"Rowan" by K.G. Orphanides

My latest assignment for The Lovecraft eZine was K.G. Orphanides' "Rowan," set in an old mining town in South Wales where an old evil still lingers. The narrator follows a friend named Rowan to the abandoned mines in an almost mythical, archetypal descent into the underworld... and I'll stop there. Because you should read the story for yourself- and it can be read for free online- and also because that was the point in the story that fixated me upon the characters and where they were going.

I read this story a week after Christopher Lee's death, and I had just watched The Wicker Man DVD again, and I thought there might be a link between Rowan Morrison in the film and Orphanides' "Rowan." While researching rowan trees for an authentic look, I discovered the tree held a place in Norse and Celtic mythology and was sometimes referred to as a portal or threshold tree. It seemed appropriate to place a silhouetted rowan tree at the place where the girl stood, on the brink of the unknown.

Sketchbook page. Rowan designs on the right included rowan trees and a second figure in the foreground.

In my first few sketches, I had the narrator in the picture, attempting to keep up with the girl in the distance, the old mining equipment emerging from the fog behind them, the fog on the ground somewhat luminescent around the heaps of slag. By the time I began etching the scratchboard, I'd discarded the second figure to focus on the girl beckoning to the viewer from the ridge just before she disappears from sight. The skulls in the roots and the sneering faces in the mist were design elements that weren't in the story, but made for an enticing illustration.

"Rowan," 5"x 7" scratchboard

"Rowan" by K.G. Orphanides appeared in issue 35- the Summer 2015 edition- of The Lovecraft eZine and can be read online for free here.