On a clear bright morning in a kingdom long asleep, sounds of moaning traveled across the moor from Tangled Woods to where Thomas and his guardian sat near the river’s edge. Thomas felt a quiver of ice run up his spine as Blackie nudged him with her cold nose.
He tried to calm his fears by stroking the dog’s head. “It’s just the wind, old girl.”
Nonetheless, Thomas decided to answer the hunger pangs in his young stomach and head back across the fields to the manor house, returning by way of the stable. The nearer he came to home, the more he convinced himself that he had only heard the wind in the trees or the sound of some great sea creature in the distance. Peculiar sounds drifted down from Tangled Woods now and again, often enough to spark the imagination of young and old alike.
“Are there really ghosts there?” Thomas stopped and asked the stable master.
“Aye, laddie, there be ghosts aplenty and many a young boy who was too curious has joined their unearthly ranks! Forget that place and stay far from it!” decreed the stable master as he went back to grooming the master’s horse.
Thomas continued on to the rear entrance of the manor house and decided to try again in the kitchen as he plopped down on a bench. “Blackie and I were walking through the fields and the moaning came from the mountain again. I think it frightened Blackie. Do you suppose the spirits of dead things linger there?”
“I’ve known of some who entered there, never to be heard from again,” replied Cook with a faraway look in her eyes.
As usual, no one ever gave him a solid answer, but the fear that flashed across the servants’ faces when he asked revealed more than their words.
Thomas grabbed an apple from the table and made his way through the corridors to the great hall of the manor. He put the question to the two men sitting before the fireplace.
“’Tis the sound of a mother weeping for her babies,” Validon said sadly.
“Truth has a way of making itself known, my lad,” his father, Sir Bertrand , answered. “In due time, it will find you. But there are other things to spend your thoughts on … like finishing the day’s lessons, and not wandering too far on the moors alone!”