“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“It was a craft,” I said. “Something Sarah’s father bartered for the shoes… something to do with fishing nets. The village was right by the sea. The cobbler’s shop was the only one around, though there were other villages. Sarah’s father made fishnets out of seaweed, dried seaweed. They wove it together like rope, then made the nets.

“Do you know the name of the village?” Rob asked.

I had been seeing everything that I’d been describing, and now the name just appeared in my head. “Levonshire. It was fewer than three hundred people, on the northeast coast of England. The people also got some of their food from another village further north. For some reason, the land was better there.”

“I see tomatoes, but even as I say it, it seems to me once that I read that people didn’t eat tomatoes in those days. But yes, the people in the small villages did; and wheat and barley. They had cows.

“The cobbler was comparatively well off, though not wealthy. He was fifty-three when he died. The boy, Albert, was too young to take over the shop, and for a couple of years the village had no cobbler, and the boy was a fisherman. Then another cobbler came and Albert helped out in the shop again … He finally married. His wife’s name was also Sarah. She was a cousin of Sarah Wellington’s. Most of the people in the village were related in one way or another; they had no other place to go.”

I laughed out loud, because I saw it so clearly. “I see houses and a couple of shops, then a narrow cobbled walk raised up high — it was a partly dirt road built up of rocks and stones that ran around an inlet from the sea. But it was never flooded; the road kept the village dry. There wasn’t any sandy beach, though.”

My inner gaze traveled up the hills beyond the village. I felt myself climbing. But Rob interrupted: “How far was it from London?”

Then suddenly, I was back again, seeing the later time. “In London, I don’t know why, Albert’s wife liked to go to the bakery shops. They had fancier breads there than in the village. And Sarah … the first one … if she hadn’t burned to death, she would have died anyhow at seventeen, of tuberculosis. One lung was bad. It was a bad place to live. The village wasn’t sunny, and they kept the windows closed. There weren’t many windows anyway. The land was so rocky … and they would build a house on a slab of rock, and it was always damp. … Sarah’s dress was dirty. It was woolen, a brown natural color because it wasn’t dyed. It wouldn’t have burned so, but it had grease on it, and the grease caught the flames. …”

I shivered, seeing the dress catch fire and watching once again as the cobbler rolled the girl out to the street, beating at the flames. Then I seemed to be above the town again, looking down, but dimly. “The descendants of the invaders lived in the village too. There was the Laverne family, and De Nauge, and the Breims. They slept on hay. It was so damp and foggy, and the hay was never dry …”

“A few could write their names, but usually they couldn’t read other people’s names. … They didn’t have water to drink. There was salt in the ocean — that’s why they washed there. But they thought that drinking water was unhealthy. It was hilly and rocky behind the village, but there was a stream up there, and they went up with horses and buckets. But they didn’t drink the water. They drank ale. They made soups from the water, though, and they were lucky that the stream came down from a high place. Otherwise they’d have had to dig down too far.

“My experience was great,” I said. “But it was something like a moving picture I was looking at from some crazy angle. The scenes would change too. I’d be looking at that main street, and then suddenly I’d be in the hills beyond the village. Not really there like I’m in this room now … but … partially floating. Very dim at times. But your vision was quicker, more limited, but very precise.”

“Then isn’t that enough for now?” Rob said. I nodded; at the very least there was enough material for a good short story on the whole thing, I thought. Yet the village and the scenes lingered in my memory. “We’ve only been involved in this stuff a little over a month,” I said. “I’m content for now. But we’re going to have to try and check some of this out if it keeps on.”