Breydon Water, not far from where Jackie and Geoff are watching the wyrm
(Credit: Wikipedia/Rackellar)

You’d think people would be satisfied. Flo Thursby is in love with a wyrm. Geoff and Jackie have sighted it, as they hoped. Calpurnia is deep in scholarly thinking. Marcus is having fun manipulating his fellow magicians. Ursula is off-stage, but whatever she’s doing, you can be sure she has some new lover wrapped around her finger (or some other body parts). And Bathsheba is  . . . well, Bathsheba’s doing whatever it is she does. If her mother can’t understand her, I’m not going to try to explain her here. I’m not sure I can.

And yet unexpected things do happen, and Bathsheba doesn’t cause all of them. (Some she does.) So things take a turn for the worse in chapter 9, “No one is happy in this chapter,” of As the Wyrm Turns, my weekly serial about placid British waters harboring monstrosities.