by Dagny Paul

“There Is No Road through the Woods” is a Pseudopod Original. “Silly as it seems — no, is — I’m actually a bit afraid of plants. I like trees, and I have a garden, but there’s something unnerving about being among all these living things that we treat as though they’re just background. They’re alive. It freaks me out. The title of this story comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem, The Way Through The Woods. I read this poem when I was about three quarters of the way finished with the piece, and it really shaped the way it turned out.

The Way Through The Woods

by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring-dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods.

But there is no road through the woods.

DAGNY PAUL is an 8th-grade English teacher who lives in New Orleans with her husband and three-year-old son. She has an unhealthy (but entertaining) obsession with comic books and horror movies. After we purchased this story, Dagny was asked to come on board with PseudoPod as Associate Editor.

Your reader – Tatiana Gomberg – is a critically acclaimed actress of stage, screen, and the audio booth. She lives in New York City. She can be contacted for work at her VOICE 123 account.

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I wanted to bring your attention to a project from Orrin Grey and Strix Publishing. You already know and love Orrin Grey.

PSEUDOPOD 155: THE WORM THAT GNAWS

PSEUDOPOD 262: BLACK HILL

PSEUDOPOD 415: NIGHT’S FOUL BIRD

Strix Publishing has launched a Kickstarter to bring us a new and expanded hardcover edition of Orrin’s collection NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS. This new edition includes all ten stories from the original, as well as the heretofore hard-to-find “A Night for Mothing” and an all new story, “Goblins.” As of the time of this recording, it’s just passed the halfway mark with almost three weeks to go, so it’s time for the add-ons and additional goals to creep out of the corners.

So, please check it out: NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS Kickstarter. You’ll be glad you did!

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The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.

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Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

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“The summer it happened, Mr. Mason cut down the diseased elm in his front yard and found a fist-sized clot of blood, bone, and hair in the middle of its trunk. I didn’t see it, but Ellie Langford, who was a year ahead of me and lived next door to Mr. Mason, said that she had been sitting on her front porch, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up, when all of a sudden Mr. Mason’s chainsaw died and she looked up to see red splatters on his wife beater and a puzzled look on his face.”