The Dragon in the Cliff by Sheila Cole

because he then said, “They are pieces of the backbone of an animal. I have never seen so many like these at one time. They’re part of a large animal by the looks of them. Larger than anything that lives around here now. Could be a crocodile. People say there are fossil crocodiles. If you find one, lass, you tell me. Promise now. I’ll pay handsomely for it.”
    Here I had just been thinking about what Papa had said about the dragon or the crocodile, or whatever it was, and now Squire Henley was talking about it. How strange, I thought.
    Squire Henley returned to his carriage without waiting for me to reply. “I will stop by from time to time as I did with your father,” he called to me. “He used to save the more interesting fossils for me, and I wish you to do the same. None of your thunderbolts, now. It is your rare ones I am interested in.” And with that the carriage drove away.
    I stood there daydreaming of finding the dragon for some time before I realized that the Squire had not bought anything from me. The coach was long past due. I rearranged the curiosities that he had jumbled and waited. I waited until it was late, too late to go down to the beach to hunt for my curiosity basket. No one else came past my display.
    It was raining when we woke up the next morning. “Don’t be foolish, child, people don’t buy curiosities in this kind of weather,” Mama said, when I started to put the curiosity table out. I spent the rest of the day in the workshop, preparing the few curiosities I had in the shop. But there was not much I could do with only one hammer, a medium-sized chisel, a penknife, and a mounted pin.
    I stole out of the shop as soon as the rain stopped and made my way down the beach to the slide where I had so foolishly lingered. Washed away by the tides and the rain, it was much smaller than it had been. Luckily, the tide was receding, which gave me plenty of time to search for my basket. I thought I remembered where I climbed off the beach. I tried to scramble up the cliff there but only slid back down because it was so slippery from the rain.
    Back down on the beach, I stopped to look around me. Was I in the right place? Then I remembered that at first I tried to walk back to town along the beach. Only when I realized that it was too late did I scramble up the cliff. I walked back along the beach searching for the place I had started my climb, but no piece of the cliff stood out from any other. There were the bushes, I remembered, searching the cliff face for some overhanging bushes, but I could see that there were bushes sprouting from several places. It was hopeless. I was close to tears in despair.
    I reasoned that it was better to start my search at the top of the cliff and work my way down. Walking toward town, I spied my basket lying on the shore, tangled in a clump of seaweed. I hurried toward it with a sense of relief, only to find that the basket was empty. The tools were gone, buried in the sand or beneath the water, sunk of their own weight. I would never find them.
    When I came home Mama was sitting by the window, working on lace for a wedding veil. Aunt Hunnicutt found her the work on the promise that it would be finished in two months’ time. She wasn’t to be paid until she delivered it.
    â€œThe coach was here,” Mama said as I came in, “but they were not interested in curiosities. Didn’t even bother to look. It’s when the sun is shining that people are reminded of the seashore and curiosities. We’re going to have to think of something to tide us over until then.”
    I was hungry, and I went to the sideboard.
    Seeing me, Mama said, “If you eat the bread now, there will not be enough for supper.”
    I closed the sideboard door without taking anything.
    When I was sitting with Mama, darning stockings a few days later, I said something to Mama about being cold. She told me to put a blanket around my