Withered Hill Quotes

“Hares appear a lot in folklore. Witches’ familiars, sometimes witches themselves, shapeshifting.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“It's the way of things in Withered Hill.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Owd Hob, they call me. And Owd Hob I shall be. They called me many names before I struck the compact with them long, long ago that made the men and women of this place loyal to me, not to their new gods. The agreement that I would give them the bounty of this earth if they would honour me and procure for me a wife. For the plan, the grand design. The rewilding. Boggart, they called me. Goblin and elf. The Good Folk, the Fair Folk, the People of Peace, they called me and my kin. As they grew bolder, they tried to diminish me, make me a tale for naughty children. They called me fairy, pixie, sprite. Fallen angel, demon, devil, they said as they rallied ’neath the shadow of a wooden cross. Owd Hob, they call me now, as they bring me up through the worms and the dead things. I gather flesh and bone and eyes and hair and a tongue and teeth and fingernails and a cloak to cover me, all formed from the raw material of the earth. Which I am, and which I am of.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Sung for me, and those like me, precious few that we are now. And that is not the fault of the wind in the trees, nor the beasts that no longer roam, nor the bees, nor the birds, nor the squirrels, nor the rabbits. They knew me and my brothers and sisters for what we were, what we are: guardians, curators, servants, masters. It is the fault of the men that came, who worshipped us, then feared us, then forgot us, then spread like a pox across the face of the world, not living in harmony with it but shaping it and raping it and bending it to their will. Consuming it and choking it and taking, taking, taking and giving nothing back. It was the fault of the men that came and starved us of belief and gave their fickle fealty to other gods: progress and commerce and selfishness and war. It was the fault of the men that came and buried my brothers and sisters beneath concrete and steel, burned them in their forges and mills, suffocated us with their chimneys. And once they’d seen off my brothers and sisters, and forced those few of us into retreat and hiding, in places like this, they staked their claims on the land, and divided it up, and killed each other for ownership of that which can never be owned, for it is not for sale.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“They know the song though they never learned it. They were born with it in them, like their hearts that beat and their lungs that breathe. And before they were here, before any like them were here, the song would be sung by squirrels or rabbits, whistled by birds and hummed by bees. And before even they were here, the song was sung by beasts long since disappeared from the earth. And before even them, when the world was silent, save for the roaring of water and the burning of fire and the rushing of air and the grinding of the earth’s plates and joints as it settled into itself, the song was sung by the wind in the trees.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Who is this Owd Hob anyway? What right does he have?’ ‘He has the natural right conferred to him by the earth he tends, and which tends him,’ hisses Sophie fiercely. ‘He is both the land, and of the land. He is the air, and of the air. He is the water, and of the water. He is the fire, and of the fire.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“She doesn’t want to leave. She can’t wait to leave. She says out loud, her voice hoarse and strangled, ‘I must be mad. Or I wouldn’t have come here.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“This is Samhain. The night when the walls between worlds are paper-thin. They bring them to us. Just for a few hours. Those we have lost. They escort them over the divide, across the black river, and we spend time together. We never know who will come, or if anyone will come at all. But mostly, they come.’ ‘Why?’ asks Sophie. Catherine shrugs. ‘It’s always been the way in Withered Hill. Perhaps as a thank you for our service. For our belief.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Folk like you? There are more of you?’ whispers Sophie. ‘We are legion,’ says Owd Hob. ‘Or, we were. When this land was covered by the great forest, when all that lived did so by the whim of us, when the world was in balance. Now…’ Owd Hob holds out his long, skeletal finger and a brilliant blue butterfly alights upon it. ‘Now, these places are crushed, defiled, poisoned, withered.’ Sophie gasps as Owd Hob’s other hand darts out and closes around the butterfly, squeezing tight. ‘This is what man does, to all that is beautiful, all that is under Owd Hob’s auspices, and the auspices of the dwindling numbers of those like him.’ He holds out his white hand, the butterfly crushed and broken in his palm. Sophie feels so sad that she might cry. ‘This is what man does,’ he says again. ‘But it is not irreversible.’ The broken butterfly shimmers, and then is whole again, and it flutters from his hand into the dazzlingly bright leaves of the trees. Sophie now feels like weeping tears of joy. ‘Why am I here?’ she says in a barely audible whisper. ‘To help me,’ says Owd Hob. ‘To help me undo the damage.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“I am both the land, and of the land,’ he says. ‘I am the air, and of the air. I am the water, and of the water.’ His black eyes seem to glow. ‘I am the fire, and of the fire.’ Owd Hob sweeps his hand and the bare, dead trees seem to shudder, and then burst into life, buds and then leaves sprouting from their dry branches, insects crawling along their moistening bark, birds singing in the exaggerated colours of their foliage. ‘I am all of that, and all of that is me,’ says Owd Hob. ‘I was here before anything, and after everything here, I shall be.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“He, who sits in front of her, pinprick eyes piercing her soul. He, who is known to her, whatever cellular memory she has from her time outside suddenly plucking at her nerves like violin strings and sending his name shimmering along every sinew. He, who is the master of this place and, she now knows for certain, the master of her. Owd Hob.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“He is there, seated on a hillock, elbows on his knees, scratching his chin with thin, claw-like fingers. His face is hooked and gnarled like the tree branches, but as white as the moon beneath his tatterdemalion cloak and ragged hood. It is as though he has been carved from pale, young wood and clothed in the oldest night there ever was, as though he has grown there, like a living statue, his eyes shining like fireflies framed against the blackness of the hour of the wolf. He looks simultaneously ancient and yet vital and full of life. He speaks of spring and autumn, of new growth and burnt death, like the unholy progeny of the summer and winter solstices made some kind of flesh. He is the turning of the seasons, his scent is musk and soil and sweet lavender.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“The school where Catherine teaches is called St Michael’s, and that is a nod to the Christian faith, but only because, as Thaddeus Obermann once told her, Michael was the patron saint of fairies and intervened with God on their behalf, and saved them from destruction so long as they inhabited dark, out-of-the-way places.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“In many ways, Faunalia is the most important of Withered Hill’s festivals,’ he says. Sophie hands him back the book. ‘Are you sure you read this properly? It’s quite important. The festival is in honour of Faunus, the Roman god who dwelt in the woods and was worshipped by farmers in return for bountiful harvests. But it is not just the fertility of our land and animals that we ask for at Faunalia. Do you know when the most popular month for birthdays is in Withered Hill?”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Neither is Gladys expected to get her hands dirty. She has a threefold role in Withered Hill, just like her mother before her, and her grandmother, and goodness knows how many generations back. She teaches at the school, she travels to the outside, and she takes care of people like Margaret. Doubtless, Gladys will take a husband soon – she is twenty-three, after all – or at least have one of Withered Hill’s strong young men father her a child. And she will have a daughter, as her line always does, and that daughter will do the same jobs, and so it will go on. Forever, expects Margaret.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Don’t think of it as killing a person. Think of it as redistributing the force that winds through us all. Using it for the greater good, rather than having it stoppered up in a sad, vicious little man.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“For a moment,’ she admits, ‘I felt… part of something.’ She drains her glass. ‘I felt connected.’ ‘And not just to Withered Hill,’ says Catherine, pouring Sophie another whisky. ‘To everything.’ She sits back and watches Sophie for a while. ‘Nothing really dies. Not really. Everything is linked. Connected. There is a… force that moves through all of us. It is the wind through the trees and the heat of a sun-warmed stone and the beating of our hearts. It is within us and everywhere around us. And that is the essence of life in Withered Hill. That nothing ends, that there is a continuous cycle of life and death and rebirth. It used to be the way of things the world over, but gradually people forgot this. Out there, they live in the moment, forgetting the past and ignoring the future. They have forgotten that they are part of a much broader canvas, that spools out in front of them and behind them into infinity.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“What are you?’ asks the farmer. ‘Boggart? Fairy? Sprite?’ Owd Hob looks back at Catherine, then says, ‘All of these things and none of them. I am of the land and the land is of me.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“And then she sees them. They are as though carved from the bark, figures bound like twigs with twine, but huge, sometimes as big as a man, sometimes smaller, sometimes with far more dark, gathered mass. They are feathers and fur and beaks and teeth and yellow, raptor eyes. They are skin and bone and rags and shadows, sprouting from the land and hanging from the trees. They are the fruit of the woods and the heartbeat of the earth and the devils in the details of the rough, hard-hewn land on which Sophie stands like an alien entity that does not belong there. They chitter and chatter and sing like birds, squeal like mice, grunt like pigs, and together they are the most terrifying thing Sophie hopes ever to see in her life.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“If I get drunk, don’t let me forget to put a bowl of milk outside the front door before I go to bed.’ ‘What for?’ asks Sophie. Catherine laughs as she pours two big glasses of wine. ‘You really do have a lot to learn about Withered Hill.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“She knows how to walk through the woods now. You need permission to be there, which is not obtained through asking. It is granted for purity of thought and stoutness of heart, for honesty and peace. You can never be part of the woods, never be of the woods, but you can be in the woods, for a brief moment in time, like a lover inside another. It is a bargain, a compact, a tryst. To partake of what it offers, you must leave something of yourself behind. Few people know that, thinks Sophie, as her hand trails over the wych elm in the shadows of the trees. It can be a memory of childhood, or a trinket given by a long-forgotten suitor. A baby’s shoe, or a cat’s claw. A secret whispered into a hole in the ground and covered over with leaves. A drop of blood.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Things grow well in Withered Hill, given that it is in the heart of the Lancashire countryside. Crops are bountiful, livestock is fat, villagers are healthy and strong. Fecund, thinks Sophie. That is a good word for it.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“It is Lammas, and we give thanks,’ says Noah gruffly into the microphone. ‘Thanks for the harvest we hope to receive, thanks for the land that looks after us, and those that are the earth and are of the earth. Aye, you all know who I mean.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“As I were going up Withered Hill With night-time coming soon I met a man under the trees Whiter than the moon He smiled at me and stroked my hair I were frit for my life He showed his teeth and smiled and said, ‘Owd Hob wants a wife”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“Nothing really dies. Not really. Everything is linked. Connected. There is a… force that moves through all of us.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill

“She knows how to walk through the woods now. You need permission to be there, which is not obtained through asking. It is granted for purity of thought and stoutness of heart, for honesty and peace. You can never be part of the woods, never be of the woods, but you can be in the woods, for a brief moment in time, like a lover inside another.”
― David Barnett, Withered Hill