Prince of the Undergrowth

There is, somewhere, a little village; a tiny dot on the maps of history. It has a post box, a telephone booth (not one of the nice red ones), a tavern/impromptu post office, a modernized farm, a burnt-down hall, a cold church with accompanying overgrown graveyard, a very small council estate, a scattering of cottages, a large vicarage, some houses-on-the-hill, a small village hall and a lifeless caravan site. There is a quaint yet thin river inhabited by lazy fish, startled waterfowl, the occasional heron, smokes of midges, miscellaneous man-mind disposable plastic paraphernalia and watercress.

One of cottages has an allotment, the one-time pride and joy of its former inhabitant; now an overgrown nettle-ridden jungle of blackcurrant bushes, bramble, briar and mysterious rhubarb. If you were to crawl on your belly through the loamy wet earth of this forgotten allotment, scratching yourself on botanical teeth and unknown matter as you do so, you would reach a small patch of moss covered soil. An unseen thrush cackles in the holly bush overhead somewhere, and if you gaze upwards you can follow the flight of wielding gulls as they drift in the currents and dream of the ocean, and of tractors ploughing fields. Someone, perhaps as much as ten or twenty years ago, has stacked up some terracotta roofing tiles. Nettles spiral out around the back of this small pile, and snails hold silent moots, perhaps in mourning.

This pile of tiles conceals a secret. There is something cold and manipulative lying in wait in the cool soil underneath. Woodlice bravely loiter on the under surface of these cracked orange tiles, tracing glyphic patterns in the dark and lonely world of rotting leaves. Underneath the mulch and fungal roots and waiting in the dark he sits, brooding. He has been there since late October, but now he feels the new warmth seeping through the earth to his skin like oil. His large filmy eyes slowly open, glistening in the darkness. A slow grin spreads across his soft face, thick tongue pulsing out in an experimental taste of the stale air that encases him beneath the ground. He is ready for worms, and slugs, and beetles. For he is bufo bufo; Prince of the Undergrowth, and he’s ready for spring.