Station Zero

Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild is one of my spookiest efforts, so here for Hallowe'en is a little excerpt, featuring one of the supernatural denizens of the Vale of Barrowchurch.    I’ve borrowed two pictures to illustrate it. The green lady above is by the brilliant Iris Compiet, from her book Faeries of the Faultlines, which features a host of eerie and unsettling beings. The one below is one of Brian Froud’s paintings from his 1979 book Faeries , with Alan Lee, which partly inspired the river girl and much else in Utterly’s world.  In the story, Utterly and her Uncle Will are visiting Barrowchurch as guests of his cousin Francis. Utterly's friend Egg has gone with them, and is posing as their servant... *  *  * Egg had been exploring too, although he had no guide except his own curiosity. It had led him first to the kitchen garden, and then into the large fruit-cages there, where he ate a large number of ripe strawberries and raspberries before...

  This is the map of the Wildsea that I worked from while I was writing Utterly Dark. As you can see, it’s a considerably smaller world than the galaxy-wide rail network of the Railhead series , and I think that was part of the appeal: to focus in on a tiny little world in great detail.  Like most of my stuff, it probably goes back to Tolkien. I didn’t consciously base Wildsea on the Shire , but it’s a similar idea - a slightly idealised rural England of the Olden days, but with wild magic lurking just beyond its borders. Here’s a quick tour of some points of interest, starting 1/3 of the way up the west coast at Sundown Watch and moving clockwise.   SUNDOWN WATCH This is the house where Utterly lives, and where much of the action takes place. There’s always something evocative about a house on a cliff top, I think. I remember seeing one at Rinsey in Cornwall many years ago that instantly suggested a story, so that got filed away till the time was right. Around the sam...