Page 15 of You, As You Are

The vantage point exposed some kind of brick building tucked away on a patch of grassland in the middle of the secluded beach and a narrow streak of land stretching out to sea, like a finger of pebbles and shingle pointing out towards something that was no longer there. Maisie hadn’t studied geography in years, but she was sure that in technical terms it’d be called aspit.

She halted on the hill. “Do you know what that is?”

“Sarn Gynfelyn,”Iain answered her, slowing his own step as he explained. “Old legend says it was once a sea wall of a lost mythical kingdom. It was swallowed by the sea when the kingdom’s guardian,Seithennin,got drunk, presumably, and failed to close the gates, meaning the land was drowned by the ocean. Now the remaining spit reaches something like fourteen kilometres out underwater.”

Maisie watched the movement of his lips and the twitch of his chill-touched nose as he gave another unusually long chunk of words to their conversation, his skin above his beard a little uneven in its texture. The extent of the story he’d given in his answer was impressive, and it definitely showed on her face.

Iain caught her look and shrugged. “I did some research after the first time I saw it.”

“That sounds like a fantasy book waiting to be written. I love stories like this. We don’t get many old myths and legends in London.”

“You’re telling me that there’s no stories of monsters swimming up the Thames?”

“Not one that I believe in.”

“Moo Moo!” Vera’s nickname for her carried up the cliff on the wind. “Are you coming down?”

In their break to talk about myths and the lone white house on the beach, the pensioners had made it halfway to the bridge crossing the river at the base.

Maisie looked at Iain squarely. “We’d better go.”

He pursed his lips in agreement. “After you, Moo Moo.”

God,he was never going to live that down. “Pleaseforget that you know about that?”

“It’ll be hard.”

“I can pay you in onecroissant.”

Iain hummed. “I might need some more convincing.”

She groaned.

They caught up to the others waiting in front of where the bridge crossed the water just outside of the house.

“Oh no,” Malc – at least that’s what Maisie thought his name was – said as he patted down his coat pockets. “I think I dropped my bus pass. I had it just up there.”

Up there… as in the peak of the cliff they’d just spent half an hour descending?

“I can go back,” Iain offered, and Maisie was shocked he didn’t sound more irritated. What were the chances of finding a tiny piece of card within a few kilometres of bracken and grass in blustery weather?

“No. No. We always hike in pairs,” Vera argued which received hums of agreement. She swivelled. “Maisie, you can go too.”

I can—“What?”Maisie’s eyes widened.

Ronnie tried to help. “Perhaps I should?—”

Vera not-so-subtly swatted his arm. “The young legs won’t mind, will they?”

Maisie forced a smile. It didn’t exactly seem fair to make anyone who was at least twice her age go back up the cliff to search for something that could probably be reissued with a simple phone call anyway. It’d be completely selfish of her.

Her people pleasing tendencies were why she grinned, bared it, and said, “I’ll go.” If this ‘hiking in pairs’ rule was real, then she felt safe enough that Iain wasn’t secretly a psychopath who would push her off the cliff with no one around to witness it.

“We’ll meet you at the supermarket in Clarach,” he told the others. Malc patted his shoulder in thanks and joined the rest of them in crossing the footbridge.

Maisie and Iain did a one-eighty, and even Ted didn’t seem impressed to be heading back up the route they’d already taken down.

“This isn’t how I imagined my first hike would go.” Maisie exhaled heavily, preparing herself mentally for walking back up the bloody hill.

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