At the Edge of the Wood
A long long time ago, I frequently accompanied someone to a house in the country, near Chambord in the Loire Valley, a converted hunting lodge, a weekend here, a fortnight there. Autumns, the acres of surrounding woodland resounded with the bellowing of stags whose mates, the does, would eat the roses right from the doorway trellis. No hunters having ridden those lands for a generation, the creatures knew themselves safe. One night in front of an October's fire in the hearth I thought I heard something at the door.
If I could trace the seed that gave rise to "At the Edge of the Wood" that would be it, though a childhood fraught with the shadows of orphanages and early death also lent nutrients to the soil it gestated in.
Of the countless stories I spent years try to bring to fruition - all in vain, each time- this is the first that made it out of me entire, these miscarried and stillborn children of word and image, and as such it means so very much to me.
Shelter of Daylight, the aptly named, at Hiraeth Books has accepted to give it a home and I am proud to see it published there.
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