The coastal cart dropped her at the crossroads and did not wait.
Nora stood on the gravel with her pack at her feet and watched the cart shrink to a smudge on the coastal road. The driver had said seven words since Harrowmere.
“Port Selby’s the stop before the sea.”
He had not been wrong. The sea was right there, grey and heaving under a sky the colour of old pewter, and Port Selby was a scatter of slate roofs huddled against the cliff like it was bracing for weather that had not arrived yet.
She had been to a dozen villages like this. Same salt-scoured stone. Same narrow streets running downhill toward the harbour. Same smell of wet rope and low tide and someone frying something that would taste better than it had any right to. The villages changed. The work did not. A contract keeper arrived, assessed the situation, did what could be done in three months or six, and moved on before anyone started expecting her to stay.
This one would be three months. She had read the posting twice. Driftwood Dragon Sanctuary, Port Selby. Temporary keeper needed. Dilapidated condition reported. Apply to the Port Selby Council Office.
Dilapidated. That word in a job posting meant someone was trying to be honest and still keep applicants. She had learned to read the gaps.
“Here for the sanctuary, then?”
The voice came from her left. A woman in a stained apron was standing behind a fish stall that had been set up on the harbour wall, gutting mackerel with the kind of efficient disinterest that came from thirty years of holding a knife. She was broad-shouldered and grey-haired, with forearms strong enough to haul a skiff onto shore alone. The knife moved in a steady rhythm, separating flesh from bone until the fish was clean, and she did not look up until it was done.
Nora turned. “Is it that obvious?”
“You’ve got the look.” The woman wiped her hands on her apron and reached under the stall. “Keeper registry sends someone every time the posting goes up. You’re the first one who actually showed.” She held out a bundle wrapped in brown paper. “Smoked mackerel. Eat it while it’s warm.”
“I haven’t even introduced myself.”
“You will.” The woman nodded toward the cliff path with her chin, her hands already reaching for the next fish. “Sanctuary’s up that way. Gate’s rotten, cottage leaks, barn’s full of driftwood. But the dragon’s still there, so it can’t be that bad.”
She turned back to her fish, and the conversation was over.
Nora weighed the bundle in her hands. It was still warm. She tucked it into her pack and started walking.
The road from the harbour curved uphill, past a pub with a sign she could not read at this angle, past a chandlery with coils of rope hanging in the window, past a narrow lane that led to the stone steps where two fishing boats were tied. The few people she passed nodded as they went, the kind of acknowledgment that said they had seen her and would decide about her later.
The cliff path branched off at the edge of town. It was narrow, edged with thrift and sea campion, the white flowers nodding in the salt wind. To her right, the harbour opened out, a half-circle of grey water where a few fishing boats rocked at their moorings. The water slapped against the stone walls in a rhythm that matched the pulse of her walking. To her left, the cliff rose in terraces of fractured slate, and above it all, the lighthouse stood at the point. White stone. Black lantern. The lens was dark in the afternoon light, but she could see movement at the base, a figure carrying something down the outer stair.
She stopped to watch. The man was tall, dark-haired, in a heavy fisherman’s knit that had been mended at least twice at the elbows. He carried a creel in one hand and moved with the sure-footed efficiency of someone who walked this route every day, who knew the weight of each step on the worn stone. He did not look up. He reached the bottom of the stair, crossed the headland, and disappeared down a path toward the harbour, never acknowledging her existence.
Nora watched him go. A lighthouse keeper, probably. Or a fisherman who lived on that side of the point. Either way, he was not her problem. Her problem was the sanctuary.
She found it at the top of the rise, and the word dilapidated turned out to have been optimistic.
The gate was the first thing she saw, because it was the thing that should have kept her out and was failing at the job. The iron hinges had rusted through, leaving the gate hanging at a crooked angle, one corner dragging in the mud. The wood was grey with salt and weather, splintered where it had been forced against the ground. Beyond it, a cottage hunched against the cliff like something that had been beaten by weather for too long and had stopped pretending otherwise. Moss grew thick on the roof slates, the colour of old verdigris, and the windows were salt-crusted to opacity. A barn stood to the side, built of driftwood and salvage, its roof patched with tarred canvas and hope.
The path from the gate to the cottage door was barely visible under a layer of grass and sorrel that had grown unchallenged for months. Nobody had walked this path in a long time.
Nora stood at the fallen gate and felt the familiar pull of the thing she did not want to feel. The sanctuary was a wreck. It would take weeks just to make it habitable. The garden would be a tangle of brambles and sea kale. The roof would need patching. The chimney would need cleaning. The structures would need shoring against the next winter storm. The previous keeper had walked away, and the registry had not sent anyone to fill the gap, and the whole place had sat here falling apart while the town went about its business on the other side of the cliff.
She was already listing the repairs in her head. That was the problem. A broken thing always started a repair list. First the gate, because a gate that did not close was an invitation to weather and animals. Then the roof, because the roof was the only thing between the interior and the coastal damp. Then the chimney, because a hearth that did not draw was a hearth that could not warm. Then the windows, the door, the path, the garden.
She was not supposed to care this much. That was the rule. A contract keeper assessed, stabilised, and moved on. She did not rebuild. She did not plant. She did not stay long enough to see the first repair weather.
Nora pushed the gate open, felt it scrape against the ground, and stepped through.
The cottage door was not locked. The wood had swollen in the damp, and she had to put her shoulder against it, but it gave with a groan that sounded like the building was complaining about being disturbed. Inside, the air was cold and still and smelled of salt and dust and the particular mustiness of a space that had been closed too long. She stepped over the threshold and let the door close behind her.
The main room was a kitchen and living area combined. A hearth, black with old ash. A table, two chairs, a dry sink with a pump handle that would need priming. Shelves along the wall held a few crockery pieces and a tea tin. The window over the sink was so crusted with salt that the light came through pale and milky, like looking through ice.
And in the corner, pressed against the wall where the window gave onto the cove, a dragon stood watching the sea.
Nora stopped.
It was not a large dragon. About the size of a sheepdog, she thought, though she had never seen a sheepdog that moved like this one moved. Its body was long and low, built close to the ground, with a ridge of spines along its back that shifted in slow sequence, like waves moving across water. Its scales were the colour of wet stone, grey and blue and green all at once, catching the light in ways that made it hard to see where the dragon ended and the shadow began. Its head was turned toward the window, and it was staring at the sea with an intensity that made Nora’s chest tighten.
It had not acknowledged her. It had not moved. It was simply standing there, pressed against the wall, watching the water through the salt-crusted glass. The spines moved in their slow sequence, a wave that started at its neck and travelled to its tail, and Nora watched them, motionless and silent, letting the creature decide whether she was worth noticing.
A full minute passed. The dragon did not turn.
Nora set her pack down slowly, careful not to make a sound that might startle it. The bundle of smoked mackerel was still warm in her hand. With fish in one hand and a dragon by the wall, what she knew about tide dragons would not fill a teacup. They were rare. They were reclusive. They were not supposed to be kept in cottages that were falling down around them.
“This is not what I expected,” she said quietly.
The dragon gave no answer. But the wave-pattern along its spines shifted, a slow ripple from neck to tail, and Nora got the distinct impression that she was being assessed by a creature that had not decided whether she was worth the attention.
She had been assessed by worse.
Nora moved to the window, keeping her distance, and faced the cove. The tide was low, exposing a strip of wet sand where rock pools gleamed in the grey light. The water beyond was the same grey as the sky, and the horizon was a clean line where the two met and disappeared into each other. The lighthouse stood on the far point, white and silent, and she could see the shape of the outer stair where the man had been standing.
She had arrived.
The sanctuary was a wreck. The dragon was withdrawn. The town was guarded. The lighthouse keeper would not look at her. And she had three months to hold this place together before the registry sent her somewhere else.
Nora set the mackerel on the table and took in the room properly. The hearth was cold, the ash in it deep and fine, undisturbed for months. The shelves held the basics: a few plates, a teapot with a chipped spout, a candle stub melted onto a saucer. The dry sink was empty but clean. A small window beside the door opened onto the overgrown garden and the collapsed greenhouse beyond.
She began looking for a kettle. She found it on the hearth, blackened and cold, and she carried it to the sink. The pump handle was stiff, and she worked it slowly, feeling the mechanism catch and release. The first few strokes brought nothing but air. Then the water came, brown and rust-coloured, running into the sink before it cleared to a pale, mineral grey. She let it run until it was cold and clean.
She filled the kettle, set it on the hook over the hearth, and began opening the cupboards to see what she had to work with.
Three plates. Two cups. A knife with a bone handle. A box of matches that might still be dry. A half-empty jar of salt. A tin of tea that was older than she was, the leaves compressed into a dark cake at the bottom.
She built a fire from the kindling she found in a basket beside the hearth. The wood was dry, and the flames caught quickly, casting the first light the cottage had seen in months. She set the kettle over the flame and stood in the middle of the room, letting the warmth reach her.
While the water heated, she wet a corner of her travelling cloth and rubbed at the seaward pane. The salt came away reluctantly, grain by grain, until she had cleared a strip no wider than her hand at the tide dragon’s eye level. Then she stepped back.
For the first time, the dragon moved with purpose. It shifted one forefoot, lowered its head to the clear glass, and looked through. The slow ripple of its spines eased. After a moment it settled its shoulder against the wall beside the bright strip and kept watching the cove.
Nora wrung out the cloth and hung it over the pump. One hand-width of sea returned to the room.
The tide dragon remained at the cleared strip, fixed on the water, its spines moving at the pace of the tide outside.
Nora sat down at the table with the cup of tea she had made from the old leaves and made her first list. Roof. Chimney. Gate. Hearth. Window. Barn. Then, at the bottom, in smaller letters: Dragon.
She could work with that.
Outside, the light was fading. Nora stood at the window and watched the cove darken by degrees, the rocks losing their edges first, then the water. The tide dragon stood beside her, still at the window. It had not moved closer, but it had not moved away either.
Nora banked the fire, checked that the door was latched, and lay down on the cot with her coat over her. The canvas was rough against her cheek, and the pillow smelled of salt and the person who had used it before her. The tide dragon remained by the glass, its reflection dark and narrow against the darkening water. One flash crossed the window every twelve seconds. She counted ten of them before her eyes closed.
