I stepped through the hedge gap to find three men confronting a woman so lovely I knew her at once as the maiden acclaimed throughout the County of Kent as Lady Mirdath the Beautiful. The last time I paused, lost in solemn glory of the coming twilight, I heard to my right, beyond a gap in the hedge bounding the country road, the din of strident voices, some low and coarse, but one higher, as of a person in distress. It was the joy of sunset that brought us together, as I walked alone, far from home with my oak staff in hand, pausing often to view with wonder the clouds forming, row upon row, the battlements of evening in the sweet, gathering dusk of the year 1827. Nothing else survived, nor does anything remain around the manor except a stand of ancient oaks and a small, family cemetery. The charred fragments of the story we now call “The Night Land” were discovered in an iron box in the burned ruins of an ancient country residence in the County of Kent. Chapter One and Two of The Night Land, A Story Retold, my rewrite of William Hope Hodgson’s masterpiece.
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