The Even Middle - Part Two: The Ridge

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3:03So this is easy. Go to down to ground.co and use code sleep10 for 10% off. That's sleep10 at down to ground.co. Hello friend, it's Eric. Welcome back to listen to sleep. Stories to calm your thinking mind and help you find your way back to yourself. Well the otominal equinox is right around the corner, and this year I'm celebrating it with a story about our ties to both the natural world and each other. Something that reminds us that we are all in this together. Tonight I'll be reading part two of the even middle. The story stands on its own, even if you've missed last week's episode. But if you'd like, you can go listen to part one first. In part two, the morning after their solitary vigils, two girls from villages that have

4:06had almost nothing to do with each other in living memory. Some hire than either one intended, each trying to find out who lit the second fire across the ridge. What they find is a friendship neither expected, and a small mystery in the marks each has carved into her own token. One that leaves them wondering how much their two peoples might once have had in common. Before the day is done, they trade what neither was ever meant to give away, and promise to meet again, if the season allows it, when spring brings the next even middle. Before we begin, if these stories help you find calm and rest, I'd really appreciate it

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6:13Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. This is your time, quiet time. One more deep breath in and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay. Just let yourself drift off. The even middle, part two, the ridge. A long ridge runs like a spine between two very different lands. Forest and orchard falling away on one side of it. Salt wind and gray cliffs falling away on the other. The people of each side call it by different names.

7:17And cross it seldom enough that neither has much cause to think of the other at all. But twice each year, the whole turning world tips into balance. Day and night weighed out equal on either side of it. And evening both peoples call the even middle. And in the valley they call eldervale. And among the sea cliffs of a place called stone water, each of these two peoples asks its coming of age girls to spend a night alone at their own waiting place when that evening does come. Once in autumn, when the even middle opens what they call the long dark. And once again in spring, when it opens the long light.

8:25Two girls kept that first vigil on the very same night this year, each on her own side of the ridge. A girl named Briar sat alone beneath an old oak in eldervale's forest. A girl named Sigrun sat alone inside a ring of standing stones above stone water's sea. And near full dark each of them caught the glimmer of a second small fire. She had no way to explain. They were off across the ridge. And each called out into the dark. Each got an answer back. The next day Sigrun woke before the sun did. The fire at the ring stones gone to ash and a thin curtain of morning mist still clinging

9:30low over the sea below. Her whole body ached pleasantly after a night spent sleeping and waking and paying close attention. Her joints were stiff from the cold stone at her back. And for a moment she simply lay where she was, listening to the first gauze call somewhere far below. Latching her breath cloud in the cold air and let herself feel glad quietly and without fuss that she'd made it through. It was a custom that a girl leaving the ring stones left some part of the night behind her there. Someone had noticed them before, tucked into the gaps between the stones.

10:34Small worked things gone smooth and pale with weather. A bit of carved antler here. A bead of polished sea glass there. Each one a night some other girl had kept alone long before Sigrun's vigil. The whalebone blade was meant to join them, a mark of having kept her own night and nothing more. Sigrun sat up and reached for it, meaning to set it down properly before she started home. But she didn't. Instead she found herself turning it over once more in her hands, running her thumb along the notched mark she'd cut into the haft and thinking of the small light that

11:34flickered across the ridge the evening before and the voice that had answered hers. Whatever waited over that ridge she wanted, suddenly and without being able to explain why even to herself to see it before she let anything of this night go. She tied the blade back onto her belt instead, telling herself she'd decide what to do with it later and got to her feet. Across the ridge in the hollow of the vigil oak, Briar was waking to the same thought. Tucked into the bark around the hollow were the same kind of small offerings. Worn wooden beads, a stub of a carved horn, one smooth stone with a single notched cut

12:40into it. The fire spindle and its board were meant to join them. Briar held the board a long moment, thumb finding the small burned mark on its underside, without quite meaning to. And then, like Sigrun, she didn't leave it. She tied it back at her hip, also told herself that she'd decide later and set off. Not toward home, but up. Neither girl had planned to climb higher. The straight way home lay downhill. Back through orchard or a long cliff path, an easy walk either of them could have made half asleep tired as they were. But the light from the night before had come from somewhere higher up.

13:44Somewhere neither of them had ever actually stood, and some part of each of them wanted, more than she wanted breakfast or the comfort of her own home, to see it for herself. Where climbed past the vigil oaks clearing and on, where the forest thinned to scrubby, wind-bent growth, she didn't have a name for. Low gorse and heather that belonged to neither orchard nor deep wood, ground that felt like it belonged to no one at all. Twice she stopped. Seeing herself, this was foolishness, that she ought to turn around and go home, the way every girl before her had. And twice she kept climbing anyway.

14:49The morning mist was burning off in slow ribbons, and with every rise in the land she could see a little further. The valley falling away behind her, smoke from elder veils' hearths, rising thin in the distance. The world ahead of her strange and open, in a way nothing in the valley ever was. Sigrun climbed past the ringstones and headed inland, where the salt-stunted grass gave way to that same wind-bent gorse. The sea falling behind her, the way the valley was falling behind briar. The cliffs became rolling high ground, bare rock, giving way to soil thin enough that only the hardiest things grew in it.

15:52Off low plants she had no name for either, clinging close against the wind. She found herself thinking, with a small, unexpected ache, that she'd never once in her life stood somewhere she couldn't see the water. And then, a moment later, that she couldn't see it now, and hadn't noticed the exact place where it had slipped from view. More than once, each girl told herself she'd gone far enough, that whoever had lit that second fire was surely long gone by now, back down her own side before dawn even properly broke. More than once, each girl kept climbing anyway.

16:56Past the point where turning back would have been the sensible thing to do, telling herself just a little further, just to the next rise, just far enough to be sure. They found each other a little before midday, near the highest point of open ground either of them had reached. Another single, wind-bent tree, stood alone among likened rock, to stubborn or to stranded, to belong properly to forest or coast. Briar saw her first. A girl about her own age, sitting on a flat grey stone, with her knees drawn up, looking out at a view, Briar herself had only just reached.

18:00Their eyes met, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all. Briar took her in, in that first long moment. A girl, her own size, sun-browned, a bone-hilted blade at her belt, hair pulled back, plain and stiff with salt. Sigrun, in her own quiet way, was doing the same. Taking in Briar's oak-brown cloak, the hazel spindle tied at her hip, hands rough in a way that spoke of different work than her own. Neither girl found much in the other, to match whatever she'd half expected. Only another girl, tired and pleased with herself, and a little wary, much the same as she

19:07felt herself. Was that you? Briar finally asked. Last night? The girl on the stone turned, and something in her face eased into something like relief. It was. Was that you calling? It was me. I'm Sigrun. Briar. After their brief introduction, because there wasn't much else to do about the strangeness of it, they both laughed, short and surprised. Oh, how old are you, Sigrun asked? Thirteen? Same, Sigrun said, and something about that settled the last of the strangeness between them. There was a story I heard growing up, prior admitted, feeling a little foolish, saying

20:11it out loud. That sea-folks eyes went pale as sea-class from staring at the water so long. Sigrun laughed, delighted, rather than offended. Mine are just brown. Same as yours, near enough. She thought a moment, and added, I heard something about your people, too, that valley-folks could walk through their whole forest without a single footstep, quiet as the trees. Briar thought of her own two stumbling stops on the climb up, twigs snapping loud enough to startle birds each time, and left outright. Clearly not me. Clearly not, Sigrun agreed, and something in disproving both old stories together so easily

21:15left them feeling easier with each other. They sat and talked in the easy, uneven way people do, when they're not yet sure how much to say. Briar explained the vigil oak, the fire spindle, her mother's name, the months of hopes and fears she'd waited through for this night to finally come. Sigrun explained the ringstones. The whale-bone blade, her father's boats, her own long waiting. Somewhere in the talling, each found she was describing the same small worry from a different shore. A father or a whole village expecting one kind of grit, and a quiet or kind turning out,

22:17on the night it mattered most to be grit all the same. Neither girl said this outright, something in the way each one nodded at the other story, quickly, knowingly, said it plainly enough. Neither girl said much about the fear each had carried alone through the dark hours, neither, though something in the easy way they sat together, without needing to fill every silence, said they each understood what the other had carried. It was Sigrun who noticed the board first, tied at Briar's hip beside the spindle. Is that yours? What you built the fire with? Fire untied it and held it out, turning it so the burned mark on the underside caught

23:22the light. I made it myself. It came out of my hands, working out at these past weeks. Sigrun went very still. Then without a word, she drew the whale-bone blade from her own belt, and turned it so its halfed sat beside the board. Two lines meeting at a point. Small notches meeting at a point. Not identical, not quite, but close enough that neither girl needed the other to say it out loud. I have never seen anyone else make that shape. Sigrun said quietly. "'Nither have I,' said Briar. They sat with that for a while. The way you sit with something too large to talk your way around quickly.'

24:29Neither girl offered an explanation, because neither had one. Only the plain, curious fact of it, sitting between them. Hungry now that the excitement had settled a little, they opened what was left of their bundles, and shared what neither had finished the night before. Apples and bread from Briar's side. Breadfish and hardbread from Sigrun's. An odd little meal spread out on the flat stone between them. Sigrun made a face at the apple's tartness that made Briar laugh outright. And Briar, in turn, found the dried fish, stranger and saltier than anything she'd ever put in her mouth. So she finished it anyway.

25:30If only to see Sigrun's small pleased nod. Once they'd eaten, Briar showed her how the fire spindle worked, spinning it quickly between her palms until Sigrun could see the shape of the motion, though neither of them had tender enough left to try properly for a spark. She ran in turn through her small knife and showed Briar how she read the grain of a piece of bone before ever carving into it. Running her thumb along bone, Briar herself, had never learned to see the way Sigrun so plainly could. Each girl watched the other's hands with deep attention and growing affection. The sun climbed as they sat there, until it stood almost directly overhead, throwing

26:34hardly any shadow at all. Day and night for one long moment waited out equal on either side of it. The way Thora always said the even middle asked the thing to be tested and found true. Somewhere below them, on both sides of the ridge at once, valley and coast alike, were readying themselves for the same evening. The same fires, the same old turning of the year, and neither girl could have said, sitting there, which side of the ridge she felt more like she belonged to just then. Neither girl said anything about that. They didn't need to. They simply sat together and let the sun stand where it stood.

27:36And for a little while, the whole wide difference between forest and sea, valley folk and sea folk, orchard smoke and salt wind seemed to matter very little. It was Siggren who finally spoke of what came next. I'm not finished yet, she said. Not truly. There's a second half of it come spring. The even middle that opens the long light. So it's mine, prior said. Mines the same, spring. They looked at each other, and the same understanding rose in both of them at once. Unhurried and certain. Whatever waited for each of them in her own place come spring.

28:38It would be happening on the very same day. Then we should come back here, Siggren said, after if we both finish. When we both finish, prior said. As the sun began its long slide back down toward afternoon, each girl knew, without either saying so, that the day couldn't stretch much further. There was still a long walk ahead of each of them, and a village waiting, and a fire to be lit before dusk, whether either of them was ready for it or not. Before they parted, each girl pressed her token into the other's hands instead of carrying it back. Prior took the whalebone blade.

29:40Its edge and its small carved mark, an object that hadn't crossed to the valley side of the ridge, and longer than anyone in stone water could say. Siggren took the fire spindle and its board. Hazelwood that hadn't crossed to the coast side, and longer than anyone in elder veil could say either. Neither girl said much about what they were doing. It broke a custom, both of them had grown up inside. But neither girl cared. It felt right, in a way very few things had felt entirely right in either of their lives so far. Writer, if anything, than leaving the tokens behind ever would. I'll call it the two fires, Siggren said, looking back at the wind bent tree as they made

30:48ready to go their separate ways. This place, so I know what to call it when I think of coming back. Prior liked that well enough to say so, and they left it at that. They went down their separate sides of the ridge in the long light of the afternoon. Prior back through Gorse and Heather into gentling forest. Siggren back through Gorse and Heather toward the smell of the sea. Each of them carrying an object that had never before been to her own village, wrapped carefully and kept close. The walk down went quicker than the walk up had, even though Briar's legs were heavy, with two nights of little real sleep.

31:49She wrapped the whalebone blade in a fold of her cloak, and held it tucked close against her side the whole way. As though it might slip loose and be lost, if she let her attention wander even once. She passed the last of the wind bent course, and slipped back into real forest. Oak and Hazel, closing over her again, like something familiar, taking her back in. Hair reached eldervale just as the last color was leaving the sky. In time to see her family gathered at the hearth, waiting to light the fire that every household in the valley would light at the very same hour. Hazel's eyes went first to her daughter's face, and then, without asking anything at all,

32:53seemed satisfied with whatever she found there. Woodrow looked up from what he was doing just long enough to meet her eyes and nod once. The closest to came to saying anything at all. Lynette caught Briar's eye across the room, and something passed between the two sisters that needed no explaining now. An understanding shared at last, rather than only offered from one side. Woodrow struck the spark that lit their own hearth. The small flame catching and steadying the way it always did. One more fire, among however many hundred, were catching all across the valley in that same breath.

33:55Nobody asked Briar what her night had been like. She hadn't expected them to. She only warmed her hands at the newly lit fire. But the whalebone blades wait, still where she tucked it against her side, and let herself be, for this one evening, simply home. Sigrun's walk back down was easier than her climb up, too, buoyed by the fire spindle, and its board bundled against her chest under her cloak. Woodwind giving way at last to the drier air of the cliff path, gulls wheeling overhead the whole way down, as though they too had somewhere to be before dark. Down along the coast, Sigrun arrived at stonewater, as the single beach was catching its own

35:02evening light. Leftward fires being built up all along the tide line. Lanterns lit and hung from the pulled-up boats, one by one, until the whole beach glowed with them. A different shape of the same fire, Eldervale was lighting in its hearths just then. Full vague looked her daughter over with the same quiet searching look Hazel had given Briar, and seemed to find whatever she was looking for. Altar set a hand briefly on Sigrun's shoulder, and said nothing more than, good, which from him was a great deal. Thora, closest to the fire as always, only smiled the small, knowing smile of someone who

36:08understood exactly what a night like that could hold, and decided, as always, not to ask. Sigrun warmed herself at the beach fire. The fire spindle and its board tucked safe inside her cloak, and let the whole, strange, wide day settle into something she could finally begin to carry quietly, and only for herself, at least for tonight. Both girls slept that night in their own beds. Each with an object from a village, not her own, kept close beside her. Each with the memory of a wind-bent tree on a ridge that belonged now, a little bit to

37:10both of them. There would be a long season of ordinary things between now and spring. Orchard work and net-mending, hearth fires and boat repairs. The whole slow turning of a valley and a coastline through the long, dark ahead of them. Their girl knew, falling asleep that night, exactly how she'd count the months until it was time again, only that she would. But somewhere past that turning, waiting on the far side of winter, stood the even middle that would open the long light, and two girls, each in her own home, fell asleep that night,

38:17all ready, looking forward to it. Rest well, friend. Good night.