Gillik’s Grove

I’d never been in this part of the forest before. When I was a child they called it the Gillik’s Grove and told us to keep out and out of a genuine fear we all did. We all knew someone though who had been in and seen it and their stories got wilder and more unbelievable. I suppose with these kind of tales more is more. But now as an adult I didn’t come this far because it wasn’t worth the effort. I had usually managed to find enough mushrooms to keep the local restaurants supplied for a week before I got to the giant leaning Scots Pine that marked the start of the Gillik’s reputed lair. But today I was short, very short and in the mushroom business more is more so I kept on.

It was darker here. The trees older, branches longer, leaves wider. I could see where the stories came from. In the still, quiet depths every sound seems that bit more alarming. But that rattle of acorns falling from height and scattering wasn’t footsteps. The wind through the branches weren’t a tail dragging along the undergrowth. The breaking twigs weren’t claws scraping along the tree trunks. They were none of those things because the Gillik is not real and it certainly wasn’t following me. It was clearly a root that tripped me over not an outstretched hind leg and the tears in my jacket were from the hawthorns, definitely not a clawed hand. The shadow that loomed over me was an owl swooping overhead, not a dark malevolent creature and it was its beak I saw, not saliva coated fangs. I didn’t collect many mushrooms that day, but nothing strange happened and no, I’m not lying to myself.