Dragon in flames on a forearm

The Brightwater was a forty-foot herring boat, skippered by Jory Penhale, who never once put his oilskins on before the wind had a go at him. In the autumn of the great shoal the nets came up so heavy they near pulled the mast out, and the men were too greedy to cut loose. Out past the Gull Rock a light came up under the water, orange as a forge, and the sea began to smoke. Something was rising through it, black as wet slate, with wings like sails folded the wrong way and fire running off them in ropes.

Jory's boy, Tom, who was only eleven and had no business on deck, stood up in the bow and called it by name. Old Mother Penhale had taught him that name at the hearth: Anhar, the one who keeps the drowned. The dragon turned its head and looked at the boy. Down in the burning water a small dark shape kicked and clung to a broken float, the last of the crew who'd gone over the side. Tom went in after it. The dragon watched him do it and, for reasons nobody has ever settled, let them both go.

They say the Brightwater came home with her hold empty and her nets still smoking, and Tom never feared the sea again. So when you're out past the Rock and the water starts to glow, don't you go shouting names. Pull in your nets and be decent to the drowned.