Gone With The Harp's Echo by Narya

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Chapter 7

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It was quieter than Robin had thought it might be, despite being the Solstice – but he supposed that most of the celebrations had taken place at dawn. Still, they were by no means alone as they climbed up Glastonbury Tor.

“Do you really think we can do...whatever it is we're going to do, without being seen?” he asked Laurie.

His friend snorted. “Has anyone noticed that star on your forehead, besides May and myself?”

“Well. No.”

“Then you have your answer. People see what they expect to see.”

“I'd imagine quite a few people up here on Midsummer's Day will be expecting to see strange things.”

“Hoping, perhaps. That is not at all the same thing.”

Robin tilted his head. “Like you hope the waters from the two holy springs will do the trick and get me through?”

Laurie laughed – a rolling, melodic sound like a sea-wave's curl. “You've more than hope in your favour, believe me.”

“So this is going to work.”

“I think so, yes. There's power in that chalice, and in the waters you drank – healing waters, don't forget. Then there's the star in your head, and the fairy's kiss, and the land itself. Why do you think she told you to come here?”

“Is it true, then?” May asked. “Everything they say about this place?”

“Not everything, no. And as for true...that depends on your definition of the word.” He smiled, a little mischief in the curve of his lips. “But it has a magic of its own.”

“Where worlds lean together, and Song and Magic bleed through,” Robin murmured.

Laurie nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

They had reached the top now. The sky was clouding over, and some of the other visitors were packing up, muttering about rain. Others, though, stayed, sitting around on blankets and nibbling at evening picnics. Behind them, St Michael's Tower reached up to the heavens, and below, the Summerland Meadows tumbled away, bathed in the glow of the softening light.

May, apparently nervous, started pulling up grass stalks. Laurie gently took hold of her hands.

“It will be alright,” he told her.

She swallowed. “Sure?”

“Fairly sure, yes.”

Robin gave her a smile and held out his arm; she leaned against him, and he squeezed her shoulders gratefully. In truth, he was nervous too – though whenever he thought of the fairy's kiss, intoxication crept through him again, and he knew that he had to go on.

“This was all sea and salt-marsh, once,” Laurie said. His voice dropped into a soft, gentle cadence as though he was telling a story. Wind blew through the grasses, and the dying sun gleamed on the network of ditches and rhynes. “Where we sit now was truly an island, until the sea-rise slowed and the reed-beds grew. But the land remembers, and sometimes, even now, it tries to return to the sea.”

May sighed softly. “You make it sound alive.”

“It is alive. It is a place of constant change and strange power, and it only grows stronger as it feeds on belief.”

Robin shivered, and Laurie caught his eye, and now his smile held a hint of challenge.

“I would not have thought it would come as a surprise to you, with your history. There are plenty of thin places in this world, where time twists and the realms push close together, but few are as potent as this. Can you not sense them? Can you not feel the echoes?”

The air had grown colder, and the sun was setting – though surely, Robin thought, it could not be that time yet. The chatter from the other visitors to the Tor had faded away to a whisper, and when he turned to look at them, he was startled to see that they were grey and shadowed, like ghosts.

A quiet scream from May brought his head around. Against a sky of deep orange swirled with lilac and grey, a murmuration of starlings soared through the air, banking tightly over the fields, their wings chattering and rustling in the deepening gloom.

“That's...not normal for this time of year, is it?” Robin asked, rubbing May's shoulders with a soothing thumb.

“No.” Laurie nodded to something behind them. “Turn and look, lost Robin-Wanderer. The way has opened to you again.”

Robin turned, and his stomach fell away.

St Michael's Tower was no longer there. In its place was an archway, past which lay a land both familiar and strange, like the ways he had walked as a child – a reaching plain draped in mist, and a hill of shadow, and a great white tree like a tower, shining like the sun's noon light.

The King's Tree.

He had never seen it, and yet somehow he knew its name.

But even more lay beyond this. There was another archway, beyond the tree – a doorway in the air, above the mists, and through this Robin saw a gleaming white tower rising out of the sea, its lustre soft and warm like an oyster's delicate shell.

“The Tower of Pearl in the Enchanted Isles,” Laurie said. “Where Arthur sleeps and heals.”

“Our Arthur?”

“'Even he,
That was King once, and yet again shall be.'”

Robin exhaled.

“For now he rests there, and the Tower and the Isles guard the way to Tol Eressëa, and the port city of Avallónë.”

The ground suddenly seemed lighter under his feet. “Where Avalon and Avallónë meet...”

“Precisely.”

Robin looked up. “How did she know that you'd know where to come?”

“Because I have stood here many times as the year turns, hoping to catch a glimpse of the road I can no longer travel. It can only be seen in the midsummer's dusk, when the walls of the world grow thin.” Laurie's eyes were fixed on the archway, and Robin had the sudden idea that he could see something even beyond the Tower of Pearl.

“Is that your home?” Robin asked tentatively. “Avallónë?”

“I have kin there.” Laurie turned away. In the distance a kingfisher called. “I would not say that it is my home.”

Robin looked between the two of them. “Will you go with me?”

May shook her head. “I can't see anything. Only the tower – the one in this world. I don't think I'm supposed to go.”

Robin hugged her tightly, and looked at Laurie.

“No.” The Elf's voice was full of sorrow, but it was firm. “Not yet. Perhaps never.”

“But what will you do?”

“Walk on, as I have always done. Perhaps that is my fate – to wander forever on the edge of history and song.”

“That's terrible.”

“Depending on who you ask, I may well deserve it.”

A fierce rush of anger cut through the insistent hum of the fairy-call. “Nobody deserves that.”

Laurie looked surprised, and touched. “You do not know what I have done.”

“I know you. I've lived with you.” He grinned, attempting humour, though he was startled to find tears in his eyes. “I've seen you drunk.”

Another musical laugh. “I contest that allegation.”

“You climbed onto the roof and started singing that song about seagulls.”

Mischief sparked again in the grey eyes. “The gulls they are loud
They flock in a crowd
A feathery cloud
They never are cowed...”

“Yes, that one. What is it even about? Really about, I mean.”

“I'll tell you one day, if we meet again. Though you might not believe me.”

“There isn't much I won't believe. Not these days.” He drew the taller man into his arms, and felt an ache like the ocean falling away beneath him. “Look after May, please,” he said quietly. “And tell my mother...something. Give her my love.”

“Of course.”

He gave May a last kiss on the cheek. As he stepped through the archway, he heard Laurie's voice on the evening air.

“The gulls they do fly
Up, up, up, very high
They wheel in the sky
And longing they cry...”

Robin laughed – and then a welcoming wind rushed over his skin, and the song was gone, and he knew that the doorway had closed.

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Chapter End Notes

“...Even he,
That was King once, and yet again shall be.” - from the poem 'Glastonbury', by Tolkien's friend Geoffrey Bache Smith.

The Enchanted Isles don't seem to exist in canon past the War of Wrath, but for the purposes of this story, I have them guarding the way through the realms, since Valinor is gone from the circles of the world.