March 23  Challenge: Everyone avoided the tower. It was believed to have...

Write a story or poem that starts with this line or create a piece of art that reflects this line.

This is quite different than my usual.  I began with our starter sentence, and just began to write, with no idea of what or how it would turn out…

There was echo of song

Everyone avoided the tower. It was believed to have been a place of the Little Folk long ago, and none wished to offend them if they lingered yet. After all, their good will would sometimes mean chores done secretly in the night, but their ill will could mean mischief. Some of the farm wives would occasionally leave an offering of a saucer of milk on the worn stone that was believed to have been the front step. Children would sometimes dare one another to go into it, but none ever did. They would stand about and boast, and once in a while a bold one would dart towards it, but always stop short.

But the young man on his walking trip had never been there before, did not know the local legends. He was fascinated by the tower, so tall and straight, seemingly deserted. It was ancient and fair, and he was sure it held secrets. He explored all around it, and then entered the ruins. While the outside of the tower looked strangely untouched by time, the inside was another matter. A portal where once must have been a stout wooden door was long rotted away, and where windows had once been sealed by shutters, the same had occurred. Inside the tower was bare enough. A stone stairwell went up to nowhere. Presumably there had once been a landing there, but now the stair clung in a graceful curve against the inner wall, and came to an abrupt end about twenty feet above his head. Leaves had blown in, and littered the broken flags of the floor. He stared above his head, to see a perfect circle of blue sky. What must the stars have looked like from there at night!

He went back out, circled the place, and then made ready to set up camp for the night at its base. Perhaps he could have cleared out a space within the tower which would have been out of the wind, but somehow that did not seem right.  The weather was mild, and he needed no fire.  He ate and drank what provisions he had with him, and unrolled his bedroll.  He lay beneath the stars and looked up into the clear sky, amazed at how bright and numerous the stars appeared from this hilltop.  They seemed much brighter, much larger...they were the largest, brightest stars he had ever seen...he thought he could almost reach out and touch them...they swirled in patterns, and it seemed he was there among them, looking down upon the starlit world.  Then, as it seemed, he could see the Tower standing fair and intact.  There was light shining from the windows, and from below as well, from little round windows in the hill on which the Tower stood.  It seemed a rosy dawn came and he knew that the little round windows looked out upon fair gardens, and a path of white stone leading down to a winding road.  Over the winding road came a small figure on a pony.  He could see a grey-green cloak, and silver hair where the hood was blown back...a round door opened, and a small woman came out, not young but very comely, her golden hair shot with threads of silver.  She greeted the rider, and assisted him to stiffly dismount.  They embraced, and somehow he knew they were father and daughter... they faded from his view and he found that he was once more among the swirling stars.  A song, a haunting song of piercing beauty in a fair tongue he could not understand filled his mind, and he saw he was now looking down upon a sea-strand.  Two walked there, one in robes of white, an old man venerable and wise, with a beard as white as his shining robes, and at his side walked one whom he took at first for a child, in a cloak similar to the one on the rider in his first vision.  But it was no child he saw...they walked upon the beach, and left no footprints...the song faded, and all he could hear was the sound of the waves, growing louder and louder...and then, one great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness inescapable...

He woke with a gasp, blinking in confusion.  As he came to himself, he sat up and saw to the east the pinks and purples of the coming morning, snatches of the strange song and the strange tongue lingering in his mind...

________

Author’s Notes: The title comes from JRRT’s poem “The Sea-Bell”; the last portion of our unknown hiker’s dream is from Faramir’s dream which he recalls to Éowyn in the chapter “The Steward and the King”.