Jamie and the Tree Troll

a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex

the novel by Zsolt Kerekes - published in 2023

free sample chapters

Foreword

temporary book cover image Jamie and the Tree Troll Names of places, if true, tell stories… which legends, themselves, have names renowned too.

We always look forward to one we've not heard. And now we edge close to where it begins.

Jamie and the Tree Troll. A story of living memory, with truth in its pages, and legend, and magic.

And as to the place? Such a place! There before words were first written.

Ancient woods don't need words. But their stories do. Strong trees! Upgrowing. Amidst elders resting. Trees slanting, fallen, untidy and real. Mossy nature, no signage… surrounding the grounds of a once grand old mansion. Successfully keeping the busy world out. Yet somehow all this lying hidden and quiet, and shushed in the South Downs in Sussex.

And unlike those many: self-styled as "South Downs" - but placed actually a cloud's shadow north in the Weald - this house - in Clayton - invisible - even as you jog past its entrance - no gate - a mere gap in the trees along Underhill Lane - and up, up from there - bouncing up the bone-shaking steep drive - how do people with cars manage? and yet - there it is! - perched, nestling into the hill and high enough up to craftily overlook Ditchling - and while not quite at the crowning tippy top - like the nearby famed windmills of Jack and Jill - is in itself (not needing any benefit of stories I may write) about as authentic a South Downs sort of place as you can get.

As a frequent visitor 20 years ago and looking down from the lofty windows at the ant-like weekend detectorists waving their wire-wound antennae in the broken fields below I often wondered about the names… Clayton, Underhill Lane, and what they signified and what the Saxons had to do with it?

When I heard Jamie's story - of course - it all came together. There was so much more to it than that. Those amateur archaeologists were in the wrong place using the wrong tools. Coils don't detect magic. Much easier to be the one found than find. Knowing now. It all seems so obvious. The answer was always in the names.

So many years have passed since I last went there. Old trees have tumbled, new ones have sprouted. Paths have crumbled. I doubt if I could find my way to where the story threads all came together now. And the entrance has no doubt been sealed and moved. I'm so glad I wrote his story down at the time before my fading memory lost the fine details.

So here at last in a proper book. A true story of that place.

chapter 1 seen but not heard

In my grandmother's day adults used to say that little children should be seen but not heard. And children used to go to bed when they were told. That could be as early as 7 or 8 o' clock.

Nowadays things are quite different. It's hard to get the Little Darlings to go to bed before 9 o' clock (on a school day). And if the following day is a weekend or a holiday, they'll try and talk you into letting them stay up as late as the adults. Sometimes parents get so tired of providing nonstop food and entertainment they feel as if they are the ones who should be going to bed first. And if you think getting the Little Whatsits to bed is the start of a quiet child-free night - you're sadly mistaken. Because, as everyone knows, what comes next is…

"I'm thirsty. Can I have something to drink?"

"I'm hungry. Can I have something to eat?"

Followed by another visit to the toilet and the rebrushing of teeth.

And next… comes the one which is hardest to resist.

"You said you would read me a story!"

This then, Dear Reader, is the true story of a real-life child of today called Jamie Huggett.

Unlike the fairy tale paragons of old who could be "seen but not heard" Jamie learned the interesting trick of turning invisible (when he didn't want to be seen).

But you could still hear him alright! He could howl like a - hungry baby tyrannosaurus at feeding time - when the occasion demanded.

All modern children can do this trick. You can see them practicing their natural born grizzling skills in any supermarket on a Saturday afternoon.

Howling like a baby dinosaur would not, in itself, make a very interesting story (even if it sounded truly and horribly authentic). But learning how to become invisible, so that no one can see you, even when you are standing right next to them in broad daylight, is rather more unusual. Most children can't do that no matter how hard they try.

So you might ask - how did Jamie learn the art of becoming invisible?

He learned that trick from a tree troll. But Jamie's ear splitting trick of howling like a baby tyrannosaurus is one he invented all by himself…

chapter 2 - need to feed dragons

It was one of those sunny Saturday afternoons which you can get in Sussex any time between April and mid September. Jamie and his father Mark were out in their woods sawing down trees, chopping up logs and collecting firewood.

They lived in a rundown old mansion. It looked just like the haunted house licked by lightning you see perched at the top of the hill in spooky episodes of Scooby Doo. But unlike the cartoon, their house - the Middle House at Clayton Holt - was real and was set midway up the north facing slope of a woody hill on the Sussex Downs. It was always gloomy inside and for half the year it was ice freezing cold.

Visitors would say - once they had settled politely inside…

What an amazing house!

Such large rooms and high ceilings!

and having already commented on the location…

What a hidden gem - yet such wonderful views!

and the relief they felt at having arrived in one piece…

What a fright I had driving down Underhill Lane - I had to swerve to avoid hitting some idiot driving in the middle of the road coming the other way! and having only just survived the crumbling track edges and car shaking potholes of the steep twisty driveway leading up to the house without wrecking their cars…

Of course I only have a normal car but I suppose everyone in the country has a 4x4?

would soon be rubbing their arms, wishing they had dressed in more layers and with shivering inevitability steer the conversation around to asking - as if their lives depended on it - the blunt question…

But I'm curious and do tell me if you know - compared to where I live and the weather outside - how come in here - it feels so fridgingly ice freezing cold?

One reason… was it was shaded by the hill behind and never got any direct sunlight. And being in a country lane with the nearest gas pipes miles away the central heating worked on oil which was stored in a dark rusting steel tank which perched on the only flat space in the back garden. The boiler was what you'd call a normal size for a house - which meant it was way too small to heat this mansion properly. So when the heating was switched on it was expensive to run - slurping up all the fuel greedily and running out before doing much more than defrosting the radiators.

Just top it up with more fuel you might say.

Have you seen the size of an oil tanker?

Have you seen the size of a single track country lane?

There's your answer in a nutshell.

The oil tankers were too wide and too long to drive on the local country lanes. So the fuel company used to send out what they called a mini tanker instead.

The mini tanker - not much bigger than an ice cream van - was narrow enough to brush through the hedges which lined Underhill Lane and short enough to twist around the bends under the canopy of fat branches as it crunched its way over fallen dead twigs and bumped across the potholes up the steep tree lined tunnel leading up to the house.

The mini tanker driver was always a welcome sight but he could only deliver a few days' supply of oil at a time.

And after that the boiler would run out again and sometimes it would stop working and need a service engineer to clear out the air lock or ungunk the clogged up filters before it would restart. (This kind of breakdown was especially galling if it happened just after the tank had been filled and 1,000 litres of heating oil was sitting there useless - all ready to be slurped up by a boiler which had run out of suck).

By then it would be Christmas and the family would have to shiver till after the end of the New Year holidays before anyone would come out to fix the problem.

On the plus side, there were a few really hot days in the summer when hardy visitors could safely risk taking off their jackets (inside the house) and would comment on how pleasantly cool it was compared to being outside.

Cooler than air conditioning and even better than standing next to the chilled food cabinets in the supermarket.

How refreshing!

But once it got dark - even on the hottest of summer days Jamie's father Mark would usually light the big open fire in their sitting room.

It gave out more smoke than heat, but it cheered the place up a bit.

One winter, fed up with always feeling so cold, Mark decided that the struggle with burning oil wasn't worth the candle. As the house was surrounded by trees and he was pretty handy with a chain saw, he bought two new log burning stoves. The smaller of these was made of thick black iron. It had windows in the doors so you could see what was going on inside. Jamie and his sister Laura called it the Black Knight. They put it in the dining room.

The so called dining room was grand in size but not in style - which is to say it was easy to tell that children lived here.

Because except on special family occasions like Christmas - the polished wood dining table was normally covered.

Covered with what?

Well there may have been a wipe-able plastic table cloth somewhere on it but evidence of this was rarely seen as most of the time it lay buried under layers of sticky crumbs, amazing drawings of sharks and dinosaurs, melted wax (from Babybel cheese packs and old candles), half empty tumblers of water, plastic toys and coloured pencils with broken points.

And stretched out on top of all this (as if daring you to test his claws by moving him) lay a large purry cat licking himself - called Wolfie.

Wolfie was a Maine Coon - and he used to store the left over bottom halves of rabbits under the children's beds just in case he needed a snack before going out. That was a safe tuckaway for meaty morsels because the dusty gaps under their beds between shoes and socks and t-shirts were decluttered even less often than the layers above the dining room table and no one ever stole Wolfie's bits and bobs because the family were all vegetarians. The other new log burning stove was designed to provide central heating.

Unlike the titchy old sludgy oil boiler the new shiny wood burning furnace was the right size for the house. It was a big red metal monster which dominated the downstairs hall. As big as a sentry box with shiny fat steel pipes ascending up to the ceiling like the pipes in a cathedral organ.

When you opened the door a fan came on. Flames roared up and blasted you with comforting heat. And even with the door closed - when it was really going - you couldn't stand close for long without melting.

So Jamie and Laura called it the Red Dragon.

It was a hungry dragon and in winter the Red Dragon sucked in wheelbarrows of logs the way some people eat mince pies. On warm sunny days, like the day in this story, the Red Dragon and Black Knight both stood quietly asleep. But if the family didn't plan ahead and prepare logs to start drying now in the summer they would regret it later. Because both stoves smoked sulkily and refused to give out any heat at all if fed on a diet of freshly chopped green timber.

Jamie and Mark were in a part of their woods which was a long way from the house. And the path for the little tractor ended a few hundred yards away. Mark had felled and sliced some likely looking trees with his chainsaw and split the logs with his long axe. They were now engaged in the easier task of collecting logs and kindling.

Years of practice meant Jamie and his father worked as an efficient team.

They had two wheelbarrows. Jamie would gather up the scattered pieces of wood and fill one barrow with logs while his father walked the other barrow down the windy track to where the tractor and trailer were parked. It took about five wheelbarrows to fill up the trailer.

When it was full they would drive to one of the many covered log stores Mark had built in the clearings near the house. Jamie would ride on the tractor with his dad. The paths were on steep slopes and sometimes the trailer would tip over spilling out all the logs.

The hard work wasn't over when they reached the log store. They had to unload the trailer and stack the logs carefully so they would dry and burn better and be easy to collect in the dark winter months ahead.

Chopping logs and stacking them was something they did nearly every week, and often they did it after school.

In the first winter of feeding the Red Dragon they ran out of logs. So when the children came back from school Mark said "Come on Jamie, Laura. Get your torches. Let's go and find something to burn."

In the pouring rain it was miserable. They slid about in the mud looking for scraps of slimy wood and kindling which they had missed before.

And when they got the soggy heavy logs back to the house they carefully gathered up all the scraps of paper they could find, including every piece of junk mail, pizza boxes, the inner tubes from old loo rolls and even (when they got really desperate) the least loved drawings off the dining room table. ("Sorry Wolfie" said Laura. "Shift your butt.") All to give the precious fire the best possible start.

After the match was struck (Mark never used more than one) they watched hopefully for the first sign of flames from the wood, huffing and puffing with the bellows and touching the cold radiators testing for the first flow of heat. This time they were lucky. Another time all their efforts were in vain and all they got was dark smoke which meant another cold night and going to bed early.

"Get your jim jams on. I'll fetch the hot water bottles."

They got more organised about preparing the wood stores after that.

Their house is surrounded by 50 acres of woods. If you climb to the top of the slopes and turn right - a short walk along the South Downs takes you to the famous Jack and Jill windmills. If, on the other hand, you turn left, you soon reach Ditchling Beacon. Standing here on a clear day you can see the countryside for miles around and even catch glimpses of the sea. It's hard to imagine how anyone could ever get lost. Although some people apparently do…

It's easy enough to get lost in the woods.

When Jamie's school friends come to play they sometimes split up and it can take an hour or more to find them again. The trees grow close and you can't see far along the meandering mossy paths. Also sound has a way of getting lost in the leaves so that - even if you shout at the top of your voice - then someone a few hundred feet away can't hear you. Jamie knew most parts of the wood quite well. But he hadn't been in this part they were in now for a few years. None of the tractor wide paths reached it. And whenever they cut a new path towards it - by hacking at the undergrowth - it would grow back and be lost again just a few days later.

When Jamie was younger he remembered having a picnic here with his sister Laura and uncle Zsolt. They had brought up some food and drinks in a plastic carrier bag which they set down by a tree. Jamie and Laura had seen a green hand coming out of the hollow at the base of the tree pulling the bag towards the hole.

"Uncle Zsolt! Uncle Zsolt! Quick! Look! A hand!"

As soon as they said it the hand was gone. He hadn't seen it and joked that it must have been tree trolls. So they all watched carefully for a few minutes. They didn't see the hand again - but when they checked the bag - some of the food was missing.

"Maybe we left some of the sandwiches back in the kitchen," said Uncle Zsolt. "Or maybe… it really was tree trolls."

Jamie knew his uncle was teasing and didn't believe in tree trolls. But they began to notice that if they left a bag of food on the path while they went to explore a short side path then - when they returned - the bag would have moved or some of the food they had packed in it would be missing.

"It's probably a fox or a badger," said his uncle.

So on later walks they took their picnic food in backpacks rather than carrier bags and whenever they sat down to rest or eat they hung the packs on branches to keep them safe from anything which might sneak up from a hole in the ground when they weren't looking. Jamie didn't believe in tree trolls. But he had a good imagination. And whenever he went for a walk in the woods he got the impression that if he turned around suddenly he would see things going in or out from the root bowls of the oldest trees.

Today - the sunny bright day of this story - Jamie and his father Mark were in the woods logging. They brought their picnic in a backpack and just in case of foxes or badgers or tree trolls hung it, as usual, from a branch while they worked together.

"The trailer's full," said Mark, wheeling back an empty barrow. "Why don't we have some lunch now and collect the rest up later."

Out of the rucksack came bread and hummus sandwiches, and lumps of cheddar cheese and tomatoes. And apple juice for Jamie and a bottle of wine for his father. When they finished that they dug in again and out came some apples and bananas and two bottles of water.

"We'll save the crisps and cakes till later," said Mark. He looked at the time on his mobile phone. "I don't know about you but I could do with a bit of a nap. We've got another three or four hours before Laura comes back from visiting (her friend) Indie." Mark collected some moss and bark and made a snug nest for both of them up against the slope. Just to be on the safe side he set the alarm on his phone.

"I'm not sleepy," said Jamie yawning. "Well I am. I'll just have a little snooze. You keep watch on the backpack. If any tree trolls try to steal the crisps just yell and I'll wake up and chase them off." With that he closed his eyes and went straight to sleep.

Jamie was feeling dozy too. Collecting the logs and kindling had been hard work and the air was getting hotter. It was hard to keep his eyes open.

Swish…

What was that?

He thought he had seen something near the bag. He couldn't see anything now. There was a gentle breeze and the tops of the trees were swaying. But down here at ground level the air was heavy with the scent of moss. His eyelids were heavy. They blinked shut.

What was that!

A rustle. Eyes open again. He couldn't see anything, just the rucksack swaying…



temporary book cover image Jamie and the Tree Troll this is the end of the sample. I hope you found it interesting.

My book - Jamie and the Tree Troll - a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex - is available in the following formats:- You can see more info about this book and how I came to write it on its home page here

I've published 4 books for kids and the adults who read to them. Click here for an overview.

...more about the author - Zsolt Kerekes on his author member page - Alliance of Independent Authors