Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 4372992" data-attributes="member: 11760">Emmerson and Tucker continue north on the deer track. Although they don't pick up an actual trail again -- the ground here is sheltered enough by the thick canopy above to prevent much rain from hitting the ground over the course of the week -- neither do they see any evidence in the fallen leaves and the like that suggests the children have left the track.They continue northward, the forest getting darker as they go."What were Rutiger and Pentagruel following?" Emmerson asks. "I don't think they would have ventured this far without someone or something either tempting them or forcing them. What is in Moss Pond anyway?""Water," Tucker says simply. "Surrounded by high, dark rocks covered in moss. Thus the name."He picks his way around a stand of trees, following the vague trail."When I was a kid, we'd still hike out there to fish and go swimming. Not recently, though. A few years back, people started disappearing. Someone would go for a swim alone, and never come back to town. Fishermen would be hours late returning from the pond, and when people went looking for them, their boat would be floating there, calm as you please, with no sign of anyone in it. People stopped going, even in groups."Now even the 'official' paths to the pond are nearly overgrown -- heck, we're probably having an easier time following this deer track than if we'd tried to come the 'real' way.""What happened to the missing?" asks Emmerson. "Was nothing ever found of them?""Nothing but what they'd left on the shore or in their boats. It's probably just a combination of factors: someone looking to make a break from town, using a phony 'drowning' to keep anyone from looking elsewhere; a fisherman's line got caught, and he dove in to free it, but then couldn't climb back into his skiff and was carried downstream; part of it's probably just rumor and exaggeration, too.""But if they were carried downstream, why didn't they just climb out when they got back to town? The river is wide and slow by that point.""Yes, that's true. But my father tells stories about his time in the baron's army. Once his entire regiment went for a swim in a seemingly safe river. But it had been raining in the mountains above, and the water was deeper, colder, and moving faster than usual."You couldn't see it, but there was a spot in the river where the water was flowing differently, much faster than the rest. A corporal wandered into it, and was sucked beneath the surface immediately, before he had a chance to even cry out. The only reason anyone even knew what happened was that three people were looking right at him when it happened. They thought he was kidding around, but when he didn't come back up, they started to worry. Two of the men dove into the stream, to see where it would take them, and the rest got out of the water and started running down the bank.""Some kind of magic? A spell to speed the water along somehow? Did they find the man?""No magic: It's apparently something that just happens under the right conditions. They did find the corporal -- half an hour's march from where they had been swimming. The way the water was flowing, he was pinned to the bottom of the river just by the sheer force of it. If the other two hadn't gone after him, he'd probably still be there now. All three of them were out on the bank by the time my father and the others arrived. The corporal apparently got quite the chewing out from the warrant officer when he got there, and for the rest of the campaign, any time the regiment stopped by a river, stream or pond, the guy was only allowed in the water if he tied a rope around his waist and the other end around a sizeable tree." They continue to chuckle intermittently as they walk. Just before they reach the edge of the woods, Tucker adds one final theory."You know the story of the Maiden's Bridge, right? You've been here long enough to hear the song?" Emmerson starts to hum the tune, nodding. Tucker continues. "When I was a kid, I snuck out of the house with a bread knife, looking under the bridge for the troll. I didn't find anything, of course. Not under the bridge. The rumor is that the troll lived -- or lives, maybe -- here in Moss Pond."</blockquote>

Verification