Never to return....

For this week's Magpie Tales

What lies beyond the date remains unknown, for it’s a place that no one dares venture. At least, not for many a long year.

There was a time when an old man in a ragged cloak sat hunched beside the stepping stile. Those that remember talk of his blank stare, his terrified ashen face. ‘They went’ he would croak pointing a quivering bony finger into the distance.‘They went never to return’.

It is said that those who chose to ignore his counsel suffered a similar fate.

Not birds of flight nor creatures of the undergrowth inhabit that place. No sounds, no breeze, just a sinister silent stillness.

He no longer waits. A weatherworn stone marks the place he sat. Some say he went in search of lost souls. Who knows? If indeed he chose that fateful course, then he too went never to return.


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