Book One · in the making
Two tails. Two tales.
An illustrated fantasy adventure for readers 8 to 16. A kingdom lives on one great lantern-lit oak. To the east, the forest has gone grey, and it is creeping closer.
The legend
Long ago the squirrels fought a great war, and won it. But the victory tore a wound in the land, and the wound went grey and spread. Today it is the Dark Forest, and it creeps a little closer every year.
The old stories say that one day a squirrel will be born with a mark on its tail: an oak inside a diamond. That squirrel will lead, and will have the knowledge and the courage to heal the wound and bring back the light.
For seven generations the watchers of the Longwatch have checked the tail of every kit born on the Cradle Bough. Old Oswin has watched for fifty-one years and found nothing. Tonight, in the worst storm anyone can remember, he climbs up for the very last time.
Tonight, for the first time in fifty-one years, something on the Cradle Bough is about to change.
Oak in a diamond, born in the bough,
one day a heart, but nobody knows how.
Watch every tail, and keep your vow.
Who you'll meet
The boy from the oak
Grows up in the kingdom at the heart of the great oak, where everyone knows his name. Clever, kind, and always planning. He can see six ways to do anything, and sometimes that is five too many.
The last watcher
Tells the best stories in the kingdom and comes to every birthday. A watcher all his life, his eyes go to your tail before your face.
The exile
Walked away from the kingdom long ago and never came back. Quick with a needle, quicker with a reply. She hums a lullaby that always stops one line short.
The boy from the corner
Lives in the deepest corner of the Dark Forest, where nothing grows. He has never seen the sun. He once ran off three grey creatures with nothing but a pinecone, and he would like you to know that.
What the grey makes
Bark-grey, with knothole eyes and tails like dead branches. They take things and drop them and take again. Nobody knows what they want.
The world
The First Oak, older than the kingdom. Homes, bakeries and workshops wind up its trunk on spiral roads. High in its branches is the Market Ring, where moles deliver the post through hatches in the floor and the newest map is already out of date, because the grey edge keeps moving.
The legendary armour in the Great Hall, made from bark the great oak shed. Its heart-plate has been missing for longer than anyone can remember.
The Sapwardens draw a thread of light from living bark to fill the kingdom's lanterns. Magic is borrowed, and it always costs the one who borrows it.
Where the colours stop. For generations the line between green and grey stayed put. Lately the sentries on the east wall keep finding one more grey tree than the day before.
A hundred shades of grey, and rot-glow on the trunks like chalk. Warm fog rises from the Wound, a great bowl nobody has seen the bottom of, and the dead leaves fall upward. Under one hole in the canopy lies a fallen statue no one remembers carving.
The lantern trail
Every lantern is a piece of the project. Lit ones are done. Flickering ones are being made right now. Dark ones are still ahead on the path.
Done
Every road, root and rumour written down. Book One is planned from the first page to the last.
Done
Conor, Oswin, Hesper, Cade and the Hollow have been drawn, turned around and studied from every side.
Underway
The Prologue and Chapters 1 to 4 are written. Twenty chapters to go.
5 of 25 lanterns lit · Prologue + 24 chapters
Underway
Each new chapter is read aloud at bedtime first. If it doesn't hold a family's attention, it goes back to be rewritten.
Underway
An animated short film of the book's opening night. A first rough cut, with sketch pictures and stand-in sound, is put together, and new storyboard frames are being drawn.
Underway
Climb the great oak, walk the grey, follow the story your own way. The game design is written and the first 3D pieces are standing.
Ahead
The book on a phone or tablet, with a small game for every chapter so you can step into the scene you just read.
Ahead
The lantern we're all walking toward.
Far ahead
More books. Other kingdoms. Deeper into the grey.
No dates until they're real. The trail is updated as we go. Last updated 11 October 2026.
Coming soon · follow it here
Book One isn't finished yet, but it has begun. Here is how it opens, straight from the draft.
Next lantern on the trail: Chapter 5
Prologue · The Last Night of the Watch
The storm came up out of the Dark Forest the way storms always did, low and sideways, as if it had been crouching there all day and was glad to be let out.
Oswin of the Longwatch climbed into it.
He went up the Arden Oak one paw at a time, the way his grandfather had taught him: three claws in, test the bark, then move. Rain ran down the trunk in sheets. It got into his ears and under his coat and made the bark slick as river stone. Somewhere below, a shutter banged and banged.
He was old now. Old enough that his knees had opinions about every branch.
On his back he carried the lantern basket that every watcher in his family had carried before him: woven willow, darkened by seven lifetimes of paws, lined with soft wool.
In his coat pocket, wrapped in waxed leaf so the rain could not reach it, was a letter. He had written it four times. The fourth time, he had kept it short.
To the Council of the Kingdom. The Longwatch is ended.
Tomorrow, at sunrise, he would set it on the council table, and that would be that.
But tonight was still his. So he climbed.
There's nothing to sign up for yet, and we collect nothing. Bookmark this page and come back: each time a lantern is lit on the trail, this page grows.
thetailsoftwosquirrels.com
