Tower Challenge 2nd Submission. Mine!

Wanderer's Lesson.
By Elaine Dalton.


I'd always thought living in a tower would be sheer torture. Up there, all on my own with nothing to do and no friends or family. I thought it would it was the most miserable fate anyone could be condemned to and the idea of someone willingly living in such circumstances was insanity! That is, I thought that way until I met her. The meeting took place in a rather interesting manner. I was passing through a little known town in the middle of nowhere looking for work; a farmer and his family took me on, paying me to do odd jobs around the farm like chop wood or fix the fence in exchange for a room, food and a little money {they couldn't spare much but I was grateful for what they gave me and never asked for more}. One day, having noticed an odd weekly trip the farmer and his family took, I asked him about it. "Sir, pray tell where do you go each Wednesday?"


"Why," he replied, "to visit my niece."


"Where does your niece live sir?"


"In a tower outside of town."


"Why does she live in a tower outside of town?"


"Tell you what, why don't you come along with us tomorrow and ask her for yourself."


I agreed and the next day I joined the farmer and his family on their peculiar trip. I carried the large, rather heavy basket on my strong shoulders while the farmer walked arm-in-arm with his wife and their nine children scampered to and fro ahead of us, racing around, enjoying the fresh air and the signs of spring all around them. Not long after we left the small town behind us, we rounded a curve of the dark forest and I stopped in wonder at the sight we be held. Before us the grassy meadow sloped gently upward and then raced down into a little hollow with the dark forest stretching away to our left and two sides of the Blue Ridge Cliffs rising up behind and to the right of the hollow. A small stream poured over one of the cliffs, dropping into a good sized swimming pool of clear cold water before trickling away into the forest in a small brook. Smack in the middle of this cozy little hollow was a tower, the dandiest tower I've ever seen with roses climbing up its walls and ivy hanging down from a windowsill at the top. Aside from the window, I could see no other entrance to the tower but that wasn't my concern at the moment; my attention was focused on the sweet strand of music drifting toward us on the light breeze. It was the enchanting sound of someone singing softly in accompaniment to the strumming of a harp.


I looked at the bemused farmer, "What wonder is this, good friend?"


He laughed, "Wait and see, for a wonder still yet abides within."


Confused but intrigued, I followed the family to the foot of the tower and listened as the farmer called up to the occupant within. "Ho there, Shadow-dancer let down your rope!"


The music above stopped and a rope ladder was flung out the window, swiftly followed by another rope attached to a pulley to haul up the basket. The children one by one caught hold of the ladder and scrambled up it as nimble as squirrels, followed by their mother who clucked at them like an anxious mother hen. Having secured the basket, the farmer tugged twice on the rope and watched as the load was hauled slowly upward; when it was level with the windowsill, he climbed up after his family, and I in turn followed him upward. When he reached the top he sat on the windowsill and swung the basket around before helping his sons pull the thing through the window, and then disappeared inside after it. When I reached the windowsill, I pulled myself up and leapt through it, landing squarely on my feet only to feel knocked completely backward by the sight that greeted me.


The inside of the tower was warm and surprisingly cozy with thick soft rugs carpeting the hard oak floor. Colorful paintings and tapestries adorned the walls all the way up to the ceiling which had stars painted on it. To my left was a kitchen area, with a bright fire burning on the hearth, a counter with a wash basin sunk into it {the farmer called it a sink and tried to explain to me something called plumbing but I wasn't listening at the time}, and cupboards covered the walls of this little corner. A bowl of fruit and a loaf of bread sat on one of the counters while a black pot containing stew, I assumed, bubbled near the fire. To my right {and all the rest of the upper room as well} were bookshelves built into the walls packed full of leather bound books on every subject imaginable. A dining table with one end piled high with mending, dominated part of this right hand side of the room while a corner near a second window was strewn with cushions; obviously a reading nook of some sort. The center of the room was fairly empty and the rugs there looked as though they were frequently rolled back to clear the floor for dancing, I supposed. Two tiny staircases stood in the far corner on either side of the room, one disappearing into the floor leading to another chamber, and one climbing up to a loft where I assumed was the bedroom of the curious tower's sole occupant.


This sole occupant stood before me, completely oblivious to the cheerful chatter of the children. The person was a woman of tall slender build, surprisingly strong arms with narrow hands and long fingers, the sort best suited to play the piano or some other type of instrument. She had dark brown hair that swept in gentle waves to her waist, a tanned but fair complexion with high cheek bones and a little annoyed furrow between her slender eyebrows. Her eyes were a sparkling dark blue with flecks of silver in them and, I was astonished to noticed, the tips of her pretty little ears that were poking up through her thick hair were pointed, like an elf's or fairy's. She was dressed in a loose flowing sleeveless but modest gown of a rosy pink hue. Dumbstruck by her beauty, I forgot the few manners my poor mother had tried so hard to drill into me {half of which stuck only half the time} and stared, open mouthed, at the woman.


The furrow between her eyebrows deepened and she turned to the farmer, "Who is this staring fool? Is it a mute idiot with no manners that he stares at me so?"


The farmer laughed, which sound caused me to snap my mouth shut and frantically try to regain my self-composure. "He is the fellow I told you of who has been making himself useful doing odd jobs around the farm. Quite frankly, I've never seen him act like this before: he's usually so self-controlled." Amused at his own private joke, the farmer laughed softly to himself again.


Swinging her gaze back to me, she demanded my name.


"My name is Wanderer, fair one."


She stiffened, "Do not make a habit of calling me such ridiculous things man! I am no fairer than any other woman that walks this earth."


I opened my mouth to protest then the thought struck me that this might not be a good idea and I closed it again.


Ignoring me, the woman greeted each of the children by name and sent them rushing to the kitchen area with the promise of finding a cake in one of the cupboards. While they noisily banged open and slammed shut the doors looking for their prize, the woman greeted the farmer and his wife each with a warm embrace. Watching them, I realized that she was not just some friend of theirs but rather must be a relative of some kind. Of course, I thought, she's their niece! The farmer's wife and the tower occupant then moved to the basket, pulling off the cover and beginning to sort through the contents, putting them on the floor in organized piles. Siding over to my employer, I asked him who the woman was.


"She is my niece, if you must know." I frowned, already knowing that bit of information.


"How did she come to be here? Where are her parents? Why is she living in a tower by herself?" My questions bounded out one after another, unheedful of my attempt to slow them.


The farmer, a naturally cheerful man, chuckled to himself. "Why don't you ask her yourself?"


"Dare I?"


"Aye; tis the reason I brought you here!"

Motivated by his response and eager for the answers, I stepped beside the woman and knelt down till I was at eye-level with her. She shot me a questioning glance and I was suddenly tongue-tied. Giving myself a little shake, I pushed the image of her beautiful eyes out of my head and voiced my questions.


For the first time since I'd stepped through the window and about fell over, I saw her smile. It was a rare, beauteous moment that didn't fade when she looked up at me. "You ask good questions for an idiot."


I frowned, not quite understanding her jest.


"But," she continued, "I shall answer them truthfully." I decided I didn't like the way her eyes teased me at that statement. "Here, take these and follow me." She shoved an armload of wrapped parcels that felt like floor, meat, vegetables and such, into my arms and scooped up a similar load before marching off toward the stair that disappeared into the floor. Following her, I nearly slipped off the narrow stair several times and feared I would get stuck in one of the tight turns but managed not to by turning my board shoulders sideways. Dratted things, I could never figure out why they ended up wider than my father's. At last, we emerged at the foot of the stairs in a dark room filled with barrels and lots of shelves. "What is this place?" I asked without thinking.


"My storeroom. Below it is my library and below that is where I store my firewood and where my backdoor is hidden," she replied, her voice a soft musical sound in the near blackness. Her bare feet slipped soundlessly across the floor to one of the shelves where she tucked her previsions away before taking my load away and stowing it somewhere else in the room.


And then it was back up the narrow stairway yet this time the trek was easier for I was unburdened. However, she played a nasty trick on me by running back up and I was sore put to it to keep up. Back in the top room, I had to catch my breath and blink very rapidly to adjust my eyes to the searing brightness of the sunlight streaming in through the windows, a grand total of twelve of which circled the room at varying heights above the floor. "Might you tell me your story now, fair maiden?" I panted.


Frowning at the title I'd unthinkingly given her, she shook her head, causing her hair to ripple and toss back and forth down the length of her strong back. Distracted, I barely heard her reply, "Nay, for we have not finished our work. Duty first, pleasure later."


Sighing, I reminded myself of how much I disliked that saying and moved to help her finish unloading the basket. A good bit of fruit came out {which she hid in one of the cupboards}, several bolts of fabric and other sewing supplies, and about a dozen books rounded off the contents of the basket. Grateful that it was finally empty, I stretched, feeling more worn out helping the woman tuck her supplies away than with all my hard labor on the farm. I noticed that once everything was stowed away, the woman brought a purse out from some hidden pocket and paid the farmer a previously agreed upon sum of money, and then gave each of the children a coin, calling it her "shipping and handling fee." Whatever that meant! I was surprised when I was rewarded with a slice of cake and a glass of apple cider {neither of which I had excepted}, and invited to sit with the squirming children and their parents in the little cozy reading nook with all the cushions and the new books stacked nearby. She sat down too, hugging a purple throw-pillow to herself and then trading it for the toddler of the children who crawled onto her lap and sat contentedly sucking his thumb, gazing solemnly at the rest of us.


"Now," she began in what was obviously her storytelling voice for the children all stopped wriggling around and turned toward her, listening intently, "our friend Wanderer here has asked several good questions and the time has come to answer them. Most of you already know the story I'm about to tell so do please be quiet and try not to spoil it for Wanderer." She winked at the littlest children who giggled in reply.


"Once upon a time, many years ago, there lived a strong brave woodcutter. He lived all alone in the forest and spent his days shopping fallen trees into firewood; once a week he would hitch his tired old horse to a wagon and haul the wood to market, but he spent his nights dreaming of someday meeting a lovely young woman who would consent to be his wife, for he was dreadfully lonely. One day, while he was working and thinking about his dream, he heard a lovely voice in the forest singing a sweet song. Now he'd heard all the stories of how the forest was enchanted and haunted by ghosts and that fairies lived in the trees, just waiting for a hapless human to wander past them before they captured the person and dragged them screaming down to their dark lairs beneath the forest floor where they were never seen again. But he didn't believe any of those silly stories: he was a sensible man and believed only in what he could see, hear and touch and in God, Whom he saw, heard and felt in everything from the wind in the trees to the flowers in the field to the beat of his own heart. Thus he wasn't afraid when the voice started singing and listened quietly to the song. When it ended, he decided to go looking for the sweet singer and find out who she was.


"It took him only a few minutes to find her, for she'd begun singing a new song and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. A lovely young elf maiden with hair as black as ebony, eyes as blue as the sky after a rainstorm and skin as white as cream sat amid the moss and flowers of the forest floor, cradling a fawn in her arms and smiling at the birds perched in the trees around her. A young rabbit hopped nearby and a mother duck waddled over to her, leading her brood of ducklings all in a line behind her. The elf maiden sensed his presence and ceased her song, looking around with a concerned expression. Not wanting to scare her off, the woodcutter stepped out into the open, raising his hands to show he was unarmed and meant her no harm. At first, she appeared uncertain of his intentions then seemed to decide to trust him and beckoned him forward. When she deemed him close enough, she handed one of the little ducklings to him and watched as he gently took the tiny thing in his large rough hands, being very careful not to hurt it.


"Several months went by, with the lovely elf maiden visiting the woodcutter at odd intervals during the day; at first they were both very shy around each other, gradually getting use to one another. She would sit for hours watching him cut wood while he in turn would watch her play with her animal friends and sing songs to them. Finally, he asked her to marry him and she said yes, only if her father and brothers consented. Now, these had been watching the pair for some time and liked the woodcutter; they were married shortly afterward and a year later a daughter was born.


"The tiny little babe was born during a hard time for the family. The elves were locked in a civil war with a rival tribe of their kind while the humans were advancing in knowledge, claiming that elves, fairies and such didn't exist, that all could be proven by a thing called science. In an extraordinary way, the woodcutter and his wife had been blessed with a fortune and were well off though plagued by fortune-seekers. They knew that when their daughter was grown, many worthless young men would try to win her heart solely for the sake of her inheritance. Wanting to protect their daughter, whom they valued more than silver and gold, they had a tower secretly constructed and when she was old enough, she went to live in it. The woodcutter and his Elvin wife visited her every day, spending hours and hours with his growing daughter; and then one day he came to tell her that the time had come for the daughter to prepare her heart for the one God had planned for her. They still visited her everyday but now she used the time between their frequent visits to grow, to learn useful skills and to patiently wait.


"The girl in the tower was never lonely, for she had many friends. There were her books for instance; every time her parents visited, they brought her dozens of new books to read. There were the birds and animals of the forest, descendents of those whom her mother before her had befriended, that she loved to play with. There was also her beloved aunt and uncle and their many delightful children who visited her often and loved to tell her many stories and in turn listen to her stories. She was content and happy, living in her tower, waiting for her prince to come someday.


"But the prince never came. The years flew by and she began to fear she would stay in the tower forever, alone." Her voice trailed off, the furrow between her brows back in place and her gaze fixed on the floor, a thoughtful expression on her face.


One of the little girls snuggled up close to her and began to finish the story for her. "And then one day, when she wasn't looking for him, a handsome young man as fine as any prince and as strong as any woodcutter, climbed to the top of her tower and looked in. He found her scrubbing the floor and thought she looked so pretty surrounded by the soap bubbles that he instantly fell in love with her, not even stopping to ask her name first. Overjoyed that at last her prince had come, the girl called her friends and family together and they celebrated her engagement long into the night. And when the prince and the girl were married, they came back to the tower and lived there forever with their ninety-nine children. The end."


One of the older girls spoke up, "Wait, I thought she was weaving a rug when the prince climbed up the tower?"


Another curly haired girl said, "No, she was baking a pie!"


"Nay," chimed in a third, "she was mending a sock."


The argument, which seemed to have occurred rather often, would have continued if the farmer had not chuckled and said, "My children, regardless of what the dear girl was doing when her prince arrived, the point of the story is that she waited patiently on the Lord for Him to find the right man and send him to her."


The cleverly concealed meaning of the story hit me just then and, turning to the woman, I said, "The story is about you, isn't it? You are the girl living in the tower. Did your parents really leave you here all by yourself?"


She shot me a mildly annoyed look. "You ask a lot of questions. Yes, the story is about me, and yes, my parents did leave me here, but not when I was as young as the story might lead you to believe."


"Where are your parents?" I think she was right about my asking a lot of questions.


"Did you notice the cliff walls guarding the tower when you arrived here? Well, my parents carved a mansion into the opposite side of those cliffs so they could be near me and keep an eye on me. The land this tower stands on is theirs and they come to visit every day. Likewise, a day doesn't pass wherein I am not found running across to visit them and my little siblings still at home. I have several other siblings, all living in towers dotting the land within an easy walk from here."


I made a confused face as the children scrambled up and dashed off, bored with our conversation.


She decided to enlighten me. "Think of it as an ant hill or as the spreading branches of a young tree, growing outward from the roots and reaching up to the sun."


Her illustration clinked with something in my mind and I completely understood what she was trying to describe. "Your parents have created a sheltered environment that offers protection, help and love to their grown children while still letting them make their own decisions and live independently?!"


A dazzling smile flashed across her face, "Exactly! That's precisely what they've done! Just because a child has reached the age of eighteen or twenty or twenty-three doesn't mean that they have to be given over to the wolves and fortune-seekers of this world. They can still live in the home environment, still be a part of the family, yet still have their own space and be able to make their own decisions, such as what to make for dinner."


"I like that strategy." As soon as the words left my mouth, I immediately knew that I had to get to know this woman better and that I had to meet her father as soon as possible.


Expressing my intention to the farmer later that evening after our visit to the tower had ended; he laughed and took me the next day to see his brother, the woodcutter who'd married the Elvin maiden and who was now a well-off merchant. I laid my request before him, stating my intentions in as clear a tone as possible, and waited. Great indeed was my surprise when he agreed and gave me permission to court his daughter {whose name, I learned, was not Shadow-dancer although that was one of her many nicknames}. Fighting the sudden urge to kick my heels up in a jig and to shout to the heavens, I shook his hand and bounded away to tell the woman the good news. Of course, I had enough sense to ask her what her name was before I blurted my news out.


Those silver flecked eyes twinkled mischievously. "Guess," she said.


I frowned unhappily but did as I was requested. "Rosa?"


She shook her head.


"Violet?"


Again, she shook her head no.


"Maria?"


"Nope." This time I thought really, really hard for about ten seconds. I remembered something from her story. "Is it Patience?"


She smiled, "Yes, it is."


A few short months later, we became engaged and then married. A year later, a saying started making its way around the kingdom. "Wanderer has found Patience and God has given them Peace." Our firstborn child, a daughter, was named Peace.


And yet, nearly twenty years after all this took place, I still can't figure out why someone would deliberately and willingly want to live in a tower! We lived in Patience's for about a year and then, after a big tree nearly took our home out that winter, I moved us out, first into her parents' mansion and then into a sensible cottage tucked into a sheltered little hollow near the edge of the forest. We haven't regretted our move; for one thing, it's a lot less drafty in a cottage than in a tower.

                                                                   The End.