The Keeper's Hatchling
(2026)(The second book in the Driftwood Dragon Sanctuary series)
A novel by R J Cole
The woman who wrote the book on keeping dragons has come to Port Selby to take one away.
All winter, Nora Harris has waded into a sea cave at every spring low to check on an egg that never changes. Then Cove starts building a nest, and a letter arrives from Harrowmere. The registry's Keeper-Assessor is coming to supervise the hatching.
Miss Whitlock is seventy, small, and very straight, and she travels with three pairs of spectacles and a disapproving ink dragon in her coat pocket. She wrote the pamphlet every keeper is issued, the one that gives tide dragons a single footnote. She has hatched forty-one eggs. She has never seen a tide dragon. And she has already signed the order to send this one to a new rearing house in Harrowmere the moment it can travel.
Then the egg hatches, and the baby dragon wraps itself round Nora's boot and will not let go. Ada at the fish stall says it sounds like a limpet. The name sticks.
Now Nora has until the lowest tide of the year to prove that some creatures can't be raised by the book. Port Selby is quietly closing ranks. The lighthouse keeper keeps turning up at supper. And Bramble the garden dragon is stealing everything that isn't nailed down, including one thing nobody knew they'd need.
Book 2 of The Driftwood Dragon Sanctuary, a warm, low-stakes coastal cozy fantasy. Nobody dies. Somebody steals a great many socks.
New here? Start with The Tide Dragon's Keeper.
All winter, Nora Harris has waded into a sea cave at every spring low to check on an egg that never changes. Then Cove starts building a nest, and a letter arrives from Harrowmere. The registry's Keeper-Assessor is coming to supervise the hatching.
Miss Whitlock is seventy, small, and very straight, and she travels with three pairs of spectacles and a disapproving ink dragon in her coat pocket. She wrote the pamphlet every keeper is issued, the one that gives tide dragons a single footnote. She has hatched forty-one eggs. She has never seen a tide dragon. And she has already signed the order to send this one to a new rearing house in Harrowmere the moment it can travel.
Then the egg hatches, and the baby dragon wraps itself round Nora's boot and will not let go. Ada at the fish stall says it sounds like a limpet. The name sticks.
Now Nora has until the lowest tide of the year to prove that some creatures can't be raised by the book. Port Selby is quietly closing ranks. The lighthouse keeper keeps turning up at supper. And Bramble the garden dragon is stealing everything that isn't nailed down, including one thing nobody knew they'd need.
Book 2 of The Driftwood Dragon Sanctuary, a warm, low-stakes coastal cozy fantasy. Nobody dies. Somebody steals a great many socks.
New here? Start with The Tide Dragon's Keeper.