Once upon a time the whole of our land was covered in trees. The forest began at one sea-shore and ran, deep and dark and wild, all the way to the other side. Our ancestors lived there, among the leaflight and shifting shadows. There were bears and wolves in those ancient woods. There were wild boars, dragons, trolls, bogles and hobs, hags and harpies and willo-the-wisps and other, far stranger things, whose names we have long forgotten. Rumplestiltskin, Robin Hood and the Big Bad Wolf all lived there, and it was in the forest that the first stories were born.
Most of the old woods are gone now, chopped down to make room for towns and cities, and if we notice them it is as a distant green blur, glimpsed from the window of a speeding car or train. It is easy to forget that we ever lived out there and to imagine that the old tales are nothing but silly stories. But the forest has deep roots. The stories live on and the creatures of the forest are with us still, skulking in the twilight, taking refuge in forgotten corners. Slither, shadow, claw and creep, we feel their eyes watching us from the dark and hear the growl of wild, sabretoothed things in the shadows under the bed.
We have made maps to measure and tame the wilds but the wilds cannot be contained. The stories live on, slipping between the cracks. They live on in our dreams, reminding us of who we were, long ago, and who we still are. They speak of light and dark and of the cycles of life. They remind is that we are mortal and born to die and they remind us of the wordless wonder at the heart of everything true.
All the stories that you will find here have come from the forest, even the ones with no forests in them. Like ivy winding its slow way up a wire fence or foxes slinking into your back garden at night, stories adapt, changing as the times change. The forest is inside us. It is where we come from.