was scarcely wider than her shoulders, hidden behind a curtain of weed.
Perfect.
She slipped through.
The passage narrowed almost at once.
Nessa wriggled deeper, pleased with herself.
No one would find her here.
Then the current changed.
She felt it before it struck.
The sea tightened around her.
For the briefest moment Nessa went still.
As though waiting.
Then she smiled.
And let it take her.
Water seized her and dragged her down.
Stone rushed past. The tunnel bent sharply. Darkness swallowed everything.
Nessa tucked her flippers against herself and allowed the current to carry her.
It would have been difficult to fight.
Not impossible.
But difficult.
And Nessa was curious.
The passage opened beneath her and she tumbled into black water.
For several moments she remained beneath the surface.
Then she saw pale light above.
Nessa swam towards it.
She broke the surface with a gasp.
Silence.
Not the silence of the sea.
This was deeper.
Older.
She floated in perfectly still water.
Above her arched a cavern so enormous that its ceiling disappeared into darkness. Pale crystals glimmered among the stone like frozen stars.
She swam towards the shore and pulled herself onto the rock.
That was when she saw the gold.
It lay in drifts across the cavern.
Coins.
Goblets.
Jewelled boxes.
Ancient swords.
There was even a throne lying on its side beneath a heap of coins, as if someone had decided it was too inconvenient to sit on.
Nessa stared.
“Oh.”
A golden eye opened in the darkness.
She went very still.
A second eye opened beside it.
What Nessa had taken for a ridge of stone moved.
A long bronze head lifted from the treasure.
Two horns swept backwards from the creature’s skull. Scales caught the cold light. Smoke curled faintly from its nostrils.
A dragon.
Nessa had never seen one before.
The dragon stared at her.
Nessa stared back.
Neither moved.
Then the dragon spoke,
“You’re a selkie.”
“And you’re a dragon.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He was magnificent.
That was her first thought.
Her second arrived rather conveniently.
“You’re not going to eat me?”
“Thanks for the offer, but no.”
“It wasn’t an offer.”
“Ah. Then I withdraw my thanks. I thought you were being very hospitable.”
“I’m terrified,” she said.
“And yet impeccably mannered.”
“Are you always like this?”
“Only when I’m hungry.”
Behind Nessa, unnoticed by the dragon, the surface of the underground lake rose half an inch.
The water waited.
The dragon’s eyes brightened with amusement.
“You said you weren’t going to eat me,” she said.
“I said I wasn’t going to eat you.” He lowered his head until one enormous eye was level with her. “Do you have any chocolate biscuits?”
Nessa looked at him.
The lake settled.
“No. But,” she said, “I do know where to get some.”
“What sort?”
“Chocolate digestives.”
The dragon considered this.
“I prefer the ones with dark chocolate.”
“You’re surprisingly particular.”
“I have standards.”
Nessa glanced at the mountains of treasure.
“I noticed.”
The dragon followed her gaze.
“This is not as excessive as it looks.”
“There’s a crown under your tail.”
He glanced behind himself.
“So there is.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I lose things.”
Nessa smiled.
“What’s your name?”
“Orin.”
She had expected something with claws in it. Something ancient and terrible.
“Orin?”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You don’t like it?”
“I do. It’s just…”
“Yes?”
“I expected more syllables.”
“Such as?”
“Vaerathrax.”
Orin stared at her.
“Vaerathrax?”
“Something like that.”
“My grandfather was called Vaerathrax.”
“There.”
“He was unbearable.”
Nessa laughed again.
Orin looked at her for a moment.
“What’s yours?”
“Nessa.”
“Nessa.”
He said it slowly.
As though testing the sound of it.
She rather liked the way he said it.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
“I was hiding.”
“From whom?”
“My cousins.”
He waited.
“We were playing hide-and-seek.”
Another pause.
“You fell into a dragon’s lair during hide-and-seek?”
“I was winning.”
Orin made a sound that might have been a laugh.
It was deep and warm and rolled through the cavern like distant thunder.
Nessa felt it beneath her feet.
She liked the sound.
That was unexpected.
Orin turned towards the lake.
“Which passage?”
“The one coming from the sea.”
Orin looked at her.
This time there was no amusement in his expression.
“None of them comes from the sea.”
“I assure you one does.”
Nessa smiled innocently.
He looked at the lake again.
“Nobody has ever entered this cave that way.”
“Well.”
Orin looked at her rather more carefully than before.
She liked that too.
“You’re wet,” he said eventually.
Nessa stared at him.
“I’m a selkie.”
“Yes.”
“We tend to be.”
“I meant you must be cold.”
She realised she was shivering.
Orin shifted one wing.
A rush of warm air moved through the cavern.
Then he breathed gently onto the stone beside her.
Flame bloomed.
Nessa jumped.
Orin immediately stopped.
“Sorry.”
“No. I’ve simply never had anyone light a fire by breathing before.”
A small fire now crackled among the stones.
Nessa sat beside it.
Orin settled opposite her.
The cavern suddenly felt less enormous.
For a while neither spoke.
Nessa watched the flame glow against his scales.
Bronze became gold.
Gold became copper.
His eyes remained on her.
“Is it true,” Orin asked eventually, “that selkies can become human?”
“Yes.”
“Could you?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
Nessa smiled.
“Curious?”
“Very.”
She considered him.
Selkies were careful about such things.
A skin was not simply clothing.
It was home.
Freedom.
Sea.
Never something to be handled carelessly in front of strangers.
And yet Orin did not feel entirely like a stranger.
Nessa slipped from the skin.
A moment later a young woman sat beside the fire, dark hair spilling damply over her shoulders.
Orin stared.
Simply with wonder.
Nessa knew that look.
“Well?” she asked.
“You changed.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.”
His head lowered slightly.
“Something less like magic.”
She held her hands towards the fire.
The flames bent subtly towards her.
Orin noticed.
Nessa noticed him noticing.
Neither said anything.
“Can dragons become anything else?” she asked.
“No.”
“Never?”
“Why would we?”
“To see what it’s like.”
“To be smaller?”
“To fit through doors.”
“I have never encountered a door that presented a lasting difficulty.”
Nessa laughed.
“I suppose not.”
Orin looked at her seal skin lying beside her.
“That is how you return to the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Without it?”
“I could never return properly.”
Something changed in his face.
“You should keep it close, then.”
Nessa looked at him.
Orin could have hidden her skin beneath a single claw.
Instead he moved slightly farther from it.
Nessa drew the skin towards herself.
They talked.
At first about small things.
The sea.
The mountain.
How dragons slept.
How selkies slept.
Whether fish became bored.
Why humans insisted on putting flags on things they had only just discovered.
Then the questions grew stranger.
Orin wanted to know what storms looked like from beneath the water.
Nessa wanted to know what clouds looked like from above.
He described flying through moonlight.
She described swimming beneath ice.
He had never touched snow except on mountaintops.
She had never seen a desert.
He had watched kingdoms vanish.
She had followed whales hundreds of miles simply because she could.
Eventually Nessa realised she had forgotten entirely about the game.
Then, faintly, from somewhere deep beneath the cavern came a sound.
“Nessa!”
She sat up.
Again, far away:
“Nessa!”
Her cousins.
Orin lifted his head.
“They’re looking for you.”
Nessa listened.
A distant voice called again.
She should have been relieved.
Instead something sank gently inside her.
“Yes.”
Orin looked towards the underground lake.
“We should find the tunnel.”
“We probably should.”
The fire cracked.
Nessa looked at him.
“Do you really like chocolate biscuits?”
“Very much.”
“Why?”
“I had one once.”
“Once?”
“Forty-three years ago.”
“You’ve been thinking about a biscuit for forty-three years?”
“It was excellent.”
Nessa laughed.
“You dragons really do hold on to things.”
Orin looked around at his hoard.
“Yes.”
Then he looked at her.
“I’ll show you the way.”
The tunnels beneath the mountain were labyrinthine.
Orin led her along a passage where quartz glittered in the walls.
At several points he had to fold his wings tightly against his body.
Nessa followed, sometimes walking, sometimes slipping into pools that joined one cavern to the next.
Eventually they reached a tunnel entirely filled with rushing water.
Orin stopped.
“No.”
Nessa peered around him.
“What?”
“That current.”
“What about it?”
“You can’t go through there.”
She looked at him.
“I’m a selkie.”
“It would crush you against the rock.”
Orin blocked the passage with one foreleg.
She looked up at him.
He genuinely believed he was protecting her.
There was something unexpectedly lovely about that.
She could have told him.
Nessa stepped neatly beneath his foreleg and walked into the torrent.
“Nessa!”
The current divided.
There was no explosion.
No flash of magic.
The torrent simply curved around her body.
Nessa looked back.
“Yes?”
Nessa glanced around. “Oh.”
Orin stepped closer.
The torrent hammered against his claws.
Around Nessa it flowed as gently as silk.
Nessa turned.
The torrent opened before her.
She walked through.
Behind her, Orin followed.
At the next cavern they found a chasm.
It plunged so deeply that neither could see the bottom.
Nessa peered over the edge. “How do we cross?”
Orin crouched.
She looked at him.
Then at his back.
“How do I stay on?”
“Hold on.”
Orin extended one wing.
“There’s a ridge between my shoulders.”
Nessa climbed carefully onto his back.
His scales were unexpectedly smooth.
Warm too.
She settled between two raised ridges.
“You’re holding on?”
She wrapped both arms around the base of his neck.
Orin went very still.
His voice sounded different.
“Good.”
He leapt.
Orin’s wings opened.
Air thundered around them.
For one stomach-lurching instant they fell.
Then they rose.
The shaft opened above them into a vast chamber.
Orin climbed through it, wings beating rhythmically.
Below them, darkness fell away forever.
Above them, crystal shone in the rock.
Nessa clung tighter.
“Still terrified?” he called.
“Completely!”
Nessa buried her face against his neck.
She rested her cheek against his warm scales.
Neither spoke for a while.
He landed gently on the far side.
Nessa climbed down.
For a few moments they stood very close.
“Flying,” she said, “is almost as good as swimming.”
“Selkies don’t know what they are missing.”
“Dragons sleep on money.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“It cannot possibly be comfortable.”
“You should try it.”
Nessa smiled.
“Perhaps I will.”
Then somewhere ahead came another faint call.
“Nessa!”
She sighed.
“This way?” she asked.
“Yes.”
They eventually heard the sea.
It began as a distant pulse.
Then a roar.
Nessa knew immediately.
Her whole body knew.
Home.
The final tunnel descended towards blue light.
Sea water surged rhythmically through the opening.
Beyond it lay the open coast.
Her coast.
Through the gap she could hear voices.
“Nessa!”
“Nessa!”
“She’s here!”
One of her cousins had seen her.
Nessa stepped towards the water.
Then turned back.
Orin stood in the shadows.
He looked far too large for the tunnel.
“You found the way,” he said.
“You found it.”
“I’m no longer certain you needed me.”
Nessa smiled.
“I didn’t know the tunnels.”
Her cousins called again.
“Nessa!”
Orin lowered his head until they were almost eye to eye.
“You know,” she said, “you never did get your biscuits.”
“No.”
“That seems tragic. I could bring some.”
Orin said nothing.
Nessa felt, unexpectedly, a little shy.
“Dark chocolate,” she added.
His eyes brightened.
“You remembered.”
“Forty-three years is too long to wait for a second biscuit.”
“How long would be appropriate?”
Nessa pretended to think.
“Three days.”
“Three?”
“Perhaps two.”
“One seems better.”
“You’re greedy.”
“I’m a dragon.”
“Of course.”
“Nessa!”
She stepped backwards into the water.
Orin watched her.
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Tomorrow.”
“Early?”
“Orin.”
“Yes?”
“Try not to sound desperate.”
“I have waited forty-three years for a biscuit.”
“Ah. So it’s the biscuit.”
“Entirely.”
“Good.”
Nessa slipped deeper.
The water curled around her waist.
The sea behind her rose.
Not as a wave.
As a wall.
For one extraordinary moment the entire mouth of the tunnel became a vertical sheet of water twenty feet high, perfectly motionless.
Through it, Orin could see fish suspended in the blue.
Nessa stood at its centre.
Her dark hair floated around her shoulders although she was still above the surface.
Nessa raised one eyebrow.
Then the sea crashed down.
When the spray cleared she was gone.
Orin stood dripping in the tunnel.
For several seconds he did not move.
The other selkies surrounded Nessa almost at once.
“Where were you?”
“We thought you were trapped!”
“Mara said you’d been eaten!”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I’m fine.”
“Where did you go?”
She looked back towards the rocks.
The opening was almost invisible from the sea.
Deep inside the mountain, something golden moved once in the darkness.
Nessa smiled.
“I found a very good hiding place.”
Her cousin Elia narrowed her eyes.
“You were gone for hours.”
“I know.”
“You lost.”
Nessa considered this.
“No,” she said softly.
“I don’t think I did.”
The next morning Orin woke before dawn.
This had not happened in ninety-seven years.
He arranged a small pile of gold.
Then rearranged it.
Then decided the whole thing looked ridiculous and pushed it aside.
He polished one goblet.
He had no idea why.
He moved a sword.
Put it back.
Moved it again.
Finally he sat beside the underground lake and stared at the black water.
Nothing happened.
Orin told himself this was unsurprising.
Selkies belonged to the sea.
They wandered.
They changed direction.
They disappeared.
He waited.
Still nothing.
Orin looked away.
The surface of the lake rippled.
He turned.
A dark head appeared.
Then two bright eyes.
Nessa hauled herself onto the rock.
She was carrying a waterproof bundle.
Orin tried very hard not to look delighted.
He failed.
“You came back.”
Nessa stood.
“You sound surprised.”
She threw something.
Orin caught it between two claws.
A packet of chocolate digestives.
Dark chocolate.
He stared at it.
Then at her.
Nessa held up another packet.
“I brought two.”
Orin looked at the biscuits.
Then at Nessa.
Dragons, everyone knew, were creatures who hoarded precious things.
Gold.
Jewels.
Anything rare.
Anything beautiful.
Anything they could not bear to lose.
But he did not close the passage behind her.
He simply moved aside and made room beside the fire.
Nessa noticed.
Of course she did.
Selkies noticed paths left open.
She sat beside him.
Orin opened the biscuits.
Carefully.
He offered her the first biscuit.
Nessa took it.
Her fingers touched his claw.
Neither pulled away.
Outside, far beyond the mountain, the tide was turning.
Nessa could feel it.
She always could.
For the first time in her life, she did not immediately feel the need to follow it.
She looked at Orin.
He looked at her.
“Well,” she said.
“Well.”
“I should probably tell you now.”
“What?”
“I’m very good at hide-and-seek.”
“So I gathered.”
“No. I mean very good.”
Orin’s eyes narrowed with interest.
Nessa smiled.
“If you want another biscuit, you’ll have to find me.”
She ran and darted behind the treasures.
Nessa tried not to laugh too loud.
Orin pretended not to hear her.
Not yet.
The dragon appeared to smile.
Then he began his search.
