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YEAR 4
“The seaside? With Agatha?”
Simon immediately regretted trying to talk to Rhys and Gareth in the locker room before P.E. He should’ve visited them in their room after classes.
“Holiday with Wellbelove,” laughed Dev. “Sounds like a blast.”
Because now Simon wasn’t just telling his friends about hunting selkies over the Easter break. Now he was telling every boy in his year.
Now he was telling Baz, who Simon could see sneering through the back of his boater-topped head.
Simon shrugged off his blazer and hung his own boater on a hook. “It wasn’t a holiday.”
. . .
“You went on holiday with Simon Snow?” Trixie squealed. “That happened so fast.”
What happened fast? Agatha wondered. We’ve been friends for years. She pulled her boater-crushed hair into a ponytail. “It wasn’t a holiday.”
“A honeymoon,” teased Trixie.
Thank magic Penny wasn’t around to hear. Penny always got out of P.E. with a note saying she had a conscientious objection to pointless wastes of time.
“Simon Snow,” sighed Philippa. “He’s cute as can be.”
Agatha rolled her eyes as she pulled on shorts under her skirt. “We’re just friends.”
Movement from the corner of the locker room caught Agatha’s eye—Niamh Brody, taping crosses before afternoon practice. She held a stick across her thighs as she overlapped the tape just so.
Maybe I’ll try lacrosse, thought Agatha.
“Come on,” prompted Keris. “Tell us more.”
. . .
Agatha had expected the Cornish coast to be picturesque. And maybe it was, in the villages and along rocky beaches. But the inside of the fishing hut was squalid.
The Mage had sent Simon to Cornwall to collect the skins of four selkies accused of enchanting Normals. “They need to stand trial before the Coven,” the Mage had said. “Without their skins, they can’t slip into the sea to evade justice.” Simon, Penny and Agatha had found three already.
“I’ll ask you once more,” said Penny, holding the fisherman and his wife at ringpoint. “The skin was here in the last fortnight.” The woman’s eyes grew wild as Penny continued. “Where is it now?”
The woman cringed, eyes darting between Penny’s ring, Simon’s sword and, for no obvious reason, Agatha’s face. “Don’t—I don’t—”
“Fall to pieces.” Penny’s ring flashed and the hut’s only window shattered, inches behind the woman’s head.
“Don’t lie,” Simon warned. Flames licked up his sword. The damp thatch roof steamed where the sword grazed it. Morgana, Simon, let’s get out of this shack before you burn it down, thought Agatha.
“I swear, I don’t—“
“The well.”
All eyes turned toward the fisherman.
“In the marsh.”
Simon and Agatha looked through the broken window at the salt marsh that surrounded the hut, which had been built on slowly sinking infill.
Penny never looked away from the couple. “If you’re lying—”
“M’not,” grunted the fisherman. His wife just stared at him.
“I’ll look,” said Simon, vanishing his sword.
“I’ll hold them,” gritted Penny. “Agatha—“
“I’ll help Simon,” Agatha said. Simon wouldn’t need help, Agatha knew, but she couldn’t look any longer at the woman’s face.
. . .
“It’s hot at the seaside,” leered Dev. “Did you find some shade? Make out under the dock?” Across the locker room, Baz scoffed.
“I, um. There was no dock.” Simon didn’t want to talk about Agatha behind her back, but he did want to shut up Dev. And Baz. “I did hold her hand.”
. . .
Agatha squeezed Simon’s hand to comfort him; she was worried he’d go off. The water had reached their chests and was still rising.
The fisherman hadn’t lied. Simon and Agatha found the selkie’s skin was at the bottom of a stone well, clearly abandoned when its stone walls started letting in saltwater from the surrounding marsh. The skin was a huge, heavy, stinking thing like the other three stashed in Penny’s bag of holding.
The fisherman hadn’t lied, but he also hadn’t mentioned that the skin was tied to a metal ring driven into the well’s floor. Or that the skin would magickally ensnare their feet when they stood on it.
Or that the tide was coming in.
“Simon.” They were huddled back to back, sharing what little heat they had and still shivering. “D-do something.”
“There’s no room to draw the Sword,” said Simon. “And anyway, we’re supposed to bring the skins back intact.”
“F-fuck the s-skin,” chattered Agatha. “Bring our-s-selves back intact.” Agatha’s feet were going numb and she was shaking all over.
“Ags?” Simon sounded worried. There was barely enough room in the narrow well to turn around, but she felt him trying. “Here. I’ll warm us up.”
. . .
“He pissed in the well?”
“Don’t be crude, Brody.”
. . .
Simon’s excess magic instantly turned the frigid water uncomfortably warm. Agatha felt like she was sitting in a hot tub on a summer day.
Agatha and Minty did that sometimes, when they wanted to lounge by Minty’s pool without actually swimming. But when Agatha and Minty overheated they could just dive into the kidney-shaped inground. They’d go back and forth until they were waterlogged and pruney, then go inside for manicures and mocktails, smelling of chlorine. It was brilliant.
There was nothing brilliant about lobster-steaming to death next to Agatha’s closest magician friend. Or drowning with him.
The water was still rising inches every minute. It was like taking a slow escalator into the sea.
Illustration by ionlydrinkhotwater
. . .
“Snow and Wellbelove, drowning in a bog,” sang Niall. “S-N-O-G, snog, snog—”
. . .
“This is such utter crap,” Agatha spat into the murk.
“What?”
“This. Us, drowning, for no reason.”
“But I need to stop—”
“No, you don’t. You don’t need to do any of it. I certainly don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Ags.” Simon squeezed her hand, sounding miserable. “I should’ve kept you safe.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. I should have already been safe at home. Or school. So should you.”
The water was almost in their mouths now. It would cover Simon’s first—he was still an inch or two shorter than Agatha. She could feel him rise to his tiptoes.
“Ags,” he sputtered. “If we don’t—if this is—”
The water choked his words.
. . .
“So you nearly drowned and you just, what, waited for your boyfriend to fix it?” Brody folded her arms, crosses forgotten.
“He's not—”
Trixie clapped her hands. “Eeeek! I knew it! Keris—”
“Fine,” Keris said. “I owe you five quid.”
Philippa pouted.
“He’s not—”
Brody rolled her eyes. “Life or death and you’re thinking about boyfriends.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Agatha finally cut in.
“Please.” Brody scowled. “Did you even put up a fight?”
. . .
Agatha had had enough. She was going to do what they should have done as soon as the skin ensnared their feet. What they should have done instead of faffing about with unhelpful magic trying to keep the bloody thing intact. She took a deep breath, crouched, and sunk her fingers into the selkie’s skin.
It wouldn’t work, she knew. She was going to drown, and so was Simon.
But she didn’t want to be found with perfect hands limp at her side. She wanted them to dredge her from the well with her nails clawed bloody into blubber and fur.
The skin felt much softer than when Agatha and Simon had first tried to pull it from their feet. Not just softer—immaterial. Agatha, expecting the tough skin, felt her hands plunge straight through it into something warm and soft. She pushed past her knuckles and wrists and elbows until the skin rose on its own over her shoulders, over her face.
For half a second Agatha smothered, and then—
There was suddenly no room in the well for Agatha and Simon to stand side by side. She was somehow under him, pushing him above the surface of the water, her body brushing every wall of the round stone shaft.
The water that had threatened to drown her seconds ago no longer felt like a problem, and Agatha no longer had feet tangled in a rubbery mass. She no longer had feet at all.
“Ags?” Simon sputtered, tumbling on top of her. The water was gushing in now as she punched new cataracts into the well with every movement. The water was well over her head, though she didn’t feel panic or pressure. Soon it would be over Simon’s. He didn’t know how to tread water, even if there had been room enough.
Agatha’s sleek head rose between Simon’s knees. It was easy, with the water supporting his weight. Simon somehow got the message and hugged her shining neck, squeezing her shoulders with his knees.
As the well collapsed all around them, Agatha pumped her tail for dear life.
Illustration by technetiumai
. . .
“Splashing around together,” sighed Elspeth. “That’s so romantic.”
As a dead fish, thought Agatha.
. . .
Carrying Simon through the marsh wasn’t uncomfortable once they cleared the sinking debris of the well. Agatha could have swum faster underwater, but she cruised along the surface for Simon’s sake. He was straddling her back now, as unsteady in his seat as the disastrous five minutes she’d once got him on her horse.
Agatha aimed for the silhouette of the hut and drifted toward it, her mind filled with memories not her own.
Foraging at the seabed. Sunning with her sisters. Water and salt and endless depths.
Shedding her skin, visiting shore. A man with a kind smile and a cosy home. A refuge, eventually, when her skin disappeared.
Years stranded from the sea, always hunting for her skin. Living with the fisherman, who turned hard and sour, even though she gave him children, even though she gave him whatever he wanted.
Always, the sound and smell of water, of the home she couldn’t reach, the sisters she couldn’t savour. Of the sea that called to her but tossed her back like foam.
. . .
“Bet you got her suit damp,” leered Dev.
. . .
“Is that a California sea lion?” Penny had read up on pinnipeds on the train to Cornwall. “You can tell it’s not a seal because—”
“Not the time, Pen,” interrupted Simon, who had climbed off Agatha before he waded and she waddled ashore. “Still got them?”
Penny narrowed her eyes and releveled the gem. “Got them.”
“Good.” He turned expectantly to Agatha.
It’s sweet that you think I know what I’m doing, she thought. And then she thought more, about the skin splitting down her chest outward and off her human shoulders. When she thought about it she realised it had happened. Agatha stepped dripping out of the skin, which she picked up. It must weigh fifty pounds.
Agatha saw with mild relief that her clothes had reappeared, albeit soaked with fishy water. Where did my jumper go? Where did any of her go when she transformed?
Penny looked shocked, and Simon relieved, by Agatha’s transformation. Now or never, Agatha thought.
Illustration by technetiumai
Agatha crossed the hut and flung the skin over the fisherman’s wife. Penny and Simon yelled, but Agatha stood between them and the woman. Or—what had been the woman.
Where the fisherman’s wife had cowered there was now a speckled harbor seal.
“Great snakes!”
“Ags, what have you—”
“Don’t touch her,” Agatha warned, and something in her voice made her friends listen.
The selkie didn’t spare them a glance, undulating across the hut’s rough floor, barely squeezing out the door. They heard a splash as she must have slipped off the dock.
“You.” Agatha turned to the fisherman, whose face had gone somehow white and purple. But what could Agatha do?
Normal police would never listen to stories of magickal human trafficking, let alone inhuman trafficking. And the Coven would probably prosecute Agatha for aiding a dark creature.
Only dark when I—when she—hide from boats, thought Agatha.
“But what will we tell the Coven?” said Penny. “The trial—”
“No.” Words weren’t coming easily back to Agatha. “No trials.”
. . .
“Did Simon use his sword?” asked Philippa. “Was it epic?”
. . .
Agatha pulled her wand from her pocket. (Guess that survived the transformation, too.) She levelled it at the fisherman, flexing every muscle of her magic, concentrating on the words.
“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Penny had found the spell. No one had expected Agatha to be the one to use it.
If the fisherman ever touched salt water again, even ankle deep, he would drown.
. . .
“No,” Agatha said. “It wasn’t epic.”
. . .
Agatha didn’t feel like talking after they left the hut, but she let Penelope see for herself with Great minds think alike. Let her explain to Simon.
Before they left the coast, they threw the three other skins they’d collected—all from men with brown-eyed wives—into the sea. A solemn face watched them from the water.
. . .
Niall was still singing. “Snow and Wellbelove, wading through the muck—”
“Enough.”
Simon’s eyes widened. Baz was sticking up for him?
Baz cleared his throat. “Wellbelove would never snog this half-wit.”
Oh, thought Simon.
Snogging Agatha. Had Simon thought about that before? He’d felt safer, having her hand to squeeze in the well. He cared for Agatha. More than anyone in the world, except Penny. And maybe the Mage.
Agatha cared for him, he knew she did. They were friends.
That’s why she would never date Baz. Just because Baz was richer and cleverer and fitter and better at magic, she wouldn’t date him.
Unless, maybe, he was her only option.
“Don’t be sure, Baz.” Simon slammed his locker shut. “I have a better chance than you.”
Baz sneered. “Really.”
Illustration by technetiumai
“Tell me moooore!” squealed Trixie.
“There’s nothing else to—”
“Enough.” Brody stood, frowning. “I have work to do.”
No one asked you to listen, thought Agatha, as Brody laid a crosse back over her thighs.
By the time the girls reached the recreation field, they were calling Simon Agatha’s boyfriend. She didn’t bother correcting them as she started her pre-football stretches.
Simon was a good person. He always did what he thought was the right thing. And she’d saved his life in Cornwall. Maybe he’d be safer with her than without her.
“Hey, Ags.”
Agatha looked up from touching her toes to see Simon’s knees sticking out of gym shorts. “Hi, Simon.”
“Can I, er.” He scratched the back of his neck, not meeting Agatha’s eye. “Can I join you?”
“Sure.” Agatha resumed her hamstring stretch. From the sidelines she could hear Elspeth’s giggle, Dev’s whistle, Niall’s singsong chant. She ignored them.
“Man, this is hard.” Beside Agatha, Simon strained to reach his toes, fingertips barely grazing his shins.
They were too far from the other students to hear any conversations, but Agatha picked out stray words from the crowd. Wellbelove and Snow and boyfriend and nonsense. That last sounded like Basil Pitch. Agatha knew from Simon’s huff that he’d heard too.
Agatha sat on the grass and lay back for glute stretches, Simon flopping heavily beside her. They crossed ankles over knees and pulled their thighs to their faces. Simon poked out the tip of his tongue with the effort. It was kind of cute. Like an eager dog.
Agatha’s mum keeps talking about prospects…
Simon would never lie to Agatha, she knew in her soul. He’d always be kind to her.
And when she needed to leave, he’d let her go.
Illustration by ionlydrinkhotwater