High in the mountains, where steep rocky walls meet, there was hidden a quiet valley. And right there, between two gray crags, lived Echo. She was not an ordinary echo. She felt and thought, but she was very sad. Her greatest torment was that she had no voice of her own.
Whenever a tourist visited the valley or a curious child ran in and shouted: "Hello!", Echo had to obediently repeat: "Hello... hello... hello..." Always perfectly, always precisely, but never in her own way.
One day, a little girl with braids the color of straw sat down on the meadow below the crags. She called out at the top of her lungs: "How beautiful you are, world!" Echo answered her as best she could: "...beautiful, world!... beautiful, world!..." Except she didn't think so. Her world was empty and quiet, full only of foreign words that touched her and immediately flew away. "If only I could sing my own song," she sighed so quietly that no one could hear her. "Just one single note that would be mine alone."
Just then, old mountain goat Rocky appeared above her on a rocky ledge. He had whiskers hanging with wisdom and hooves solid as granite. He measured the sad Echo with his gaze and asked in a deep, calm voice: "Why are you so dejected, neighbor?"
"Oh, Rocky," whispered Echo, and her whisper quietly bounced off the rocky walls. "I would like to have my own voice. To create something of my own. To tell the world something it hasn't heard yet. But I can only repeat."
Mountain goat Rocky pondered and scraped his hoof across the stone. "Hmm, that's true. You cannot create new sounds. But have you ever really tried to listen to yourself?"
Echo didn't understand. "What do you mean? I listen all day so I can repeat everything correctly."
"No, no," Rocky shook his head. "You don't listen, you just wait for a signal. Try it differently. Don't just listen to words. Listen to the whole valley. Every sound it makes. Maybe your strength isn't in creating, but in connecting." With these words, he skillfully pushed off and disappeared behind a rocky outcrop.
Echo remained alone with her thoughts. Connecting? What could he have meant by that? She decided to try it. She closed her eyes, even though she had none, and concentrated.
First, the wind reached her. It brought no words, just cheerful whistling as it rushed through the mountain pines. It sounded like a thin flute. Echo didn't repeat it immediately. Instead, she seemed to keep that sound to herself, holding it inside like a precious treasure.
Then she heard something else. From the meadow below her came a gentle, sweet tinkling. Sheep were grazing and their little bells played a merry melody. Ting, ting-ting, tingli-ling! Echo caught this sound too and added it to the wind's whistling. She still didn't let them out.
Thirdly, the babbling of a stream reached her, as it searched for its way among the stones. Splash, whoosh, glub-glub. It was a soothing, regular rhythm. Echo stored this one too.
Suddenly she had three completely different sounds within her. The wind's whistling, the tinkling of bells, and the babbling of the stream. What now? Should she try to release them all at once? Carefully, like a painter mixing colors on a palette, she began to connect the sounds.
First she quietly released the babbling stream as a basic rhythm. Glub-whoosh-glub. Right after that, she added the gentle tinkling of bells, which seemed to dance on the water's surface. And on top of everything, like a thin ribbon, she laid the high whistling of the wind.
Something wonderful happened. From the crags came neither whistling, nor tinkling, nor babbling. It was a completely new sound! It was music! It was a song of the entire valley, composed of its own voices.
Echo fell silent for a moment from surprise and joy. She had done it! She hadn't created a single new note, but she had connected the existing ones into something unique. Into something that was hers. Her own symphony.
The animals in the valley perked up. The sheep stopped chewing grass. A marmot who was just about to whistle remained quiet and listened. Even mountain goat Rocky stopped halfway up the steep wall and nodded with a smile.
The next day, the little girl came again. This time she didn't shout. She just sat in the grass and listened to that strange, beautiful music that echoed from the crags. "Oh my," she whispered in wonder. "That's the song of our valley!"
Echo heard this and her heart filled with joy. She repeated her words, but this time with pride: "...our valley!... our valley!..."
From that day on, Echo was never sad again. She learned to listen to the singing of birds, the buzzing of bees, and even the quiet cracking of pinecones in the hot summer. Every day she mixed these sounds and composed newer and newer melodies. She discovered that her gift was not in having her own voice, but in showing everyone what wonderful music the world can create when its voices come together.
And perhaps, when you venture into the mountains someday and listen really carefully, you won't hear just the wind or the stream. Maybe you'll hear a piece of that most beautiful song that Echo herself composes for you.