Hunger games in the weird wildwood

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The deer are instinctively wary. I share something like it, an uncanny feeling in an eldritch place

The feeling of just being watched does not make this place eldritch. A strange, otherworldly, wood, it can feel unsettling at the best of times. Now there's a chill to the east wind, and the year and the weather have changed. Something hungry moves in the trees.

There are eyes watching for that as they watch me, too. It feels like a tightening of the air, a narrowing of sightlines through tree cover so dense it is not possible to see more than 20 metres even where there's a gap.