Willow has been called lots of things: folk horror, a portal fantasy, a quest, and even a kids' book (!).

Of course, such descriptors are trappings and characteristics of the novel, not necessarily what it's about.

Willow is at its heart a book about generational trauma. It's about how the damage wrought on combatants in the Great War transfers from the battlefields to the family home. From trench to hearth. It's an anti-war book.

The main point of view character, the Boy, fundamentally desires peace - peace for his father who struggles with what he brought back from the war, and the resulting peace that would fall upon his family. Isolated on their farm, and further isolated when he embarks on his journey through the woods, the Boy must confront the realities of war through an imagined invasion of his home by soldiers from across the sea and the force that resists them.

What appears below is a short scene that was excised from the original version of Willow when it was called Blood and Starlight. The boy is searching the forest for his missing sister and encounters a situation he is powerless to prevent and is forced to witness play out until its grim end. While it shows the Boy's desire to save everyone from harm, it ultimately wasn't doing much for the story and had to go. One darling killed amongst many others.

Warning: the writing is florid, indulgent, but heartfelt. The writer that wrote the words beneath doesn't really exist anymore.

To set the scene for those who have read the novel already, this section appeared after escaping the hillfort and before the Boy meets the Willow girl, a young woman from a local British tribe. That whole meeting is totally different in the earlier drafts and involves a kidnapped bull, a barn fire, and a narrow escape. Maybe one for later.

Ghosts of the Living

A cry. A stolen cry in the darkness, left by winds that circled. In sleep I heard their voices sounding out above the creaking limbs of trees and the rush of water. I heard a man's voice, sounding so much like Father's, though in tones and strength I could only imagine from him. Forceful and desperate. Mournful, almost. Summoning me. Calling me to him.

As if driven by the dream I woke from, I had gained my feet and twisted my body to better hear the voice over the noise of the forest. North? East? I did not know, but I knew it was across the river and up the facing hill. I loped along the bank, searching for a sand spit or shallow, wading into the chill water when I glimpsed a bed of rocks glint beneath the glow of night. I struggled to cross, shivered with every step. My body rocked with clamped down jaw in freezing spray, yet still I could still not fully wake. What drove me on I could not say; perhaps only the sound of a man in dire need commanding me in half sleep.

I gained the far bank and climbed out of the river into the trees once more. The hillside promontory beyond was an inverted amphitheatre of leaf fall and loose dry earth. A stand of wide spaced birch bathed in moonlight silver, waited for the dawn, and sang. I stumbled on, tiny between them, fearful of the cry I heard now, of its meaning and of losing it forever.

It came again as I crested the rise and confronted its source. I froze and in my horror blinked away all remnants of sleep.

The knotted trunks of old oaks stood as wide apart as their canopies: thirty, forty paces or longer. In the gloom beneath, a line of men stood between them, facing out over the disappearing hillside I had climbed. They were locked in place, straight as on the parade ground, not still but only slightly stumbling as the wind came. Then I saw what held them. From trunk to trunk, coiled ropes span out and forked around their necks, tight and level. Each man was held by it, to the trees and to each other, so high in places that shorter men strained on their toes. It was a prison to them – each man was tied in place just out of finger’s reach from the next, unable to slide sideways in their noose, the skin of their necks burned raw by early struggles. Ten men stood in the forward line, but more were lashed up behind. They were all from the invading army. Captives now, tied and left here to wait for weakness to take them. And where it might take one it would take all as the line tightened further under dead weight.

This I knew to be the torture and end they faced. Another row of men hung limp between trees further back, already given up and gone. Heads angled, necks red but faces white as ash.

One man was forcing himself up on tiptoes. Where he twisted his neck, those on either side also had their necks bent back; such was the tautness of the rope. His yearning for strength was clear, yet I could see the man next to him held none at all. His head lolled forwards as much as the rope would allow and with this came a hiss of his neighbours, weak demands for him to stand still and find some strength from within, from anywhere, but stay standing!

The mournful cry rose up again, from one dry and bleeding mouth. Not my own cry, as I feared. His voice called out as if demanding some hidden power should rescue him – a spirit or agency he always believed in yet never sought until now. His was the hope of dying man, whose faith fled to unexplored corners, who sought the blood of an immortal to fill him. To spare him, and the ones he suffered with, from death.

Instead, there was only me. I could not move or even breathe. In a few short days, maybe, or just at that moment, I had learned to disbelieve my senses. Stories were just stories, after all. The tales you told, however bleak and unresolved they were, were impossible to me. The tabletop of wooden figures you arranged to fight was immobile, never living. They would never bleed or fall; their limbs would repair with glue. Their faces never cracked. Eyes remained as blank as the sky. Yet here I was, a dislocated spyglass catching these men’s last light, feeling the desperate cries of a condemned man echo in my chest.

And in my freedom, I thought only of myself again. Even if madness had entered me, why would it present such a scene as this? From where would it draw such an image? Anger flared. I drummed my temple with a fist, screwed my eyes shut against it, but it was too late. I hoped some tendril of sleep remained and still showed me a dream as I looked again.

They were still there. Rope sheared, twisted and closed around their necks. An early rain fell on the downcast heads of those who had already given up the struggle. I was exhausted by hate. My head and heart were empty but I would reach your lake and fill them with its water, cool the burn in my hand and find you. I would find you there. Let these men be free as I am, I demanded of the world. Let them follow me if they desired, or flee. But let them live. Let all people live forever.

I ran to the nearest tree and sprung up the high roots as high as I could. The loop of rope around the trunk was slick with the fine drizzle that fell and my fingers slipped against it. Taking care to not add my own weight to the line, I worked my fingers into the few gaps in the knot and pulled but it was no use – it had been secured fast by the hands of many men. On the ground nearby I found a flat rock with what seemed to be a sharp point, but in my hands it did nothing but slide useless over the thick twine. In desperation, and amid the longing cries of the men in the line who still held some awareness, I ran my hand along the rope as far as I dared, searching for a frayed end or loop to work the stone point into. I felt the dry blisters on my palm open up once more, leaving ripe yellow flaps of skin wedged in the coils. But I had reached too far and could feel myself falling. My landing was heavy, despite the bed of dry leaves and grass.

Then, the weakest man fell. He had waited only so long, called back to life by the voices of his brothers, but now he fell. Some final ounce of will expended just to see me fail; his final sight would be of me at his feet. One last collected pulse of ten fearful men rang out, down the rope, into the wood and through the ground to me. I shook and rolled away, stood and turned, forced my hands over my eyes. The breath of those men, the slightest breeze I had never perceived, I now detected in its absence. My ears were filled with the creaking complaint of the rope as it pulled tight as a drum head, the strangled cries of them, and the long moments of silence that followed.