For the denizens of Primeval, the world beyond its fields and forests is but a dream. The outcast Cornspike raises her daughter among the creatures and spirits of the forest. The squire Popielski loses his faith and becomes obsessed with a game where progress is attained only by dreaming the right kind of dream. Nonhuman beings – trees and mushrooms and archangels – have their stories, or Times, too, as do inanimate objects, which may be ‘more important for the world than people.’ Yet their Times are buffeted by the feral history of the twentieth century, after war carries Michal the miller away from his family in 1914. Bloodshed, betrayal, and the dramas of daily life mark the birth, life, and decline of Primeval’s little world and Times, making us consider afresh the stories by which we comprehend our own.
