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FOREWORD

BY GRAHAM JOYCE

In the traditions of the Fantastic, the ewood elory, from those very traditions The Woods is a place of archetypal force The writer who invokes the power of the greenwoods knows that the stakes are high and the list of antecedents long In fact it would take a book on its own to chart the treatue here

In fact I ought to write it, though I knoon’t because it would take too long But if I did I could talk about how fairy tale tradition locates so lorious stories — Hansel and Gretel, Babes In The Wood, Red Riding Hood, just to name three — in the Woods for very particular reasons Or why A Midsuhts Dream by ol’ Will Whatsisna’s Man-Cub, just like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, being raised in the jungle by animals

In their brilliant cataloguing of Fantasy enerated the phrase Into the woods to denote the process of transfor woods and forests It is very often that, but it’s actually even more specific, and certainly more than the usual fantasy portal to transformation For the Woods is a very literal place of both dark and light Of beaten pathways and uncharted zones Of twists and turns A place where youas friends It is the primal locus of fear and wonder In other words, in the fiction of the Fantastic, the Woods is so often the psychic correlative to the condition of Childhood

The Woods stands in for the budding consciousness of the child, the individuation of character, and the ultie out of childhood Or to put it another way, the passage out of unconsciousness and into self-consciousness For example, CS Lewis launches the children of his Narnia sequence into the woods before having theonists do not have to be children More recently and in works more complex, varied (and dare I say superior to Lewis), Charles De Lint (Greeno Wood) and Ramsey Campbell (The Darkest part of The Woods) — just to na presence of the Greenwood and its role in the human psyche

Christopher Golden takes this rich tradition and braids it beautifully with another pattern recognisable to the connoisseur of the Fantastic concern: that of the artist (in this case a writer) haunted by his own creations, Stephen King’s The Dark Half and Peter Straub’stoo very fine examples of the species All writers ith antecedent forms What separates thewith all the authors mentioned above is a superb creator froinality of vision thatin a persuasive new form

In the case of Strangewood, what Christopher Golden does is to co the question of the relationship between Childhood, Creativity and the I themes for all writers, especially authors of the Fantastic There is, after all, a relationship between vulnerability and the ie of a small child in the woods? And what can be more clever than that device by which Christopher Golden brilliantly contrives to have not only the child, Nathan, at risk in the woods; but also to render the adult hero of the narrative, Thoinal child, the “Our Boy” of Strangewood

It’s a ewood, pushing it into that prized place in which the story is er than itself

So there is in Strangewood an exploration of the complex relationship between a writer’s faination, creativity and children All of this is offered in a fascinating double narrative, where Strangewood reaches out, root and branch, to impact upon the world of its creator

Thoonist of the story, is an author who suffers an extres he has created in the children’s novels he writes A terrible revenge is visited on his own child The novel links a disintegrated e, which of course threatens the happiness of the child Nathan, with the internal collapse of the Fantasy world — Strangewood — created by the author Thomas The question is whether the crisis is precipitated by the flawed nature of Thoe; but whichever it is, in this case “the sins of the father are visited on their sons”

Unlike most modern Fantasy that constructs either a hermetically-sealed universe or enters another universe via a portal concealed in this world, Christopher Golden locates his story in both the conteht to both Because his real interest, his real subject, is the iination, the true portal, the primal mentalistic woods that demark the land between the contemporary world and the Fantastic world

What talent or distress is it, exactly, that divides writers and their ilk from the rest of the population? Why do they seek such extended recourse to the depths of the forest or to the rear of the flickering cave? Certainly Christopher Golden knows that the human psyche in a state of distress can construct al is too wild or incredible, and, as you are about to find out froination can sewood

Graham Joyce

Achill Island, August 2006

PROLOGUE

"Is it true? Is it really true?" shouted The Boy, as he stared up into the green-blue sky above Strangewood

"Yes, oh yes," replied Fiddlestick the dragon, and he swooped and soared and looped and spun in figure eights above the The Boy and all of his Friends very dizzy indeed

"I should have known!" The Boy cried "I should have known this very eous day, too warm for autumn — and it is autumn now, you know! Too war to be so special! A day like no other!"

The Boy watched Fiddlestick a on for long without getting a crick in his neck, being as how the dragon was up in the air and such Then The Boy whooped and laughed, and did one of the cartwheels he was forever trying to teach Brownie the Grizzly, without any luck

Brownie laughed and tried a cartwheel anyway and fell into a big, brown pile of giggling fur

They were all laughing and dancing in the se, which had been a sad place for a while, but was now a happy place again

There was a ringling jingling jangling noise, and The Boy looked up happily to watch as Mr Tinklebu-ran into the clearing

"He's right, Our Boy! Fiddlestick is right! Word has been passed along by Clapper and Tru Way all the way from the Land of Bells and Whistles! They've been seen, they've been seen, coers have confirmed it!"

Mr Tinklebu with joy at every step Laughing Boy yelped his hyena laugh, and Brownie danced, and they could all hear the sing-song, scritch-scratch, wind chi the tune of flying music

Gourdon Squashhead was the last to arrive His autu Old Orchard, to keep it safe from the Crow Brothers, Dave and Barry When The Boy saw Gourdon today, he cried out in pleasant surprise, because Gourdon was not alone!

The Crow Brothers had arrived with Gourdon himself

"Oh, indeed, this is a special day when the Crow Brothers and Strangewood's only scarecrow can put aside their grudges," The Boy said "We shall have a big party, noelcoain party A we'veparty! Yes! Yes indeed!"

All of The Boy's Friends cried out in agreement They were excited at the prospect of a party, but what an occasion! To have their old friends returning at last!

A moment later, as The Boy danced with Brownie, Fiddlestick cried out from above

"They're here, they're here!" he shouted down, and the s picked up in tempo and volume

"Quiet up there, I can't hear myself think!" Gourdon yelled at Fiddlestick