Our Castle by the Sea

by Lucy Strange

  “What?” a voice called out rudely from the back. “ARP warden? As well as headmistress and justice of the flamin’ peace?” It was Arthur Briggs, Kipper’s father.

  “Yes, Arthur,” Mrs. Baron replied, deploying the tolerant smile she usually reserved for the children who shouted out stupid things in class. “Unless you fancy the job, of course?”

  “You’re welcome to it, I’m sure,” muttered Briggs, adding a sarcastic “m’lady,” under his breath. Then I heard him mutter to Kipper, “Fingers in too many pies, that one … She’ll be queen of flamin’ England next.”

  Very wisely, Mrs. Baron chose to ignore Arthur Briggs and was now pressing on with instructions on how to use the gas mask, but I found it very difficult to concentrate because Mags was fanning herself, flapping her gas mask instructions around right next to my face, and it kept making me blink. She seemed to be in a sort of trance, staring intently towards the front of the hall. I nudged her, and when she eventually looked at me, I swatted her gas mask instructions right out of her hand. Mags scowled and elbowed me hard in the ribs, making me squeak. I was immediately aware that Mrs. Baron had stopped talking and was looking straight at me. My stomach went tight. Other people were turning to look at me now too.

  “This is no laughing matter, young lady,” she said, pressing her lips together and shaking her head in disappointment. “This device could save your life, you know. Come along, Petra. Come up here and I’ll show you how it works.”

  I squeezed past Mags, out of our row, and made my way to the front of the hall to stand beside Mrs. Baron. I felt like a magician’s assistant about to be sawed in half. I hoped no one could see that my knees were shaking.

  I had always rather liked Mrs. Baron, but right now she was my least favorite person on the whole planet—after Mags of course. I glared at my sister and tried not to make eye contact with Mutti and Pa, who were smiling at me proudly as if I had been picked to play the lead part in the school play. I noticed Mrs. Baron’s handsome son, Michael, was also smiling, and I hoped that my cheeks weren’t too beet red.

  Then I realized that Mrs. Baron’s eagle eyes had settled expectantly upon me and I hadn’t been listening to a single word she had been saying.

  “Off you go, Petra,” she said, gesturing to the mask I was clutching in my hands.

  I knew exactly what was going to happen next. What always happened to me when I was this frightened. I froze.

  Mrs. Baron sighed. “Like this, dear …” And quite suddenly she had taken the gas mask out of my rigid hands, pressed it onto my face, and was pulling the tight strap over the top of my head.

  I was underwater. I was drowning.

  The village hall became a sinking ship, swaying its way down to the bottom of the deepest, greenest sea, taking me and everyone else with it. My whole head was pinched with pressure, and I gasped for air, hearing a strange, alien hiss as I managed to draw a little, dizzying oxygen, just enough to keep me alive for a few agonizing seconds until, at last, I felt a hand on the back of my head pulling the strap off again—and then—oh!—the relief!—I could breathe once more—I could move! I folded in half, hands on my shaking knees, tongue hanging out of my mouth, trying to inhale enough clean air to get rid of the bitter, rubbery taste of the mask.

  “Are you all right, Petra?” Mrs. Baron said, rubbing my back soothingly. “It is a bit odd at first I know, but don’t worry—you’ll get used to it with practice!” She gave a sympathetic little laugh, and everyone else in the village hall laughed too.

  My face burned with embarrassment as I made my way unsteadily out of the door along with the rest of the village, my gas mask safely back in its cardboard box. I took a deep, cool breath of the seaside air and turned my face up towards the sun, as if its light could somehow bleach away the horror of the last few minutes.

  “You did well, Petra,” said a voice beside me. I turned to see Michael Baron’s sparkling green eyes looking down at me. “I felt quite queasy the first time I tried to breathe through one of these. Tastes horrible, doesn’t it?”

  “Disgusting,” I agreed, and started to feel a bit better, but then I was knocked sideways by my idiotic sister bumping up beside me. Michael gave us both a cheerful wink before he turned left and started striding off up the hill.

  “Thanks for nothing, Mags,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

  She just gave me a sarcastic little grin.

  Michael turned back then and called to us: “By the way, are you two ladies entering the crabbing competition tomorrow?”

  “I didn’t think it was happening this year,” Magda replied.

  “Of course it’s happening—not going to let a silly little thing like a war get in the way of an important tradition like crabbing, are you?”

  Mags laughed.

  “And it’ll be fun beating Kipper again …” Michael timed this remark beautifully, just as Kipper and his father emerged from the village hall. “Calls himself a fisherman, but last year he couldn’t even catch a cold, could you, Kipper?”

  Kipper glared at Michael and started to turn away. But Mr. Briggs went crimson. He shoved Kipper forward with a snarl, as if encouraging his son to fight Michael Baron on the spot. Kipper shrugged him off, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sloped off down the hill towards the harbor. After spitting on the cobblestones and cursing “the bloody high-and-mighty Barons,” his father followed him.

  Michael raised his eyes to heaven and grinned. “Well, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, then, ladies!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Crabbing, Mags?” I said. “Do we have to?”

  “Of course!” she insisted, smiling broadly. “It’s a tradition! Come on, Pet. We’ll take the rowing boat and a picnic—it’ll be fun.”

  I didn’t really want to go, but I could see it was suddenly important to Mags, and she hadn’t looked this happy about anything since the war had begun.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Just promise me you won’t get too competitive about it. I don’t want to be out in the boat for hours and hours until it gets dark.” Just the thought of it made me feel cold and sick.

  “I promise,” she said. But she had that wild, excited look in her eye.

  I should have known then that something was going to go wrong.

  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, skillfully 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 whirl-pooled 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 farthest 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 onto my line, silently cursing my competitive sister. She was always getting me into ridiculous scrapes. The idea of getting 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 th
e harbor. 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 cliff path 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 snugly, 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 leaned 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 through the current. I watched the white scrap of meat slowly disappearing as it drifted down 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 up 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 suddenly shouted, “What the hell is THAT?”

  The fishing line dropped through my fingers. I had already got myself into a nervous 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 leaned forward, and 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 across the splintery wood—but it was too late—I was heading 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 into 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 woolen 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 heard Mags’s muted voice above the surface—“PET!”—and I kicked out at the water 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 and 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 smooth and solid—I shrieked and kicked desperately against it, and found myself rising up against the hull. I pushed down again, pulling on the loop of 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 at my hand and hauled me all the way out.

  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 sea water 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 sweater 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?”

  I nodded miserably.

  “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?”

  “Pardon?”

  “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 water. 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 expressio
n 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.”

  Mags suggested that we tell the police, just in case that dark, sinister shape really had been a German U-boat, but Michael Baron said there was no point, as they wouldn’t believe us. He tried to persuade her to take him out in the boat straightaway so that he could see it, but I fixed my sister with such an I’ll tell Pa look that she took me home instead.

  I couldn’t decide what was more horrifying—the idea that I’d stepped onto the scaled skin of the Wyrm in my struggle to get out of the water, or that what I’d felt beneath my feet had been the top of an enemy submarine.

  There were certainly rumors of U-boats in the Channel. Some of the fishermen came home with stories of having spotted them lurking beneath the water, but most people dismissed the sightings, just as fishermen’s tales of mermaids and giant sea serpents had been dismissed for thousands of years.

  Could the enemy really be that close to our coast? Could they be watching us? Since those first reconnaissance planes on the day we finished painting the lighthouse, everything had been eerily quiet—no bombs or gas—none of the things we had been warned about—just air raid drills and false alarms. Someone on the wireless had called it the “Twilight War.” Perhaps the promised darkness is never going to come, I had thought. Perhaps all the trouble is just going to fade quietly away … But now it seemed possible that the darkness was much, much closer than we’d thought.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but its shadowy fingers were already reaching into the very heart of my family.

  A couple of months after the disastrous crabbing competition, a stubborn fog settled over Stonegate. Pa was under strict instructions not to light the lamp. He only lit it now when he received a telephone call, telling him that the light was needed for the safe passage of a particular British convoy. The foghorn was not sounded very often either—again, only when the telephone rang or Pa received a radio message. This was to make sure that we were not accidentally helping any enemy airplanes or vessels that might be near our coast.