South of Willowdale's gate the road drops through sheep country and orchard rows, and ends where the Briarwood closes over it.
The slopes south of Willowdale have been grazed and planted for as long as the village has stood. Stone walls hold the hillside in strips of pasture that reach down to the sea, and below them the orchard has stood long enough for its rows to close overhead. Shepherds work the higher ground and the pickers the lower, and both are home before dark.
Halfway down, the road passes under a stand of old willows. These were planted as waystation cuttings during the Spreading Boughs, when the highway ran south past the Briarwood and on toward settlements that are gone now. The road beyond closed during the Withering and has stayed shut ever since. The willows kept growing. Their shelter still reaches a little further than the last field does.
Below the willows the Briarwood starts. Thorn canes have grown across the old roadbed, and nothing wider than a person has gone that way since. The shepherds cut the growth back each spring and lose the ground again by autumn. Whatever lives in there comes to the walls on some nights, and the flocks are counted twice on those mornings.
