Scary Fairies by Anna Kemp
The Hollow Hills is the second book in the Goblyn Wood Adventure series. We are delighted to welcome author, Anna Kemp to the blog to share her guest post entitled, Scary Fairies!
Scary Fairies
I used to think fairies were small, sparkly creatures that lived at the bottom of the garden, or sat at the top of the Christmas tree. For years I thought that fairies meant fairy cakes, fairy lights and twenty pence coins under my pillow whenever I lost a tooth.
But that was before I picked up an encyclopaedia of Fairy Folklore. A few pages in, and all my illusions about fairykind had gone up in a puff of sparkly smoke. Here the Tinkerbells and Tooth-fairies were few and far between. Instead, I found hobgoblins who lurked in dark cupboards, river hags who pulled people into weedy ponds, beautiful fairy queens who stole children from their cradles, and all kinds of other mysterious, shape-shifting creatures. They weren’t all nasty – there were hobs and brownies who might do your washing-up in exchange for a bowl of cream – but most were powerful, dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. All the same, I quickly fell under the spell of these strange, unpredictable creatures who used to populate the imaginations of our ancestors, and before long the seed of Goblyn Wood was sown.
Old fairy lore is one of the main inspirations for the Goblyn Wood Adventures. The world of Into Goblyn Wood and The Hollow Hills is one of underground fairy villages, stone circles and elfin oaks, and it is populated by various different kinds of fairy – some are friendly, some are not.
The hero of the story, eleven-year-old Hazel Quince, is part-human, part-fairy, but doesn’t know it yet. Her adventure begins when her best friend, Pete is snatched away by shadowy creatures in the woods, leading her deeper into the forest and into the fairy realm. To save him she will need to face the terrible truth of her past, learn who and what to trust, and draw on every ounce of her courage.
In writing the story, I drew deeply on fairy folktales, weaving in many traditional elements. Like their ancestors, the folk of Goblyn Wood live underground, have a special connection to nature, fear iron, and are distrustful of the human world. There are fairy fiddles that make you dance, fairy fruits that must be resisted, and magical ointments that, when smeared on the eyelids, dispel fairy glamour.
But, of course, whenever we talk about fairies, we are also talking about ourselves. One of the things I learned from reading fairy folk-tales is that fairies often appear during moments of great change and upheaval in a person’s life: childbirth and death, but also at the tipping point from childhood to adulthood. For me, The Goblyn Wood Adventures are not only about fairies but about growing up. They’re about friendship and belonging, about knowing the difference between what is true and what we want to be true, and finding out what we are capable of.
Like the fairies of folklore, the fairies of Goblyn Wood can be tricksy and dangerous. But they are also Hazel’s mischievous, meddlesome guides as she unlocks her own unique powers and learns that she is so much stronger than she ever imagined.