Wannaskan Almanac for Tuesday, July 29, 2025 The Song Chapter 1

 Over the next couple of weeks I will be sharing a story that I wrote recently.  Today we look at chapter 1.  Enjoy!

Chapter 1

The rusty hinges of the garden shed shrieked in protest as Elias wrestled it open. Sunlight, thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, spilled into the dim interior. He was on a mission, a treasure hunt of sorts, though the treasure was less gold and more… forgotten melody. His grandmother, Nana Maeve, had passed away a few weeks prior, leaving behind a house overflowing with memories and an attic crammed with the detritus of a long and vibrant life. Elias was tasked with sorting through it all, a bittersweet excavation of his family’s past.

Nana Maeve had been an eccentric soul, a painter of vibrant landscapes and a collector of equally vibrant stories. She’d often hum tuneless melodies while tending her riotous garden, snippets of songs that seemed to drift in on the breeze and vanish just as quickly. Elias had always been fascinated by them, these fleeting musical fragments that hinted at something ancient and profound.

He’d found the dusty, leather-bound journal tucked away in a trunk filled with old photographs and dried flowers. Its pages, brittle with age, were filled with Nana Maeve’s elegant script, interspersed with sketches of swirling patterns and strange symbols. And then there it was, a series of notes meticulously drawn, accompanied by words in a language he didn’t recognize, yet somehow felt resonating deep within him. Beneath it, in Nana Maeve’s familiar hand, was a single sentence: “The Song of the Turning.”

Days turned into nights as Elias became consumed by the journal. He painstakingly transcribed the musical notation, his fingers tracing the faded lines. The unfamiliar words seemed to hum on his tongue as he tried to pronounce them, a series of soft vowels and guttural consonants that felt both alien and intimately familiar. He was a musician himself, a guitarist who usually dealt in bluesy riffs and soulful ballads, but this was different. This felt… primal.

One rainy afternoon, holed up in Nana Maeve’s sunroom, the scent of lavender and old paper filling the air, Elias finally felt ready. He’d practiced the melody countless times, his guitar lying forgotten in the corner. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to sing.

The notes that emerged from his throat were unlike anything he’d ever produced. They were clear and resonant, yet possessed a strange, almost ethereal quality. The unfamiliar words flowed effortlessly, each syllable vibrating with an energy he couldn’t explain. As he sang, a tingling sensation spread through his body, a subtle hum that seemed to vibrate in the very air around him.

When he finished, the silence that followed felt thick and expectant. He opened his eyes, half-expecting… he wasn’t sure what. A revelation? A sign? The rain continued to patter against the windowpanes, the world outside looking exactly as it had before. Disappointment flickered within him. Had he just wasted hours on a fanciful old journal?

He decided to take a break, a walk to clear his head. Nana Maeve’s house was nestled in a small, relatively untouched corner of rural Maine, surrounded by dense woods and rolling hills. He pulled on his boots and a rain jacket and stepped out into the misty afternoon.

He followed a familiar path that wound through a patch of birch trees and opened into a small clearing where a dilapidated old barn stood, its grey wood weathered by decades of harsh New England winters. He’d played in that barn as a child, its dusty interior filled with the ghosts of forgotten harvests.

As he approached the clearing, he stopped dead in his tracks. The barn… it was gone. Not just collapsed or further deteriorated. Gone. In its place stood a cluster of towering pine trees, their needles a vibrant, almost luminous green. The clearing itself was different, the familiar patches of stubborn weeds replaced by a carpet of lush ferns and moss. A small stream, which he’d never seen before, gurgled through the undergrowth.

Elias’s heart hammered against his ribs. He spun around, his gaze sweeping across the surrounding woods. The familiar shapes of the trees seemed… different. Taller, perhaps. Wilder. The air itself felt cleaner, crisper, carrying the scent of damp earth and pine, but something else too, a primal fragrance he couldn’t quite place.

Panic began to bubble in his chest. Had he somehow wandered into a completely different part of the woods? That was impossible; he knew this land like the back of his hand. He retraced his steps, his eyes scanning for familiar landmarks, a uniquely shaped boulder, a twisted oak tree. They weren’t there.

He stumbled back towards where Nana Maeve’s house should have been, his breath catching in his throat. The familiar silhouette of the two-story farmhouse with its wrap-around porch was… absent. In its place stood a dense thicket of ancient-looking trees, their branches intertwined, creating a canopy so thick that only dappled sunlight filtered through.

Terror, cold and sharp, pierced through his confusion. This wasn’t just different; it was impossible. He had been gone for maybe an hour. In that time, the entire landscape had transformed.

He sank to his knees on the damp earth, his mind reeling. What had happened? Had he imagined the song? Had he somehow hallucinated the changes? But the scent of the air, the feel of the moss beneath his fingers, the utter absence of anything remotely human-made… it was all too real.

Then, a horrifying thought struck him. The song. Nana Maeve’s cryptic inscription: “The Song of the Turning.” Turning what? Turning when?

He remembered the tingling sensation as he sang, the strange resonance in the air. Could it be? Could the song have… changed something? But what could a song possibly do to the physical world?

Driven by a desperate need for answers, he scrambled back towards the thicket where his grandmother’s house had stood. He pushed through the dense undergrowth, his clothes snagging on thorny vines. The air grew cooler, damper, the silence broken only by the rustling of leaves and the chirping of unseen insects.

He emerged into a small opening. There was no house, no porch swing, no rose bushes Nana Maeve had so lovingly tended. Instead, a massive, gnarled oak tree stood sentinel, its branches reaching towards the sky like the arms of some ancient giant. At its base, a patch of wildflowers bloomed in vibrant hues he’d never seen before.

He circled the clearing slowly, his mind struggling to comprehend the impossible. There were no signs of human habitation, no discarded tools, no stray pieces of brick or wood. It was as if the house, the barn, everything he knew, had never existed.

He walked further into the transformed landscape, a growing sense of dread weighing him down. The familiar dirt paths he’d walked countless times were gone, replaced by winding trails carved through the undergrowth by unseen creatures. The sounds of the forest were different too, a symphony of chirps, rustles, and calls that lacked any familiar bird songs.

He reached a small stream, its water crystal clear. He knelt down and cupped his hands, drinking deeply. The water tasted pure, untainted, unlike the slightly metallic tang he sometimes noticed in the tap water back at the house.

As he looked around, he noticed something else. The rocks along the stream bed were smooth and rounded, showing no signs of being disturbed by human activity. There were no discarded bottles, no footprints in the mud, no hint that anyone had ever been here.

A chilling realization began to dawn. The song hadn’t just changed the immediate vicinity of the house and barn. It had changed everything. But to what? And when?

He stood up, his gaze sweeping across the primeval landscape. The trees were larger, the foliage denser, the air thick with the scent of untouched wilderness. It felt… ancient.

He remembered reading something in Nana Maeve’s journal, a passage describing the “time before the echoes of man.” Could it be? Had the song somehow… reversed time?

He had to test it. He had to see if it was truly the song, or if he was simply experiencing some elaborate delusion. But what could he sing it to? Everything around him was nature, untouched by human hands.

Then he saw it. A small, moss-covered rock, about the size of his fist. He picked it up. It was ordinary, unremarkable. He held it in his palm, took a deep breath, and began to sing the Song of the Turning.

The familiar notes filled the silent forest, the ancient words resonating in the still air. As he sang, the tingling sensation returned, focused this time on the rock in his hand. When he finished, he waited, his heart pounding.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rock began to change. The moss seemed to recede, the rough edges softened, the color deepened. It became smoother, rounder, more… worn. It looked like it had been tumbled in a riverbed for centuries.

Elias stared at the rock, his mind reeling. It had worked. The song had somehow… turned it back. But back to when?

He looked around at the ancient forest, the pristine stream, the complete absence of any human trace. The phrase from Nana Maeve’s journal echoed in his mind: “the time before the echoes of man.”

Could it be? Had he somehow sung this part of rural Maine back to a time before humans existed? A time when the land was wild and untamed, ruled only by the rhythms of nature?

He had to find out. He had to understand what he had done, what this song was capable of. And more importantly, he had to figure out how to undo it. He was alone, utterly alone, in a world that felt both breathtakingly beautiful and terrifyingly alien. The echoes of his own song were the only human sound in a vast, silent wilderness.

Like what you have read?  Check it out here.  Or just read along as I post the whole thing here in the almanac!