‘Let’s try here.’ Mags pulled on the left oar and reversed with the right, skilfully 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 whirlpooled 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 furthest 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 on to my line, silently cursing my competitive sister. She was always getting me into ridiculous scrapes. The idea of being 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 the harbour. 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.