Spin spooky,
Cozy stories with friends while you wait out the storm in this bedtime story for Samhain season,
Accompanied by rain sounds.
Sleep and Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy inspired sleep series.
My name is Laurel,
And I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey.
Sleep and sorcery is one part bedtime story,
One part guided meditation,
And one part dreamy adventure.
Listen to my voice for as long as it serves you,
And when you're ready,
Feel free to let go of the story.
And surrender to sleep.
If you're still awake as the story comes to a close,
I'll guide you through a relaxing body scan inspired by Yoga Nidra.
In tonight's story,
October brings a cascade of inclement weather events to your quiet place in the country.
You invite your friends and neighbors to shelter with you in the family estate you've inherited and fixed up,
Coventry House.
Battered with rain and shut inside.
You find an unusual way of keeping yourselves busy.
Searching the vast library for the best ghost story.
Tonight's story alludes to the strange and supernatural as we turn to the dark months of the year.
But the intent is to awaken that cozy,
Nostalgic sense of Halloween through conventions of the Gothic novel and the stories we loved as children.
I'm here to help you fall asleep.
But if you don't find comfort in spooky season like I do,
You might be happier with one of my other stories.
All this to say,
It's spooky,
But not outright scary.
If you enjoy this story and want to hear more of the magical goings on at Coventry House,
I have several other sleep stories that revolve around this location and its characters.
Look for The Holly King and the Oak King,
The Pageant Wagon,
The Book of Merlin,
And Tales from a Coventry Christmas in the Sleep and Sorcery feed,
Wherever you listen.
The world to me was a secret which I desired to discover.
To her,
It was a vacancy.
Which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
Mary Shelley Frankenstein.
The first drops of rain fell in the night,
But their relative daintiness made them poor heralds for what was to come.
Having studied the radar for days now.
You expected a downpour by noon.
And high winds to accompany it.
But as you stockpiled food,
Checked the windows and readied the stables,
The coming storm was still an abstraction in your mind.
Nothing could have prepared you for its reality.
An opus of wind and rain,
So theatrical.
You can't help but be reminded of a production of King Lear you once saw,
In which thunder sheets rumbled and offstage fans blew currents of air into the actors' faces.
Blow winds and crack your cheeks,
" the Mad King cried,
Raging against the elements.
Now,
Coventure House,
Which you've called home for just a few years,
Stands just as mad against nature's fury.
Shudders rattling,
But ultimately unmoved.
The torrents blew in faster than predicted,
So that now,
Though it's only mid-morning,
The sky is black as midnight,
With heavy clouds and thick rain.
So it was prudent of you,
Or perhaps a stroke of luck.
To call your friends when you did,
And urge them to make their way to the stately mansion as soon as possible.
Gwen and Carrie,
Who live lakeside,
Jumped at the chance to wait out the storm at Coventry.
All the weather reports suggested that the lakes would flood by the end of the day.
They did their best to prepare the house,
Packed overnight bags,
And turned up promptly on your doorstep,
Each with a smiling corgi tucked under one arm.
Your other close friend David,
Who lives in the village,
Was in a less precarious situation weather-wise.
His bookshop and townhouse are on high enough ground that he should avoid the worst of it.
Still.
When he heard that Gwen,
Carrie,
And the dogs were headed to Coventry and making a slumber party out of the storm,
He insisted you invite him as well.
Now,
The often empty country house is filled with cheerful voices and the occasional grunt or yelp of a small canine.
All of you trying to make your best of the ill weather.
And you could hardly ask for better company.
Since relocating to this strange and sensational part of the country,
These three have become your closest friends.
Carrie,
The most outgoing of the group,
Practically adopted you the moment she saw you.
She and her partner Gwen come as a packaged deal.
David owns and operates the bookshop in town,
And you became acquainted through your sales and donations of numerous volumes from the Coventry Library.
When you inherited the old house from your eccentric uncle,
You personally took over the upkeep of the residence,
Which has included the sometimes tedious and sometimes revelatory organization of the many oddities and artifacts that line its halls Going through your uncle's things will prove to be a years-long venture.
He was reclusive toward the end of his life.
Seeming to endlessly accumulate objects and curiosities.
But David volunteered much of his time to helping you at least get the library in order.
You've kept as much in place as you can,
But you are also gratified to ensure that so much of the library's inventory has moved into the thoughtful stewardship of such a dedicated bibliophile.
The four of you,
Plus the corgis,
Have chosen to hole up in the library for now,
Being the innermost chamber of the house and clear of the large windows in the sitting room.
Though insulated mostly from the storm,
You can still hear the constant patter of rain,
The howling of the wind beyond the walls.
You've brought armfuls of snacks,
Pushed the armchairs together in a small circle,
And rustled up as many blankets and candles as you can find in case you lose power.
For now,
The electricity is holding steady.
So you pass the time by watching one of your mutual favorite nostalgic movies.
One perfect for the eve of Halloween.
Coventry and the surrounding area has seemed,
From the moment you set foot here,
A place of eerie enchantment.
But there's something about these shifts in the season,
These days that double as spokes on the wheel of the year.
Solstices,
Equinoxes,
And the cross-quarter days.
Something that seems to amplify the vibrations of the land,
Waking the spirits of past,
Present,
And future.
Inviting you to frolic with the unknown.
Be they fairy,
God,
And goddess.
Or simply ghost of another lifetime.
On the turning point of All Hallows' Eve,
With the dark skies and atmospheric storm blowing about the great house.
You feel it once more.
A pricking in your thumbs.
The charge in the air that suggests something extraordinary could happen.
If only your eyes are open enough to see it.
Lightning flashes beyond the narrow windows of the library.
Followed swiftly by a snap of thunder.
It makes you all startle,
Coinciding with an alarming jolt in the movie score.
Poppy,
The corgi nestled in your lap,
Is the only one unbothered.
She snoozes peacefully,
Snoring through the commotion.
You and your friends share a laugh at all your outsized reactions.
But a moment later,
With another flash of lightning and an almost concurrent thunderclap,
Everyone gasps again.
Following the flash,
The entire library goes dark.
The television screen flickers out and the sconces on the walls shut off.
You're not entirely shocked to have lost power.
But again,
The storm's progress is faster and more severe than expected.
You fumble for the matches and manage to strike one lit.
The little flame throws an amber,
Flickering glow a few feet around you.
David brings a candle,
Which you light,
Shaking out the match before the flame can tickle your fingertips.
Together.
You and your friends light the rest of the candles in the library.
Some are thick column candles,
Others narrow tapers stuck in silver candlesticks,
And still others are votives and tea lights.
Within a few moments,
You've created a luminous enough atmosphere.
To feel safe and comfortable.
The central gathering space,
Where you've heaped the blankets and shuffled the chairs,
Sits in an envelope of pulsing light,
While darkness creeps in at the corners,
Haunting the bookshelves and hidden nooks of the great library.
Wow,
So much for the movie,
Laughs Carrie,
Bringing some levity to the solemn environment.
Spooky,
Isn't it?
Says David,
Shivering a little.
Like we're in some kind of gothic novel with all the candles and the storm.
Indeed,
The candlelit library does feel like something ripped from the pages of Anne Radcliffe or Horace Walpole.
Coventry has always had an atmosphere of the eerie and mysterious.
The raging of the storm,
The flickering of the candlelight,
And of course,
The turning of the seasons.
Has only amplified that feeling today.
In any event,
You're all happy to be where you are.
Fortified in such a sturdy house on high ground,
Well fed and with plenty of supplies should the bad weather overstay its welcome.
And among friends.
It doesn't hurt to be surrounded by books,
Either.
Gwen wonders aloud if you should pass the time by playing a game.
Surely there is a deck of cards somewhere.
Or there's always charades.
Or other parlor games.
And for a time you do amuse yourselves with such activities.
A game of charades passes an hour with both laughter and frustration.
Then,
David chimes in with an idea.
You know what this reminds me of?
He says slyly.
Geneva,
1816.
You cock your head at an angle,
Unsure what he's getting at.
Oh,
The year you were born.
Scary jokes.
David sparks,
But continues.
It was the year without a summer,
He says.
Gwen makes a noise of recognition.
She's a university professor,
So she and David often connect on references before the rest of the room catches on.
The year before,
He says,
A volcano had erupted in the Pacific,
And the whole world felt the aftermath.
There was ash in the air,
So the skies went dark,
Crops failed,
And it was cold and wet and rainy for months at a time.
You wrap your blanket tightly around your shoulders as you feel a subtle shiver at the back of your neck.
Already,
David has slipped into storytelling mode,
His glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose,
His voice becoming grave and tantalizing.
Amid the fog,
The dense rain,
And the cold,
During the summer of 1816,
A group of friends found themselves shut in together during their holiday at Lake Geneva.
And their names were.
.
.
Here,
Gwen interrupts.
Dr.
John Polidori,
Lord Byron,
Claire Claremont,
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
And Mary Godwin,
She smirks.
Yes,
Later known as Mary Shelley,
Of course,
Says David.
This was the setting for perhaps the most famous night in literary history.
Lord Byron,
The famous British poet,
Had rented the Villa Diodati for the season.
Hoping to enjoy the pleasures of Lake Geneva.
He stayed with his physician,
Polidori,
And the villa received frequent visits from the younger poet,
Percy Shelley,
His future wife,
Mary,
And Mary's stepsister,
Claire.
Oh,
To be a fly on the wall in that room,
David says dreamily.
Some of the brightest minds of a generation.
Byron was the first bona fide literary celebrity.
It was mad,
Bad,
And dangerous to know,
As Caroline Lamb said.
And Shelly was a genius in his own right.
Mary was the genius of the group,
If you ask me,
Gwen says.
She only wrote the most important novel of the last several centuries.
Yes,
Yes,
David concedes.
You find yourself amused by the playful academic banter between them.
I was getting to that.
You see this night,
This one night in Geneva.
All these friends were gathered in their villa during a horrible storm.
And what did they do to pass the time?
They busied themselves with writing ghost stories.
Another bright flash and simultaneous crack of thunder makes you jump.
The rain continues to pummel the roof of the house,
Becoming a fuzzy curtain of white noise just outside.
In this light,
You think.
It could be 1816 for all you know.
The limited throw of the candlelight falls not on any modern technology or trappings of the information age.
The Villa Diodati might not have been much different from Coventry House.
Surely it had a comparable library.
Perhaps even a similar architectural style.
As David describes the events of that fateful night in the 19th century.
You feel the flesh on your arms tighten into goosebumps.
In the shadows,
The souls of Byron,
Shelley,
Polidori,
And Mary might well be roaming the bookshelves tonight.
They were reading all the great scary stories they could find in the library.
Christabel and so on,
David continues.
But then Byron proposed a contest.
They should all write their own fantastical stories and try to frighten or excite each other.
Of course,
Being Byron,
He thought he'd be the victor.
Or else Shelley.
But it was Polidori and Mary,
Whose work at Lake Geneva would leave the most lasting impression on the literary future.
It was that night that Polidori wrote The Vampire,
Which is often cited as a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre.
And Mary,
Only 18 years old,
Conceived her greatest work.
Frankenstein.
There's a moment of quiet between you all,
Broken up only by the quiet snores of the still snoozing corgis.
You imagine it.
That miserable night on the lake,
When a holiday meant for enjoying nature and the beauty of the outdoors turned inward.
The volcanic eruption,
The dark skies,
The death of summer.
The visionary poets shuddered inside with only the gifts of their imaginations.
Though it's a true story.
It has the tenor of myth.
The antiquity and the gravity of it.
The silence is thick.
Ecstatic.
Filled with the electric potential of such a compact between your friends.
You too are shut inside,
Surrounded by stories,
Poised on the threshold of seasonal change.
It feels as if one more lightning strike could crack the world wide open.
Letting multitudes of stories spill out.
Coventry has always felt like a focal point of magical energy.
A lightning rod for visitations of the strange and supernatural.
This part of the country hums,
Almost sings with history and lore.
Each of you here today has had your own encounter with the unexplained.
You more than a few times as you've settled into residing at the house.
But Carrie breaks the silence,
And thus the spell of possibility,
With her trademark sarcasm.
So you want us all to tell a scary story then?
That's all you had to say?
There's a ringing of laughter among you.
You grasp this thread.
Why not?
Why don't we all tell a ghost story?
It's Halloween,
Isn't it?
Or it will be at midnight.
What could be better?
I don't know any ghost stories,
Says Gwen.
Carrie narrows her eyes.
Not real ones,
I mean.
I've never been haunted.
I have,
Says Carrie.
But it was a friendly ghost.
Can I tell a friendly ghost story?
How about this?
David interjects,
Eager to orchestrate the rules of engagement.
If you've got a personal ghost story,
You can tell it.
But if not.
.
.
He gestures toward the encroaching shadows,
The looming bookshelves that surround you.
We've got so many to choose from.
The idea seems to light a spark in the group.
There's a sense of excitement and animation,
An almost giddiness you get.
You feel so safe,
So comfortable among these people,
Within these walls,
That even the thought of swapping scary stories feels immensely cozy to you.
Carrie snuggles up to her dogs and settles into her armchair.
She's already got her story.
The rest of you take to the shelves,
Each determined to find the best spooky tale to amuse the group.
You take a three-pronged candelabra on which the tapers slowly melt into the stacks with you.
With your blanket still draped around your shoulders and dragging on the floor behind you.
You imagine you resemble the paperback cover.
Of a gothic novel or a penny dreadful.
The thought makes you chuckle.
You hold your light to illuminate the shelves.
Not sure exactly what you're looking for,
But certain you'll know it when you see it.
As much work as you and David have done to catalog and reorganize the library's collection,
There are still whole sections left unturned or untidied.
And therefore,
There are still surprises to be found among the volumes.
You explore one of these untouched sections now,
Stopping occasionally to clear a cobweb or blow the dust from a row of spines.
Then,
Deep in the spiral of stacks toward the furthest corner of the library,
Your candlelight falls on a thick,
Black volume.
You squint to read the weathered gold threading on the spine.
You gasp when you read the title.
And a moment later,
Your surprise is rewarded by a clap of thunder.
Soon enough,
You all gather again in the candlelit center of the library,
Bundled in blankets,
With the power gone,
You've taken everything perishable from the fridge and put it out as a kind of feast.
There's fruit and cheese and other accoutrements strewn across trays on the end tables and the floor.
The whole thing resembles a renaissance tableau,
Or one of those dramatic paintings marked by bold,
Brooding contrast of light and shadow.
Chiaroscuro.
Who's first?
David asks.
When no one immediately jumps in,
He volunteers himself.
I thought nothing could be better,
He says,
Pulling a slim hardback book out and letting it fall open on his lap.
Than a reading from one of the works that inspired the antics of that legendary knight in literature.
So,
Without further ado.
.
.
David adjusts his glasses and clears his throat.
Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge He begins to read the long and languid ballad,
Styling it with some grandiosity to match the language.
It's a wildly atmospheric poem,
Conjuring the tenebrous silhouettes of ancient woods and crumbling castles.
The heroine,
Christabel,
Encounters Geraldine,
A woman of preternatural beauty and allure.
A star hath set.
A star hath risen.
O Geraldine,
Since arms of thine have been the lovely lady's prison.
O Geraldine,
One hour was thine,
Thou'st had thy will by tern and rill,
The night-birds all that hour were still.
You find the language and meter of the poem haunting and hypnotic.
You close your eyes as you listen,
Reclined against the leg of an armchair.
The candlelight flickers behind your eyelids.
And abstract,
Kaleidoscopic shapes dance across your vision.
The poem continues.
And it becomes clear that this Geraldine,
Whom Christabel has taken into her father's home,
Is something like a vampiress.
She has Christabel and all those around her completely enthralled.
Still.
The young heroine fights against the enchantment.
Hoping to save herself and her family.
Perhaps tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other,
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm,
Perhaps tis tender too,
And pretty,
At each wild word to feel within a sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what,
If in a world of sin,
Of sorrow and shame should this be true?
Such giddiness of heart and brain.
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do.
Here,
David removes his glasses and snaps the book shut.
You look at him,
Confused.
That's it,
You say.
What happens to.
.
.
Coleridge never finished it.
David sighs.
One of his greatest disappointments,
In fact.
We'll never know how it ends.
David and Gwen swiftly commence an analytical discussion of the symbols and underlying meaning of the poem.
Gwen notes the transgressive nature of the relationship between the two women.
How groundbreaking the work was as an illustration of the monstrous feminine and women's sovereignty.
But Carrie quickly puts an end to this by exclaiming that she's ready to tell her story.
All attention now turns her way.
This was before Gwenny and I lived together,
She prefaces.
I was getting ready to move out of my apartment in Cardiff.
I'd lived alone for two years,
Perfectly comfortably,
Never once got the sense the place was haunted.
Not till one night,
The night before,
I was set to move.
You lean in,
Intrigued.
See,
I'd had a strange dream the night before,
That an old friend had come to visit me.
A childhood friend.
And she looked quite the same as she did when we were children.
We played kids games,
Hopscotch and skip rope.
And then I was seized with this sort of knowing in the dream.
I suddenly knew that my friend,
This girl,
Was a spirit.
Not flesh,
But a visitation.
From the past,
Or from beyond.
And then I woke up from the dream with tears in my eyes.
Wondering whatever became of that girl.
But I couldn't even remember her name to look her up.
So it's the following evening,
And I've taken to keeping a dream journal.
I'm working on Lucid Dreaming.
Haven't cracked it yet,
But I will.
And I'd just gotten to scribbling down what I'd remembered from that dream.
I was sitting up in bed.
Writing it all down.
When I got the funniest feeling.
It was like when people say they feel they're being watched,
But Not quite.
I just knew I had to close the curtains.
And turn the lights out.
So that's what I did.
I climbed into bed,
Got under the covers.
And rolled over on my side.
That's when she came.
I knew she was a woman.
Don't ask me how I knew,
But I did.
And I knew she was there in the room with me.
I heard the jingling of a chain or bracelet on her arm.
But I also knew she wasn't there to frighten me or cause me harm.
She felt,
Overwhelmingly,
Like a benevolent presence.
And still I couldn't bring myself to turn around and look at her.
I didn't want to see her.
But she smelled like vanilla And then I felt her lean in close and tap my arm like this.
Carrie demonstrates,
Rapidly patting Gwen on the shoulder five times.
Exactly like that.
I still didn't turn around.
I don't think she wanted me to,
But she wanted me to know she was there.
That she'd been there the whole time.
And that she had been looking out for me.
The gesture was so authoritative.
So grandmotherly,
I guess.
Like she was patting me and sending me on my way.
Saying you will be alright dear girl.
Chin up.
The very next day the movers came to load up all my things into the trucks.
And I had such a wistfulness,
A homesickness for this place I was about to leave.
Because I realized.
.
.
I'd had a companion there all this time.
A guardian watching out for me.
Maybe she was a ghost.
Maybe my childhood friend?
Maybe she was an angel.
Maybe she's still looking out for me.
You feel warmed by the story.
Like you've just taken a drink of hot tea or cider.
Carrie has such a look of peace on her face as she tells it.
Gwen takes her hand.
Did you ever think it might be your grandmother?
Gwen says.
I never got to meet Nana Carol,
But it sounds like the kind of thing she'd do.
Stick around and look after you.
Carrie smiles.
I like that Gwen is the next to share.
She also produces a book to read from.
Maybe it's a cliché.
She smiles.
But I'm going to read The Raven.
A little thrill of a gasp moves contagiously through the group as Gwen begins to read the classic poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
Once upon a midnight dreary while i pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded,
Nearly napping,
Suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping,
Rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor,
" I muttered.
Tapping at my chamber door.
Only this.
And nothing more.
As well as you all know the poem and its lilting lines.
Something about it seems to sparkle anew in the candlelit air of the library.
You can see the shadows cast from the stately bust of palace above the narrator's chamber door.
You can feel his grief at his lost love,
Whom the angels name Lenore.
You shudder at the single word uttered again and again by the titular Corvid,
Driving the poet to madness.
Nevermore.
Gwen's reading is beautifully punctuated by thunderclaps and lightning strikes.
As if the gods of Olympus themselves are listening to your gathering and offering up their own dramatic flourishes.
And the raven,
Never flitting,
Still is sitting,
Still is sitting on the pallid bust of palace just above my chamber door.
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted.
Nevermore.
The final words of the poem hang in the air like crystals of mist.
You can almost feel them on your skin.
The rain continues to beat down above and around you.
Enthralling Coventry in its wild and torrential embrace.
There's only one person left to go.
And that's you.
You move to reveal the book you've taken from the hidden shelves.
Its title.
The Coventry Mysteries.
A history of curious goings-on at Coventry House.
1800 to 1900.
Your guests are stunned.
No one knew such a text existed,
Including you.
You've found numerous handwritten journals kept by your uncle.
But never a printed and bound text illustrating the history and lore of this wondrous estate.
What lies within its bindings is a mystery to you all.
Will you discover,
Together,
The origins of Coventry's unique enchantments?
The reason for all the mystical happenings you've experienced in this corner of the country.
How far back does this history go?
You decide to start,
Of all places,
At the beginning of the book.
If it proves interesting or revelatory to your friends,
You might read on.
Or you might go deeper on your own.
Or work with David to learn more about the publication of this book.
For now,
You simply read from the first chapter.
October 30,
1816.
The first drops of rain fell in the night.
You begin.
You note right away that it's composed in first-person narration,
Indicative of a diary entry.
You wonder at the identity of the author.
Perhaps an earlier ancestor who owned the house before your uncle.
You read on.
But the relative daintiness of that shower made it a poor herald for what was to come.
Having consulted the almanac and studied the behavior of the animals,
I expected a downpour by midday,
With high winds to accompany it.
Nothing could have prepared me for its reality.
An opus of wind,
Reminiscent of the tempest faced by King Lear.
Blow winds and crack your cheeks,
I cry to the wilds,
Just like the Mad King,
Raging against the elements.
Now Coventry House,
Which has stood on this spot in one form or another for a thousand years or more,
Stands just as mad as Lear against nature's fury.
Or shudders rattle.
But ultimately,
She is unmoved.
Let the torrents blow the sky fall black as midnight with heavy clouds and thick rain.
I have my candles.
My quill.
And enough food to last several days.
A library full of books to entertain myself.
And I am on high ground.
You shake,
Reading the words on the page before you.
The writer's thoughts are so like the ones you had earlier today.
You might have written them.
You feel an intimate kinship with the person who set this entry down.
A sense of history repeating again and again within the walls of this house.
Avenger.
A locus for eternal return.
The same stories reenacting themselves until the end of time.
Who knows when this entry was set to type?
But it was composed by a resident of Coventry in 1816.
A year without a summer.
The same year Mary and Shelley and Byron and Polidori and Clare.
Huddled together.
To comfort each other with the chilling warmth of phantasmagoria.
If only this lonely composer with the scratching quill.
So reminiscent of the grieving poet of the raven that had friends.
What tales might they have spun together?
What connections might they have made?
Sometimes living within the walls of Coventry House.
You feel an intense responsibility to your uncle.
And to all those who inhabited here once.
You owe them your stewardship of the house,
Of course.
But you also owe them something more.
The continuation of some traditions.
Of the breaking and liberating of others.
In your short time as Coventry's owner.
You've invited the world in.
You've invigorated its empty corridors with laughter,
Storytelling,
And community.
You've made it more than a stalwart monument against the world.
But a shelter.
A fellowship hall.
A place to wait out the storm with friends.
If history repeats itself through your actions and the stories you tell.
Let that history be one that is shared.
You think of Carrie's ghost.
The grandmotherly presence,
Smelling of vanilla.
And offering a firm tap on the shoulder.
An acknowledgement that everything is going to be alright.
Is Coventry haunted?
This whole region is,
You think.
But not in a way that should spark fear or discomfort.
It's a haunting that's more like the lingering scent of someone's perfume.
The disturbance in the air.
Of one's poetic words.
And their impression on the listener's ear.
The ghosts of memory.
Which hang around and give solace.
Give comfort.
Give peace.
By writing your stories,
Perhaps,
You can give some of that peace back to them.
Rain continues to batter the roof tiles of Coventry House.
Water seeps into the loam of the hills.
Soaking the as-yet-unexcavated artifacts that rest under the soil of the nearby Iron Age hillfort.
The lake floods.
But Carrie and Gwen's cottage will come through the storm just fine.
Their apple tree,
Though stripped of leaves and fruit by the gusts of wind,
Survives.
In future seasons it will flower as splendidly as ever.
David's bookshop will sustain a not inconsequential lead.
But mercifully,
All the books will be spared.
And only a corner of the carpet will need replacing.
Coventry House.
On which you've labored for years to resurrect from disrepair.
Will need some fixes after the storm.
That it's nothing you can't handle,
With your community there to help.
And in time.
You will find more volumes of history.
Hidden on unsuspecting shelves of the library.
Containing the mysteries of Coventry.
Composed by different authors.
Or perhaps the same author.
Taking new names and shapes over time.
One night,
You will pick up a quill and begin journaling by candlelight.
Feeling like the romantic poets who once bent over their manuscripts.
Of the Villa Diodati.
You'll write your own histories and mysteries of Coventry.
The house as mad as King Lear.
The house.
That shelters friends.
Breathe deeply.
Relaxing.
Softening into your bed.
Sinking a little deeper.
With each exhale.
Bring your awareness to the sensation of your body.
To the points of contact with your surface.
That which is grounded.
Breathe into this sensation.
Allowing the breath to fill you up with peaceful light Then cleanse your mind.
And body.
On the exhale.
Find some stillness and peace.
And simply listen to my voice as I guide you in a rotation of consciousness.
When I say the name of a body part.
Bring your awareness to that part of the body.
Relaxing it or imagining it lighting up.
As if a flashlight is shining on it.
Then move on to the next part as I say it aloud.
Right thumb index finger.
Middle finger.
Ring finger.
Pinky finger.
The space between the fingers.
The palm of the right hand.
The back of the hands breaths.
Forearm.
Elbow.
Upper arm.
Shoulder.
Right side of the chest right ways.
Right hip.
The groin.
The thigh The right knee.
The back of the knee right lower leg.
Right ankle right heel.
It's all of the right foot.
Top of the foot.
Right big toe.
Second toe.
Third toe.
Fourth toe.
Fifth tone.
In the space between each of the toes.
Feel the whole right side of the body.
The whole right side of the body.
Now move your awareness to the left hand thumb.
Index finger.
Middle finger.
Ring finger.
Pinky finger.
The space between the fingers.
Left hand palm.
Back of the hands.
Rest.
Forearm.
Left elbow.
Upper arm shoulder.
Left side of the chest.
Left waist.
Left hip.
Left side of the groin.
The thigh.
Left knee.
Back of the knee.
Lower left leg.
Left ankle.
Left heel.
Soul of the foot.
Top of the foot.
Left big toe.
Second toe.
Third toe.
Fourth toe.
There's the toe.
The space between each of the toes.
Feel the whole left side of the body.
The whole left side of the body.
Feel both sides of the body together.
Move your awareness to the throat.
The night.
The jaw.
The right cheekbone left cheekbone.
The nose.
The right eyebrow.
The left eyebrow.
The center point between the eyebrows.
The right temple.
The left temple.
The skull.
Feel the whole head.
Feel the whole body.
Breathe.
Relax.
Good night.
