This crudely-carved wooden owl sits watch over a rarely-trodden path through Horsingdon Wood.
Similar figures are scattered throughout the area, and are used by the region's cunning folk - the guardians of the Black Bowers - to demarcate the boundaries of a particular site deemed sacred to Those Who Wait, or of some grove to be used by the guardians for the enactment of nameless rites dedicated to those inscrutably ancient masters.
Owls figure prominently in Horsingdon folklore, where they are commonly presented as familiars to the guardians of the Black Bowers - but also as manifestations of a mysterious group of beings known as 'The Watchers in the Wood'; in the latter instance, there seem to be intriguing points of convergence between the lore surrounding The Watchers in the Wood, and the appearance of owls within more recent ufological abduction narratives (including those involving both Horsingdon Wood and Hill), where these nocturnal avians perform the role of 'screen memories', supposedly masking the true (and more horrifying) nature of the actual abductors.
In any case, it is best not to tarry too long in the vicinity of these silent icons; nor is it advisable to step too far across the boundaries which they oversee: for the crossing of such thresholds constitutes an act of transgression into unknown and forbidden zones of being - zones whose inhabitants do not take kindly to such intrusions, and from which there may be no returning.
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