Although he suspects his companion shares his feelings of disquiet, the two men don’t speak about their unease.

Alone, collecting driftwood for the fire, the narrator describes the willows as “utterly alien,” a vast army of “innumberable silver spears”. He and his companion avoid speaking about their current situation, even when all they have to occupy themselves with is conversation. The rising water, the shouting wind, the crumbling islands, and the masses of willows all together create a sense of unease and terror in the narrator, which he tries to dismiss by focusing on practical matters. With the waters still rising and the winds blowing the two find an island large enough to camp on that they are sure they will not be washed away. Having left the town of Pressburg during a rising tide, with the threat of a storm on the way, they are washed out of the main channel of the river and into a wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp covered with willow bushes, a “separate little kingdom of wonder and magic… with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers.”

The story follows the narrator and his traveling companion (referred to throughout as “the Swede”) as they journey down the Danube River, which is almost a character in the story. Lovecraft as an example of horror and weird fiction. Kingfisher’s book The Hollow Places, I discovered in the afterword that she had been inspired by a novella by Algernon Blackwood titled The Willows, which was much admired by H.P. ( | Project Gutenberg | )Īvailable: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, Project Gutenberg

The willows blackwood