The Inn, Fireflies & Stones

Published Jun 3, 2024, 2:01 PM

Our stories today have a bit of magic in them. Whether it is the mundane sort, like minnows swimming in schools beside the shore, or the more unexplainable type, like millions of fireflies blinking in unison. We’ll start at one of the favorite locations in the Village, with the original story of the Innkeeper, as she looks out from the porch and guests begin to stir up in their rooms. Then, we’ll head out with our trowel and net to find some small treasures in the sand in The Beachcomber. Finally, we’ll set out after the sun goes down to commune with the lightning bugs in Fireflies on a Summer Night.

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Welcome to Stories from the Village of Nothing Much like easy Listening, but for fiction. I'm Catherine Nikolai. I write and read all the stories you'll hear on the Village of Nothing Much. Audio engineering and sound design is by Bob Wittershein. In our show notes, you'll find links to our ad free premium version, our other shows, merch and our new wind Down Box, a quarterly sleep subscription box full of products I've picked to bring a little more joy and ease to your bedtime. When the world is a little too much, when you need to be reminded of some small bits of goodness. One you want to step through into a place where kindness is commonplace and there is time and space to enjoy life, there is the Village of Nothing Much. I started telling these stories years ago in my bedtime story podcast Nothing Much Happens, and sometimes as a writer, I would be a bit down thinking that while I was really glad that people were sleeping so well to my stories, I also wanted them to be heard by conscious people, and listeners asked for that too, so we made this podcast. Whether you think of these as positive distraction, therapy or just enjoyment, we are glad you're here. Every story is written in first person, but the more you listen, the more you'll notice the way the narrators interact the storylines crisscross. Stay tuned at the end of the show to hear about the connections between our stories today and others in the series. Now into the village we go, and just because I think it will feel good, take a big breath in through your nose and sigh from your mouth again. Breathe in and let it go good. Our stories today have a bit of magic in them, both the mundane sort, like minnows swimming in schools beside the shore, and the more unexplainable type, like millions of fireflies blinking in unison. We'll start at one of the favorite locations in the village with the original story of the innkeeper as she looks out from the porch and guests begin to stir up in their rooms. Then we'll head out with our trowel and net to find some small treasures in the sand in the beachcomber. Finally, we'll set out after the sun goes down to commune with the lightning bugs in fireflies on a summer night. The innkeeper in the mornings on the water, the seagulls play a game of round robin on the mossy tops of dock posts and pilings. There are more gulls than places to land, so they circle in the air, cawing and crooning those quick repeating songs, and they'll suddenly drop down to push a flock made off their perch and into their own circling flight. I sat and watched them from the edge of the water. It was my spot in the morning, a wrought iron bench with a worn wooden seat that each spring was scrubbed down and repainted a dark grassy green, a caught morning sun, and except for the call of the birds and a few frogs still croaking from the night before, it was very quiet and still. At the edge of the water. In the shallow spots where the land curved into little protected pools, a chain reaction of excited minnows rippled across the surface, far out into the lake, past the edge of the farthest dock, A bevy of swans, and behind them a plump of geese or pushing through the water. The geese had a zigzagged line of goslings between them. I watched the way the parents steered them, their long black necks bobbing back and forth indicating which way to paddle. I took the last swallow of coffee from my mug and stood up, making my way up the gravel path, past the stone patio with its loungers and umbrellas, past the small shed that held croquet sets and dusty tennis rackets, and the hammocks that we strung from the trees in the afternoon shade, and up the steps to the back porch of the inn. The porch ran the full width of the house, with a low, broad railing that let the breeze in. We had a few tables laid out ready for breakfast service, with cups turned upside down in their saucers, and silverware on napkins, and the salt shakers showing a few grains of rice mixed with the crystals to keep the humid air from sticking them up. I straightened a few of the chairs as I walked down the length of the porch and smoothed the tablecloths where they were creased. Our place was small, Our hospitality could only accommodate a dozen or so folks at a time, but it mattered to me that for those few, the inn felt comfortable and well taken care of, so that at least while they were here, they could feel the same way. The porch swinging in the corner was draped with a discarded blanket from one of last night's stargazers. I folded it and laid it across the seat for the next person in need of a place to rest. I stepped inside, leaving the bright sunshine of the porch for the cool corridors of the old house. The house, built a decade before the end of the nineteenth century, had high ceilings and tall, triple hung windows looking out to the water or the broad lawns. On either side. There was a study whose walls were lined with books, where guests could sit on rainy days and sip hot drinks, play cribbage or backgammon at the game's table, or take naps in the deep armchairs. Upstairs, off a long branching hallway that smelled of wood polish and clean linen, were our guest rooms, of which only two or three were occupied right now. The season was just picking up, and by the end of the week we'd be full up and the place would be busy all day with vacationers reading paperback mysteries on our lounge chairs and pushing the old rowboats out into the water, signing their names into the big book at the front desk, and turning over the cups at the breakfast tables, ready for them to be filled with their morning coffee. I continued with my morning rounds, working my way through the rooms, tidying and checking things as I went. I opened the windows in the reception room and pulled a wilting dahlia from the arrangement on the desk. I turned the page in the guest ledger and wrote the date across the top, spun it on its lazy Susan toward our front door, laying an ink pen in the inner seam, ready for new arrivals. I went down to the kitchen and checked on how breakfast was coming along. At the Inn, we are known for our coffee cake. Our cook was turning one out from its bunt pan as I came in, and they kindly cut me a slice, tipping it onto a thin china plate that had been part of this house longer than I'd been alive. Quality control, they said, as they slid a fork and napkin across the counter to me. Our coffee cake has a crunchy seam of cinnamon and brown sugar running through the vanilla cake. It's sweet, but just barely, and we serve it with a pile of fresh berries or melon slices, and for most guests, two slices are required. Before setting out for a mid morning walk, I pulled up a stool to the counter as I ate, and we talked through the shopping list for the day. We weren't a restaurant and didn't serve three course meals. Most guests would walk into town to eat their dinner, but we liked to serve up an afternoon tea with sandwiches or vegetable salads or a slice of pie. Cook made a list and I thanked them for the bit of breakfast and went up to the garden in the front yard. The air was warmer already. We'd need beach blankets and inner tubes today. I added them to my list as I took a pair of snips from my back pocket to cut a few delphiniums for the breakfast tables. As I carried them back in, I heard the first sleepy voices in the hall overhead, and slow steps making their way down the carpeted stairs. It was time to fill the crafts and pour the orange juice. Time to slice up the coffee cakes and get ready for another summer day by the water the beachcomber. One of the lovely things about being a grown up is the ability to revisit things you were interested in as a child, but for one reason or another, never got the opportunity to play with or explore. That is why, as an adult, I have a lot of glow in the dark stars on my bedroom ceiling. I own a collection of books about dinosaurs, and recently acquired my very own rock tumbler. I'd always wanted one. I remember seeing them in the gift shop at the museum as a child and immediately imagining myself as an archaeologist with my pith helmet and khakis and little soft bristled brush in one hand, exposing fossils and rare fines from deep in a trench of red dirt. My parents, I think, wisely considered how likely I was to actually use a rock tumbler, how much potential mass could be created by one, and the availability of other options for my birthday and left it on the shop shelf. Then last fall, as I was walking the beach on one of the last warm days of the year, I met someone who, like me, had a handful of pretty rocks. He was bent over peering down at the sand, clearing away the grains from a stone that I certainly would found pocket worthy. When my shadow blocked out his light. He smiled up at me, and I squatted down beside him. I noticed that he had a little net, like a butterfly net, but a bit sturdier, and a small trowel, the kind I used to plant my petunias. I'd never considered coming to the beach that organized. I always left with a pocket full of damp sand and a few rocks I couldn't bear to part with, and I was impressed. He gestured down the beach and I saw a few other people picking in the surf with the same equipment. They were a club, he told me. They met every Thursday morning and combed the beach for interesting, beautiful, and possibly geologically important specimens. I remember my eyes growing wider. It was like finding out as an adult that it wasn't too late for me to earn some of my scout back. There were other people interested in what I was interested in, and they'd taken the significant step of making a club about it. I joined right away for a very reasonable membership fee. I'd gotten my own net and shovel and a discounted parking pass for the beach. Now every Thursday morning was blocked off in my calendar, and I looked forward to the hour or so that we would spend sifting through sand and making discoveries. Afterward, we'd hand around our favorites, point out the flex of minerals, the layers of sediment, the rare but exciting fossilized bones. That's when I heard about rock tumbling and thought back to my childhood fantasy with the pith helmet. I was closer to living out that dream than ever before, so at my birthday. Over the winter, i'd bought myself my very own tumbler and learned to use it. Each week, i'd bring home my net, which made rinsing the rocks in the lake easy and quick, and turn it out onto the work bench. I'd learned to identify lots of types of stones, to know what was rare and what was common, what was the oldest and what relatively speaking, was new. Along the lake, there were lots of granite pebbles, which came in many different colors depending on their makeup of minerals. The creamy white ones held a lot of quartz, pink stones were rich in feldspar, and the dark green ones held horns blend. Another favorite fine were the Septarnian brown stones, which I had jokingly proposed as a potential team name if my fellow beechcombers ever wanted to start up a softball team. These stones were around fifty million years old and had formed on the seabed floor of clay and mud. They had thick veins of calcite and were sometimes called turtle stones or lightning stones. I found lots of basalt, and they tumbled up nice and smooth and shiny. But it was a rare and lucky day that I found a piece of malakite or a tiger's eye or sunstone. Those all did really well in the tumbler and came out so striking that they were hard to set down. I had a piece of malakite I carried around in my pocket. I felt like a tiny talisman to rub my thumb over when I felt scattered or disconnected. It was a bit of nature that reminded me that I was too, and that always calmed me down and helped me focus. When it was time to tumble, I'd add my raw rocks to the drum along with some water and grit. The tumbling would act like sand paper on the dull surfaces of the stones, and like sandpaper, the grit came in coarse, medium, and fine. I'd start the process out with the coarse grit and let the tumbler do its work for a week or so before I'd dumped the stones out and washed them, switched to medium and started up again. Then a week in the wash with fine, and finally a week with stone polish. So the whole procedure took at least a month from start to finish. At first, that had seemed like an inordinately long amount of time, but after a moment's thought, I remembered that the stones had been composed over millions of years, so really it was absurdly speedy. At first, I'd kept my stones. I had them on my bedside table and my window sills and around the stems of my house plants to keep them company. But at a certain point, even I had reached my limits. That's when I started taking them back to the beach. I began to observe a one for one rule. For each rock that came home with me, I'd leave another, polished one behind, sometimes on the beach, sometimes on the corner of a picnic blanket, or on a table by the concession stand. I liked to think that some small, imaginative archaeologist would pick up a shiny stone and start to wonder where it had formed and where it had been since then fireflies on a summer night. Children are born believing in magic, and as a child, I persisted in believing. Adults tried to tell me that it wasn't real, that it was only something that happened in stories, But to me, there were so many signs of it everywhere that it seemed like they were only trying to convince themselves. After all, What about when you slipped your finger into the coin return on a page and found a quarter. What about when you opened a book to just the right page and your eyes fell on just the right word or drawing. What about when you found a stone that fit into your palm and hugged exactly around the curve of your thumb. And if magic isn't real, then what about fireflies? I would wait for them on summer nights, watching from the steps of the back deck or my bedroom window, And when I came, I thought they might be coming for me. Could we speak to each other, them and their language of slow blinking glimmers me and mine of quiet wonder? I'd step out in dewy grass and watch and wait. I never tried to seal them into jars, even then, that nobody likes to be boxed in. Instead, I might reach out a hand and see if one wanted to rest on it for a moment, And when one did, when they stayed and blinked at me for a minute or so, I would wonder, how is this not magic? I guess I still persist in believing, even now that I'm all grown up, I still see it everywhere. What about when you're walking on the sidewalk and catch the eye of a stranger riding on a bus, and you both hold on to each other for as long as you're in sight. What about when you step into your favorite cafe on a blustery, chill day and find there's just one plate left of exactly what you were craving. What about when you learn that the iron in your blood was born in the belly of a star before the earth even was? And have you ever jumped into a lake on a hot summer day, and while you're completely surrounded by water, forgotten every other moment of your life. Go on, keep telling me how magic just happens in books. Tonight was just the sort of evening that fireflies would be thick in the trees. I thought I might go looking for them. I slipped sandals onto my bare feet and quietly closed the door behind me. Where should I look? In the garden, in the cluster of trees behind the shed. Now in the park tonight they'll be in the park, I thought. I strode down the driveway. They are still hot from the day, and slipped down the street. Some houses had lights on inside, the top of a head and the edge of a book visible under the glow of a reading lamp. Some were quiet and dark, everyone already abed. Days in the sun always meant good sleep, and a few head porches with dogs lying on the warm wooden boards, A neighbor or two sitting on a swing enjoying the night air I raised a hand, answering the low calls of evening in the park. I circled slowly through the paths, smiled at an older lady sitting with her gray faced dog on a bench, gave some privacy to a couple cuddled up by the fountain, and made my way toward the edge of the pond. There was a tiny pier stretching out into the water, and I padded down it to the bench at the very end. The air was thick with the sound of frogs and night breezes, and insects buzzing. On the other side of the lake. I saw them lighting up around the stems of hostas and flashing in front of the trunks of tall maples. I stood up and walked to the railing, leaning my elbows on the wood parapet. They glowed, they glimmered. Have you ever noticed how many very nice words for describing what light can do start with g l glint, glimmer, gleam, gloss, glisten, glaze, and maybe the best one, gloaming. It was well past gloaming, now full dark was around me. I put my chin in my hand and just watched them. I'd heard once that there are mile long stretches on the nile where the fireflies all blink in unison. Can you imagine how bright and then how dark? And how much like language that must feel. They call that emergence, when order emerges from chaos. Maybe it's just another way to say magic. After a while, I made my way back down the wooden planks of the pier, back past the fountain, past the circle paths and benches, and back down the streets of my neighborhood. In a neighbor's yard, I saw the flames of a bonfire, a circle of chairs pulled up, and friends laughing and telling stories. On another night I might have joined them, But tonight I was happy to be alone, to listen smilingly to their voices, and make my way to my own quiet house. I closed the front gate behind me, me and Sad a moment on my porch, the night sky was clear and full of stars and the visible glow of Mars. I knew Mars would set an hour after midnight, and soon after Jupiter and Saturn would rise. Then on the cusp of dawn, Venus would shine, and faintly behind her would be Mercury. They could set and rise without me. I thought of the softness of my sheets, my pillow, cool and sweet scented from the moving night air, and I stood and made my way inside. I turned the lock on my door and took a slow, deep breath. Next would be sleep and dreaming more magic. Now, as promised, I could share a little more about these stories and their narrators, and where you can hear more from them. The Innkeeper is. It's a bit of a tricky subject because when I wrote this story, I thought of her as existing a long time ago. We were looking into the past in her story, some morning at the Inn, long long ago. A few months later I wrote an episode called The Other Innkeeper, and it is the story of how the Inn set empty for decades and then was renovated and brought back to life. So we have in our cannon two Innkeepers, And there are a few stories where you may not know which one you're hearing from. And I cheekily refuse to explain too much about who is who. I like the mystery. I think the Inn has some element of magic in it. The way the Other Innkeeper finds herself drawn to the place, it feels like someone is guiding her and there are these echoes between the staff of the past and the staff the present, So there is a bigger story for me to tell one day about all of that. So we promised to share more of the stories of the inn and the innkeepers and keep connecting the dots as we go, at least mostly now. The beachcomber has made a recent reappearance in Nothing Much Happens, the bedtime story podcast where all my stories start, but those haven't played here on this show yet. After she learns about beachcombing, she branches out into mud larking, and those stories are a bit magic as well. She finds objects in the silts of the river that runs through downtown Nothing Much, and as she digs them loose, she imagines where they came from and the people who last held them in their hands. And I think what she imagines is more than just a fanciful daydream. I think she is really connecting to the past. She also talks about leaving the stones in places that others will find and wonder at them, and that references a story we've done on this show called Touchstone. I like the idea that this narrator is leaving some of the stones that are found in that story. That is episode fifteen, if you'd like to go back and listen. Finally, the narrator of Fireflies, I don't think we can specifically pick her out in any other stories, but this story was one of the first times as a writer that I felt like I had found my authentic voice. It happened sometimes that you don't have to force or fight to find what you're writing about. It doesn't even really feel like writing, more like transcribing something that already exists, like it's just moving through your fingers. You know, before I started writing my show, I thought I wasn't a creative person, that I just didn't have any creativity. I thought I was creative adjacent, like I admired it and I had lots of artist friends, but I didn't have it myself. And now I've learned that it's actually a practice, not just something that you're born with apart from prodigies. So I think i'd been practicing it long enough when I wrote Fireflies, which was over a year into the process. By the way, when I finally wasn't editing my brain, I was just dropping into the space where creation was possible, and that certainly felt like magic to me. Hey, if you're enjoying hearing these behind the scenes bits, by the way, let us know over on our Instagram page link in the notes. Thank you for spending this time with us in the village of Nothing Mine. Here's to fireflies, here's the coffee cake. Here's to malachite and the time and space to enjoy them all.

Stories from the Village of Nothing Much

In the Village of Nothing Much, everyday life is full of glimmers of ordinary magic. From the Inn on 
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