A walk into the forest should not be undertaken lightly. Preparations may be wise. Think of Hansel and Gretel with their bag of crumbs to mark the trail. Pay attention to the lore of ancestors who knew how ravenous the forest can be. Accordingly, we are setting out some stepping stones in this Preface, to provide footholds in the murk. 

Image credit: Timothy Dykes

What the Forest Knows 

You came to lose yourself, you say? Well, this is surely the place for that. Our opening flash fiction piece, Grounding Exercise by Cormack Baldwin, calmly invites you to breathe in the sights and sounds of the forest:‘You are of the same world as the soft rot beneath your feet’. Close your eyes then for this guided meditation that returns us to the dark earth.

Image credit: Motoki Tonn

Seas and Trees

Not all trees are Earthbound. Not all seeds are edible. Like the sea squirts hidden between the ferns on our cover, Bex Hainsworth evokes gorgeous marine imagery in the ‘strange reef’ and ‘flock of rays’ of her ‘Mushrooms’ poem. This is echoed in J.K. Fulton’s story, which plunges us deep into the oceans of the moon Europa. Icewood is the first of our sci-fi forest fables and it’s packed with otherworldly marvels as well as Fulton’s wry humour and taste for adventure. His astronaut diver is a cynical ‘trash collector’ who must navigate the perils and plant life of a strange, submerged forest. Watch out for that bumpy landing and the narrator’s earthy language when provoked.

Image credit: Benjamin L. Jones

Budding Hours

It’s a paradox that forests can appear timeless compared to our restless modern lives. Yet in truth, they are never still. The woodland flora and fauna burgeon and decay in a constant flux. A rhythm that resonates with humans of all ages. So Deborah Tyler-Bennett recalls the fierce joy of an adolescence spent birdwatching in her poem, ‘Rook Land’. And when an ageing couple creep away from a retirement party in Jennifer Ruth Jackson’s ‘Changes of Life’, it is to slip into their true skins. With the same spirit of acceptance, grieving parents embrace the solace of a werewolf child in JP Relph’s flash fiction piece, When the Moon Gives Way. In all seasons, the forest takes and the forest gives.

Image credit: Bella Huang

Seeding Poison

Yet the forest’s gifts are not always benign.  If Hainsworth’s mushrooms were estranged by metaphor, Bitter Karella’s Toadstools prove hallucinatory in this weirdly cyclical tale of illicit pickers risking their lives and sanity on behalf of a shady company. Karella’s God of the Forest might be a myth or a monster lurking in the forest’s labyrinth but it holds its secrets close. Likewise, John Kitchen’s poem teases us with the brooding atmosphere and ‘seeds of poison’ dropping from ‘The Great Yew’. Often planted in graveyards, legend links the yew to Druidic rites and Christ’s Crucifixion, to murder and resurrection.

Image credit: Artur Łuczka

A Green Life-force

Elsewhere, the tree is a vivid symbol of nature’s urgency and sprawling habit, even beyond our own planet. Alex Harwood’s story hurls us into the far future with a ravaged human population sheltering in cryogenic stasis; until one of their number wakes to an Odd Eden. This lone ecologist discovers the spaceship has been colonised by an alien World Tree with its own blueprint: ‘I believe it is a single lifeform, endlessly remodelling, reinventing, rebirthing itself’. Similarly, the two astronauts in Ivan Richardson’s The Stone Forest discover that the ‘barren lump of rock’ which they have crash-landed on isn’t as desolate as they thought. There’s life, if not as we ever imagined it. 

Image credit: Jack Millard

Colonisation

The same irrepressible life-force bursts forth on Earth in the seeds and moss that ‘resettle’ our planet in Caspar Wort’s poem, ‘After the Bombs, the Trees’. And in Terry Grimwood’s cautionary tale, Moon Forest, the discovery of a mysterious crystalline forest on our Moon triggers an aggressive space race. On the one hand, the forest is ‘a thing of terrifying beauty’ to the Chinese and American astronauts who first behold it. On the other, it is ‘a potential resource, nothing else’ to their masters on Earth. The same blind quest for growth drives the roots in G. O. Clark’s poem, ‘Persistence’, which break apart and reclaim the territory of a graveyard. 

Image credit: Takashi Watanabe

Hunters and the Hunted

Unsurprisingly, the threat of bloodshed hangs heavy in tales about hunting. In Lyndsey Croal’s Be Still, Iron Heart, frightened villagers hire a killer to slay the ghoulish Green Man in their local woods. Yet in Kate Boyes’ poem, ‘To All Travellers Who Must Pass a Night in the Forest of Vampire Bears’, it is a bloodsucking ‘ursus vampirus’ who stalks a human hunter. More chillingly, L. P. Melling’s story blends historical fiction, fairytales and horror as a Nazi officer pursues a Jewish family into the Black Forest. The Red Princess Who Was Hidden Underground finds solace in her father’s folklore during dangerous times.

Image credit: Godz1

Love, Lore & the Fae

Rumours of the fae lurk in many corners of our anthology, along with twisted braids of love. Richard Urwin conjures magic in a leaf by fusing ‘the last fairy’, a sun-god and dark matter in his poem, ‘Suspended Belief’. And Mark R Brandon’s The Forest King unravels a love story amidst the druids, rogue kings and forest deities of Celtic myth. Not to mention a magpie that ‘has become wiser than any magpie who ever lived’. Meanwhile mother love proves a dangerous force in R. J. Howell’s spooky story, Of Brittle Heart and Bleeding Bone, when a grieving parent summons a bone fae: ‘Some things are not meant to be called’. You don’t want to ask what spell this fae will perform or what price will be exacted. 

Image credit: Stormseeker

Altered Skins

Peer into the shadows of our front cover and you’ll glimpse the mutated creatures and people that lope through this anthology. In Holly Schofield’s flash fiction piece, Bear #178, a starving, genetically modified bear decides that ‘there is only one way to avoid humans’. The prepper in Michele Witthaus’ poem, ‘Everyone Should Be Prepping’, is also trying to drop off the radar, though the narrator wonders how he’ll know ‘when it’s safe to go home’. In Matthew Pegg’s Wolfskin fable, the wolf knows in its bones that home is with the pack. Until it meets a small human female wearing a cloak that was ‘the red of rabbit blood’. Pegg’s story unwraps the many ways a pelt can be stripped. In A Zone of Peace and Tranquillity, a wily survivor is hunting rabbit when he stumbles across a mutant squirrel. This wry dystopian tale from Phillip Temples ends on a stunning reveal. 

Image credit: Andy Holmes

A Violent Becoming

Classical mythology couldn’t resist stories of humans transforming into trees, flowers and woodland creatures, whether against their will or as an act of escape. Our Bark & Bone writers find metaphors of change that speak to contemporary concerns around identity and how we belong in this fractured world. Charlie Winter’s poignant and timely memoir, Rewild Me, wrong-foots the reader with its shocking opening but deepens into an account of small-town cruelty, eco-devastation and the struggle to claim a trans identity. It’s one of several powerful LGBTQ+ themed pieces that lean into the mythic possibilities of the forest.

Image credit: Teena Lalawat

Broken Bodies

Watch your back in this forest of Bark & Bone, betrayal awaits at every turn. In Erin Jamieson’s ‘Family Tree’ poem, a spouse swings the axe on a failing marriage. But we are left guessing at the wounds inflicted in Julia LaFond’s intriguing flash fiction piece, One Set of Footsteps. Guided by a terse narrator, we track the marks left by a man fleeing through the trees. Then we stumble into Max Turner’s episodic story, The Scream That Became A Howl. Turner cunningly blends fantasy tropes about lycanthropy with a darkly inventive account of gendered violence and transitioning across the centuries. Perhaps they will all be needing the knitbone leaves featured on our front cover. 

Image credit: francesco carinci

Gendered Gardeners

Our next few pieces transcend the archetypes of Mother Earth and the Green Man. Shelly Jones’ story deftly transplants The Iron Baba witch into an original eco-fable along with a grown-up Gretel who now earns her living as a logger but never forgets the dangers lurking in the woods. Meanwhile, Abida Akram’s delicate poem, ‘Conversation Between An Alien And A Tree’, unfolds a surprising bond between a sentient alien and an Earthly tree. And in Treez™, an agendered Guardian is shocked to encounter another human amongst the silicone trees. Victoria Haslam updates our woodland lore for the digital age with her thoughtful story about a synthetic forest. This futuristic fable poses the question of whether you would ‘fight for nature’ or pledge allegiance to ‘a Mankind community’. 

Image credit: Jason Blackeye

Fragile Forests

Despite the sapling’s tenacity in Treez™, our Bark & Bone writers often evoke the vulnerability of our green ecosystem in the hands of humans. If the forests of our planet harbour our past, their summer fires also flag a dangerous future. The mutual dependence of trees and humans is suggested in Emilia who Talks with Trees. Rod Duncan layers his poignant story with ambiguities and slippages as a highly imaginative child grows into an adult eco-activist and later, an elderly woman navigating dementia. And in Emma Lee’s poem, ‘Trees want you to interpret their dance’, a beautiful cultural display for the tourists gives way to ‘the mangroves’ appeal / to preserve us, heed a community’s call’. Many of our pieces echo this call.

Image credit: David Clode

Remembrances

In our last tale, we are immersed in a child’s curiosity. e rathke’s wonderfully weird fiction piece, He sleeps with garlands woven in his hair, features a girl who tends to a slumbering tramp in the woods: ‘Right away I could tell he was a foreigner … I had never seen someone so completely untroubled, peaceful’. When she finally leaves, she keeps an oddly portentous memento from their time together: ‘I still have it’. 

Image credit: Cedar Wheeler

And with your foraging done, you should pack up your hoard of berries along with the secret things you unearthed. We hope these stories and poems will travel with you as you make your way out of our forest of Bark & Bone. Assuming you can find your trail of breadcrumbs in the undergrowth. Good luck!

Image credit: Liana Mikah