Tangled Yarns: Breath-taking

was a strict rule that no one was to swim here unsupervised. The sea was dangerous. There were rips. More than one person had been drowned at this place.

And then she saw them. There were others on her beach. Two black dots, two men, far away to the north. They were walking towards her, but they probably hadn't seen her yet. She didn't want them to see her. It annoyed her that anyone should be on the same stretch of beach, although she knew they had the same legal rights to walk along it. The world seemed crowded when other people came along this way.

She ran up the stones and hid in a small valley of sand. The saw-edged grasses folded over her and whispered in the wind. "Strangers strangers" they said, "We see strangers." The tips of the grass tickled her bare back.

It seemed like hours before the men came into sight. They were not walking quickly. As they passed, Edna saw them stop from time to time, to look at something. Were they collecting shells? Or stones? No, they kept nothing. They stayed, most of the time, near the wettest edge of the beach, where the sand and the white froth of the waves met. Sometimes they walked in the water, not caring that their shoes were soaked. Then, suddenly, they stopped. One man pointed at the ground. The men had seen something. But what?

Tracks. Edna knew now. These men were looking for the prints of some animal. She watched as they walked up the beach, trying to guess where the trail went in the stones. It was invisible of course. Lost in the thousands of grey rounded stone bodies. The men walked as far as the sandhills and separated, going north and south.

Edna didn't like these men. There was something dark about them. Bad. They were doing something wrong. She knew it. It also annoyed her deeply, and intensely, that here on this barren piece of Earth two men just happened to walk close to where she was hiding.

Suddenly one of the men was very close. He came down from behind her, pushing through the long grass. When he saw the girl, crouching in the shadows, he stopped.

"Hey!" he said, "What are you doing here?"

The other man started to come over.

"What?"

"There's a kid, hiding in me grass!" called the first man.

Edna stood up. She was trembling.