The Dark Between the Trees Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD!
“Dr. Alice Christopher [felt now] as if she were walking against a backdrop, a kind of stage setting. It was the oddest sensation, and as they made their way in a snaking line along the ridge, it only grew stronger: a hunch that this ground where she was putting her feet was not the forest floor, that the landscape she saw to the left and right was not the landscape. It wasn’t based on anything in particular— except perhaps that she had built this place up in her head to be something vast and mythical, and instead here she was tramping through rainy woodland. And yet the feeling remained, that what they were walking through was not all there was to walk through, and what they were seeing was not all there was to see.”
The VVitch meets Briardark, part historical fiction, part horror, The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett is a dual account of two groups who enter and then disappear in the mysterious Moresby Forest in the UK, one a small company of soldiers in 1643, the other a modern day, fact-finding archeological team there to investigate what happened to the soldiers hundreds of years before. In Moresby Forest dwells a creature from legend— the Corrigal— present in local accounts dating back even before Christianity reached it. It hunts both parties as they get lost, separate, and begin to see the Forest for what it truly is: a duplicitous place haunted by an ancient being that defies understanding. This engrossing read is about mentorship, how groups fall apart, history folding in on itself, trust, and ego being so easy to prey on.
The Dark Between the Trees is really about when to decide to give up on something or someone and when to stick it out. When do we believe and follow our leaders into danger and when do we question them or even leave them to save ourselves? What is cowardice? Who decides? Is it cowardly to survive? Is it a moral failing to give up? And where does bravery really get us in the end?
Our novel has two leaders: Captain Davies of the Parliamentary army and Dr. Alice Christopher. Both lead a group through Moresby Forest and both struggle to maintain control over their parties. By story’s end, both face down their fate and choose to follow their egos into the mouth of the Forest. In both cases, they had one remaining loyal follower who must confront the question of remaining steadfast or setting out on their own to survive.
When we first meet Captain Davies, the soldiers are ambushed on a hill and are sent straight into Moresby Forest. A few of the soldiers from the region say they should not go into the Forest because it’s haunted by a monster. Of course, the Captain believes this to be nothing more than local superstition and he leads them deeper in. But after the first night, a few of the men are missing— deserters, one of whom survived to tell the tale for our later group of academics to study. The soldiers frown on deserting as a cowardly act and continue on behind the Captain. The deeper they go, they find themselves confused on which direction they are walking, the Forest shifting and changing around them. Captain Davies says they are going this way, while one of the soldiers insists they are going another. As the soldiers start to see things, hear things, and lose members to injury from the ambush, they begin to crumble and in the chaos one of the sergeants leads a mutiny to remove Davies from authority. But men start disappearing out of thin air. Or their bodies left in a mangled mess for the group to find. A silent predator follows them closely. One by one, we lose the war party until it’s Captain Davies and his right hand man, Harper. After losing their way, they are led by the Forest to a cave. Davies believes his fate is to enter that cave to find what lives there so he can hopefully kill it. Harper decides to risk his life and follow him in. But when they become separated, Harper is alone in the cave, at least until centuries later.
When we first meet Dr. Alice Christopher, she is leading the group of fellow academics and forest rangers into Moresby Forest, where things quickly turn sinister and confusing. The two maps they have contradict each other and are incomplete; their navigational equipment doesn’t work in the Forest; and soon the group becomes lost. Alice insists they continue forward on the trail of Davies’ party over 300 years before. As they become lost, one of their Rangers injures herself and from there things fall apart. Characters lose trust in Alice and in her project, eventually splitting up until the only one left is Nuria, Alice’s mentee who is writing her thesis about the Corrigal. She stays by Alice the longest, even when the others bail and meet unknown fates, though we can guess. But, finally, Nuria sees that Alice isn’t thinking clearly anymore; she is blindly driven by a need to be in this Forest, to understand it, and maybe even doesn’t want to find a way out. Nuria must choose: her thesis and her mentor or survival. By story’s end, Nuria is the only one to make it out of the Forest again, alive.
We read mixed messages about deserters in the book. Some argue they should be hung. Others understand it. In the cases of both the Davies company and Alice’s team, it is a deserter who survives, but there are a few deserters who do not make it out. It’s not a black-and-white matter of deserters live and loyalists die. It’s a mixed bag. Nuria’s thesis is focused on the soldier who deserted and his account of the story. But in the end, it’s Nuria’s survival instinct that saves her. It begins with abandoning Alice. Alice believes the Forest is trying to communicate with her alone, artifacts they find are actually signs, and mysteries are to be deciphered by only her. The Forest lures her into its stomach by her grandiose sense of importance. To get out, Nuria focuses not on her thesis or on the mysteries of the Forest, rather solely on the fence that marks her way out. Nuria’s instinct to flee an obsessive project and leader saved her, while her letting go of her thesis permanently frees her.