She closes her eyes to concentrate, and I still have enough energy in my freezing brain to think, What now? Surely Vi isn’t still trying to see her parents. Doesn’t she know we’re as good as drowned already? None of that matters now.

The sea mist boils once more, red and strange in the submerging cavern, as Violet calls on the magic one more time.

“No!” Eels shouts again, splashing upright in the pool, grabbing his harpoon gun. He aims it at Violet, at point-blank range.

Fut! Fut!

Since he didn’t bother to reload the gun, the mechanism spits nothing but compressed air.

In desperation, Eels starts climbing the mound, but by now Violet is wreathed in a maelstrom of power, and the man slips back and cringes in terror as the light of the malamander egg grows brighter and brighter …

… but then dims.

Violet lowers her hands, looking suddenly small and defeated. The storm ceases its roar, dying down again, and the mist rolls away.

Now all we can hear is the rush of water as the tide continues to rise. The magic is ended, and whatever it was Violet wished for hasn’t appeared.

“Nothing?” rages Sebastian Eels, as he struggles back to his feet. “You wretched, unimaginative child. Is that it? You don’t deserve the power. You are as weak and pathetic as your father. Give me the egg! Give it to me, now!”

“Are you sure you want it?” says Violet, quietly. “Really sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Eels rises up out of the sea towards her, pulling his knife from its sheath. “Give it to me!”

“Then take it!” Violet shouts, and she tosses the malamander egg over the man’s head.

Eels jumps, throwing himself up in a frantic bid to catch the egg before it hits the water.

And he succeeds.

He bobs back down, holding the egg above him in triumph.

“Ha!” he cries.

And his cry is answered by a sound I thought I would never hear again: a screeching, shrieking roar of reptilian fury. The malamander, miraculously whole again, glistening with iridescent scales and bristling with spines, leaps from the shadows and lands on Sebastian Eels. Its gaping mouth, lined as before with tooth needles, closes with a sickening crunch over the hand that holds the egg.

Then both monster and man are gone, crashing beneath the inky surface in a storm of water.

Which subsides.

There’s a ripple or two, and a snaking, finned tail twists to the surface of the water for a moment. Then there’s nothing.

Sebastian Eels is gone.

Now all there is to worry about is the spraying of the invading sea, and the boom of the waves, and the creaking of the wreck as the tide rises to engulf us.