Welcome to sleep stories with Steph It is time to relax.
And fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 30 They didn't spend all their days on the island.
They spent more than half of them wandering at will through the enchanted Muskoka country.
Barney knew the woods is a book and he taught their law and craft to Valancy.
He could always find,
Trail and haunt of the Shywood people.
Valancy learned the different fairy likenesses of the mosses,
The charm and exquisiteness of woodland blossoms.
She learned to know every bird at sight and mimic its call,
Although never more perfectly than Barney.
She made friends with every kind of tree.
She learned to paddle a canoe as well as Barney himself.
Valancy liked to be out in the rain and she never caught cold.
Sometimes they took a lunch with them and went burying strawberries and blueberries.
How pretty blueberries were!
The dainty green of the unripe berries,
The glossy pinks and scarlets of the half-ripes,
And the misty blue of the fully matured.
Balancy learned the real flavour of the strawberry in its highest perfection.
There was a certain sunlit dell on the banks of the Mostowis,
Along which white birches grew on one side,
And on the other still changeless,
Ranks of young spruce.
There were long grasses at the roots of the birches,
Combed down by the winds and wet with morning dew late into the afternoon.
When Valancy carried any of these berries home,
That elusive essence escaped and there became none more than the common berries of the marketplace.
Very kitchenly good indeed.
But not as they would have been,
Eaten in their birch dell,
Until her fingers were stained as pink as Aurora's eyelids.
Sometimes they went after water lilies.
Barney knew where to find them in the creeks and bays of Mostowis.
Then the blue castle was glorious with them.
Every receptacle Valancy could contrive was filled with exquisite things.
Sometimes they went trouting on little nameless rivers or hidden brooks on whose banks Nyaads might have sunned their white wet limbs.
Then all they took with them were some raw potatoes and salt.
They roasted the potatoes over a fire.
And Barney showed Valancy how to cook the trout by wrapping them in leaves,
Coating them with mud,
And baking them on a hot bed of coals.
Or at times they just prowled and explored through woods that always seemed to be expecting something wonderful to happen.
At least that was the way Valancy saw it.
We don't know where we're going,
But isn't it fun to go?
Bon used to say.
Once or twice night overtook them,
Too far from their blue castle to get back.
But Barney made a fragrant bed of mosses,
Old spruces,
Bracken and fir boughs.
While beyond them moonlight and the murmur of pines blended together so that one could hardly tell which was light and which was sound.
There were rainy days too,
Of course,
Where Muskoka was a wet green land.
Days when showers drifted across most hours like pale ghosts of rain and they never thought of staying in because of it.
Then Barney shut himself up in Bluebeard's chamber and Vance he read on days when it rained in right good earnest and they had to stay in.
On Sunday evenings they paddled across to a point of land and walked from there to the woods and the little free Methodist church.
One felt really too happy for Sunday.
Valancy had never really liked Sundays before.
But Sundays and weekdays,
Now she was with Barney.
Nothing else really mattered.
And what a companion he was.
How understanding!
How jolly!
How Barney-like!
That seemed to sum it all up.
Balancy had taken some of her $200 out of the bank and spent it on pretty clothes.
She had a little smoke blue chiffon which she always put on when they spent the evening at home.
Smoke blue with touches of silver.
It was after she began wearing it,
Barney began calling her Moonlight.
Moonlight and blue twilight.
What do you look like in that dress?
I like it,
It belongs to you.
You aren't exactly pretty,
But you have some adorable beauty spots.
Your eyes and that little kissable dent just between your collarbones.
You have the wrist and ankle of an aristocrat.
That little head of yours is beautifully shaped and when you look backward over your shoulder you're maddening.
Especially in twilight or moonlight.
An elf maiden I'll call you.
A wood sprite.
You belong to the woods,
Moonlight.
Should never be out of them.
In spite of your ancestry,
There's something wild and remote about you.
And you have such a nice,
Sweet,
Throaty,
Summery voice.
Such a nice voice for lovemaking.
Sure,
When you kiss the Blarney stone.
Scoffed Valancy.
But she tasted these compliments.
For weeks.
Valancy got a pale green bathing suit too.
A garment which would have given her clan their deaths if they had ever seen her in it.
Barney then taught her how to swim.
Sometimes she put her bathing dress on when she got up and didn't take it off until she went to bed.
Running down to the water for a plunge whenever she felt like it,
And sprawling on the sun-warm rocks to dry.
She had forgotten all the old humiliating things that used to come up against her in the night.
The injustices and the disappointments.
It was as if they had all happened to some other person.
Not to her,
Valancy Snaith!
Who had always been happy.
I understand now what it means to be born again,
" she told Barney.
Holmes speaks of grief staining backward through the pages of life.
But Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise,
And flooded with rose colour her whole previous drab existence.
She found it hard to believe she'd ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.
When death comes I shall have lived.
Thought valency.
I shall have had my hour.
And her dust pile.
One day Valancy heaped up the sand in the little island cove in a tremendous cone and stuck a gay little union jack on top of it.
What are you celebrating?
Barney wanted to know.
I'm just exercising an old demon,
" Valancy told him.
Chapter 31 Autumn came.
Late September with cool nights.
They had to forsake the veranda but they kindled a fire in the big fireplace and sat before it with jest and laughter.
They left the doors open and Banjo and Good Luck came and went at pleasure.
Sometimes they sat gravely on the bare skin rug between Barney and Valancy.
Sometimes they slunk off into the mystery of the chill night outside.
The stars smouldered in the horizon mists through the old Oriole.
The haunting persistent croon of the pine trees filled the air.
The little waves began to make soft sobbing splashes on the rocks below.
They needed no light but the firelight that sometimes leaked up and revealed them,
Sometimes shrouded them in shadow.
Barney would never read.
He vowed books bored him.
But sometimes Valancy read them herself,
Curled up on the wolf skins,
Laughing aloud in peace.
Barley was not one of those aggravating people who can never hear you smiling audibly over something you've read without inquiring placidly.
What is the joke?
October came with a gorgeous pageant of colour around Mistois,
Into which Valancy plunged her soul.
Never had she imagined anything so splendid.
A great tinted peace,
Blue wind winnowed skies,
Sunlight sleeping in the glades of that fairy land.
Long dreamy purple days paddling idly in their canoe along shores and up the rivers of crimson and gold.
What had all the smug,
Opulent lands out front?
To compare with this.
Then November,
With uncanny witchery in its changed trees.
With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills.
With dear days where the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes.
Days full of a fine,
Pale sunshine that lifted through the late leafless gold of the juniper trees and glimmered among the grey beaches.
Lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines.
Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake.
But days too of the wild blackness of great autumn storms,
Followed by dank wet streaming nights.
Where there was witch laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees.
But what cared they?
Old Tom had built his roof well and his chimney drew.
Would you be happier now if you had a million dollars?
Said Barney one night.
Not half so happy.
I'd be bored by conventions and obligations then.
Said Valancy.
And at last December.
The pale fires of the Milky Way.
It was really very cold.
Cold,
Starry winter.
How Valancy had always hated winter.
Cousin Stickles used to make weird noises,
Gargling her throat.
Cousin Stickles whined over the price of coals.
But now winter was beautiful.
Almost intolerably beautiful.
Days of clear brilliance,
Evenings like cups of glamour,
The purest vintage of winter's wine.
And nights with their fire of stars.
Cold exquisite winter sunrises.
Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the blue castle.
Moonlight hung on birches in a silver thaw,
Ragged shadows on windy evenings torn,
Twisted and fantastic.
The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long white mistoes.
Icy grey twilights broken by snow's spalls,
When their cosy living room,
With its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats,
Seemed cosier than ever.
Barney ran Lady Jane into Roaring Abel's barn and taught Valancy how to snowshoe.
Balancy had not even a call then.
Later on in the winter Barney had a terrible one.
And she nursed him back through it with the dread of pneumonia in her heart.
But even her cold seemed to have gone where old moons go now.
This was lucky for she hadn't even read Fern's liniment.
She thoughtfully bought a bottle at the port in Barney and had hurled it into a frozen mastois with a scowl.
Bring no more of that devilish stuff here!
Barney ordered briefly.
That was the first and last time he had spoken harshly to her.
At times they seem to be walking through a spellbound world of crystal and pearl,
So white and radiant were the clearings in lakes and sky.
The air was so crisp and clear,
It was half intoxicating.
One evening they came across a snowdrift far back in an old clearing,
Which was the exact likeness of a beautiful woman's profile.
There was a low noble brow,
A straight classic nose,
Lips and chin and cheek curve modelled as if some goddess of old time had sat to the sculptor and abreast of such cold swelling purity.
As the very spirit of the winter woods might display.
To think no human eye save ours will see it.
Brave,
Fancy,
Who felt at times as if she were living in a book by John Foster.
I wonder if he ever spent a winter in the stars?
Said Valancy.
Not likely,
Scoffed Barney.
People who write Tosh,
Like that,
Generally write it in a warm house or some smug city street.
You're far too hard on him,
" said Valancy severely.
No one could have written that little paragraph I read to you last night without having seen it first.
You know he couldn't.
I didn't listen to it,
" said Barney morosely.
You know I told you I wouldn't.
Then you've got to listen to it now,
Persisted Valancy.
And she made him stand still on his snowshoes.
While she repeated it.
They had a lovely Christmas.
There was no rush,
No scramble,
No niggling attempts to make ends meet,
No wild effort to remember whether she'd given the same kind of present to the same person two Christmases before.
They decorated the blue castle with pine boughs and Balancy made delightful little tinsel stars and hung them amid the greenery.
She cooked a dinner to which Barney did full justice.
While Good Luck and Banjo picked the bones.
A land that can produce a goose like that's an admirable land.
Val Barney.
Canada forever.
Then they drank to the Union Jack a bottle of dandelion wine that cousin Georgiana had given Valancy along with the bedspread.
One never knows,
She said solemnly,
When one may need a little stimulant.
Barney had asked Valancy what she wanted for a Christmas present.
Something frivolous and unnecessary,
Said Valancy,
Who had got a pair of galoshes last Christmas and two long-sleeved woolen undervests the year before.
To her delight,
Barney gave her a necklace of pearl beads.
Valancy had always wanted a string of milky pearl beads,
Like congealed moonshine,
She said.
And these were so pretty!
All that worried her was that they were really too good.
It must have cost a great deal,
$15 at least.
How could Barney afford that?
She didn't know a thing about his finances.
She'd refuse to let him buy any of her clothes.
She had enough of that,
She told him,
As long as she would need clothes.
In a round black jar on the chimney piece Barney put money for their household expenses.
There was always enough.
The jar was never empty.
Though Valancy never caught him replenishing it.
He couldn't have much,
She thought.
But she would wear the necklace and enjoy it tossing care aside.
This was the first pretty thing.
She had ever.
Had.
