The Tower
The story is that people are attracted to the Tower because of some enchantment. That at some time something so beautiful had happened there that made it for ever blessed. A birth, some visiting kings? That would be too much! But there had been love. Surely? The sort that transforms beasts, turns toads into princes and induces irrational thoughts and behaviour and a belief that you can make things come true.
Certainly the Tower had a quality of mystery about it. Especially in the early evening when the valley between it and the dark rise of the fir forest beyond is layered with mist touched silver by the rising moon.
Is it just that lonely towers prompt such imaginings? That their ancient histories suggest contacts with long lost and arcane magics? Contacts with benign powers that we have let slip carelessly away in our busy lives? That a quiet time in the Tower will allow to ease back into our thoughts?
Of course there must have been hauntings of a kind: whisperings, small secrets, longings and fulfilments. You have only to put out your hand and press its palm on the rough stones of the Tower to make contact with those who first heaved them into place. You have only to listen with the imagination to hear the small voices of the silence, the echoes of the past and the sighing of the Earth as it exhales.
There was Walter de la Mare’s Traveller who sensed there were others listening when he knocked on the moonlit door.
It only needs a pause and quiet thought and its gifts will come to you. Gifts of time, of belonging and continuity. It’s not just the Tower of course. There’s - but we’ll see.
Page(s) 19
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