The trees came without warning
‘The trees came without warning. A forest of dense, impenetrable branches sweeping for miles across the battered coastland of the north. They swallowed everything in their path. Covering fields, meadows and hills as far as the eye could see, wrapping all before them in a blanket of limbs and leaves. They came at night. Some say they heard the creaks and groans in the darkness. Others spoke of singing, chanting, even screams. Then there were the twisted dreams. All told the same, each one feeling trapped, suffocating, smothered by some unseen presence. And there were the missing. Those never seen again. Villages and farmhouses swamped within the darkness of the woodland. Men, women, and children gone. There are those that still speak of the cries of the lost, of hearing their voices whispering at night, calling from beyond the trees.
T’was a crisp, spring morning, as the first rays of sunlight seeped above the horizon, when people awoke to find them everywhere. A labyrinth of gnarled wooden limbs coated in a canopy of green, each leaf stained with the teardrops of fresh, silvery dew as they danced with the soft dawn breeze. At its most southerly point, this vast forest curved into the narrow tip of a horn. Here, at the edge of the trees, a cluster of village folk gathered. None would venture into the woods. None would dare get too near. Each stood in silence, mothers and children clutching hands while fathers stood alongside. The village watched and waited. Scouring the dark cracks between the twisted branches. Looking for a sign of something, a glimmer of life. They saw nothing, though each man, woman, and child had an overwhelming sense of being watched. There were eyes deep within the trees, the cold stare of something living.
The elder folk knew this day would come, though none of them knew when. Tales of this night had haunted bedtime stories for generations. Tales passed down through families, stories as old as time itself. They told of an ancient woodland. Of elms, yews, and silver birch. Of ash, beech and English oak. A huge enchanted forest springing from the ground in the dead of night, the darkest of hours, on a night without moonlight. The tales spoke of the forest of the giant wooded horn, from which this village took its name.
The trees were a sign. Heralding the return of the Wunderfolk. Ancient, mystical creatures for which the woodland was home. It was written that one day they would return to claim their land once more. This vast kingdom stretching from the point of the horn, to the coast of the East, and on up to the hills of the North. A kingdom once ruled by them, and them alone. Thousands of years before the Nordic invaders came from across the seas, and the armies of the Empire of Rome.
The Wunderfolk give the forest its magic. They are its spirit and and its life. Often heard, seldom seen, many in the village have a tale of a chance encounter. All know someone with such a story to tell. And in the dark winter nights, when families huddle around the fire, wrapped in thick, leather blankets. When the children snuggle in tight, gazing into the heart of the fiery embers. This is when the elders tell the tales. Passing the stories down to the next generation, a thread stretched across time that binds us all. The stories of the Wunderfolk, and the night the trees came.’
