Hillary Llwellyn-Williams was born in Kent of Welsh-Spanish parents. Her books include The Tree Calendar, The Book of Shadows and Animaculture, all published by Seren. She currently lives in South Wales. In the Wildwood The Hunter enters the forest alone and on foot, so sure is he of the ground and its beaten paths where he slips his hounds, all under his command skilled and well-equipped with a quiver full of arrows, a well-sprung bow never afraid to venture into the thickets He is here to start an idea - to pursue images, to run them down to harry them from the bushes and bramble-clumps transfixing them as they bolt for the canopy sunlight netting their wings His hounds retrieve the ragged feather bundles he strings them together as trophies and drags them home Sometimes his triumph is greater: he’ll capture a larger beast, a black boar with wicked tusks, a hind with velvet ears her liquid eyes rolled back as the dogs snatch at her throat Women fall for this Hunter Perhaps it’s the sweat from the chase the forest musk or it might be the lingering spoor of blood that draws them clustering     hoping to touch him But of course he must run freely among the trees - this is my place he says my right place and he wants to name every single thing he sees, and lay claim to it Nothing shall be forbidden because he is a great artist nothing escapes him, it’s all fair game If only he had gone as a gatherer grateful for what the glades and dingles offer rootling around on the forest floor and listening to the creatures he might not have blundered on the pool of shadows and believed what he saw there: the image of a woman bathing naked the image of his desire He imagines he is shielded crouched behind the hedge of his intellect He should have noticed the bearskin spread on a rock What a shock when he feels those claws rip at his human shape, letting the stag out! None of his metaphors can save him now His four legs stagger, his muzzled antlered head is filled with the baying of hounds Pebble From a stone in my palm I have made a bear cub: blind and hairless yet her pulse flicks warm in the nest of my hand and her long paws scrabble against my skin as she noses warm and nuzzles in Soon she loses the shape of the stone becoming flesh and fur, with a voice of her own so I can hide her no longer - not even in the folds of my coat She plays like a kitten rolls over, displays the petal soft underside of her feet and bares her teeth a little yet her small bright eyes are unreadable as pebbles or stars               * When the wind roars from the forest my bear lifts her head One day she won’t come to my call but with a curving claw she’ll trace a crack in the wall and away she’ll roll into the leafy shadows growing like a mountain shaking heavy flanks she’ll become a presence the snap of a twig behind me the breath that follows