Did this mother understand that they would have been engulfed by the lava—that I had saved them?

Her shriek drowned my thoughts, and I yelped with the pain from my injured ear. The wind of her wings battered me, rocking the boat. I was like a sacrifice offered up to a mythical beast, completely helpless.

Should I reveal to her what was in the chest? Maybe she could scoop up the eggs in her mouth and save them after all. I could return them to her.

But if she were able to carry the eggs, then she would have done so in the cavern.

With a grinding shriek, the dragon released a stream of fire.

It smashed into the sea to my side, shooting up plumes of steam. I curled up, folding myself as small as possible.

All was quiet.

The wind of her wings eased. When I dared to crane my head upward, she was almost directly above me and staring down like an avenging angel or devil, her body in a tightly controlled hover I recognized from watching a hawk about to dive on its prey.

My survival instinct took over. The ancient knife, blackened with age, was in the base of the boat. I grasped it, a tiny weapon less than a tenth the size of one of the dragon’s claws, but something is always better than nothing. I would stand and fight. I balanced in the boat, water swilling at my ankles, watching her plummet. She knew the eggs were in the chest, I was sure of it.

I remembered her screams of anguish in the cavern.

I couldn’t attack her, I just … couldn’t. I threw the knife aside.

I grabbed the chest and leaned heavily to the side, capsizing the entire boat and tipping myself into the sea, the boat over my head. I lost hold of the chest. The slats covered me like a roof, and when the dragon fire hit the wet wood, it did not catch at first. But with a second shrieking blast the fire took hold and I was in a tiny cave of flame. I ducked down beneath the sea, chunks of the boat floated ablaze above me, blocking my route to air. I kicked away as hard as I could, underwater, until my lungs were bursting and I was forced to surface.

I gasped and sputtered, spinning, scanning the sky all around me. Empty.

The last scraps of the ancient boat smoldered and sank.

Something dark bobbed on the surface of the water. At first I imagined it was my fiddle, somehow making it all this way to join me, just like when I first dragged it from the surf. But it was the wooden treasure chest.

I splashed over to it, grappled at the damp, slippery wood, singed and blackened but still strong, then rested my head and arms over the chest and let it hold me up.