The season ended with a piece of driftwood.
That was Night 31. The tide brought in a small carved crown, no bigger than a paw and worn smooth from long travel, and Freddie carried it up to the fountain and looked at his own reflection for a considerable time. Thirty-one nights, and that was the one that turned round and looked back at him. It seemed a reasonable place to stop for a while. You can find the full season on
and his
hit “Follow” so the new stories find you on their own.
The next season is being written. Which left the question of the gap, and Freddie had a view about the gap.
His view was that the stories were all still there, and nobody was doing anything with them.
The sorting
The plan, at the start, was favourites. He went through the year one night at a time, did his three circles, lay down, and listened. This took several days, because his method involves a great deal of sitting down.
The plan did not survive contact with the stories.
He did not hear the end of a single one. Not one. There was no pile of the ones that kept him up and no pile of the ones that did not, because every single night put him to sleep somewhere in the middle of itself, which is the entire job and makes choosing between them impossible. A story you finish is a story that kept you. Thirty-one out of thirty-one declined to keep him.
So favourites was off. He loved all of them, and said so, and moved on to a system that could actually be operated by a dog who keeps falling asleep inside the evidence.
He sorted them into themes instead.
Some of them he remembered by what happened in them. The bud in the walled garden that opens once every seven years, and the old woman who moved her chair to the middle of the dark to wait for it. The hermit crab wedging sea glass into every shell on the tideline, trying to make them all sing one note. The bottle with a letter inside describing his own beach, lighthouse and fountain and all. Some he remembered by weather, which is a more reliable index than it sounds. Some he remembered only by smell, which is his preferred filing system and not one he can explain to anybody.
The first pile was not the sea one. It was the nights for when the head will not stop. The ones where nothing gets solved, because nothing needed solving, and the only thing anyone does is stay where they are until the evening catches up with them. Six of those. The pile got a tail sway, which is how he confirms a decision.
Then he hopped down the steps to the beach with his crown dipping on every one, which is how he goes down steps, and considered the matter settled.
What he made you
An hour of it. Six tellings, back to back, as one night: the keeper says hello once at the top, and after that it is only the stories and the sea underneath them. No adverts, no long stretch of waves between one story and the next, nothing to keep up with. It opens on the night nothing needed fixing and ends with a sandcastle at the edge of the tide.
LISTEN TO ONE HOUR OF CALMING STORIES
Set a sleep timer or let it run. Nobody is checking, and Freddie would think rather less of the whole enterprise if you heard the last one. If it is 3am where you are and your brain has started up before you did, start it anywhere. There is no order you are supposed to be in.
There is a longer version of the same night on The Settle Premium: the same six, each told once and then once more, slower, so the second time you already know how it ends. Nearly two hours, with the sea running on after the last one.
And then
There are other piles. There is a sea one, twelve nights with the water properly in them, and it is next. There is a village one, with Señor Tiempo and his clocks that refuse to tell standard time, and Gilberto, and the octopus under the dune who has catalogued everything the sea ever handed over. There is one made entirely of moon and stars. There is a winter one, which Freddie is holding back until the beach empties out and earns it.
They will come one at a time, in the gap, the way things do here.
As for the next season, join “The Settle Premium” and you will be the first to know.
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