A is for Acorn
Albert was far from home, travelling and seeking his fortune, as people do. When he had first stepped off the little boat that he had taken across the channel, he had made some effort to learn the local language, but as he had wandered from village to village, he had quickly discovered that the people in this land were worse than his own countrymen for incomprehensible local accents. The smattering of words and phrases he had learned in his point of arrival were quickly found to be more and more useless in each successive town, and Albert found himself getting by with pantomime and trying to remember the words for common items that the previous town had used.

After a fortnight, Albert was amazed to meet a countryman, a priest who had felt the calling to visit a nearby shrine, and though neither of them were Parisian, both spoke enough of that particular strain of French that they were able to communicate. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from Albert’s shoulders; he had taken to talking to himself, just to hear the familiar sounds of speech, rather than the guttural, speedy grunting of the people in the towns and villages he passed through. The priest told Albert of a woman he had seen wandering the woods, a golden-tressed beauty who wore a flowing white robe with a delicate acorn graven in gold on a chain about her neck. She had not replied when the priest had hailed her, but she had turned to see him, and the beautiful melancholy of her face was clear to him, before she turned away and walked deeper into the wood.

The priest said that he had asked the local villagers about her, and – young and old – they had hissed through their teeth and made the sign of the cross, and said nothing. He had asked the monks at the shrine, and they too had made the sign of the cross and told him to ask no more, if he truly loved his soul. Being curious by nature, though, the priest had done some investigation on his own. He had scoured the library of the monastery, but they only had five books, and four of them were records of the lives of saints, and the other was a badly water-damaged volume collecting Greek translations of Saracen medicine and science, and the monks debated constantly about whether reading it would lead to heresy or some other wickedness, and so denied the priest access. He had also sought out the collection of the local lord, who was renowned to be a great collector of written stories, but the lord had never heard of the woman in the forest, nor did he have any interest in the superstitions of his own people, his own reading being dedicated to the gods and stories of Classical times.

Finally, the priest had found something that had amazed him, in a half-ruined old church, inhabited by one solemn and seemingly-antediluvian anchorite who tended to a flock of four goats and spoke only seven words a day. What he found was a painting, on a large piece of smooth, black stone that made up much of one wall of the church. The painting must have been as old as the anchorite, who said “yes, as long as I can remember,” and then turned away to milk his goats when the priest asked if the painting had been in the church for a long time. The painting was of a yellow-haired woman, surrounded by trees, and flanked by a white doe and a golden stag. Around her neck she wore a golden object, which the priest could not make out, but which he had only been able to assume was an acorn. The painting was worn and faded, and the priest was sure that there was more too it that had been eroded away by time and the elements. He tried to press the anchorite for more details, but the old man simply shrugged, for he could say no more until the next sunrise, and by then, the priest had moved on.

His own adventures having been somewhat mundane up to then, Albert resolved that he would seek out this woman, and do his best to find out her story. He thanked the priest for giving his quest some direction, and asked for a blessing, which the priest gave. They parted ways at dawn.

Albert travelled the surrounding wood, singing and whistling the folk songs of his homeland to himself. He snared rabbits, picked berries and herbs, and dug roots for food, for this land was fertile and did not lack for natural food. He bathed in streams and ponds, and enjoyed his wanderings, though he saw no sign of the woman.

Weeks passed, and summer crested, beginning to wane. With the birth of autumn came storms, and rain poured down from the heavens, driving Albert to seek shelter. Holding his broad hat firmly to his head, Albert ran as swiftly as he dared through the wood to a cave he had seen on his meanderings, his path lit only by the intermittent white flares of lightning that tore the sky. The cave sat near a deep cold pool, and the pool was flanked by a dozen mighty oak trees which spread their branches into a vast canopy. Albert was glad for the trees’ cover, although it was known in Albert’s land, and elsewhere, that oak trees drew lightning to them. Albert hurried around the pool, under the shelter of the oaks, towards the cave, when he saw that beneath one of the trees knelt the golden-haired woman.

She was unmistakeable: even in the darkness, her hair shone yellow like a halo, and her white gown was silvery and radiant in the lightning. The rain poured down her face, wetting it to the point where Albert could not be sure if she mixed tears with the rainwater. Finally, the gold acorn glinted at her delicate throat.

Albert stood behind the bole of one of the immense trees and watched the woman, who seemed to be praying fervently; though her mouth did not move, she had the appearance of one who was imploring the heavens for the surcease of some great suffering.

As he watched, a mighty peal of thunder, greater than any before in that storm, shook the sky, and a bolt of lightning fell from the sky with such intense brightness that Albert was shaken, and his eyes flashed white. When his vision returned, the beautiful woman was no longer alone. Next to her beneath the towering oak was a man. The man was a giant, red-haired and broad shouldered, with a full beard. He was shirtless, and wore bands of silver around his wrists, and a heavy leather bag hung at his hip. He regarded the woman with fierceness, but his face softened as he gazed at her sad face, and soon he fell to his knees beside her. He took the golden acorn from about her neck and raised it over her head, removing the chain.

Immediately, her sobs became audible. She had indeed been crying, Albert realized, but the sound had been somehow stolen by the acorn. She steeled herself and began to speak to the red-bearded man. Albert strained to hear her over the torrential rain.

“Hello, My Love,” she said, and there was a moment of silence as their eyes met. Albert knew she was not speaking French, and yet somehow he understood her words more clearly than he often felt he understood his own. The figures’ eyes met, and then she continued: “Have they relented?”

The giant man shook his head and said only “No.”

The woman sighed, and rose to her feet. She seemed to be growing stronger the longer she was without the acorn about her neck. She took the man’s hands, and helped him to his feet. They embraced, tightly, but chastely, her head resting on his enormous chest.

“It is strange,” he said, and his voice rumbled in time with a distant growl of thunder, “that we two are so mighty, and yet we cannot escape our natures.”

“Mighty as we are, Beloved,” she told him, “our fathers are mightier still, and we must bear their will. Besides, our love was cursed from the beginning. I, the virgin, and you, already married; we could not be.”

“My wife,” said the red-bearded giant, but the golden-haired woman shushed him, and held him tight.

“It does not matter,” she said, “for this night is all we have.”

With that, they kissed, and there was a flash of light brighter than anything Albert had ever seen. It had the white-heat of lightning, yet seemed tempered by the silvery glow of the moon. Albert was forced to close his eyes to the brightness. When he opened them, the kiss was over, and the man was opening his heavy bag. From it, he withdrew a steel helm, too small for his own head, but which fit perfectly over the woman’s. Next, he drew out a silver bow and a quiver of hunting arrows, fletched with white feathers. These items, he handed to the woman, who wore and carried them as naturally as any could. Lastly, he handed her an enormous hammer, which Albert felt sure the woman would not be able to lift, and yet she hefted it with grace, examined it, and placed it back in the bag, which she slung over her shoulder.

The man finally passed her the golden acorn, which glinted in the light. She took the chain, and placed it around the man’s neck, and Albert saw that where once the pendant had been golden with a silver chain, now it was silver, and the chain was gold. When it fell about the large man’s chest, he fell silent, and seemed as if the weight of the world had fallen upon him.

Once more they kissed and embraced, and then the woman turned away, and in a flash of light, she was gone.

The red-haired man slumped back to the forest floor and plucked two old acorns from the earth. He tossed them idly into the pond, and watched as they bobbed across the surface of the water, drawn together by some unseen force, which Albert knew meant that the man and the woman he was thinking of were truly in love, for acorns could predict such things. The man gazed at the pool, and his mighty form was wracked with a silent sigh. The rain stopped, suddenly, and Albert forgot all about the cave. He turned away from the man, and fled back towards the village.

The villagers found Albert the next day, collapsed with exhaustion near a sheep which had become separated from the flock during the storm. They brought Albert – and the sheep – back to the village, and fed him, gave him a new hat, and sent him on his way back to France.

Albert spent another year seeking the priest he had met, to share the story with him, but never again found the man. He eventually outgrew his wanderlust, and returned to his family’s broad and rich lands, where he lived out the rest of his life in happiness, and married well, and had many strong and wise children. Even after settling down, Albert sent letters asking about the priest to all the churches and shrines he could think of, but never received a reply.

Though he was happy, in his later days, Albert was often scolded by his family for wandering alone in rainstorms, gathering acorns and staring at the sky.