“Come down from there you nutter,” shouted the boy’s cruel voice.  The jeers of other girls and boys drifted up through the leaves of the oak tree Sorrel was perched in.  She’d been hoping for some peace and quiet from the other foster children.  Her foster parents were nice enough, an older couple, the two had taken in many children over the years.  It was only recently that Sorrel had been in foster care at all.  A year ago, her mother was put in an insane asylum, a fact Sorrel had managed to keep quiet until just recently.  She’d received a letter from the asylum saying her mother was going to be staying indefinitely.  The other children had found the letter and decided that the quiet, bookish Sorrel had taken after her mother and was insane.  Sighing, Sorrel turned her unusually bright green eyes to look down at her group of tormentors. 

Just then, from the house came the ringing of the dinner bell.  The children turned and ran off to the house, the idea of a hot supper outweighing their joy in their cornered prey.  Slowly, Sorrel closed the tattered book she’d been reading and climbed down from the tree.  She walked toward the house, entering into the chaotic dining room filled to the brim with children, all scrambling to get food.  Quickly darting into the throng and grabbing some bread and cheese, Sorrel then decided to retreat to her bedroom.

Her room, more a small cupboard in the attic, was one of the few places in the house Sorrel found solitude.  She sat down on the thin mattress that laid on the floor, once again opened the book, and started eating the food.  She made sure to place a few crumbs in the corner of the room for the family of dormice that had taken up residence earlier that spring.

Eventually, Sorrel heard the footsteps of the other children coming up from dinner to go to bed.  As the house quieted, Sorrel closed her book and lay back to sleep.  She’d just fallen into a dream about an abandoned mansion in the woods when she heard the door to her room creak open.  Keeping her eyes shut so as to not alert her visitors that she was awake, Sorrel was trying to place the owners of whispered voices, when suddenly a heavy hand was shoved over her mouth and other hands held her down.  She started to fight back when a voice spoke to her.

“Quiet,” the voice of the boy from earlier that day said.  “Behave yourself and we won’t hurt you.”  Seeing that there were two other attackers who she surely couldn’t fight off, Sorrel did as she was told.  Cruel hands dragged her to her feet and directed her outside.

Sorrel heard the crunching of branches under her feet and the hooting of tawny owls as they walked into the forest.  Sorrel was scared, but not nearly as much as anyone else would be.  She knew the boys wouldn’t physically hurt her, and the forest was always a place where she felt comfortable and at home.

Finally, the group came to a halt in front of a large abandoned manor house, eerily similar to the one from Sorrel’s dream earlier that night.  The boys told her to enter the decrepit building and not come back until the morning.  Again, she knew the classically creepy building would frighten anyone else, but as she walked towards the swung open wooden doors, Sorrel felt more welcome than she had anywhere since leaving her house in London.  She heared the footsteps of the boys leaving, but paid no mind, instead entranced by the beauty of the house that had been left to rot, yet still stood, melding with nature.

Entering, she realized that it was too dark to see anything.  All she could make out was a looming black shape in front of her.  She walked with hands outreached until she felt a smooth stone sculpture, of what she couldn’t tell.  Sorrel’s instinct to hide herself, just in case the boys came back, led her to climb up the sculpture, into the dark, until she reached a flat area.  Deciding to wait until the morning, she lay down and fell asleep, the feeling of finally being home never leaving her.

~                                   ~                                   ~

Sorrel woke up to the sound of young jackdaws in a nest above her begging for food.  Climbing down from where she had slept, Sorrel saw that she’d been sleeping on only the top of the hip of a huge stone dragon.  The whole dragon was much larger, with a pair of folded wings and a neck that curved up toward the ceiling.  The jackdaw nest was at the end, atop the dragon’s head.  Sorrel ran her hand down the spines on the dragon’s tail as it wove towards the large staircase that led to the second floor of the house.

For hours Sorrel explored the manor, eating food left over in her pockets from the day before whenever she got hungry.  Bedrooms with wrought iron beds and clothing for a new day laid out, a nursery with toys still laying scattered across the floor, a dining room with dishes laid out and candles burned down to the nub.  Everything would have looked as though it had been left just that morning if not for the thick layer of dust and encroachment of nature.  The forest really had come into the house.  Vines wove in through windows, various birds, owls, flycatchers, and warblers, nested in the upper floors of the house, while badgers and foxes had dens in the basement.  Sorrel loved it all.  She felt as though her life thus far had been leading up to the moment she came to the manor.

As she explored though, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.  Multiple sets of eyes seemed to follow her from room to room.  The feeling wasn’t sinister, but rather curious and welcoming.  Sorrel, though captivated by every detail of the old house, was always watchful from the corner of her eye.  Occasionally she would see what appeared to be dense clouds of smoke following her, though they always disappearing when she tried to get a better look.

Moving towards the back of the house, Sorrel entered a room that made her heart jump with happiness.  It was a huge library with spiral staircases joining floors of thousands upon thousands of books.  Sorrel stood there, admiring all of the books at once, until she couldn’t take it anymore and absolutely had to look more closely at each title.  Nearly skipping with excitement, she tried to take in as many books as possible.  There were books from all genres, but Sorrel was most excited to see a large selection of fantasy books. 

When Sorrel finally reached the top floor of the library, she saw a single wall that wasn’t covered with books.  Instead, it held portraits of the people who had lived in the manor house decades ago.  The portraits were in a line, the oldest ones at one end, and the newer ones toward the opposite wall.  The oldest portrait caught Sorrel’s eye.  It showed a man, perhaps in his forties, with greying hair and armor with a crest depicting a dragon and flock of jackdaws.  Beside him sat a woman, small and also old, but seemingly tough, though with welcoming eyes.  Near them stood three children, two boys and a girl.  All three of the children, as well as the man, had Sorrel’s bright green eyes.  Greatly intrigued, Sorrel quickly walked down the row of picture, scanning the faces of the people in them.  The vast majority of the people had Sorrel’s unusual eyes.  Sorrel was startled to hear a cough behind her.

Turning quickly, she was surprised to see the man from the first portrait.  But of course he was not a normal man.  He was more like smoke than a real person, see through, and what Sorrel could only presume was—

“A ghost, yes, that’s what I am.  But perhaps a better introduction would come with my name, Sir Kingsley of Ashwood Manor, at your service,” the ghost said, with a bow and a humorous expression.

“So you’re from—” Sorrel started.

“The fourteenth century?  Yes.  Though having seen every century that has passed since then, I prefer not to confine myself to only that time,” Sir Kingsley said, a twinkle in his eyes that were the same bright green as shown in the portrait, even though the rest of him was a smoky white-grey.

“Are you a relative of mine?” Sorrel asked.

“Ah yes, a distant great grandfather I’d suppose.  I’m glad to see you’ve come here at last!  Your mother always refused to have anything to do with us, ever since her friends, who weren’t family and thereby couldn’t see us, persuaded her that ghosts aren’t real and she was only imagining things.  Psh, not real, I’m as real as you or she, only dead, that’s all.  But how is your mother anyways?”

“She’s in an asylum…,” Sorrel trailed off.

“Oh,” Kingsley exclaimed sadly.  “I guess she couldn’t rid us from her mind as easily as she had wished.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sorrel said, feeling a tad awkward now.  In truth, she hadn’t been that close to her mother.  She’d always forced the two to move, Sorrel had thought to escape her father, but perhaps it was to run away from the ghosts.

“Anyways, how was your trip here?  I’m sorry if it frightened you too much, you mustn’t blame the boys, I didn’t know how else to get you here.  For years I’ve been trying to send you dreams of this place, but you never came, so I haunted one of the boys a bit to persuade him that he needed to bring you here.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Sorrel said.  “I felt like I was coming home, and I knew the boys wouldn’t hurt me, no matter how much they tease me.”

“Oh good, you seem to take after my wife Cora in your bravery,” Sir Kingsley said, beaming at his great times something granddaughter.  “And speak of the Devil, here she comes.”

Sorrel saw the small figure of the woman from the painting drifting up the stairs. 

“Hello dear, I see you’ve already met my eccentric husband.  I’m Lady Cora,” the ghost said.  “I was glad to see you enjoying my library, Sir Kingsley never did fully appreciate the beauty of the written word,” Lady Cora said, casting an amused eye at Sir Kingsley, who in turn looked quite abashed.

“Oh I love it so very much.  I rarely get books at my foster home and my mother never really wanted me reading fantasy stories.  She preferred I keep my mind out of the clouds,” Sorrel said, seeing Sir Kingsley scoff slightly out of the corner of her eye.

Cora on the other hand kept her face straight.  “Well, feel free to come here and borrow books whenever you please.  With that though, you really must be getting back to your foster mother.  She’s been getting a right bit worried, and the boys who brought you here are running out of excuses for your absence.”

“So I can come back whenever I want?”

“Of course!  I’m pretty sure this house even falls into your hands with your mother in the situation she’s in,” Sir Kingsley said jubilantly.

“Really?  I would like that ever so much,” Sorrel said, imagining her life in the beautiful manor with all the books.

“Then it is all yours, but only when you’re old enough, because for now you must return to your guardian.  She does care about you, you know.  As do the other children, you just need to open up to them,” said Lady Cora.

“I guess,” Sorrel said, a bit disappointed that she couldn’t live in the manor house now, but knowing they were right.  “But can I ask one question before I go?”

“Of course you can,” Lady Cora said.

“Where are all of the ghosts from the other portraits?”

“Oh, they come and go.  Some of the earlier ones are probably around here somewhere.  The later ones are the worst though.  Once they stopped living in Ashwood Manor, they started spending the majority of their afterlives in other places.”

“Why did they leave here?” Sorrel questioned.

“It was during the Second World War,” Lady Cora replied.  “During a family dinner, bombs started falling nearby.  The family hid in the bomb shelter they’d built in the basement and decided to leave that morning, taking nothing with them but a few valuables and their dogs.”

“And the family never returned?” Sorrel asked.

“No, the mother struck ill and the children seemed to find city life more fulfilling,” at this even Lady Cora’s face showed disapproval.

“I would have come back,” Sorrel said quietly, the ghosts smiled gently at her.  “But anyways, I guess I’ll be leaving now.”

“Farwell Sorrel.”

“We hope to see you again soon,” said Kingsely.

~                                   ~                                   ~

For a few days after returning home, Sorrel’s foster mother doted on her, making Sorrel stay in bed and eat only hot soup after what she thought to have been a traumatic experience in the woods.  During those days, Sorrel was driven nearly mad, wishing to return to the manor and to meet more of her relatives.  But deep down, she was happy that care was being shown to her by someone alive.  After she was finally released back to the other children, Sorrel found them too, slightly kinder.  The boys had felt quite guilty after having brought Sorrel out into the woods for no apparent reason, so they persuaded the others that perhaps she wasn’t crazy after all.

Sorrel was much happier, though she was still shy around the living, so she made sure to visit the ghosts in the manor as often as she could.  And of course, over the next few years, she read nearly every book in the huge library.

Many years from when she first visited Ashwood Manor, Sorrel finally left her foster home.  She attended Oxford, but never forgot to visit the manor on her breaks from school.  She even visited her mother a few times, but didn’t dare bring up how she had met the ghosts.  Instead, she appeased her with talk of the scientific research she was doing and of the young man she had met and was planning to marry.  Finally, when Sorrel was settling down to make a family of her own, she bought a house near Ashwood, not wanting to disturb the beauty of the abandoned manor by living in it, and slowly introduced her husband and children to the only real family she’d had as a child.