Moss Trolls

The Holloway Path.

They say Tamsin of Oakhollow was the first to see a moss troll and live.

She was a hedge gatherer, known for straying deeper than most dared go. Folk warned her not to cut yarrow near the old barrows, but she laughed it off, bold as a blackbird.

“The dead don’t mind,” she’d say, “they’ve no need of flowers.”

One morning, before the mist had risen, she wandered off the woodland path, chasing a cluster of harebells deeper into the trees. The sun barely broke the leaves, and the silence was thick, no bird, no breeze, no insect hum. Just the hush.

That’s when she saw it.

It stood beside a sunken barrow, so still she thought it a tree stump at first. Moss hung from its brow like a veil, and its arms were as thick as old oak roots. It didn’t move. It didn’t speak. But she felt it looking through her, all the same.

Tamsin dropped her basket.

She whispered a name, not her own, but her grandmother’s, buried long ago, and laid down her gathering knife in the moss. Then she turned and walked backward the way she came, never taking her eyes off it. When she finally reached the holloway path, the woods exhaled. The birds sang again.

She never gathered near the barrows after that. But she kept a small bowl by her hearth, filled with honey and acorns. “For watching eyes,” she’d mutter, “and old debts owed.”

And every Midsummer’s Eve, she’d leave it at the edge of the woods.

Just in case.

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Moss Trolls.

Ancient Guardians of the Wessex Barrows.

Deep in the green hush of the old Wessex woods, where the trees remember and the wind carries stories not meant for men, the moss trolls dwell.

Ancient guardians of the Wessex barrows, they rise from earth and rot, from root and rain. Shaped by sorrow, cloaked in moss, these silent sentinels watch over the resting places of forgotten kin, those who sleep beneath the soil, their names lost to time.

If you stray from the woodland path, especially where the barrows sleep beneath the bracken, you might see one. Not walking. Never walking. Just there,

where no shape stood before. Like a stump, half swallowed by time, yet thick with presence.

They do not speak.

They watch.

And they remember.

It is said they were once the forest’s oath keepers, born to stand guard over the bones of chieftains and warriors, healers and smiths. Bound not by chains, but by honour older than kingship. They do not take kindly to trespass. And they do not forget.

Some woodsfolk still leave offerings, acorns strung on cord, honey in bark bowls, a whispered name for the dead. To mock their vigil is to summon a silence that follows you home, heavy as sodden soil.

So if you pass beneath the twisted boughs of Wessex, where holloways lead and shadows deepen, step softly. Speak kindly. And do not linger long where the moss grows thick.

-Woodlarking