Eighteen-year-old Sasha Clems didnât mean to steal a seadragonâs magic. Or err⌠More correctly, she did. She just didnât mean to get caught.
Sasha is tired of being poor. Tired of foreclosure notices tacked to her familyâs fridge, tired of working four jobs, tired of dreaming about college rather than attending.
When one morning she witnesses a dying seadragon expel its magic in the form of a basketball-sized jewel, she grabs it. The last time this happened, the jewel sold in the high nine-figures, but only after a kidnapping, three deaths, and an international manhunt by the Magic-Handlersâ Alliance.
No reward without a little risk.
Sasha bolts off on a cross-country race to the single person she trusts to help auction off the jewel. Chasing her is the government, the Magic-Handlerâs Alliance, more dragons, and the hottest teenage magician on the face of the planet.
Even worse, the more Sasha discovers about the world of magic and the nature of the seadragon itself, the more she realizes there are things and people that just might be more important than money.
Maybe� Because Sasha is really done with being poor.
Eighteen-year-old Sasha Clems didnât mean to steal a seadragonâs magic. Or err⌠More correctly, she did. She just didnât mean to get caught.
Sasha is tired of being poor. Tired of foreclosure notices tacked to her familyâs fridge, tired of working four jobs, tired of dreaming about college rather than attending.
When one morning she witnesses a dying seadragon expel its magic in the form of a basketball-sized jewel, she grabs it. The last time this happened, the jewel sold in the high nine-figures, but only after a kidnapping, three deaths, and an international manhunt by the Magic-Handlersâ Alliance.
No reward without a little risk.
Sasha bolts off on a cross-country race to the single person she trusts to help auction off the jewel. Chasing her is the government, the Magic-Handlerâs Alliance, more dragons, and the hottest teenage magician on the face of the planet.
Even worse, the more Sasha discovers about the world of magic and the nature of the seadragon itself, the more she realizes there are things and people that just might be more important than money.
Maybe� Because Sasha is really done with being poor.
Chapter 1
It shouldâve been an entirely normal, early morning, absolutely nothing-unusual-happens run on the beach.
I left the house at 5:37 a.m., the sun a hazy reflection behind the horizon. I wore my usual outfitâlong hair in a pony, light hoodie, jogger shorts, and high-end Saucony Endorphin running shoes.
No, my family wasnât rich.
We were more endlessly-on-the-verge-of-foreclosure, worry-instead-of-sleep, dead-but-unburied-due-to-costs broke. Dad, Gramps, my brother, and my brother-in-law went in on the Sauconys as a combination Christmas and graduation gift. Yes, Iâm that girl who graduated from high school a semester early.
The drive to my favorite beach took ten minutes. I parked in the sand-strewn lot, hid my keys under my seat, and stretched my upper body as I hiked over the dunes to the water. Running in the mornings was pretty much the only quiet time I got, and I cherished it like most people my age did their cellphones. Okay, I totally cherished that as well, even if mine was six years old and had the crappiest cell service on the planet.
I knew the moment I left the dunes that something was off about the bay. No salty breeze. No morning bird calls. Even the surf seemed muted.
Meh. Enjoy the peace. I had a small window here.
I had the timing of my runs down perfect. If I began at six a.m. sharp and kept my pace, Iâd finish at 6:54. This gave me twenty-eight minutes to get back to my car, drive to Carmel, and arrive for my Job #1 only two minutes late. Any later than that and Mrs. Lee gave me a bruising lecture on punctuality and threatened to fire me. Yes, it was a weird motivational tactic. Yes, it worked.
The moment my phone chirped six a.m., I shoved it into my pocket and took off across the damp sand.
Only then did I notice what was wrong.
Something in the distance blocked the beach. An overturned boat hull maybe, half out of the rolling tide.
That happened sometimes. A boat would get loose during a storm, drift down the coast, and show up somewhere else beat-to-death. But it was April and this was California. Whale, then?
That happened too. A couple years ago, my dad and brother had taken me with them to get pictures of a partially eaten whale calf. Gross.
This was much bigger than the calf. Much, much bigger. âFourteen hours,â I complained to the object, the ocean, my dad and brother who couldnât hear me anyway, âThatâs how much I worked yesterday. Fourteen very long, very tiring, very doing-ten-more-today hours. I deserved to get to run. I earned this.â
I slowed to a walk anyway, pulling my phone back out and setting it to video. My dad had a minorly successful social media channel, meaning he made enough money to not quite cover his expenses. My brother, Antony, was his producer. While the platform was exotic car parts, they could work in pretty much anything that might get views. A recently deceased whale was a no-brainer, especially as Ant would find a way to blame cruisehips or fishermen or someone like that for the death.
âThis isnât likely to make any financial difference,â I grumbled to myself. (Nothing ever did.)
I hit Record. âOh, wow,â I exclaimed in a hopefully-not-too-fake tone for the benefit of the channelâs audience. âUpside-down sailing boat? Gray whale? Giant squid? What could it be?â I panned my phone, watching the screen to make sure I framed it well. Weirdly, the boat/whale/squid didnât end where it shouldâve but continued on and on and on and on into the water like it had a massively thick, extremely long tail. Also, the whole thing appeared to be purple.
âMother of Dog, no way.â My pulse leaped so hard a quiver ran through my body. I lowered my phone. âI think itâs a seadragon.â
The thingâs front end was blunt with a wide mouth and enormous eyes. Very whale-like, really. That was the end of the resemblance, though. The curve of the body was longer and more serpentine. Instead of fins, it had water wings, long, thin appendages that were currently limp and crushed against the sand but underwater supposedly floated like rippling gossamer webbing.
Supposedly, because no one had ever photographed a seadragon underwater. Magical-creatures were rare. Seadragons were . . . well, whatever ârareâ was divided by a hundred thousand.
They were also valuable. Pricelessly valuable.
I jerked my phone back up and continued filming. âNo oneâs seen a dead seadragon since . . .â My voice hitched. Not fake this time either. âSince . . . that one they made the movie about before I was born.â
I walked forward again, describing what I saw, my voice ragged with excitement, my pulse still in high-gear. This dead seadragon had to be worth an easy hundred million. And I was the only person who currently knew it existed.
There was an opportunity here.
However . . .
Seadragons were protected under every single international law on the planet, and the Monterey Bay was a marine sanctuary. Removing anything, touching anything, was likely to get me into serious trouble, possibly even arrested.
Right.
I wouldnât touch it.
I was totally going to touch it.
A single scale would pay for four years of college without my living at home and holding down multiple jobs. Two scales would cover my brotherâs school debt. Four would pay off my dadâs credit cards. Five (maybe more like nine) would save our house from the never-ending threat of foreclosure.
Yeah. No way was I not going to pilfer as many scales as I could carry. Iâd just snag some quick and hightail it back to my car. No one would ever know.
The sun cracked over the dunes, splitting the shadows and lighting the carcass in iridescent purple and green and black. I froze mid-step, momentarily awed.
âItâs . . .â
The perfect word to describe the resplendence in front of me lost itself halfway up my throat. It wasnât just the richness of the color, either, but the sinewy shape and texture of the hide. Everything about it was just so stunning, gorgeous, amazing . . .
â . . . dead.â I finished softly.
I headed to the seadragonâs blunted head, trying to be respectful while still filming and gauging how I was going to remove the scales. (Because admiration didnât pay the bills and nothing I did now would bring it back to life anyway. Gotta be practical about these things.)
âIâm so sorry,â I whispered as I neared. âI hope you werenât in pain.â
The head was twice my height. Its huge eye had a hazy, dead cast to it. The scales were even more colorful and gorgeous up close, pearly and reflective and gleaming all at once. Each scale was twice the size of a piece of binder paper and lay smooth against the hide.
After taking some close-up photos, I tucked my phone under my arm and ran my fingers under the edge of a glossy scale. It lifted easily, as if meant to flare out. âPlease, donât hate me for doing this,â I said to the dragon as I gave the scale a tug. âI really, really need the money, and I promise not to waste what I take.â The scale didnât budge, so I put a foot on the side of the dead creature, leveraged my weight backward, and pulled as hard as I could.
My hands slipped down the velvety smoothness, and I toppled backward, landing on my butt in the sand. The massive eye blinked at me.
I screamed and clawed backward, my hands digging wrist-deep into the sand as I panic-pushed myself away as fast as I could. I flipped over and jumped to my feet, running up the beach faster than Iâd ever run before.
It wasnât supposed to be alive.
How could it be alive? Was it now going to kill me? I had, after all, been attempting to tear a piece of it off. A small piece, but still. How salty would I be if someone tried to steal one of my fingernails while I watched?
Since it made no move to chase me, I slowed and glanced back.
Seadragons werenât thought of as killers, not like the desert fire-lizards of Africa or the eel-like-things that lived in Norway, but all magical-creatures had better-than-cow intelligence. It blinked a second time. The milkiness Iâd assumed was the cast of death was some kinda inner lid.
Before I could do more than recognize this, it threw its head in the air, and I threw my arms over my head as I was peppered by sand. The seadragon thrashed against the beach. Great thumping thrashes, head up and down, body back and forth, salt water and grit flying everywhere. A screeching flock of gulls broke from the dunes for the safety of the sky. The surf crashed violently against the shore. I bolted backward again.
At the same time, I could just hear my fatherâs voice when I told him Iâd witnessed the death throes of a seadragon, and I hadnât filmed it for his channel. Sasha Beth Clems, Have. You. Learned. Nothing?!
I stopped again and hit Record right as the creature lunged backward cobra-like and threw its upper body fifty feet in the air, revealing a pale underside.
And an anchor-sized harpoon jammed into its scales.
âHoly freaking not-a-cow. Someone shot it?â
The seadragon fell back to the sand with the loudest thump Iâd ever heard, making the ground shake way worse than the 6.3 earthquake weâd had when I was ten. The wind disappeared and the ocean waves stopped waving for a long, held breath.
I kept filming.
The creature had come down crooked and facing me. Its eyes narrowed to slits and its face wrinkled as if it were in horrible pain. Pain so strong the sand under my running shoes shivered with it. Or maybe that was actually me shivering in reaction.
This was so wrong.
The seadragon was beautiful and it was in pain and it didnât deserve this. Regardless of my familyâs financial needs, I was an animal lover and I truly, deeply, didnât want the creature in front of me to die.
The wide grimace of a mouth parted, showing huge ice-pick teeth. My pity dove behind my liver and I bolted backward a third time.
The creature made a wet popping sound as if blowing the worldâs largest kiss. Then its entire body shuddered, teeth to tail. The surrounding sand shook in response, for-real-this-time. The seadragon went still. Slack. Limp. Dead. (Again, for-real-this-time.)
I stared at it for a long moment, silent, sick, somber. I glanced at my phone to be respectful. â6:07 a.m.â
Only then did I notice what the seadragon had expelled onto the sand with that kiss.
Oh. My. Dog.
What a complete and utter idiot Iâd been. Dumbest of the dumb. Too stupid to own a phone, smart or not. There was only one group of people with the gall, the resources, and the desire to kill a seadragon, and especially to do so within a marine sanctuary.
âThe magic-handlers,â I whispered and then frantically scanned the bay as if saying their name might call them.
Magic-handlers wouldnât care about the scales or the value of the creature itself. They had more money than many small nations (Lucky!) and were said to have their fingers in the economies of half the planet (Unfairly lucky!). Nope, the magic-handlers didnât care about the creatureâs value or beauty or pain. They cared about the thing that made magical-creatures alive, the thing magical-creatures gave up when they died.
The raw magic.
The seadragonâs magic sat half-buried in the sand in front of its slack mouth. A basketball-sized sphere glowing with internal swirls of blue and purple and black like something from a trendy glassblower shop.
Semis. Thatâs what raw magic was called. A Latin word that rhymed with âfreebiesâ (or âfecesâ).
If a handful of scales would solve all my familyâs financial problems, a Semis would make us gazillionaires.
Great opening. Rachel Taylor Thompson has your attention from the get go. There are a number of dragon stories in the market place right now. Sasha vs the whole wide world (and Dragons) remains unusual in that we follow the fate of the young woman who finds a magic potion. The first chapter describes the scene with great detail leaving us feeling the intensity of the feelings experienced by Sasha. The magic potion is the key to the story.
The story will appeal to the young adult readership and is filled with geography, magic knowledge or so-called magic knowledge, political nuances and good old male -female relationships. Sasha is like many other youngsters right now working three jobs and keeping their heads above the waters. As the story evolves she learns how to manage emotions and make critical decisions. We move from the USA to Canada and back, making it quite timely as in real life today, border discussions on both sides are the âhotâ talk of the town.
Take note of the name ShashaâŚ.keeping up with 2025!.
The problem is it all seems so real! It is a good read full of the unexpected. I wondered where the story would go after Sasha took on the dogs. Was it simply as company?.... But I wonât spoil the plot. Just to let you know, there is actually a list of spells in one chapter. Keep reading and you might get some awesome advice (smile)!
Rachel Taylor Thompson uses the dialogue to envision a different 21st Century. It is driven by âraw magicâ, a new concept which she enjoys positioning in the present world of unchecked automation and computer technology. And besides all the intrigue, dragons and history, Sasha vs the Whole Wide World (and Dragons), moves towards a blossoming love story.