Heralds of the Mended Wood

I think I like this post title best of all. I recently finished reading The Green Ember by SD Smith. I have been a little slow to read this book. I actually gave it to my niece for her birthday last year, because she loves rabbits, and I had heard good things. But she hasn’t read it yet and so I decided to read it myself and borrowed it from the local library. 

'My place beside you, my blood for yours,
Till the green ember rises, or the end of the world!'

It was really something. How soul-stirringly rousing is that refrain? Rabbits with swords, fighting against evil and living as ‘heralds of the Mended Wood’. A great story to echo the greatest story.

Here’s a paragraph I particularly liked:

Before she turned in for the night, Heather stood before the painting of what she was convinced was her old home in what had been the Great Wood. A heaviness fell on her. Images of Father, Mother, and Jacks filled her mind. She imagined them all together, living in the hollow in the painting. Looking at the painter’s initials, F. S.—Finbar Smalls—she thought of Smalls, then of Emma, of the whole ups-de-down world and its million broken hearts. She wasn’t sure exactly what they meant by the Mended Wood, but she began to long for it. She began to believe, somehow, that she always had been longing for it. 

At the same time as the rabbits are preparing for the battle that must come against the evil that has overtaken and destroyed the Great Wood, they are also growing a community, perfecting their crafts and living as the ‘heralds of the Mended Wood’, ready for the time when they will be free and the wood restored. I love that idea.